MORE ON MURTHA: WaPo: Eye-Opening Earmarks.

ANN ALTHOUSE smacks Andrew Sullivan. Hard.

MORE TEA PARTY NEWS:

NEW RICHMOND, Ohio — The flag was prominently displayed Sunday in New Richmond as a crowd of people gathered to celebrate Flag Day with patriotic and political fervor.

Organizers of the Cincinnati Tea Party movement used the symbolic day to encourage political involvement, as the group sets its sight on the national political stage.

“The politicians are disconnected from the citizens. They don’t realize that they still work for us, and too often they go off in their own direction without paying any attention to what the citizens actually want,” said Mike Wilson, president of the Cincinnati Tea Party.

Tea Party organizers said they are trying to encourage political participation in the hopes of influencing the 2010 midterm elections.

An earlier report said there were over 1,000 people there.

MAX BOOT: “If the mullahs were really canny, they would have let Mousavi win.”

DAVE PRICE: The high cost of accommodation. “Just as newly minted President Barack Obama appears bearing apologies and overtures of friendship, Iran’s autocrats seem bent on throwing away the last vestiges of democratic legitimacy the regime possessed by crushing protests, killing unarmed protesters, and arresting the presumptive winner of the election.”

RICH LOWRY: “You have to wonder if the Iranian authorities now regret ‘over-stealing’ the elections? Did the theft have to be quite this blatant?”

A BUNCH OF Father’s Day gift recommendations.

BBC: Unrest Challenges Iran’s Republic.

GEORGE W. BUSH’S message to the Iranian people.

HEY, MAYBE THAT DEMOCRACY-IN-IRAQ THING DID make a difference.

REMEMBER WHEN IT WAS WRONG TO question people’s patriotism? That was then, this is now. “Before you know it, Sullivan will claim the Mormons are behind Ahmadinejad.” Only if it gets attention.

You think that’s mean? You obviously aren’t reading Bill Quick.

UPDATE: Iranian thuggery confuses the Left. “Does the American Left – after eight years of whining about make-believe tyranny – not know how to react to actual tyranny when it sees it in action?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Really, Sully? I mean, really? WTF goes through someone’s mind when they dream up an idiotic comparison between (a) Karl Rove, a Republican political strategist, and (b) Mahmoud Ahmadinejed, a Jew-hating genocidal maniac?”

Hey, don’t dump on Sullivan here. At least he’s picking on Karl Rove and not one of the Palin kids.

YOU’RE NOT GETTING OLDER, YOU’RE GETTING BETTER: Happy Birthday to the U.S. Army.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT: Remembering The Rape of Nanking. “I was struck by the similarity between the reaction of the Chinese civilians and soldiers to their fate and that of many Jews during the Holocaust. Despite plenty of obvious evidence to the contrary, they clung to a belief that they would be okay right up until the very end. The Japanese troops carrying out the killings were often outnumbered ten and even a hundred to one by their prisoners yet there were very few instances of any resistance even though the Chinese likely would have been able to overwhelm their captors had they acted together. It’s probably part of human nature at some level to refuse to accept that a horrible fate awaits and to rationalize your way into inaction. I don’t know if there are any lessons that one can take from this (and hopefully they would never need to be applied), but one seems to be that if armed men come to take you away you should assume the worst. Resistance at that point, even if futile, is probably preferable to the alternative. It reminds me of how people are usually advised that if you are getting car jacked or kidnapped, the best chance of escape is in the initial moments of the attack.”

IRAN TRIES TO END THE “FACEBOOK REVOLUTION.”

So far, not working.

HOPE AND CHANGE: Freed From Guantánamo, Uighur Muslims Bask in Bermuda . “We have ended up in such a beautiful place. We don’t want to look back and we don’t have any hard feelings toward the United States.”

OBAMA’S REACTION TO IRANIAN CHAOS — FAMILIAR? “It reminds me of of George H. W. Bush’s reaction to the events preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall. The best word to describe both administrations is flatfooted. I guess this is the way that all ‘pragmatists’ react when their neat, little assumptions about the world order run into reality.” More on Obama’s reaction from Jake Tapper.

UPDATE: Mike Pence: Obama should speak out in favor of Iranian reformers.

DIGITAL CAMERA UPDATE: People email me for camera advice all the time, but I haven’t shopped for a new camera in a while. I still love my Panasonic Lumix LX-3 — the only “complaint” is that the telephoto isn’t very long, but since I bought if for the wide-angle coverage that’s kind of inevitable — and I still love my Nikon D300. But the new issue of Consumer Reports has a big digital camera survey and if you’re interested you might check it out. They really like the Sony DSC-W300, though it seems a bit pricey to me. They also like the Canon SD880, which is considerably cheaper. In the somewhat more-sophisticated range, they like the Canon Powershot G10.

DPReview is also a good digital-camera resource if you’re interested.

IN NEW YORK CITY, protesting Iranian election fraud. A blog-report with pictures and video.

UPDATE: Constantly updated coverage from Nico Pitney at the Huffington Post. Including: “The students’ plea to Obama: don’t accept these results.”

WHERE IS MY VOTE? Iranians protest in London.

Plus, Video: Iranian thugs beat protester to death in broad daylight. Robust debate . . . .

UPDATE: Also, beating foreign journalists?

IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: The Empathy Exam.

IN LIGHT OF MY EARLIER POST about how it’s not Rush Limbaugh hollering about “the Jewish Lobby,” a reader emails:

Rush has been downright forceful in defending Israel, yet I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Jew defend him.

It is frightening and sobering for me, as the child of Holocaust survivors, to see my co-religionists align with pals of unambiguous anti-semites like Rev. Wright.

I let my wife choose to raise our kids as protestants, rather than have them risk the fate of my grandparents.

American Jews have cast their lot as poorly as many German Jews did nearly a century ago. I can honestly say I never imagined in my blackest moments I’d see this.

Yes, the mainstreaming of anti-semitism (disguised as being tough on Israel or “Zionists”) has proceeded apace, even while people on the right are the ones called Nazis.

UPDATE: Ron Coleman says get out more.

WORKS FOR ME: Health-Care Debate Could Derail Over Government Plan.

WORRYING TOO MUCH about swine flu?

A FLAG DAY POST from Jules Crittenden.

MORE ON IRAN: “Iran doesn’t have elections, it has circuses.” “Reports that some of the thugs doing the ‘crowd control’ are foreigners, who speak Arabic, not Farsi. These seem to be Hezbollah people, from both Lebanon and Syria.”

Plus, Insurrection: Day 2. Also, Ahmadinejad Or Obama: Who Will Have The Last Laugh? And, Four More Years of Ahmadinejad: Change We Can Believe In . . . .