Roger Cohen:

Khamenei, far from an arbiter with a Prophet-like authority, has looked more like a ruthless infighter. His word has been defied. At night, from rooftops, I’ve even heard people call for his death. The unthinkable has occurred.

The second is that the hypocritical but effective contract that bound society has been broken. The regime never had active support from more than 20 percent of the population. But acquiescence was secured by using only highly targeted repression (leaving the majority free to go about its business), and by giving people a vote for the president every four years.

That’s over. Repression will be broad and ferocious in the coming months. The acquiescent have already become the angry. You can’t turn Iran into Burma: The resistance of a society this varied and savvy will be fierce.

The third is that a faction loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fiercely nationalistic and mystically religious, has made a power grab so bold that fissures in the establishment have become canyons.

Members of this faction include Hassan Taeb, the leader of the Basiji militia; Saeed Jalili, the head of the National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the reclusive but influential son of the supreme leader.

They have their way for now, but the cost to Iran has been immense, and the rearguard action led by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a father of the revolution, and Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, will be intense.

The fourth is that Iran’s international rhetoric, effective in Ahmadinejad’s first term, will be far less so now. Every time he talks of justice and ethics, his two favorite words, video will roll of Neda Agha Soltan’s murder and the regime’s truncheon-wielding goons at work. The president may prove too much of a liability to preserve.

The fifth is that, at the very peak of its post-revolution population boom, the regime has lost a whole new generation — and particularly the women of that generation — by failing to adapt.

Thirty years from the revolution, the core question of this election was: Must Iran stand apart from the forces of economic and political globalization in order to preserve its Islamic theocracy?

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The NYTimes editorializes on consumer protection. No, Congress should not fuck with this, Congress being the actual institution most in need of reform.

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Call it a million bucks. The GOP would have spent ten times that if it had helped Coleman v. Franken drag out another month.

The Republicans are the anti-democracy party in every conceivable way. Challenging voters, challenging voter registrations, challenging everyone who is not them because none of us are worthy. The GOoPers are no longer the elect, except in their hearts and blogs.

Losers, every one of them.

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Garrison Keillor on solitude.

On this one, I’m with him 100%.

With Eric Asimov, less so, but wistfully reminiscent all the same. Asimov is reviewing craft beer in NYC, and it sounds pretty good, especially given the heat and humidity we’ve been experiencing locally.

The Strib has an editorial about booze in the new Gophers football stadium, which is about neither craft or solitude. Booze for some but not for all? The only angle the Strib had would have been to have argued for one beer free “family” section, but Gopher football games isn’t really about family, now are they?

The UM privileges money and them that has it quite enough, thank you. Making the swells go dry for a few hours on six or seven Saturday afternoons isn’t too great a penalty for pretending that all Minnesotans are created equal, even though state law disagrees.

The Minnesota rich: lower tax rates, more services per dollar paid in taxes, direct input into how the state is run, etc. It’s nice to know that for three hours on seven Saturdays a year they won’t have quite as many special privileges. Other than the best seats in the house, of course.

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It took a minute for the names to click, but former blogger Chris “Rahelio Soleil” Stewart is right in the middle of a big stink in the Minneapolis Schools and Jon Tevlin wonders why the public isn’t being told what happened.

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Errands. Life without a printer is getting complicated and I need to run to Kinkos.