As quietly inserted into today’s White House schedule, set for a time after Journalist Working Hours:

President Obama will sign a presidential memorandum on Wednesday to extend benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, administration officials said Tuesday evening, but he will stop short of pledging full health insurance coverage.

Mr. Obama, in an Oval Office announcement, is expected to offer details about which benefits will be provided. It is the most significant statement he has made on gay issues, and it comes as he faces intense criticism from several gay rights leaders over what they suggest has been a failure to live up to campaign promises in the first months of his presidency.

Now stop saying he never cared about you.

U.S. to Extend Its Job Benefits to Gay Partners [NYT]

We have to presume, absent notable developments to the contrary, that Iran’s rulers will emerge from this extraordinary moment with their power intact. They are, after all, following a familiar script: Declare a god-blessed landslide victory, throttle communications, label the opponents anti-revolutionary, arrest as many opposition leaders as you can, throw some hardware on the streets.

But their power, until now, has been maintained under a pretense of legitimacy. It may not be a government beloved by its people, but the millions voting in Friday’s election weren’t calling for an insurrection — they were calling for reform. And, until Friday night, they were confident it would happen, or at least be given a decent chance. This was not an angry election.

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Ultimate power in Iran’s convoluted governing structure is held by the aptly titled Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. He’s the one who twice blessed the fantasy election tally over the weekend, before trying to buy some time by asking the Guardian Council — half of whose members he appoints — to have another look at it.

But Khamenei’s power is not unchecked, at least while Iran’s rulers are still playing by the rules they set for themselves. The 86-member Assembly of Experts, led by Khamenei’s rival Ayatollah Rafsanjani, has the formal authority to remove him and name his successor.

Rafsanjani, who openly supported Mir Hossein Mousavi prior to Friday’s vote, has been publicly quiet since. Educated guesses have him doing some vote-counting of his own among the Assembly, assessing how much power he has to confront Khamenei.

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Iranians
65 million, roughly two-thirds under 30 years old — too young for the Revolution, too young to even remember the Iran-Iraq war. And while we tend to view Iran as a Shia nation in a region of Sunnis, locally they view themselves as Persians (51 percent), Azeris (24 percent, including Mousavi), and a half-dozen other ethnic groups, including Kurds (7 percent). But the nation can also be sliced into urban/rural groups, rich/poor, and other politically familiar divisions. All politics is local — until you rattle nukes at them.

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Although we didn’t explain it, our Sunday tweet — Allah O Akbar, or “God is Great” — is one of the legendary chants from the Iranian revolution. We ran it because we read reports that people were shouting it from Tehran rooftops last night, in a “deafening” chorus of protest. How deafening? Now we know.

(Update: No we don’t — video’s from June 9, as updated at niacINsight, and which we could have easily checked before posting. But while we’re here, latest reports have police going door to door and marking buildings where they hear the second night’s shouts.)

Title: “Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine”

Author: Glenn Beck

Rank: 3

Blurb: “Glenn Beck revisits Paine’s powerful treatise with one purpose: to galvanize Americans to see past government’s easy solutions, two-part monopoly, and illogical methods and take back our great country.”

Review: “Thomas Paine was a rabble-rousing hellion who punched out many more revolutionary pamphlets than those collected in ‘Common Sense.’ Further, Thomas Paine didn’t survive the George Washington government following the American Revolution and took off for France to fight in the French Revolution in 1792. Paine was a out-and-out lefty and where Glen Beck gets off acquiring Paine to boost his sales is typical of the former CNN commentator, the rat. Reader, beware.”

Customers Also Bought: “Unlikely Mormon: The Conversion Story of Glenn Beck”

Footnote: You didn’t know Glenn sports the magic undies? Neither did we!

Glenn Beck’s Common Sense [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Since the occasional cutaway to Christiane Amanpour isn’t doing it for us, here’s a list of online resources providing continuing coverage and analysis of what certainly feels like a world-historical event, even if it’s happening on a sleepy cable-news weekend.

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