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My Friday story was about why Alaska Governor Sarah Palin quit. Since coming up to Alaska on the weekend the reasons have grown five-fold. A web story out today. Let’s hope the reasons don’t proliferate as I’m running out of headlines.

It’s not because of those scurrilous sports complex rumors, she twitters. It’s about country; something, she says, we in the MSM will never understand.

Iran continues to emit wisps of turmoil at the highest levels. First, there’s the unprecedented statement by the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom–the religious center of Iraq–in support of the reform movement. This was the group that was at the heart of the movement led by Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomenei that brought about …

Barack Obama’s approach to foreign policy–rebuild bridges and focus on commonalities, not differences–will be tested this week in Russia. In advance of the trip, Obama and his aides have been adopting an ever-so-slightly more aggressive posture.

Late last week, Obama took the notable step of seeming to scold Russian Prime Minister …

From the New York Times:

The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the

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Following up on Michael Scherer’s excellent post, here’s a web story on Sarah Palin’s surprise decision to resign as governor of Alaska. If you’d told me a governor was going to resign today, I’d have laid good money on Mark Sanford. Also, a friend made a good point at dinner: if one resigns 18 months ahead of schedule to avoid lame …

A dispatch from Swampland London correspondent Catherine Mayer:

Last night Richard LeBaron, America’s Chargé d’Affaires ad interim in London, hosted the annual Independence Day shindig at Winfield House, the sumptuous ambassadorial residence that has stood empty since the departure in February of the last U.S. envoy to Britain, …

The New York Times puts its story about the Washington Post controversy on Page One, with a headline that calls it a “Pay-for-Chat Plan;” the Washington Post puts its own version back in the Style Section (Page C1), and calls them “Corporate Dinners.”

I know I’m a bit dim, but it sounds to me like the President confirmed my story about his church preference in a conversation today with a group of Catholic reporters.

We have attended services at Camp David every weekend that we’re there. I will tell you, by the way, that it is a wonderful little congregation; the members of Camp David

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Hilary Hylton, our reporter in Austin, passes along the following:

Famous/infamous (depending on your point of view) Travis County DA
Ronnie Earle, now retired, has filed papers with the Texas Ethics
Commission as the first step to running for as a yet-to-be-announced
statewide office. Supporters have been urging him to run

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Walter Shapiro, over at Politics Daily, clearly summarizes the political situation President Obama inhabits, now that the vertiginous economic collapse seems to have slowed, and the long period of economic agony has begun, with continued job losses projected for many months to come. The president still needs to buy himself time with a …

A statement just released from his would-have-been publisher:

Sentinel has agreed to release Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina from his contract to write a book about fiscal conservatism, which was to be called WITHIN OUR MEANS and was scheduled for publication in March 2010. This is a mutual decision. We wish Governor Sanford

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