Other Midday Links

Other midday links.

* Apropos of what I was saying yesterday about Andrew Sullivan, here's Ben Smith on Sullivan, his continued outsized influence, and the first-mover advantage in the blogosphere.

* There have been a lot of assertions from both left and right that Obama "isn't doing enough" to support the protesters in Iran. It's not clear to me what exactly these people have in mind; any U.S. involvement is likely to be entirely counterproductive, as Obama himself has noted. So it's worth noting that the Obama administration has quietly taken action to support the protesters in a way that is not counterproductive; according to NBC News, the State Dept. has leaned on Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance because of the way the site is currently being used in Iran.

* Also from Iran: Gary Sick lays out an important challenge to that much-discussed pre-election poll showing Ahmadinejad ahead that I hadn't seen discussed anywhere else—it's from over a month before the election.