U.S. House Passes Resolution Opposing Crackdown on Iranian Protestors

In a sermon today, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that if the opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continued to protest their would be violence. He also declared that the vote in Iran was a fair vote. (He was referring to the vote where Ahmadinejad won his opponents home area, and the results for the nation were announced in neat million vote blocks a half hour after the election.)

In response to these statements, and President Obamas inactivity on this issue Rep. Mike Pence introduced a resolution that condemned Tehran's crackdown on protestors. While discussing the resolution, Mike Pence said, "When Ronald Reagan went before the Brandenburg Gate, he did not say Mr. (Mikhail) Gorbachev, that wall is none of our business." The Democrat Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and cosponsor of the resolution said, "It is not for us to decide who should run Iran, much less determine the real winner of the June 12 election. But we must reaffirm our strong belief that the Iranian people have a fundamental right to express their views about the future of their country freely and without intimidation." The resolution passed the house on a vote of 405-1. The sole dissenting vote was from the king of isolationism and the friend of liberty Dr. Ron Paul.

Senators McCain and Lieberman are considering introducing a similar bill in the senate.

Two Martin Luther King Jr. quotes are particularly poignant when considering the Iranian situation. When it comes to the Iranian protestors...

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

In regards to our need to stand up with the Iranians...

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. ~Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Replace Atlanta with America and Birmingham with Iran and the quote is very applicable. Let us continue to stand up for freedom everywhere around the globe.