I appreciate the Oregonian nervously reporting* about the Washington Free Beacons’s chronicling of Senator Jeff Merkley’s knee-jerk tendency to apologize for a regime that hangs homosexuals and adulterers: I might not have gotten to it for a while otherwise. Anyway, it’s depressing how unsurprising this report is:

The senator who fronted a campaign against new sanctions on Iran earlier this year has since 1979 been advocating that the United States take a soft line on Iran due to his belief that America’s global power and influence are waning, according to a copy of the lawmaker’s 235-page college thesis obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) emerged in January as one of the leading Senate Democrats who massaged the press on behalf of the Obama administration and pressured his colleagues to kill new Iran sanctions that were supported by a bipartisan majority of lawmakers.

Although I will give Senator Merkley points for consistency: he’s been making excuses for the ‘revolutionaries’ who took over Iran for, what, thirty-five years now? That’s almost impressive. Another apologist might have broken under the strain by this point.

Via

Merkley spokesman Matt McNally said he was “not going to engage” the Free Beacon on its story. http://t.co/m0pWReBT7r

— Adam Kredo (@Kredo0) April 1, 2014

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Look, I know that Oregon is more liberal than a lot of places, so it’s not shocking that some of the Democratic politicians in that state might be a bit too… accommodating… when it comes to foreign policy. But they hang people in Iran for being gay. They hang them from cranes. I get that this doesn’t bother Jeff Merkley, but surely it unnerves at least some of the people who normally vote for him?

*Jeff Merkley’s staff declined to repudiate the thesis. Presumably that means that the Senator remains committed to appeasing the Iranian regime.