Iranian blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi died in prison on Wednesday. He was in jail for insulting Iran's leaders. Authorities claim he committed suicide. That is probably a lie.

Hey, Hillary did something awesome: Our new Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor is Michael Posner, head of Human Rights First.

One unmitigated good that's come of the lawlessness of the Internet is that it's allowed daring bloggers in third world countries to flout their authoritarian regimes (Kos and HuffPo just like to think they do the same). Egypt, China, Iran, and Pakistan have all jailed online diarists and tried to block the rest of the population from even accessing international media. All have failed for the same reason samizdat entered the lexicon in the cold war: dissidents are more enterprising than their persecutors. (At left, activists demanding the release of Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, who was sentenced to four years in prison and then became a cause celebre).