The following are editorial opinions from newspapers from around the world which may be of interest to Royal Gazette readers.

Lincoln Nebraska Journal Star,

on Obama's message to Iran

There was a time earlier in the Obama administration when it made strategic sense for the United States to refrain from noisy cheerleading for Iranian protesters.

The downside of enthusiastic support for the Iranian opposition then was that it would have played into the hands of Iran's autocratic rulers, who are always eager to attribute any dissent to US influence. Those days, however, have passed. The need for the administration to take a strong public stand was signalled bluntly weeks ago when protesters chanted: "Obama, Obama – either you're with them or you're with us."

Since then Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has become increasingly brutal.

On Sunday, at least eight people were killed when police fired upon and beat demonstrators, injuring hundreds. There were hundreds of arrests, including senior opposition leaders and the sister of Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Price in 2003.

The nephew of former presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi was shot and killed, and his body was seized, apparently to prevent a funeral ceremony that might have triggered another demonstration. ...

Charleston West Virginia Gazette,

on Democracy: Not in the US Senate

A bedrock principle of democratic equality is "one man, one vote". It means that one American's vote carries just as much power as another's in choosing legislators. It means that a mere 10,000 voters in one district cannot send a representative to Congress, while one million voters are required in a different district. Such an imbalance would give each resident of the first district 100 times more sway in Congress than a person in the second. In the 1960s, the US Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws" means that legislative electoral districts around America must be roughly equal in population. That's why West Virginia lost seats in the House of Representatives as the US population boomed and this state shrank.

But a glaring exception to the equality rule is the US Senate. Every state, tiny or huge, has two US senators, thanks to the nation's constitution. As West Virginia State University political scientist Gerald Beller noted in a recent column, little Wyoming, with a half-million people, has the same number of senators as California, with nearly 37 million population. Thus, in choosing a senator, each Wyoming voter has about 70 times more power than a California voter. ... The formula giving each state two senators cannot be changed without amending the US Constitution. But undemocratic Senate rules can be corrected easily by senators. We urge West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller and Robert C. Byrd to support any attempt to bring more democracy to their half of Congress.