The Middle East Mess: Iranian protesters massed in the streets of Tehran yesterday and set fire to a portion of the Saudi Arabian embassy in protest over the execution of a Saudi Shiite cleric who had criticized government treatment of Shiites. They called for the end of the Saudi regime. Disturbances also broke out in Saudi Arabia’s Shia-dominated eastern province and in Beirut.

The official website of Iran’s supreme leader  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei quotes him saying, “God’s hand of retaliation will grip the neck of Saudi politicians.”

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 other people were executed Friday in Saudi Arabia for convictions of terrorism and anti-government activity. Iranians, who are mostly Shiite, are enraged that the outspoken sheikh was lumped in and executed along with members of al Qaeda associated with violent attacks.

South of the Border: The mayor of a Mexican town 85 miles south of Mexico city was killed by gunmen two days after she took office. Gisela Mota was killed by four shooters at her home in the city of Temixco. Two of the men were shot dead by police officers.

There’s no known motive for the killing. Several Mexican mayors have been killed by drug traffickers.

Patriotism: A group of western militiamen has taken over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in a protest over two ranchers going to jail.

Ammon Bundy, the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who had a standoff with the feds over grazing rights, posted on Facebook, **ALL PATRIOTS ITS TIME TO STAND UP NOT STAND DOWN!!! WE NEED YOUR HELP!!! COME PREPARED.” That probably means bring food and guns.

Bundy said they are planning on staying for several years.

The action started with protests in support of a father and son ranchers who had set fires in the refuge to burn invasive species and protect their land from the danger of wildfires. Both have been sent to prison.

The Obit Page: Former Arkansas Gov. and US Senator Dale Bumpers, who passionately defended President Bill Clinton and the election that put him in office, has died at age 90. Arguing against throwing Bill Clinton out of office for the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and Clinton’s lying about it, Bumpers repeatedly asked his colleague, “What are we doing here?” Paraphrasing the biting essayist HL Mencken, Bumpers said, “When you hear somebody say, ‘This is not about money, it’s about money.’ And when you hear somebody say, ‘This is not about sex,’ it’s about sex.”

Spotlight: At the Boston Globe today hundreds of employees from reporters to editors and the business staff volunteered to get out the paper after a new delivery service has struggled to drop the paper on the doorsteps of thousands of subscribers. Today, at least, some of the people who wrote the paper delivered it.

The new delivery service, ACI Media, has a rookie staff of 600 delivery people who don’t know where all the subscribers live. “Yes it has come to this,” columnist Farah Stockman tweeted, journalists are “getting up at 4 am to do what a company evidently can’t: deliver the paper.”

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