I wasn’t the only one to deride the FHFA’s ingenious plan to end the foreclosure fraud crisis. Indeed, the reliance on internal reviews, and encouragement to engage in more foreclosures, raised the eyebrows of many housing advocates and prominent politicians. Now, six Senate Democrats have sent a letter to FHFA Acting Director Ed DeMarco and top regulators on the systemic risk council (including Geithner and Bernanke) calling for legitimate action on the servicers, who have no specific federal regulator.

The six Democrats – Sherrod Brown, Barbara Boxer, Sheldon Whitehouse, Debbie Stabenow, Tom Harkin and Mark Begich – pushed back on the idea that these are merely technical errors, as the FHFA letter intimates, rather than systematic violations of the law.

One might wonder whether other states have similar situations, where the foreclosure services firms are tightly entwined with the state’s Republican Party while preventing all efforts to change the number of foreclosures.

A handpicked district court judge in Florida rejected a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, allowing challenges to the constitutionality of the law on two counts to go forward. Attorney General Bill McCollum, forum-shopping to the most conservative city in Florida, Pensacola, for the best opportunity to get a sympathetic judge, filed the suit on behalf of 20 states.

A new article at Truthout describes how Paul Wolfowitz issued a military directive in March 2002 that loosened rules against human experimentation and protections for subjects of such research that had been in place since the early 1970s. According to sources within the Department of Defense, the Wolfowitz Directive, “Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research”, was used to support a top-secret Special Access Program at Guantanamo funded through the Defense Department’s black budget involving “deception detection”, interrogation, and other research upon detainees.

Today, Barack Obama appeared at an MTV town hall (co-sponsored by BET and CTV), and there he was asked about why he did not just issue an executive order to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (VIDEO & TRANSCRIPT)

Voters in Arizona strongly support allowing for medical marijuana in the state. According to a Rocky Mountain poll, 54 percent of likely voters in Arizona plan to vote yes on Proposition 203, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act. Only 32 percent of voters claim they plan to oppose the measure.

The Judge Advocate General of the Air Force said this afternoon that until the injunction issued Tuesday barring the enforcement or application of 10 USC 654 (commonly known as the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”) is vacated, it must be followed.

Another day, another uneventful civilian hearing for an accused terrorist, yet more proof that the civilian courts can handle terrorist cases.

The Administration never offered grants for public works projects which are truly shovel-ready; i.e. all they require is a shovel. They could have funded jobs to clean up and maintain distressed and vacant properties. They could have funded jobs to beautify national, state and local parks. They could have funded jobs to paint white roofs on every commercial building in America.

Arizona, Oregon and South Dakota have medical marijuana measures on the ballot thath have received little attention. These initiatives are being run by people who are really committed state grassroots activists, but they are seriously understaffed and under resourced. So Just Say Now volunteered to help all of them — as well as the Prop 19 campaign — with our phone banking, event, fundraising and email tools.

So if you’ve bought a T-shirt from the Just Say Now store, or you’ve given a donation to the Just Say Now campaign, take a spin at the new South Dakota Measure 13 and Oregon Measure 74 websites and have a look at your handiwork. Because your support made it possible.