Mahmood Al-Yousif, a Bahraini blogger, was arrested overnight by the regime’s security forces. They came for him at 3am local time. As I write this, it is seven hours later, and his brother Hani reports that “We don’t know where he’s held.”

• An end game in Libya?
• In Japan, no end in sight.
• The recovery — still fragile.
• Shutdown, here we come.
• The Frothy Mixture brings the crazy.

Hard to believe that a repeating loop pushed breathlessly by FoxNews turned out to be complete BS.

Janis Joplin — Move Over, on The Dick Cavett Show, June 25, 1970; and Get It While You Can, from the same show.

The Kennedys, an eight part miniseries beginning Sunday, April 3, on ReelzChannel, has been fraught with intrigue and dismay since it was announced last year. It was originally scheduled to air on the History Channel, which paid $30 million to make the sex, drugs and scandal-scented series.

At the time, I thought it was kind of random when Herman Cain, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO, won the Teabaggers’ presidential straw poll in Feburary. I mean, I follow these wingnuts pretty closely, and that really took me by surprise. But now it’s pretty easy to see why he won.

After explaining that Manning, if convicted, “should spend a long, long time in prison,” and then claiming that the overall narrative of the State Department cables shows a story of “rightdoing,” P. J. Crowley describes how Manning’s treatment undermines our own strategic narrative.

We all know how this turned out the first time, but for the record, Judge Maryann Sumi extended the temporary restraining order against the anti-union law which strips most collective bargaining rights from public employees, and warned of sanctions for any public official who continues to implement the law.

Local organizers in Oregon have begun the push to gather the required 87,213 signatures to put the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act 2012 (OCTA 2012) on the ballot in 2012, now that the petition has been approved by the Secretary of State.

Even if the banks somehow get the borrower complaints out of the judicial process, I don’t see any way they can get the same deal with investors in mortgage-backed securities. And remember, investors and borrowers are pretty well aligned here. They both want modifications and not foreclosures. The difference is that the investors have the means to fight the banks and servicers on this point, albeit in a way that maximizes their self-interest.