Kloppenburg has precisely the right attitude about this recount: “A recount may change the outcome of this election or it may confirm it, but when it is done, a recount will have shed necessary and appropriate light on an election that, right now, seems to so many people to be suspect.”

Radiation Nation is Firedoglake’s attempt to turn frustration into information. It is an effort to take all of the news, statistics, websites and debates about the fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and turn them into a useful, productive, dependable, and, above all, understandable resource. Radiation Nation may not start with all the answers, but it starts with the idea that we—me, you, other FDL contributors, and a wide variety of experts, authors, researchers, and journalists—will find ways to get the answers.

The Wall Street Journal scoops that Jared Bernstein, Joe Biden’s chief economist and the one person on the economic team seen as reliably liberal, will leave the White House soon.

John McCain, giddy at finding a new war zone to put on his travel schedule, flew into Libya today, praising the rebel forces in Benghazi as heroes and encouraging them to finish the job.

President Barack Obama made stunning accusations about accused Wikileaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning, directly asserting that Manning “broke the law.” Apparently the President of the United States of America and a self-described Constitutional scholar does not care that Manning has yet to be tried or convicted for any crime.

After Thursday’s full day of diplomatic meetings in Washington on the ongoing US-Pakistan crisis, the US killed another 25 people in North Waziristan when four missiles were fired from two drones. News of this latest strike comes as Pakistan’s Express Tribune reports on a potential route to ending drone strikes that was brought up in Wednesday’s meeting between US and Pakistani military leaders in Rawalpindi.

The DISCLOSE Act would have mandated disclosure of most campaign spending. Having failed to achieve that through Congress, Chris Van Hollen is attempting to force the FEC to make certain rules to that effect through a lawsuit.

A year after Macondo the Mouth of Hell roared in the Gulf of Mexico, forever altering the ecology and lives of those who depend on the Gulf for their existence, it is business as usual for BP and a complicit Department of Justice.

Heroes, one and all, if they do not say so themselves.

Gary Moore — Empty Rooms, live in Stockholm, 1987.