Flip Wilson (as Geraldine) having fun with Ray Charles and singing a medley of Hank Williams Sr. songs on The Flip Wilson Show.

Why does Scottdemort hate poor voters?

Although earlier expert analyses and TEPCO announcements suggested only partial meltdowns and varying levels of water covering parts of each reactor’s core, it now appears the cores were completely uncovered for some period early on –within the first hours or days — resulting in near total meltdown at each unit. That means the melted fuel is now puddled at the bottom of each reactor vessel, though it is thought (because of low temperatures) to be covered with whatever cooling water can be injected into each reactor vessel.

The AP has a interesting–and interestingly timed–story on the help we’re giving Saudi Arabia to build a “facilities security force” to protect, among other things, its oil fields and planned civilian nuclear sites.

One of the first stories to pique my curiosity in the foreclosure crisis was the Kafkaesque “rocket docket” in Florida. Individuals seeking due process in foreclosure cases were getting as little as 20 seconds in court. The special courts were set up seemingly to push along foreclosures in assembly-line fashion. I remember asking Rep. Kendrick Meek (remember him, he was the Democrat in the race against Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist) last summer about the rocket dockets and he was unaware of their existence. It was almost unbelievable when you first heard about it.

The idea that private companies were going to somehow find a radically more efficient way to do something as basic as holding and feeding criminals in a secure building was always pretty much pure fantasy.

Well, if Barack Obama thought he could wrap things up in a bow on the Middle East with his speech today, Bibi Netanyahu put an end to those hopes.

Congressional leaders in both parties made a deal to extend three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for four more years with little debate. Earlier this year, the same provisions – roving wiretaps, court-approved access to business records, and “lone wolf” provisions allowing surveillance on foreign citizens without connections to terrorists – were extended for 90 days.

Antiwar and international solidarity activists, subjects of a federal grand jury investigation that alleges they may have provided “material support for terrorism,” uncovered documents on FBI guidelines and investigation practices left behind in an activist’s home that was raided in September of last year. The documents illuminate how the FBI has conducted surveillance of the activists being targeted in the investigation and further prove the grand jury is being used as a tool to go after political groups.

Obama’s speech on the Arab uprising was delayed, apparently because of late rewrites. And I think that’s apparent in the text, which is a real tightrope. There’s a tension to fit all of the past and present actions of the United States in that part of the world under one coherent theme. The President spoke of how “America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator,” and this is impossible to square with tacit support for dictators before this moment, and more importantly, during it.