It is now believed that a meltdown in at least one of the reactors started before the tsunami that followed Japan’s March 11 earthquake. In other words, as I reported previously, the earthquake damaged the containment vessel or, more likely, the cooling system before the massive wave knocked out the backup generators and, thus, power to the cooling system. So, the loss of power did not lead to at least some of the meltdown—earthquake damage did.

Eric Sterling is a member of the Just Say Now advisory board, and President of The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. He released this statement in response to comments made by LA County Sheriff Lee Baca to the effect that the proliferation of marijuana dispensaries has resulted in more crime in Los Angeles:

Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca may have used his role in law enforcement to advance the political agenda of the “No on 19″ campaign, bolstered by drug treatment program theories and materials which California’s Dept. of Education reported as “misleading” and “inaccurate.”

Recent polling by Angus-Reid shows that a majority of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana. Moreover, a SurveyUSA poll in California indicates that 74% of people between the ages of 18-34 favor legalization. So, where have members of the House come down on marijuana bills in the past? If you have links that indicate where your Senator or Representative stands with regard to marijuana, leave it in the comments. Better yet, give them a call and ask.

We learned Wednesday from The Hill that many Democratic Senators don’t actually support all the great things they claim they have “fought for.” They lied to voters; they refuse to take the small step that would actually allow them to become law.

The Obama administration has approved covert military operations in a wide number of Middle Eastern countries, The New York Times reports, including in Somalia, Yemen and Iran (not to mention the long-running, kinda sorta covert war in Pakistan). As former National Security Council staffers Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett note, Obama’s move marks a particularly dramatic “intensification of America’s covert war against Iran” — a war that, because it is being run out of the office of General David Petraeus and CENTCOM, is “not subject to the same congressional oversight and reporting requirements as the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Kit Bond, who cares very much about not overstating threats. . . .

Here’s one of the more curious details about yesterday’s surprise news that Steven Kappes was leaving the CIA.

Best as I can tell, the White House has not yet issued a statement about his retirement (at least not via the White House press list). Not even in a week when one of the key issues for which Kappes gets some credit, the elimination of loose nukes (in Kappes case, in connection with Libya), was much in the news.

Dear Senator Feinstein,

I read your January 30 letter in the New York Times critical of an op-ed article by former Army interrogator Matthew Alexander in the 21 January issue of the Times. Alexander’s article, “Torture’s Loopholes”, labeled certain interrogation techniques allowed in the current version of the Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collection (AFM) as “actions that no right-thinking person could consider humane.” In particular, Mr. Alexander noted that the Army Field Manual allows, in its Appendix M, for unlimited solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and “monstering”, a form of extended interrogations lasting up to 40 straight hours.

In your letter, you disagreed with this assessment, indicating that the manual used “noncoercive, rapport-based techniques to get detainees to talk.”

California’s vast Delta — the largest estuary on the Pacific Coast of the Americas and the hub of the state’s sprawling water projects — shows every sign of ecological collapse. For the second year in a row, the number of Sacramento River salmon going out to sea is so small that the commercial fishing season will likely be canceled. Will California’s recent drought and chronically unsustainable water use finally stop the flow of Federally subsidized water to the wealthy deadbeats in the Westalnds Water District?