Last week, when writing about the new case filed in Virginia against a group of Somali pirates who are accused of killing two American couples after hijacking their boat, I quoted at length from pleadings in a 2010 Virginia case where the defendants, young Somali men convicted of pirating a ship in the Indian Ocean, were awaiting sentencing.

Five defendants, all in their young 20's, all facing life sentences. $27,000 per year for 40 years for 5 defendants equals - $5,400,000.00. And that's just the cost of housing them. It doesn't include the cost of prosecution or defense or their medical care while in prison.

Now we have a new Norfolk case with 14 young Somali defendants, captured in the Indian Ocean, and flown to the U.S. for criminal prosecution. With the jurisdictional and venue issues already decided against them in earlier cases, with no local interpreters and no local Somali population to sit on their jury, their fate will probably be the same. $27,000 per year for 40 years for 14 defendants equals $15,120,000. $20 million just to warehouse the defendants in two cases.

Monday, the five were sentenced to life in prison. These sentences aren't going to stop piracy. They do, however, cost the U.S. a huge amount of money that could better be spent elsewhere.

Richard Hatch, who won a million dollars on Survivor and then went to jail for three years for failing to pay taxes on it, is back in prison. The judge last week revoked his supervised release because he still hasn't amended his returns and made payments. The judge imposed a new 9 month sentence.

Hatch is now a contestant on Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice. The show just aired the second episode, but wrapped up filming a while ago. He surrendered yesterday to the U.S. Marshals to start serving his new sentence.

Now along comes Donald Trump and says he may be willing to help Hatch. Does Trump really think if he pays Hatch's tax debt the judge or Bureau of Prisons will let him out of jail?

Trump says, "If he makes it to the finals – and I'm not saying he is – I'm sure we can get him time off for good behavior."

Despite the weighty issues facing Japan, I'm going to watch the season finale of The Bachelor, followed by "After the Final Rose." which is not going to be all that rosey this year. If you want to know what happens, but don't want to watch, check my posts at PopLeft. Here's what you'll see tonight.

There's also a new Harry's Law.

Enjoy your evening, here's an open thread, all topic welcome.

Reports are conflicting about the latest explosion at a nuclear reactor plant in Japan today. Some say radiation levels are rising dangerously. Others say levels rose noticeably only inside the plant.

Things change quickly. Kyodo News Agency has more. And this ABC News reporter in Japan is updating frequently via Twitter. I'd rather read her twitter feed than ABC News which continues to bombard us with videos that play automatically when you click on a news article.

Al Qaida has launched a magazine for women, called Al-Shamikha, which translates to "Majestic Woman." The first issue is a 31 page glossy.

The magazine's advice to women: Cover up and marry a martyr. Al Qaida's rationale behind the project:

"Because women constitute half of the population – and one might even say that they are the population since they give birth to the next generation – the enemies of Islam are bent on preventing the Muslim woman from knowing the truth about her religion and her role, since they know all too well what would happen if women entered the field of jihad... The nation of Islam needs women who know the truth about their religion and about the battle and its dimensions and know what is expected of them."

The Daily Mail says the first issue contains beauty tips as well as The magazine includes exclusive interviews with the wives of martyrs, who praise their husband's suicide missions.

Is it a new day for the global marketing of Jihad? Al Qaida has had some sophisticated marketing campaigns in the past. But do they reach anyone but the disaffected? Sounds like a lot of preaching to the choir to me.

So there are a lot of important stories going on right now. But none more important than my March Madness bracket.

No blogging today until I have it figured out. I may do some paying work as well.

Open Thread.

This weekend went by so fast. Maybe due to the great spring-like weather here.

I'm sure there's news besides what's happening in Japan, I just haven't checked yet. If you'd like to discuss something, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

1 am MT: The Kyodo News Agency reports more than 2,000 people have died or are unaccounted for. In Minamisanriku, a town in Miyagi with 10,000 people, more than 5,000 people are unaccounted for. The police chief thinks the toll in Miyagi could exceed 10,000. Hundreds of bodies have been found under rubble. In one town hit by the Tsunami, the town hall and a nursing home were swept out to sea. Neither the mayor nor the elderly patients have been heard from.

20,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed and more than 300,000 in six perfectures have been evacuated. The power outages may last weeks. The LA Times has some descriptive photos of the destruction here. For this family, it's like watching a scene from that new show Waking Dead. What an awful shock. One day life is fine, the next day it's gone. These picture pretty well capture the extent of the property damage in that area.

At least 160 people have been tested for radiation exposure from the nuclear reactors. Six reactors have now failed or are in danger of failing.

Don't forget to turn your clocks ahead before going to bed. You may lose an hour of sleep, but you'll gain an hour of sunlight starting tomorrow.

Update: Too funny. Verizon i-Phones apparently are falling back an hour instead of springing forward. The fix (and again it's only Verizon iPhones): "Restart your device to fix the issue and get the clock back to normal."

Here's another open thread, all topics welcome.

March Madness! just around the corner.

Let's Go Gators!

Open Thread.

Former federal judge Jack Camp of Georgia was sentenced to 30 days in prison today, 400 hours of community service and he must pay the costs of prosecution. He was allowed to remain on bond and voluntarily surrender to the designated facility at a later date. Camp pleaded guilty to offenses involving his use of drugs with his girlfriend, a former stripper with a prior drug conviction. The Government had asked for 15 days.

The sentencing judge, Thomas Hogan of Washington, D.C., also ruled Camps' offenses were all misdemeanors:

In one ruling issued Friday, Hogan found that Camp had not committed a felony, as prosecutors believed he did had when they signed the plea agreement. Instead, Camp committed three misdemeanors, exposing him to a sentence of up to 6 months in prison. Prosecutors asked Hogan to sentence Camp to at least 15 days in prison. Camp’s lawyers asked for probation and community service.

In a 21 page opinion, U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan in the Eastern District of Virginia today upheld a federal grand jury subpoena issued in December for twitter user account information related to the Wikileaks probe.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a subpoena ordering Twitter Inc. to hand over private messages, billing information, telephone numbers and connection records of accounts run by Assange and others....The subpoena, dated Dec. 14, asked for information dating back to November 1, 2009.

Salon posted a copy of the subpoena in January here. [More...]