Before I get into the update on the financial industry's massive swindling of the world, I'd like to encourage you all to give money to Alan Grayson, one of the few Congressmen who has been making a stink about the enormous fraud that the financial industry has been unleashing on the American people. I shudder to think what will happen to this Congress if we lose one of its few courageous voices and get more shills for the financial services industry. So give to Grayson. Give, give, give.

So now, back to Wall Street's continuing quest to loot America. BoA has become the latest pack of scumbags to realize that they didn't do a good enough job of forging documents to evict people from their homes and that they'll have to backtrack a bit:

Bank of America said Friday it is halting all foreclosure sales and foreclosure proceedings nationwide while it reviews the documents being used to justify homeowner evictions.

It is the first bank to put a moratorium on foreclosures in all 50 states. Previously, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and others were only pausing foreclosures in states where a court has to participate in foreclosure proceedings.

To review how we got to this point, click here. It basically boils down this: After the securitization process the banks had no idea what mortgages were and were not on their books. So they started making stuff up to compensate. This is theft, pure and simple.

Megan McArdle predictably comes leaping to the poor banks' defense, saying they may have made a few oopsies but are overall swell people:

The story on the foreclosure mess has become a bit overblown in some tellings. It's clear that banks have been taking some shortcuts in preparing their foreclosure documents. The banks are obviously overwhelmed with the volume of foreclosures, and the (apparently) many instances in which sloppy securitization has resulted in lost paper trails, obscuring who, exactly has a right to foreclose. Rather than seeking legislative or judicial clarification, they've resorted to dubious practices that seem (to my non-legally-trained eye) illegal.

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The most annoying voices in rock singing Bohemian Rhapsody. h/t Skippy. Open Thread below...

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Props to CBS for this "60 Minutes" interview with "Liars Poker" author Michael Lewis about the Wall Street crash. Believe me when I say it's well worth reading the whole thing:

But none of that has changed the Wall Street bonus culture. Lewis says there is a sense of entitlement to outrageous compensation that he thinks is way out of proportion to its contribution to the U.S. economy.

"How did that happen that somebody thinks they're automatically worth millions of dollars a year?" Kroft asked.

"Well, when you're surrounded by a lot of other people who are being paid millions of dollars of year, you're not thinking, 'Oh, it's outrageous for someone to pay me millions of dollars a year.' You're thinking, 'It's outrageous that Jim got $500,000 more than me.' That they're looking to each other as reference points rather than to the larger society," Lewis explained.

Asked if he thinks people are worth that kind of money, Lewis asked, "What do you mean are they worth that kind of money?"

"Do they deserve all that money?" Kroft asked.

"Again, what do you mean do they deserve it? They worked really hard. They spent a lot of hours in the office," Lewis said. "So you can't begrudge someone who starts a company and employs lots of people and so on and so forth for making a lot of money. I don't mind people making a lot of money. On Wall Street the business has become very obviously divorced from productivity, from productive enterprise."

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American speed skater Joey Cheek has done a great deal to bring global attention to the immense suffering of the people of Darfur, forming Team Darfur and even going so far as donating his $40k Olympic bonus to the cause in 2006. Unfortunately, the gold and silver medalist was punished for his activism by the Chinese government -- who has contributed to the genocide in Darfur by fueling and supporting Sudan's murderous military government -- when they revoked his visa this week, preventing him from attending this year's Olympics in Beijing.

During the opening ceremony NBC's Bob Costas discussed the controversy surrounding Cheek and the Chinese government, noting that he made it clear he would not protest the Chinese government during the Olympics:

Costas: "Joey Cheek had planned to invoke the Olympic truce, the time-honored concept of an Olympic truce, to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. He did not intend to directly protest the Chinese government. The fact that they pulled his visa is so contrary to the Olympic ideal it is simply outrageous."

I wondered if NBC was going to cave on this or take a stand and defend Cheek against the reprehensible actions of the Chinese government. I applaud Costas for choosing the latter.

I just got a tip that Obama and Hillary are appearing with Stephen Cobert tonight. And for some bonus fun---John Edwards is going to show up too. It should be a very interesting show...

Fry and Laurie, "The Ass-Kickers Song". Details, background, and a hat tip to Halfway There. Open Thread below and we've also got an bonus open thread for those watching the Oscars here.

UPDATE: We're having some technical problems right now so we haven't been able to post anything on Sunday so far. The techies are working on it and it'll be fixed soon....

(thanx to regular C&L commenter Karen for the image)

Oh noes! It's Mitt-ens the Pander Bear, your agent of change! (If that's what you want).

Open thread below, and of course the cool kids are also visiting the bonus South Carolina Primary Open Thread running at the same time...

General Open Thread below, and don't forget the bonus Nevada Debate Open Thread going on down the page....

Iceland just had one "troop" on the ground in Iraq, (actually a press aide, not a soldier--Iceland has no standing army), but that didn't stop Bush from counting them as an equal member of his "coalition of the willing."

Oops, Iceland stopped being willing, they pulled him out. The genius hotties at AndyCobbonUTube take it from there, be sure to watch about 1:20 in for the Icelandic techno-rap dedication to the other coalition members who have found a way to withdraw their troops before 2013 (take note, Democratic contenders). When the world found out there were no WMD's in Iraq, a lot of them went home.

Here's tonight's open thread, but fans of the playoffs might want to keep John Amato's bonus baseball thread going tonight, as well.

Largest Minority: "Prepare for War with Iran" Says France

TPM Cafe - Don Key's Blog: "Pity the Nation," a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

David Stephenson: Using the web to protest the war.

MadKane: So are you planning to run out and buy Greenspan’s self-serving, history-rewriting The Age of Turbulence? There’s really no need to, because MadKane has summed up the former Federal Reserve Chairman’s new book in a single haiku!

Hillbilly Report: Senators McConnell, Vitter, Craig.... Diapers, and The Ten Commandments, with bonus Youtube video!

Guest round up by Blue Gal . Thank goodness the panties my mother sent me never went "viral."