KFOR-TV catches a massive tornado on camera as it moved just outside Oklahoma City on Tuesday. FULL POST

Storm chaser Reed Timmer rides out tornado winds "well in excess of 150 miles an hour" in Oklahoma on Tuesday. FULL POST

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin urged residents to take cover as deadly torndoes moved across her state Tuesday. FULL POST

Michael Hare desperately searches for his 16-year-old son, Lantz, missing since Sunday's tornado in Joplin, Missouri. FULL POST

ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today’s OFF-SET questions is Peter Moskos, assistant professor of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He also teaches at the City University of New York’s Doctoral Program in Sociology. A former Baltimore, Maryland police officer, he is author of the book, “Cop in the Hood."

Moskos’s new book is entitled, “In Defense of Flogging.”

The Supreme Court has affirmed a federal order telling California to reduce its overflowing prison population, a situation the majority said "falls below the standard of decency." California now has to figure out how to reduce the population by more than 30,000 prisoners. From your point of view, why does the prison system in the U.S. continue to fail?

 Prisons fail because they don’t do what they were designed to do: cure criminals. And as long as we insist on fighting an idiotic “war on drugs,” nothing is going to better.

Penitentiaries were built as houses of “correction” in order to cure the criminally ill just like hospitals healed the physically sick. It didn’t work. Incarceration does little but make people more criminal. People do not get out of prison ready to be more productive members of society.

What do you expect when you take a desperate person, isolate him from normal society, and surround him with a bunch of criminals? Criminals need help, but it’s nothing we’re giving them in prison.

So California now says they’re not going to release prisoners who are a danger to society. But if they’re not a danger to society, why are they behind bars in the first place? If we just want to punish people for breaking the law, there are better—and cheaper—ways to do so. FULL POST

The Number of the Day is $36 million.

That’s the amount that has been spent in the second quarter FY 2011 by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau–led by Elizabeth Warren, the Obama administration adviser working to set up the bureau.

Compare that to the trillions that were lost during the financial debacle of the past few years, largely as a result of our failed regulatory structure. We all, of course, had to foot the bill for theses losses, bailing out a myriad of institutions and making up for losses in the economy.

Warren was back on Capitol Hill Tuesday to defend the new bureau against Republicans who want to curb and control the agency's powers. Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, went as far as accusing her of hiding the truth the last time she appeared before Congress.

So when these Republicans start giving Elizabeth Warren a hard time for spending too much– it brings to mind the old cliché about being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Another small point of contrasts: financial, insurance and real estate institutions, according to one study, spent $62,905,312 lobbying in DC last year—double what the federal government spent on protecting consumers. FULL POST

Steven J. Rosen and Jeremy Ben-Ami discuss President Obama's call for a return to pre-1967 borders to start peace talks. FULL POST

Answering today’s OFF-SET questions is Nadia Hijab, director of Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network.

She also serves as senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies. Hijab’s first book, "Womanpower: The Arab debate on women at work" was published by Cambridge University Press. She co-authored "Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel." She was Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Middle East magazine before joining the United Nations, after which she established her own consulting business.

After his meeting with President Obama on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines - because these lines are indefensible; because they don’t take into account certain changes that have taken place on the ground, demographic changes that have taken place over the last 44 years." 

In your point of view, does that line in the sand slow down the possibility of new peace negotiations, or offer some possibilities?

Good question, because this is really a key issue. Under the law, Israel has  to withdraw from all the territory it occupied in 1967, just like it did when it withdrew from Egypt’s Sinai desert.

The core principle of international law – that territory cannot be acquired by force – is the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 242, which Israel actually accepted in 1967.  The 1967 borders have been the basis of peace negotiations for 44 years.

Yet Israel has grabbed about 60% of the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem for its illegal settlements. If Israel really wants peace, it got to stop taking Palestinian land. FULL POST

ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today’s OFF-SET questions is Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of The Jerusalem Fund & The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C.  He received his BA in Political Science and History from the University of Massachuetts-Amherst and MA in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland.

According to its website, “The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Washington, DC that does educational and humanitarian work on behalf of Palestinians, particularly those living in the Occupied Territory and surrounding refugee camps.

 “The Palestine Center is an independent think-tank committed to communicating reliable and timely information about the Palestinian political experience to American policy-makers, journalists, students and the general public.”

After his meeting with President Obama on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines - because these lines are indefensible; because they don’t take into account certain changes that have taken place on the ground, demographic changes that have taken place over the last 44 years." 

In your point of view, does that line in the sand slow down the possibility of new peace negotiations, or offer some possibilities?

The principle of the 1967 line, or the 1949 armistice line, (same thing) being used as a baseline from which to negotiate agreed upon swaps is nothing new when it comes to the negotiations. In fact, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have been operating based on this principle since before Obama was President.

A joint statement released by the State Department and the Israeli Prime Minister after Netanyahu met with Sectary Clinton in November discusses the same principle. The problem was not the baseline of a two-state solution (except in Jerusalem where the Israelis unilaterally annexed occupied territory) the problem had always been that when Israel wanted to take what the Palestinians couldn't afford to give, no one stopped them.

The disagreement is about which territory to swap and not what baseline to use. Israel has always wanted to keep major settlement blocs which would make a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank impossible and the United States has always, unfortunately, supported these demands during negotiations. FULL POST

ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today’s five OFF-SET questions is Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for President George W. Bush.

He and Ted Schwarz have written the new book, “Deadly Indifference / The Perfect (Political) Storm: Hurricane Katrina, The Bush White House and Beyond."

Brown is scheduled to appear In The Arena on Tuesday, May 24, 2011.

You write that when you George Bush first appointed you Under Secretary, you discovered a concept you’ve called “deadly indifference.” What is that and how did it inform your approach to your job?

Deadly Indifference is our (whether citizens, politicians, businesses or other groups) refusal or failure to see the risks that we face where we work, live, play.  I came to recognize, particularly during Hurricane Katrina, that deadly indifference can make any disaster worse, and often creates additional problems for rescue workers and others trying to respond to a crisis. FULL POST