Your Tuesday Random-Ass Roundup.

Here’s an unusually late, no-frills roundup of links. Sorry for the delay:

1. In the year since the Gulf oil spill, communities along the coast have spent hundreds of millions of BP’s dollars that have little to do with the cleanup. (Blackink)

2. PolitiFact has fact-checked three of the most notable – if not incendiary – claims against Planned Parenthood. No surprise, all of them were lies. (Blackink)

3. As a DC resident, it would have be nice if someone told us that 2011 would be the year of dumping on DC.  Maybe there’s a helpful Tea Partier who can explain why it’s acceptable for the GOP to demand that the intrusive federal government tell DC what it can and cannot do with local funds.  It’s cool, we don’t need a needle exchange program.  It’s not like we’re in the midst of an epidemic or anything. (Nicole)

4. And D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray was arrested Monday as part of a stunt to protest congressional control of the city. But it was a stunt, Adam Serwer notes, that is “really all the city has to register its displeasure.” (Blackink)

5. In France, the burqa-ban went into effect Monday. According to the CS Monitor, “the law is part of a new right-leaning symbolic political language in France and elsewhere in Europe that appeals to mainstream voters – telling them a traditional sense of European identity and culture applies to all members of society, including larger numbers of Muslims.” (Naima)

6. Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has been arrested by forces loyal to president-elect Alassane Ouattara. Not that this means the conflict is over, not by a longshot.  Meanwhile, the African Union has negotiated a cease-fire with Moammar Gadhafi…only the AU, headed by notable Equitorial Guinean -despot- president Teodoro Obiang Nguema, is not the most credible or neutral of negotiators. (Nicole)

7. Hidalgo County, Texas, is considering a lawsuit against the federal government for failing to count as many as 300,000 people living along the U.S.-Mexico border. The federal government allegedly failed to mail census forms to 95 percent of colonia residents because they were “hard to count.” (Blackink)

8. Also, high Hispanic population in parts of Florida doesn’t translate to higher rates of political representation. (Naima)

9. Let’s regain our clarity about the Civil War and why it happened. (Blackink)

10. As always, ColorLines neatly unpacks some of the online homophobia that accompanied stories about Malcolm X and Mister Cee last week. (Blackink)

11. Yahoo! Finance combed Census data to come up with a list of the  “American Ghost Towns of the 21st Century.” (Blackink)

12. En route to becoming one of the world’s economic and manufacturing powers, China’s labor costs still remain far behind other international competitors. (Blackink)

13. Images from Japan’s staggering recovery from a pair of natural disasters last month and Libya’s ongoing civil war. (Blackink)

14. Last week, Jay-Z launched a new blogsite, spotlighting everything from music, sports, technology, design, style, and art. (Naima)

15. With the NFL lockout only in its second month, 10 percent of the players have reportedly taken out “extremely aggressive” short-term loans with high interest rates. Some believe as many as half of the NFL’s 1,800 players might seek out similar loans. (Blackink)

That’s it. If you’ve got some things we should be reading or writing about, please leave a link or a comment in the usual spot.

Otherwise, we’ll be back next week.

Joel

Joel Anderson —blackink —  writes about sports, politics, crime, courts, and other issues far beyond his competence at BuzzFeed. He has worked at media outlets in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Atlanta and contributed to a number of publications, including The Root and The American Prospect, among many others.