The Iraqi elections were surreal but on the whole heartening and downright inspiring. I cannot imagine many Americans voting under such horrific conditions, frankly. There are many reasons why the Bush administration insisted on having this vote take place in the midst of a bloody war””and few of them have anything to do with the [...]

My new column in the Los Angeles Times  is now posted. I have been invited to be a regular contrubutor to a new Sunday Opinion column that features critics of the Times– a crafty way to buy us all off for mid-three figure sums! Here’s my lede:In the weeks leading up to today’s election in [...]

The notorious chief of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s feared secret police was hauled off to a prison term in Santiago today under a hail of eggs and rotten fruit. Damn, I wish I could have been there! Retired General Manuel Contreras was taken into custody at his swank Northern Country Club home in the [...]

My friend, Andrew Gumbel, is not only a sometimes commenter on this blog but he’s also the talented Los Angeles-based correspondent for the UK’s The Independent. He also writes a regular column for the weekly L.A. CityBeat. In his most recent offering in the latter, Andrew takes a steely-eyed look at the state of the [...]

My new L.A. Weekly column is now posted. In it I razz the Governator for taking a hard right economic turn. Here’s a tease:Where’s all that amped-up courage the governor can supposedly muster when it comes to defending the future of California’s children? One of the most repugnant acts of former Governor Davis was his [...]

How delightful! First we have the Clear Channel/Air America marriage. Now we have the Hillary Clinton /Jerry Falwell flirtation. I love it. I’d pay for this. There was Hillary earlier this week, keynoting a New York Family Planning luncheon when she openly, brazenly and shamelessly began pandering to the Religious Right. Gotta love this gal””she [...]

I do live in "Hollywood" — at least broadly defined as being within a 15 minute drive of the Burbank studios or Benedict Canyon.  And I do hold a membership card in the Writers’ Guild (owing to sins committed in my past). So I am entitled to some reaction to the announcement today of the [...]

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to get around to in the last handful of days and have only found time now. The top liberal radio network, the year old Air America , is now extending its national reach thanks to the country’s biggest (and supposedly very conservative) radio-conglomerate, Clear Channel Communications. Excuse me while I [...]

I’m very very busy and a bit overhwhelmed with work and deadlines…so I will have to resort to some not very-round-about self-promotion to generate today’s posting. Regular commenter on this blog and newbie blogger himself, GM Roper has just posted a very flattering profile of yours truly. This, only a few days after Norm Geras [...]

OK, now about that  bearded 900 lb. gorilla sitting right over there. Astute readers of the Web already know that a brouhaha has broken out over an embarrassingly stupid cartoon The Nation ran this week about the Abe-was-Gay story.  Lest anyone think I’m chickening out on this one”¦here’s my view: Robert Grossman’s cartoon which you [...]

Meta-blogger Norm Geras from across the pond has just posted his online profile of me. I can neither deny nor confirm the remarks attributed to me. But read it anyway!

So now we officially begin the second Bush administration. And as I write in my latest L.A. Weekly column, the defeated Democrats now move to Plan B — “B” as in billionaires. As we learned last week, George Soros and a couple of other money bags are now pledging as much as $100 million to [...]

I had some good laughs watching Condi’s confirmaton hearing today. I loved watching all those snarling Democrats on the Senate committee who barked and growled at her about "selling" Iraq to the American people, about her claiming not to know how to define "torture," and about how the next Secretary of State claimed to know [...]

Following up the post below about the nexus of anti-intellectualism and hyper-activism, I inadvertently stumbled on a great example of how so many in the anti-war movement fall right into this pit. No pun on words, but I somehow got on William Rivers Pitt’s “Truthout.Org” email list and was rather amused to see today’s posting. [...]

My friend, UC Irvine historian Jon Wiener, (who by the way has a new and very good book out ) has called my attention to an intriguing piece on anti-intellectualism among leftist activists. Doug Henwood, Liza Featherstone and Christian Parenti, writing in Lip Magazine, pick away at one of  my favorite sore spots: how too [...]

Inbreeding. A helluva an affliction with some obviously pernicious consequences. I’m about as phobic as you can get about political correctness. But the Royal Family, it seems, ought to be damn grateful for every day that passes during which they are spared a go through the guilloitine by enraged  (small ‘R’) republican masses.  And, therefore, [...]

Understandably, there’s much hub-bub over the Newsweek article of a few days ago about the U.S. contemplating the so-called  death-squad “Salvador Option” in Iraq. As  the magazine put it: Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist [...]

Too many deadlines. Back with more bloviating on Wednesday or Thursday.

The long-awaited report on CBS News’ bungling of the Bush Air National Guard story is finally out. And four top news staffers have been canned. CBS News President Andrew Heyward has inexplicably survived. As has Dan Rather. Something like the captains of a grounded ship tossing the crew overboard. That said”¦those who think the 224 page [...]

Pardon me, but the silence from the port side is rather deafening. Early this week Iraqi trade union leader Hadi Salih was brutally murdered by a barbarous gang associated with the “resistance.” Salih was a socialist who was first jailed by Saddam Hussein when we was 21 years old. For the last two years, with [...]