Tombstone, ArizonaThursday Afternoon
Got to Tombstone a day ahead of the official kick-off of the Minuteman Project. Something like a thousand  "volunteers" are expected to meet and rally here tomorrow beginning a month-long protest along the Mexican border.
I've posted about a dozen pictures from this afternoon's cruise of the town. Check them out by clicking [...]

Associated Press reporter Arthur
Rotsein has taken his prose right up to the edge in his no holds-barred description
of the "minuteman volunteers"� who begin streaming tomorrow into the area around
Tombstone, Arizona on their way to blockade the southern U.S. border;.
How's  this for a scorcher of
a lead sentence for Rotstein's piece that flashed around the globe [...]

I interrupt my journey between Las Vegas and Tucson for a moment of bald-faced self-promotion. On the way thru the Vegas airport this morning I noticed that the local Borders bookstore was featuring my book, The Last Honest Place in America, as its top "High Flying Hit."  I like that.

You really have to feel for Jesse Jackson. Imagine the
burning moral anguish experienced by The Reverend — as his staff calls him"�when
he had to weigh the pros and cons of staying on as spiritual advisor to
oppression victim Michael Jackson. Or instead, should he swoop in for a last
minute stand with Terry Randall and Terry Schiavo?
[...]

L.A. Times media writer David Shaw is easy to make fun of.
Arrogant and puffed-up, he loves to slather out long thumbsuckers about The
Newspaper Industry--- pieces that all read remarkably the same. "Well, we
really kind of dropped the ball on that one,"� is the most frequent sort of
quote that Shaw gathers in response to just about [...]

Posting might be light in the next few days. I'm currently in Las Vegas working again on the upcoming PBS American Experience series on same.
And mid week I'm off to Arizona where I will be hanging out with  The Minutemen who vow to "patrol" the Arizona border for the month of April.
Therein, folks, resides the [...]

I continue to read the Damascus-based Heretic's Blog by Syrian
intellectual Ammar Abdulhamid, and he continues to raise the hairs on the back
of my neck.

A few weeks ago he predicted that he and his family would
have no choice other than to flee his home country.

Now, he reports on his own interrogation by Syrian State [...]

My heart is really broken by the Schindler family. As a father, I fully understand their
sorrow, their desperation and even their self-delusion. I grant them wide berth
in coming to terms with a horrifying reality. Who knows what any of us would do
in a similar situation.

They first lost their daughter fifteen years ago. Not
wanting to accept [...]

This is rich. Of all people, Ralph Nader has now come out to join forces, effectively, with Jeb Bush and Randall Terry on the Terri Schiavo case.  That's right. Ralph has joined up with some far-riight folks who argue that Schiavo is being murdered by the courts.
Here's part of what pal Doug Ireland has to [...]

My feature report on the small Mexican town that now serves as the "capital of illegal immigration " across the Arizona border has now been posted:
ALTAR,
Mexico "� As soon as
he spots me taking pictures on the steps of the 3-century-old
avocado-and-lemon-colored Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe church, Manuelito makes a
beeline my way. A pudgy 30-year-old Tzotzil [...]

My L.A. Weekly column looking at the joint Schiavo-DeLay Relief Act is now posted:
"Is it safe? Is it safe?"� as Laurence Olivier asked in the great movie Marathon Man. Has
Congress finally run out of gas and safely gone home? Or are we going
to have to arm ourselves with picks and drills to fend off these
used-car [...]

Free universal national health care has finally arrived. And not a moment too soon!Michael Bassik over at Personal Democray Forum has come up with a great way for all of us Americans to benefit from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's unique skills that combine vast medical knowledge with clairvoyance.
If he can diagnose Terri Schiavo [...]

Women. That's a subject I usually avoid on this blog. Got one as a wife. Another as a daughter. No reason to mix them into my hobbies. OK. Just joking. Sort
of. But I have been following, as has
most of the blogosphere, the nasty fight between Susan Estrich and Michael
Kinsley. Now, the dispute over the dearth [...]

UPDATE: One of my favorite conservatives, "Whipped Cream" Bob Barr has just appeared on CNN denouncing Congress for intervening into the Schiavo case. Calling it "unprecedented" interference into the state courts, he speculated on the "political damage" the Republicans may have wrought on themselves. Good for Barr who has taken many good and principled positions [...]

The Schiavo Case (now better known as the Tom DeLay Resuscitation Project) continues to dominate the weekend news cycle. This must say something about us as a people -- and let me give you a hint: it says nothing about our compassion. And a lot about our politicians.
The goalposts of this debate keep slipping. So [...]

What a disgraceful day for our body politic. Time to put it,
not Terri Schiavo, on life-support. As
if Schiavo's status wasn't horrible enough as is, the Republican congressional
leadership -- with the inimitable and totally corrupt Tom Delay at its head --
squeezed that poor girl's carcass for every ounce of political opportunism possible.

It wasn't only a [...]

How exciting! When you're a politician, you know you're in
trouble when they start publishing flow charts to connect the dots of your campaign
contributions.

Here's the chart on the nefarious, Texas Congressman Tom
"The Hammer"� Delay a.ka. the single most corrupt member of the U.S. House:

Take a look at this Washington Post article to better understand [...]

George W. Bush nominated Paul Wolfowitz today to be the next
president of the World Bank. Which
reminds me of this:

Back in the 1980's, comedian Mort Sahl came up with a fabulous line about the murder of Vicki
Morgan. She was the back-door bombshell for old man Alfred
Bloomingdale, the department store tycoon, founder of the Diner's Club [...]

Oh no. The L.A. Times is back with yet another piece on controversial journalist Gary Webb. Webb
killed himself last year after having been driven out of the profession and a long bout of depression.
And once again the Times takes the occasion to besmirch Webb's reporting.
Unfortunately, I'm going to have
take credit for this one. Over Christmas, [...]

The BBC is reporting  that today's anti-Syria rally in Beirut was
the largest in the history of Lebanon, drawing perhaps a million people.

That's out of a national population of three-and-a half-million (the
same population of the city of Los Angeles whose Mayoral election drew only 27%
of voters).
After last week's muscle-flexing by Hezbollah, it's
heartening to see the [...]