By the time you read this sometime Monday, while I’m out brainwashing my USC journalism students, President Bush will have likely named his latest candidate to sit on the Supreme Court. Unless he names Patrick Fitzgerald, (the only choice less likely than Al Sharpton), the nominee is likely to only aggravate the current political storm [...]

I asked it back in July. And I’ll ask it again: Is there anybody left in the American political debate who can make moral judgements without first checking his or her voter registration card? Isn’t it just too much of a coincidence that, according to which political party you identify with, you have this or [...]

A guy innocently goes to a couple of meetings this afternoon and gets back home to find that in the meantime about eight million words have been spilled all over the Topic of the Day.  Culling what I can, here’s my decision: I’m going with Gergen and Sullivan in terms of cutting through to the [...]

…coming later tonite!  In the meantime, it seems Rove’s situation is the worst of possibilities for the White House. The continuing investigation into his role only indefinitely prolongs the crisis for the Bush administration.Have a happy Friday. 

What can I possibly add to the clickety-clack over the anticipated announcement of  indictment/s Friday by Plamegate prosecutor Fitzgerald? I guess, at a minimum, I can disagree with my Nation magazine colleague John Nichols who muses that the Harriet Miers withdrawal was part of an “elaborate PR strategy” by the Bush White House – a [...]

Update: [Here's the poll mentioned in the post below. It checks with what I said. Arnold's facing a total defeat in the California special election set for November 8]. I assume public attention for the next stretch, maybe a long stretch, is going to be consumed by whatever Patrick Fitzgerald announces before the end of [...]

About that merger of Village Voice Media and New Times First, a disclaimer. I worked for the L.A. Weekly in the early 80’s. I worked for the Village Voice in the early 90’s. I worked for the New Times in the late 90’s. I work currently for the L.A. Weekly. Talk about moons, and Junes [...]

Very strong words continue to be blasted out from Larry Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief-of-staff from 2002 to 2005. In Tuesday’s L.A. Times, Wilkerson ratchets up his news-making rhetoric, first publicly aired in a talk he gave last week in Washington. In his Tuesday LATimes’ op-ed, Wilkerson charges that many of the [...]

With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore, I’m posting a Fitzmas wiki. I warn you that I slept through my poetry classes and claim no talent nor aptitude in such erudite matters. So what you see below is a very quick and dirty first draft meant, precisely, as the skeleton basis of a wiki. Please redo, [...]

We’ve been working hard to resolve all the outstanding issues in the transition to our new blog server and the redesigened site. We think we’re almost there…

The public self-expurgation that the New York Times is going through on the Judith Miller episode makes some of the most compelling current reading. Say what you will about the Times, few news organizations (make that few institutions of any sort) dare to be so openly self-critical. Times ombudsman Byron Calame’s long-awaited take on the [...]

(Still working on blog optimization issues)As recently as one week ago I got into a heated argument with some people I know who still cannot believe – who won’t believe—that this administration has crashed. So pathetic, so impotent, so fearful and downright paranoid has become much of the American left that it cannot yet bring [...]

As promised earlier an edited text version of my recent interview with Gore Vidal is now posted and published by The Nation. Vidal On Bush:   "I never thought the President would dare to favor pre-emptive war. I never thought it would come to this, a sort of maniac for President who goes around attacking [...]

The L.A. Weekly’s special issue on California’s Nov. 8 special election includes my column on Governor Arnold’s transformation from bi-partisan hero into unpopular partisan hack. In the special balloting he’s called he wants us Kallyfornians to approve one-sided campaign finance reform–shutting down union contributions but not those from powerful corporations: "…Public financing of elections is [...]

When bad things happen to bad people.  Click here.

Note: still working on the glitches in the blog redesign. Patience. If you’re having trouble viewing the site with Internet Explorer, then switch to Mozilla Firefox — which you ought to be using anyway. (But we will fix it for the IE diehards very soon). Meanwhile, some have asked me if I have any second [...]

We’re in the middle of a face-lift, makeover, server transfer of this blog. Bear with us a for a few days as we go through some weirdness. It’s gonna be a bit strange.

It’s rather breathtaking to watch Judy’s Miller’s flame-out (no pun intended). That the New York Times’ self-described "run-amok" reporter is self-immolating, I believe, is now an inevitability beyond any doubt. It’s only a matter of time – a few weeks or a few months at most—before some sort of graceful, cosmetic exit is found. The [...]

"The American people will stand for anything and will stand for nothing," said the irrascible Gore Vidal when I taped an interview with him last week in his Hollywood hills home. The mp3 audio file of that interview –60 minutes long– can be heard by clicking here. Or you can download a podcast at this [...]

I offer a modest and very brief proposal in today’s L.A. Times to the Minutemen who have just announced another border sweep. In case you’re not a Times subscriber I rerproduce my offering below:        MODEST PROPOSAL Minutemen, grab your hoes and march north            By Marc CooperMARC COOPER [...]