I’m not a big football fan, so can’t say I’ve ever been to a Superbowl TV party (can’t even say I’ve ever seen an entire Superbowl game). 
I do follow politics, but didn’t really figure out until this week that there’s such a thing as State of the Union watch party. GAWD is all I can [...]

The next 48 hours will be filled with excessive commentary on two non-events: the sputtering Democratic filibuster against Sam Alito and the industrial-strength bromides that will be ladled out by Bush in his state-of-the-union address.
So, let me dribble a few pre-emptive words out, at least on the former if not the latter.
That was a [...]

Michael Berube has gone to the extraordinary length of posting an original 5,000 word entry on his fine blog. His topic: academic freedom. Michael doesn't flinch from the fact that liberals and lefties, indeed, might out-number conservatives by 4 to 1 among America's university faculty. But he asks: What's wrong with that?
Michael offers a deeply [...]

Just noticed (via an inbound link to me) a spicy new blog by Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone. A welcome breath of fresh air as Tim deflates the huffing and puffing by the Internet Liberals in their faux war with Chris Matthews at Hardball.
Good for Tim. Matthews can blow plenty of balmy gusts; but what an [...]

The sweeping victory  scored by the fundamentalist Hamas in this week’s Palestinian elections is about to put the entire regional U.S. strategy to a perilous test.
The elections pushed relentlessly by the Bush administration have produced the least favorable results – for all parties involved. We saw the tight little corner that the President has placed [...]

I am sad to learn that my friend, the self-exiled Cuban writer, Justo Vasco died earlier this week of a stroke at his home in Gijon, Spain. He was 62.
This is a devastating loss to all of us who knew him.
I first met Justo in Havana in 1989 when he was one of [...]

My latest L.A. Weekly column looks at the case of a certain Mr. Jones -- Andrew Jones. He's the former UCLA student (and certifiable wack job) who had been offering $100 to other students who would tape record or provide notes from the lectures of leftist professors.
Jones would then add the info to his website which exposes [...]

Let’s make sure we get this story right. You take the captured, uniformed general of an enemy army – and in blatant violation of all notions of human decency and of the Geneva Conventions— you beat him with rubber hoses, pour water down his nose, then stuff him into a sleeping bag, tie him with [...]

***Please see the two crucial UPDATES at the bottom of this post***
Everything in me screams to NOT  write this posting. It’s just not worth the pain such endeavors normally evoke. When I’ve done it before, I’ve been slandered, muddied, slashed, booed down, accused of everything short of being Jack Abramoff’s secret lover.  I've even been [...]

Beyond the administration’s comic-book caricatures of Al Qaeda—dumbed down enough so that  even your average blow-dried congressman can memorize them between golf rounds—there are actually two or three reporters who have a nuanced and profound understanding of Osama Bin Laden.
 Peter Bergen, who interviewed OBL and 1997 and is now the author of Holy War, Inc. and [...]

The 2006 World Report is just out from Human Rights Watch and it is not easy reading for those who believe in and value human dignity. In announcing its publication, HRW underlines that the so-called enlightened and advanced countries have much to answer for:
New evidence demonstrated in 2005 that torture and mistreatment have been a [...]

Looks like Osama isn’t so dead after all. He’s back. He’s on TV.  And he’s threatening domestic attacks inside the U.S.  Isn’t that special? 
Oh, yeah. I forgot one other thing. Move over, Howard Fineman. Now Osama is also a pundit:
"Based on the substance of the polls, which indicate Americans do not want to fight Muslims on [...]

You know there’s something really, really wrong with American politics when some Democrats begin to think that “the conscience of the party” is none other than Al Gore!
Now, that was a pretty darn good speech Gore gave last Monday. A damn good speech. It even moved me to the write the only complimentary words I’ve [...]

I'm thinking a lot right now about Jill Carroll, the young American journalist being held hostage in Iraq. On Tuesday, her captors released a video to Al Jazeera saying she would be murdered in 72 hours if women prisoners were not released from Iraqi prisons.

Carroll is a 28 year old freelance reporter, working primarily for [...]

My editorial on the election of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet appears in the Wednesday edition of The Los Angeles Times.

In the air today. No posting.

The election of  Socialist pediatrician Michelle Bachelet as President on Sunday is good news for the people of Chile. Especially given the alternatives. By a 53-46% margin, Bachelet defeated the conservative candidate, Sebastian Pinera, who is mostly credited with bringing easy credit-card access to Chile.
Bachelet becomes Chile’s first woman president and one of the very [...]

I'm happy to report that after -- yet one more day-- on the Mexican border, we didn't detect any decline in the BIBILICAL EXODUS of Mexicans heading north, And latest reports indicate that no such let up is predicted for the next 15--20 years -- regardless if the U.S. builds its 700 mile, $2 billion [...]

Still on Mexican border with limited web access and spotty posting  but I can tell you this much: I was in the Sonoran town of Altar today -- a dusty hamlet 90 minutes south of the border which has become the major staging area for undocumented immigration into the U.S.
I was here a year ago [...]

I'm still in the midst of a border journalism conference in Arizona and will spend all day Wednesday in Mexico; so posting will remain light.
During the few free moments I've had available I've been keeping up with the news as best I can. Reporter Miriam Pawel's Los Angeles Times series thumping on Cesar Chavez' United [...]