I don't have a problem, in principle, with Congressional Democrats seeking a reasonable compromise with Republicans in order to come up with the broadest bi-partisan push to oppose the White House war policy.
Indeed, I suspect that in the end it will be more an election season-motivated Republican revolt rather than Democratic opposition that will have [...]

Few people I know could hold their booze like jolly Molly Ivins. R.I.P.

I was more a professional associate of hers rather than some sort of close friend. But on those occasions I found myself sitting next to or across from her I was also impressed by the way she could drink just about everyone [...]

Given the Bush administration's intransigence and most of the Democrats' ambiguity, I think Senator Russ Feingold's push to cut-off funding is the most intelligent way to go forward.
It's going to be some time, if ever, that the Congress works up enough courage to take that step. But it's hardly too early for Feingold to stake [...]

Now and then there are some very strange harmonic convergences that cannot but bring a grimace or two to those of us cynical enough to notice. But this match-up is a doozie.
In the same week, two controversial world leaders -- supposedly ideological poles apart-- award themselves almost identical and enhanced executive powers.
Let's start here at [...]

Hillary Clinton is out on the campaign trail attempting to make a pivot on the war in Iraq.
Not an easy task because, cutting through all the hooha, Clinton has been a supporter of the war from the onset.
OK, so now she's hustling to catch-up with her own constituencies and sync up with overwhelming majority opinion. [...]

It's good that tens of thousands have showed up in Washington D.C. Saturday to protest the war.
But you gotta ask yourself, just how big are the rocks in the heads of the protest organizers? You can hardly blame the media for thrusting Jane Fonda into the lead of nearly every piece on the protests if [...]

Here's a glimpse at how politics really work. When results don't sync with your rhetoric, don't even dream about altering your program to produce a better reality. Simply shift your rhetoric to cover-up the ugly reality.
Faced with the real possibility of a bi-partisan majority approving one or another congressional resolution opposing the White House escalation [...]

We do not live by politics alone.
Sometimes we go fishing. Just got the pix from last weekend's local expedition and wanted to post them as a pause from our usual political chatter.
Here I am with a really big surf perch. About 15 inches and somewhere around 3lbs. This is about as big as they get [...]

Not gonna say much, because this SOTU will be very, very quickly forgotten.
I will be more amply pontificating on the Bush speech on the radio Wednesday as a guest commentator from 10-11 a.m. PST on KPCC (89.3) in So Cal. You can listen live or to the archived show that will be posted.
But the only [...]

So, George Bush's State of the Union address tonight won't focus on Iraq. Duh.
Instead, the President is going to roll out a series of domestic proposals, like his health-care [sic] plan.
Some plan. One that won't cover a single additional person among the 50 million presently without insurance. And one that will levy a punishing tax [...]

We'll have George W. Bush to soundly kick around after Tuesday night's State of the Union address.
In the meantime, let's stay on the Democrats' case. Nancy Pelosi's grand 100 hours concluded last week in barely 42% of the allotted time and -- apparently-- delivering maybe even a smaller percentage of what was promised.
This must be [...]

My review of  Howard Zinn's latest anthology of essays is now out in this Sunday Los Angeles Times Book Review. I'd call mine a "mixed" review.
The headlines and subheads are written by the editors, not by us lowly writers. But I kinda like the pithy sub-head the Times slapped on my review: "The Same Old [...]

When I was at the YearlyKos convention last Spring, what most unsettled me was a palpable streak of anti-intellectualism; a glorification of the netroots as if typing was in itself a significant political act.
Now it looks like a veritable viral pandemic of such silliness has just erupted on the Web.
Patient X seems to be Matt [...]

I'll give this much credit to Hillary Clinton: She has come up with a formulation that only the most skilled, conniving, slippery sort of politician could dream up. After returning from a visit to Iraq, she has decided to propose a troop "cap."
Only a real pro could stand before the cameras and make such a [...]

Want to find the most hair-raising way to measure the cruel hypocrisy of the Bush administration?
Consider these figures published in the Washington Post:
The war in Iraq, to date, has produced about 1.7 million refugees. They flood over the borders of neighboring countries at the clip of 100,000 per month.
How many has the United States accepted [...]

The group of 1000 active duty military dissenting from the war in Iraq that I wrote about a few weeks ago have formally gone public.
After holding a press conference Monday, they presented their appeal to Congress on Tuesday to end the war and bring the troops home.
Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich was on hand to join [...]

Here's the real surge in Iraq: civilian deaths. Primarily by political assassination.
The UN reports today more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians killed in 2007. Almost 6500 killed in just the last two months.
Another half million internally displaced since outbreak of sectarian murder last February.
Almost a million Iraqis living as refugees in Jordan.
The good news: this isn't [...]

The news coming out of Havana suggests that Fidel Castro might be in his final hours. The Spanish newspaper, El Pais, reports that the 80 yr old Castro is in "very grave" condition after three failed intestinal operations.
When and if Fidel checks out, you can immediately add Cuba to the list of Bush administration foreign [...]

Apropos of my posting below, check this out.
Argentina's president Kirchner gives the cold shoulder to Mullah-man Ahmadinejad. A moral lesson for those who justify Ortega and Chavez praise of the Iranian fundamentalist.

I've got hours of waiting ahead of me for my flight out of the Denver airport (the snow is coming down pretty hard) so I thought I'd take advantage of free wi-fi and my Thinkpad to work up a post on one of those areas of continuing controversy.
Controversial at least on this blog. But reading [...]