Looks like it’s time for another dye-job for the Net-Roots. Their natural white is starting to peek through again. Bad news for the shadow boxers over at KOS, MYDD and others who believe the frontline of the political fight is on cable TV. After their successful Web campaign to block the Nevada Democratic Party from [...]

I’m still buried under a flu attack. But in a feverish moment I thought I would bring some of the steamy debate from the comments thread in the post below up here to the front page. We’re having a little dustup over what freedom means. To some on the thread, as you will see, every [...]

A touch of the flu. Back soon.

There’s a nice little punch/counterpunch up on The Nation website that you might want to check out. It begins with an essay from Cuban government official Ricardo Alarcon lamenting the 45th anniversary of the death of radical sociologist C. Wright Mills. Alarcon’s point: if only we had more courageous voices nowadays like Mills. The Nation’s [...]

Las Vegas Seven of the Democratic presidential contenders spent all of Saturday morning talking about  their health care policies at an union organized forum at UNLV;  and while they vowed to provide universal coverage if elected, only John Edwards presented a plan with any significant details.  ”One of the reasons that I want to be [...]

Las Vegas There was something really inspiring about Friday night’s rally of several thousand unionized hotel workers gearing up their contract campaign. And it wasn’t that presidential candidates Clinton, Obama and Richardson all showed up (more about them in a moment). Rather, it was looking out over a parking lot full of maids, porters, busboys, [...]

For the second time in four weeks, most of all the major Democratic presidential candidates are swarming Nevada. This Saturday they will pariticipate in a Las Vegas forum on health cares issues organized by the mighty Service Employees Intl Union.  On the previous eve, tonight, Clinton, Obma and Dodd will headline the rally in solidarity [...]

There’s a lot of folks, including many trusty commenters on this site, who are living on cloud cukoo when it comes to today’s House vote on the war funding measure. They’re suffering from what you might call Unrealistic Pragmatism. Those of us who have denounced the Democratic leadership’s limp measure, that would theoretically link a [...]

More from John Stauber on the now infamous MoveOn poll that supposedly revealed mass progressive net-root support for Nancy Pelosi’s $124 billion war funding bill.  Turns out that the “84.6%” of the MoveOn membership that voted to endorse the Pelosi plan was really 84.6% of the approximate 4% of the online group’s total membership who [...]

In the midst of the burgeoniong Purgegate scandal, one can only hope that the Democratic Leadership will get as tough and unbending with the White House as it has with its own anti-war members. Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants have begin to whip any and all Democrats straying from her middling position on funding the [...]

I’m swamped with work so gonna keep it real short and rely mostly on the work of others for this post (Remember that all journalism is “derivative”). Looks like it’s Adios Alberto.  No tears will be shed. But Gonzales’ departure solves no problem. Bush will replace him with a clone. More important is that Congress [...]

Reporter Carla Marinucci writes about a new, unauthorized pro-Obama web video that portrays his run against Hillary Clinton as nothing less than a generational battle against mindless conformity. Spoofing the classic Apple commercial which spoofed Orwell’s 1984, the spot casts Hillary’s followers as robotic followers of Big Sister, much in need of liberation from someone [...]

Some of the little chickies hatched over the last few years in those CIA’s black prisons are coming home to roost. If neither moral nor constitutional reasons aren’t enough for you to oppose torture and extra-judicial procedures then maybe you will at least be moved by pragmatic concerns. The confession proffered in a secret U.S. [...]

Looks like my daughter is gonna get out of UCLA this summer just in time so we can avoid yet one more fee tuition increase. Since she began college in late 2001, the tuition in the UC system will have climbed a staggering 92%. By the time you add books, parking and incidentals, this public [...]

No. It’s a gun.

As soon as I heard a few weeks ago that the Bush administration had pushed out a handful or so of federal prosecutors, I immediately figured that Phoenix-based U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton had to be among them. Unfortunately, I was right. It was an educated guess. During a border issues journalism fellowship I directed last [...]

With the appropriate big bang, the 48-year old iconic Stardust Hotel and Casino was imploded in Tuesday’s pre-dawn hours. Once again Las Vegas was getting ready to slather a new layer of glitz atop the old — the $4 billion Echelon complex skedded to rise on the rubble. The loss of the Stardust stings all [...]

I can only hope that General Peter Pace’s new career as syndicated advice columnist will be (no pun intended) more fruitful than his current stint as top commander of the U.S. military. I mean, he will lose his job now, won’t he? I don’t want him to feel sorry or regretful. Nor do I give [...]

Greg Sargent over at TPM Cafe has gotten a hold of the final version of the Democratic leadership’s bill on Iraq and….guess what? It continues to get watered down. Two key sections contained in earlier drafts have been erased. No longer will funding be cut off for the war once the August 2008 deadline for [...]

Please check out and bookmark the new blog WitnessLA put up by ace-reporter and my pal Celeste Fremon (aka Rosedog). Disclosure: The project is supported by the Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism where I am associate director. But that shouldn’t stop you.