My Nation colleague and friend Jon Wiener remembers the release of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album exactly 40 years ago -- June 1, 1967.
So do I. For those of you who know L.A., you can picture me rushing out of my senior class at Fairfax High School and going across the street to Aron's Records, [...]

What a bellylaugh I had watching the gargoyle-like Tennesse Republican Rep. Zach Wamp (correct sp) on Hardball. Zach, the head of the Draft Fred Thompson Committee, was on the air crowing about how Uncle Fred has apparently decided to make the presidential run.
I don't have the exact transcript on hand, but Zach claimed that Thompson [...]

Yesterday's L.A. Times carried an eyebrow-raising piece that ought to be getting a whole lot more attention. It carries a Washington DC datelines but relies heavily on blind quotes from a "senior military official in Baghdad."
I'm not dinging the Times. I think what is in the story constitutes crucial info. Precisey because the military sources [...]

Apropos of the previous post, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is now branding a second national TV network as "enemies of the homeland."
"You should watch where you are going," he ominously warned the owners of Globovision in a televised rant. For good measure, he also branded students and others protesting his weekend shutdown of RCTV [...]

What you see in the photo is media reform -- Venezuela style. Hugo Chavez's police have now opened fire on protesting students with rubber bullets and tear gas. The demonstrators were trying to protest the shutdown this weekend of the country's largest and oldest private TV network --RCTV.
Chavez had refused to renew RCTV's license [...]

I was pleased to find this essay by the wonderful writer Luis Alberto Urrea in Sunday's WaPo.
I was mesmerized by his trilogy on Tijuana and by his now classic account of the death of the "Yuma 14," The Devil's Highway. In his mind-searing narrative, he remarks on the so-called Season of Death -- the [...]

Here is the latest in my occasional series of Las Vegas gambling pieces for The Los Angeles Times.  It comes replete with my mini-guide of where and how to play.  Shuffle up.

Went of to the hospital for a two-day "tune-up" so sorry for the pause. All is well. Back to blogging after Memorial Day. See ya,

Someone should tell these pushy lawbreakers to get to "the back of the line."

My long time friend -- author, agitator, and commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson -- has officially joined the fray. Check out his new blog, bookmark it and start reading. His top piece is an analysis of L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa's first two years in office.
And remember for all things L.A. pleae keep tuning into Celeste Fremon's WitnessLA.com.

Just as predicted. The Democrats fold on Iraq.
What a surprise.
More here and here.
Had enough?

There's the the Bedtime for Gonzo story and the Senate immigration debate starting this week. A good reason, at least for a moment, to take advantage of this relatively placid Sunday evening to switch gears (I also need the emotional release after tonight's teeth-gritting episode of the Sopranos -- no pun intended).
So let's pick on [...]

After weeks of wrangling and political horse-trading, a bi-partisan clutch of Senators led by Teddy Kennedy have announced a consensual agreement on comprehensive immigration reform.
The proposal, whose details are still not clear and that might be voted on by the end of the month, is basically a more restrictive, more punitive version of the bill [...]

Looks like we are now only a few days away, at most, from some sort of great capitulation by Harry Reid on the issue of war funding.
The Democrats staged their sordid charade today and waved a limp noodle at George W. Bush.  That done, they will now get down to the grim business of continuing [...]

Please don't confuse me with somebody who actually cares about:
1) The death of Jerry Falwell. As far as I am concerned the passing of the Reverend by natural causes at age 73 was far too little and way too late.  What I feel about this not-so-tragic event is quite similar to what the late, great [...]

I felt an authentic emotional jolt just now when I learned that the son of Andrew Bacevich has been killed in Iraq.
Bacecvich, himself a former career military officer-turned-professor, wrote one of the books that has most impressed me in the last few years.  Written from a conservative-realist point of view, his "The New American Militarism: [...]

Nothing like general, violent political instability in a nuclear-armed third world country to focus your nightmares.
The Pakistani city of Karachi, among others, is reported shut down on Monday by a general strike protesting 40 people murdered and 150 wounded in weekend political repression.
The violence and the strike are the rolling, mounting aftershocks of the crisis [...]

I'm pleased to note that this blog is a finalist in the "Best Individual Weblog" category in the Greater Los Angeles Press Club awards for 2007.  We'll know the final results in a month.
As you read through the list of nominations, it's interesting to note how many nominations the L.A. Weekly got compared to, say, [...]

I've actually bumped into a few people who were cheered by Thursday's House vote to parse out war funding in rations tied to "benchmarks."
I, on the other hand, find nothing to celebrate. What I see is a Congress -- both parties included-- who are willing to continue the bloodshed even though an overwhelming majority [...]

So less than a month ago, my daughter starts a blog and on Tuesday she posts some mordant thoughts on the film Fracture.
Then she gets a call from an editor at E! Online who is sufficiently impressed by her writing that he invites her to start writing movie reviews. He sends her to a screening [...]