I want to write a few words about gunshots and sniper fire. And then, a bit later, about Hillary Clinton. Gunfire is an overwhelming sensation that can never be forgotten. You can’t confuse it for something else. You can’t honestly mis-speak about it. Most people in this country, fortunately, never experience it — even at [...]

“I don’t give a rip,” is the latest verbal pearl to roll from the lips of Bill Clinton. In 1992 he didn’t give a rip that black Arkansas convict Ricky Ray Rector was a brain-damaged vegetable when he flew back from the campaign trail to have him executed so he could deflect public attention away [...]

Within the next few days, I will be once again starting up daily or near daily commentary on the political campaigns. So start tuning in.

Sonora, Mexico Here’s my fleshed-out response to Obama’s race speech this week in the form of my latest L.A. Weekly column: Dissonance The O-boomers Even hardened veterans of the ’60s have to hand it to Obama By MARC COOPER It’s not much of a risk to venture that Barack Obama’s much-noted speech on his association [...]

Green Valley, Arizona I’m on my way into northern Mexico to do some reporting, but as I was preparing my trip I did catch most of Obama’s big speech today. And, as others have noted, it was big, big, big. Indeed, it sets a new political precedent and only reconfirms my admiration for him. While [...]

Working on the border. See you in a few days.

John “Rick” MacArthur, publisher and president of Harper’s magazine, was an early critic of the drive to invade Iraq, arguing on the eve of war that the White House was engaging in “Orwellian” manipulation of public opinion. Indeed, MacArthur, back in 1992, had penned a scathing critique of the media’s lack of skepticism regarding the [...]

The media has turned downright skittish in noting the similarities of character shared by Eliot and Bill. The only implication I can draw is that too many editors think it would somehow be unfair -even unseemly–to muddy the Hillary Clinton campaign with such uncomfortable associations. This is absurd, of course. Those same neurotic compulsions to [...]

You know your news staff is in trouble when conservative pundit Bill Safire is more willing than they are to call torture by a conservative administration for what it is: torture. Here’s my take cross-posted at The Huffington Post: With President’s Bush’s veto this weekend of a bill to outlaw the CIA’s use of waterboarding, [...]

Cross-posted at The Huffington Post The Barack Obama campaign is about to pay a very high price for the inopportune words of one of its most distinguished foreign policy advisors. The dazzlingly brilliant journalist, Pulitzer-prize winning author, and Harvard professor, Samantha Power, has been forced to resign from the campaign after she recklessly told a [...]

I’ve had a few hours to rework my initial, instant response to Tuesday’s elections (which has drawn 1500 comments). Here’s my more elaborate, final and filed version as it appears in my latest L.A. Weekly column. Here’s a teaser graph: “I have no doubt that as Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary spent many, many anxious nights [...]

For two or three days, the Hillary Clinton campaign will spin itself –and the media—silly, breathlessly celebrating her overwhelming victories in Rhode Island and Ohio and her squeaker in Texas. After the confetti is swept and the champagne bottles are tossed a more sober reality will take hold. Not just that her net gain of [...]

Only the brain dead could remain impassive before the impending drama of Tuesday’s primaries. They’re not going to change the world, but…well…the rest is rather obvious. In the meantime, more than 200 citizen journalist/volunteers signed up for HuffPost’s OffTheBus Superdelegate Investigation and helped us build this map of superdelegate profiles (with more coming in as [...]