I’ve succumbed to the 25 Random Things About Me chain letter on Facebook. So for those of you too cool or too old or too grumpy to be an FB member I’m reproducing the list here, with an addendum. Here’s the list: 1. When I was 7 I thought I was Felix The Cat. 2. [...]

No, I haven’t given up following politics nor am I giving up blogging. Just been REAL BUSY! Mostly because one of the new responsibilities I have assumed is that of Director of the newly created  Annenberg Digital News at USC.  With the end of Campaign ’08 our OffTheBus project at The Huffington Post met its [...]

Time for a little L.A.-based local politics. We’ve got an election coming up in just over a month and it’s getting little drama and almost no notice. But there’s at least one important candidate running for one important office. And I am an unabashed supporter. I’m going with Nick Patsaouras for L.A. City Controller. Nick’s [...]

I was in the middle of reading Andrew Bacevich’s great new book, The Limits of Power, when I found this perfectly appropriate companion posting from my USC colleague Jonathan Taplin. Jon forcefully reminds us that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires and warns Barack Obama that he should not precipitously sink us into the same [...]

New York politics is uncharted territory for me. But it seems obvious that Governor David Paterson has made less than a stellar choice in tapping upstate Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to take the Senate seat left open by Hillary Clinton. Gillibrand has a dismal voting record — a true woof-woof Blue Dog Democrat. She’s got a [...]

Still keeping my mouth mostly shut because there’s just too many words and images out there this week. I got a couple of emails from friends, however, telling me some of the darker ideas that zipped through their heads watching Bush-Cheney exit the scene. Thought I would share my own. Sort of. It’s just that [...]

I had a great time watching most of the inauguration show this morning at USC in the company of some smart colleagues and hundreds of students who were alternately spellbound and worked into a frenzy of excitement by what they were experiencing. Obama’s speech, I thought, was extraordinary. As some of my colleagues pointed out [...]

As I was walkin’ – I saw a sign there And that sign said – no tress passin’ But on the other side …. it didn’t say nothin! Now that side was made for you and me! Chorus In the squares of the city – In the shadow of the steeple Near the relief office [...]

I write this at a few seconds past midnight EST on Monday night, so technically it’s Day One. Close enough for government work as they say. Or for journalism. My effort is to get to bed early tonight to be able to get up in time to make a few early morning inauguration shindigs over [...]

A pity that this day has 24 hours. Twelve or fifteen, or even 23, would be preferrable. When it expires, so will the Bush administration. No more George W. Bush. No more Dick Cheney. What more could you ask for? Well, as a bonus, we also get Barack Obama. A helluva lot better replacement for [...]

The chattering set off by my autopsy and post-mortems (plural) on L.A. Weekly continued to click away this past week. For one, it led to a rather impromptu flash-mob sort of gathering Thursday night at an L.A.-area eatery of mostly former and some current Weekly employees. At one point we figured there were more (former) [...]

I’m not a very good Jew I must admit. If and when the war in Gaza is over, and the heart is a bit lighter, I will bore you with the details. But suffice it to say, when I was 12 1/2 the rabbi I went to wound up suggesting I NOT be given a [...]

Here’s my three favorite things Barack Obama has done so far: 1) Announce the end of the era of torture with the shutdown of Gitmo. 2) Appoint Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor. 3) Piss off everybody by asking the right Reverend Rick Warren to speak at his inauguration. And now I can add a [...]

School started this week so I’m a little pressed for time. And combined with all the fun we’ve been having with the three L.A. Weekly posts below, I haven’t been much inspired very to refresh this site. I promise I will start doing so sometime this week when a more natural pace returns to my [...]

I intended the “autopsy” on the L.A. Weekly I published last week to be a modest cathartic and insider report of interest to a small circle of friends. Instead, it sort of went viral, garnering tens of thousands page views and numerous inbound links ranging from Romenesko to the site of the Association of Alternative [...]

The debate started by the post below is still raging. I invite you to join its mostly civil and still popping comment thread. I will try to do a big sum-up of other response and reactions in the next few days. Meantime, more bad news, some VERY bad news from the Bad New Times group. [...]

The L.A. Weekly Trashes Years of Its Hard Copy Archives Warning: If you are not a Los Angeles or Southern California resident or unless you have some perverse interest in the sausage-making that goes into local alternative newspaper production, you should probably skip this post. But as a new year dawns and I arouse from [...]

I had to read this L.A. Times story three times to make sure it wasn’t a spoof. I couldn’t find any real facts in it, other than some gratuitous and blatant apple-polishing for the top U.S. Marine general in Iraq. I heard a reported piece on this cow-based story on NPR as well yesterday. No [...]

I was really pleased to learn that Leon Panetta has been tapped as Barack OBama’s choice for new CIA Director. Especially after some rumors last week that Obama was thinking about re-appointing current spy chief, Michael Hayden — a chilly Air Force General knee-deep in the torture policies of the Bush-Cheney administration. The rap on [...]

The Israelis have kicked off the New year with a literal big bang. The much-threatened ground invasion of the Gaza strip is now fully underway. After eight days of massive airstrikes against a sealed-off, cooped-up and densely packed Palestinian population, Israel is now moving in with heavy armor and thousands of troops in what government [...]