The phrase “I’ll have another shot of that” takes on a whole new meaning as a new law permits the carrying of concealed weapons into Arizona bars. I don’t have that great a problem with either guns or booze in themselves but mixing them together like this is nothing short of insanity. Or at a [...]

All hail President Max! Hey, who knew back in November we were really voting for Max Baucus? This whole ghastly spectacle of five Democrats on President Max’s Senate Finance Committee voting with the Republicans to bar a public option in the national health care bill reminds me of that asinine Kevin Costner movie of last [...]

As a reporter, I’ve conducted interviews  in myriad places: in a closet, in a church pew, in bars, steam baths, back alleys, jail cells,  and often in the back seat of a car. But I’ve never done one in bed, at least not while simultaneously embracing my subject. That was apparently the methodology employed by [...]

The geniuses at The Washington Post have just taken a giant leap back into the past. Remember this moment, please,  a few years down the road when it collapses into obscurity. It took paidcontent.org to make public the internal memo circulated last Friday that basically puts a gag order on Post editorial staff in their [...]

For all those shedding tears over the supposed “suffering” that Roman Polanski has already undergone, better buy yourselves another box of Kleenex. How does his case compare with these?  Kids doing life sentences for the same crime he copped to. Also, in the same edition of  Monday’s L.A. Times we find this dopey column from [...]

What’s the connection between Bill Safire and Roman Polanski? None. Except that both septuagenarians had a pretty bad weekend. Safire, 79, I suppose had the worse of the two. The former Nixon speechwriter and New York Times columnist died of pancreatic cancer. Polanski, 76, the celebrated director of “Chinatown,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Pianist” among other [...]

Neon Tommy, the USC-based student-managed 24/7 online news and arts magazine I supervise has moved from a Facebook Group to a much more user-friendly Facebook Fan Page.  If you support a new generation of journalists, put your mouse where your mouth is and take one moment by clicking here to join our page. Don’t make [...]

It’s sort of an amazing moment that we are living through if you really think about it. Since Obama’s inauguration just what has dominated our national political debate? Health care, legitimately enough. But along with that a truly idiotic comic book level back and forth about Big Brother government, socialist takeover of the school nurse’s [...]

I had the occasion to spend part of this evening with two veteran State Department career functionaries visiting L.A. and they displayed great skepticism that the Obama admin would, in the end, get even a poor health care bill through congress.  This is a conclusion at which I absolutely do not want to arrive. And [...]

I have to say that I am pleased, at a minimum, that President Obama is taking his time before rubber-stamping the request of his military commanders to significantly escalate American troops levels in Afghanistan. I guess this is why he gets paid the big bucks.

The dubiously re-elected President of Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad, has recently started to really let his hair down when it comes to holocaust denial and pure anti-Semitism. The inimitable and honorable Professor Juan Cole, anyuhing but a war-mongering neo-con, lets him have it right between the eyes, boldly calling him out for a new blast of [...]

Can the right-wing conduct a smear campaign, exaggerate and even falsify the problems with ACORN and can what has been alleged still  be partially and even significantly true? I think the answer is an obvious yes.

Except post the interview that appeared today with his daughter on her just-signed publisher’s web site. Anybody have a better idea? ————— Our Neon Tommy story of the day is by reporter Julia James looking at the browning of  Governor Arnold’s green policies.

This story in the Chri Sci Monitor about Bill Clinton’s endorsement of Gavin Newsom for Cailfornia governor is actually pretty good. But the guy who wrote the headline that Clinton’s nod “galvanizes” the campaign of the current SF mayor ain’t living in the same state I am. Which last time I looked was called California. [...]

The real “Norma Rae” has died at age 68 of cancer after her private health insurance company held up her treatments for several months.  North Carolina native Crystal Lee Sutton, of course, must also accept a quota of individual responsibility for her own demise. When she was making $2.65 an hour in the non-union J.P. [...]

Senator Max “Big Pharma” Baucus I don’t know about you, but during one or another of George W. Bush’s last five or six state of the union speeches extolling torture and aggression, I probably would have cheered if a handful of U.S. congress members would have stood up, shouted out “You Lie!” and then, en [...]

Sort of hard to assimilate, but after only about six weeks after starting her blog MadMen Footnotes, the brilliant daughter has just inked a book deal.  We consider this to be Very Good News!

We learn today that the sleazeball functionary of Wells Fargo who squatted in Bernie Madoff’s  $12m mansion has been fired. I want to know where are the criminal charges? Isn’t this at least breaking and entering? Criminal trespass? Fraud? If this isn’t against the law, I want to throw a BBQ there this weekend.  Mister [...]

The prolonged fantasizing over the breadth and impact of the weekend tea-bag fest on the D.C. mall continues unabated. A  self-desrcibed “near-successful” screenwriter at Pajamas Media has now “scientifically” proven that at least 850,000 people showed up (not the 70,000 or so that credible news sources report). That would mean more people showed up to [...]

I wasn’t at the weekend Patriot/Tea Bag/FreedomWorks big rally on the D.C. mall. But the best I can piece together from all sources, is that there was something like 70,000 people there.  As Nate Silver puts it, not a giant rally, not a small rally, more like as business-as-usual rally.  I agree.  If the Malkinites [...]