Tombstone, ArizonaThursday Afternoon Got to Tombstone a day ahead of the official kick-off of the Minuteman Project. Something like a thousand  "volunteers" are expected to meet and rally here tomorrow beginning a month-long protest along the Mexican border. I’ve posted about a dozen pictures from this afternoon’s cruise of the town. Check them out by [...]

Associated Press reporter Arthur Rotsein has taken his prose right up to the edge in his no holds-barred description of the “minuteman volunteers” who begin streaming tomorrow into the area around Tombstone, Arizona on their way to blockade the southern U.S. border;. How’s  this for a scorcher of a lead sentence for Rotstein’s piece that [...]

I interrupt my journey between Las Vegas and Tucson for a moment of bald-faced self-promotion. On the way thru the Vegas airport this morning I noticed that the local Borders bookstore was featuring my book, The Last Honest Place in America, as its top "High Flying Hit."  I like that.

You really have to feel for Jesse Jackson. Imagine the burning moral anguish experienced by The Reverend — as his staff calls him””when he had to weigh the pros and cons of staying on as spiritual advisor to oppression victim Michael Jackson. Or instead, should he swoop in for a last minute stand with Terry [...]

L.A. Times media writer David Shaw is easy to make fun of. Arrogant and puffed-up, he loves to slather out long thumbsuckers about The Newspaper Industry— pieces that all read remarkably the same. “Well, we really kind of dropped the ball on that one,” is the most frequent sort of quote that Shaw gathers in [...]

Posting might be light in the next few days. I’m currently in Las Vegas working again on the upcoming PBS American Experience series on same. And mid week I’m off to Arizona where I will be hanging out with  The Minutemen who vow to "patrol" the Arizona border for the month of April. Therein, folks, [...]

I continue to read the Damascus-based Heretic’s Blog by Syrian intellectual Ammar Abdulhamid, and he continues to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. A few weeks ago he predicted that he and his family would have no choice other than to flee his home country. Now, he reports on his own interrogation [...]

My heart is really broken by the Schindler family. As a father, I fully understand their sorrow, their desperation and even their self-delusion. I grant them wide berth in coming to terms with a horrifying reality. Who knows what any of us would do in a similar situation. They first lost their daughter fifteen years ago. [...]

This is rich. Of all people, Ralph Nader has now come out to join forces, effectively, with Jeb Bush and Randall Terry on the Terri Schiavo case.  That’s right. Ralph has joined up with some far-riight folks who argue that Schiavo is being murdered by the courts. Here’s part of what pal Doug Ireland has [...]

My feature report on the small Mexican town that now serves as the "capital of illegal immigration " across the Arizona border has now been posted: ALTAR, Mexico “” As soon as he spots me taking pictures on the steps of the 3-century-old avocado-and-lemon-colored Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe church, Manuelito makes a beeline my way. [...]

My L.A. Weekly column looking at the joint Schiavo-DeLay Relief Act is now posted: “Is it safe? Is it safe?” as Laurence Olivier asked in the great movie Marathon Man. Has Congress finally run out of gas and safely gone home? Or are we going to have to arm ourselves with picks and drills to [...]

Free universal national health care has finally arrived. And not a moment too soon!Michael Bassik over at Personal Democray Forum has come up with a great way for all of us Americans to benefit from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s unique skills that combine vast medical knowledge with clairvoyance. If he can diagnose Terri Schiavo [...]

Women. That’s a subject I usually avoid on this blog. Got one as a wife. Another as a daughter. No reason to mix them into my hobbies. OK. Just joking. Sort of. But I have been following, as has most of the blogosphere, the nasty fight between Susan Estrich and Michael Kinsley. Now, the dispute [...]

UPDATE: One of my favorite conservatives, "Whipped Cream" Bob Barr has just appeared on CNN denouncing Congress for intervening into the Schiavo case. Calling it "unprecedented" interference into the state courts, he speculated on the "political damage" the Republicans may have wrought on themselves. Good for Barr who has taken many good and principled positions [...]

The Schiavo Case (now better known as the Tom DeLay Resuscitation Project) continues to dominate the weekend news cycle. This must say something about us as a people — and let me give you a hint: it says nothing about our compassion. And a lot about our politicians. The goalposts of this debate keep slipping. [...]

What a disgraceful day for our body politic. Time to put it, not Terri Schiavo, on life-support. As if Schiavo’s status wasn’t horrible enough as is, the Republican congressional leadership — with the inimitable and totally corrupt Tom Delay at its head – squeezed that poor girl’s carcass for every ounce of political opportunism possible. [...]

How exciting! When you’re a politician, you know you’re in trouble when they start publishing flow charts to connect the dots of your campaign contributions. Here’s the chart on the nefarious, Texas Congressman Tom “The Hammer” Delay a.ka. the single most corrupt member of the U.S. House: Take a look at this Washington Post article [...]

George W. Bush nominated Paul Wolfowitz today to be the next president of the World Bank. Which reminds me of this: Back in the 1980′s, comedian Mort Sahl came up with a fabulous line about the murder of Vicki Morgan. She was the back-door bombshell for old man Alfred Bloomingdale, the department store tycoon, founder [...]

Oh no. The L.A. Times is back with yet another piece on controversial journalist Gary Webb. Webb killed himself last year after having been driven out of the profession and a long bout of depression. And once again the Times takes the occasion to besmirch Webb’s reporting. Unfortunately, I’m going to have take credit for [...]

The BBC is reporting  that today’s anti-Syria rally in Beirut was the largest in the history of Lebanon, drawing perhaps a million people. That’s out of a national population of three-and-a half-million (the same population of the city of Los Angeles whose Mayoral election drew only 27% of voters). After last week’s muscle-flexing by Hezbollah, [...]