I do my writing and online reading at the Santa Monica library now. It’s comfortable and quiet, but there’s no place like home; without one, I find myself easily distracted, a much less prolific writer and a less omnivorous reader. Accordingly, I’ve trimmed my blogroll by about a hundred to include only the ones I [...]

So Barack Obama is planning to become the first African-American president of the United States. The first black president. Or so we’re told. But wait just a second here. How come Obama is black? When someone is tagged “white,” it’s because s/he’s all white. Allegedly. If s/he has one drop of African-American blood, s/he’s black. Of [...]

According to Ronald Reagan, Human Events magazine offers “aggressive reporting, superb analysis and one of the finest collections of conservative columnists to be found.” Of course much of that collection as Reagan knew it is under glass now, but the magazine has others who are still alive or are cleverly simulating life.
So that’s one [...]

Yes, I think that yesterday we saw a potent manifestation of the contagion of our era, a mode of how to comport oneself with others that is modeled (MBA-style?) by Mr. Insolence-in-Chief himself. It had the stamp of a particularly neoconnish brand of disdainful arrogance. And it wasn’t coming from the upstart of [...]

A recent article in slate by Columbia economics professor Ray Fisman, drawing on a forthcoming paper in American Economic Review ["Diamonds Are Forever, Wars Are Not. Is Conflict Bad for Private Firms?"] by fellow economists Massimo Guidolin and Eliana La Ferrara, takes the answer to their question [i.e., no, not necessarily, and sometimes it is [...]

Friday’s Wall Street Journal [sorry, can't link] reported on 34 foreclosures in New Orleans, foreclosures by subprime lending companies which, it turns out, were invested in by the hedge fund (Fortress), which in turn John Edwards has been invested in — and which has hired him as advisor — all fully disclosed, never hidden, but [...]

I’m not quite sure what all to make of it [though i'm about to make a lot of it anyway], and maybe I’m the only one only now belatedly seeing this, but I just google-stumbled [googlumbled?] on a nationwide survey on childrearing practices taken in August 2005, where 600 adults (18 and over, half male, [...]

If you haven’t yet seen this last Saturday’s LAT lead editorial, it’s a real winner and sign of just how much the Emperor’s Clothes Era is still with us.
What a sad and embarrassing editorial, embarrassing for those of us who have been LA Times readers all our lives [There's a photo of me [...]

It’s classic MBA Presidency stuff (btw, Why aren’t all the MBAs in the nation rising up and calling for Bush’s impeachment? Hasn’t he singlehandedly devalued the stock of an MBA sheepskin forever?): “What’s good for GM is good for the nation.” When was the last time that flag got hoisted in public? [...]

This site’s new spam blocker, which keeps the comments section from being overrun by links to everything from porn sites to closet organizer merchants, was installed on June 26. As the graphic below shows, it has blocked more than 460,000 attempts to post comment spam since then. That’s about 1,000 per hour. If we could [...]

Through a combination of ill health, low spirits and technical befuddlement (all on the part of the proprietor — our other contributors are not to blame), BTC News has been variously moribund or inaccessible for much of the past two months. We’ve trashed the previous design, which was probably the source of the mechanical difficulties [...]

During his two terms as president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin managed to cut the country’s economy almost in half. He invaded Chechnya, leading to the worst human rights abuses in the brief post-Soviet history; he dissolved the Russian parliament — in fact he attacked it with tanks — and he allowed friends and associates to [...]

Earlier this week I received an email thanking me for my part in helping to discredit the anti-war movement. It was from the woman pictured at left: Melting Melanie Morgan, the chairman of Move America Forward.
I’m not sure where MAF ranks in the right-wing crazies pecking order but if the email is any [...]

We mentioned on January 16 that Fox News chairman Roger Ailes is slated to receive the First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation (RTNDF). On March 8, Ailes will join past recipients such as Katherine Graham, the Washington Post publisher who presided over the paper’s Watergate reporting; First Amendment attorney [...]

Much attention was paid yesterday to the introduction of Bush capo Karl Rove as the villain behind Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s legal predicament. A Google News search for the names of the two men returned some 1500 results (and counting). But don’t be fooled: Libby v. Rove is a sideshow aimed at diverting the jury’s attention [...]

The last time former Nixon defense secretary Melvin Laird popped up in the pages of the Washington Post, it was to chide the retired generals who were unloading on Donald Rumsfeld. They didn’t have the big picture, he said, and anyway they had plenty of opportunities to speak up within the chain of command when [...]

The National Review is lauding Democratic (sic) Senator Joe Lieberman for warning against “excessive partisanship and rancor” in response to president Bush’s escalation of the Iraq war. Kathryn Lopez posted Lieberman’s enthused endorsement of Bush’s new policy in its entirety, with a note of thanks to Connecticut voters for sending the Senator back to Washington. [...]

“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission … sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. “
It’s hard to choose exactly the right television reference for the administration’s New Way Forward — a very Soviet-sounding designation — in Iraq. [...]

Imagine if you will a portrait of George W. Bush wearing a bibulous nose, an Alfred E. Neuman expression and a helmet made of Jack Kemp’s epoxied hair. And then imagine it captioned with the memorable phrase, “The Colossus of Crawford.” If you can’t, which is perfectly normal, not to worry: the original is here, [...]

The circus execution of Saddam Hussein has managed to resurrect a man who had become irrelevant to the daily lives of Iraqis. The timing of the event and the atmosphere of it suggest that it was intended by Iraqi prime minister Maliki as a straightforward propitiatory human sacrifice to the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, whose [...]

It is naive to attempt to characterize activities a President might authorize as ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ without reference to the circumstances under which he concludes that the activity is necessary.
– Richard Nixon
Another bloody year draws to a close, which means it’s time to pay tribute to a few of the truly bloody-minded among us. [...]

The best US journalism on this country’s involvement in Iraq, both before and after the invasion, belongs hands down to McClatchy Newspapers. The former Knight Ridder chain was a voice in the wilderness during the runup to the invasion, with its Washington Bureau standouts Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel all too often offering the only [...]

A number of people are commenting on the report that the US is considering the establishment of overseas military recruiting stations. Some people may be wondering whence the idea sprang, and whether it’s a good one. The answer to the first question supplies the answer to the second.
The idea was first floated in a February, [...]

Everybody knows that moods are infectious. Now, former New York Times science writer Daniel Goleman has explained why. His new book, Social Intelligence, details the neurological processes that help us transmit our moods and other social cues to those around us.
Once believed to be lumps of lonely gray matter cogitating between our ears, our brains [...]

I don’t often veer into the autobiographical but for various reasons this seems a good moment to violate my own privacy.
Depression is a monster. It is a malignancy of the spirit. It is an embezzler and a daylight thief; it will rob you of your simplest pleasures, and often enough of your livelihood as well. [...]

If president Bush keeps up the good work, he’ll leave office every bit as popular as Richard Nixon was the day he left. The occasion should be suitably memorialized. (This is assuming Bush actually leaves.)
Incoming presidents don’t customarily use their inaugural addresses to slam their predecessors but in this case there’s really no point [...]

From the Department of Oh Lord We’re Screwed comes news that Europeans think the US wants to start a civil war in Palestine.
AMERICAN proposals to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian security forces with additional guns and fighters have alarmed other Western nations, who argue that it is tantamount to supporting one faction in a potential civil [...]

Apparently John Gibson has a feature on Fox News called “The Big Story,” in which he fulminates against this or that outrage. Today’s outrage is all about the lawsuit filed by US and German attorneys seeking to have a German court hear war crimes charges against Donald Rumsfeld and other current and former US officials [...]

The Bush presidency began with a Supreme Court decision disavowed by the very judges who made it, and has only gotten stranger. Now, six years in, the leader of the free world — the man who has claimed dictatorial powers unto himself, the war president, the decider — is the object of a very public [...]

Multinational drug firms seeking to crash the gates of the UK’s National Health Service are getting a boost from the White House. The Guardian says that the US deputy health secretary wants the NHS formulary open to every new drug and wants the British government to permit consumer drug advertising rather than limiting it to [...]

If you’re a creationist looking for a quick answer to the vexing question of hominid fossils, I have two words for you: Ratso Rizzo. Lucy, Australopithecus, Homo erectus … they’re nothing more troubling than the post-Garden ancestors of Dustin Hoffman’s consumptive anti-hero in Midnight Cowboy.
The Guardian’s Stephen Bates paid a visit to the Creation Museum, [...]

John McCain has had a lock on the maverick label since the 2000 presidential campaign. Reporters are fined heavily and demoted if they don’t use the term when writing about him. But there are signs he’s losing his maverick mojo, and senator-elect Jim Webb of Virginia may put the final bullet in the myth.
McCain is [...]

Nothing less than a Time Lord will help us salvage Iraq, and love him or hate him, Robert Gates is no Dr. Who; more like Dr. “What?“, according to the Iran-Contra prosecutors.
BTC News is now three years and one month old. Every so often I don my own Time Lord gear and head back to [...]

George Bush has nominated yet another Iran-Contra figure, former CIA director Robert Gates, to replace Donald Rumsfeld. Gates served as deputy CIA director under William”Wild Bill” Casey for Ronald Reagan and was chosen in 1991 by the elder Bush to head the CIA. Although Iran-Contra prosecutors found Gates less than credible regarding his involvement in [...]

George Bush has a lot of nicknames for Karl Rove. There’s “Boy Genius”; there’s “The Architect”; and there’s “Turd Blossom,” bestowed to honor Rove’s legendary ability to frolic in the muck and emerge smelling like a rose.
But that was yesterday, and yesterday’s gone.
Just like the GOP majority in the House, and possibly their Senate [...]

Democrats appear to be hurtling toward a serious House majority**. And according to the Jerusalem Post, Jews are doing well too.
The headline, lede and much of the rest of the story seem to have been rewritten since the Google News appearance, but thanks to the miracle of screenshots, the original is preserved in all [...]

Former Sandanista leader Daniel Ortega appears to have won the Nicaragua presidential elections, and the US isn’t happy. Why? Who the hell knows. And who knows why exactly the US feels simultaneously free to meddle in south-of-the-border elections and to pout when those countries resent us for doing so?
These are rhetorical questions.
Ortega first came [...]

Update: on the second printout, Abercrombie, Akaka and Hirono are all above 60% with Abercromie edging toward 70%. Go, Neil.
Hawaii voters don’t have any Republican national office holders to kick out, so you mainland people have to do it for us. Please, please, please.
The only nail biters here are for the gamblers betting the [...]

We have no idea who will win which races. If you’re looking for practical prognostications, start here and follow the arrows. What we have to offer is more in the way of election day advice and post-election color commentary.
First: if you’re getting a bunch of annoying computer-generated phone calls about Democratic candidates, you’re being harassed [...]

The horse race is between Republicans and Democrats. The real contest is between starkly different measures of maturity, morality and character.
If you think Americans are so immature that we cannot be trusted to judge what our own government does in our own country’s name, vote Republican.
If you think America is so pitiably weak [...]

Yes, Donald Rumsfeld is smug, irritating and possibly insane. Yes, he’s been an unmitigated disaster as defense secretary. But so what?
The Air Force Times, Army Times, Marine Times and Navy Times are all running an identical editorial calling on Rumsfeld to resign. In so doing they join a long list of Congressional figures, former generals, [...]

A note to our readers: BTC News is inviting you to submit questions to be asked of a White House spokesman who has agreed to answer on the record the ones we select. If you’d like to participate, read the invitation and leave your questions in the comments section.
Now that the majority of Americans view [...]

As John Aravosis and others have noted, one voice is conspicuously missing from the controversy over ABC’s “The Path To 9/11.” 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton has yet to speak publicly about the issue. The program will apparently air as scheduled, complete with key scenes that distort and in some instances completely fabricate the conclusions [...]

As a substantive political project, E.J. Dionne is right – conservatism is finished. While he didn’t mention it, my pet example is the provision in the (failed) law to pre-empt state policies prohibiting tips from being counted against the minimum wage. When I mentioned the proposed law to my wife Dr. Brazen Hussy, she [...]

An op-ed column in the San Frnacisco Chronicle suggests some close parallels between the respective failures of Enron and George Bush. The fraud that led to Enron’s collapse, according to Alex Epstein, was the outcome of a determined effort to elevate ideology above reality and then to conceal the predictable results of that effort.

One man I respect says that he’d no longer support another one. It’s no fun when your friends start fighting, is it?
PZ Myers of Pharyngula, like many good liberals, reacted quite strongly to Barack Obama’s recent speech suggesting that liberals take into account the role of faith in American life. Now I certainly have my [...]

Predominantly liberal voting rights activists have been raising alarms about electronic voting machines for several years now. Come November, when many activists expect to see massive irregularities in precincts with electronic voting systems, they may find themselves in some suprising company.

Connecticut Senator Joe Liberman, whose political soul contains multitudes, today became the nation’s first Meta-Democrat. Lieberman announced at a press conference that he was beginning a petition drive to place himself on the November ballot as an independent should he lose his Democratic primary bid against challenger Ned Lamont.

Israel is creating a nightmare in Gaza, systematically wrecking the infrastructure that keeps people alive there, and few here seem to notice.