At the end of July I read an article in the New York Times stating that Houston was the worst recycling city in the country, with a recycling rate of just 2.6% of its total waste. (San Francisco, where I live, is the best recycling city in the country,...

It's a psychedelic experience this week, watching Cindy McCain out on the campaign trail, attacking the opponent's wife. In rally after rally she says, "I've always been proud of my country," a not so subtle jab at Michelle Obama's gaffe earlier about really being proud of America for the...

Yesterday I wrote an editorial for the Huffington Post on Barbara Boxer's failure to take a stand on Proposition 98. Today I found out the No On 98 Campaign has a signed statement from Barbara Boxer stating she is against Proposition 98. For the record, I called Barbara Boxer's...

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has failed to come out against Proposition 98, the landlord scheme to end rent control in California. The proposition, which would take away municipalities' ability to make their own housing policies based on their own specific needs, is hidden behind the fake title of...

Standard Operating Procedure: Movie Review

He calls it the "Interrotron." The way Errol Morris interviews a subject is to speak into a camera. His image is then projected on a screen and the interviewee responds into the camera. It's like a teleprompter that allows the game show host or newscaster...

Benazir Bhutto was standing in an open car in the military city of Rawalpindi when the shrapnel sliced into her. That was just over a day ago. Violence has engulfed the region and we're waiting for the next chapter in this ever-worsening dilemma.

It would be cynical to blame...

My friends sometimes make fun of me for being too effusive. It's either the best movie I've ever seen, or it's worthless trash. It's either a great book, best of the year, or I didn't finish it. I'm a compulsive recommender, a chronic maker of mix-CDs. When I enjoy something...

"We may decide she's not our first choice, but she's not a bad choice." - Markos Moulitsas, August 4, 2007

It was a surprising thing for Markos, the founder of DailyKos the most widely read political blog, to say. He made that statement just before the candidate forum...

You worked for the spotlight. You played endless gigs, gave away free CDs at your shows. You wanted to be taken seriously. You wanted to be heard. You were drawn to fame like a moth to a fire. Now you have it. It wasn't an accident. People are almost...

Disclaimer: If you're tired of reading about Paris skip this article. There are other, important things to be reading about.

The media, the Los Angeles Times in particular, followed by TMZ, has bought into the absurd notion that Paris' sentence is unfair. And this is the line...

Sometimes I think Paris Hilton is a hero. I watch the news and I see the willowy blonde, staring from the squad car window, face like a painting. Then I hear about over-crowded jails, a corrupt Los Angeles Sheriff, a two-tiered legal system. It doesn't bother me that it takes...

by Caroline Paul

MY BROTHER IS considered one of the biggest domestic terrorists in the country. You probably haven't heard of him, and I think that's odd. After all, he's dangerous. He's trying to overthrow our country. He "doesn't like our freedoms," or so President Bush has said of...

The press is the biggest scapegoat for everything that goes wrong. I remember being in Israel at the height of the Second Intifada and one day I'm interviewing Uzi Landau, the right wing Minister of the Interior. It's just after the Sbarro's bombing and Uzi is saying to me (well,...

A couple of news articles recently pointed to some of the awful class differences we're facing. The most egregious was the front page piece in the New York Times. In California, if you're crime is not too serious, you can pay around $100 a day to stay in a...

We've spent 500 Billion Dollars reducing Iraq to a state of anarchy but, according to Mitt Romney, one of the Republican presidential front-runners, it's not worth the money and effort it would cost to catch Osama bin-Laden. Here's the AP interview. The headline is about Republicans switching positions but...

Welcome to the no-plan-B zone. Six bombs killed at least 45 people in Baghdad today. John McCain has no plan-B for those people. Heavily criticized for his armored Baghdad sojourn, John McCain recently said he would be willing to walk the same market with less security this time....

Read the right wing commentary today and it's all about the absurdity of firing Don Imus positioned against the poor Duke lacrosse players who were slandered and had their lives ruined (ruined is probably too strong a word here, but let's say they had a bad time of...

There's a lot of hypocrisy going on with this Imus mudslinging. Hillary Clinton said yesterday of Imus, "I've never wanted to go on his show and I certainly don't ever intend to go on his show, and I felt that way before his latest outrageous, hateful, hurtful comments." None-the-less...

It's interesting to see John McCain portraying Democrats as acting out of political opportunism and Republicans as acting on principle. This wouldn't be the same John McCain who spoke at Jerry Falwell's University. And he couldn't possibly be referring to the Republicans who manipulated intelligence, connected Saddam to al-Qaeda,...

The protesters at BYU are making great points against Dick Cheney delivering the school commencement speech. He's a liar. He falsely tied Saddm to Al Qaeda. He told a Senator to go fuck himself. He's responsible for outing Valerie Plame. But the best point, perhaps, was made by the...