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The Los Angeles Times In this election cycle, those ‘issues ads’ he created last time are likely to be exceeded by the GOP. You’d be forgiven if you thought of the contest for the presidency as two big battles–first, the primary battle to choose each party’s nominee, which this year is effectively over, and then […]

Tuesday: Dems on Cells Wednesday: The Three-Convention Drop Thursday: Babs on Politics Tuesday: Dems on Cells Our bus makes its way to Staples Center through a neighborhood of squat white and pink houses and small shops with signs mostly in Spanish. The sky over LA is brown. Locals tell […]

Colombia’s War from the Ground Up Congress passed an emergency aid package June 30 that includes more than $1 billion to help fight the Colombian drug war — despite criticism that the war is failing. The aid primarily provides military training and equipment to the Colombian government for its war against the country’s largest rebel […]

For nearly a decade, the Colombian military, fed by American dollars, has used crop-dusting planes to drop a dangerous herbicide where it believes coca and poppy fields may exist. In return for that favor, the United States government is giving the friendly generals items like Blackhawk helicopters, which the military promises to use to fight […]

It was a terrifying delusion — one that could only seem real to someone plagued by paranoid schizophrenia: Russell Weston was the illegitimate son of John F. Kennedy, a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, and the “commander of all the armies in the world.” While working for NASA during the early 1980s, he […]

Bill Clinton recently spared Juan Raul Garza’s life — at least for a little while. On August 5, Garza — a drug trafficker convicted of ordering the murder of three people — would have become the first person executed by the federal government in almost 40 years. Though few question whether Garza is guilty, Clinton […]

For the last 4 years, as evidence has grown that the death penalty system in this country is rusted through, death penalty supporters have held one person aloft as the shining example of why we “need” capital punishment in this country: Timothy McVeigh. Point out that the federal death penalty has been sought almost 80 […]

A grand jury charged Cincinnati police officer Stephen Roach with negligent homicide Monday for the shooting of an unarmed African-American man that sparked three nights of riots. The same day, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced he is launching a civil rights investigation of the Cincinnati Police Department. While the investigation is thoroughly justified — officers […]

Q: The first question I wanted to ask was about “stealth PACs.” Voting on a bipartisan basis, Congress recently closed the loophole that allowed these groups to conceal their donors. But some have questioned the significance of the legislation. Do you think this is a step toward more fundamental reform, or does it just serve […]