Month: September 2007

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JOHN DEAN says Republican rule has destoyed Congress, the Presidency, and the courts — and he will explain what’s to be done about ignorant and apathetic American voters. He’s the guy who became counsel to the President in 1970 when he was thirty-one, and then served as counsel to President Nixon for a thousand days. His new book is BROKEN GOVERNMENT. John Dean will be speaking tomorrow/Thurs Sept 27: Vroman’s @ All Saints Church, 132 N Euclid Ave, Pasadena, 700pm.

Also: KENTUCKY AT WAR: BOB MOSER of The Nation reports on the 50-State Strategy: Can Democrats win in places they abandoned years ago to the Republicans? Today he reports on the anti-war movement in Louisville and how the effort to unseat pro-war Republican Senator Mitch McConnell in 2008 is looking good. Bob’s reports on politics in the red states will be running in the magazine through the campaign year. Check out the Hillbilly Report and the DitchMitch websites.

Plus: CLASS WAR IN THE AMERICAN WEST: Scott Martelle of the LA Times has a new book about the Ludlow Massacre – the seven-month-long battle in 1914 by striking immigrant coal miners which was ended only by the US army after 75 people on both sides had been killed. The book is BLOOD PASSION. Scott is appearing Sun Oct.7 at 5pm at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., W. Hwyd.

More stuff to read: my “Chemerinsky and Irvine: What Happened?” at Inside Higher Ed.
and my “Chemerinsky and the Chief Justice: Something is Wrong” at the Huffington Post

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While President Bush claims “progress” in Iraq, the death toll there has passed one million, according to a British study. LA Times Baghdad correspondent Tina Sussman reported on Sept. 14 that ORB, an agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, concluded that 1.2 million Iraqis have died as a result of war-related violence. TOM ENGELHARDT will comment; he keeps track of “Iraq by the numbers” at TomDispatch.com; his book The End of Victory Culture is out now in a new edition.

ALSO: Republicans call it “The Presidential Election Reform Act”; it’s an initiative they are trying to get on the June 8 ballot. Democrats call it another Republican dirty trick – an effort to win the 2008 presidential election by dividing California’s electoral votes. RICK JACOBS will explain – he’s head of The Courage Campaign.

PLUS: Since its founding in 1947, the CIA has consistently failed at its primary mission: to understand the world. Instead, it has been turned into a secret police force. TIM WEINER of the New York Times has spent 20 years studying the Agency, “an incapable and incoherent service whose deepest secret is its own weakness and ineptitude” —most evident on 9-11. Tim is a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter who broke more than 100 page-one stories on the CIA. His new book is LEGACY OF ASHES: THE HISTORY OF THE CIA. Tim will be speaking tonight at 700pm in the ALOUD series at the downtown LA Public Library, 5^th and Flower streets—the event is officially “full-standby only.”

AND: Your Minnesota Moment:  the ACLU has filed a brief on behalf of Republican Senator Larry Craig, arrested in a  Minneapolis airport men’s room in that gay sex sting operation.  The ACLU argues that Americans have a free speech right to solicit sex that would occur in private.

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Gen. Petraeus gave his long-awaited report on “progress” in Iraq, and his recommendation came as no surprise: in the words of the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons: “Stay – just a little bit longer.” IAN WILLIAMS will comment – he’s UN correspondent for The Nation and writes the “Comment is Free” blog at Guardian Unlimited.

Plus: When people talk about black independent labels, they think of Motown first and then Chess in Chicago. But there was another Chicago label cutting its own groove in the fifties and sixties and racking up even bigger hits: Vee-Jay. CHRIS MORRIS explains – he writes for Rolling Stone, the LA Weekly, LA CityBeat, Billboard, and the Hollywood Reporter, and hosts “Watusi Rodeo” every Sunday from 9-11 a.m. on Indie 103.1 in LA. Playlist: Jimmy Reed, “Baby what you want me to do” (1959); Elmore James, “It Hurts Me Too” (1957); Gene Chandler, “Duke of Earl” (1961); Four Seasons, “Sherry” (1962). A new Vee-Jay 4-CD set is out now from Shout! Factory.

Also: UC Irvine fired its new law school dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, a week after offering him the job — on the grounds that he was too liberal. Chancellor Michael Drake made the decision. Conservative legal scholars are joining the chorus of outrage. LA Times legal correspondent HENRY WEINSTEIN will report — his story is online at LATimes.com.

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President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq’s Al-Anbar Province on Monday, part of his drive to persuade Americans we should stay in Iraq because “progress” is being made. JUAN COLE says “The ‘good news’ appears (I swear to God) to be that you can “walk” in Iraq. The 8 billion people in the world walk every day, in most of the world’s locales. Only, if you are American in Fallujah you might need a company of Marines with you so that you can . . . walk. Is al-Anbar Province really paradise, as Bush suggested?” Juan writes the indispensible Iraq war blog “Informed Comment” – his new book is Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East.

Also: Update on the Republicans – with HAROLD MEYERSON. He says Bush and Cheney deserve to be impeached – but impeaching them will make it harder to end the US war in Iraq and win universal health care. Harold wrote “The Trouble with Impeachment” for The American Prospect; he’s also an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.

Plus: Award-winning Nation magazine columnist KATHA POLLITT talks about some lessons she’s learned from her own life – about her boyfriend who deceived her (her driving instructor points out her weakness–“Observation, Katha, observation!”) and the noble final days of her leftist study group.
The stories are told in her new book LEARNING TO DRIVE: AND OTHER LIFE STORIES—it’s “painfully hilarious to read,” the Boston Globe said. “Pollitt’s tone of incredulous fury is pitch perfect.”
Katha writes the column “Subject to Debate” for The Nation; her blog, “And Another Thing,” runs at TheNation.com.