Despite a 2002 Supreme Court ruling that executing the mentally retarded is unconstitutional, Texas has not stopped killing Gumps, according to this article in the Texas Observer.  Pretty much everything is present in this story to qualify Texas as institutionally…

This article was first published by AlterNet. HESPERIA, CA—Say hello to the thing that could save our gas-guzzlin’ suburban lifestyle: affordable residential solar power that’s within reach of the most cash-strapped America consumer. This breakthrough is not a result of…

This article was first published in Alternet. A lot of us have been wondering, despondently, why the Hell Barack Obama is keeping Timothy Geithner on the job as Treasury Secretary, given his central role in the plunder of trillions of…

This article was first published in The eXile on February 19, 2004. Haiti popped into the news again, and I decided it was time to tell the whole military history of the place. It’s got to be the most amazing,…

It’s fashionable to dismiss The Simpsons, to claim never to watch it anymore because its best days are long gone. It’s been fashionable to do this for ages. I remember when the show was about five years old and staggeringly…

This article first appeared in Alternet. Wall Street Vampires: Lately, a lot of Americans, myself included, have used the blood-sucking freaks as a metaphor to describe the Wall Street billionaires who rule us, and who are ruining us.  Like so…

Riot at Indian TV station over Exiled Online article This has to be the single weirdest episode in my journalism career–and that’s saying a lot, considering all the strange and scary shit I’ve been through over the past decade-plus. I…

We’ve been lied to for years now about the severity of California’s water shortage. The media and state officials have been ringing the alarm,  warning that the state was in the grips of the quite possibly the “worst California drought…

OK, so after taking some time off, courtesy of me moving back to the fucking stone age to a house with no internet or cable, I’m going to try and write on a little more regular basis. This time, I’m…

This article was first published in The eXile on November 13, 2002. Reading the leaks from Washington, you can tell we’re gearing up to do something in Yemen. A little regime-change action maybe, a sideshow to the big production number in…

For a good time, call Robert Downey Jr. Of course, some people don’t want to have a good time. That’s one of the mysterious facts of our modern lives, and that’s why there’s a market for films like Precious: Based…

What are the best movies of the decade? How the hell should I know? To hear the critics tell it, it’s Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, plus a lot of other solemn bummers I didn’t see. However,…

On December 16th in the town of Cuernavaca, Mexican armed forced cornered and killed Don Arturo Beltran Leyva, the country’s most powerful drug boss and one of the top three capos of the trade. Some people still don’t believe he…

This article was first published by TruthDig (truthdig.com) Michele Bachmann has become known as the Queen of the anti-government Tea Baggers, protesting health care reform and slamming every other government handout as “socialism.” But what her followers don’t know is…

Avatar turns out to be the one about the white guy who gets mixed up with Noble Savages and likes them so much he goes native, right before the big battle. So no surprises about the plot. But what about…

The problem with the water debate, to the extent there is one, is the way it’s spun. Long dominated by eco-warrior do-gooders, the fight for water has been framed as boringly and abstractly as possible. How is the “environment” supposed…

I was in Detroit to visit my girlfriend’s family for Thanksgiving and decided to take a look around. Knowing my tastes, locals told me to head for a burnt-out slum called Highland Park, HP for short, as it’s hands-down the…

Anne Applebaum is a dingbat. I don’t throw that word “dingbat” around lightly, folks. But I just made the mistake of clicking a link that led me to an Anne Applebaum column, and seriously dude: Anne Applebaum? She’s a dingbat….

Article originally published by Vice magazine Prospects have never been good for ex-cons. Even during good economic times they hover between 50 and 75 percent unemployment, and generally take home about nine grand a year. No wonder 70 percent of…

This article was first published in The eXile in November, 2002. Look down at your hand. Flex the tendons, watch them ripple under the skin. What a nice design! So silent and quick. That’s what they never get in these…

This article was first published in The eXile on June 23, 2003. As Russians openly strive to become elitny, America’s dominant oligarchs and feeble intellectuals live in a state of grotesque denial about their elitism. Billionaires act like hicks and…

This article was first published on AlterNet What are we getting in return for the bailout? So far, predatory credit card rates, exorbitant bank fees and obscene Wall Street bonuses. But we’re being robbed in other, sneakier ways, too. It…

This article was first published by TruthDig (truthdig.com). In recent days, students have been rallying and barricading themselves inside buildings on University of California campuses to protest a 32 percent hike in tuition fees. Last Wednesday and Thursday, scuffles broke…

This story was first published on AlterNet. What happened to all the initial reports that accused Fort Hood killer Maj. Nidal Hasan snapped because he was distraught over the Army’s refusal to grant him either a discharge or an exemption…

This article was first published in The eXile on November 13, 2003. Reading the Western press accounts of the Khodorkovsky arrest has at times been as unpleasant as one of my famous giardia attacks. I’m not sure which version is more ridiculous:…