Marc Cooper

The moment I heard that the Bush administration had rudely pushed out a handful or so of federal prosecutors, I immediately figured that Phoenix-based U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton had to be among them. Unfortunately, I was right. No clairvoyance here. Just an educated guess. During a border-related journalism fellowship I......

Excuse me for having gotten this wrong for the last 10 years or so. But I thought the liberals’ big bitch about Fox News was that its claim to be fair and balanced was a sham, that the network was phobic about giving airtime to any view more enlightened than......

Thanks to the work of Washington Post reporter Dana Priest and federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, we now have a pretty pair of bookends for the war in Iraq. The Post has revealed just exactly what happens to the young, wounded and maimed soldiers after they come back from Iraq. They......

I spent 20 years with the Democratic presidential candidates one day last week, or so it seemed. Their opening speeches at the first of their Campaign ’08 forums, held in Carson City, Nevada, were supposed to be limited to 120 seconds, but in most cases, by halfway through, it was......

IF WE CAN’T WIN IN IRAQ, then let’s take the war into Iran. If Americans are turning in droves against failed White House policy in Iraq, then let’s spend the next two years blaming the mullahs. That seems to be the new message coming from an increasingly detached and desperate......

LET ME MAKE SURE I GOT THIS RIGHT. We’re spending a couple of hundred billion dollars and investing — so far — more than 3,000 American lives to bring democracy to Iraq, but we don’t really want any of that exotic, messy stuff in Washington. Especially not if it embarrasses......

LOOKS LIKE THE L.A. TIMES has found a creative way to help satisfy its profit-hungry bosses at the Tribune Co.: It’s apparently shifting the costs of some metro reporting to the LAPD payroll. At least, that’s the sensation I got from reading last Saturday’s cheery story from staff writer Richard......

HOW DO YOU SAYquagmire in Swedish? Watching George W. Bush unreel his penultimate State of the Union speech Tuesday night, I couldn’t help but think of that great scene in the Woody Allen classic Bananas. Presidente Esposito, the bearded, delusional leader of the fictional Central American Republic of San Marcos,......

One American who is not going to be impressedby George W. Bush’s arguments this week for escalating the war in Iraq is Harriet Elaine Johnson — or Momma J, as she likes to be called. Her 22-year-old son, Army Specialist Darius T. Jennings, was part of the president’s original surge......

AND SO IT IS TIME for one of those very conventional New Year’s Resolution columns. But first, this: When Gov. Schwarzenegger hobbles out of bed at the end of the week to attend his own posh inaugural bash, he’s going to be packing more than just the crutches he needed......