Marc Cooper

ONLY SUCH A TOWERING PILE of self-absorbed arrogance as Don Rumsfeld could have the gumption to take a couple of high-profile victory laps at the precise moment in which his war policies have collapsed into full-blown catastrophe. If he had been a Japanese official suffering such shame and dishonor, he......

You think the factional fighting between Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis has gotten ugly? Just wait until January, when Sacramento opens up for business again and the bloodletting commences between Governor Schwarzenegger and his own California Republican Party. The rumbling tectonic shifts in the national congressional makeup over the past few......

BARELY TWO WEEKS AFTER THEY HANDED the Republicans their much-deserved “thumpin’,” is it somehow unfair or unseemly to already be criticizing the Democrats for their vagueness on Iraq? Hardly. A first postelection poll by the AP revealed that barely 29 percent of American adults thought the Democrats had an actual......

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN Ken Mehlman can kick a barnful of Kenmores into heavy-duty cycle and try to wring out anything positive from Tuesday’s referendum on Iraq. But there’s no rational way to deny what’s come out in the wash: a historic repudiation of the Bush administration, the governing Republican......

WHILE NEXT WEEK’S NONCONTEST for governor draws about as much public attention as a wall of drying paint, something quite significant for the state’s future is taking place beneath the surface. One of the richest and most powerful state lobbies has shifted allegiance from Democrat to Republican and is likely......

When’s the media going to get around to taking on Alice Huffman, the longtime Democratic Party apparatchik who has turned her presidency of the California NAACP into a highly profitable personal political-consulting gig? Under Huffman’s leadership, America’s oldest civil rights organization flirts with becoming a round-heeled advocacy group–for–hire as Huffman......

SATURDAY NIGHTS ARE FRANTIC at the world’s biggest card club, the Commerce Casino just east of downtown L.A. But last weekend, this football field–size mecca of 250 tables couldn’t contain the crowd, with lines snaking out to the parking lot by 8 p.m. Hundreds of poker fanatics had been forced......

Sorry I’m a bit late with this column. It’s not because I am an alcoholic and have checked into rehab. Or because I am a gay man. Or because as a young choir boy I was fondled by priests. Or because in the ’80s I voted for Gerry Studds, or......

EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO, in the run-up to the special-interests special election in which he would be crushed, Arnold Schwarzenegger was political dead meat. After the Governator had gone a couple of fathoms too deep into the tank for the Chamber of Commerce, and as his gasping corpse was plummeting......