Bowing to demands of Gulf coast residents and environmentalists, Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday announced criminal as well as civil investigations into the oil spill that has gushed between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels of gas and Louisiana crude daily into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20. In a press conference in New Orleans after surveying the areas being polluted with a mixture of oil and chemical dispersants, Holden said “What we saw this morning was oil for miles and miles and miles,...

Right or wrong, Israel marches to its own drummer. Led by Turkey, the United Nations Security Council is asked to adopt a resolution condemning Israel for its commando raid on a Turkish passenger ship that resulted in the deaths of 10 persons aboard the Mavi Marmara. World condemnation of Israel is nothing new. The little country that could was spanked for its wars with Muslim nations of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. No matter which political party is in control of the Israeli government over...

Today’s discussion is why governments are dysfunctional and I offer you Proposition 17 which is unquestionably the least sexiest item on the June 8 primary ballot in California. Prop 17 is the Rodney Dangerfield of the June 8 primary. All the attention is focused on Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner spending millions on television ad attacks for the Republican nomination for governor. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer is fending off lesser opponents from her own party knowing full well that...

Failure of BP engineers to plug the massive oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico with a “top kill” snuffing procedure is another kick in the gut to frustrated and outraged residents along the Gulf shorelines. Every promise to fix the nation’s largest economic and environmental accidental disaster has failed and mitigating the damage will not begin until the hole 5,000 feet below the Gulf water surface is plugged. BP has taken on the face of the movie monster Freddie who keeps coming...

It is said the first news accounts are the rough drafts of history. It is also promoted that history is a guide to prevent making the same mistake over and over again. If that’s the case, we learned nothing, saw nothing and did nothing to prevent the largest oil spill in our nation’s history that is fast approaching the world’s greatest accidental man-made environmental and economic disaster. We’re talking, of course, about BP the oil giant whose negligence killed 15 factory...

We’ve all heard the expression “Get the government off my back.” In the marshes and estuaries and bayous of rural Louisiana, rural folks who fish and sell their seafood products not only preach but practice that principle. They live in a shadow economy where cash is king and keeping exacting records for the Internal Revenue Service or more recently damage claims filed against BP is an afterthought to some and never a thought to others. A local businessman who operates a wholesale...

Death plays no favorites. As our nation this Memorial Day weekend honors those who gave their lives and served their country, most of the memory will be focused on … Two actors who did not serve a day in our military. Dennis Hopper and Gary Coleman. In life as well as in death, timing is everything. In no way do I begrudge the legacy of stardom in all its warts on the two actors. It just worked out that way. Dennis Hopper, 74, gained fame for his directing and co-starring in the cult movie...

T. Boone Pickens, the oil, gas and wind baron, knows something about oil well leaks. On the Larry King Live show Thursday, Pickens said he doubts BP’s efforts to “top kill” the oil gushing from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico will be successful. He said the only sure fire way of capping the leak is by drilling two parallel lines and hoping one intersects below the ruptured pipe 8,000 feet into the earth’s crust. . I’m sitting in front of the television set congratulating...

If it’s Friday, it’s garbage day at the White House. Fans of the late, great television series “The West Wing” know that Fridays are the days when the White House press machine releases gems intended to be lost and buried in the weekend news cycle. Now, I’m not saying that late this Friday afternoon the White House will release its official version it offered a deal to coax Congressman Joe Sestak out of running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. As President Obama said...

The only news of substance coming out of President Obama’s press conference Thursday on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was the announcement the government is shutting down exploratory drilling — as was the case with Deepwater Horizons — for all 33 deep-water rigs in the Gulf. The rest of the one-hour presser was an attempt by Obama to claim the government is doing the best it can, has been on the job since Day One, April 20, and that his daughter asked him this morning while he was...

Hours before President Obama’s scheduled press conference on government plans to more tightly regulate off-shore drilling, the government’s top oil spill commander announced engineers have nearly stopped the gusher of Louisiana crude in the Gulf of Mexico. When pressure at the site of the major leak reaches zero, cement will be poured to cap the leak which has been gushing thousands of barrels of gas and oil since April 20 causing an ecological and economical disaster on the Gulf Coast. Adm....

South Korea has found the smoking gun, a torpedo, that sank its warship Cheonan March 26, killing 46 sailors. Because its dear leader Kim John Il is considered mentally unstable and North Korean leaders for the umpteenth time are threatening war against South Korea should its neighbor to the south retaliate, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has told the leaders of both nations with an audience intended for China the U.S. stands resolutely behind South Korea. And China, who holds the key to all...

I’m so disgusted with politics that I swear never to write another story on that derisive subject until Thursday morning when President Obama holds a press conference on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. In the meantime, I will seek comfort in the confines of the wonderful world of sports. Oh my gosh, the National Football League owners are being accused of a fix for naming New York the site of the 2014 Super Bowl game. For years the game’s biggest event has been played in a warm weather...

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I ask forgiveness for I have stooped to the lowest level of pop journalism, joining the ranks of Today Show host Matt Lauer and all the other bottom feeders. In my world, granting ink to Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the renowned White House state dinner party crashers, is comparable to writing about the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., who picket funerals of our military war heroes. All crave the publicity, good, bad or indifferent. The Salahis have been...

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Please check out the sidebar and epilogue in this post to learn about the dispersant Corexit pushed by BP and the insecticide DDT the government pushed on farmers at the end of World War II). The Environmental Protection Agency ordered BP to cut back by 50 to 75% of the oil dispersant Corexit Monday because they don’t believe the oil company’s word that it does not effect sea life EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the feds will conduct their own independent...

Americans are absolutely ga ga over someone else’s sex life, especially if that someone is a celebrity, political incumbent or, as in today’s news, a Republican candidate for South Carolina governor, the current one who also had a widely publicized tryst on the Appalachian Trail, uh, check that, with a woman in Argentina. In the latest tell-all sexploitation, a Republican operative who has a blogsite (who doesn’t?) confesses he had an affair with Rep. Nikki Haley who recently was...

The California Legislature is considering passing a new law against violent sex molesters of children that has the endorsement of victim families, advocacy groups, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger, U.S. Sens. Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and an endless list of who’s who in the fight for human decency. There are mousetraps in the law Legislators must weigh. One is the realization there is no cure for deviant child predators or within the sexual molester population. Yet, the state pays $185,000...

Desperate in its quest for any semblance of political and diplomatic victory, the Obama administration has notched one but you won’t hear the president crowing about it. Here’s why. The victory, if one might call it that, came far away on the island of Okinawa over the vociferous protests of local residents and a humiliating disgrace for Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. Hatoyama visited the island Sunday after the Tokyo government announced its decision to relocate a U.S. Marine...

I’m a sports fan as well as a political junkie. It not only amazes me but also amuses me how those who write about such polarized universes share the same tools to exploit their positions. I mean is a voter going to place a bet with those bookies in Ireland that candidate Joe Schmuck will win the 33rd Congressional seat in California because some political columnist of the New York Times predicts Schmuck will beat his opponent? Will the zealot Phillie Phanatic place his week’s paycheck...

This scene is etched forever in my mind. It was Labor Day 2005. Thousands of mostly black faces were in anguish, deprived for days of food and water. They were gathered at the entrance to the Superdome in New Orleans where they were taken and abandoned to escape the high waters created by Hurricane Katrina. On live television, a pleading Shepard Smith, the correspondent for Fox News, became the voice of humanity screaming into the cameras “When in God’s name is help coming to rescue these...

Andrew Malcolm, the acerbic writer for the Los Angeles Times “Top Of The Ticket” segment, filed this report Friday: First, there were the gate-crashing Salahis who got by the crack White House protocol and security forces. Now, there’s the rat. Or vole. Or some kind of rodent, who crashed a Thursday White House event in the Rose Garden. Prof. Obama was droning on about the joyous Senate passage of his latest galactic reform scheme, this one to straighten out the shady ways of the...

The New York Times offers a riveting story Friday about the “cozy relationship,” as President Obama has claimed, between Big Oil and the government. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration insists that all water, sediment and marine animal tissue samples be sent for analysis to TDI-Brooks International testing laboratories in College Station, Tex.., whose biggest clients are the oil industry. Even though there are dozens of other licensed labs to conduct the analysis,...

While Main Street voters high-five themselves and raise a toast to Congress for bashing Wall Street, perhaps some sober reflection is in order. The financial reform bill passed by the Senate Thursday goes to a joint conference committee to iron out differences with the House bill passed in December. The earliest it could reach President Obama’s desk for signing is the July 4 recess. One thing Main Street can relish is that unlike most major legislation in Congress, the financial reform legislation...

On the pages of The Moderate Voice where I toil as a columnist much tsk tsk tsking and hand wringing of crying towels is being made of Republican nominee Rand Paul for U.S. Senate in Kentucky. It seems the libertarian, when asked his views on private property rights for citizens in the Civil Rights Act, Paul doesn’t like that one section. In the broadest example of that section think Lester Maddox. As a restaurant owner he refused to serve African-Americans. The government said, no, his restaurant...

History as seen through the eyes of social conservatives is being rewritten by the Texas Board of Education for school textbooks. Among the changes: Although one of the country’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson’s contributions are short-changed because he advocated separation of church and state. George Wallace marched along side Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as sort of the great white hope in the Civil Rights marches. Advanced high school students learn the “unintended consequences”...