Michael Hiltzik

Ciao?.With this post I close my guest tenure this week on Political Animal. As a long time reader, first time blogger, I found the experience a blast, a grind, and a rush. Certainly I acquired deeper respect for the sheer toilsomeness of the effort and for those who do it, day after day. I return […]

The Next Social Security Meme?.As the privatization campaign starts gearing up for what may be its last great push this fall, we should expect expect to hear more about domestic private-account schemes that are supposedly working better than Social Security. Prime among them will be a program created in 1979 for municipal employees in Galveston, […]

John Carroll and the L.A. Times?.The news industry is wrongly convinced that the world is fascinated by such inside developments as executive comings and goings. That said, as staff member of the Los Angeles Times for more than 20 years, I feel obliged to contribute my own take on the voluminously-reported announcement that John Carroll […]

Weekend Literary Blogging (A Personal Experiment)?Most of us, I suspect, harbor a great fondness for an author or two who we believe deserve a much larger fan base?a personal favorite who we promote to all our friends yet who never quite breaks through to the general audience. I?m not talking about authors like Wodehouse who […]

A boondoggle grows in San Francisco?.The initial euphoria inspired by California?s passage of a $3-billion bond program for embryonic stem cell research last November has already faded, replaced by mounting questions about where the money is, whether it will be spent openly and honestly, and whether the program will yield any real benefits for the […]

Zero tolerance reconsidered….It?s probably a mistake to make too much of the french fries case as part of the John Roberts brief; no doubt there will be more substantive grist arriving at the mill for an up or down vote on his qualifications for the Court. And of course my esteemed co-guest blogger, Lindsay Beyerstein, […]

Die Arnolddammerung?.Karl Rove wasn?t the only one to get a reprieve from media scrutiny thanks to the Supreme Court nomination frenzy. Arnold Schwarzenegger can thank President Bush for knocking his latest outbreak of cluelessness out of the national newspapers, too. I?m talking about the discovery that Schwarzenegger was the beneficiary (more or less) of an […]

You didn?t think the culture wars were over, did you??.One thing that distinguishes today?s breed of (conservative) Republican is their conviction that the whole world lives up their street. If they don?t like your political views, taste in clothing or music, or the subtext of your movies, then you’re the depraved one; they’re the ones […]

Reflections on a tattered shield (law)?.Cervantes depicted Don Quixote?s ancient leather shield as an object whose protective capacity was a joke?indeed, it?s unceremoniously lopped in two within the first few pages of the great novel. This image occurs to me as I contemplate Sen. Chris Dodd?s proposed federal shield law, the subject of a Senate […]

On the continuing search for new definitions of ?obscene,? HP division….Word is out today on the long-awaited Hewlett-Packard layoff plan: 14,500 jobs cut, or 10 percent of the workforce. My friend and colleague JP writes: ?This is one of those days when I think business really stinks…HP gives Carly millions in severance ? for doing […]