Harry Shearer

It's one thing to be in love with New Orleans, as I have been for almost two decades. It's another thing entirely to spend almost... ...

As we approach the five-year anniversary of the Katrina flooding next month, it becomes increasingly clear that almost every piece of information spread about the event by the national media has turned out to be wrong. ...

NEW ORLEANS--It's not as if the US isn't sufficiently anti-intellectual (see the Climate-gate "scandal", e.g.), but we have been led into three consecutive neo-imperial expeditions... ...

We only got to read about McChrystal&Co's imprudence because the RS reporter was a freelancer, not a Pentagon beat reporter desirous of maintaining his relationship with an important source. ...

NEW ORLEANS--Yes, it does come as a surprise that they're still putting out the LA Times, especially when it publishes a story like this one,... ...

LONDON--The British media have been ablaze with patriotic defensiveness, upset that President Obama keeps calling BP "British Petroleum". Strange: I was at the Tate Britain... ...

It's all there in the HuffPost archives, posts about the Corps of Engineers choosing what they admit is a "technically (not) superior) solution for the... ...

Yes, he played cat-and-mouse with Rachel Maddow on the subject of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but, as he rightly points out (pun intended), that's... ...

I've been writing about Bagram because it stands as a rebuke to the president's pledge for change. What's happened at Bagram -- and you can Google it -- is perhaps worse than our history at Guantanamo. ...

NEW ORLEANS--Ray Nagin is Na-gone, the city is enjoying a second springtime when it should ordinarily be early summer, hot and muggy, and yet, walking... ...

NEW ORLEANS--Mid-Saturday morning, storm clouds are motorcycling across the sky. We're seeing, and feeling, the winds we've been hearing about for two days, the winds... ...

Now, just weeks away from the fifth anniversary of the federally-caused flood, New Orleans has recovered, physically, economically, even spiritually, to a degree un-dreamed of... ...

How enraptured is New Orleans with David Simon's portrait of the city in "Treme", which just premiered last Sunday? This enraptured: news of the series'... ...

I'm old enough now to remember a time--check this, kids--when journalism meant, more than anything else, telling you what was new (hence, news). Hence my... ...

So I guess this war is enough like the Iraq war that President Obama, like his predecessor, can only visit the troops at night, in... ...

While the Cheneys continue to hammer away at the accusation that Obama has a terror trial "mindset" problem, another bullet-hole has been leveled at their argument by Germany. ...

Defenders of "enhanced interrogation techniques" have continually insisted that the treatment does not cross the line into the forbidden land of torture. But now we have some hard evidence that it does. ...

The Sunday yak shows have been abuzz with Republicans, from Dick Cheney on down (up?), hammering on their poll-tested theme of the moment: that the... ...

NEW ORLEANS--I've been rather consistently critical of the Obama Administration's largely MIA stance toward New Orleans, with the singular exception of the appointment of a... ...

NEW ORLEANS--In the wake of the Underpants Bomber, lobbyists for companies that make full-body scanners--including, notably, former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff-have unhesitatingly pushed their products,... ...

In the welter of State of the Union news, this tidbit got to me: the administration is letting the Office of Gulf Coast Recovery quietly... ...

NEW ORLEANS--I'm preparing to begin shooting a feature-length documentary on the subject of why, in August 2005, 80% of the city of New Orleans experienced... ...

This relayed by my friend Lolis Elie, reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, who describes Beverly Bell's work in Haiti as "selfless and inspiring": Friends:... ...

LONDON--The British have been doing something so deliciously un-American: looking backward. The Chilcot Inquiry into the origins of the Iraq War is back after its... ...

While the President and the punditocracy alike have no compunctions in talking about Guantanamo Bay, Obama's promise to close it, the missing of the deadline,... ...

Dick Cheney certainly isn't spending the first year of his retirement from the vice presidency growing a beard. Instead, he's playing a very clever game,... ...

Now that the reassurance machine has kicked into high gear, with statements from everyone from President Obama to Janet "The System Worked" Napolitano, we're being... ...

Something rather interesting is going on in Great Britain these wintry days--an official inquiry, broad-ranging in its declared scope, into the way that country got... ...

For a crystalline example of what's wrong with American journalism, and the American political conversation, at this exact moment, go no farther than Sunday's "60... ...

The man (and his wordsmiths) can write. President Obama's acceptance speech in Oslo was elegant, nuanced, and intelligent. Faced with accepting a peace prize while... ...

The spectacle of near-celebrities going on Larry King Live to ask for the return of their privacy has been one of the long-running jokes of... ...

As the Salahis begin their media tour with an admirable descent into self-described victimhood, we're being treated to an even more familiar spectacle, perhaps.  White... ...

As the stage is being set for an“AfPak Surge”, it might be time to take a look at Surge 1.0, in the now-forgotten war... ...

This should be the year that made clear the distinction between the publicity-hungry, irremediably ego-needy actual denizens of show business (like myself) and the way... ...

Now we're getting somewhere, and it's only day three of Britain's inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war, a quaint little enterprise to strip... ...

The Guardian sums up the second day of the official Chilcott inquiry into the origins of the Iraq War.  Hm, why can't we have one... ...

The Brits -- backward-looking sort, don't you think? -- have just opened an official inquiry into how that country got into the Iraq War. ...

Of course, Republicans defended George W. Bush and blamed state and local officials when independent investigations (here and here) pointed to the US Army Corps... ...

When Ruth Seymour announced earlier this week her retirement as general manager of Santa Monica's pioneering public-radio station, KCRW, it really did mark the end... ...

Okay, now it's official, or as official, at least, as the considered ruling of a Federal district judge can make it.  The United States Army... ...

"It's scary," says Tom Jackson, a regional levee commissioner and engineer of the admission by the Army Corps of Engineers that a section of lakefront... ...

When the Fox network staged a special Veterans' Day version of its NFL pre-game show at Bagram AF Base last Sunday, two hours was apparently... ...

Following Matthew Hoh's resignation letter comes a missive from William Polk who, like Hoh, finds the only prudent course of action regarding Afghanistan to be a timely removal of troops. ...

One of the questions New Orleanians have heard most often from outsiders since the 2005 flood is, "why didn't you all have flood insurance?"  The... ...

For anyone who wonders why New Orleanians worry about what the Corps of Engineers is doing in the "rebuilding" of the levee-floodwall system--now renamed the... ...

It was maybe March of this year that I first said to someone who asked what I thought of the then-new President that he was... ...

I'm preparing to make a documentary film on the causes of the flooding of New Orleans, and so I decided to attend one of the community outreach meetings the Corps of Engineers holds. ...

In case you haven't noticed, the"debate"about Afghanistan going on inside the White House (thanks for the transparency) has already been decided, and the... ...

Sam Stein's report that musicians are signing on to a Freedom of Information request for documents relating to the use of music as a torture... ...

Last post on this subject this week, I promise.  The Times-Picayune's Mark Schliefstein reports on the visit of the White House Council on Environmental Quality's... ...