C'mon, everybody's doing it!
By Christopher Cook

Look, I know that President Bush has disappointed us in many ways. He's lousy at selling even his best ideas. His first term was a smashing success; his second term has been much less effective. He's made some mistakes, and he's deviated from core conservatism in several areas.

The left hates him the way the Democrats hated Lincoln—not just political hate, but a burning, visceral, personal hate. But we conservatives and Republicans, however disappointed we may be in aspects of his...

The World Trade Center window-washer looking up in goofy terror as one of the hijacked planes careens towards the towers...

A dumb yet venal President Bush talking on the phone, taking out insurance on a Middle East oil facility while he plays with a toy plane—smashing it into two World Trade Center towers models he's built out of Lego...

Tracy Ullman using the phrase "Let's Roll" (the phrase uttered by American hero Todd Beamer on 9/11) in a comedic sketch lampooning the storming of the cockpit on Flight 93...

These ostensibly comedic films and sketches shown in this report from CNN don't just make...

Proving that I can and do indeed have the utmost respect for anyone who heads over to visit with our troops, even if they aren't affiliated with Penn State (though that's a nice bonus), can't say enough great things about NCAA football coaches Richt, Tubervile, Weis and others who have joined up with Armed Forces Entertainment ...

"(It's) just a small token of appreciation for me to be one of a group of college football coaches to go over there and try to mix and mingle with a whole bunch of our troops..."

Filmmaker Jack Marino takes Forgotten Heroes to the streets this weekend, specifically the streets of Studio City. For those SoCal readers, please make a stop at Micky Sinardi's Showstopperstars Spectaular, Saturday & Sunday, May 17-18 2008, at CBS Studio (Radford and Ventura).

Come down and support Forgotten Heroes by getting a signed DVD from the director for $25.00. For every purchase, $5.00 will be donated to the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial Fund.

By Rene Guerra

The local Pravda (a.k.a. San Jose Mercury News) published an editorial recently about the need to regulate the carbon-offset business.

Great! The Left invents a lie (global warning and greenhouse gases caused by humans mainly), creates a great sneak-oil business (carbon-offset indulgences) and now the Left in Marxifornia (a.k.a. California) wants to start regulating the shameless scam . . . blaming free-entrepreneurship for...

by Eric "I'd have to say it's been a good year" Porvaznik

Every year when the musical landscape gets blessed with a slew of albums that make my ears glad to be attached to my body, I have an extra rush of of blood to the brain. "Could this be the year? Could it finally be time for 1984's crown to be unseated?"

Other great years have come close, don't get me wrong, and my head may admittedly be stuck in that inexplicably charmed time and place, to the point nothing will top it. This year's not too shabby, though. Here's Part One of a few favorites so far ...

Stephen Baldwin, Gary Sinise, Robert Duvall, Namrata Singh Gujral lead Fest Line-up

Hello, loyal readers! Nothing incredibly monumental (unless you count the fact there's actually a rocker who wholeheartedly supports John McCain), but a cool Q&A with Alice Cooper that I thought needed some sharing.

Oh, highly recommend Cooper's 2005 Dirty Diamonds album, too.

by Eric "Vampirin'" Porvaznik

Not long ago, I read that there's a glandular part of the brain that kicks in sometime in a person's 30s that makes them appreciate country music more than in their slightly younger years. Life experience apparently lends itself to lyrics involving lost and/or painful love, traveling thousands of miles down long highways and the joys associated with one's dogs.

By Burt Prelutsky

In case you missed it, John Murtha said John McCain is too old to be president. Of all the lines I’ve heard during this political season, that’s the one I enjoyed the most. If you’re wondering why, it’s because of all the consternation it must have caused many of Mr. Murtha’s Democratic colleagues. There are, by actual count, 21 Democrats in the House as old or older than 71-year-old McCain. Charles Rangel is coming up...

A coda to Orange Countification...

By Steven Travers

Conservatism and Christianity, working hand in hand in America, have proven themselves to be the winning ideology of 2000 years of history. In the immediate here and now, there are variations on the theme. Had the United States gotten the same results in Iraq in 2003-2007 as they did in 1991, the Karl Rove strategy of a “permanent” GOP majority may well have been realized. The Democrat Party might not have survived such a thing, splintering into something else, possibly two parties independent of the traditional party of...

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

Excerpt from One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a Nation
By Steven Travers

Touching Home is the best indie film, twin baseball-playing actors will be the hottest sensations since Affleck/Damon and Vaugh/Favreau. Ed Harris is Oscar-worthy

By Steven Travers

In 1996-97, independent films reached what we now see was its one-decade plateau. John Sayles had made a number of successful, low-budget movies. Quentin Tarantino was hotter than a pistol. Harvey Weinstein was said to be the most powerful executive in Hollywood.

Three films directed or screenwritten by young, or at least relatively new filmmakers, were all the rage. There was Sling Blade by Billy Bob Thornton; Swingers from Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau; and...

(Part 1) (Part 2)

Excerpt from One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a Nation
By Steven Travers

(Part 1)

Excerpt from One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a Nation
By Steven Travers

The Republicans outflanked LBJ’s Democrats in the 1966 midterms. They demanded a Douglas MacArthur–like resolution to the ongoing Vietnam conflict while expressing backlash against the Great Society. Nixon’s legendary work ethic paid off. He crisscrossed the country campaigning for Republicans, who were beginning to knock a few chinks in the Democrats’ Southern armor. Nixon then cashed in the chits he had earned with Republican elected...

Excerpt from One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a Nation
By Steven Travers

In 1964, the Democratic Party dominated U.S. politics. Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater with 64 percent of the vote. He had enormous filibuster-proof majorities in the House and Senate. The imprimatur of John Kennedy’s legacy hung solidly on LBJ. A majority of America’s governors and state legislatures were...

By Leba Sleiman

Emotions can arise spontaneously from within the privacy of your own mind and heart, or they can be triggered by your daily encounters with life.

This is closely related to the ‘nature versus nurture’ problem. Which of these two, nature or nurture, creates the person that you are? Again the answer is both. But the difficulty lies in understanding the reciprocal...

By Leba Sleiman

Running as deep as the soul, emotions are an inalienable property of your being. They form the colours of life. And emotions can lift you up or bring you down. What are these curious things we call ‘emotions’? Can we control them? Are emotions the key to a happy life? These and other aspects of the things we call ‘emotions’ will be discussed in this essay.

Let us start with the nature of ‘emotion’. What exactly is emotion? Emotion is a unique power of the soul by...

LAPD Commission VP John Mack is angry. After four years of painstaking investigations into racial profiling, the LAPD has dismissed all 800 false allegations. Is he upset that the falsely accused officers were cleared, or that he may have to admit that racial profiling does not exist? What influence do black theology pastors like Jeremiah Wright have on John Mack, and how do their perverted views affect America's minority communities?

By Burt Prelutsky

When I tell liberals that I can’t figure them out, they tend to assume I’m owning up to my own intellectual shortcomings. They figure their thinking is so profound that it’s simply beyond the scope of little old me. Well, let them enjoy their fantasies. The truth is, I can’t fathom their belief system because it seems so divorced from reality that if we discovered tomorrow that, like the pods in the movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” liberals only look like human beings, but are actually from outer space, I’d be the one saying, “Aha, now it all makes perfect sense.”

Back in the 1960s, the Democrats went in for social engineering in a big way. They concentrated...

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5)

By Steven Travers

Many white Southerners still believe blacks were treated better under Jim Crow than in modern Northern cities. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took his case to the streets of Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma in the 1960s, many Southern whites wanted to know why he was spotlighting them while Los Angeles, California, supposedly the home of racial enlightenement where the citizenry had gotten it right, exploded in flames during...

"Double standard" doesn't begin to describe it
By Christopher Cook

The difference between what Democrats can get away with and what Republicans can get away with is so extreme, it could be said to be a violation of the 14th Amendment.

For example, if you were to ask the average man on the street which party engaged in vote suppression, voter intimidation, and vote fraud in 2000 and 2004, what answer do you think...