The gay male escort's

“stage name” is Benjamin Nicholas

He’s alleged to have been involved

with the married Sen. Trent Lott, 66,

who unexpectedly announced his retirement on Monday

Lott is well-known to be against

a plethora of gay rights issues

   more »

Keywords: gay, sex, republican, scandal

Hillary Clinton is the cautious, rigidly programmed candidate who, in the view of most voters, will say whatever the moment demands. Spontaneous she ain’t.

You can just picture her cross-examining advisers and prowling through polling data to determine whether she’s for or against driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.

Barack Obama has the incandescent smile, and the personality to go with it. Oprah loves him, and a lot of campuses are wild for him. But you still wonder if there’s any there there.

His is the make-nice candidacy, no sharp edges. But it’s one thing to offer yourself as the agent of change, and quite another to answer the obvious question, “Change to what?”   more »

During the November 15 Las Vegas debate, John Edwards, the so-called “populist,” was charged with invoking the specter of “class war.”

If only it were so! The “criticism” is risible enough not to warrant further comment except to note how familiar this refrain has become in our political culture.

The assumption is that it is normal for state policies to operate first and foremost with the interests of capital in mind. So normal that it goes unnoticed.

What is abnormal – and downright unseemly – is to care about the victims of the system those policies reinforce.   more »

Authorities fear that, should these demonstrations continue and get out of control of police forces, there could be a replay of the November 2005 riots touched off by the electrocution of two youths while fleeing police in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. They are therefore publicly announcing preparations for a massive confrontation.

A police official told Le Monde, “It’s been a long time since there have been so many police forces brought together. Even in 2005 we hadn’t seen something like this. The town is entirely sectioned off.”

The use of language reminiscent of French colonialism’s struggle against the masses of Algiers in the 1950s is no accident. The policy of forming large-scale police authorities capable of rapidly mobilizing large numbers of cops for police raids in poor neighborhoods - a policy championed by Sarkozy as Interior Minister in 2003 - has helped transform the relations between inhabitants and police into a constant, low-level war that erupts every time the police kill someone, unintentionally or otherwise.   more »

Future historians will review the Pakistan of November 2007 as a classic of soap opera geopolitics.

The main plot screams "revenge". Rattled by a know-all exiled elitist (Benazir Bhutto) imposed on him by a scheming Washington, the hapless "Mush" - as President [soon to be ex-]General Pervez Musharraf is informally referred to by middle-class Pakistanis - decided not only to sing his own version of My Way but to follow his own timing.

In a little over three weeks, Musharraf proclaimed his own "surge" (aka emergency rule); sacked the Supreme Court; rounded up the usual suspects (journalists, lawyers, students, human-rights activists); kept at least 2,000 of them in custody (according to the Interior Ministry).

He got a puppet court to legitimize his way towards "re-election"; amended the constitution through executive order; hung up his uniform; and will become the next (civilian) president of Pakistan.   more »