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Political speech is so close to religious discourse. Listening to John Kerry and his friends and family last night was a little like praying: my mind skates over the parts I find disturbing (as during prayers beseeching God to smite our enemies), and lingers, swelling with desire, during the parts that lift my heart. Then …

Yesterday’s paper quoted Condoleeza Rice as saying “No one is thinking of postponing the elections.” A Justice Department spokesperson went so far as to deny they’d ever had a conversation with the Homeland Security folks on this question. I’d say the trial balloon described in my blog of 14 July crashed like a lead weight. …

The other day I took a walk with a friend who came to this country as a child, a refugee from Nazi Germany. We talked–are there any other topics these days–of the state of American politics and society. “It’s just like Germany,” she said. “If we were younger, if our children didn?t live here, we’d …

Yesterday a friend sent me a message headed “The pending 2004 Coup d’Etat.” You may understand that when I started to read, I felt skeptical. It was a letter from a Unitarian minister in Atlanta, claiming that the Bush administration’s Homeland Security department is pursuing legislation that would allow it to postpone national elections in …

Today’s Doonesbury makes it clear why I chose \Clarity\ for my title. Can we get it into the Army’s MREs?

It’s hilarious the way \Fahrenheit 9/11\ is being microscopically vetted for accuracy, with long newspaper stories scoring each of Michael Moore’s assertions and implications. Where were these avatars of “balance” when the Ronald Reagan mythos was being constructed daily by a print-electronic media collaboration that rivaled the Tower of Babel? The media snit suggests a …

My friend Michael Dorsey has a good story on his blog for June 29th about the U.S. Attorney’s insane charges against artist Steve Kurtz of the Critical Art Ensemble. They started with bioterrorism and whittled the indictment down to something they thought might actually stand, petty larceny. But the crime the artist actually committed was …

Click here for the full text of my interview with Jan Cohen-Cruz.

A few days ago I alerted you to expect information about another great project by and for artists awakening to the crisis in democracy. SPARC, the Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice, California, has inaugurated the National Call to Artists, a Web repository for images, songs, scripts, and ideas that can help increase …