Emanuel Cleaver holds monthly “Coffee With Cleaver” get-togethers around his district, and today was the day for one near me. I went early, but not nearly early enough. Lots of folks, generally calm . . . with a little watching by the police to make sure it stayed that way.

As a Mormon following his faith, director of the L.A. Film Festival Richard Raddon donated $1,500 to support Proposition 8.  Both the L.A. Film Festival and the Independent Spirit Awards are under the umbrella of Film Independent, a nonprofit arts organization with the explicit mission to promote diversity. Last week, Raddon offered to resign as [...]

Provocative comedian Sandra Bernhard was dropped from a benefit performance from Rosie’s Place, a Boston women’s shelter after the shelter’s executive director received email about her controversial stage show Without You I Am Nothing at Theatre J in Washington DC. "I really feel bad for Rosie’s Place," she told Huffington Post Thursday afternoon. "It was [...]

Katie Couric’s interviews with Sarah Palin made a feeble boost in CBS’s ratings this week, gaining the CBS Evening News only about 10 percent in audience from the previous week. The newscast averaged just under 6 million viewers for the week, up from 5.44 million. Worse, the ratings were actually down from the same week [...]

Oh no! Someone’s making fun of Sarah Palin again! This time it’s a fake Facebook page. Oh Sarah, are you mad that a page like that was kinda made to … I don’t know, you know…Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah? Well, don’t pout. Such playfulness might end now there’s a new big [...]

facepalm.jpg Bono on US financial crisis and global poverty at Clinton Global Initiative: I am not qualified to comment on the interventions that have been put forth. I can assume these people know what they’re doing. But is is extraordinary to me that you can find 700 billion dollars to save Wall Sreet and the [...]

Update at 11:46 pacific – Latest reports from the streets – live video at The Uptake: RUBBER BULLETS FIRED AT 10TH/ST PETER BLACK BLOC. 1 PROTESTER DOWN. national guard also coming to scene reportedly with concussion grenades and smoke. Legal observers from the Cold Spring Legal collective have been arrested – these are the folks [...]

Free Speech Zone, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein. DENVER, CO. My first assignment at the DNC was to find a designated "free speech zone" aka a "freedom cage." Apparently, there are several around the Pepsi Center. This one is near the corner of 7th St. and Auraria Pkwy, in sight of an amusement park. The [...]