“Deported veterans?” she says. 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

There’s a pause. “Huh.” 

Even at an organization like the VFW, even in a military town like San Diego, the news that former soldiers, sailors and marines are among the hundreds of thousands of immigrants deported every year can come as a surprise.

Go to San Diego CityBeat

Here’s the radio segment, it runs about 12 minutes.
KPBS Roundtable
(The full show, with great discussion about other local issues, is at the KPBS website here.)

Matt Sledge over at Huffington Post also had some observations about the City Beat story, and some of the views expressed in the comment section. Definitely worth a read.

Unfortunately, production has not yet expanded beyond the five-gallon plastic bucket in my closet, so it won’t be hitting the market any time soon. (Unless any breweries out there want to license my label for this booming market segment. Start the bidding!) But I’m glad others in this business appreciate a little gallows humor. And while I don’t want to discourage any potential employers – feel free to toss any pity assignments my way – I am in fact still writing, and even enjoying the freelance life. Granted, the line between “freelance” and “unemployed” is sometimes blurry. But you get the idea.

Want to give full credit to Alberta Johnson, the photog who created the original image of this ink-stained wretch, and then very kindly let me use it. She’s really cool. Check out her other work here.

Go to L.A. Weekly

I figured it would be an adventure, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a place I’d never have the brass to visit on my own. I’m not exactly an international vagabond. Prior to this trip, my excursions outside of the U.S. had taken me as far afield as Rosarito and exotic Vancouver. I figured maybe I’d get a few stories out of it, and a few useful contacts, and if not, well, it would just be a very unusual vacation. And either way, I’d get to have a birthday in Benghazi, which sounds like a Dead Kennedys song, so that about settled it.

I finalized my plans exactly one day before news broke about the attack on U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed – note the parallels – in a Benghazi villa, not too far from where I was staying. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t second thoughts. But pretty soon my plane tickets were booked and there was no backing out. Besides, you can’t believe what you see on TV. Reporters are always worked up about something or other. It probably wasn’t as bad as all that. I’d be fine. Right?

I’ll end the suspense right now – it wasn’t as bad as all that. It was great, actually. I’m not going to do a full play-by-play here, but over the next week or two I’ll be posting some excerpts from my journal, as time permits. I didn’t come back empty handed either, so I should have some actual reported work forthcoming. In the meantime, I’m posting a few pictures I took along the way, and getting back to my stateside reporting. It’s easier here, where I can communicate with words, instead of spastically waving around my Arabic phrase book and pointing at things.

The conservative lawyer James Bopp Jr. has done as much as anyone to clear the way for the flood of money pouring into this year’s election. As James Bennet tells us in his excellent Atlantic piece, Bopp is the legal mind behind the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and another influential 2007 ruling, which together helped weaken disclosure requirements for political giving and ushered in the unlimited corporate and union donations of the Super PAC era.

Go to Slate

Once used mostly by local cops to catch car thieves and unregistered drivers, LPR systems have morphed into what privacy activists call an increasingly pervasive network of mass surveillance.

Go to Salon

Still, the Rigmaiden case is being watched closely because of a tool the FBI used to catch him. The device, called a StingRay, would seem right at home in any spy flick.

Go to L.A. Weekly

There was no suspect, no eyewitness. Investigators had little to go on — or so it appeared. What Long Beach detectives didn’t know the day of the murder was that the alleged getaway car had already been under police surveillance — before Robles’ murder was even contemplated.

Go to L.A. Weekly