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Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

    

Pat Tillman's family says "fuck" a lot. And who can blame them? Pat's youngest brother, at the memorial service for the fallen NFL-star-turned-soldier, follows Maria Shriver's "Pat is with God now" rhetoric with, "Pat would want me to say this, he's not with God. He's fucking dead." A year later Pat Tillman Sr. writes a blistering letter to the military brass who continued to stonewall the investigation into his son's death signed, "Fuck you…and yours." Such is the seething flavor of director Amir Bar-Lev's The Tillman Story (open today at select theaters), which paints a striking portrait of Pat Tillman's devoted and outraged family's search for the truth behind his death in eastern Afghanistan in April 2004.

The footage and documentation do perhaps more than either Tillman book (one by his mother, the other by Jon Krakauer, telling Tillman's wife's story) to walk through the life and death of the country's highest profile war-fighter. For not only do we get the emotions and efforts of the entire clan (Krakauer didn't speak with his mom, for example) but we see what unfolded in pictures, whether it's home video of Pat's Ranger outfit, rugged footage taken the day after he was killed, or evidence of the reams of redacted documents his mother pored over for years—only to be served up an anemic congressional oversight hearing.

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In his new (self-serving, of course) memoir, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair praises George W. Bush as a man of "genuine integrity and as much political courage as any leader I have ever met." Yet Blair leaves out of the 700-page tome any mention of a meeting he had with Bush in which the US president proposed a plan to trigger the Iraq war through outright deceit.

The early media coverage of Blair's book, A Journey: My Political Life, has zeroed in on his complex and dramatic relationship with Gordon Brown, his onetime political soulmate. (Blair writes about him as one would an ex-lover.) Yet Blair devotes a serious chunk to defending his decision to partner up with Bush for the Iraq war. "I can't regret the decision to go to war," he writes. "…I can say that never did I guess the nightmare that unfolded." He adds, "I have often reflected as to whether I was wrong. I ask you to reflect as to whether I may have been right."

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It's a classic move by an industry player feeling the squeeze of pending regulation: Hire a lobbying firm to create the appearance of widespread opposition via a carefully stage-managed astroturf campaign. One of the latest outfits to give this strategy a try: Education Management Corporation (EDMC), a multibillion-dollar heavyweight in the for-profit higher education industry that's the subject of multiple lawsuits and ample criticism from investors, lawmakers, and government officials who accuse the company of a range of deceptive business practices. The company, whose majority stockholder is Goldman Sachs, recently hired a GOP-linked lobbying shop known for its astroturing prowess to fight a proposed federal rule that has the entire industry fretting about its future.

Education Management Corporation operates Argosy University, Brown Mackie College, South University, and various Art Institutes. On August 24, EDMC CEO Todd Nelson blasted out an internal email, first reported on by the New America Foundation's Higher Ed Watch blog, saying that the company had hired DCI Group, a Washington-based lobbying and public relations firm with a controversial history, to coordinate a campaign against the Education Department's proposed "gainful employment" rule. The rule would establish metrics for assessing graduates' ability to repay their student loans as a way of judging whether an academic program is truly fulfilling its mandate: preparing graduates for "gainful employment." 

For-profit colleges have made no secret of their opposition to this rule; Harris Miller, president of the Career College Association, the industry's top trade group, described it as "unwise, unnecessary, unproven." And for-profit colleges have let the Education Department know their displeasure in a major way. Little wonder why: Education Department officials say the new rule would disqualify 5 percent of programs from receiving federal student aid money, and 55 percent would face limits on growth and mandates to warn students about the risks of excessive borrowing.

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In the small Latino farmworker community of Kettleman City, California, at least 11 babies in the past three years have been born with serious birth defects, and several infants have died. Residents blame the recent spate of tragedy on the vast hazardous-waste dump three miles from town. But Kettleman City has numerous environmental villains, including contaminated tap water, heavy air pollution, and daily toxic pesticide exposure. In fact, residents' health is compromised in so many ways that Rachel Morello-Frosch, an environmental health researcher at UC-Berkeley, calls Kettleman City "a poster child for cumulative impacts." You can read the full story here, or view a photo essay exploring the tragic impact of cumulative pollutants on Kettleman City families. 

Interstate 5 and State Route 41 Each day up to 400 semitrucks pass within 4 miles of residential homes in Kettleman City. Nearly 100 trucks, some of them bearing toxic waste, roll directly through town on State Route 41.

Farms The state of California is investigating possible links between pesticide exposure and Kettleman City's birth defects.

Waste Management landfill The largest hazardous-waste dump west of the Mississippi stores asbestos, pesticides, and petroleum products, as well as PCB-contaminated wastes, which the EPA suspects may be linked to birth defects. A recent EPA investigation found PCBs in the soil (PDF) outside a storage building and concluded that Waste Management had improperly disposed (PDF) of waste.

Gas fumes The California EPA says pollution from gas stations—there are 5 in the town of 1,500—could be linked to the birth defects.

Petroleum deposits Potential contamination from oil and gas drilling in the Kettleman Hills includes toluene, which has been linked to birth defects.

Food desert Cleft palates and neural tube defects are associated with deficiency in the vitamin folic acid, which is found in leafy green vegetables as well as fortified baked goods and cereals. Some researchers suspect diet might be a factor in the Kettleman City mystery.

Contaminated tap water Kettleman City's two municipal wells contain what the California EPA calls "elevated levels" of arsenic and benzene, both carcinogens that are also suspected of causing birth defects.

California Aqueduct The state Department of Toxic Substances Control is testing the aqueduct for toxic chemicals; some Kettleman residents eat fish (PDF) from the waterway.

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[Editor's Note: See a related photo essay here.]

THE FIRST BABY'S NAME was America. She was born in September 2007, with Down syndrome, two heart murmurs, and part of her upper lip missing. She couldn't suck from a nipple, so her mother, Magdalena Romero, would stay up through the night to feed her with a special tube. America showed pleasure in music and delighted in being held by her four siblings. Magdalena thinks they felt a special tenderness for her because of her vulnerability.

Hospital officials told Magdalena that the baby wouldn't live a year, but she didn't want to believe it. Then, one morning when America was nearly five months old, her lips turned purple. Concluding that paramedics would consider a rescue futile, Magdalena drove the baby to the hospital herself and insisted that all efforts be made to save her. For a few days, America survived, tethered to machines. Then she died in her mother's arms.

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As he walks the quiet Main Street of Farmville, Virginia, Rep. Tom Perriello has his work cut out for him. Wearing khakis, brown boots, and an open-collar shirt in the 100-degree heat, the freshman Democrat pops into stores and offices—he's not always recognized—and asks how business is going and what he can do to help. He tells his constituents that America needs to "make things," and "the elites" in Washington don't get this. At Key Office Supply, owner Jim Ailsworth thanks Perriello for his health care reform vote, noting that he plans to use the law's small-business tax credit for his staff. At Davenport & Company, an independent stock brokerage, manager Brad Watson says he's worried that the stimulus (which Perriello also supported) won't yield long-lasting public works. Perriello points out that he argued "for a stimulus that is focused on 10 years—not 18 months." After Perriello leaves, Watson points to campaign literature on his desk for state Sen. Robert Hurt, who vanquished several tea party candidates to become Perriello's Republican challenger. "Hurt's a nice, moderate Republican," Watson says; he intends to vote for him.

Some 175 miles away in Washington, Republican strategists would be heartened to hear Watson talk. Defeating Perriello is one of the GOP's top priorities as the party fights to gain the 39 seats it needs to seize control of the House and create an anti-Obama fire wall. These few sleepy blocks in central Virginia constitute one of the front lines in this fight. (Before the campaign even began, Perriello was already the target of $1 million in attack ads.) Given that political handicappers estimate the GOP is likely to bag at least 30 House seats, the Dems' fate could depend on whether Perriello manages to hold on.

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During his much-ballyhooed "Restoring Honor" rally on Saturday, Glenn Beck told a whopper involving the founding father who was supposedly unable to tell a lie: George Washington.

Speechifying at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, the controversial Fox News host highlighted the legacy of the nation's first president to drive home his claim that encouraging honesty and integrity was a main aim of the event. Beck even told attendees that "the next George Washington" was "in this crowd. He may be 8 years old, but this is the moment. This is the moment that he dedicates his life, that he sees giants around him. And 25 years from now, he will come not to this stair, but to those stairs. And he can proclaim, 'I have a new dream.'"

Beck also invoked Washington while describing the inspiring experience of visiting famous tourist destinations around the nation's capital. "I have been going to Mt. Vernon," he explained. Holding out his hands for emphasis, he declared with emotion, "I went to the National Archives, and I held the first inaugural address written in his own hand by George Washington."

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As Fox News, the New York Post, and other right-wing media outlets are stirring up emotions over the so-called "terror mosque" planned near the site of the World Trade Center, I can't help but think back to the few days I spent in southern Ohio as a volunteer for the Obama campaign in November 2008. It was there, in Fairfield County, that I committed one of the greatest acts of cowardice in my life. I allowed myself to stand by and say nothing while an entire creed was deemed violent, hateful, and un-American.

At the time, the Obama team was already concerned about the false rumor that their candidate, a self-identified Christian, was a closet Muslim. (According to a recent survey, nearly one-fifth of Americans continue to believe this). When approaching potential voters who believed the rumor, volunteers were instructed not to get in an argument over Muslims, their rights, much less what Islam really stands for. Instead, we were given pamphlets about Obama's faith in Christ and were told to talk about the then-senator's churchgoing habits.

On one campaign stop I knocked on the door of a middle-aged woman who was shocked to see her son's name on my list of potential Obama voters. "He had better not vote for Obama," she declared to me on her doorstep. When I asked her why, she leaned towards me and whispered in my ear, "Well, for one, he's a Muslim and I have the proof."

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In his new memoir, Backing Into Forward, Jules Feiffer describes channeling dyslexia, anxiety, and a troubled childhood into a prolific career. "There's some brain damage," he jokes, "but I've never met a cartoonist who isn't quirky or weird in some ways." Fortunately, the Oscar-, Pulitzer-, Obie-, and Polk-winning author and illustrator's quirks remain in full bloom. The 81-year-old is still cranking out political cartoons and working on kids' books with his daughter and—after a 50-year hiatus—The Phantom Tollbooth author Norton Juster. Not that he's gone soft; his satire remains as sharp as ever: "The grown-ups, or the ones I choose to go after, deserve everything they get."

Mother Jones: I should start by confessing that I named my son after Milo in The Phantom Tollbooth and, like a lot of people, became familiar with you through your children's books. How does it feel to have that be the way into people's hearts—the softer side of Jules?

Jules Feiffer: [Laughs.] As long as they pay attention, why should I care? I love doing the children's books as much as anything else I've done. As a matter of fact, just coming back from the audiologist because the hearing aids I've just spent $7,000 on weren't worth a goddam thing, I wrote new picture book on the bus just to cheer myself up.

MJ: Do the kids' books feel like they're on a continuum to the very dark social satire that you've done?

JF: No, no. It's a different part of me. Until kids' books, I was never able to show the more playful side, the sillier side, and just be out-and-out goofy.

MJ: In your book, you say that the best cartoons or comics are when one person does all the writing and the drawing. I found it interesting in context of The Phantom Tollbooth, because I can't imagine a better pairing of text and image.

JF: Well Norton [Juster] and I have for the first time in 50 years just done another book, which is coming out in the fall. It's a picture book for younger kids, called The Odious Ogre, which will be in color. What I've tried to do is kind of get inside the author's head and do a presentation that he or she might want to do if they could draw. It's all about telling the story, and telling the story from the inside. What I've always done with the cartoons, in terms of my art, is try to get inside the characters I'm talking about. You know, the character who is speaking, is showing us through body language and through facial expression what he or she is thinking, what the struggle is that's going on, and visualize it as much as verbalize it, and that's what I try to do in the kids' books.

MJ: Your kids' books do such a wonderful job of capturing loneliness and other emotional states that we think of, falsely, as adult concepts.

JF: I couldn't actually write kids books and go on the attack the way I do with grownups. The grownups, or the ones I choose to go after, deserve everything they get. But kids are in ongoing need of support, and they get various versions of it from grownups which aren't legitimate—a grownup's version of what we think you should have. We tell you what creativity is, and we even tell you what you're thinking. What I try to get at in my books is akin to that sense that Holden Caulfield felt when he reads a writer and wants to call him up in the middle of the night—to be a friend to the reader.

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The office might be that of a regional sales director for a midsize company—a modest space, adorned by little more than family photos, a "Fightin' Phillies" banner, and a shelf of binders bearing labels like "Northeast" and "Midwest." Four blocks from the Capitol, it has a view not of Washington's grand buildings, but of an elevated highway. Yet this room is the command center for a titanic fight that could determine the future of the nation. It's the office of Jon Vogel, the man tasked with one of the toughest jobs in politics: stopping what appears to be a tidal wave heading toward Congress.

Vogel, 35, is the executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a.k.a. "D-Trip" (even "D-Triple C" is now passé), the party unit in charge of raising money and providing other support for House races. It's a tall order: Since Abraham Lincoln, the party of a first-term president has always lost House seats in the midterm election, with two exceptions—the year after FDR was inaugurated during the Great Depression, and the year after 9/11. If the pattern holds true this year, Republicans might ride popular discontent, Tea Party anger, and sky-high unemployment to regain control of the House. Vogel's job is to stop that from happening.

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At some point during the awful days of Hurricane Katrina, I received an email from my friend Harry Shearer, the actor, satirist, and musician. The national media are getting the story wrong, he angrily declared: What's happened in New Orleans is not a natural disaster; it's a catastrophic failure of government. This was a case of profound negligence—poorly designed and shoddily built levees had collapsed. He was anxious to spread the word: Don't blame the category-five storm. Blame those who constructed the inadequate levees.

Now, on the fifth anniversary of Katrina, Shearer is releasing a feature-length documentary he's produced, written, and directed—called The Big Uneasy—in which he nails the case: The flooding of New Orleans was due not to Mother Nature but to the US Army Corps of Engineers. For some, Shearer may seem an unlikely investigative documentarian. He's well-known for starring in movies (he was bass player Derek Smalls in This Is Spinal Tap) and for voicing several characters in The Simpsons, most notably the deliciously nefarious Mr. Burns. For nearly three decades, he has hosted Le Show, a syndicated weekly radio show featuring a satirical hodgepodge tied to the news. He was a Saturday Night Live cast member; he's written a novel; he's developed video installations for museums and galleries. But he's also practiced journalism. Shearer covered the O.J. Simpson trial for Slate. He has been a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, spending a stretch as its top media critic. I first met Shearer at the 1996 GOP convention in San Diego, when we both were trying to sneak into a private fundraising reception chock-full of lobbyists. (We failed.)

Shearer is a part-time New Orleanian. "My wife and I got a place here in the late '90s," he says. "This is an incredibly seductive city, it speaks to you in a language all its own, and if you speak that language—even though you may never have heard it before—it's irresistible. It functioned as a great antidote to Hollywood." And he did not want to see anyone get off the hook for failing his adopted city.

The Big Uneasy, which will be screened on August 30 in theaters across the nation (check here for a cinema near you), is an indictment of the Army Corps. Shearer tracks independent investigators working for the state of Louisiana who moved quickly after the hurricane to determine what had caused the disastrous flooding that destroyed much of the Crescent City and that claimed the lives of hundreds. Weaving together poignant interviews with these scientific gumshoes, dramatic computer imagery depicting what went wrong with the levees, and gripping footage of the flooding, Shearer tells the story of the most calamitous engineering screw-up in US history.

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Does doughnut lasagna sound yummy? Then Thu Tran is your Julia Child. Tran is the host of Food Party, the Independent Film Channel's gleefully anarchic "non-reality cooking show," which debuted last year to confusion and acclaim. In her DayGlo kitchen, Tran cooks with the help of pals like Peanut Butter Jerry—a guy with peanut butter for hair—and lots of puppets. It's a cooking show full of recipes you'd never eat and crucial questions like, "Which is harder to get out of your beard, peanut butter or glitter?" (Answer: glitter.) We caught up with the cast enjoying a healthy mid-afternoon snack of Mountain Dew, Thin Mints, and American Spirit Lights outside the show's Brooklyn studio, where Tran and the crew were filming the show's second season, now airing on IFC.

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The Obama administration has repeatedly vowed that tackling climate change is among its top priorities. But in a landmark legal case that could force the nation's dirtiest power plants to clean up their acts, the administration this week sided with some of the biggest polluters in the country. This latest development has left a number of environmental advocates wondering whose side the White House is really on when it comes to global warming.

Five years ago, Connecticut, seven other states, New York City, and several conservation groups filed suit against the US-based power companies most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that the climate-change-causing pollutants expelled by the their coal-fired power plants constitute a "public nuisance." Lawyers for the plaintiffs used EPA records to pin down the five biggest offenders—American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Southern Company, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and Xcel Energy—and filed suit on the basis that all those planet-warming coal-fired power plants were creating a problem for everyone else.

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This post first appeared on the TomDispatch website. It is excerpted from Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, published this month by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Click here for Mike Mechanic's Mother Jones review of the book.

Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable: He knows what he wants and where he's headed; when it comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the inclination. All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.

My own education did not commence until I had reached middle age. I can fix its start date with precision: for me, education began in Berlin, on a winter's evening, at the Brandenburg Gate, not long after the Berlin Wall had fallen.

As an officer in the US Army I had spent considerable time in Germany. Until that moment, however, my family and I had never had occasion to visit this most famous of German cities, still littered with artifacts of a deeply repellent history. At the end of a long day of exploration, we found ourselves in what had, until just months before, been the communist East. It was late and we were hungry, but I insisted on walking the length of the Unter den Linden, from the River Spree to the gate itself. A cold rain was falling and the pavement glistened. The buildings lining the avenue, dating from the era of Prussian kings, were dark, dirty, and pitted. Few people were about. It was hardly a night for sightseeing.

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Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

     

FOR SEVEN and a half years, US soldiers have been on a fishing expedition in Iraq: the hunt for the Saddam Bass.

Hundreds of the huge, carnivorous creatures swarm the moats of Baghdad's Al Faw Palace, a sandstone citadel built by Saddam Hussein that now houses the US military HQ. The fish, which can grow to six feet and weigh more than 100 pounds, were supposedly cultivated by the dictator and his sons. A favorite base workers' myth holds that the Husseins threw captives to the fishes, who in time developed a taste for human blood.

Today, the Saddam Bass feast on nothing nastier than chow-hall scraps, torment waterfowl, and dodge soldiers and contractors indulging in off-duty catch-and-release fishing. They even have a fan blog (thefishatalfawpalace.blogspot.com).

The fish, actually a rare variety of Tigris carp and other native freshwater species, have also been enlisted in reconstruction efforts. Many were shipped last year to a hatchery in Wasit province, where it's hoped they'll help restore wetlands and "revolutionize the fishing industry," in the words of Col. Lyle Jackson, an Army veterinarian who oversaw the redeployment. "We can help the whole Iraqi economy with these fish," he says.

Plenty of Saddam Bass still patrol the palace, mascots of sorts for the remaining troops, who will soon be coming home—or departing for Afghanistan, where they have bigger fish to fry.

For a rundown on what else the US leaves behind in its wake in Iraq, check out Mother Jones' slideshow on what we left behind, then join us on Facebook to post your own thoughts on the costs of the Iraq war.

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Perhaps the most famous—and contentious—judicial election of the last decade was held in West Virginia in 2004. Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy, spent $3 million of his own money on ads against Warren McGraw, an incumbent state Supreme Court justice. Some of the ads misleadingly suggested that McGraw had released a child rapist early; the campaign was so outrageous, it ended up inspiring a John Grisham novel, The Appeal. In the end, McGraw lost, and his replacement, Brent Benjamin, became the swing vote on a decision that overturned a $50 million verdict against Massey in a suit brought by another mining executive, Hugh Caperton. (Caperton's suit alleged that Massey had tried to drive his firm out of business so it could buy its mines.)

Caperton appealed the decision on the grounds that Benjamin should have recused himself, and four years later, the US Supreme Court agreed, sending the case back to the West Virginia high court. But that was cold comfort to McGraw, who says his failure to win reelection is a sign of the times. "Political campaigns are won and lost nowadays on the basis of how much money is spent," he says. "I've always survived without that. Now...we've turned the process over to the rich and powerful."

Indeed. For a down-ballot category that even well-intentioned voters pay little attention to, judicial races are astonishingly expensive. In 2004, $9.3 million was spent in the race for a single seat (pdf) on the Illinois Supreme Court. That's higher than the price tag of more than half the US Senate races in the nation that year. In 2006, three candidates for chief justice in Alabama raised $8.2 million combined.

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Fed up with the feds? Good news—24 state legislatures have already passed laws declaring themselves sovereign (only 7 governors actually signed the bills into law). Meanwhile, lawmakers in 11 states have passed measures to nullify federal health care reform (3 of those are now law).

As of May 18, 2010
Source: Tenth Amendment Center

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This February, around 300 conservative activists and candidates gathered at the Atlanta airport Hilton to celebrate the Tenth Amendment, the oft-overlooked constitutional provision that's become the philosophical underpinning of opposition to everything—from bank bailouts to federal gun laws to the new health care bill. Among the speakers were the author of The South Was Right; a man who'd done time for evading taxes while running a gold and silver "bank"; and Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court justice who lost his robes after refusing to remove a giant Ten Commandments from his courthouse.

The odd man out was Michael Boldin, the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center, a tiny California think tank that cosponsored the event. Unshaven and dressed in jeans, an untucked button-down shirt, and hipster glasses, Boldin stood out from the crowd, which included the obligatory Tea Partier in a tricornered hat. The 37-year-old Wisconsin native told me that the Moore who'd inspired his activism was Michael, not Roy. Boldin describes himself as a "recovering Catholic" and reads Mother Jones. He got into politics because of the invasion of Iraq and has come to believe "that most of what the federal government does, from foreign to domestic policy, is a constitutional violation."

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