Two of my Hollywood pals had important things happen this past week that are worth noting and I hope you'll indulge me. First, A friend of almost 20 years, Chris Willman of Entertainment Weekly lost his job due to cutbacks at Time Inc. I can't emphasize enough what a...

For the life of me I just don't understand why a) President-elect Obama would want to choose Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and b) she would accept the post.

Why would Obama want to tarnish his brand new administration with the Clinton soap opera of Monica, Whitewater, Vince...

One of the best things about running a record label is finding amazingly talented artists before the rest of the world does. Molly Jenson is one such artist and if things go as we hope, you'll be hearing a lot more about her very soon.

I kept hearing about...

I love conspiracy theories because sometimes they turn out to be true. I mean, who could have imagined that John Edwards would be stupid enough to a) make it with his videographer while his wife was battling cancer and b) try to visit her and their child on the eve...

There's a fascinating piece in GQ today about strife within the McCain campaign over the handling of Sarah Palin. I knew next to nothing about Palin before I set out to write my book which was just released last week, Sarah Barracuda: The Rise of Sarah Palin.

The Republican party has offered up some pretty lame presidential candidates in the last hundred years. There was Richard Nixon, perhaps one of the most awkward politicians in American history, Bob Dole, with his strange penchant for referring to himself in the third person, George H.W. Bush with his disdain...

1988 was the last time I recall one major candidate running for president calling another a liar. It was during the GOP primary and Bob Dole was annoyed at George HW Bush. Asked by Tom Brokaw if he had a message for Bush, in a way that only Bob Dole...

In 1966 Betty Friedan is said to have scribbled the goals of the National Organization for Women (NOW) on a napkin: "To take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men."

The...

My pal Michael Levine has just released "Guerilla P.R. 2.0," a book that's not quite new, but rather an updated version of his classic '80's tome, Guerilla P.R." I have my copy and I would urge anybody who is in the business of communicating to pick up a copy...

When I wrote this piece yesterday analyzing McCain's VP prospects, I purposely didn't pick Sarah Palin because I didn't think in a million years that McCain would pick her. I was wrong and this is a choice that should send shivers up the Obama campaign's spine and here's what...

John McCain has made up his mind about his VP pick and we will soon know much about the man by whom he chooses. Here's how I'll look at the choice:

If McCain picks Lieberman it means that he is feeling frisky and wants a major fight with the right...

I spent a good part of Saturday at Saddleback Church, in Orange County, CA blogging live on the Obama-McCain debate, but felt too close to the action to provide analysis so I decided to wait a bit and weigh in after I had a chance to absorb all that I...

(Lake Forest, CA) Pastor Rick Warren convened his Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency to thunderous applause from a crowd that seemed to be mostly members of his church. After a few words to the crowd, Warren introduced Senator Barack Obama who was welcomed warmly by the audience.

Warren...

The Saddleback Civil Forum, the non-debate between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama is about to get underway in Lake Forest, CA. The only real news so far is that the evening's host Rick Warren is said to be suffering from a severe cold

It's not exactly a presidential...

Come on Matt Lauer and Bob Costas: Just because China has somehow kowtowed Taiwan into calling itself Chinese Taipei and leaving their flag behind, doesn't mean that you guys have to go along with it. You're independent journalists remember?

It's T*A*I*W*A*N, or officially, The Republic of China (ROC). Let's...

One of the things that I hoped to accomplish with my two books The Rock & Roll Rebellion, Faith, God & Rock 'n' Roll and my next, Rock Gets Religion, was to encourage artists to use their music to grapple with the big issues of life. Theology, the...

Rocker Melissa Etheridge has responded exclusively to the Huffington Post regarding comments attributed to her in Rolling Stone about guitar virtuoso Phil Keaggy. Etheridge had quoted Keaggy, one of the top guitarists in the world, who was once a mainstay in the Christian rock world as saying she had...

In the most recent issue of Rolling Stone, rocker Melissa Etheridge talks about her spirituality and an encounter she claims to have once had with a guitar virtuoso named Phil Keaggy. The reason you've likely never heard of him is because after converting to Christianity in the early '70's he...

Last month I wrote about a film I'd seen in Hawaii called Hakani which deals with the gruesome practice of infanticide among certain tribes in the Amazon. As a father of twins, I took particular offense at the practice of of burying alive twins whom witch doctors have...

Losing Tim Russert wasn't quite like losing a family member, more like losing a relative -- maybe a cousin or an uncle. I was surprised at how much of the coverage of his death that I watched and at how much I cared about him.

When he made his...