Hugh Hewitt

WHEN GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS addressed his retirement ceremony audience on Monday, he didn't mince words. The news accounts focused on his striking endorsement of the president's "bring 'em on" challenge to Fedayeen terrorists attacking U.S. forces in Iraq, but equally important was his prediction of a "rough road ahead." Franks and his colleagues know better than to paint rosy pictures of the life of an occupying army in a war-torn, shell-shocked country ruled for years by an evil fascist.

NEWSWEEK'S media reporter Seth Mnookin handicapped the race for the job of New York Times executive editor last week, putting Los Angeles Times managing editor Dean Baquet as the 2-1 favorite, Bill Keller (runner-up to Howell Raines in the last go-round) in the second position at 3-1, and Boston Globe editor Marty Baron as a reasonable 5-1 shot.

Baquet has widespread respect within the newsroom of the west coast Times, and Keller's writing since September 11 has often been riveting, but I'm hoping Baron gets the job.

LAST WEEK in this space I described the Los Angeles Times's slide into mediocrity and agenda journalism. Some objected. The Nation's always reliable Eric Alterman condemned the column as "nonsensical," and then quoted one of my objections--that "columnists who deal regularly with politics outside of the editorial pages come in two varieties: left and far-left." To which Alterman replied: "Oh really. My goodness.

THE STRANGEST SEASON in California's long, strange political trip has begun with a declaration of candidacy for a governorship that isn't vacant, a withdrawal from a Senate campaign that hasn't really begun, and a rumor mill spinning out of control.

The declaration of candidacy came from Congressman Darrell Issa, who has injected cash and leadership into the campaign to place a recall election before the voters in early fall. The target is Governor Gray Davis, whose approval ratings make Nixon's in August of 1974 look pretty good.

THOSE PROFESSING SURPRISE at the public collapse of credibility at the New York Times haven't been paying attention to Mickey Kaus or Andrew Sullivan. They haven't been reading the descent into fevers of Paul Krugman or the bitter stridency of Maureen Dowd. The deep sickness at the Times had many symptoms. Believers in the "mission" of the paper just chose to ignore those symptoms.

The very same symptoms are evident at the Los Angeles Times.

ACTOR EDWARD NORTON attacked President Bush as possessing a "low quality mind" this week, and thus joined a long list of stars, pundits, and professors who have elected to stand opposite three-quarters of American public opinion. Others who have done so--including Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, and the Dixie Chicks--have discovered that a lot of folks listen closely when celebrities speak and respond in the marketplace by refusing to buy products or tickets or to sponsor speeches.

THE LEFT EDGE of the Senate Democratic caucus has taken control of the judicial-nomination process and has forced the entire Senate into what is, at best, an extra-constitutional swamp. With their filibuster of D.C.

Last Friday, CNN's Eason Jordan published an op-ed in the New York Times that contained some admissions that cannot be considered as anything other than astonishing. CNN's "chief news executive" confessed that, among other things, Saddam's crazy son Uday had told Eason in 1995 that he, Uday, intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law. The two men were not warned by CNN and were eventually lured back into Iraq where they were murdered.

THE APRIL 7, 2003 ISSUE of the New Yorker contains an article by Seymour Hersh that will be taught in journalism classes for decades to come: "Offense and Defense: The Battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon." Hersh's opening sentences read: "As the ground campaign against Saddam Hussein faltered last week, with attenuated supply lines and a lack of immediate reinforcements, there was anger in the Pentagon.

THE ATTEMPT by France to protect Saddam, even at the cost of a crack-up of NATO and the United Nations, has confused many Americans who had long believed that France was an ally. So speculation abounds: Is Chirac on the take? Is it about the oil contracts? Are French munitions going to show up in the wrong piles in Iraqi arsenals?

There may be a less obvious answer. It appears that the French film industry has tanked in so thorough a way as to be beyond rescue.

HAVING MADE the mistake of agreeing to "debate" the war before a college campus audience, I ought not to have expected much beyond emotional appeals from the antiwar participants. But I did, and of course, I was disappointed.

The Rev. George Regas was one of three antiwar voices, the others being the Rt. Rev. J. John Bruno, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, and my colleague and friend Professor Don Will of Chapman University's Peace Studies program.

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, often called the Lost Angeles Times or the Left Angeles Times, escapes the sort of scrutiny that Andrew Sullivan and others apply to the New York Times because the "West Coast's leading newspaper" simply doesn't matter much on the East Coast (and increasingly not so much in its own back yard).

Had the New York paper run with a front page like Sunday's LA Times did, Sullivan would have been at work for a week playing catch up. It is as though the editors had agreed on an "All setbacks, all the time" policy, regardless of the actual news from Iraq.