We are honored to have our first Academy Award nominated documentary for movie night, and I am even more thrilled that it is about my city and our struggles with race, land and politics, beautifully and movingly executed by by Scott Hamilton Kennedy. As always, please keep on topic–and there’s plenty of topics contained in The Garden.

Because nothing says crisis control like hiring the same public relations firm used by former Bolingbrook police sergeant Drew Peterson, who is suspected in the disappearance of his fourth wife and whose third wife died suspiciously in a bathtub.

Dude. You need to chill.

The Senate has passed him through. I’m sure he will do as good a job for Obama as he did for Bush, Bernanke and Paulson.

Unlike the immigration bill, it’ll probably pass, only because there are a lot more Democrats in Congress now. Pre-compromising the bill left Obama without a left wing that’s fired up to push it, with few effective media surrogates to push back against Republican propaganda, and a bill which will be much less effective economically than it should be.

Shall we lie back and think of Japan or at the very least demand we be able to compete with them?

Why people keep hiring Bill Kristol – and why they keep firing him.

Jane Mayer’s latest piece describes how much work went into last week’s Executive Orders ending the use of torture. Which offers key lessons about the work we need to do to make sure he also ends warrantless wiretapping.

As all of Hollywood gears up for the uber-expensive glitter of the Academy Awards, plus the oh so fancy pre- and post- parties, 100 aging entertainment industry veterans face eviction as the Motion Picture & Television Fund long-term care nursing home and the acute-care hospital close down over the next few months.

Larry Swearingen is scheduled to be executed tomorrow for the 1998 murder of Melissa Trotter. But forensic pathologists — including the one that originally helped convict Swearingen — have concluded that the physical evidence shows Swearingen could not have been the killer.