The Los Angeles Times seems determined to join the rest of the corporate media as a right-wing activist endeavor. They have pretty much dropped doing investigative reporting on the GOP, despite how massively corrupt Bush, the Republican Congress, and Schwarzenegger are.

Now, the paper has canned Bob Scheer, the most talented columnist the LA Times has ever produced. Scheer's work appeared in the paper for 30 years, starting as a reporter. Publisher Jeff Johnson is widely known to be angry about Scheer's columns criticizing the quagmire in Iraq and calling for withdrawal of US troops. It's a shame that the Times has fired its best columnist merely because he is patriotic enough to oppose Bush's unAmerican and illegal war in Iraq.

The paper even tried to enhance its GOP credentials through the required mendacity, in this case by lying about the number of readers who protested Scheer's firing. I remember when the LA Times was a great paper. It has devolved into a propaganda rag for the GOP without any integrity or journalistic standards whatsoever. In other words, it has joined almost all of the corporate media here in the U.S.

Contact the Los Angeles Times and demand that Scheer be reinstated and that the Times reinstitute journalistic standards rather than acting as a mouthpiece for the GOP.