Corzine Wants To Keep It a Secret

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and former state worker's union president Carla Katz, who dated before he became governor, have been fighting to keep the e-mails they exchanged during budget negotiations private since Tom Wilson, The Republican State Committee Chairman, and several news organizations, including The Associated Press, requested the correspondence.

A three-judge appeals panel reversed a lower court ruling that the e-mails be made public. The appeals court ruled that the release of the e-mails could have "a chilling effect the governor's ability or willingness to solicit advice, or to accept unsolicited advice in the future."

Personally, I think that since appellate court has upheld the principle that Corzine has been fighting for, he should release all the e-mails he exchanged with Katz to prove to the public that none of them influences the state worker contract negotiations last year.

Until he does, this issue will remain a cloud over his head, especially compared to the recent shifts for a more transparent government by Barack Obama.

Cartooning the Inauguration

For anyone that's going to the inauguration tomorrow to watch Barack Obama be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, keep an eye out for a chubby white guy with a sketchpad roaming around the crowds.

I'll be drawing and taking pictures for various newspapers, attempting to be a modern-day Shel Silverstein while hopefully not freezing to death. I'll be posting all my cartoon on my Cagle cartoons blog on Wednesday, located here.

Long before he became a world-famous children's-book author, Silverstein went to work for fellow Chicago native and cartoonist buddy Hugh Hefner at Playboy magazine.

Silverstein did several brilliant comic travelogues published by Playboy between 1957 and 1968, These pieces took Silverstein all across the world, from Scandinavia to Africa and the Middle East, from Paris and London to Moscow. He even did a two-part epic titled "Silverstein Among the Hippies."

So we'll see what I can do. I'll be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday talking to people and covering the festivities, and I'll return to Delaware on Wednesday to assemble what I was able to produce for various publications.

I'll post what I can when I can. So just check back on Wednesday to see what I came up with, good or bad. You can also follow me on twitter, where I'll be posting brief updates throughout the day. You can follow me here.

And don't worry. I've already been warned about the bathroom situation. In fact, that's where I'll be headed first.

There's lots of comedic potential in millions of people fighting over port-a-potties.

New Cartoon News Blog at Cagle Cartoons

It's official. You can now check out my Cartoon News Blog over at Cagle's Cartoons website, where I'll be covering all aspects of art and politics, be it illustrations, animation or political cartoons.

Check it out here.

“Working at the Daily News has been like living with an incompetent, terminally ill relative.”

So says Patrick O'Connor, the former editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Daily News. Patrick was laid off after 8 and a half years with the Daily News along with 9 other employees.

In an interview conducted by Alan Gardner at The Daily Cartoonist, Patrick talks about being let go, severance caps, and facing the bleak future of editorial cartooning.

"Ah shoot, I've got a lot of questions."

"Ah shoot. I've got a lot of questions."

And so Joe the Plumber, War Correspondent for PJTV, arrives in Israel to spout non-licensed plumber wisdom on whoever is willing to listen.

Joe says, like Israel, he was a victim of media bias and can't understand why Israel didn't strike back sooner: "I know if I were a citizen here, I'd be damned upset."

He also took time to lecture his fellow reporters about journalism in wartime, saying, "...media should be abolished to reporting."

Then what are you doing there?

Here's my cartoon for Editor & Publisher about Joe:



H/T - The E&P Pub

Chris Christie for Governzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Boy, NO ONE saw this coming!

Here's the sketch:

New cartoon for Editor & Publisher

Here's my latest cartoon, and the first of a new weekly gig doing media-related cartoons for Editor & Publisher called "Tornoe's Corner."

So bookmark their E&P Pub blog, and check back every Thursday for a new cartoon.

New Japanese 'Watchmen' Trailer

The Corzine Economic Recovery Plan of 2009

Here's today's cartoon for PolitickerNJ.com. To comment, click here.

Cardinals Quarterback Draws From Divine Inspiration

Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner, fresh from the playoff victory over the Atlanta Falcons, sat down for a new documentary called ‘God in the Box’ to draw his version of God.

“So, I was drawing a picture of God, but it came out more like Jesus,” Warner said of his sketch. “So why don’t we stick with that being Jesus.”

If this guy becomes half as good at drawing as he is at throwing the football, artists beware.

RIP Roy Carless: 1920 - 2009

Bill Richardson resigned, but what about Hillary?

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has withdrawn his name from consideration as commerce secretary for President-elect Barack Obama, citing an ongoing investigation into possible pay-to-play corruption in the awarding of a state contract to a company that contributed to Richardson.

So is Hillary going to be next to resign?

After all, she's involved in her own mini-scandal involving a developer in New York donating $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton's foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Hillary helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman's mall project.

So much for No-drama Obama.

PolitickerNJ.com's Year in Review

PolitickerNJ.com released their always excellent Year in Review of New Jersey politics, and featured several of my cartoons throughout the round-up.

If you're a fan on New Jersey politics, check it out here.

Best of 2008 - National Cartoons

Everybody is releasing their "Best of 2008" lists, so I figured it was about time to post what I thought were a selection of my best national cartoons from 2008.

I'll post a separate list of my favorite New Jersey cartoons from 2008 soon.


While working for Politicker.com, I had the opportunity to "live-cartoon" election day, filing quick cartoons all day from Dixville Notch to Obama's victory speech.

You can check out the rest of the cartoons here.

I was always a fan of Tim Russert. I would love to say it was for his honesty and straight-forward earnestness, but it was his love of the Buffalo Bills and his desire for them to "squish the fish" that allowed me to first relate to him.

Did this cartoon on a Monday, and on Friday I was laid-off. I'm still waiting for my career as a psychic to take off. Call me Dionne Warwick!

Happy New Year Delaware!

I have to admit, I'm going to miss drawing Ruth Ann Minner.

Merry Christmas

Here's one panel from my New Jersey "Christmas Card" now posted over at PolitickerNJ.com. Go check it out.

The rest of the week, I'll be celebrating Christmas with not one, but two families, so I won't be posting anything else until Monday.

Have a great holiday, and I'll see you when I see you.

Go Check It Out: Richard Crowson's Christmas Cards

The Little Weekly Newspaper That Could

The New York Times has a cool story today about the TriCityNews, a weekly newspaper out of Monmouth County, N.J. Apparently, the newspaper and it's staff of 3.5 employees are prospering because they aggressively IGNORE the Web.

Their website is very minimal, mostly a little text about the paper's mission and ad rates, but nothing more (check it out here).

Dan Jacobson, the publisher and owner of the TriCityNews, explained to the New York Times why:

"I don’t understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper. Why should we give our readers any incentive whatsoever to not look at our content along with our advertisements, a large number of which are beautiful and cheap full-page ads?”

New Jersey Cartoon: The Ghost of Chris Christie's Past

Chris Christie, the former U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, is continuing his "let's wait and see" approach about running against Jon Corzine for Governor in 2009.

Despite having little experience as a criminal prosecutor when George W. Bush appointed him in 2002, Christie has been a political corruption buster, amassing 130 political corruption convictions without a single acquittal.

But, in the last year, he received a blemish on his record when he handed his one-time boss, former U.S. Attorney John Ashcroft, a contract worth between $27 million and $52 million to monitor a medical device company for 18 months. Democrats challenged the no-bid deal, which lead to new Justice Department guidelines on how federal monitors are selected.

Will it come back and bite him? Who knows. We'll see if Steve Lonegan puts together a commercial with money changing hands, as Ashcroft sings in the background, "Let the eagles soar..."

Go Check It Out: The Last 8 Years

Artwork by David Horsey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

H/T - Juan Melli