Author:

The Village Voice's Rick Perlstein scours Orange County in vain for anyone who loves Gov. Gray Davis. He finds plenty who hate him, though. A woman in a gated community who shreds her mail so illegal immigrants can't steal her identity. Surfing teenagers who detest the car tax. A congressman who deplores the Chinatowns springing up across the state and "exploding in population." And a grassroots organizer who sums up the recall initiative: "We found an opponent with a really weak hand; we just kept raising and raising the stakes."

In Texas, history has a way of repeating itself. Jake Bernstein and Dave Mann of The Texas Observer reveal how last year a small group of politicians and corporations bought themselves a legislature and poured hundreds of millions back into the pockets of the corporations. The no-holds-barred campaign was run through the Texas Association of Business and U.S. House Whip Tom Delay's Texans for a Republican Majority. Both entities took a calculated risk, which paid off with the first Republican Texas legislature in 130 years, but both are now under investigation.

When thousands of Somali and Sudanese refugees made their way to the American Midwest in the 1990s, they were often hailed as success stories. Starting at the bottom of the economic ladder, they worked double shifts in menial jobs and carved out lives for themselves and their families, thankful just to have the opportunity -- and to be safe from the violence that plagued their war-torn homelands. But as Pitch staff writer Kendrick Blackwood reports, the Somalis and Sudanese brought something with them besides a tireless work ethic: a culture in which young men are taught never to back away from a fight.