Tana Ganeva at AlterNet.com reports on Lou Dobbs' abrupt departure last week from CNN, calling it "a major victory for the Latino advocacy groups demanding his resignation."

She writes: "For years, the talk show host has stirred up xenophobic, anti-immigrant hysteria and promoted an array of right-wing talking points, giving lie to CNN's reputation for impartiality as well as comically belying his own claims of 'independence.'

"Some of Dobbs' greatest hits: In 2005 the talk show host implied that Latino immigrants were spreading leprosy in the United States. He falsely stated that illegal immigrants make up a third of the U.S. prison population. In a March 2009 radio broadcast, Dobbs declared, 'Mexico has become our enemy.' Of Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, Dobbs said 'pure, pure, absolute pandering to the Hispanics ...' "

As the Army learns more about the motive behind Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's rampage at Fort Hood, which claimed the lives of 12 soldiers and one civilian, Dahr Jamail at Asia Times points out that suicides claim nearly as many lives at Fort Hood every month:

"Fort Hood has ... borne much of the brunt from its heavy involvement in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Fort Hood soldiers have accounted for more suicides than any other Army post since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. This year alone, the base is averaging over 10 suicides each month -- at least 75 have been recorded through July of this year alone."

From Chad Hermann of The Radical Middle, a blog that appears at post-gazette.com:

"Regular readers of the PG Sunday Forum section know that each week's edition includes some sort of chart or graph (or both) titled 'Enough Said' and subtitled 'Facts that speak for themselves.' In the spirit of that feature, and in honor of what we already know to be true, here are a few facts that spoke to me and for themselves ... when I decided to take a look at [Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's] spiffy new campaign Web site and see if anything had changed in the past few weeks ...

"Total # of words in the campaign blog: 71

"Total # of words in the Blueprint for Pittsburgh's Renaissance: 80

"Total # of words in the home page text: 184

Total # of words in the mayor's bio: 1,090

Nick Baumann at Mother Jones Online reports that Russian radio personality and former KGB agent Igor Panarin is being embraced by birther/tea party conservatives who lend credence to his warnings that the United States will "splinter into separate states controlled by foreign powers in 2010."

Why? "Economic problems and deep racial and ethnic divisions," about which President Barack Obama is doing little. Among Mr. Panarin's predictions: The South, "with its Hispanics," will ally with Mexico. "Alaska, naturally, will go to Russia," and the Chinese will take over the West Coast because of its growing Chinese population and because most Californians' laptops are made in China.

The Nation last week decried the effort of Cook County prosecutors to intimidate students in an investigative journalism class at Northwestern University that has freed 11 innocent men from Illinois prisons. The students are investigating a new case and the prosecutors don't want them nosing around. They have issued subpoenas for students' grades and e-mails, claiming that the students might be under pressure to prove innocence to get better grades. And exactly why should that matter if they gather solid evidence?

The point, of course, is to make journalists think twice before taking on the Cook County attorney. As Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University, told the Nation: "It creates an enormous chilling effect that's positively glacial."

From the local Agent Ska: "If you track some of the graffiti blogs, there's a trend going on now where cities bring in some of the world's best graffiti artists and allow them to paint murals on old trains that are no longer being used. I often take this one road that goes from Carson Street to The Waterfront. It winds past old trains that never seem to move. Wouldn't it be cool to put murals on them that depict scenes of old and new Pittsburgh?"

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.