Ralph Nader

JUST when you thought the worst of the holidays -- and the caucus madness -- was over, who should arrive but the ghost of elections past. Ralph Nader, looking more spectral all the time, decided to break months of (relative) silence to voice his opinions on the Democratic field of presidential candidates. In case you care: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a corporate goon and former Sen. John Edwards is the man on the white horse, according to Nader (who still is threatening to join the race.

Ralph Nader could be poised for another third-party presidential campaign. The consumer advocate will appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday to announce whether he will launch another White House bid. Nader kicked off his 2004 run on the show. A Nader spokesman did not return calls seeking comment.

Consumer activist Ralph Nader launched an independent campaign for the White House on Sunday, criticizing the Republican and Democratic candidates for not addressing issues "that are supported by a majority of the American people."

"You go from . . . the bungling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts, getting a decent energy bill through, and you have to ask yourself, as a citizen: Should we elaborate the issues that the [parties] are not talking about?"

In 2002, consumer advocate and current presidential candidate Ralph Nader quickly criticized the NBA referees who worked the Lakers' controversial Game 6 Western Conference finals victory over the Sacramento Kings.

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader lambasted the Democrats and Republicans on Friday as a "two-party dictatorship" that has squandered decades of power and allowed corporate greed to dictate American policy.

"An Unreasonable Man," a documentary opening Friday at the Nuart in West Los Angeles, chronicles the life and accomplishments of public advocate Ralph Nader. The crux of the film, though, is how Nader went from being an admired attorney responsible for the passage of historic safety and health laws to a pariah when he ran for president in 2000. Many still blame him for the Democratic loss because he refused to exit the race, siphoning votes that otherwise might have gone to Al Gore.

"It'll be in the first two lines of his obituary," Phil Donahue says of his friend Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential candidacy, which won the onetime hero of consumer advocacy the enmity of Democrats who believe he was responsible for getting George W. Bush into the White House -- and, by implication, for every bad thing that's happened since.

Re "Raider without a cause," Opinion, July 22 In his premature political obituary for Ralph Nader, Todd Gitlin claims that Democrats enlarged their tent to include leftist activists. That comes as news to many of us in that category. The touchstone for Gitlin's thesis would have to be the war in Iraq, the No. 1 issue on the minds of the American people. Democrats were elected to Congress in 2006 on the expectation that they would end the war in Iraq. They have not. MoveOn.

Rose Bouziane Nader, a Lebanese immigrant and author who raised a family of civic activists -- including her son, consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader -- has died. She was 99. She died Friday at her Winsted, Conn., home "peacefully and in no pain" just 18 days before her 100th birthday, Ralph Nader told Associated Press on Monday. The cause was congestive heart failure. "It's just breaking us up," Nader said.