Los Angeles Times

"Anyone who loves LA struggles with it, has been obliged to reconcile the disparity between what LA is supposed to be and what it actually is," says Gregory Rodriguez, executive director of Zócalo Public Square and a Times op-ed columnist. ...

Mexico's drug war is bound to have a profound effect on the lives of Mexican immigrants in the United States. On the one hand, the image of Mexico's chaos as a spreading contagion most likely will strengthen the hand of anti-immigrant forces. On the other, as Mexican newcomers look back at their increasingly dangerous homeland, they will -- consciously or unconsciously -- set down deeper roots in the United States.

I have finally let the cat out of the bag and publicly confessed that I'm nostalgic for the first years of Antonio Villaraigosa's mayoralty, when His Honor seemed to be everywhere all at once.

"Unless someone can write a really big check, there really is no other source of money that we can tap," said Len Nichols, an economist who heads the health policy program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.

I thought U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. was a little over the top last month when he called us "a nation of cowards" for our collective failure to adequately discuss our troubled racial past.

Less than a month later, officials at his Justice Department are believed to have pulled the plug on the nomination of Thomas Saenz, chief counsel to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to head the department's civil rights division. Why? Apparently because of Saenz's past advocacy on behalf of immigrant rights.

(The New America Foundation estimates that in 2006 and 2007 alone, the US gave $3.5 billion in military aid to the Pakistani army, the most powerful institution in an institutionally weak state.) The dark view has only been underlined by the violence ...

In his 2003 book "Being America," Jedediah Purdy remarked that at "the same time we disclaim imperial aspirations, we Americans suspect that we are the world's universal nation." Without using the term, he was raising the question of ...

"A great director-general is one who artfully navigates the politics of the situation to permit the IAEA to fulfill its technical mission," said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the New America Foundation. "I think [ElBaradei] has lost that ...

TERRY TAMMINEN, Environmental advisor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger "I think people’s bandwidth is a zero sum game -- if you’re increasingly concerned about something (your job, the economy overall, your mortgage -- all of which you previously didn’t ...

In the same week that the media reported on a burgeoning tent city in California's capital, Sacramento joined Los Angeles and other cities in making it a crime to scavenge in recycling bins placed in front of homes. A staff report for the Sacramento City Council argued that such scavenging "can result in identity theft, injuries to the scavengers, waste being strewn about the surrounding areas, containers being left open to emit foul odors [and] attract animals and pests, and theft of recyclable material."