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Tim Rutten |
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Acouple of front-page stories in Tuesday's papers -- one from the East Coast, the other from the West -- frame a pretty effective portrait of these United States in this election year.
We've all become so inured to the unending stream of dreary and dispiriting news produced by the Los Angeles Unified School District that Thursday's horrific report on the high-school dropout rate came and went with barely a civic whimper.
The ancient Irish believed that a poet's satire had the power to kill the target of his scorn.
Before we move on to this campaign's next contretemps, it's worth considering the substance beyond the snickers over Jesse Jackson's candid, if unplanned, appraisal of Sen. Barack Obama.
It was a melancholy thing to see the face of handsome young Mando Ramos, once the lightweight boxing champion of the world, staring up off the obituary page of Monday's Times. He was just 20 when he won the crown, and just 59 when he died of natural causes in his sleep Sunday. More than 20 years ago, he waged a successful fight with alcohol and drug addiction, but diabetes and a back injury suffered while working as a longshoreman had sapped his health in recent years.
Apart from understanding how and why the Bush/Cheney administration tricked the American people into going to war in Iraq, no question is more urgent than how the White House forced the adoption of torture as state policy of the United States.
As The Times reported Friday, Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca "are increasingly at odds" over the role racial hatred plays in fomenting gang violence.
A proper insalata Caprese is one of the jewels of Campania's incomparable cuisine.
Thursday's arraignment before a military tribunal of five Al Qaeda members accused of planning and assisting the 9/11 terrorist atrocities seemed custom-made to assist the loathsome defendants in achieving exactly what they desire -- an aura of martyrdom.
Two things already can be said about the pro- posed state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage that on Tuesday qualified for the Nov. 4 ballot. One is that the coming campaign is sure to be nasty and divisive; the other is that recent history suggests that such electoral struggles over fundamental rights are likely to have unintended consequences.