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Dana Parsons• E-mail
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Recent Columns:
After I'd lived in California for a while, my friends in the Midwest wanted to know what was different out here. I hated to break it to them, but I didn't find Southern Californians all that different from Midwesterners. Nor did day-to-day life seem that much more expensive, given that money spent on Midwestern winters -- such as on heating bills, heavy clothes, snow tires -- was money kept in the Californian's pocket. Cable TV offered the same shows.
About a month ago, I passed out in a cafe and ended up in the emergency room.
Thirty years ago they called him brash, arrogant. Said that he had no clue about what it took to run a county jail. That all the liberal jerk knew how to do was sue them.
To many of us, economics is that subject we struggled with in college and then gladly purged from our memories when we left. Way too complicated and, frankly, kind of boring. Then you grow up and wish you'd paid a lot more attention to how it all works.
Arthur Carmona didn't live long enough to get what he wanted the most: public vindication over convictions for two armed robberies that put him behind bars for 2 1/2 years before the Orange County district attorney dropped the charges against him.
It's a one-flight walk-up in an 80-year-old building, just as it should be. You wouldn't put a ballroom on the ground floor.
The last time I talked to Gustavo Delgado he had just picked up the keys to his entry into big-time politics. It was the second week in January, and he was about to open the new headquarters for the Barack Obama presidential campaign in Orange County.
A funny thing happened on James Ochoa's way to getting the shaft again.
The Orange County Sheriff's Department has run head-on into a problem that can plague any large organization that deals with the public: how to regain trust after it's been damaged.
Acting Orange County Sheriff Jack Anderson has expressed disgust at the mess he's inherited at Theo Lacy Jail. "I can't think of a lower standard they were acting at," he told a Times reporter Tuesday. "I will take it as far as I can take it," he said about possible further disciplinary actions, "and termination will not be enough for me."