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Dana Parsons• E-mail
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Recent Columns:
Ah, the brashness of youth. The sheer audacity of it. Imagine, the notion that a relatively unknown political figure, just a step or two up from the novice ranks, would dare take on a much more seasoned and politically connected officeholder.
Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm said last week that we've become a nation of whiners. Speaking for myself, he's right. But before he disses an entire nation, would he prefer that we become a nation of mooners instead?
How many articles have you read lately on Zimbabwe?
I'll make every effort not to stretch the point here, but just like Bill Clinton, former Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona knows how to work a room. He's personable, well-spoken and has that innate speaker's gift of knowing how to go from serious to funny and back to serious with seeming ease.
As a girl, Parisa Popalzai learned that her heritage contained the stuff of fairy tales, that she was in fact descended from Afghan royalty. Imagine, a 19th century emir in the family.
Some people just sit around and complain about a problem (Note to self: Look in the mirror), and other people actually try to make things happen.
One of my jobs here at the newspaper is to carefully monitor behavioral changes in the people of Orange County and then attach profound insights to them. To answer your question, of course it's difficult work, but I'm not complaining. I knew what I signed on for and am handsomely compensated for it.
Broadcom Corp. and the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Two highly visible operations headed until recently by relatively young men of power and charm. The kind of guys who inspired others while basking in their own success and the prospect of more of it to come.
He's been around for all of Santa Ana's big political battles of the last generation -- and been in the middle of some of them -- but John Palacio seems strangely mellow. And while some in the city have long wished he'd either go away or just be quiet, Palacio has no plans to do either.
Toshiko Wilkinson isn't claiming any special wisdom. She's not looking for a soapbox. She's merely agreed to my request to talk about her marriage, since it began amid a swirl of societal and family doubts that sound vaguely familiar to those in the wind today as same-sex marriage goes on the books in California.