The fading yet controversial green bike lane that stretches through downtown Los Angeles on Spring Street may be getting a fresh coat of paint that all — including the temperamental asphalt — can live with. 

Bicyclists and downtown residents love the highly visible 1.4-mile bike lane that runs from Cesar Chavez to 9th Street. But film and TV location scouts hate the fluorescent green ribbon that runs through the heart of the most popular filming location in Los Angeles. Under bright lights, this particular green bounces off every surface it hits (including actors’ faces) and is costly to remove in post-production — which has to be done if, say, the corner of 6th and Spring is standing in for a 1930s city.

But Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar, through whose district the green bike lane runs, has suggested repainting it a nonreflective version of the forest green used for New York's street bike lanes. Paul Audley, president of Film L.A., has said that shade...

Maybe because President Obama said so many other things in his speech Thursday -- about drones, Guantanamo and a “new phase” in the war against terrorism -- a reference to Benghazi didn’t attract much attention. But, at the risk of over-interpretation, it struck me as another attempt by the president to counter the Republican claim that he refused to recognize Benghazi as a terrorist attack.

Here’s what Obama said: “Now, make no mistake, our nation is still threatened by terrorists. From Benghazi to Boston, we have been tragically reminded of that truth. But we have to recognize that the threat has shifted and evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11.”

You’ll remember the presidential debate at which Mitt Romney claimed that “it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.”  Romney was responding to this quote from Obama: “The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the...

Led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a number of House Republicans asserted this week that the newly scandalized Internal Revenue Service, in its role as Obamacare enforcer, would collect sensitive personal medical records. That was one of the latest reasons cited for repealing the 2010 law, formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Where they came up with this specious idea is a bit of a mystery, because you won't find any support for it in the law itself or the IRS regulations implementing it. Let's just say it emerged from the same place as Sarah Palin's death panels.

The Affordable Care Act does call on the IRS to do many things in support of its insurance reforms, such as determining whether someone is eligible for insurance subsidies and determining whether employers face penalties for failing to offer a minimum level of coverage to their full-time workers. In none of these instances, however, would the agency need to obtain medical records.

That's...

“What could go wrong?”

If you’re a woman, you’ve undoubtedly heard this phrase -- probably more than once -- from your father/grandfather/husband/boyfriend/male friends, shortly before the aforementioned types did something really dumb.

It’s a guy thing -- and yes, ladies, you already know the answer, even if you politely keep quiet and let the carnage occur.

So many of you probably weren’t that surprised when you read that a trucker hauling an oversize load took out a bridge in Washington state Thursday. And you probably imagined the conversation in the truck’s cab just before impact:

“Gee, Willy, don’t you think that bridge looks kinda short and narrow?”

“Naw. What could go wrong?”

Need more proof? OK. I give you one Jesse James. The motorcycle bad boy, no stranger to shooting himself in the foot (see: Sandra Bullock, cheating on), took it one step further Tuesday, chopping off his pinkie in a workshop accident.

When the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board took up L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas' proposal Thursday to add two stations to the new Crenshaw light-rail line, Lakewood City Councilwoman Diane DuBois asked the right question. Then she gave the wrong answer.

At issue were stations at Leimert Park Village -- a historic center of African American life in Los Angeles -- and at Hindry and Florence avenues in Westchester. The latter would be above ground and relatively inexpensive, but the stop at Leimert Park was projected to cost $120 million. The Metro board agreed in 2011 to build that station only if the total 8.5-mile project stayed within its budget of just under $1.8 billion.

On Wednesday, the City Council voted to pony up $55 million for the two stations, leaving a gap of about $80 million. Ridley-Thomas' motion called for both stations to be added to the project, funded by the $55 million from the city and $80 million from the board's reserves.

SLIDE SHOW: 10...

I have a particular -- er, peculiar? -- passion for commencement speeches. When Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick spoke at my bother's graduation a few years ago, I was re-energized for months, and now I seek out notable commencement speeches on YouTube whenever I need a pick-me-up.

But what’s the point of inspirational speeches for grads who’re entering a dismal job market, many of them also weighed down with significant debt?

David Horsey’s latest cartoon shines a harsh light on today’s depressing reality. In an accompanying piece, he argues that it’s time to make a proactive change.  

In a country that claims to care about its children and operates on the premise that things should get better for every generation, we are not doing well.

Colleges need to do more than grind out grads while reaping ever-more-outrageous tuition fees. They need to prove the diploma is worth the price by providing transitional programs into the working world. And America&...

The Boy Scouts of America is voting on whether to allow gay boys to be Scouts. Which is, of course, really stupid, because gay boys are already Scouts, and have been for many years, even if Scouting chooses to think otherwise.

Still, this is a serious issue. The future of Scouting may hang in the balance. Or not. After all, wasn’t it Groucho Marx who said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member”?

If I may, though, I’d like to suggest we may be ignoring the real problem with the Boy Scouts and other groups, such as the Indian Princesses. It’s not gays we should be worrying about; it’s regular suburban dads.

You think I’m kidding? You think the kids are safe, as long as they are with dad?

Moms, you want to know the truth? Well, you can’t handle the truth.

For example, a dad friend (who shall remain nameless to keep him from permanent doghouse duty) took his boys on a Scout kayaking trip to the...

You won’t see politicians lined up at the unemployment office, but every election means that some defeated officials wind up out of work.

It happened again in this week’s L.A. city election.

So let us ask not what the city can do for them, but what they can still do for the city.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

Wendy Greuel, for one, who lost to Eric Garcetti in the mayor’s race.

She’s served on the City Council, she was a business executive at DreamWorks, and she spent four years as city controller, L.A.’s official pinch-penny auditor. And we heard a lot during the campaign about her family’s hardware store in the San Fernando Valley.

So why not create a city version of the Small Business Administration and put Greuel in charge of it? L.A.’s Chamber of Commerce endorsed Greuel as “the only candidate in this race who has signed the front of a paycheck and not just the back.”

The city’s reputation as business-hostile needs...

This post has been updated, as indicated below.

The races for mayor and other top city offices so underwhelmed Angelenos, fewer than one-fifth of registered voters bothered to cast ballots.

So, why don't we have another election in a couple of months? Say, July 23?

I'm not kidding. Because no candidate for the 6th Council District seat earned more than 50% of the votes Tuesday, residents in the district will have to trudge back to the polls for the fourth time in nine months to choose a replacement for former Councilman Tony Cardenas. The office became vacant when Cardenas won a seat in Congress last November.

The runoff will pit Cindy Montañez, who collected 43.5% of the votes, against Nury Martinez, who received 23.9%.

So why didn't the city hold the 6th District primary in March, when all the other council primaries were held? Because Cardenas didn't step down until Jan. 2, the day before he was sworn in as a member of Congress. According to city officials, there wasn't enough time...

The Times' editorial board endorsed 5th-grade teacher Monica Ratliff for a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District board -- twice -- but that doesn’t mean we expected her to win.

Ratliff went into Tuesday dubbed the underdog by a mile, with her relative shoestring of a campaign war chest compared with the $2 million in independent fundraising for her opponent, Antonio Sanchez. Sanchez also is the far more politically plugged in, and politically savvy, of the two, and he had the backing of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, for whom he used to work (as well as the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, for which he also used to work).

As the favored reform candidate who would favor parent triggers, charter schools and more extensive use of test scores to evaluate teachers, he had the considerable financial backing of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the rest of the education-billionaire group. On top of that, Sanchez has been working full time on his campaign for close to a year....

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