Gene Maddaus

Faced with generally abysmal voter turnout, a handful of neighborhood councils are trying to allow their "stakeholders" to vote online or by phone.But "American Idol"-style balloting has few fans at the City Clerk's office, which is in charge of running 89 neighborhood council elections between March and May. "It's not......

A state appellate panel dealt a setback today to Manhattan Beach and to other cities that have sought to ban plastic bags, ruling that the city should have done an environmental impact report before imposing its bag ban in 2008.In this case, the plastics industry -- under the name of......

That's what Thomas Peters, a Washington, D.C.-based blogger, is claiming in a recent post. Peters says that Cardinal Roger Mahony has approved the selection of a coadjutor bishop who would succeed him as Archbishop of Los Angeles when Mahony hits the retirement age of 75 next year:Some of the faculty......

Sage Lewis has spiked hair and the determined gaze of a would-be guerrilla leader. From his home in Highland Park, Lewis launched an arts collective that achieved the near-impossible: It invaded Cuba. Cuban musicians frequently tour the U.S., but American artists rarely go to the island. Though President Obama recently......