Howard Blume

Compelled by the uncertain outcome of the recall election, state lawmakers are pressing for legislation requiring private employers to provide health insurance, which would put California in the vanguard of national health-care reform. “California is at the forefront of the effort to achieve universal health care at the state level,”......

The essence of a live Gregory Hines performance was not his rich, sensuous baritone, his palpable charm or even his percussive, hard-driving tap improvisations. It was that moment when he turned up the house lights, looked out, and told people to take out their tap shoes, come up onstage and......

Illustration by Juan Alvarado The survival of Governor Gray Davis will depend on the willingness of progressives — Democrat and otherwise — to vote against the October 7 recall and mobilize others to do the same. This reality is not lost on Davis, who last month performed an about-face on......

Seven staffers have lost their jobs in layoffs at The Village Voice, the largest economic reduction in years, perhaps ever, at the flagship paper of the alternative press. The move comes at a time when the Voice and the L.A. Weekly — as well as their corporate parent, Village Voice......

Remember that antitrust lawsuit? The one in which the federal government accused the owners of News Times L.A. and the L.A. Weekly of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to divide up markets in L.A. and Cleveland? At last look, prosecutors had declared victory, while the companies admitted no guilt but......

It’s not the sort of news about which state officials were likely to send out a press release — and they didn’t. But starting this fall, the state will change the way it counts dropouts. The new policy comes preciously close to an admission that California’s old methods produced a......

The fabled Ambassador Hotel — site of the RFK assassination and the Cocoanut Grove nightclub — stands as an unlikely survivor. No one in power wanted to save it, not recent mayors, not the local councilman, not the school district, not the property’s owners. Donald Trump, to name one, intended......

This week’s victory for affirmative action is real but precarious. The Supreme Court could well have chosen to end, not mend, efforts to promote racial diversity. Instead, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor — the most important voter in America — emerged as the swing vote in a ruling consistent with the......

Anyone paying attention knew why Hal Kwalwasser was brought to L.A. Unified at the highest salary ever paid for the school district’s top in-house attorney. Superintendent Roy Romer nabbed the former Pentagon lawyer to be his fixer — the legal eagle who would find or finagle the legal foundation for......

The school board’s divided go-ahead vote last week on the Belmont Learning Complex made it clear that the battle over the nation’s most expensive high school project is far from over. At Thursday’s meeting, a parade of public officials, parents and community members urged the board to approve the project......