John Seeley

If W. is indeed inaugurated on January 20, the first people he needs to thank -- even before brother Jeb or ever-helpful Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris -- are the residents of Jacksonville, Florida, and surrounding Duval County. And not so much those who voted for him, though they......

In the 1972 presidential election, Arizona officials faced the same problem now focusing worldwide attention on Palm Beach County, Florida: what to do with thousands of ballots marked for two different candidates. In Pima County that year, just as in Palm Beach County this year, the problem was a confusing......

Few proposition campaigns have been entirely factual, but the finalists in the category of phoniness are unquestionably Proposition 37 — a vaunted “taxpayer protection” scheme that will raise your taxes — and Proposition 34, a “campaign-finance reform” measure that undoes what Californians already voted overwhelmingly to do. Proposition 34 also......

When more than 8,000 janitors walked off their jobs this spring, priests and rabbis flocked to the picket lines. Sympathetic citizens pressed donations into the janitors’ hands, and L.A.‘s political leaders condemned the greed of wealthy corporations that wouldn’t pony up a livable wage. So far, no such support has......

Last week‘s exhaustive two-day debate over the LAPD consent decree forced the City Council to confront novel policing issues. But as council members struggled doggedly through the Department of Justice’s 182-paragraph prescription for police reform, they suddenly found themselves back on very familiar turf -- the oft-visited issue of senior......

As convention week and its melees, fracases and police assaults faded into history, the welts inflicted by LAPD rubber bullets began to fade as well. And as baton bruises turned from bilious purples to more muted hues, raw feelings among many media folks mellowed to a more philosophical, “it‘s-all-in-a-day’s-work” point......

Photo by Virginia Lee Hunter One federal lawsuit was filed Monday, and more may follow, charging that police interfered with the media covering convention-week protests. The ACLU sued on behalf of five plaintiffs who say that the LAPD targeted reporters and photographers covering a post-concert fracas August 14 outside Staples......

Unless you see schools of salmon swimming up the Los Angeles River to spawn, don’t believe that L.A. in mid-August is going to be “another Seattle.” Despite Mayor Riordan’s raising the specter of riotous mobs, despite the D2K organizers’ invocation of the “spirit of Seattle,” this will be no rerun......

Getting into a street gang is no picnic -- being “jumped in” can leave you with aches, scrapes and bruises from the brutal induction ritual -- but it’s a piece of cake compared to getting out, say those who have managed the U-turn. Among the barriers, they say, are hostility......

After almost a month of pressure from the L.A. City Council, the Airport Commission and labor unions, a three-carrier consortium dominated by Northwest Airlines conceded defeat in its attempt to replace long-term service employees at Terminal 2. The veteran wheelchair attendants, baggage handlers and screeners and skycaps, in limbo since......