California’s Parole Board goes by the book, even when it comes to the most heinous murderers. It pretty much has to, or its decisions will be overturned by the courts, which must rule on the […]

Julia Child was an ardent Planned Parenthood supporter and the inspiration for the now much anticipated annual Planned Parenthood Los Angeles (PPLA) Food Fare fundraising gala. Thirty-four years ago Child supervised 20 amateur sous chefs […]

Banana republics got their appellation during the 1920s, when dictators ruling countries like Honduras and Guatemala made decisions on the say-so of banana growing companies, strictly for the profit of those companies – and usually […]

There’s theory and there’s fact. My last column attempted to focus on gun issues by way of the story of the prop gun purchased for service in a theater piece of mine currently being performed […]

Are you ready for $6-per-gallon gasoline? Then $7 a little later? Premium grades of gasoline already go for more than $5 per gallon in some parts of California; regular has been above $4.50 for a […]

From the moment AB 32 and its mandate for greenhouse gas reductions passed in 2006, conservative opponents and climate change deniers have vilified it as an economic suicide pact for California. But that may not […]

Gov. Jerry Brown has never described it quite this way, but the essence of what he wants to do with many of the new tax dollars from last fall’s Proposition 30 is finish the job […]

Major politicians both nationally and in California are talking as if changes in America’s immigration system are now inevitable, including a guest worker program and “amnesty,” the code name for allowing some kind of pathway […]

Moving from New Haven Connecticut to Santa Monica in 1964 to attend the USC Masters in Cinema program, I was fortunate to find an apartment at 359 Sycamore Road in Santa Monica Canyon. Venturing into […]