Andrew Breitbart

Andrew Breitbart, the pugnacious, conservative Internet entrepreneur who took on the left and what he called the "media bully cabal" with a series of exposes that were explosive and sometimes flawed, died early Thursday after collapsing near his home in Westwood. He was 43. According to his father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, Breitbart, a father of four, was out for a late-night walk shortly after midnight when he apparently suffered a heart attack. Paramedics took Breitbart to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Bean said, but he could not be revived.

Commentator and editor Andrew Breitbart, a polarizing website publisher who once helped edit the Drudge Report and found his way to tea party stardom in recent years, died of heart failure and hardening of the arteries, the Los Angeles County coroner's office said Friday. Coroner's officials deemed the death "natural," and toxicology tests detected no illicit drugs or elevated blood-alcohol level in Breitbart's system. Breitbart collapsed near his Westwood home March 1. He was 43. "He was walking near the house somewhere....He was taken by paramedics to UCLA, and they couldn't revive him," Breitbart's father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, told The Times.

WASHINGTON -- Shirley Sherrod has filed a defamation suit against Andrew Breitbart, the conservative gadfly she alleges triggered her firing by the Obama administration and ignited a national debate on race and reverse discrimination. Sherrod was the Georgia director for rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture until last June, when Breitbart posted online a heavily edited video excerpt of her speaking to a Georgia civil-rights group in which Sherrod, an African American woman, suggested that she once discriminated against a white farmer seeking help.

At a conference of first ladies the other day, Barbara Bush said that 2012 has "been the worst campaign I've ever seen in my life. " I disagree. My vote would be for the repulsive 1988 campaign that her husband,George H.W. Bush, waged against Michael Dukakis, in which he accused the former Massachusetts governor of being soft on crime, anti-Pledge of Allegiance and pro-flag burning. Bush the elder took the aristocratic view that games (like tennis, or politics) should be played to the death but that animosity should be suspended when the drinks cart arrives.

Commentator and editor Andrew Breitbart, a polarizing website publisher who once helped edit the Drudge Report and found his way to tea party stardom in recent years, died of heart failure and hardening of the arteries, the Los Angeles County coroner's office said Friday. Coroner's officials deemed the death "natural," and toxicology tests detected no illicit drugs or elevated blood-alcohol level in Breitbart's system. Breitbart collapsed near his Westwood home March 1. He was 43. "He was walking near the house somewhere....He was taken by paramedics to UCLA, and they couldn't revive him," Breitbart's father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, told The Times.

Andrew Breitbart, already an increasingly prominent player in the political and media influence game, never had a moment quite like the one on June 6, 2011. One of his websites, BigGovernment.com, had caused a sensation when it posted lewd photos of a man that appeared to be U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner , a firebrand liberal congressman from New York. Breitbart's move came after a suggestive photo of Weiner had been posted on the Democrat's Twitter account, which the congressman repeatedly said was the work of hackers, though he had not offered any evidence.

The command center of Andrew Breitbart's growing media empire is a suite of offices on Sawtelle Boulevard in West Los Angeles with the temporary feel of a campaign office. Only the computers seem firmly anchored. On a recent summer day, just weeks after he posted video clips that touched off a national furor over race, Breitbart was swigging a bottled Frappuccino at his desk. In a Lacoste shirt, cargo shorts and laceless Converse All-Stars, he looked every bit the 41-year-old industry player he might have been, but for a political awakening that transformed this liberal, West Side child of privilege into a Hollywood-hating, mainstream-media-loathing conservative.

Under an unrelenting scorching sun, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart extolled what he said was the individual, grass-roots nature of the "tea party" movement. "There is not a leader here; everybody came here on their volition," he told an energized crowd of several hundred converged on the grass before the iconic Beverly Hills sign, contrasting the movement to what he said was the lockstep organization of labor unions and calling it a "totally purist, people movement. " Breitbart was among about a dozen speakers Sunday at a tea party rally organized by actor and singer Pat Boone and some of his neighbors in Beverly Hills.

Former federal official Shirley Sherrod, ousted from her job after a racial remark she made during a speech was taken out of context, turned down an offer to return full time to the Department of Agriculture on Tuesday, but said she would continue to speak out about racism and discrimination. Sherrod said in a news conference with Agriculture Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack that she would work with the agency as a consultant at some point, but was not ready to come back full time.

For Anthony Weiner, it all began unraveling in a House office building. It was there, just a few days into the then-small-scale story over a mysterious photo of a man's underwear that had flooded the Twitterverse, that Weiner's façade began to crack as he was confronted by aggressive questioning from a CNN reporter and producer. Until then, the New York Democrat had largely been given the benefit of the doubt. As the photo surfaced over Memorial Day weekend, much of the media's attention focused on whether Weiner was the victim of a conservative sting, perhaps orchestrated by the irrepressible Andrew Breitbart.

Last week, the nation lost an elegant inquisitor and a nasty pugilist. Both were conservatives and natives of Southern California, and they agreed about many matters of policy. But James Q. Wilson delved deeply on matters of significance and left a vast and consequential legacy. Andrew Breitbart raked for muck and accelerated the nation's unhappy race to replace civility with furor. They represented two distinct veins of our national discourse, and of the tensions within modern conservatism.

Andrew Breitbart, the pugnacious, conservative Internet entrepreneur who took on the left and what he called the "media bully cabal" with a series of exposes that were explosive and sometimes flawed, died early Thursday after collapsing near his home in Westwood. He was 43. According to his father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, Breitbart, a father of four, was out for a late-night walk shortly after midnight when he apparently suffered a heart attack. Paramedics took Breitbart to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Bean said, but he could not be revived.

I knew Andrew Breitbart, who died at UCLA's Ronald Reagan Medical Center about midnight Thursday. We lived in the same neighborhood. Our kids attend the same public school. For several years, they were in the same classroom. Andrew and I would gravitate toward one another at school events and inevitably get into heated discussions about politics. We were told by the teacher once to leave the classroom during an open house to show off our kids' work. I can't think of a single thing Andrew and I agreed on. But I will say this: The man was a true believer, and he had the courage of his convictions.

Andrew Breitbart, already an increasingly prominent player in the political and media influence game, never had a moment quite like the one on June 6, 2011. One of his websites, BigGovernment.com, had caused a sensation when it posted lewd photos of a man that appeared to be U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner , a firebrand liberal congressman from New York. Breitbart's move came after a suggestive photo of Weiner had been posted on the Democrat's Twitter account, which the congressman repeatedly said was the work of hackers, though he had not offered any evidence.

And you thought the “birther” movement was dead. Not in Arizona, where Phoenix-area Sheriff Joe Arpaio held a news  conference Thursday to reveal the preliminary results of an investigation into the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate. Obama released the long-form certificate last year in an attempt to quiet critics -- including Donald Trump - who claimed he was born outside the United States and was therefore ineligible to become president. The White House considers the matter settled.

For Anthony Weiner, it all began unraveling in a House office building. It was there, just a few days into the then-small-scale story over a mysterious photo of a man's underwear that had flooded the Twitterverse, that Weiner's façade began to crack as he was confronted by aggressive questioning from a CNN reporter and producer. Until then, the New York Democrat had largely been given the benefit of the doubt. As the photo surfaced over Memorial Day weekend, much of the media's attention focused on whether Weiner was the victim of a conservative sting, perhaps orchestrated by the irrepressible Andrew Breitbart.

And you thought the “birther” movement was dead. Not in Arizona, where Phoenix-area Sheriff Joe Arpaio held a news  conference Thursday to reveal the preliminary results of an investigation into the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate. Obama released the long-form certificate last year in an attempt to quiet critics -- including Donald Trump - who claimed he was born outside the United States and was therefore ineligible to become president. The White House considers the matter settled.

I knew Andrew Breitbart, who died at UCLA's Ronald Reagan Medical Center about midnight Thursday. We lived in the same neighborhood. Our kids attend the same public school. For several years, they were in the same classroom. Andrew and I would gravitate toward one another at school events and inevitably get into heated discussions about politics. We were told by the teacher once to leave the classroom during an open house to show off our kids' work. I can't think of a single thing Andrew and I agreed on. But I will say this: The man was a true believer, and he had the courage of his convictions.

Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner was a nearly ubiquitous media presence last week, making the rounds of TV news shows to protest his innocence: No, the New York congressman said repeatedly, he did not tweet a sexually suggestive photo of himself from the waist down to a college student. Perhaps his Twitter account had been hacked. But Monday, in a teary news conference in New York City, Weiner, 46, 'fessed up. He said he had lied repeatedly out of embarrassment and shame. He had indeed sent the photo to the woman in Washington state, and he also had inappropriate online contact with several others over the last three years.

Rep. Anthony Weiner has called an afternoon news conference Monday amid a fresh round of sordid allegations involving the married congressman, including the release of a new set of photos that appear to show him posing shirtless. The website BigGovernment.com, run by conservative rabble-rouser Andrew Breitbart, reignited the frenzy it started last week involving the New York Democrat in a series of posts Monday. One photo shows a man's naked torso; the subject's full face is not visible, but pictures in the background include Weiner.