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.

Andrew Breitbart loathed the "institutional left," and what he called "the Democrat media complex. " A son of Brentwood who cut his sharp online incisors working alongside blogging pioneers Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington, Breitbart went on to forge an eponymous website and persona as one of the fiercest voices of the right. His mission appeared cut short March 1, when he died of heart failure. Breitbart was just 43. But an unlikely crew of friends and associates - his oldest childhood friend, a pair of Harvard-educated lawyers, a financier/filmmaker who served in the Navy and a musician pal who reinforces the fallen leader's voice as the website's "minister of culture" - scarcely paused after the loss.

LAS VEGAS - It is hard to imagine the Breitbart website without its namesake, Andrew Breitbart, whose pugnacious personality was unexpectedly extinguished when he died of heart failure March 1 at age 43. Indeed, in the months since he collapsed on a sidewalk near his Westwood home, Breitbart's closest colleagues have often found themselves wondering, “What would Andrew do?” “We often don't know what Andrew would have done,” said Breitbart News Editor in Chief Joel Pollak, a failed GOP congressional candidate who got into politics after a much-publicized 2009 tangle with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)

LAS VEGAS - It is hard to imagine the Breitbart website without its namesake, Andrew Breitbart, whose pugnacious personality was unexpectedly extinguished when he died of heart failure March 1 at age 43. Indeed, in the months since he collapsed on a sidewalk near his Westwood home, Breitbart's closest colleagues have often found themselves wondering, “What would Andrew do?” “We often don't know what Andrew would have done,” said Breitbart News Editor in Chief Joel Pollak, a failed GOP congressional candidate who got into politics after a much-publicized 2009 tangle with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)

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.

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.

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.

Andrew Breitbart loathed the "institutional left," and what he called "the Democrat media complex. " A son of Brentwood who cut his sharp online incisors working alongside blogging pioneers Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington, Breitbart went on to forge an eponymous website and persona as one of the fiercest voices of the right. His mission appeared cut short March 1, when he died of heart failure. Breitbart was just 43. But an unlikely crew of friends and associates - his oldest childhood friend, a pair of Harvard-educated lawyers, a financier/filmmaker who served in the Navy and a musician pal who reinforces the fallen leader's voice as the website's "minister of culture" - scarcely paused after the loss.

It is only fitting that the Right Online conference, a project of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, should hold its conference for political bloggers in the Sands Expo, a huge meeting and convention facility next to The Venetian hotel casino here on The Strip. After all, the corporation that owns both entities, Las Vegas Sands, is owned by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a Republican who has turned the 2012 presidential campaign into something of a personal sandbox. “I know the left hates guys like Sheldon Adelson and David Koch,” Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips said as he welcomed the bloggers Friday to their two-day conference, which he said was designed as a counterpoint to the left's Netroots Nation gatherings.

LAS VEGAS -- It was a rousing pep talk for a ballroom full of conservative bloggers, and a tribute to a fallen compadre Friday evening, as Sarah Palin honored the memory of the late Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart and told an annual gathering of conservative new media that they fill a vital role in the nation's political discourse. In some ways, Palin's 35-minute speech was also a vintage performance, her sing-song voice rising and falling as she also castigated and mocked the “lamestream media,” accusing it of failing to vet then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and of promulgating rumors about her personal life, which still seem to get under her skin.

"I Feel Your Pain," Liz Magic Laser's captivating 2011 performance piece, begins with a couple nibbling popcorn in a theater and sharing a shy kiss. "Hey," the man asks his flushed companion, "can I read you what I wrote in my journal last night? It's about you. " The sweet, early moments of a courtship, clearly. But no. Actually the words are adapted from an interview Glenn Beck conducted with Sarah Palin in 2010, in which he muses, hopefully, about whether she is "the one. " What ensues over the next 80 minutes of Laser's work -- on video, in the New York artist's first L.A. show, at Various Small Fires -- is simultaneously absurd, disturbing, comical, creepy and revealing.

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.

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.

Kennedy: A March 7 Op-Ed article about Andrew Breitbart and James Q. Wilson said that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died in 2007. He died in 2009.

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.

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.

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.