Betrayal

In 1989, New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm published her famous essay, "The Journalist and the Murderer," with its notoriously overheated opening sentence: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. " This was back in the era when the New Yorker specialized in overheated and overhyped essays, including "The Fate of the Earth" by Jonathan Schell, which argued that all normal life must cease until we eliminate nuclear weapons.

The trailers for ABC's new lineup of dramas have been released, and the early buzz so far is all about "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. " Joss Whedon's TV spin-off of the feature film franchise "The Avengers" is set to anchor a Tuesday night filled with new programming. ABC Entertainment Group president Paul Lee says he has high hopes that the show will draw record ratings. The other new dramas from ABC are "Once Upon a Time in Wonderland," "Mind Games," "Betrayal," "Lucky 7," "Resurrection" and "Killer Women.

It's not the same without Tom Bradac ("Bradac Acknowledges Grove Ousted Him" by Rick VanderKnyff, Calendar, July 19). Just knowing he is no longer behind the Grove Shakespeare Festival, as he was for so many years, is a disappointment. He saw it through its inception, its early years of getting a foothold in the community, its struggle with recalcitrant board members who were often reluctant to come up with the funds to support it, and now, just when all seemed to be going well, he is suddenly pushed out. Why?

One hundred prisoners held in the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are engaged in a hunger strike -- a desperate attempt to get the attention of President Obama, who was elected in 2008 having promised to shut the place down. Not only did Obama fail to close the facility, his administration has neglected to appoint anyone to oversee repatriation of the 86 current prisoners who have been cleared for release. Among the 166 detainees at Guantanamo, some, no doubt, are true enemies of the United States.

The first time we see Juliette Binoche's Emma, she is sitting at a lone table at the far end of an austere English pub. The floor beneath the scene is turning, slowly carrying the woman around to face the audience at the Roundabout Theatre Company as if she were a precious figurine on a carousel that had once carried joy.

"The Mistress" is nasty, brutish, short--and terrific, too. It explores the ways in which betrayal, corruption and cravenness in the political sphere--which is, in the end, a sphere of human relations--make love in so-called private life utterly impossible. Philippe Tapon's vision is a dark one, and he has the courage never to flinch from the far-from-pretty characters he has created, from the lies they tell and from the often-unintended consequences of their actions.

Less than five minutes into "Legacy," a nervous commando says, "I've got a bad feeling about this" ? and here come the conspiracies, betrayals and torture. But, aspiring for psychological drama rather than action movie, the film takes itself far too seriously. Idris Elba plays Malcolm Gray, who, if we can believe anything we're told, is a black-ops assassin who does really, really terrible things. A mission goes wrong (betrayal!), he's captured and tortured (told you). Later, shattered Gray is holed up in a hotel room, drinking gin and muttering to himself ?

Ralph Nader has done more to encourage inflation than any man in history. He raised the price of betrayal from 30 pieces of silver to $12 million. DICK GUTTMAN Malibu

I couldn't figure out why Robbins was so forthright about his wrongdoing and so cavalier about a possible prison sentence. Then, it turns out he has been wearing a wire and working for the feds. Now I see. So, to racketeering, cheating, fraud, dishonesty and betrayal of the public trust, we can now add betrayal to save his own a--. What a guy! BURT WILSON, Simi Valley

The sending of arms to Iran by the Reagan Administration makes the Watergate affair look benign. Watergate was only a domestic offense. Our President has just alienated the world with this irresponsible act of dishonesty and betrayal. ELIZABETH SZABO West Covina

The jobs of the nation's citizen soldiers are supposed to be safe while they are serving their country: Federal law does not allow employers to penalize service members because of their military duties. Yet every year, thousands of National Guard and Reserve troops coming home from Afghanistan and elsewhere find they have been replaced, demoted, denied benefits or seniority. Government agencies are among the most frequent offenders, accounting for about a third of the more than 15,000 complaints filed with federal authorities since the end of September 2001, records show.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, California's most, ah, colorful former first couple, were back in the news this week. On Tuesday, using his own life as an example of the American Dream, Schwarzenegger argued for immigration reform during a panel discussion at his USC institute. Also Tuesday, Shriver announced she would return to NBC as a "special anchor" focusing on women's issues. Which raises the question: Whose reinvention is working out better? Since leaving office in 2011 and being forced to admit he had fathered a child with his family's longtime housekeeper, Schwarzenegger, 65, has tried to recreate himself as the cartoonish movie action hero that brought him worldwide fame.

President Obama spit his game, as the kids say, when he spoke to an enthusiastic crowd at a Planned Parenthood conference a little over a week ago: “You're making me blush,” he cooed to their thunderous applause. “I love you back.” Oh, how he wooed them: “Forty years after the Supreme Court affirmed a woman's constitutional right to privacy, including the right to choose, we shouldn't have to remind people that when it comes to a woman's health, no politician should get to decide what's best for you.” A week later, he spit in their eye. His administration is fighting a federal judge's ruling that the emergency contraception pill known as Plan B should be available to teenagers and girls of all ages without a prescription.

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. - In Afghanistan, Tonya Long, a 13-year Army veteran, approved military cash payments to Afghan drivers of "jingle trucks," the colorful transport trucks that carry supplies to U.S. bases. Last week, Staff Sgt. Long stood in the dock in a federal courtroom here and read aloud from a statement she had written on notebook paper: "I cannot express how sorry I am … I chose to betray my country and my family. " She did not ask for mercy, she told a judge, "because I don't deserve it. " Long, 30, had pleaded guilty to stealing at least $1 million and shipping the cash in hundred-dollar bills to the U.S. in the guts of hollowed-out VCR players.

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached deals Thursday with two political rivals that will enable him to forge a broad-based, but potentially unstable, coalition government. After weeks of hard-fought negotiations with the centrist party Yesh Atid and the nationalist Jewish Home, Netanyahu managed to persuade both to join his government with a combination of political promises and coveted ministry appointments. The agreements were still awaiting final signatures Thursday night, reportedly delayed by discussion of government titles for some players.

Some survivors of the 2009 Fort Hood massacre say the government has neglected them. On Tuesday, the same night President Barack Obama gave his State-of-the-Union speech, ABC's "Nightline" was to broadcast interviews with disgruntled survivors, including a Fort Hood civilian police officer who accuses the government of betrayal. "Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," former Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who was shot three times, told ABC News. "In fact, they've been neglected.

Re "New Look at Ancient Betrayer," April 21: As a Jew interested in the traditional aspects of Judas' betrayal of Christ and its horrendous affect on my people, I was more than fascinated by the possibility that the eternal stigma attached to Judas and his "betrayal" may have been misunderstood and/or misinterpreted. My eternal question has been: If Jesus' mission on Earth was solely for the purpose of being sacrificed as the Lamb of God for the sins of man, how could Judas, who aided in that process, be seen as anything but a direct instrument of God, thereby deserving respect and reverence, certainly not the reviling he and my people have suffered ever since as a result of his act. ENID LAMBERT Malibu

Your editorial "Time to Give Up Censorship Move" (Oct. 19) is dead wrong. The Santa Ana City Council must continue its suit against Mitchell Bros. and its insidious lucrative adult theater. There is a delicate balance between mental stability and lives shattered, lived in limbo or institutionalized later. The book "A Betrayal of Innocence" by David B. Peters documents many evils starting from pornography and not yet exposed. VERA McINTYRE Sun City

In a 1996 Supreme Court decision protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that Colorado voters had evidenced an unconstitutional "animus" toward homosexuality. Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, huffing: "I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible - murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals - and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. " Seven years later, when the court overturned a Texas law that criminalized same-sex sodomy, Scalia again dissented, writing: "The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are 'immoral and unacceptable' - the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity.

Former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky was sentenced Tuesday to a minimum of 30 years in prison, meaning he will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars in a child sex-abuse scandal that roiled the nation and the shook the sports powerhouse. The sentence of 30 years to 60 years in prison was far less than the 400 years that Judge John Cleland could have imposed, but it means that Sandusky would be almost 100 years old before he has any chance of being released.