Discipline

"The Dog Whisperer" Cesar Millan is usually focused on rehabbing canines -- but he's now revealing some work he had to do on himself following a suicide attempt in 2010. In February of that year, he lost his top dog, Daddy, to cancer after 16 years as a team. A month later, Millan's wife told him she wanted a divorce after 16 years of marriage. The combined blow knocked him for a loop, he shares in "Cesar Millan: The Real Story," a documentary on Nat Geo Wild. In May 2010, he attempted suicide via drug overdose, winding up unconscious and hospitalized, he said.

The limits on student suspensions approved by the Los Angeles Unified school board this week may burnish the district's progressive credentials, putting L.A. in the forefront of a national shift away from zero-tolerance policies that ban kids from campus for minor offenses. But the measure, which forbids suspensions for "willful defiance," has also shown how complicated and emotional the issue of student discipline can be. The two school board members who voted against it have markedly different perspectives that rarely make them allies.

The Medical Board of California licenses physicians and other medical professionals. It also investigates medical complaints and issues disciplinary actions. The most serious penalties include license revocation, suspension and probation. These are the Los Angeles County physicians and surgeons subject to serious disciplinary actions between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31, 1998, according to medical board documents. Generally, final actions are published only after all appeals are exhausted. Dr.

UC Irvine's chancellor pledged Wednesday to find and discipline whoever slipped a racist note into a black female student's backpack last week. The student found the note, which read "Go back 2 Africa slave," while she was in the science library on May 7, according to UCI police. The department is investigating what it is calling a hate incident. "When apprehended, the responsible individual(s) will face appropriate sanctions," Chancellor Michael Drake said in a statement on UCI's website.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Bernard J. Schwartz was censured Thursday by the state Commission on Judicial Performance for statements he made to police during his arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol last year in Pismo Beach. The director of the commission said censure was the panel's most serious punishment short of being removed from the bench. Schwartz, 45, can continue to preside over criminal hearings.

Just beneath the surface of Los Angeles' charter reform debate, a historic struggle for power is being waged inside the LAPD, with the department's chief trying to solidify his authority and the city's police union taking what once would have been considered desperate measures to resist. According to documents submitted to the city's two charter commissions and interviews with many of the principals, Police Chief Bernard C.

It was 9:15 on the night of May 27, and Cara Vanni was chatting with a friend on the phone, just like any number of San Clemente teen-agers. Suddenly the line went dead. A minute later, strangers appeared in her bedroom doorway. "My parents brought these three people into my room," Cara, 16, recalled. "At first I thought they were old friends of the family who were about to say they knew me when I was 4. They weren't."

The current Wall Street Journal Magazine queries six luminaries on the topic of  discipline. Among those asked were designer Karl Lagerfeld, performance artist Marina Abramovic and London-based restaurateur and author of “ Plenty ” and “ Jerusalem ,” Yotam Ottolenghi . Here's what he had to say about discipline in the kitchen. "I don't think discipline applies to one single school of cooking. I don't think molecular gastronomy requires more discipline than rustic French cooking or mama's cooking in a Greek village.

Now that the NFL draft is over, the league will turn its attention to disciplining the New Orleans Saints players involved in the pay-for-performance bounty scandal. It's possible that suspensions could be announced Monday. "With the discipline that involved the players, we hope to be doing that very soon and get that behind us," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday, before the start of the first round. "We want to complete the work that we've been starting. We want to make sure that we're thorough and fair.

Recent news stories about lawyer Richard DeGallegos' alleged mistreatment of his legal clients were of interest to many people who have been frustrated (or made ill or made paupers) due to legal abuses. Their attorneys have: failed to appear in court or missed deadlines, filed or settled a lawsuit without a client's knowledge or consent, overcharged or kept the client's money, not answered calls, or kept the client informed, dragged out a simple lawsuit for 5 to 10 years, etc., etc. Like a trip to the dentist, visiting a lawyer is probably inevitable for virtually all of us. The pain of injury, divorce, death in the family, business problems, or being sued eventually forces each of us to use legal services, at some time.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Tuesday said it planned to appeal a National Labor Relations Board judge's order to rescind disciplinary actions against five engineers and scientists. "Caltech respectfully disagrees with the decision and intends to appeal," JPL spokeswoman Veronica McGregor said in a brief statement. Administrative Law Judge William G. Kocol had ordered JPL, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology for NASA, to remove disciplinary letters from the employee files of the five.

A National Labor Relations Board judge has ordered NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to rescind disciplinary actions against five scientists who shared emails at work about a Supreme Court decision on background security checks for JPL employees. Administrative Law Judge William G. Kocol ordered JPL to purge disciplinary letters related to the case from the employee files of Dennis Byrnes, Scott Maxwell, Larry D'Addario, Robert Nelson and William Bruce Banerdt. The five were accused of violating rules against unsolicited spam and bulk email.

SACRAMENTO - Speaker John Pérez wants voters to know something: Cash may be cascading into state coffers as it hasn't for years. Democrats may totally control the Assembly with a new supermajority. But they're not going to be drunken sailors. They're going to be disciplined and conservative, at least by Democratic standards. Pérez, 43, a Los Angeles Democrat and former labor leader, invited me into his ornate Capitol office last week to get the word out. "It shouldn't - but it may - surprise folks that Democrats with our supermajority will be looking to build on the fiscal responsibility that we've shown the last couple of years," the speaker said right off. Actually, the Legislature whacked programs for five years because of the recession.

Re "'Willful defiance' in schools," Editorial, April 16 "Willful defiance" is hardly a "relatively minor infraction" that rarely merits a suspension from school. Unchecked, it leads to a breakdown of classroom discipline, adversely affecting the majority of students who are there to learn. School suspensions can be viewed in quite a different way than as a reward. As a former middle school dean who ran the referral room, I can say with some certainty that school suspensions are a tool to get parents involved in helping to curb defiant classroom behavior that eats into vital instruction time.

Re "'Willful defiance' in schools," Editorial, April 16 As a principal in the Los Angeles Unified School District, I have a few concerns about your editorial on suspension policy. The Times said that suspending kids from school rarely makes sense except in cases of safety. Yes, but students witnessing "willful defiance" must be able to see accountability. Teachers should provide homework for that student and have a day off from being treated with disrespect. How wonderful it would be to follow your suggestion of setting up special classrooms and school detention centers with tutors.

A commander in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was disciplined after his phone rang during a meeting with top brass. But it wasn't failing to put his phone on silent that raised eyebrows. It was the ring tone. Cmdr. Paul Pietrantoni, one of Sheriff Lee Baca's hand-picked jail reformers, was meeting with other top supervisors when his personal cellphone played "The Oriental Riff" - accompanied by a mock, stereotypical Asian voice saying: "Hello, you pick up phone, you pick up phone.

Credit card users with money smarts and discipline can protect themselves better than any legislation can. Initial provisions of the federal Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act took effect in August. They require banks to give cardholders longer notice before increasing the interest rates on their plastic. And cardholders can opt out as long as they stop making charges and pay the balance under existing rates within five years. That's all good, of course.

The Oakland Unified School District and the U.S. Department of Education reached an agreement last week that would allow federal officials to monitor the district's efforts to curb the number of out-of-school suspensions of its African American students. The resolution, which the Oakland school board passed unanimously, closes an investigation by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights into whether African American students were disciplined more frequently and harshly than their white classmates.

Forget about learning the state capitals, at least, as the sum total of your knowledge of geography. "Geography is about meaning, not knowing place names and memorizing lists - that was school geography," said Daniel Edelson, vice president for education programs at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. Say hello to the new geography. It runs your GPS unit, takes you on mobile-device-guided tours, helps you find and see hotel rooms before you book them. Want to calculate your estimated time of arrival, locate a nearby gluten-free restaurant, or find out whether it's raining in Río?

The current Wall Street Journal Magazine queries six luminaries on the topic of  discipline. Among those asked were designer Karl Lagerfeld, performance artist Marina Abramovic and London-based restaurateur and author of “ Plenty ” and “ Jerusalem ,” Yotam Ottolenghi . Here's what he had to say about discipline in the kitchen. "I don't think discipline applies to one single school of cooking. I don't think molecular gastronomy requires more discipline than rustic French cooking or mama's cooking in a Greek village.