Government Reform

State lawmakers tiptoed Tuesday into the roiling debate over how to overhaul California government. With less than a month left in the legislative session, proponents of change urged a state Senate panel to quickly adopt ideas that have bipartisan support while continuing to push for solutions to tougher problems -- or risk having voters do it for them. "It really comes down to a question of political will -- as opposed to political won't," said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, a business-backed group that is pressing for a constitutional convention to let citizens draft a new blueprint for the way state government operates.

Cubans waited hours in line for tickets, packed Havana's cinemas and watched with rapt attention as "The Lives of Others," a chilling account of East German secret-police repression of communism's doubters, arrived in the Cuban capital last month. Was the debut of the Academy Award-winning film two years after its release another signal that Cuba's Communist leaders are open to reform?

The CIA's internal investigative branch will be subjected to a series of new checks and controls designed to give targets of in-house probes greater ability to defend themselves, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a statement to the agency's employees. Among the changes is the creation of two positions to oversee the work of the CIA's inspector general, including a "quality control officer" charged with monitoring the inspector's handling of evidence and testimony.

Key partners in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government may seek the ouster of the Shiite Muslim leader if he fails to move quickly on stalled benchmark reforms and on sharing in decision making.

Government and opposition negotiators agreed Friday to work toward a raft of electoral and constitutional reforms, but remained bitterly divided over how Kenya's presidential rivals might settle their differences and share power in a coalition. Former U.N.

If Los Angeles leaders take the advice of Controller Laura Chick, a minister from Idaho who has studied philosophy would soon be responsible for reforming a dysfunctional bureaucracy that spends millions of dollars on unproven anti-gang programs. Jeff Carr was chosen by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last year to bring a fresh eye to gang problems in a city seen nationally as a launching pad for bands of violent youth.

Three years after state officials promised to fix California's troubled juvenile prisons, advocates for incarcerated youths are urging a judge to appoint a receiver to take over a system they say remains tragically broken. The plea came in a filing last week from lawyers who had settled with the state after suing to transform institutions they said treated children as hardened criminals without regard for their welfare.

The Supreme Court this week may reopen for the first time in more than 30 years the debate over what qualifies as an "indecent" broadcast. The media environment has changed dramatically since 1978, when the court last ruled on this issue: Today's viewers and listeners are exposed to the more freewheeling cable TV, Internet and "shock jocks" on satellite radio.

China usually doesn't like to air its dirty laundry. But when fighting a wily foe, in this case its own well-entrenched bureaucrats, the leadership isn't above a bit of guerrilla warfare. Recently, the China Youth Daily, a mainstream Communist Party newspaper affiliated with President Hu Jintao's power base, released an online survey that found more than 90% of Chinese were fed up with inefficiency and bureaucratic muddle.

A Republican state senator proposed political reform legislation Wednesday that hasn't got a snowball's chance in a Sacramento summer. And that's too bad, because it could cure some serious ills. The proposed state constitutional amendment would, in one package: * Repeal legislative term limits, but not until 2016. Any benefit to current legislators would be diluted and delayed far into the future. * Strip the Legislature of its power to draw district maps, a flagrant conflict of interest.