Leadership

House Republicans have looked to an unlikely place for a fresh face to help lead them out of the political wilderness, tapping Rep. Kevin McCarthy from solidly Democratic California as their chief deputy whip. Officially, the Bakersfield lawmaker -- who has ascended to a party leadership post after only one term in Congress -- will be responsible for helping Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia plot the GOP response to the Democratic majority's legislative agenda.

The board majority of the Screen Actors Guild on Monday stepped up its efforts to oust the union's executive director, taking its case directly to members. In an e-mail statement to SAG members, the majority coalition said it no longer had confidence in the leadership of Doug Allen, citing his "failed strategy" for securing a new contract for actors. SAG members have been without a contract for almost seven months.

On the eve of his inauguration as 44th president, Barack Obama dropped in on wounded veterans of a war that he vows to end, pitched in with community volunteers whose work he promises to promote and dined with leaders of two parties he pledges to unite. On the last full day in office for the 43rd president, George W. Bush kept a low profile at the White House but granted clemency for two former Border Patrol officers in a controversial case.

The prospect of a new contract for Hollywood's film and TV actors brightened Monday after the Screen Actors Guild board appointed a new negotiating team and ousted the union's executive director. In a dramatic shake-up of the union's leadership, the board tapped former SAG General Counsel David White as the guild's interim executive director after firing Doug Allen, citing a leadership crisis that has paralyzed Hollywood's largest actors union. For now, Allen's job will be split in two.

Republican officials voted Friday to elect their first black national party chairman, a response in part to election defeats that have left the party's base more white and Southern at a time when the country is growing more diverse. The election of Michael Steele puts in the limelight a charismatic African American who has championed outreach to minorities as key to the party's future.

Throwing a monkey wrench into the renewal of contract talks with the major studios, Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg has launched a legal challenge to the legitimacy of the union's newly appointed leadership.

In 1994, Rush Limbaugh was a field marshal in the Republican revolution, rallying troops fervid in their passion, armed with a change agenda and determined to shake Washington upside down. Fifteen years later, Republicans are politically hobbled and Democrats are fervid in their passion, armed with a change agenda and determined, along with their new president, to shake Washington upside down. And again there is Limbaugh, master of the talk radio universe, unchanged and unbowed.

California's historic leadership in higher education is in decline, with the state failing to provide a new generation of low-income, heavily Latino and immigrant students with the college prospects their parents and grandparents enjoyed, according to a study released Thursday.

He started out as a champion of their ideals, the leader of a group of conservative Republican state senators devoted to cutting the size of government and blocking tax increases for their rural and suburban constituents. But over time, state Sen. Dave Cogdill came to see the crisis facing California as bigger than his own closely held views. Then late Tuesday, two former allies walked into his office to deliver the news that his reign was over.

Antonio Villaraigosa has reigned over Los Angeles for four years with the same guile and keen political instincts he used to dethrone the sitting mayor in 2005. Those skills have won him national attention and allowed him to recover from what he refers to as "the mistake that looms over all others": the self-inflicted humiliation two years ago of an affair with a television news anchor that ended his 20-year marriage and damaged his standing with many voters.