Leadership

Iran's economy stood in shambles and its international status was at a nadir. Disturbed by the leadership of then-President Ali Khamenei, Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi wrote him a letter and threatened to resign from his high-ranking post, according to news accounts at the time. "The affairs of Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan are in your hands," Mousavi's 1988 missive reportedly said. "You know better how disastrous these have been to the country."

Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens doesn't have a 2010 election opponent yet, but she laid out what appeared to be a blueprint Monday for how she plans to win voter approval. Using the end of her first year in office as the hook, Hutchens cited changes she made in jail management, said she had restored public trust in the office and would fire any deputy caught lying in so-called "code of silence" situations.

The chief of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mahsud, and close associates attended the funeral of a militant commander in the country's tribal areas but left before a suspected U.S. drone attack that killed dozens of people, residents said Wednesday. The area where the attack occurred, the Bekh Mary Langara region of South Waziristan, is remote and there was no independent confirmation of the number of casualties.

Forty-two years after Pat Brown left office and 13 years after he died, his California took quite a beating last week. The visionary governor swept into office in 1959, and by the time he was swept out eight years later, he had created the 16-dam, multiple-aqueduct state water project, devised the three-tier college and university system, constructed nine major campuses and built more than 1,000 miles of freeways to connect regions of his burgeoning state.

Ted Kennedy wakes up mornings in his house on Cape Cod to a packet of news clippings put together by his wife. If there's a hearing going on in Washington, he watches on his computer. Five hundred miles away, Congress is wrestling with historic legislation to give every American access to quality healthcare. It is the moment the Massachusetts Democrat has worked toward for 46 years.

Are you ready for some football? Not as ready as Roger Goodell is, trust me. You might tire of all the non-football NFL news of the last several weeks, but at least you're not living it. The commissioner must long for the days when "Cable fight" meant trying to get the NFL Network in more households, not trying to pry apart Oakland Raiders coaches. Goodell is fond of saying the NFL is the "ultimate reality show," and who can argue? Not with every other story having to do with Michael Vick coming back, Plaxico Burress going away and Brett Favre doing a little of both.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's death leaves a void in the firmament of American politics, one that will be difficult to fill -- not only because the Democratic Party has no understudy ready for his role, but also because Congress has changed so much in the more than four decades of his career. Kennedy was the polestar of old-fashioned Democratic liberalism, the constant point against which much of his party measured itself. "The commitment I seek is not to outworn views but to old values that will never wear out," he told the 1980 Democratic convention.

When members of the Screen Actors Guild cast their ballots for president in the coming weeks, they will be voting for a leader who can best repair the damage inflicted on Hollywood's largest talent union over the last two years. With 125,000 members, the 76-year-old SAG is still the mightiest union in Hollywood. But its clout has been diminished by internal bickering, a divided boardroom and a disastrous power struggle with a smaller union that represents actors as well as broadcast journalists, disc jockeys and recording artists.

He came to power as an insurgent vowing to shake up the stodgy House of Labor that was the AFL-CIO. Fourteen years later, John J. Sweeney, an immigrants' son who rose to the pinnacle of U.S. unionism, is stepping down this month as president of the AFL-CIO. The labor movement remains deeply divided, its ranks greatly thinned, its top legislative goals unrealized and unemployment nearing 10%, the highest in more than a quarter of a century. Yet Sweeney, 75, departs as organized labor faces its best prospects in years.

Four and a half years ago, a Los Angeles city councilman looking to become mayor promised to take the bureaucracy into uncharted territory by helping residents get better access to cheaper prescription drugs. The LA-Rx program, unveiled in the heat of Antonio Villaraigosa's campaign, was ambitious. It was innovative. And it took a back seat to other initiatives once he won office. When Villaraigosa finally unveiled the start of LA-Rx last week, it was one of several signs that the mayor -- now in his second term -- is trying to shed a reputation for being long on promises and short on follow-through.