Legislature

SACRAMENTO - The next class of the Legislature will be stocked with a new variety of lawmaker, the product of a new political order intended to foster moderation, compromise and foresight in an institution not known for such things. Able to serve longer in one house under revamped term limits, the newly elected will have time to develop expertise. They may well be more accountable to voters because their seats will no longer be safe as they were when districts were gerrymandered to maintain the status quo. And their moderation, born of more balanced districts and nonpartisan primaries, can serve as a check on Democrats' emerging supermajorities in both houses.

There were 14 sports figures who ran for election on Tuesday. Of those 14, nine lost. And any sports fan will tell you that a 5-9 record will not qualify you for the playoffs. A look at the results: Winners: Jim Renacci, Arena Football League owner, Ohio, R, U.S. House. Jon Runyan, NFL, New Jersey, D, U.S. House. Fred Smith, Harlem Globetrotter, Arkansas, Green, Legislature. Jim Tedisco, college basketball, New York, R, Legislature. Losers : Clint Didier, NFL, Washington State, R, public lands commissioner.

Democrats were within striking distance of a supermajority in the state Senate late Tuesday, and were drawing near in the Assembly as well, moving the party closer to unilateral power to raise taxes. The potential gains, a result of sweeping changes in California's political system, captivated the Capitol on a night in which there also were unprecedented battles within the state's congressional delegation. If the Democrats achieve a supermajority, as party leaders believed likely, it would mark the first time either party has captured two-thirds of the seats in the Senate or Assembly in 34 years.

BEIJING - Purged Chinese politician Bo Xilai has been expelled from the legislature in a preliminary move that will allow him to be tried in criminal court on charges of corruption and covering up his wife's role in a bizarre murder plot. Although widely anticipated, the expulsion adds to the political turmoil in the run-up to next month's Communist Party congress, when a new leadership is to be formally anointed. Bo's supporters - mostly neo-Maoists who believe that economic reforms have gone too far - think his prosecution is politically motivated by rivals in the leadership.

SACRAMENTO - The last time one party held a two-thirds majority in the California Senate, President Johnson was sending troops to Vietnam, Los Angeles was recovering from the Watts riots and the state's governor was named Brown - Pat Brown. That was 1965. Nearly half a century later, Democrats hope they are on the verge of again winning a supermajority in the upper house when voters go to the polls next month to fill 100 seats in the Legislature. With a gain of two seats, the Democrats would have it, putting them halfway to their goal of nearly absolute power over California's policies and finances.

SACRAMENTO - Consumer groups are trying to kill legislation that they say may lead to the elimination of most telephone regulation in California. Last month, the Legislature overwhelmingly approved a bill to eliminate all oversight of Internet phone service in California. Proponents, led by Silicon Valley companies, assured lawmakers that it would not affect old-fashioned, copper-wire telephone service still regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission. Now the consumer groups are urging Gov. Jerry Brown to veto the bill, saying the nation's big phone companies, including AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., are pressuring Washington to phase out the copper-wire-and-switches "legacy" phone service altogether.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown is reopening a state trade office in China after a similar one closed nine years ago amid criticism by the Legislature. The Shanghai office is to be funded with $1 million in private-sector funds raised by the Bay Area Council, a San Francisco-area business group. The office is expected to open by the end of the year, and Brown hopes to visit China as the head of a trade delegation in the spring, the council said. China is California's third-largest trading partner, buying $14.1 billion in California-produced goods and services in 2011.

Edward Vincent was a year away from making history in 1983 as Inglewood's first black mayor when he heard a woman screaming on a city street that her purse had been snatched and decided "to practice what I've been preaching. " At the time, he was a city councilman who emphasized anti-crime initiatives. He also was a former star running back at the University of Iowa who had briefly played for the Los Angeles Rams in the late 1950s. And he was about to become a hands-on crime stopper.

The debate over whether to offer driver's licenses to illegal immigrants has a usefully neurological angle: It's a way of defining "insanity" as the process of shooting yourself in the foot in the expectation that someone else will scream in pain. The people who are supposedly afflicted with the pain are undocumented immigrants, who are theoretically deprived of the right to drive on our roads. The injury inflicted on society arises from the fact that many of the supposed targets of this punishment drive anyway.

Efforts to more closely regulate a controversial form of healthcare self-insurance being sold to small employers ran into business opposition in the final weeks of the Legislature's session and got shelved for now. But California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones and other backers of the crackdown on company self-insurance vow to bring back the legislation, possibly during a special session on healthcare expected in December. "We think with a little more time we will be able to educate lawmakers about the threat posed by this loophole" in the federal Affordable Care Act, Jones said.