Mails

'Life is short. Have an affair." That's the slogan of the Ashley Madison dating service, a website for people who want to cheat on their partners. That's right, unlike traditional Internet dating sites -- where you're expected to say you're unattached no matter what the truth is -- Ashley Madison is honest about its duplicity. Unlike match.

SACRAMENTO - Sensitive personal information for more than 700,000 people who provide or receive home care for the elderly and disabled may have been compromised when payroll data went missing in the mail, state officials revealed Friday night. The breach occurred whenHewlett-Packard, which handles the payroll data for workers in California's In-Home Supportive Services program, was shipping information including Social Security numbers to an office in Riverside last month. The package arrived damaged and incomplete.

The Clinton presidential library on Friday released more than 75,000 e-mail messages that were sent by and to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, but they offered little new insight into her personality. The messages showed Kagan — currently the Obama administration's top lawyer to the high court and a former dean of Harvard Law School — to be more administrator than provocateur. Part of that was because of Kagan's role in the Clinton administration. As deputy director of President Clinton's domestic policy shop, she sat atop a pyramid of staffers who largely forwarded their proposals to her. Her job was to synthesize opinions to present to Clinton, not to sound off. There were, however, some flashes of personality.

Election officials have begun sending out vote-by-mail ballots for the June 5 primary. The forms can be requested from county registrars until May 29. But May 21 is the last day to register to vote in this year's primary, which will mark the first widespread use of California's new election system, approved by state voters in 2010. Party primaries are a thing of the past for all but the office of president and for county central committees. This year, all voters will get a single ballot listing every candidate for their congressional and state legislative districts.

A gaggle of transportation officials and community leaders gathered this week to help shape the future of public transit in Los Angeles County — to decide, in effect, whether it's time for revolutionary change, or whether the status quo should prevail. Status quo won by a knockout. The so-called Metro Blue Ribbon Committee was established by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority late last year to come up with "a new regional transit vision" for bus and rail systems.

Rep. Christopher Lee, a second-term Republican lawmaker representing western New York, abruptly resigned Wednesday after flirtatious e-mails, including a photo of him shirtless, were posted online by a gossip website. In a brief statement, Lee referred only obliquely to "this distraction," apologizing "deeply and sincerely" for harm he caused his family, staff and constituents. Just hours earlier, the Gawker website posted e-mails Lee exchanged with an unnamed, single 34-year-old woman in response to her personal ad on Craigslist.

They arrive nearly every day, these sad, strange e-mails from Iraq. They are unsentimental and hard, gathered by stringers scattered across a country at war. They're often tough to follow, terse poems with broken rhythms and words landing in wrong places. But there's an unadorned power that speaks to things beyond style and grammar. "An IP source said that some gunmen assassinated yesterday evening staff brigadier general in the Iraqi army and his wife in Tobchi (west Baghdad)

Two high-profile anti-terrorism task forces did not inform the Defense Department about contacts between a radical Islamic cleric and the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in last week's rampage at Ft. Hood, a senior Defense official said Tuesday. On the day of a memorial service for those killed at the Texas military base, the revelation compounded questions about whether the government had known enough in advance to stop the gunman. The FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Forces investigated e-mails that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sent over the last year to Anwar al Awlaki, an imam in Yemen who espouses a radical Islamist ideology and who has ties to militants.

It took just one word for Apple Inc. to make headlines. "Yep," wrote Apple chief Steve Jobs in an e-mail. The message was addressed to Andrea Nepori, an Italian blogger who wrote to sjobs@apple.com this week. He asked the reclusive Apple founder whether he'd be able to sync his free e-books to the iPad, due to hit U.S. stores next week. Jobs' affirmation wasn't the real news. That particular detail was listed on Apple's website before Nepori's inquiry. The response itself is what prompted bloggers to fly off the handle.

After insisting that no one was receiving unsolicited e-mails from the White House, officials reversed themselves Monday night -- but blamed outside political groups for the messages. White House online director Macon Phillips said in a blog posting that independent groups, which he didn't name, had signed up their members to get updates about Obama's projects and priorities. "It has come to our attention that some people may have been subscribed to our e-mail lists without their knowledge -- likely as a result of efforts by outside groups of all political stripes -- and we regret any inconvenience caused by receiving an unexpected message," Phillips wrote.

Responding to letters to the editor on the dust-up between the Vatican and a group of American nuns, reader Joseph S. David of Brea wrote: "Is it liberal bias that The Times had one columnist and four letter writers castigate the Vatican for its recent call to liberal American nuns to reform, but no one to defend it? "In truth, defense is unnecessary for the offense that is the liberal nuns: flaunting of Roman Catholic doctrines, unfaithfulness to religious vows and a misinterpretation of Vatican II. They forget that when the church's Magisterium (its teaching office)

The Senate passed a bill aimed at salvaging the United States Postal Service, which is hemorrhaging millions of dollars a day as fewer people send letters and conduct business by mail. The legislation would allow the postal service to reduce its pension and retiree benefit costs and pave the way for service changes. The bill passed by a vote of 62 to 37 Wednesday, after two days of voting on amendments. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), one of the bill's sponsors, said it would put the postal service back on course to financial health.

YouMail recently updated its app to include the ability to easily ditch a telemarketer or stalker's call. It turns out that YouMail will be ditching BlackBerry. The company announced that it will suspend further development for the platform . "This was a tough decision, especially since the BlackBerry is what got us our first million registered users and put us on the map as a company," YouMail said in a blog post. "But over the past year we've seen our BlackBerry audience steadily shrink, with a steady exodus of those users moving to the iPhone and to Android.

A wise man learns from his foe. Democrats have carefully studied Republicans, and now Gov. Jerry Brown may be benefiting. Or maybe not. "Talk to me in a month," says Democratic guru Gale Kaufman, who recommended that Brown emulate the longtime GOP strategy of mailing ballot-measure petitions directly to voters for their signatures. More than 1 million California voters — mainly reliable Democrats — received a Brown blurb at home last week, preceded by a robocall from the governor announcing it was in the mail.

The woman's voice in telephone messages left for singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was low and steady. "You are a sick man....You are a thief....You are a common thief. " Prosecutors say the voice mails were from Cohen's former business manager, Kelley Lynch, 55, who is on trial for allegedly making harassing phone calls to Cohen, sending him, his attorneys and other people he knew thousands of emails and violating restraining orders. Lynch, sitting next to her attorneys, occasionally smiled as voice mails from 2011 were played for jurors in L.A. County Superior Court on Friday.

SACRAMENTO - Political treasurer Kinde Durkee is expected to plead guilty to mail fraud charges and could face up to 12 years in prison for allegedly pilfering more than $7 million from at least 50 candidates and nonprofit groups, according to people close to the case. Durkee is scheduled to appear Friday in federal court in Sacramento to face five counts of mail fraud involving the misuse of campaign accounts for clients including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Federal prosecutors have approved a plea agreement in which they will recommend that the judge consider a sentencing range of 8 to 12 years, said people with knowledge of the deal.

A California Coastal Commission member already under investigation for a potential conflict of interest on a controversial project was put in an awkward position this week with the release of e-mails detailing a prominent lobbyist's attempts to secure his vote. E-mails between a hired lobbyist, developers and officials at the Port of San Diego reveal efforts to convince Commissioner Patrick Kruer to vote in favor of the multimillion-dollar project to revamp the downtown San Diego waterfront, a proposal ultimately defeated by the divided panel.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who runs the House committee charged with weeding out government abuses, fired his press spokesman Tuesday after it was revealed that the aide had been sharing private correspondence from reporters with a New York Times writer. The swift-moving drama marked the end of a colorful pairing between the press-savvy Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and his outspoken front man, Kurt Bardella, who was known in some Washington circles as "Mini-me.

Arcadia city election officials have spent the last week trying to minimize the confusion from a Chinese translation error on the all-mail ballot for the city's general municipal election in April. The ballot, mailed to residents this month, provided instructions in four languages. English, Vietnamese and Spanish speakers read that they should "vote for no more than two" of the five candidates for City Council. In Chinese, the instructions read: "Vote for no more than three.