Personnel

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity.

WASHINGTON - A National Rifle Assn.-backed task force unveiled a sweeping set of proposed school safety measures Tuesday, a counter to gun control bills introduced after the Connecticut mass shooting. The most attention-getting recommendation: to train select school personnel to carry firearms. The task force steered away from an earlier NRA proposal to rely on volunteers to provide security. Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas and head of the Drug Enforcement Administration under President George W. Bush, announced the National School Shield task force findings in a Washington news conference amid tight security.

The Clippers made it official Monday, announcing the hiring of Gerald Madkins as the team's director of basketball operations. The Clippers also announced three other front-office personnel moves. They hired Eric Miller to be the director of basketball administration, Fabrizio Besnati returns for his eighth season as the director of international scouting and Jason Piombetti was promoted to the position of director of scouting. Madkins, a former UCLA Bruins player and assistant coach, spent the last two seasons as the vice president of player personnel for the New Orleans Hornets.

CHICAGO -- What will the Kings look like after this five-game trip starting in the Midwest, winding through Dallas and finishing in Arizona? That, and one small drop-by, in the midst of it, to the most famous house in the country. This would be Tuesday's visit to the White House where the Stanley Cup champion Kings and the MLS champion Galaxy will meet President Obama . Returning to the previous question, the Kings could be a slightly different-looking team by the time they return to Los Angeles.

The House on Thursday approved sweeping new powers for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to overhaul the Pentagon's personnel system, advancing his campaign to transform the military. Rumsfeld also won repeal of a ban on research into certain nuclear weapons. The Bush administration's Republican allies pushed the Rumsfeld plan through the House with only modest changes, quashing protests even from pro-military Democratic hawks.

The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners waded into the dense and overlapping areas of technology and personnel records Tuesday, receiving an ambitious blueprint for improving the department's computer systems and voting to oppose a state bill that would force deletion of some personnel files from LAPD computers. Discussion of those items dominated a long and sometimes heated commission meeting.

There's a diner called Peggy Sue's about eight miles outside of Barstow, and as hard as Lt. Col. Kenneth Parks tries, he can never seem to pay his bill. He orders a burger and a chocolate shake. But before he's finished, the waitress informs him the tab has been taken care of by yet another stranger who prefers to remain anonymous but who wants to do something for a soldier in uniform. Many Americans have conflicted feelings about the Iraq war, but not about the warriors.

In the race-car vernacular favored by the captain, the infraction is called "swapping paint." Inappropriate contact between men and women of the 5,500-member mixed crew is rare because of the severe penalties imposed on violators of the Navy's ban on fraternization and intimacy aboard its vessels. But the laws of the heart sometimes overwhelm the instinct for self-preservation.

Moody Air Force Base in Georgia was locked down for about 90 minutes Wednesday while officials investigated a reported threat that turned out not to exist, an official said. Emergency personnel investigated and found there was no threat, a spokeswoman said by telephone. No details on the initial report were available. Moody, about nine miles northeast of Vladosta, Ga., is the home of the 23rd Wing of the Air Combat Command. The first report came in about 1:25 p.m. and the base went on lock down, the spokeswoman said.

A few days after he arrived at boot camp here, Joshua Fry no longer wanted to be a Marine. He was confused by the orders drill instructors shouted at him. He was caught stealing peanut butter from the chow hall. He urinated in his canteen. He talked back to the drill instructors. He refused to shave. Finally, he set out toward the main gate as if to head home. He was blocked, but now he had the chance to tell his superiors a secret: He was autistic.

BEIRUT - Twenty-one members of a United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Syria near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights were taken captive Wednesday, apparently by armed rebels, according to the U.N. and opposition activists. The action represents a potentially serious escalation of the violence and chaos sweeping Syria, where an armed insurgency seeking to topple the government of President Bashar Assad is nearing its second year. Amateur video purportedly from the scene shows armed men flanking three white vehicles emblazoned with U.N. logos.

Steve Kerr vividly recalls being a 10-year-old kid, with a basketball tucked under his arm, staring up at the rim from behind an imaginary three-point line he had paced off in the driveway. The basket looked a block away. "I remember thinking, 'How does anybody ever make one of these?'" said Kerr, 47, who never could have dreamed he would end a 15-year NBA career as the league's most accurate three-point shooter. That long shot - once dismissed as a publicity stunt - has fundamentally changed professional basketball.

They were the swinging, sassy voice of the homefront for U.S. service personnel overseas during World War II, singing catchy hit tunes such as "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and "Rum and Coca Cola" that delighted Americans and catapulted the Andrews Sisters to the very top of the pop charts. One of the most successful female recording groups in pop history, the sisters - LaVerne, Maxene and Patty Andrews - became a beloved American institution, lifting the nation's spirits during a conflict whose outcome seemed often in doubt.

Moody Air Force Base in Georgia was locked down for about 90 minutes Wednesday while officials investigated a reported threat that turned out not to exist, an official said. Emergency personnel investigated and found there was no threat, a spokeswoman said by telephone. No details on the initial report were available. Moody, about nine miles northeast of Vladosta, Ga., is the home of the 23rd Wing of the Air Combat Command. The first report came in about 1:25 p.m. and the base went on lock down, the spokeswoman said.

During the Vietnam War, Sen. George Aiken, a Vermont Republican, was famous for suggesting that we declare victory and go home. (What he actually said is a little more nuanced, but that was the popular perception.) President Obama seems to be pursuing a version of this strategy in Afghanistan. At least that is the inference one can draw from his claims of success at a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday in which the two leaders unveiled an acceleration of the timetable for U.S. troops to step back from combat.

Media organizations will be allowed to argue against redactions in secret church files that are due to be made public as part of a historic $660-million settlement between the Los Angeles Archdiocese and alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday. Pursuant to Judge Emilie Elias' order, The Times and the Associated Press will be allowed to intervene in the case, in which attorneys are gearing up for the release of internal church personnel documents more than five years after the July 2007 settlement.

The first time he saw the Khyber Pass leading into Afghanistan, he was a frightened 11-year-old refugee from Pakistan. The next time he saw those sheer rock walls--31 years later--he was a seasoned U.S. Marine Corps officer engaged in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Of all the untold tales of the U.S. war against terrorism, one of the most remarkable is about a ramrod-straight Marine lieutenant colonel named Asad Khan.

Amid a financial crunch that has forced painful cutbacks at arts institutions across the country, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is forging ahead on many fronts. The board of trustees continues to grow. Construction of a new building for temporary exhibitions, funded by Stewart and Lynda Resnick and scheduled to open next year, is on track. LACMA visitors currently have a choice of three large special exhibitions as well as permanent collection galleries.

CLEVELAND - Magic Johnson has some suggestions for Lakers Coach Mike D'Antoni. They're not of the "Welcome to L.A. " variety. Johnson says it "makes no sense" to relegate Pau Gasol to the perimeter when the Lakers power forward is healthy. "Gasol, to me, is the key to this whole thing," Johnson said at Dodger Stadium, where he attended a Dodgers news conference Tuesday. "But if you continue to have him at the three-point line, he's not going to perform well because he hasn't been out there, especially with Phil Jackson and the Lakers [and]

After five years of legal wrangling, confidential personnel files of at least 69 priests accused of sexually abusing children in the Los Angeles Archdiocese could be ordered released as early as January, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge said Monday. Judge Emilie H. Elias set a hearing for Jan. 7 to hear objections to the release of what a church attorney said were five or six banker's boxes of files relating to the archdiocese's handling of child molestation claims, which could include internal memos, Vatican correspondence and psychiatric reports.