Politicians

BEIJING - "Beijing power struggle heralds end of China Communist Party," screams one headline. More sensational headlines purport to reveal how the wife of recently sacked Politburo member Bo Xilai poisoned an Englishman, who may have been her lover. And if that weren't enough, other stories claim that "Bo planned airline crash" and "slept with more than 100 women. " It's payback time for Chinese exiles, especially those with a printing press, television station or just a computer at their disposal.

Deborah Pauly, the outspoken Villa Park councilwoman who drew community ire when she protested outside an Islamic charity event, was removed this week from a leadership position with the Orange County Republican Party's central committee. Party officials said Pauly, who is running for county supervisor, has been a divisive figure. Her removal comes a month after Orange businessman Bob Walters mailed out letters supporting Pauly's candidacy on a "George Wallace for President" letterhead.

Probably nowhere else do cheap politicians cost so much. CLAUDE BOUCHILLON Los Angeles

BEIJING - "Beijing power struggle heralds end of China Communist Party," screams one headline. More sensational headlines purport to reveal how the wife of recently sacked Politburo member Bo Xilai poisoned an Englishman, who may have been her lover. And if that weren't enough, other stories claim that "Bo planned airline crash" and "slept with more than 100 women. " It's payback time for Chinese exiles, especially those with a printing press, television station or just a computer at their disposal.

Last week, Arnold Schwarzenegger joined the club of leading male political figures who are known to have cheated on their spouses. Other members have included presidents (John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Franklin D. Roosevelt, for example), members or former members of Congress (among them, John Edwards, Newt Gingrich and John Ensign), and governors (including Eliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford). So why do we keep electing such people? And why, in many cases, do we continue to see the philanderers as heroes?

Politicians don't write good textbooks, and they shouldn't try. That's true in Texas, where conservatives on the state Board of Education ordered up changes in history books, such as minimizing the racism inherent in the interning of 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, downplaying the role of founding father Thomas Jefferson in part because he coined the phrase "separation of church and state," and reducing references to Islam . ...

Courting more than the vote Re "What makes them stray?" Opinion, May 22 Frank Farley focuses on sexual philandering by prominent politicians. While defining a "Type T personality" profile that fits these individuals, he tries to answer this question: "So why do we keep electing such people?" If, as Farley says, people admire their charisma and risk-taking behavior but often overlook their infidelities and narcissism, are we to accept his characterization of the United States "to some extent as a Type T nation, tilting in the risk-taking direction"?

WASHINGTON - On the first Friday of every month, at precisely 8:30 a.m., the Bureau of Labor Statistics flicks a switch and the latest clue about the U.S. economy - the jobs report - gets transmitted all over the world. And then the frenzy begins. Politicians in Washington race for the mikes to proclaim that the economy is back, or maybe falling into an abyss. Investors from Brussels to Bangkok win and lose billions. And in American factories, offices and living rooms, you can almost hear a collective groan of dismay or sigh of relief.

BEIJING - What is happening in China? The officially acknowledged or credibly confirmed facts of the Bo Xilai affair are worthy of a blockbuster political thriller. Its deeper causes, however, go to the heart of the weird, unprecedented system of Leninist capitalism that has emerged in China over the last 30 years. Its possible consequences for change in that system could do more to shape the 21st century world than anything happening in Washington, New Delhi or Brussels. Behind the walls of the Communist Party leadership compound, next to the old Forbidden City, the ghost of Hegel has somehow got mixed up with Robert Ludlum.

The Oslo courtroom where confessed mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is on trial offers a look at a tragic outcome of anti-Islamic hostility. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, years of war and repeated calls for violence against the West stirred worldwide fears of Muslim extremism, but many human rights analysts say they find it difficult to explain a recent surge in anti-Islamic hate crimes other than political manipulation and fears that displays of Islamic faith herald new threats from radicals.

Sometimes an old movie line says it best. Such a line came to mind when I read the Assembly speaker's assertion that political money doesn't influence legislative voting. "I know people love to try to create that impression," Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) was quoted as saying in a Times article Sunday about AT&T's wide-ranging lobbying operation. "But the reality is, that's not the way things happen. People give money because of whatever reasons motivate them, and we evaluate legislation regardless.

SACRAMENTO — Politicians utter thousands of words — in speeches, debates, advertisements — but the most important may be the handful they use on the ballot to describe their day jobs. Those three or so words may never have been as critical as they are this year in California. That's especially true for candidates not as well known as, say, Jerry Brown, who ran for governor as the state's attorney general two years ago, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose ballot designation in the 2003 recall race was "actor/businessman.

Many of the six candidates for Los Angeles County district attorney say they would seek out and prosecute corruption by elected officials, and it's no wonder. The pursuit of allegedly crooked pols is a winner with voters who see one example after another of politicians pushing the ethical envelope. But as an elected official, the district attorney is a politician too, and any effort he or she makes to crack down on government misconduct - or to let it be - is at least to some degree a political act. To ensure that prosecutions do not become persecutions, voters must probe deeply into the candidates' actions and attitudes.

Even some of Richard Alarcon's campaign supporters had to concede that the website slamming the politician was cleverly done. The site had an interactive Monopoly-style board game that drew attention to the legal troubles of the Los Angeles city councilman, who is running for state Assembly this year. A click on the video brings up a commentary about a grand jury's 18-count felony indictment against Alarcon and his wife, stemming from the district attorney's allegations that they lied about where they lived and voted fraudulently.

Undeterred by documentary evidence and repeated judicial rejection, a group of conspiracy theorists who say President Obama was born in Africa have sued the California secretary of state to demand that she verify the eligibility of all presidential candidates before putting them on the November ballot. Minor party politicians and voters aligned with the so-called birthers filed the lawsuit in Sacramento County Superior Court, noting that their action was on the advice of a federal appeals court ruling last year that they bring their suspicions about Obama's eligibility to a court's attention during an election, not after it. The lawsuit filed by Republican primary write-in candidate John Albert Dummett Jr., Markham Robinson of the American Independent Party of California and five others also alludes to "questions concerning the eligibility" of Mitt Romney to vie for the role of commander in chief.