Politicians

How sweet it is. Let the church bells ring. A suggestion for NFL fans in Los Angeles. Tonight over dinner, clink your cocktail glasses in toast to Phil Anschutz. We have just witnessed the most significant good-news story about the NFL and Los Angeles since Georgia and Al took their ball and went elsewhere in 1995. No huge regrets. Our stance then was correct. Don't let the door hit you in the ... Since then, until Thursday, we have had endless years of false starts, pipe dreams and empty rhetoric.

Both Republicans and Democrats say concern about the middle class is at the heart of the ongoing, vituperative debate over taxes, entitlements and fiscal discipline, but the political spat never seems to honestly address the gaping and growing class divide in the United States. As politicians in Washington slam one another over competing budget priorities, most avoid facing up to the disturbing question behind all the numbers: Is the American Dream temporarily stalled or permanently kaput?

Parking tickets are a big deal in Los Angeles. For years, the city has been jacking up fines, which slams many low-income renters and young people who live in tightly packed neighborhoods where they have to fight over street parking. Most politicians don't want to talk about it because parking fines are a big part of the city's revenue. Those tickets bring in $150 million a year. When the city runs into money problems - as it always does - it's the easiest thing in the world to raise fines instead of running afoul of unions, developers and political donors.

Hollywood director David O. Russell took a meeting this week to talk about a movie. But the man in the room with him wasn't a studio executive or an actor hoping for a role - he was Vice President Joe Biden. Russell met Biden and spoke on the Senate floor in support of legislation on mental health care. His movie "Silver Linings Playbook" focuses on a man with bipolar disorder and is in contention for eight Oscars, including best picture, come Feb. 24. FOR THE RECORD: Hollywood and politics: An article in the Feb. 9 Section A on the relationship between Hollywood and Washington said "Silver Linings Playbook" director David O. Russell spoke on the Senate floor on behalf of a mental-health bill.

As the two top candidates to become Los Angeles mayor for the first time aired dueling television ads, they pushed back at rivals who say that City Hall is nearly broke - arguing that progress has been made in pulling the city back from the brink of insolvency. Answering charges frequently leveled by two candidates who have never held public office - that elected officials have failed to do anything about the city's predicament during more than a decade in power - City Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel struck back at attorney Kevin James and former technology executive Emanuel Pleitez.

TUNIS, Tunisia - The slain Tunisian opposition leader's coffin was driven through rain-swept streets lined with soldiers and crammed with mourners who chanted against the Islamist-led government and marched with placards through the heart of this troubled capital. Chokri Belaid's funeral procession moved slowly through neighborhoods Friday while his compatriots clashed with police and demonstrated by the tens of thousands on the third day of unrest that has sharpened political divisions in the birthplace of the "Arab Spring.

A week before Christmas in 2003, a retired Los Angeles schoolteacher stood before a phalanx of news cameras and 250 reporters in a South Carolina ballroom and declared, "I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams, and at last I am completely free. " After more than 60 years, Washington-Williams had chosen to unburden herself of a secret: that she, a black woman, had been fathered by a white man - Sen. Strom Thurmond, the legendary South Carolina politician who had built a long Washington career as a champion of segregation.

For those who follow the Gospel According to Netflix, Friday is the day the world changes, instantly and forever. The day when viewers, too long oppressed by commercials, cliffhangers and increasingly erratic scheduling dictated by greedy network overlords, rise up in glorious revolution and seize the means of consumption. As of 12:01 a.m. Friday, all 13 episodes of the highly pedigreed "House of Cards" - Adapted from a British miniseries! Directed, at least initially, by "The Social Network's" David Fincher!

  More than once, Hadiya Pendleton and President Obama walked the same streets. Last week, the high school sophomore performed as a majorette at his inauguration in Washington. On Tuesday, she was gunned down in a park  a mile from Obama's home on Chicago's South Side. By Wednesday, as word of Hadiya's death rippled around the country, an official petition cropped up asking that Obama and his family return to their hometown to attend the girl's funeral. “The president and first lady's thoughts and prayers are with the family of Hadiya Pendleton,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday.

Women pushing strollers stopped to peer at handguns in glass cases. Men squinted through scopes. The "clack-clack" of stun guns crackled overhead. A man meandered through the crowd, a black rifle slung over his back with a cardboard sign: "For sale: $1,700. " Less than a month after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school, business was brisk at one of the nation's largest gun shows, held this weekend at the Ontario Convention Center, where vendors and patrons alike expressed fear of possible new federal restrictions on guns.