Public Opinion

From Michael Moore's politics to on-screen sex and violence, the movie business is constantly being assailed for not sharing the country's values. Rarely has the morality argument been as rancorous as with the Roman Polanski case. Hollywood is rallying behind the fugitive filmmaker. Top filmmakers are signing a pro-Polanski petition, Whoopi Goldberg says the director didn't really commit rape, and Debra Winger complains "the whole art world suffers" in such arrests. The rest of the nation seems to hold a dramatically different perspective on Polanski's weekend capture.

Like many folks in this tranquil town, Patty Liberty has no problem living just down the road from some of the world's most notorious terrorists. Zacarias Moussaoui, known as "the 20th hijacker" for his attempts to join in the Sept. 11 attacks, resides at the supermax prison just outside the city limits. So do would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid and Ramzi Yousef, who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski lives there too.

Larry Chisolm, the first black district attorney in Chatham County, Ga., was sitting in his modern, sixth-floor office, tolerating an interview but declining to speak about the problem that he may have to address soon -- the one that could come to define and complicate the rest of his young political career. It is a problem he inherited. The problem of death row inmate Troy Davis.

Marx Brothers fans will recall that the political philosophy of Rufus T. Firefly in "Duck Soup" boiled down to this: "If you think this country's bad off now, just wait 'til I get through with it." I've often considered that to be the secret slogan of Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration. (Just substitute "this state" for "this country.") After Tuesday's election, it's no longer a secret.

A beaming Dr. Karen Mapes appeared on "Larry King Live" this week to discuss the epic birth of octuplets she supervised at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower, but the ticker at the bottom of the screen said it all: "OCTUPLETS OUTRAGE." The story of Whittier mom Nadya Suleman has quickly turned from medical miracle to public fury -- so much so that Suleman herself complained in an interview that aired Friday on NBC's "Today" show that society is unfairly judging her.

College student Amena Omer inhaled tobacco from a hookah, the octopus arms of the hubbly-bubbly wrapped around a table leg, and summed up the state of her country: "Worse than zero." Having foreigners refer to their home as a failed state naturally puts Pakistanis on the defensive, she said.

The accusation was damning: U.S. soldiers were said to have tossed a grenade into a crowd of Afghans in the eastern province of Kunar on Tuesday, killing two civilians and wounding five to 50 others. American public affairs officers previously have been slow in responding. U.S. military officials here complain that Taliban leaders are often better and faster at spreading their versions of deadly events.

Los Angeles police are riding a crest of goodwill that has pushed the department's popularity to levels not sustained since the late 1980s as cops continue to post gains on fighting crime and building closer ties with the people they serve.

Southern California's recession-battered shoppers mostly seemed to shrug in resignation. But Day One of forking over higher state sales taxes on everything from toothpicks to pickup trucks left many venting about the latest economic insult and plotting ways to punch back -- or dodge it. Emerging from the Lakewood Home Depot with cans of spray paint, Richard Dearth said the tax hike of 1 penny per dollar of sales -- bringing Los Angeles County's rate to 9.

Is the love affair between cars and young people starting to cool? That could be the case, according to a new study of auto-related online commentary among teens and young adults by J.D. Power and Associates. The market research firm analyzed hundreds of thousands of online conversations held from January to August on auto-related websites such as Autoblog, on personal blogs and on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. The goal was to gauge the perceptions of Generation Y (those born in the 1980s and early 1990s)