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The contradictions at the heart of the Obama presidency are finally out in the open. As a result, a man who came into office hellbent on restoring faith in government is on the verge of inspiring a libertarian revival. There have always been (at least) two Barack Obamas. There is the man who claims to be a nonideological problem-solver, keen on working with anybody to fix things. And there is The One: the partisan, left-leaning progressive-redeemer. As E.J. Dionne, a columnist who can usually be counted on to make the case for Obama better than Obama can, recently wrote, the president "has been a master, as good politicians are, at presenting different sides of himself to different constituencies.

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc. unveiled a daring overhaul of its mobile operating system to kick off its annual developers conference, where it hopes to show critics that it has lost none of its innovative swagger. In addition to unveiling iOS 7, the company made a blizzard of other product and feature announcements that included upgrades to MacBook laptops and a new streaming radio service. As expected, there were no new iPhones or iPads, which are often announced separately. But the presentation seemed in spirit to also be a rebuttal to critics who contended that Apple had lost its innovative edge in the last year.

Jane Walle was among the hundreds of people who gathered Monday night outside the Santa Monica College library to remember the victims of last week's shooting rampage that shook this seaside city. Like the students, staff and neighbors around her, she paced on the concrete until just after 6 p.m., then slowly began the trek to the football field for an hourlong gathering. But just a few steps into her walk, she stopped short in front of a makeshift memorial strewn across a patch of asphalt.

Jurors decided Monday that a gang member should be executed for the slaying of four people, including a 10-year-old boy gunned down from close range as he rode his bicycle along a quiet South Los Angeles street. Charles Ray Smith, 44, stared straight ahead and showed no emotion as the verdict was read in a downtown courtroom. Smith was convicted during a previous trial of taking part in two deadly shootings in 2006, including one that became known as the "49th Street Massacre" in which two men wielding AK-47s opened fire on children and adults enjoying a Friday summer afternoon.

As the Supreme Court prepares a decision on the fate of Proposition 8, nearly six in 10 California voters now believe same-sex marriage should be legal, with support rising among older voters and in all regions of the state, a new poll has found. The USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll reveals that attitudes in the state toward gay marriage have changed significantly since Californians banned it in 2008 by a vote of 52% to 48%. The Supreme Court will decide this month whether the ban will continue.

Bud Selig, baseball's commissioner, declared the game's steroid era "clearly a thing of the past" and the use of banned performance-enhancing substances "virtually nonexistent. " It was January 2010, and former home run champion Mark McGwire had just come clean about his use of PEDs during his career. Selig's statements have now proven premature. Major League Baseball is investigating allegations that the owner of a shuttered South Florida wellness clinic distributed steroids, synthetic testosterone and human growth hormone to as many as 20 major league players, making it potentially the worst single drug-abuse case in U.S. sports history.

Eric Garcetti,  Los Angeles' incoming mayor, won the office with fewer votes than any newly elected mayor since the 1930s, when the city population was less than half its current size, according to a Times analysis of final results released late Friday. Garcetti's vote total of 222,300 was well ahead of his opponent, City Controller Wendy Greuel, but smaller than any new mayor since Frank Shaw was elected in 1933.  The results represent another low mark in what have been decades of declining voter turnout.

For Steven Ancheta, the time is long past for more arguments about online education's merits and convenience. The West Covina resident, who is enrolled in a fully online program for a bachelor's degree from Arizona State University, praised the experience and the chance for working people to take evening or weekend classes. His positive view about online education was strongly supported in a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll . Among the registered voters who participated in the survey, 59% said they agreed with the idea that increasing the number of online classes at California's public universities will make education more affordable and accessible.

Henry Bouldin could not bear to watch the Angels, not after the team was swept by the lowly Houston Astros. So, as he sat behind home plate for Tuesday's game against the Chicago Cubs, the Angels fan wore a paper bag over his head. Until the seventh inning, that is, when the Angels ordered him to take it off. "Security just showed up out of nowhere," Bouldin said Wednesday. "They said you can't wear anything over your head. " That indeed is the Angels' policy, team spokesman Tim Mead said.

The "nude scanners" are gone. The full-body scanners that used X-rays to create what look like nude images of passengers have been packed away and removed from airports across the country. The 250 or so machines were removed about two weeks ago, before the June 1 deadline set by Congress. But privacy advocates aren't satisfied, noting that the Transportation Security Administration is still using full-body scanners that employ a different technology. "They've never made a case that these scanners are better than using metal detectors or swabs to detect the use of explosives," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a research center that sued the TSA in 2010 over the use of all full-body scanners.