Vouch

Is Chad Morton, at 5 feet 8 and 170 pounds, too small to be a full-time tailback? Mike Garrett, USC's athletic director, doesn't think so. Garrett won the 1965 Heisman Trophy at USC at 5-9 and 185 pounds. "Chad could carry the ball 20 to 50 times a game and be at no more risk for injury than a 200-pounder," he said. "He's special. He's the most talented running back I've seen around here in 12 years."

In the ongoing debate over school vouchers, one reason for having vouchers goes unsaid: They can provide parents leverage in dealings with school districts. A top-heavy district bureaucracy and go-along school board might react differently to angry parents holding petitions with hundreds of signatures threatening student departure. The threat of loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars--if not millions--might cause districts to pay heed to parents' voices. Actually using a voucher to remove a child from a district would be a secondary effect.

The state's chief elections officer is standing by its touch-screen voting machines after a review prompted by complaints that some of the devices had incorrectly recorded votes. Secretary of State Betty Ireland says a technician from manufacturer Election Systems & Software has checked all the iVotronic machines in Putnam and Jackson counties. A handful of residents in each had alleged that machines switched their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates in several races. Ireland has asked all 55 county clerks to recalibrate their machines each morning during early voting, which runs until Nov. 1, and on election day, Nov. 4.

My neighbor's Honda was stolen from our street — twice. The second time it was recovered, its rear windshield had been blown out in a gang shooting. It was time for a change, a drastic one. So my neighbor bought a Ford Crown Victoria with tinted windows, side spotlights and a metal plate on the trunk lid reading "Police Interceptor. " Now it sits, black and brutish, among the Camry Hybrids, Mini Coopers and Volvo station wagons in our Echo Park neighborhood. In September, the last of the iconic cop cars — a veteran of countless street chases, both actual and theatrical — rolled off Ford's production line in St. Thomas, Ontario.

When Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" premiered last December, the action-filled film set against the backdrop of the Maya empire launched the career of a young Texan named Rudy Youngblood. In interviews plugging the movie, Youngblood, who plays the film's central character, Jaguar Paw, routinely discussed his Indian ancestry and his connections to three American tribes.

Federal auto safety officials will ask Mitsubishi to vouch for the quality of cars it has sold in the United States, after the auto maker's parent company admitted to systematically concealing consumer complaints in Japan. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was preparing a letter to Mitsubishi Motor Sales of America, posing questions about the safety of cars sold to Americans. NHTSA has no evidence that Mitsubishi had failed to report problems with its cars to U.S. authorities.

Barber-neat hedges buffer the Valley Hunt Club from the world hurrying by on Orange Grove Boulevard, the busy Pasadena street known as Millionaire's Row before condos began displacing its deep-lawn mansions. No signs bordering the Valley Hunt grounds identify it by name. But staked beneath the hedges are discreet markers that label the property private.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum's new press box is safe and spectators should have no concerns about sitting under the structure, the engineer and the inspection firm president who oversaw the work told officials Wednesday. Earlier in the day, both for the first time formally certified that the structural-steel press box contains no defects that would jeopardize its stability. The facility has been in use since the fall, 1995, college football season.

While remaining committed to President Bush's reelection, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday rose to the defense of Sen. John F. Kerry, castigating the sponsors of a new television commercial that questions the military service of the Democratic presidential nominee.

Marilyn Vann can trace her Cherokee roots back more than 200 years through generations of Native Americans and the descendants of black slaves who lived among them. She has mountains of paper -- birth certificates, tribal enrollment cards, land deeds, affidavits, yellowing photographs -- documenting her family's life within the tribe.