CONTRA COSTA County supervisors, management and public employee unions deserve high praise for successfully negotiating a two-year contract for county workers.  

I HAVE A proposal. Next time some politician goes before the cameras with his figurative pants down around his metaphoric ankles and says, "I made a mistake," let's form a mob and drag him from the podium.  

SANTA MONICA — California's campaigns introduce candidates not only to the state's voters but to its immensity. In Bakersfield, Meg Whitman, 52, the former CEO of eBay who is campaigning for the 2010 Republican gubernatorial nomination, learned about carrots.  

WHEN MONEY talks, you should probably seek help from a psychiatrist. At a minimum, you should be cautious about the quarters you frequent. This is especially important if you're a lawmaker engaged in the current debates about health care reform.  

THE CAP-AND-TRADE bill passed the House of Representatives shrouded in a fog of willful ignorance and calculated irrationality. No one could be sure what he was voting for — not after the 1,200-page bill had a 300-page amendment added at 3:09 a.  

N INDICATION that Gov. Mark Sanford's extramarital affair wouldn't be business as usual was the absence of his wife, Jenny Sanford, from his icky news conference last week.  

THE ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency finally gave California the green light to set limits on greenhouse gases from automobiles. Of course, it doesn't hurt that there's a new administrator leading the EPA and a fairly new administration occupying the White House.  

THIS WEEKEND marks the annual commemoration of this country's independence. The balloons, parades, fireworks, barbecues and flags can hide the fact that 233 years ago when the Founders placed their name on the Declaration of Independence they were knowingly signing a death warrant if their  

BART contract negotiations often have been contentious in the past. This year they are made more difficult by a steep recession and a projected $100 million budget shortfall, even with recent fare increases.  

IT'S BEING regularly debated whether the 24-hour news cycle and the vast expansion in the modes of receiving news is really such a great thing. Have we become such news junkies, so slavishly tuned-in to the world and its woes by our devices-of-choice, that our brains may overload and start making  

THE CALIFORNIA budget game has evolved into a predictable pattern of political moves, one of which is a late-blooming demand for something not directly tied to the budget as a price for its enactment.  

ALTHOUGH NEW Haven's firefighters deservedly won in the Supreme Court, it is deeply depressing that they won narrowly — 5-4. The egregious behavior by that city's government, in a context of racial rabble-rousing, did not seem legally suspect to even one of the court's four liberals, whose  

AFTER YEARS of extravagant increases in pensions for public employees in state, county, local and special districts, at least some government leaders have come to understand such generosity with taxpayer money is unsustainable.  

TITLE VII OF THE 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. While the act's purpose is not in doubt, its implementation has been unclear and highly controversial in certain circumstances.  

BERNARD MADOFF stood in front of the judge just before receiving his sentence of 150 years for conducting the largest Ponzi scheme in history and read a personal statement.