GUEST WORDS--A year-round fire season, excessive heat, drought, flooding and mudslides are the new normal in Los Angeles. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--It's almost amusing that there is a move to break up Facebook due to its semi-monopoly power.

ANIMAL WATCH--Los Angeles Animal Services' General Manager Brenda Barnette, local cat rescuers, shelter volunteers, Best Friends Animal Society and other 'trap-neuter-release' (TNR) advocates claim feral and stray cats are the cause of LA not being a 'No Kill' city. We are told if we would just spend more money on trap-neuter-release (TNR), L.A. would rank as a leader in humaneness.

VOICES--Dear City Clerk, I would like to challenge the election for the Neighborhood Council of Valley Village, held on May 16th, 2019.  

@TheGussReport – You wouldn’t eat a week-old donut.  And you wouldn’t read a week-old Dodgers box score.  But the LA Times last week published in print an article that it ran online a week earlier without explaining its timing to its readers.

AT LENGTH--On any given morning, I can hear both the sounds of the port and the traffic on Pacific Avenue from my back porch while having coffee and reading the news. The buzz of the traffic and the occasional siren on one side and foghorns and whistles of the tugboats on the other are recognizable if not consistent.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE IN YOUR HANDS--We’re living in the most perilous time for abortion rights and reproductive freedom since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.

CALBUZZ--Let’s dispense with the notion that name ID explains why former Vice President Joe Biden is repeatedly showing up with double and triple the support of other Democrats in states like New Hampshire and South Carolina and in national polls.

GUEST COMMENTARY--A springtime wedding in Northern Yemen’s Al-Raqah village took place in April 2018, a moment of reprieve from the turmoil and devastation of that war-torn country, a moment to celebrate life, love, and the birth of a new family.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING:  The intense debate over Senate Bill 50 really turns on a more important, but poorly articulated debate about California’s real housing crisis. 

LA WATCHDOG--“This has to be about congestion relief, not revenue.” Mayor Eric Garcetti. 

ONE MAN’S OPINION--Most Californians know about riptides, those currents which can carry unwary swimmers far from shore and drown those who do not know to swim parallel to the current.  Fighting a political riptide can likewise be deadly, as Hillary discovered in 2016. 

YOUNG LEARNERS IN JEOPARDY-In California, three percent of the state’s enrolled K-12 students or over 200,000 -- as well as a couple hundred thousand college students -- are living in cars, motels, shelters, on the street, or in crowded homes shared with other families. This is the largest number of homeless students in any state. Other states also have thousands of homeless high school and college students. 

ENVIRONMENT POLITICS--There has been a lot of alarm in the areas impacted by the Woolsey Fire about the risk of exposure to radiation.

EASTSIDER-You’ve heard the headlines time and again: “The Economy Is Doing Great, Unemployment is at Its Lowest Ever, and Wages are Rising.”