I'm batting 0-for-3 in convincing people to run for president.
The first time I approached someone to run was 12 years ago, long before I became a TV writer. I was working in the U.S. Senate as joint counsel for Sens. Paul Wellstone and Ted Kennedy, two of the great liberals of all time, and spending my evenings working for Wellstone's campaign for president.
One gloomy Saturday, Wellstone dropped his bid for president. I immediately fell into a depression.
To get myself out of it, in a fit of giddy inspiration, I called Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children's Defense Fund. Her husband Peter answered the phone. I think he could tell by the tone of my voice why I was calling, and sagely just passed the phone over to Marian...
Singer Ceci Bastida sits down with veteran journalist Oscar Garza as part of our Drinks With ... series. From her days as a teenager in Mexican ska-punk band Tijuana No!, Bastida has been a star on the Mexican music scene. Now living in Los Angeles, the Tijuana native is quickly becoming a musical force in the U.S. as well. Her first solo album, "Veo la Marea" (I See the Tide), dropped last year, earning her a Latin Grammy nomination, a featured spot at this summer's Lollapalooza festival and comparisons to M.I.A. and Nelly Furtado. But her music goes deeper than thumping beats -- politics are a major part of her life and music, she is influenced by novelists like Haruki Murakami and she's not afraid to challenge the powers that be, including Mexican President Felipe Calder�n, in her lyrics. One of her first singles, "This Town," could become an L.A. anthem: "Our town/ It is so glamorous/ I'll bet you'd live here if you could/and be one of us."
We like to think we have choices, but when it comes to health care in California, geography is destiny. If you live in Clear Lake, you are ten times more likely to have an elective cardiac stent or angioplasty than if you live in nearby Sonoma -- whether or not that's the right treatment for you. Women who live in El Centro are 22 ...DETAILS
Mentoring programs like Big Brothers, Big Sisters have been highly touted as a way to keep troubled kids off the streets. But can an outsider who has never been homeless or been recruited into a gang actually help a kid who knows those experiences all too well? A quarter-century ago, John Prendergast, now one of the most ...DETAILS
Ever since Americans first likened Cuba to a damsel in distress - two hundred years ago, when the island country was under threat from imperial Spain - we have seen Cuba as less of a country than an idea. The neighboring nation appears alternately innocent and menacing, culturally exotic or repressed by government, an ...DETAILS