Recently in Washington, D.C. Category

Officials are scrambling to avoid a repeat of the weekend's hillside mudslides that damaged 43 homes in La Cañada Flintridge and La Crescenta and left many scratching their heads over the apparent lack of emergency preparations.Tony Castro in the Daily News.

Workers hurried Sunday to empty debris basins once filled with mud in anticipation of mid-week rains feared to further endanger homes on hillsides denuded by last summer's wildfires.

Although today's forecast predicted mostly sunny skies and a high near 60 degrees, a 20 percent chance of rain was expected to increase to a 40 percent chance of rain by Tuesday night and a 30 percent chance of rain Wednesday morning.

California will get more than $2.3 billion in federal stimulus money to help build an 800-mile-long, high-speed rail line tying Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay area to Los Angeles and San Diego. Daily News.

The grants announced by the Obama administration would fund the largest public works project in California history, with construction likely to start with a stretch from Los Angeles to Anaheim.

"I will say this about California, as typical, has been way ahead of the curve," Transportation Secretary Raymond LaHood said during a Thursday morning conference call. "The people there have been working and planning for high-speed rail for more than a decade, and they are willing to put up their own taxpayer dollars."

The Los Angeles Harbor Commission voted Thursday to extend its contract with a high-profile lobbying firm that is trying to persuade Congress to go along with the city's version of the Clean Trucks Program. Art Marroquin in the Daily News

The additional $60,000 brings to $265,000 the amount that will be paid to Gephardt Group, the Atlanta-based company founded by former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt.

Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the port, hired the firm in May for $150,000. A $55,000 contract extension was OK'd late last year.

The U.S Supreme Court decision Thursday allowing corporations to donate directly to candidates is not expected to have a major effect on most state or local races, officials said. Daiiy News.

However, it could impact California's U.S. Senate race, where Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer is seeking a fourth term this year.

"The state and city will not be affected since corporations are (already) allowed to contribute," said campaign finance expert Bob Stern, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Governmental Studies. "But where it will have an impact is in federal races, particularly the Senate race. Corporations and unions can now spend unlimited amounts of money either for or against a candidate."

Calling it the civil rights issue of the new decade, Los Angeles officials on Monday helped kick off the 2010 U.S. Census - a $300 million effort to count every single resident of the U.S. Daily News.

The U.S. Census Bureau started its effort in Los Angeles and 12 other major cities with a Portrait of America road tour - a traveling van that features stories about Americans and explains how important an accurate census is to receive federal money in local communities and appropriate representation at the state and federal levels.

"We're engaged in an effort to make sure every Angeleno is counted," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said, adding it was an issue that would determine the region's political power in the future.

t shook Americans' sense of security, beginning with 9-11, continuing with the natural wallops of a tsunami, Katrina and deadly L.A. wildfires, and ending with a devastating economic downturn. It rocked citizens' faith in their political system, thanks to everything from a controversial presidential election to L.A. City Hall scandals. Daily News.

It challenged the status quo, with the election of the nation's first African-American president.

Becca Doten, the communications director for Councilman Richard Alarcon, won her election as a member of the Democratic National Committee post.
Doten was one of four women seeking the post and received 180 of 281 votes cast at the California Democratic Party meeting this past weekend.'
"I am honored to have the opportunity to join the California delegation to the DNC," said Doten. "Inclusion of young Democrats as DNC members is essential to the future of our Party and I thank the Executive Board members of the CDP for the strong statement they made to ensure that our diverse delegation includes young voices."
Doten first got involved in politics in 2003, inspired and engaged by Gov. Howard Dean's campaign for President. Since then, she has given hundreds of hours of volunteer time to local, state and national campaigns. In 2006, she was named a "Volunteer of the Year" by the Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley (DP/SFV).

A fiery crowd of 1,200 crammed into the auditorium of Birmingham Community Charter High School on Sunday for a question-and-answer meeting with U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks - one of the largest turnouts ever for his town hall assemblies. Sue Doyle in the Daily News.

Angry about health care, unemployment and immigration, the audience loudly jeered and cheered as Sherman answered their questions during the 90-minute meeting that filled all 800 seats in the high school auditorium and forced residents to sit on the floor and stage or stand and listen from the lobby.

im Moorhead keeps an inch-thick stack of documents nearby as proof. Susan Abram in the Daily News.

He calls them a pile of lies.

These are letters from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, repeatedly assuring him that his application for citizenship was being processed.

In fact, it wasn't. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had held on to his file for two years with no plans to review it anytime soon.

Hoping to keep Southern California transit projects on the minds of federal officials, a local coalition on Monday unveiled a list of 21 projects it says are urgently needed to keep the region moving at a 21st-century pace.Sue Doyle in the Daily News.

From crash-avoidance technology on commuter trains to freeway lane-widening projects, the list arrives as a six-year, $500 billion federal Surface Transportation Authorization bill struggles to get through Congress.

"We're barely moving on the 101. What we need now is an offramp from congestion," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, speaking at the eighth annual Mobility 21 coalition meeting.

"This regional transportation system is essential if we're going to connect to one another."

A year after the financial system nearly collapsed, the nation's biggest banks are bigger and regaining their appetite for risk.

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and others - which have received tens of billions of dollars in federal aid - are once more betting big on bonds, commodities and exotic financial products, trading that nearly stopped during the financial crisis.

State inspectors have identified more than $15 million in questionable expenditures using federal homeland security grants spent in California, an investigation by California Watch has found. California Watch in the Daily News.

Using the state's open-records laws, the investigative unit started this year by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting found scores of instances of wasteful spending, purchasing violations, error-prone accounting and shoddy oversight at agencies across the state during the years immediately following 9-11.

Los Angeles County officials, for instance, spent $20,000 for a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, $3,558 for 70 replica firearms and $1,500 for a shotgun safe - none of which were permitted under the guidelines for the homeland

day after President Obama blended compromise and combativeness in a speech to Congress pushing health care legislation, reactions from Southern Californians prominent in the debate were just as mixed. Kevin Modesti in the Daily News.

Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, dismissed the nationally televised address as "more of the same with maybe a new wrapper on it," and was displeased that Obama scolded Republicans for what the president said were lies about his specific proposals.

"It was like we were being taken to the woodshed for doing what we thought was our constitutional responsibility," McKeon said in a phone interview Thursday. "We've read the bill, and we've tried to explain it to the American people, and the American people have told us they

Dozens of workers diagnosed with cancer after their employment at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory may have more leverage in claiming federal compensation to help with their health care.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health first granted a special designation earlier this month for those assigned to the field lab's 270-acre Area IV, where much of the nuclear work was conducted. The designation applies to those who were exposed to radiation for at least 250 days, between Jan. 1, 1955 and Dec, 31, 1958.

Karen Brewster of Sherman Oaks wants to tell her congressman in person how strongly she dislikes President Obama's health care proposal. Tony Castro in the Daily News.

The problem is, Rep. Howard Berman, D-Van Nuys, hasn't held a town hall meeting on the issue.

"I want to go to a town hall and tell my congressman what I think," Brewster said.

"There are no words to describe how opposed I am," she added. "I don't want any government control of my health care."