ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY
Ask anybody who really knows her, and they’ll tell you Laura Richardson always wanted to be exactly where she is right now. No, not surrounded by her history of house foreclosures and unpaid bills and dog-ate-my-homework excuses for government regulators, a carousel of controversy that’s being played out to the rhythmic beat-down [...]

LA TIMES STORY ON RICHARDSON

For the right to represent Long Beach in Congress, HB Mayor Debbie Cook says she’s ready to take on Rohrabacher the invisible

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY
The joggers and dog-walkers from nearby McMansions are doing their daily laps around the golfers at Recreation Park, and Debbie Cook seems to fit right in as she arrives at the [...]

Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook’s just-announced candidacy for Dana Rohrabacher’s 46th District seat in Congress could translate into some long-awaited movement for the Long Beach Breakwater.
“I was one of the original supporters of the effort to reconfigure the breakwater,” says Cook, who has distinguished herself as a practical environmentalist during two terms on the Huntington [...]

Congress returns tomorrow and it looks like OpenCongress is ready, as they’ll be launching a major upgrade to their site to help track every vote and every politician.
Per OpenCongress:
Register an account with OpenCongress using your e-mail address and you’ll receive a profile page — “My OpenCongress” — that provides a personalized view of all the [...]

Education policy wonking
It should be as obvious as “water is wet”, but because religious beliefs are involved, rigorous studies must be performed to establish the obvious. And so today comes the latest study showing that abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work. The study arrives just as Congress is considering a bill that contains $141 million in [...]

Congressing is hard work
The Democratic takeover of Congress hasn’t exactly gone as supporters hoped. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have explained that they have not been able to fulfill all their promises, because of implacable Republican opposition. Fair enough. But there was one promise that no amount Republican opposition could [...]