It’s never the crime, always the “secret report.” While the only crime here could be to taxpayers, despite Pasadena officials promises to the contrary, the city seems to be ignoring the usual rule of public relations: When bad news comes, get it out, regardless of what the lawyers say. Politicians will pay the political price […]
When I was a reporter, I answered the phone one day, and a man threatened to shoot me. The coward did it anonymously, of course, and quickly hung up. He was upset because I wrote some articles about how the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department refused to allow me to review concealed weapon permits, despite […]
A “crazy” aunt who everyone jokes about at family gatherings. A cousin who believes the government is stalking her or a teenage friend, whose world is so dark that he kills himself in his parent’s garage. Mental illness, no matter the severity, has touched most of us in one way or another. In my family, […]
I felt like a turkey sliding into an oven. Unfortunately for me, there were no candied yams, cranberries, stuffing or gravy being slathered over me. Instead, I was stuffed into a $3 million machine that took a picture of my brain. I keep having a number of health firsts lately. Maladies such as colon cancer, […]
Taking my cue from the public information office of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, I’m announcing in a press release that I saved ten hikers, two lost puppies and a cute cat in Eaton Canyon Saturday – all before I had breakfast. Before those sleepy Pasadena firefighters started flipping their morning pancakes, I had […]
Of course, I didn’t know Syed Fahad Hashmi would later be dubbed a terrorist. I interviewed him for a story about his connection to a radical Islamic group, Al-Muhajiroun, which was accused of recruiting disaffected and disenfranchised students from Britain to go fight in Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. The group was meeting with students at […]
A few months ago, after allegations that the board skirted the Ralph M. Brown Act, which governs how public entities conduct their business, before voting on a raise for the school’s president, Aguirre demanded that the board repeal the raise and start following state open meeting laws. I called Aviles, a Citrus College graduate, this […]
