David Malcolm was born to be a prince of San Diego politics. Malcolm grew up poor in Chula Vista and ached to be rich, as he repeatedly confided to reporters. In 1972, while still attending …

Two major players with deep roots in old-time San Diego politics have an active but low-profile role in the ongoing Gray Davis recall battle. Democrat Lynn Schenk, top Davis aide and onetime congresswoman, is said …

The Centre City Development Corp., a city-owned, nonprofit entity promoting downtown redevelopment, has only seven board members. Two have been charged with ethics violations in complaints to the Ethics Commission, along with a former member …

These days, Julian residents are seeing something that hasn't been seen in those parts for three decades: logging trucks laden with local logs growling down the mountain roads and returning empty. "Everybody in the community …

One of the handier tools in the combat arms officer's bag of tricks is a thought process called the Estimate of the Situation. It's a comparison of potential courses of action in the light of …

The skies turned oceanic, or seemed that way. Dams and reservoirs filled beyond capacity and burst. Flash floods barraged every canyon and arroyo. They carried off barns and houses, some rolling head over heels on the rapids.

From its mouth at northernmost Mission Bay, Rose Canyon slices north past Soledad Mountain, then curves east toward the flat mesas of Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. A quarter million or so people unwittingly follow …

Hey, Matt: If you've driven along 52 between 5 and Regents Road over the last half year, you've noticed that it is a dump. Every imaginable form of debris short of corpses decorates the shoulders. …

Mattster: Why does charcoal burn? Isn't it already burned? Or is it only mostly burned? What gives? -- B.C., O'side Charcoal is carefully cooked wood. Mankind figured out this one many centuries ago. The head-producing …

Like many hackers, David Nakamura Hulton goes by more than one name. His other one, his handle, is h1kari. Some people say you shouldn’t ask a hacker what his handle means. Handles aren’t always meant …

"I sent them to Juris Jurjevics at Soho Press in New York. He’d been James Baldwin’s editor at Dial Press. Juris is respected in New York as an ambassador from a more thoughtful, writerly era in publishing."

Friday evening, my unborn baby slipped from my body in a mess of blood and pain and disappointment. The day had not started out well. I awoke Friday morning to find I’d begun spotting. I …

'The law is a ass, a idiot," pointed out Mr. Bumble, a minor church functionary in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. Bumble squeezed his hat emphatically while making the perspicacious observation. These days, his hat would …

First it was a country/western restaurant and dance hall. When that failed, it became a biker restaurant called the Roadhouse. For the past year, the low white building on the west end of Ramona's main …

It's called the "Peace Through Strength PAC, Non-Federal Account," but the political fundraising committee run by House Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter has seemingly been more concerned with the Republican congressman's local political clout …

Providence Mountains State Recreation Area, billed as California's most remote state park, hides in the midst of what some call the "Lonely Triangle" -- a four-million-acre spread of Mojave Desert landscape bounded by Interstate 15, …

“It’s been a long and difficult journey,” I said, “from Sun Up San Diego to Kafka’s Last Love: The Mystery of Dora Diamant.” “I know,” said former KFMB-TV Sun Up cohost Kathi Diamant, the author …

Mollycoddle the malefactors and revile the reformers. It's the San Diego mentality of long standing. And it's painfully evident these days. David Malcolm, the Artful Dodger in the Padres' pocket, got off with barely a …

Donna Heilman, manager of Birdland in North Park, takes no chances when it comes to protecting her store full of birds, from $5 finches to $10,000 macaws, which can live over 70 years. "We have …

It's been highly amusing to watch the flow of charges and countercharges over cooking the intelligence books on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "The administration deliberately bent the data to make 'the Merkin people' …

A high-profile witness in the federal probe of strip-club influence over the San Diego City Council has been in plenty of financial hot water lately, according to federal records in Las Vegas. Tom Waddell, who …

The trunk of the Acacia cyclops has a rubbery, spongelike quality. When Watson declared it a potential buffer for cars out of control, the state planted tens of thousands along its most dangerous hairpin turns.

Hey Matt What's the difference between a sunroof and a moonroof on a car? -- Jay, Bay Park Grandma Alice has a message for you. "Tell him the difference is like day and night!" She's …

Heymatt: I was just opening a Kit-Kat bar, and there's a contest under the wrapper. I got the usual, "Sorry. Try again." But in the list of rules it says, "For a free game piece, …

They came from assimilated, non-practicing families. They met at UCSD, then transferred together to UCLA. They spent a year in Israel. There — or rather, here — they met a young rabbi.. “We started asking questions."

One thing I’ve learned: go looking for fire eaters and you don’t know what you’ll find. After putting out the word that I was looking for fire eaters (I have a few, um, unique friends …

Ben Franklin said that time is money. Fast-talking stockbrokers and other investment peddlers say it a different way: The elderly are a ticket to quick riches. If an old person suffers an unjust monetary loss …

A fog of paranoia surrounds the U.S. Department of Justice's Immigration Court in San Diego. The mentality suffuses not only the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the former INS) in its constant watch for …

He swears he was once within hours of encircling Bin Laden, when a CIA drone fired its Hellfire missile at Osama Bin Laden's meeting. That broke up the meeting and Osama got away.

The controversial police chief of Milwaukee is on a short list to become head of San Diego cops, though he may yet end up running for mayor of his hometown, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. …

Born in San Diego in 1950, Michael Page was playing bass in local bands when a friend from New York City told him about Greenwich Village and the Bowery. The New York Dolls played at …

In the lush, shady recesses of Big Santa Anita Canyon, just north of the San Gabriel Valley community of Arcadia, you can easily lose all sight and sense of the mega-millions of people living in …