A Mostly Republican History What chance is there in San Diego for an honest young lawyer who is a Democrat? — J. Robert O'Connor, U.S. attorney for California (1900) "A choice, not an echo" was …

“I was in Sierra Leone, right next door, and in its history bears the same relationship to England that Liberia bears to the United States. That was when the bodies started piling up in Monrovia.”

Happy Camp Canyon, near Simi Valley and Moorpark, nuzzles in a crease between two long, rounded, oak-studded ridges -- part of the many caterpillar-like, parallel segments making up Ventura County's share of the east-west-trending Transverse …

Mark Ruford (not his real name) understands that the cab company he works for makes plenty of money off people stranded when their cars are towed at the beach. He drives them so often to …

The struggling reelection campaign of San Diego mayor Dick Murphy has been getting some under-the-table financial support from Sempra Energy, the utility giant that owns San Diego Gas & Electric and depends on Murphy's friendship …

Who dines on filet mignon when pension accounting is baloney? The Securities and Exchange Commission may look at that question, now that it is probing how phony pension accounting is used to inflate companies' profits. …

Hello, Matt: I was talking to a customer at my business yesterday about the election. I commented that I found it handier to go to the Registrar of Voters office on Ruffin Road and vote …

Mr. Alice: Here it is. There is a mouse, a rodent, and a mouse, a thing you direct the arrow with on your computer. Plural for a mouse, the rodent, would be mice. I know …

Ever since its founding as a railroad resort for millionaires back in 1915, Rancho Santa Fe, primarily known these days as America's wealthiest zip code, has had plenty of misery to go along with its …

Karl, of course, was into blood sports. I learned a lot from him about that world of anonymous sex and violence.” “Karl” is Karl Keller, for 20 years a professor in San Diego State’s English …

Lunar eclipses, often overlooked in favor of the more spectacular solar eclipses, deserve more respect than they get. Unlike the rare total solar type of eclipse, which is visible only along a narrow track sweeping …

A bit of California history is being made in this year's Solana Beach city-council elections. It involves the status of Dave Roberts, 43, a former congressional staffer who is one of four residents running for …

The so-called outside board members of Peregrine Systems insist they didn't know of the corruption inside the company, but they have a credibility problem: beginning in 1999, former chief executive Stephen Gardner warned the board …

Tijuana mayor Jesús González Reyes faces the prospect of finding a new job come December 1 when mayor-elect Jorge Hank takes office. González also faces the possibility, albeit remote, of going to jail. The twofold …

Heymatt: Do you think the president carries a wallet? I can't imagine he ever has to pull out a credit card or cash or flash his drivers license. -- Wondering, the net Not even Grandma …

Matt or Grandma Alice: Can you pinpoint when it was exactly that farting became a social faux pas? Flatulence is totally natural. My twin sons fart all the time. Why when someone farts in, say, …

Hey Matt: Where did the saying "good money" come from, as in, "I paid good money for that car"? -- Dawn, the net People might just mean "a lot of money" when they say good …

“We were dancing,” Mr. Galkoski says. “Things went so well, we drove down to La Jolla Shores.” “We sat on a bench talking and making out like a couple of high school kids,” Miss Taylor says .

At the start of 1904, the U.S. population included 82 million people. Almost all of them are dead now, but Bert Wilbur, Geneva Chester, Pearl Alsten, and Archie Owen have survived. In 1904, five-year-old Bert …

Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights (eastern Los Angeles County) features a green-grass strip extending nearly a mile into the Puente Hills and lots of steep, brushy hillsides affording some great panoramas of the San …

Wouldn't you know it? San Diego's most infamous love affair took place in Los Angeles. It was three decades ago, and it was between talk radio's meanest moralist, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, and talk radio's wittiest …

Some in the national media say that write-in mayoral candidate Donna Frye "came out of nowhere." Wrong. She came out of the perfect place: the sewers. Long before she was elected to the city council, …

Employees of the San Diego State University Foundation -- which is using the city's help to develop thousands of new residential units and a mammoth shopping area around the SDSU campus and has been criticized …

Hey Matt: My boyfriend says that The Jerry Springer Show is fake, that the guests are really actors, not insane trailer trash dating their sisters. Is he right, is it fake? -- Farah Daye, the …

“I heard Sascha had broken up with her boyfriend. I went out to dinner with a bunch of my friends. Afterward, we went to the place where Sascha worked. I asked her for her number.”

It's not even noon and already I'm closing the blinds on the south-facing windows of my home office. That pesky natural light is overrunning the glow of the lamp by which I work. Too much …

"When my mother is in a Newport, Rhode Island, hotel room, I never would have forgotten that. Never. With her in her black sweater with baby powder all over her, looking crazy. She had that little poodle sweater."

The shape of Banner Canyon is due to ruptures along the Elsinore Fault. This splinter fault of the San Andreas is the most extensive fault system in San Diego County and is believed capable of a major earthquake.

Two essential elements of financial fraud are secrecy and contrived complexity. And one driving force of the criminal mind is to continue doing what you have been doing, because if you stop, someone will get …

Sunday's startling endorsement by the Union-Tribune of Democrat Mike Aguirre for San Diego city attorney seems to have turned conventional wisdom on its head. But there is a big reason behind the U-T's seeming madness, …

Pete Scully, a battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry's fire protection agency, stands next to his camper-shelled pickup truck at a Highway 94 turnoff east of where Campo Creek turns south into Mexico, …

Dear M.A.: I give my dinner plate to Queenie the Loveable Lab every night, and will lick it clean (except when we have broccoli). But why when she's through is the plate so slimy? It's …

Smoking Mattster: Tell my friend that clove cigarettes are worse for you than regular cigarettes. Thank you. -- A Friend, Chula Vista Dear Your Friend: Clove cigarettes are worse for you than regular cigarettes. Best …

Hey, Matt: How is it going? How was summer vacation? Here's my question. Can cats and dogs really feel the vibrations of a pending earthquake? The reason I ask is, this morning the cat was …

Just last week, Mr. and Mrs. Toscano celebrated their first anniversary. “Rich took me salsa dancing at Café Sevilla,” Mrs. Toscano says. “I had been browbeating him for a year to take me dancing."

It is a certain kind of person that is dedicated to life in the theater these days. For one thing, it's a perpetually archaic art form that attracts less and less interest in this age …