Dan Morain

Americans for Job Security, a political operation with a name that is a cross between pabulum and platitude, did what it was set up to do: help a rich man hide his multimillion-dollar donation to a campaign.

Abel Maldonado couldn't get elected lieutenant governor when he ran against Gavin Newsom in 2010 and failed to dislodge Rep. Lois Capps from her Santa Barbara-area congressional seat in 2012.

Tim Crews was in his element, chatting up lawyers, felons and other courtroom denizens, and waiting for a judge to rule on whether he needed to comply with the Glenn County district attorney's demand that he turn over notes from some of the muck he had raked.

Steve Glazer's fight with Democrats might be a footnote to the 2012 election, except for what it shows about the dominant party in California and the new political order of the top-two primary.

Rep. Ami Bera, one of two Democratic physicians in the House, doesn't want Obamacare to fail.

At least some of those grease spots on the Assembly and Senate floors are what's left of grand legislation to raise taxes on the oil industry.

The Marquez Brothers fight will get rougher and spread as workers like Rosaura Mendoza seek better wages and benefits from bosses like Gustavo Marquez.

Attorney General Kamala Harris has a Google issue.

What's a chemical company to do?

Rob Young says the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre inspired him to get involved in the gun issue. Judy Weldon felt the same urge. They moved in very different directions.

To attract tourist dollars, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval unveiled a cheery little ad that displays the Silver State's sunny side and is set against a toe-tapping version of "Don't Fence Me In," the sort of tune that can worm its way into your head.

Nevada state Sen. Ben Kieckhefer is a Republican in a state that loves its guns.

Darius Anderson is a businessman with many subsidiaries. That has led to conflict.

At last count, the California state prison system housed 33,777 inmates diagnosed with significant mental illness, including 6,051 with severe conditions such as schizophrenia.

Want to spend a lovely weekend at your "own private ocean front" gazing at the sunset near Point Reyes?

Magdalena Romero sat at a picnic table in this dusty town's one park, remembering the baby she named America.

On the night that a new Republican organization celebrated election victories of three Latinos for local offices, Tim Donnelly, the assemblyman who hopes to import Arizona's anti-immigration law to California, held a fundraiser for his "campaign" for governor.

Like much in Vegas, the façade of Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital is deceiving.

Debi Austin spoke loudest after surgeons removed her cancerous vocal cords.

Setting aside questions of propriety, Chevron was shrewd to hire state Sen. Michael Rubio to head its governmental relations operation.

Sacramento County jailers released Matthew Herrera a week ago Saturday after keeping him separate from other inmates for his safety and theirs. Because he had no clothes, jailers issued him a disposable paper jumpsuit and flip-flops, and sent him on his way.

At the urging of Gov. Jerry Brown and major business groups, some of the most influential legislators in Sacramento are trying to fix the California Environmental Quality Act.

The tea party may be a shrinking, aging slice of the electorate. But you'd never know that from Sal Russo's operation.

In the language of Sacramento County jailers, Matthew Herrera is TSEP, short for total separation, a designation given to inmates who are kept isolated for the safety of themselves and others.

Upon counsel's advice, political operative Joel Fox declined to discuss the $11 million that was funneled to his political action committee last fall, other than to say he had done nothing wrong, and that he had received a subpoena from the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Some people have said Rep. Tom McClintock is defensive, thin-skinned and humorless.

After a three-hour hearing Tuesday focusing on gun control, some of us might have been left to wonder what more can be done in a state that has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country.

Gov. Jerry Brown is about to repent for a sin he didn't know he committed in 1975.

The Maloof brothers, their shirttails untucked, seem intent on thumbing their noses at Sacramento.

On a cold night at the northeast end of Stockton, a California Department of Justice agent wearing a bulletproof vest beneath his black uniform knocked on the door of a small tract home. A 65-year-old man living alone peeked out.

Jeffrey Beard's testimony in the landmark litigation over California's violent prison system cut to the bone.

Whatever piece of hide that his doctors had excised, Jerry Brown returned to work no worse for the wear.

Sacramento has no shortage of lobbyists. So Jeff Miller's decision to move his family to Austin, Texas, shouldn't be a big deal, except for what it says about our state and opportunities elsewhere.

Never one to build bridges, Rep. Tom McClintock has spent the better part of 30 years in office deriding the government that gives him his paycheck.

Two months before Adam Lanza used one of his company's guns to massacre 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School, George Kollitides talked about threats he perceived to his children.

Anne Blue is happily remarried and recently retired, splitting her time between a Land Park townhouse so she can be near her daughters, and a lakefront house in Alabama, where she met her first true love, the big man on the Auburn University campus.

Bloomberg news service has counted 150 publicly traded corporations whose boards of directors have sped up dividend payments by $20 billion, a step that allows investors to pay taxes under current low rates, rather than what almost certainly will be higher rates in 2013.

Oil companies and taxes are a little like gasoline and lit matches.

Attorney General Kamala Harris is saying that local police can ignore federal Secure Communities policy.

Joe Baca never saw it coming, and neither did Gloria Negrete McLeod.

Kevin James is a former talk radio host and federal prosecutor who aspires to become mayor of Los Angeles, and is promising to restore fiscal order to City Hall, all perfectly understandable.

Tom Steyer wore the same plaid wool tie that he wore the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.

Rep. Dan Lungren, trailing by 3,824 votes a week after Election Day, has not conceded, and the ballots won't be tallied fully for several more days.

As they make their big plans, Democrats emboldened by their likely supermajority in the Legislature should study Betsy Butler and Michael Allen, two Democratic Assembly members who might not be coming back to Sacramento.

Voters approved Jerry Brown's $6 billion tax hike this week because California has changed and Brown hasn't. Lots of help from organized labor didn't hurt.

To sum up: A shell within a shell within a shell, crouching in a hall of mirrors. Money laundering isn't too strong a term. Welcome to the world of Citizens United, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that emboldened the richest Americans to spend unprecedented sums to influence elections.

As he has done in campaigns since Eisenhower beat Stevenson the first time, Rep. Dan Lungren is walking with a slight limp.

From now until Election Day, President Barack Obama will make heavy use of two of California's top Democrats, Attorney General Kamala Harris and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to help win over voters in the most vital swing states.

Contributors have given $340 million to pass and defeat the 11 measures on this November's statewide ballot, by my count. You can assume some of them expect a return on their investment.