Angeles

WASHINGTON — There is an unmistakable aura of sadness when William P. Rogers talks about the man who was once his close friend and how that friend deceived him.

“I never before had a friend who turned out to be not quite a friend,” says the former attorney general and secretary of State.

The friend was Richard Nixon.

Oblivious to the clatter of dishes and the hum of lunch conversation in a crowded restaurant, Rogers sat at a corner table recently and looked back on years at the center of history.

He was President Eisenhower’s attorney general and Nixon’s secretary of State. In private law practice, he represented Martin Luther King Jr. before the Supreme Court.

But he is quick to point out that he had no role in one landmark event of the Nixon years–Watergate.

Nixon “never asked me about any of that nonsense until much too late,” Rogers said.

Rogers left the Nixon administration in August 1973 and resumed private law practice, a low-profile life he clearly enjoyed. He rarely gave interviews and never talked in detail about his relationship with Nixon.

Now 84, he put aside that reluctance and recalled his years as a valued advisor and close friend to Nixon as well as the discomforting knowledge of how much Nixon never told him.

“He didn’t lie; he just didn’t tell me the truth,” Rogers said.

It wasn’t only the truth about Watergate.

When Nixon sent Henry Kissinger, his White House national security advisor, on a secret trip to China, his secretary of State was left out in the cold.

Neither did Rogers know about Kissinger’s secret negotiations with North Vietnam.

Their bureaucratic struggle was no contest. After the 1972 election, Nixon decided it was time to replace Rogers with Kissinger.

White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman wrote in his diary: “Had a meeting with Rogers this afternoon and got into the separation. It didn’t work out very well in that Rogers obviously was shocked to be told that he was to leave.”

Kissinger wrote that he believed Nixon “wished to establish, for once, a relationship of primacy over his old friend and mentor Bill Rogers to whom he had so often turned during the periods of his own weakness.”

Rogers was a young lawyer on the staff of a Senate committee and Nixon was a freshman congressman from California when they met in 1948. Nixon was agonizing over whether to believe Whittaker Chambers’ allegation that Alger Hiss, a high State Department official, was a member of an underground communist group.

Nixon asked Rogers to review their sworn testimony. He wanted to know if he could prove one of them was lying. “I said, ‘I’m sure you can.’ I based it on the fact that Chambers had given a lot of particulars that you can’t make up,” Rogers said.

Hiss was convicted of lying and Nixon’s political career was on the rise.

Two years later, Nixon was elected to the Senate and in 1952 Eisenhower offered him the vice presidential nomination.

Rogers was on a campaign trip with his friend when the news broke that a group of California supporters of Nixon had established an $18,000 fund to help cover expenses. His position on the Republican ticket in jeopardy, Nixon made his case to the voters in a televised appearance that came to be known as the Checkers speech.

In his book “Six Crises,” Nixon wrote that the night before the speech, “I took a long walk with Rogers up and down the side streets near the hotel to get some fresh air and exercise and to test out the first outline of my speech on him. He encouraged me to go forward with the plan I had adopted.”

Nixon saved his career with a brilliant speech that referred to his wife’s “respectable Republican cloth coat” and the Texan who gave the Nixons their cocker spaniel, Checkers.

Rogers and Nixon remained fast friends through the Eisenhower administration. But losses in the 1960 presidential race and the 1962 race for governor of California left Nixon embittered, said his former friend.

“He was a changed man,” Rogers said.

From there, the two men took different paths. Rogers spent the Kennedy-Johnson years in private law practice, arguing Martin Luther King Jr.’s case in 1964 before the Supreme Court, which said for the first time that the news media had special protection against libel suits by public officials.

When Nixon finally became president in January 1969, Rogers returned to government as secretary of State, despite having little experience in diplomacy.

“I recognized when I took the job that President Nixon wanted to run things himself and that’s what he did,” Rogers said. “He always sort of resented the State Department.”

At the start of the second term, Watergate began to dominate Nixon’s presidency.

What was it like, watching the scandal unfold?

“What do you do?” said Rogers, his expression betraying the uncountable hours he has spent looking back on that period.

When Nixon realized he would have to fire Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, he asked Rogers to do it for him. Rogers refused.

“He said, ‘Will you be with me when I do it?’ I said, ‘No, Mr. President. . . . They’re your people.’ ”

In August of that year, Nixon became the first president to resign the office.

After that, Rogers and his wife saw the former president and his wife, Pat, a couple of times.

“We saw them once for lunch,” Rogers recalled. “Remarkably, we had conversations just as if nothing had happened.

“I couldn’t understand that.”

Dozens of California National Guard troops under President Trump’s command apparently slipped out of Los Angeles under cover of darkness early Sunday morning, ahead of an appellate court’s order to be gone by noon Monday.

Administration officials would not immediately confirm whether the troops had decamped. But video taken outside the Roybal Federal Building downtown just after midnight on Sunday and reviewed by The Times shows a large tactical truck and four white passenger vans leaving the facility, which has been patrolled by armed soldiers since June.

About 300 California troops remain under federal control, some 100 of whom were still active in Los Angeles as of last week, court records show.

“There were more than usual, and all of them left — there was not a single one that stayed,” said protester Rosa Martinez, who has demonstrated outside the federal building for months and was there Sunday.

Troops were spotted briefly later that day, but had not been seen again as of Monday afternoon, Martinez said.

The development that forced the troops to leave was part of a sprawling legal fight for control of federalized soldiers nationwide that remains ongoing.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the order late Friday but softened an even more stringent edict from a lower court judge last week that would have forced the president to relinquish command of the state’s forces. Trump federalized thousands of California National Guard troops in June troops to quell unrest over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.

“For the first time in six months, there will be no military deployed on the streets of Los Angeles,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a statement. “While this decision is not final, it is a gratifying and hard-fought step in the right direction.”

The ruling Friday came from the same three-judge panel that handed the president one of his most sweeping second-term victories this summer, after it found that the California deployment could go forward under an obscure and virtually untested subsection of the law.

That precedent set a “great level of deference” as the standard of review for deployments that have since mushroomed across the country, circumscribing debate even in courts where it is not legally binding.

But the so-called Newsom standard — California Gov. Gavin Newsom was the lead plaintiff on the lawsuit — has drawn intense scrutiny and increasingly public rebuke in recent weeks, even as the Trump administration argues it affords the administration new and greater powers.

In October, the 7th Circuit — the appellate court that covers Illinois — found the president’s claims had “insufficient evidence,” upholding a block on a troop deployment in and around Chicago.

“Even applying great deference to the administration’s view of the facts … there is insufficient evidence that protest activity in Illinois has significantly impeded the ability of federal officers to execute federal immigration laws,” the panel wrote.

That ruling is now under review at the Supreme Court.

In November, the 9th Circuit vacated its earlier decision allowing Trump’s Oregon federalization to go forward amid claims the Justice Department misrepresented important facts in its filings. That case is under review by a larger panel of the appellate division, with a decision expected early next year.

Despite mounting pressure, Justice Department lawyers have doubled down on their claims of near-total power, arguing that federalized troops remain under the president’s command in perpetuity, and that courts have no role in reviewing their deployment.

When Judge Mark J. Bennett asked the Department of Justice whether federalized troops could “stay called up forever” under the government’s reading of the statute at a hearing in October, the answer was an unequivocal yes.

“There’s not a word in the statute that talks about how long they can remain in federal service,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Eric McArthur said.

For now, the fate of 300 federalized California soldiers remains in limbo, though troops are currently barred by court orders from deployment in California and Oregon.

Times staff writers David Zahniser and Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

The political terrain of the country has dramatically changed since the presidential nominating process began in February. The most significant development was the outbreak of violence in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four police officers accused of illegally beating Rodney G. King. New forces are arising in the land. They must be addressed.

A segment of the so-called marginalized and disenfranchised are stirring. In the past, they were written off as the “underclass,” the disadvantaged, even as “illegal.” They have been criminalized and dismissed. You could either feel sorry for them or hate them. The point was not to get near them.

They must now be reckoned with as a political force.

From the homeless to welfare mothers, from people with AIDS to the physically handicapped, thousands are flexing their organizational muscle, and using it on the streets, in pursuit of their economic and political interests. The unity in Los Angeles between the city’s two largest gangs, the Crips and Bloods, is expressive of this development.

The stirrings of “the bottom” of society aim toward certain goals: the end of scarcity in the midst of plenty; complete literacy; the ability to function competently at any chosen level of society; productive and livable employment; access to the most advanced health care in the world and a real voice in the policy decisions that affect their lives.

It is in this context that the Bloods and the Crips have come together to demand their place in the changing social fabric.

How is this possible when police and most of the media portray them as drug-dealing, inner-city terrorists?

It’s possible because these gangs are not monolithic. There is no single leadership. To be sure, there are gang members who care nothing about unity. For years, their violent acts dictated the lives and determined the deaths of thousands of young people in South-Central. Communities were pulled into the warfare.

Another group, less publicized, became politicized with every police beating, every inequity, every injustice. Years ago, these gang members, along with others in the community, began work on uniting the gangs. Until the April uprising, most of these efforts involved individuals. Since then, unity efforts have been carried out on a larger scale, with neighborhoods participating.

At the same time, gang members grew tired of the senseless killings. Many of these killings touched everyone, particularly when children were hit. This is why, in the aftermath of the uprising, graffiti appeared expressing such sentiments as “Mexicans & Crips & Bloods Together.” Police later erased most of the unity-related scrawl.

The gangs became political through observation and participation. Although many of the youth don’t read, they witness politics playing itself out every day. What the King beating did, what the uprising did, was help them cross the line of understanding what’s really going on.

The Bloods-Crips unity is about who will rule South-Central. A Los Angeles radio announcer recently estimated that there were some 640 liquor stores within a three-mile radius of South-Central, compared with no movie houses or community centers. Elsewhere, schools and streets are in disrepair. Manufacturing industries have been shuttered forever. Under these circumstances, you have to ask: Who really controls this community?

Not the community.

Although the people of South-Central share responsibility for their conditions–proportionately, more of them are in jail than any other community in the city–they don’t have any decisive control over their lives. This is a breakdown in the integration of responsibility and authority, a component of any democratic process. Those with the authority, including the police and city, county and state officials, fail to take any responsibility, thus abdicating any claim to leadership.

Yet it was precisely when the gangs came together that the police tried to break up as many “unity” rallies as they could, arresting gang leaders and inflaming the ire of residents of housing projects, where many of the rallies were held. The Los Angeles Police Department told the media that the gangs were going to turn on police officers, even ambush them. Yet no police officer in South-Central has been killed or severely hurt since April 29, the day the King-beating verdict came down.

Soon after the rebellion, local law enforcement circulated a flyer among themselves–and the media–that proclaimed the Crips and Bloods would “kill two cops for every gang member killed.” It was incendiary and a forgery. For example, most African-American gang leaders would never use the words “little black girl” to describe Latasha Harlins, who was slain by a Korean grocer last year. They know the flyer’s writing style was not even crudely close to the current street style. The flyer appeared to be yet another example of cartoon propaganda that has characterized previous allegations by police.

Meanwhile, the federal government has launched the largest investigation of its kind to destroy the gangs. Government officials are using the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, the one used to put reputed crime boss John Gotti in jail, to go after every person associated with the Crips and the Bloods. It appears the FBI is targeting the L.A. gangs for political, not criminal, activity, since its efforts are directly related to the events beginning April 29.

This is not new, or surprising. After the 1965 Watts rebellion, several gangs united, some of them becoming the L.A. chapter of the Black Panthers. The federal government intervened, orchestrating the friction between the Black Panther Party and the United Slaves organization.

Last year, nearly 600 L.A. youth were killed in gang- or drug-related incidents. Yet only now has Washington decided to come in, when the rate of shootings and deaths has dramatically fallen.

Despite the array of local, state and federal forces currently poised against L.A. gangs, gang unity is going to last. The Bloods and Crips have undergone a 22-year-old war without declared terms. To think that in five or six months there will be total unity is unrealistic. There are still some individual disputes. But the attacks have diminished in scale and number. The war is essentially over. The government–and police–should stop undermining the truce, stop fanning the emotional flames that will only bring on more death and destruction.

The Bloods and Crips are not asking for anything from anybody. This is what they have to do for themselves. They have even bypassed certain so-called leaders, including Jesse Jackson. They are not asking for outsiders to step in and dictate the terms of peace.

Recently, a plan to rebuild L.A., presumed to be from the Bloods and Crips, was floated around. Regardless of its origin, the plan was in clear contrast to the “official” rebuilding group, whose members are mostly from outside South-Central. The plan does not call for re-establishing the taco stands, the liquor stores or exploitative markets that previously dotted South-Central. Instead, it calls for improved housing, infrastructure and sanitation, for more parks, community centers and health-care facilities. It includes a proposal for upgrading all schools. It ends with the statement: “Give us the hammers and the nails, we will rebuild the city.”

This embodies a vision, something many police and some government officials would like the public to believe the gangs are incapable of possessing. This is taking responsibility. And it is a demand for the authority to carry it out.

Despite great odds, the Bloods and Crips have found common ground, a unified aim, to end the violence. Whether society is ready for this or not, it is the only path not littered with hypocrisy and blame. Indeed, it is one of the few for peace and justice still viable in Los Angeles.

Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr

“Any suggestion that the men and women of our Office enjoyed or relished this investigation is wrong. It is nonsense. . . . The Lewinsky investigation caused all of us considerable dismay–and continues to do so. . . . This investigation has proved difficult for us because it centered on legal wrongdoing by the president of the United States. The presidency is an office that we, like all Americans, revere and respect. No prosecutor is comfortable when he or she reports wrongdoing by the president. All of us want to believe that our president has at all times acted with integrity, and certainly that he has not violated the law. . . . Mr. chairman, my office and I revere the law. I am proud of what we have accomplished. We were assigned a difficult job. We have done it to the very best of our abilities. We have tried to be both fair and thorough.”

Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), Judiciary Committee chairman

“Do we have one set of laws for the officers and another for the enlisted? Should we? These are but a few questions these hearings are intended to explore. And just perhaps, when the debate is over, the rationalizations and the distinctions and the semantic gymnastics are put to rest, we may be closer to answering for our generation the haunting question, asked 139 years ago in a small military cemetery in Pennsylvania, “whether a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure.”

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.)

“Today’s witness, Kenneth W. Starr, wrote the tawdry, salacious and unnecessarily graphic referral that he delivered to us in September with so much drama and fanfare. And now the majority members of this committee have called that same prosecutor forward to testify in an unprecedented desperation effort to breathe new life into a dying inquiry. It is fundamental to the integrity of this inquiry to examine whether the independent counsel’s evidence is tainted, whether conclusions are colored by improper motive; in short, it is relevant to examine the conduct of the independent counsel and his staff where their behavior impacts directly on the credibility of the evidence in the referral.”

Rep. Ed Bryant (R-Tenn.)

“Judge Starr . . . I want to commend you for setting forth a clear, documented, compelling case against the president. You have provided a road map for us to see how and when the president chose deception rather than truth at many important crossroads in our judicial system’s search for the truth.”

Rep. Stephen E. Buyer (R-Ind.)

“It boggles my mind to hear some people who claim that they are true advocates of civil rights, now somehow claim that it’s OK to lie in a civil rights case. That just boggles my mind. What message do we want to send unto our society? So what do we have? We have the president; he took an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the land. The president has a constitutional duty to do just that. It is alleged that the president, as a defendant in a sexual harassment civil rights case in federal court committed perjury in his deposition before a federal judge.”

Rep. Charles T. Canaday (R-Fla.):

” . . . I think what we are seeing here is a desperate attempt to get away from the facts of the case against the president. Now, I understand that because I find that the facts are particularly compelling. I think your referral sets forth in great detail a pattern of calculated and sustained misconduct by the president of the United States. And I understand why the president’s friends would instinctively react to defend him. But what is going on in attacking your investigation is not right. It is not consistent with respect for the rule of law. And I believe that the attacks that have been launched against you are without substance.”

Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Mass.)

“The committee has given the independent counsel a full two hours to present his version of the facts . . . At the same time, the majority has seen fit to give the president’s counsel all of 30 minutes to question Mr. Starr . . . I submit this is a grave disservice . . . “

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)

“I would point that with respect to Monica Lewinsky, her attorney was Frank Carter, who is a criminal, as well as a civil, attorney; . . . regulations are intended to ensure that a person’s right to counsel is respected. Under this policy, your office never should have contacted Monica Lewinsky directly on Jan. 16 without the consent of her attorney Frank Carter.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose)

“Mr. chairman, there is no doubt that this is one of the most embarrassing chapters in American history. . . . But also embarrassing has been the reaction of Congress to the referral made by Mr. Starr in September. What we should have done was this: Ask how these allegations, if true, could destroy our American constitutional system of government.”

Al Gore, who had phoned George W. Bush to concede the election after midnight, phoned again at 2:30 a.m. CST. According to several news reports, which varied in detail, the conversation went like this:: Gore: “The state of Florida is too close to call.” Bush, incredulous: “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? Let me make sure that I understand. You’re calling back to retract that concession?” Gore: “Don’t get snippy about it! … Let me explain … I don’t think we should be going out making statements with the state of Florida still in the balance.” Bush then explains to Gore that the research of his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, showed W. had won.

Gore, coolly: “I don’t think this is something your brother can take care of.” Or: “With all due respect to your brother, he is not the final arbiter of who wins Florida.’ Or: “Let me explain something. Your younger brother is not the ultimate authority on this.” Bush: “Do what you have to do.”

This Christmas Eve, slide into one of the wooden booths at chef-owner Keith Corbin’s sunlit restaurant in West Adams or order the restaurant’s signature California soul plates to complete your holiday spread at home. The regular menu with black-eyed pea fritters, smoked chicken and sausage gumbo and fried chicken with house-made Fresno hot sauce will be available for dine-in alongside the full beverage menu, with a wine list that highlights BIPOC and women producers, and cocktails including a creative limoncello martini. For those who prefer to enjoy the soulful spread at home, choices include smoked honey butter ham and house-smoked brisket with smoked apple barbecue sauce as mains; sides like cornbread bites, mac and cheese and brown-buttered candied yams; and banana pudding and brown-butter chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Catering orders must be placed online by Dec. 21 and will be available for pickup or delivery on Christmas Eve. Last-minute Christmas Eve takeout orders can also be placed via GrubHub. Adams Wine Shop, the restaurant’s neighboring bottle shop, will be open on Christmas Eve for those who need a last-minute host gift, with mulled wine kits available for purchase.

No one needs reminding that 2025 began in an L.A. aflame. Musicians didn’t escape the fires, especially in Altadena. Concerts were canceled but then became events of communal healing, a process that continues.

There were further troubling signs. Institutions continued to struggle to bring audiences back to pre-COVID numbers. Major orchestras and opera companies — San Francisco Symphony, Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, among them — feared fraught contract negotiations. Government funding for the arts dried up. Censorship, new to modern America, appeared a threat. And a military presence on downtown L.A. streets made trips to the Music Center and elsewhere in DTLA less inviting.

Still, classical music’s survival instincts proved reliable. New leaders of L.A.’s arts institutions are bringing vitality to the region, empowering musicians and giving fans hope and optimism. Here are my Los Angeles classical music highlights of 2025.

Coachella phenom of the year

It has been a year of transition for Gustavo Dudamel. The long “Gracias Gustavo” goodbye to the Los Angeles Philharmonic music and artistic director has begun. For its part, the New York Philharmonic, where Dudamel is headed next season, wonders how it can ever top the L.A. Phil visit to Coachella in April. Pop music crowds, 100,000 strong, shouted, “L.A. Phil! L.A. Phil!” and “Gustavo! Gustavo!” Big cheers rang as well at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and on an Asia tour, particularly for Dudamel’s increasingly rich Mahler performances. In late winter he led an impressive Mahler Grooves festival; the summer brought an exhilarating performance of Mahler’s First Symphony and the fall an extraordinary Second Symphony.

Orchestral visionary of the year

In his own transitional year, Esa-Pekka Salonen finished an unhappy five-year tenure as music director of a San Francisco Symphony that foolishly failed to share his vision with a startlingly dramatic Mahler Second — known, tellingly, as “The Resurrection.” That was followed three months later by the L.A. Phil announcing it was all in with its transformative former music director and had created a new position of creative director in which he would rethink the role of the symphony orchestra in society. As a preview, Salonen had conducted a revelatory performance of Pierre Boulez’s “Rituel” in the spring, with the L.A. Phil musicians and L.A. Dance Project dancers spilling around the Disney Hall stage.

L.A. opera director of the year, although you’d never know it in L.A.

Peter Sellars was barely home in 2025, although that is certain to change with the return of Salonen. Among his newsworthy projects in New York, France and Italy, a busy Sellars collaborated with Salonen on an unflinching, intense and unforgettable staging of two end-of-life monologues: Schoenberg’s “Erwartung” and, with yet more Mahler, the end of “Das Lied von der Erde.” On opening night, it left a gala audience stunned.

Former L.A. opera director of the year, although you’d never know it in L.A.

L.A.’s next-generation opera revolutionary, Yuval Sharon, bid his own farewell to the city where he founded the experimental company the Industry, and where he became L.A. Phil’s first artist collaborator. He now serves as artistic director of Detroit Opera and has relocated to New York City as he prepares to mount Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” at the Metropolitan Opera in March. But Sharon carried L.A. with him in 2025 to the University of Chicago, where he delivered the annual Berlin Family Lectures, and in which he considered opera from an anarchistic point of view, inspired by John Cage. He also staged in Chicago Cage’s “Europera 5,” completing a project he had begun in L.A., where, in collaboration with the L.A. Phil,” he had mounted “Europeras 1 & 2” on a Sony Pictures sound stage.

Uncompromising opera administrator of the year

While serving as interim managing director of Long Beach Opera in 2025, board chair Marjorie Beale put her company on the line by boldly devoting the entire season to the open-ended, deep listening music of the late Pauline Oliveros. While Oliveros worked little in opera and never in a remotely traditional manner, Beale felt the spiritual operatic substance of Oliveros’ work was what the company needed and what the world needs. Inspired, unexpected productions by the company’s artistic director and chief creative officer, James Darrah, and conducted by music director Christopher Rountree were staged in operatic byways (parks and the Queen Mary) as ear-opening, mind expanding experiences. It was a sell-out sensation season that may not have paid the bills, requiring some cutting back for next season as the company catches its breath but Beale has shown what it means to stand for something and why Long Beach Opera matters.

Wilding Wild Up

Along with his Long Beach Opera gig, Rountree is founder and music director of Wild Up, the avant-garde chamber orchestra of virtuoso musicians, all of whom happen to be progressive composers as well. For 15 years, Wild Up has been a crucial component in the grander L.A. vision of orchestral, operatic and dance reinvention. This year it found infectious joy in the music of Julius Eastman; it significantly helped the Martha Graham Dance Company remain relevant, and it began new series at the Nimoy in Westwood and Sierra Madre Playhouse.

More Pauline

Claire Chase, who has been one of the most influential instigators of the Pauline Oliveros revival, was this year’s Ojai Festival energizer bunny. Her flutes — from piccolo to bass and all in between — and friends became magic makers in this numinous physical and musical landscape. Oliveros’ deep listening and that of other composers of her environmental ilk, particularly the atmospherically ethereal sound worlds of Annea Lockwood, were made for Ojai.

Saving the Kennedy Center (for a couple of days, anyway)

Choreographer Mark Morris staved off the federal government’s arts wrecking ball by salvaging his latest work, “Moon,” a commission for the Kennedy Center’s Earth to Space festival in April. The institution’s dance team hadn’t yet been fired. And Morris displayed, in this marvelous outer-space dance adventure, that wonder could exist in what had become the most unlikely of places.

Handel Heroine

French harpsichordist and conductor, Emmanuelle Haïm, the latest L.A. Phil artist collaborator, began a three-year Handel festival with a dazzlingly sung and played performance of the oratorio “Triumph of Time and Disillusion.” This study of extravagance and sanctity made Handel seem utterly relevant in his attempt to thwart early 18th century censorship and say something important.

Mehta and MTT

There are no words for what Zubin Mehta and Michael Tilson Thomas have meant for L.A. over the past three-quarters of a century. Native Angeleno and former music director of the San Francisco Symphony, MTT, who suffers from glioblastoma, retired from conducting with an 80th birthday celebration, hosted by the San Francisco Symphony, in a profoundly moving and musically fulfilling exhibition of valedictory resilience. Although Mehta, the L.A. Phil’s 89-year-old conductor emeritus, has canceled concerts that require travel, he took on Bruckner’s massive Eight Symphony with his old band. His movements are limited. He reportedly has difficulty with vision and hearing. Beyond all that, though, an orchestra that knows and loves him brought into existence, especially in the slow movement, an inner Mehta vista that felt like a world unto itself.

Just as a president is entitled to pardon anyone convicted or accused of a crime, he is free to dismiss any petitions for clemency without offering an explanation. Indeed, he can choose never to issue any pardons or commutations of sentences at all. Still, it’s disappointing that President Obama so far hasn’t approved even one request for a pardon or other form of clemency.

It’s not that there is a shortage of claimants. Earlier this month, Obama formally denied 605 petitions for commutation of sentences and 71 pardon requests. It’s hard to believe that none of those was deserving of approval.

In the public mind, the president’s authority to grant clemency tends to be associated with high-profile and politically motivated grants of clemency, such as President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon of Richard M. Nixon for Watergate crimes, President Clinton’s scandalous pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich or President George W. Bush’s commutation of the sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice.

But presidents also have used the pardon authority to right wrongs and reward rehabilitation in much less prominent cases. They are aided in such decisions by the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Justice Department, which scrutinizes claims for clemency and passes them along to the White House with recommendations. There are strict standards for clemency petitions submitted through the pardon attorney. For example, no petition for a pardon may be submitted until five years after a prisoner is released or, if no prison sentence was imposed, five years after conviction. Petitions for a commutation of a sentence are usually entertained only when no other form of relief is available.

Ideally, presidents would give great deference to the pardon attorney’s recommendations and take a liberal view of the clemency power, exercising it often and on the basis of clear standards. Their reluctance to do so likely reflects not the merits or demerits of particular petitions but the political liability of appearing soft on crime. That reality has led some advocates of more pardons to hope that Obama is waiting to announce grants of clemency until after next week’s election. If so, we hope his first exercise of his clemency power won’t be his last.

In the context of beverage pros, you might consider Jason Lee something of a spiritual counselor. He works with restaurants where the culinary viewpoints are exceptionally strong — Baroo, Pijja Palace and n/soto line his résumé — and creates specific, complex cocktails that further integrate those culture-based flavors into the experience. Lee is currently bar director at Darling in West Hollywood, the California debut of nationally acclaimed chef Sean Brock. Like many superlative talents who move to Los Angeles, Brock desires to know fresh terrain, to respectfully reflect the city back to itself through his style of cuisine. Many of us, meanwhile, are simply hankering for a taste of his generation-defining Southern cooking. Let’s consider all this at Darling over one of Lee’s drinks. “Almond” is a deeply savory keeper fusing tequila, sherry, roasted almonds and doenjang, brightened by the herbal liqueur Génépi and lemon. Most cocktails roll closely with the seasons, such as an autumnal warmer involving bourbon, brandy, gooseberries and winter squash distilled to its essence. Come early for a dry-aged steak burger, with a limited run of 24 per night, which makes for top-notch drinking food

Show more Show less