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Back from the holiday...here are some news notes.
- The Supreme Court rules that the Navy's interest in conducting sonar tests whenever it wants trumps concerns about the damage to sea life, including whales that are disabled by the sound. LAT
- When he parses out the heavy vote among Latino voters for Obama, Tim Rutten argues that an inadvertent architect of the Obama victory was former Gov. Pete Wilson. LAT Op-Ed
- As ballots continue to be counted, Measure R to pay for transit projects still leads, the Los Angeles parcel tax for gang programs still trails, and the Beverly Hills hotel measure — to allow development of a Waldorf hotel and residence tower at the Beverly Hilton — has pulled ahead. All are too close to call. Daily News, L.A. Now
- Sen. Dianne Feinstein leads in a poll assessing possible Democratic candidates for governor, with AG Jerry Brown second. Sausage Factory
- Westfield has even more plans for its Century City mall and adjacent properties. LAT
- Joel Kotkin has the cover story in The American arguing that California "appears headed, if not for imminent disaster, then toward an unanticipated, maddening, and largely unnecessary mediocrity."
- Times Metro staffer Mary McVean moves to features to write mostly about food issues. Reader's Rep blog
- Dana Goodyear has stopped writing her Postcard from Los Angeles blog for the New Yorker, which now offers a blog uniting all of its writers' online posts.
- Terry McDermott's 2007 series in the LAT "Chasing Memory" won the American Association for the Advancement of Science journalism award. He's finishing a book based on the series for Pantheon to be called "101 Theory: A Scientist's Pursuit of the Memory Machine in the Brain."
- Scott Laumann, the artist commissioned by the L.A. Times to do its Obama illustration, is selling prints online.