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Curated news, notes and observations most weekdays from LA Observed.
State lawmakers return to session today to start a legislative year that will be marked by "leadership transitions in both houses; tests of a Democratic supermajority that November elections could erase; disputes over how to spend a fiscal windfall; wading into water wars; and the ongoing turmoil around a state senator who is under the FBI’s microscope." Sacto Bee, AP, OC Register, LAT
That Sen. Kevin de León remains a serious contender to become the next leader of the California Senate may seem surprising given the events of the past six months. His name is mentioned 56 times in an FBI affidavit alleging that Sen. Ron Calderon accepted $88,000 in bribes from an undercover agent and a hospital executive. Sacto Bee
Gov. Jerry Brown plans to propose spending millions of dollars in cap-and-trade fees paid by carbon producers to aid the state's controversial high-speed rail project. Bee, LAT
City Attorney Mike Feuer on undocumented lawyer Sergio Garcia, Measure D's cap on marijuana dispensaries and the LAPD's jaywalking tickets. KPCC
University of California President Janet Napolitano, the former chief of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said Sunday that she opposed offering clemency to Edward Snowden, putting herself at odds with a movement that has gained strength in many parts of the state. LAT
While Hillary Clinton insists publicly she is many months from a decision about her political future, a shadow campaign on her behalf has been steadily building for the better part of a year — a quiet, intensifying, improvisational effort to lay the groundwork for another White House bid. Some of the activity has the former first lady’s tacit approval. Some involves outside groups that are operating independently, and at times in competition with one another. Politico
The Board of Education will meet tomorrow to again debate how to fill a vacancy left by the death of Marguerite LaMotte: special election or appointment. KPCC
A prototype for LA's new streetlamp poles can incorporate cellphone antennas, not unattractively. Instagram
Why TV and film production is running away from Hollywood. LANG package
Plus: Middle-class Hollywood workers lose jobs, income when filming flees Los Angeles. DN
And: Neighborhoods, production crews clash over film shoots. Star-News
Don Forst, a former editor at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner who became better known as the feisty top editor of New York Newsday, the Village Voice and the Boston Herald, died on Saturday in Albany. He was 81. NYT
When life (and death) and work collide: Zocalo managing editor Sarah Rothbard remembers, and misses, colleague Charita Law, who died at age 25 after a New Year's Eve fall. Zocalo
There’s no doubt that political coverage at NPR's "Weekend All Things Considered" has been influenced by the show's move outside the Beltway to Culver City. Politico, LA Observed
A semi-favorable tweet by New York Times film critic A.O. Sweet was used in a print ad for “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Romenesko
In this week's New Yorker, Rebecca Mead profiles Jennifer Weiner, "the best-selling author and outspoken advocate for both female writers and commercial fiction. 'Jennifer Weiner has two audiences,' Mead writes. 'One consists of the devoted consumers of her books, which have sold more than four and a half million copies.' The other is made up of 'writers, editors, and critics'...Social media have given Weiner a parallel notoriety, as an unlikely feminist enforcer." The New Yorker
Two media follow-up stories on the January closing of Mrs. Nelson's Toy and Book Shop in La verne. Daily Bulletin, Jacket Copy
Bill Bratton and John Miller, back in blue for round 3. NYT
LAPD detective fondled women at massage parlors, DA charges. DN
LAPD detective Shaun King, who specializes in rescuing teenage prostitutes from the clutches of pimps, lost a portion of his leg in a New Year’s Day motorcycle crash in Redondo Beach. Daily Breeze
AIDS Healthcare Foundation head Michael Weinstein oversees a $750-million budget from the 21st floor of a Sunset Boulevard skyscraper, in a corner office with a panoramic view of the Hollywood sign. While the political response to AIDS has dramatically changed and many other AIDS activists have toned down their rhetoric, Weinstein's tactics remain hard-charging, persistent and, at times, polarizing. "He's out of control," Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said recently. LAT
Have you seen my brother standing in the shadows? Political aide and activist Sarah Dusseault on her homeless sibling, diagnosed in his 20s with schizophrenia. LAT Op-ed
Joel Selvin remembers an interview with Phil Everly and says the two musical brothers were quite different. Phil Everly "only found harmony with his brother on stage." SF Gate
With its recent vote to boycott Israel’s higher-education institutions to protest the country’s treatment of Palestinians, the American Studies Association has itself become the target of widespread criticism and ostracism. It has gone from relative obscurity to prominence as a pariah of the United States higher-education establishment. Chronicle of Higher Education/NYT
Federal authorities this year will for the first time decrease the amount of water that flows into Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, from Lake Powell upstream. “If Lake Mead goes below elevation 1,000 we lose any capacity to pump water to serve the municipal needs of seven in 10 people in the state of Nevada." NYT
Jaywalking and Parking Tickets: The Livable Streets Litmus Test of 2014. LA Streetsblog
Even after the windfall of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time Presents exhibitions, "there's still a significant list of postwar Los Angeles architects and designers whose careers remain underexplored. Among the most intriguing is the designer Deborah Sussman, whose work with Jon Jerde on the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics made a cameo last summer in 'Overdrive,' PSTP's anchor show at the Getty Museum." Christopher Hawthorne/LAT
Liz Goldwyn "has curated shows for Sotheby’s fashion department, directed a documentary about burlesque queens, put out a jewelry line, shot a TV commercial, supported designers whose work later appeared in Vogue, directed several short films, served as a muse to Viktor & Rolf, designed makeup bags and accessories and created multimedia art installations in Los Angeles, New York and Paris. Among other ventures." NYT
Clippers point guard Chris Paul will be out up to six weeks after being diagnosed with a separated right shoulder, but no surgery is needed, the team announced Sunday. ESPN LA
Jerry Coleman, the longtime voice of the San Diego Padres, died Sunday at a hospital. He was 89. LAT
Listen to the unearthly geological sounds of the world's deepest borehole: http://t.co/p3a2X0Zt8j
— bldgblog (@bldgblog) January 6, 2014