Republicans were cheering Wednesday after right-wing hidden-camera provocateur (and would-be sexual prankster) James O'Keefe unveiled his latest expose, this time catching a Democratic congressman's son advising an undercover member of O'Keefe's team on how to commit voter fraud.

The video, O'Keefe says, "takes an unprecedented inside view of voter fraud in the United States, something that many claim doesn't even exist." In it, O'Keefe's unidentified colleague (who's never shown) approaches Patrick Moran, son of and reelection field director for Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), in a cafe and says he's concerned that President Obama may lose, and is looking for help casting votes in the names of 100 people who haven't voted in the previous few elections.

The younger Moran doesn't tell the man that what he's planning is illegal, immoral or wrong. Instead, he tells him it would be "tough" and that he'd be better off spending his time and energy getting those 100 voters to the polls. He also...

People on both sides of the Atlantic are in a swivet because of something Ann Coulter said.

I know, I know. Surprise.

In this instance, people are angry for the wrong reasons. No, that’s not correct; they’re angry for not enough of the right ones.

Sometime during or right after this last presidential debate, Coulter tweeted: “I highly approve of Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard.” By which she meant, of course, President Obama.

There was, naturally, an incensed reaction to her casual use of a word that has not been accepted in polite company for many years, a shorthand for the phrase “mentally retarded,” which the medical establishment is phasing out, and which Congress dropped from federal laws in 2010, to be replaced by “intellectual disability.” In signing that bill, the president quoted the brother of a little girl with Down's syndrome for whom the law is named. “What you call people,” Obama quoted...

A fascinating dichotomy has emerged between the two criminal justice initiatives on the Nov. 6 California ballot. Both are aimed at reducing harsh sentences and thus saving the state money, yet one has attracted support from conservatives and is expected to win handily, while the other is opposed widely by conservatives and trailing in the polls. Why?

Proposition 36, which would tweak the state's three-strikes sentencing law by making it less likely that third-strikers who commit minor crimes end up with life terms, has been endorsed by Republican law-and-order types such as L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, and such GOP heavy-hitters as tax watchdog Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Bipartisan support for the measure probably explains why its passage is all but assured. A USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times polllast month found 66% of voters supporting the measure with only 20% opposed, and although other surveys have pegged the race as a closer call, none have shown a...

Although I live in Washington, working out of The Times' bureau here, I'm not a Redskins fans. (Go Steelers.)  But I do refer to them, as I have just done here, by their official -- if offensive -- name. Not so the Washington City Paper, which has rechristened the team the Washington Pigskins. “Pigskins” finished first among  alternate-universe handles in a poll of City Paper readers. Other candidates were Washington Monuments, Washington Half-Smokes (a sausage sold on D.C. street corners) and Washington Washingtons.

In an editorial three years ago, The Times wrote that the name “Redskins [was] an embarrassment to the nation's capital and a blight on the NFL” and suggested that the team shorten its name to the Washington Reds.  Not for the last time, our advice was ignored. But we didn’t suggest that our colleagues in the sports department pretend that our wish had been granted, any more than we would propose that the president elected next month be...

Which should a good "green" citizen choose: a cardboard bike or a hybrid Porsche?

In one corner -- call it the light green one -- we have Israeli inventor Izhar Gafni, who hopes to begin production soon on three models of bicycles made of super-strong cardboard. (The tires are rubber but are recycled from auto tires.)

As The Times reported recently:

Despite being made almost entirely of cardboard, Gafni says the bike is strong, durable, fireproof and waterproof. And because it is made of cardboard, it will also be cheap. Gafni's business partner Nimrod Elmish told Reuters that he expects the bike to sell at retail stores for $20.

Think of it as a bike for the 99%, and not just in the U.S. but, at that price, globally.

In the other corner -- call it the real green one -- we have the new Porsche 918 Spyder, a plug-in hybrid that is able to run on electric power only.

However, it’s still a Porsche, as The Times’ David Undercoffler wrote:

Lest you think Porsche has gone soft while it'...

To be fair, Richard Mourdock, the U.S. Senate candidate in Indiana, isn't a myth-slinging blowhard like another GOP contender for the Senate, Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri. It's hard to forget Akin's less-than-expert medical opinion that in cases of "legitimate rape," women's bodies have ways to prevent a pregnancy, or as he put it, "shut that whole thing down."

Mourdock, a "tea party" candidate who won the GOP nomination over a more moderate Republican, was speaking on matters of faith, not (pseudo)science, when he said that even in cases of rape, if the woman becomes pregnant, that was something God had intended to happen, which was why he would not support keeping abortion legal in the case of sexual attack. He went on to say that he respected the differing beliefs of others, but, as he put it:

“I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something...

Proposition 40 is a measure to retain new state Senate districts. The California Republican Party, several GOP Senate campaigns and a handful of others paid more than $2 million last year to put it on the Nov. 6 ballot. So they’re in support, right? But wait -- when they succeeded, and their political re-mapping referendum actually got on the ballot, their objective was to get you to vote no. So they’re in opposition. Right? Well, yes. And no.

The Republicans were countered early on by one very wealthy supporter of their own party, Charles T. Munger Jr., who gave almost $600,000 to a campaign to block the referendum. So if they were working against each other and the GOP was in support, Munger was opposed. Right? Kind of. But not really.

Why do campaign documents list both Munger and the GOP as being in support if they shelled out their money to fight each other? If the Republican Party changed its mind earlier this year, dropped its opposition and now wants you to vote yes...

Discussions of Proposition 37, the initiative that would require labeling of many genetically engineered foods, tend to bring up two arguments that both seem true at first blush. Opponents claim it would raise the price of food; supporters say it would result in better-informed consumers. But both assertions are more dubious than they appear.

The No-on-37 campaign bases most of its claims of higher food prices on a study that it paid for, so obviously the findings are hardly unimpeachable. But there’s an even more problematic aspect to the study: It assumes that food companies would change their products to avoid genetically engineered ingredients so that they wouldn’t have to label them. This makes for a strange argument in favor of genetically engineered food -- the assumption, even by a pro-industry study, is that most consumers don’t want bioengineered food and wouldn’t buy it if they knew it was in those cans and boxes.

This would take a huge turnaround in...

One of the few areas of real disagreement in Monday's debate between President Obama and his GOP rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, was over the size of the defense budget. Romney said the Navy and Air Force had gotten too small and that Obama had abandoned the country's longtime commitment to having a military large enough to fight two wars at once. Obama countered that the military's needs evolved over time and that Romney wanted to spend $2 trillion on defense (over 10 years) that "the military is not asking for."

The media (myself included) seized on Obama's snarkiest comment of the evening, which came in response to Romney's complaint about the Navy and the Air Force: "We also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines."

But the thing Obama said that seemed to resonate most across the Twitterverse was an...

Opponents of Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed tax increase are doubling down in their latest commercial, offering not one but two whoppers about what Proposition 30 would do.

The measure would increase the state sales tax by 0.25 percentage points and raise the income tax by 1 to 3 percentage points on individuals earning more than $250,000 (and couples earning more than $500,000), generating about $6 billion a year. The money would go into a special fund for public schools and community colleges. At the same time, it would allow the Legislature to take about $3 billion from the General Fund that would have been spent on education and redirect it to other priorities.

The new commercial by the No on 30 -- Californians for Reform and Jobs, Not Taxescampaign features a woman in blue standing at what appears to be a kitchen counter, with two kids sitting at a table in the background doing homework. She looks at the camera and says, "We all want better schools, so Prop. 30 seemed OK." So far so...

President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney debated foreign policy at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., on Monday night. Though moderator Bob Schieffer laid out an agenda, which included our next steps in Afghanistan, dealing with nuclear Iran and negotiating with China, the candidates continuously shifted their focus back to domestic issues.

“Rom hits nail on head: Says strong economy will mean strong foreign presence,” tweeted Charlotte Allen in our live commentary feed, which included voices from the left and right. But she also said: “What happened to foreign policy? Isn't that what this debate is supposed to be about?” Doyle McManus also took note: “There's so much agreement tonight that it's barely a debate -- and it's often not about foreign policy, either.”

With the presidential election just two weeks and few hours away, and with the race at a dead heat, it’s no surprise Obama came out swinging, no doubt still trying to make...