It’s tragic that a woman was mauled to death by four pit bulls Thursday morning as she went for a walk in the Antelope Valley community of Littlerock. And if the circumstances around her attack prove to be as police suspect, it’s a reminder not that pit bulls are necessarily dangerous — they are not — but that irresponsible people train them in ways that make them dangerous.

Police found and seized eight dogs — six of them pit bulls — that they suspect may have been among the ones that killed the woman. They found the dogs on a property where they also discovered a marijuana-growing operation, and they arrested a man in connection with that.

Was he using the animals as vicious watchdogs guarding an illegal business? Police will continue to investigate. He certainly wouldn’t be the first or the last to do so. In December, San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies went to an Adelanto warehouse looking for two pit bulls that had reportedly...

In the post-9/11 culture wars over Islamic fundamentalism, American conservatives — properly — have condemned attempts in Muslim countries to punish blasphemy or insults to the prophet Muhammad. It will be interesting to see if they are similarly outraged over what has happened to an art student at Carnegie Mellon University who insulted the pope.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that CMU filed criminal charges against Katherine B. O'Connor, 19, and Robb S. Godshaw, 22. The university acted after the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh asked it to investigate a parade and carnival at CMU at which a female student was photographed “dressed from the waist up in an ensemble that resembles the clothing worn by the pope. She wore nothing on the lower part of her body, and she had a cross depicted on her pubic area.”

Tasteless? Of course. Even sacrilegious. But criminal? The misdemeanor charge is indecent exposure, which, as the lawyers say, is a “content neutral&...

Vindicating the complaints of some "tea party" activists, a top IRS official admitted Friday that the agency had singled out such groups for scrutiny in the months leading up to the 2012 election.

The revelation (accompanied by an apology from Lois Lerner, the agency's lead overseer of tax-exempt organizations) is sure to draw an investigation in the House because it smacks of Nixonian intimidation tactics. But on the bright side for President Obama, maybe the administration has finally found a way to move Fox News off Benghazi!

At the heart of the scandal is an effort to enforce the rules that bar political campaigns from claiming tax-exempt status. A slew of recently minted nonprofit groups, known as 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations, have blurred the line between advocating policies and trying to elect (or defeat) candidates. This is a problem on both sides of the ideological spectrum, reflecting the squishiness of the current legal regime. Instead of painting bright lines...

The GOP’s effort to woo Latinos may have suffered a minor setback Thursday, thanks to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Republicans have been trying to improve their standing with the fastest-growing voting bloc ever since last year's election, when Latinos overwhelmingly cast their ballots for President Obama.

Graham, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, decided that Thursday’s “mark-up” of a bipartisan immigration reform bill was a good moment to review the differences between the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border and on the U.S.-Canada border. His conclusion: Canada is nice. Mexico isn't.

“We have a Canadian border.... Why are we OK up there and not OK to the south?… Why is one a problem and the other is not? Because Canada is a place where people like to stay. They like Canada. We like Canada. We love to have them visit. They want to go home because it’s a nice place,” said Graham. “The people coming across the southern...

Big employers beware -- some California lawmakers want to pressure you to extend health insurance to virtually everyone who lands on your payroll, even part-timers who work less than two hours a day.

That's one of the effects that a bill by Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Echo Park) would have on companies and nonprofits that employ 500 or more people in the state. But it's not the one that Gomez, a former labor leader, emphasizes when talking about the measure, which the Assembly Health Committee approved on a party-line vote April 30.

Instead, the measure is being sold as a way to stop companies with low-paid workforces -- and Wal-Mart in particular -- from cutting workers' pay and hours so much that they wind up on Medi-Cal, the state's version of Medicaid. During a news conference Thursday, Gomez and Art Pulaski, chief of the California Labor Federation, argued that companies were using this tactic to avoid penalties that the 2010 federal healthcare law imposed on employers that didn't...

It’s been a very good week for Tesla Motors Inc., the little electric car company that can -- with a little boost from the state of California and other automakers, that is.  

On Wednesday, Tesla reported a quarterly profit, the first in its 10-year history. And on Thursday, The Times reported that Consumer Reports magazine had given the company’s Model S its highest score: 99 out of 100.

In fact, the staid folks at Consumer Reports went, for them, absolutely bonkers in praising the car, saying it is “brimming with innovation, delivers world-class performance, and is interwoven throughout with impressive attention to detail. It’s what Marty McFly might have brought back in place of his DeLorean in  'Back to the Future.' "

Provided, of course, that a high school kid could pony up $89,650 for a car. All I can add is, I hope they’re right, given the rotten luck I had with a washer/dryer they recommended.

Still, this is not bad for a company selling...

An unintended consequence of same-sex marriage could hearten wedding traditionalists by making marriage more attractive to all couples. It’s all about the health benefits — and what isn’t these days?

In Maryland, where voters recently approved same-sex marriage, the Baltimore Sun reports that Gov. Martin O’Malley wants to do away with domestic partner benefits for state employees who are gay and lesbian. Such benefits have been available only to same-sex couples because, unlike heterosexual couples, they were until now unable to wed. Now that marriage is theirs to claim, O’Malley says, it would be discriminatory to heterosexual couples if they couldn’t also sign up their domestic partners for benefits.

This is one very small action against domestic partner benefits. It affects only state employees and in a state that provides domestic partner benefits only to a relatively small segment of the population. Private employers have said they’re...

Names and money, it turns out, have some correlation. According to a survey of top earners, the shorter the name, the higher the salary is likely to be. Or at least, people with high salaries tend to have very short names.

Before you go changing your moniker to Al, be aware that the survey just points out a certain amount of coincidence, not one thing causing another. It’s more likely that people who use short nicknames — and many of the top earners do — have certain personal characteristics in common that gear them toward higher pay. Maybe their inclination toward the short and informal indicates a certain gregariousness that we already know tends to help people in their careers. If you're a William kind of guy, switching to Bill probably isn't all that likely to land you in a corner office (though around here, there's a guy nicknamed Nick who has it).

It’s also worth noting that people from certain ethnic backgrounds might tend to have longer names than the...

ALSO:

Photo gallery: Ted Rall cartoons

McManus: Obama's plan to avoid lame-duckery

Tamerlan Tsarnaev and what the dead deserve 

Follow Ted Rall on Twitter @TedRall

Before Wednesday's hearing into last September’s attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said: “If you link Watergate and Iran-Contra together and multiply it maybe by 10 or so, you’re going to get in the zone where Benghazi is.” Not even close.

Going into the hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, we knew that the facility in Benghazi had been underprotected and that the Obama administration clung too long to “talking points” that linked the attack that killed four Americans (including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens) to outrage over an anti-Muslim video. (Contrary to what Republicans have been saying as far back as the Mitt Romney presidential campaign, the attack could have been both a terrorist attack and a response to the video.)

The hearing didn’t alter that picture much, though it featured some poignant testimony from Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in...

More than 40 readers sent letters to the editor in response to George Bisharat's April 28 Op-Ed article on a bill to include Israel in the U.S. visa waiver program. Bisharat, an American law professor and a pro-Palestinian activist who has traveled several times through Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport, said the legislation would allow Israel to continue its racial profiling of U.S. citizens who are Muslim or of Arabic descent.

Four critical letters were published in response, including one from the bill's author, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). She wrote:

"The current visa waiver program requires participating countries to offer 'reciprocal' travel privileges to Americans. My bill does not waive this requirement. In fact, it gives us important leverage to ensure Israel welcomes Americans by requiring a certification from our secretaries of Homeland Security and State that Israel has made 'every' reasonable effort to grant reciprocal travel privileges to 'all' Americans.

"My...