First thing Monday, 11.7.05

♦ Ethics reforms at City Hall have stalled now that Hahn is out and Villaraigosa is in, Howard Fine reports in a free front-pager in this week's Los Angeles Business Journal.

♦ You know how long it has been since the Police Commission conducted its mandatory annual audit of clandestine LAPD anti-terrorism activities? Seven years, Beth Barrett and Josh Kleinbaum reported in Sunday's Daily News.

♦ We find out today exactly how bad the latest L.A. Times circulation drop has been. The Audit Bureau of Circulation releases its latest numbers.

♦ The IRS threatened the tax-exempt status of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena over an anti-war sermon just before the 2004 election. Have any pastors been threatened for pro-Administration or pro-war remarks (or anti-abortion sermons for that matter)?

♦ The Washington Times reported over the weekend that those four Chinese arrested in L.A. last week "caused serious compromises for 15 years to major U.S. weapons systems." The paper cited intelligence sources saying this "could prove to be among the most damaging spy cases since the 1985 one of John A. Walker Jr., who passed Navy communication codes to Moscow for 22 years." That advances what the LAT and NYT have reported.

♦ Today's Times editorializes against councilman Bill Rosendahl over the bus lane on Wilshire in West L.A.

♦ Orlov items: Janice Cooley, wife of DA Steve Cooley, stepped down as an aide to Supervisor Mike Antonovich after just nine months...Herb Wesson has campaign material in Ethiopian...Richard Riordan is returning to the board of L.A.'s BEST.

♦ Saturday's NYT reviewed the rift at the Getty between boss Barry Munitz and the museum experts who don't like him.

♦ Blogger Independent Sources goes into the field in search of the Rumble in Brentwood, with photos. Also this email from Brentwood: "I live a block from the area where the so-called 'gangbangers' were creating problems and did not hear nor see any signs to indicate two rival gangs were even yelling at each other. I walked around that evening, my friends and their children, and my nieces and nephews all walked up and down the streets. I checked with all and none saw any signs of a fued between rival gangs." Also, Brian Humphrey was on duty at the LAFD Halloween night and emails that nothing came over the 911 network.

♦ LAT hockey columnist Helene Elliott becomes the first woman sportswriter honored by the Hockey Hall of Fame tonight in Toronto. Her husband, basketball PR guy Dennis D'Agostino, crows about it in the Times.

♦ Coverage of the Dodgers and Paul DePodesta's firing in the Times' sports section was chastised in a Sunday Outside the Tent piece by Matt Welch.

♦ The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists will move its national headquarters from New York to Los Angeles in 2006.

♦ Financial columnist Jim Cramer's days at the old Herald Examiner: "First, his apartment was robbed, then it was robbed again, then again. With no money, possessions or benefits, he bought a gun and moved into his car. The psychic hits kept coming when he was picked up (and later released) for armed robbery and then developed mononucleosis. He sought medical attention at a farmworkers' clinic, where he met a doctor who tried to coax him from the razor's edge." NYT

♦ Jewish Defense League bomb-plotter Earl Krugel was killed by a white-supremacist inmate three days after being removed from protective custody here and sent to a federal prison in Phoenix.