The Press-Enterprise

In the increasingly popular move of making urban living part of the Inland landscape, Ontario is upping the stakes.

Construction has started on the city's bid for a slice of big-city life, called Piemonte at Ontario Center, where stores and restaurants are planned to go alongside -- and under -- condominiums. Panattoni Development also expects to put up several office buildings and a 256-room hotel, all of it centered around what no other Inland city has: An 11,000-seat arena.

Piemonte, as planned,… more

Is it time to place the two major political parties on California's endangered species list? If current trends persist, the number of independent voters may outnumber Democrats and Republicans by 2025.

Distrust of elected leaders and faltering confidence in the political establishment have increasingly driven Californians to the no-party label. New voters appear to be moving to the independent status so fast that we need to rethink the red and blue political map in the 2006 California election.

A year ago in January, Gov. Schwarzenegger declared 2005 "The Year of Reform," kicking off a contentious special election that ended with voters rejecting all of his proposed measures.

California's representative democracy is broken, and serious electoral reforms are needed. The best solution is reforming our electoral process to improve our chances of electing leaders who understand our problems and are committed to solving them.

We suggest convening a Citizens Assembly of randomly selected citizens who care about their government… more

Last month's report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform headed by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker deserves serious attention. The commission makes recommendations that would greatly improve our elections. The commission's boldest call is for universal voter registration, a practice used by many democracies around the world in which all eligible voters are automatically registered to vote. Universal registration would add more than 50 million unregistered Americans--nearly three in 10 eligible voters, disproportionately… more

The U.S. Senate will soon begin confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. With partisan groups on both sides gearing up for a fight, the process promises to be as contentious as past confirmations.

One can't help but wonder if we couldn't avoid much of the partisan mud wrestling about Supreme Court nominees if there were term limits on the high court. Perhaps more than any single factor, the "until death do we part" constitutional requirement has been responsible for bruising… more

"Majority rule" is one of the cornerstones of our representative democracy. Unless a candidate wins a majority of the vote, we cannot be certain that the winner is the one preferred by the most voters.

Yet, too often, American elections fail this most basic test of democracy.

In three of our last four presidential elections, the winning candidate did not have a majority of the national popular vote.

In the Inland Empire, candidates with less than a popular majority have won important… more