Robin Abcarian: Perspective

Early Monday morning, citing “serious health issues” in her family, Liz Cheney gave up her bid for the Republican U.S.

There go the gays again. It’s not enough that they have the right to marry in 18 states.

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The culture wars are back, and this time, the battle alarms sound like duck calls.

A word of caution: If you are a woman of child-bearing age, Catholic hospitals may be hazardous to your health.

Never underestimate the power of a pop star with more than 16 million Twitter followers.

Oh my God! Parents, quick, lock up your black sons!

It’s hard to hear the details of Ethan Couch’s crimes without flinching.

Everyone knows that Catholic hospitals don’t perform elective abortions.

In Santa Claus news this week: Kudos to Megyn Kelly who has done the impossible and upped the ante in the already ridiculous “war on Christmas.”

Hello probation. Goodbye dignity.

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Rape insurance? Is that really a thing?

Oh dear.

Good riddance, Martin Bashir.

Remember when that Simi Valley pastor caused a minor stir when he tweeted that Costco had labeled the Bible fiction?

It may be a measure of how beloved a comedian Will Ferrell has become, or it may be a sign of the apocalypse, but when a North Dakota TV station gave over an entire evening news broadcast to a movie promotion stunt, no one seemed the least bit offended.

Amardeep Singh is a typical American guy -- born in New Jersey, raised by a soccer mom, die-hard Yankees fan, player of fantasy football, married with two kids, attorney.

Is the Bible a work of fiction or nonfiction? The question spawns genuine confusion.

A simple request: Please stop calling Sarah Palin names.

Here are some of the places we expect to be safe: Airports. Military bases. Movie theaters.

Julianne Hough, a white actress, darkens her gorgeous mug, dresses up as a black TV character she admires, and apologizes after she is subjected to an Internet backlash.

Hot sauce is so hot right now.

One measure of a savvy politician is how he handles his mistakes.

If Tina Brown is no longer editing magazines, then magazines must be dying.

The botched Obamacare rollout is not the botched Hurricane Katrina response.

Maybe too much sex has addled Suzanne Somers’ brain.

Thank you, Rob Ford. Thank you for making American politicians look so good.

He’s not resigning, he’s not taking a leave of absence and he’s not admitting he has a problem.

It’s possible that President Obama felt better after that confessional, hour-plus press conference Thursday.

The day hasn’t been exhilarating just for Batkid, the 5-year-old leukemia survivor whose wish to become a superhero came true Friday in San Francisco, thanks to the generosity of a city known more for its adult indulgences than for its sentimentality for tots.

Before Mary and Liz Cheney, there were Newt and Candace Gingrich.

The battle over abortion continues to rage, and both sides got good news this week.

What kind of woman sells out her sister for a shot at a U.S. Senate seat?

Two pairs of political siblings and their travails have been in the news this week: The Cheney sisters have been fighting with each other about gay marriage, and the Ford brothers have been fighting with everybody about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s fitness for office.

George Zimmerman may have been acquitted of murder after killing Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager, but I predict that, like OJ Simpson, he will eventually find himself behind bars.

No one ever accused me of stealing my own baby, but I know what it feels like to be the olive-skinned, dark-eyed mother of a fair-haired, blue-eyed biological child.

In a big win for abortion rights — not to mention common sense — a federal judge on Monday gutted a portion of a new Texas law that would have forced the closure of many abortion clinics by requiring their doctors to have unnecessary admitting privileges with local hospitals.

Of all the potential indignities involved in being a “Hooters Girl,” who’d have guessed you could get canned for having the wrong hair color?

On the Venice Boardwalk, the pot hawkers come at you like carnival barkers.

Last week, just before the California Coastal Commission denied a challenge to Mitt and Ann Romney’s plans to replace their La Jolla beachfront home with a new, 11,000-square-foot mansion, their attorney Matthew A.

If anyone expected President Obama to be cowed, apologetic or remorseful Monday when he answered a barrage of criticism about the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act’s website—which even he admitted “stank”--they must have been very disappointed.

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“Not one allegation has even been independently verified or proven in court.

Mitt and Ann Romney have kept low profiles since their plan to move into the White House fell through last November.

At a time when so many states are chipping away at reproductive rights, making it nearly impossible for women to exercise their constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, how refreshing to see California standing up for women’s rights.

It is an oft-noted truism that the tea party Republicans who have already engineered the partial government shutdown and are now threatening to let the country default on its debts have the full support and enthusiasm of constituents in their carefully drawn, politically homogenous districts.

At this point, the polls are pretty consistent: Americans are angry about the budget and shutdown shenanigans in Washington, but they’re angrier at Republicans than they are at Democrats.

Democrats and Republicans are paying little political price for invective. Slinging insults works with some voters and leaves others cold.

God bless Sinead O’Connor, the prickly Irish rock singer who once ripped a photograph of the pope on live TV to protest the Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal, for trying to school Miley Cyrus on the pitfalls of female sexual exploitation in the music business.

Finally. A jury verdict went against Michael Jackson. And it’s long past time.

Reading “Green Eggs and Ham” to the children at bedtime is perfectly acceptable way to end the day in most American households.

Cool guy, that new pope.

We’re all feeling a little desensitized now, aren’t we? Another mass shooting. Ho hum.

There is no mass shooting devastating enough, disgusting enough or shocking enough that the U.S.

The ludicrous thing about the Miss America pageant, which took place in Atlantic City.

President Obama, Tuesday night in the East Room: “Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong.

Except for intermittent floods and quadrennial presidential contests, Iowa doesn’t generally make a lot of news.

It’s the interview everyone’s talking about.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s accidental, possible solution to the Syrian crisis takes a page right out of the Mr.

It’s absolutely appalling the way that angry Trayvon Martin supporters have made George Zimmerman’s life a living hell.

Sergio C.

It’s possible that New York Democratic mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner was simply suffering from low blood sugar when he verbally attacked a man who tried to shame him Wednesday as Weiner campaigned in an Orthodox Jewish section of Brooklyn.

Sometimes, true justice — as opposed to the courtroom kind — arrives so quickly that we are taken by surprise.

As Diana Nyad crawled out of the sea Monday, she was a wobbly, disoriented ball of inspiration for our times, a rebuke to the idea that we age out of our dreams.

It’s hard to know whether Sarah Palin would be so quick to condemn a Republican president for venturing the idea that the U.S. should take military action against Syria in response to what the White House said is a documented chemical weapon attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on his own people.

When Karl Rove starts truth-squadding fellow Texas Republicans over the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, you know there are some tall tales floating around.

Was justice served Monday when a little girl called Veronica was taken from her biological father, a Cherokee, and returned to the white South Carolina couple who had begun to adopt her at birth four years ago?

Of all the people saddened by the news that the little girl named Veronica was forced to leave her biological father and return to her adoptive parents, it had not occurred to me that adult adoptees might be among those hardest hit.

Newt Gingrich can’t be serious.

Accepting the difference between what is legally defensible and what is ethically or morally defensible has been among the biggest challenges for people who believe that George Zimmerman should have been punished for killing Trayvon Martin.

Is it because she came of age as Disney’s Hannah Montana, the country girl with the secret career as a pop star, and we just can’t stand it when child stars grow up?

Long starved of power, many San Diego liberals were willing to overlook Filner’s reputation. That may turn out to be a colossal miscalculation.

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s farewell speech on Friday afternoon was a tour de force of self-pity and deflection.

Somehow, it seems appropriate that a freshman Republican congressman who raises reindeer to pull Santa’s sleigh in holiday parades is suggesting that impeaching President Obama would be “a dream come true.”

For once, Gloria Allred had a news conference and dropped no bombshells.

The two speeches everyone is talking about today, delivered 50 years apart, are powerful bookends for an era of racial progress that began with a church bombing and reached a high point with the election of our country’s first black president.

The story of Pfc.

As many people who knew him suspected, the fiery death of the young journalist Michael Hastings in a single car crash was the result of tragic circumstances, not a government plot to get rid of an inconvenient truth teller.

When U.S. Sen.

Looks like San Diego’s about to wake up from its six-week civic nightmare.

SAN DIEGO -- Can it get any weirder around here?

SAN DIEGO – The City Council and Mayor Headlock are wrestling over who should pay to defend the mayor’s bad behavior in court.

What can San Diego Mayor Bob Filner expect during his two-week intensive rehabilitation program?

I was sitting in bed reading Monday night when a hideous and unfamiliar noise jolted me upright.

SAN DIEGO – You’d think that somewhere in a corner of this sprawling town, someone, somehow would be willing to stand up for Mayor Bob Filner, San Diego’s first Democratic mayor in 20 years.

On Monday evening, the summer crowds were thick on the Venice boardwalk.

Anybody with half a brain should have known it was wrong to put an Obama mask on the face of a rodeo clown Saturday at the Missouri State Fair.

How perfectly welcome a judicial intervention might have been had Jaleesa Martin and her baby’s father decided to name their little boy Idiotface or Stupidhead.

Gloria Allred is back in the news and -- not that she gives a flying fig — but the haters are out in force.

Oprah Winfrey is not only the world’s most powerful celebrity, and one of the richest.

It’s true that a federal judge on Tuesday tossed out the racial discrimination claims against Paula Deen in a lawsuit brought by a former restaurant employee.

How to unpack the layers of irony when “journalists” at the web TV operation run by San Diego’s largest newspaper decided to spoof “Mayor Headlock’s” predicament with a remake of Robin Thicke’s chart-topping music video “Blurred Lines”?

The harassment by U.K. authorities of Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, as he traveled through England on his way from Berlin to his home in Brazil on Sunday should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the story of National Security Agency secret-spiller Edward Snowden and his interlocutor, the American documentarian Laura Poitras.

Can there be any question now that misbegotten “stand your ground” laws can provide a legal cover for murder?

SAN DIEGO -- Mayor Bob Filner has put the entire city of San Diego in one of his trademark headlocks.

Wow, what a relief.

Last week, with a massive $18-billion debt, Detroit became the largest American city to seek bankruptcy protection, and once again we are reading obituaries of the late, great Motor City.

Anthony Weiner, June 6, 2011: “The first thing I need to do is make sure that, obviously, this never, ever happens again, and that I make it up to my wife and to my family and to all the people that I’ve harmed here.”

Hate to say it, but you can’t trust a woman whose husband has been screwing around.

As I was saying to my editor the other day, just before I put him in a headlock and told him I loved him, any time a sheriff creates a sexual harassment hotline for women who believe they are victims of the local mayor, it’s not a good sign for the mayor.

Democratic Rep.

The lurid saga in San Diego continues: Democratic Mayor Bob Filner, who has been accused of vile, unwanted sexual behavior by several women, insists he will not resign.

Two self-generated photos by two young men. One “looks” guilty. One “looks” innocent.

The latest Rolling Stone cover, featuring the angelic face of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has managed to accomplish several things.

When the jury first began deliberations in the George Zimmerman murder trial last week, half of the six-woman panel thought he was guilty.

It’s not as if San Diego hasn’t had plenty of civic scandals in the past, but you don’t get too many news conferences like the one that went down Monday morning in front of San Diego City Hall.

The rehabilitation of George Zimmerman has begun.

While I am still having trouble accepting that you can follow a hoodie-clad black teenager on his way home, confront him, provoke a fight, shoot him through the heart and get away with it, I have to accept the jury’s verdict.

Every time CNN’s courtroom camera lingered on the sad face of George Zimmerman today, I felt slightly sick.

Trying a case in the court of public opinion is nothing new.

English celebrities Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi are hardly household names in the United States.

About 30,000 California prisoners this week began what could potentially be the biggest prison hunger strike in state history.

I think it’s for the best that the enraged, engaging Alec Baldwin, who seems never to have acquired the ability to control his volcanic temper despite multiple public embarrassments over the years, has decided to quit Twitter.

I don’t get the feeling that Trayvon Martin’s big brother, Jahvaris Fulton, was called to the witness stand Friday morning in Sanford, Fla., because the prosecution wanted the jury to hear his opinion about whose voice was screaming for help on the night Martin was shot in the heart by George Zimmerman.

I used to be intrigued by Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker who did the country a favor by revealing proof of the government’s intrusive domestic spying program.

Watching the George Zimmerman murder trial on TV is like being caught in a match of emotional ping pong as you try to anticipate what the jury is thinking: If the detective says Zimmerman never changed his story, does that make his claim of self-defense more believable?