Naomi Gleit helps keep Facebook growing

The gig: As senior director of Facebook Inc.'s growth, engagement and mobile team, Naomi Gleit helps grow the social network's 1-billion-plus user base.

Facebook employee No. 29: Few people outside Facebook have heard of Gleit, but she's the second-longest-serving Facebook employee, after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Gleit, 29, talked her way into a job at Facebook on July 18, 2005 — her birthday. She was Facebook's 29th employee, coming on board shortly after the company hit 1 million users and before anyone had an inkling of the colossus it would become.

Dogged spirit: Unlike most other early employees who eventually dispersed to seek new fortunes, Gleit says she has no intention of leaving Facebook. She gets that tenacity from her "tiger mom," a computer programmer who ferried her to ballet, piano, karate and Chinese lessons, and her Jewish father, an immigration lawyer who took her to Hebrew school, she said. "I know it sounds completely irrational, but I had no doubt in 2005 that Facebook would be something incredible in the future," she said.

Rival social networks: Her passion for Facebook began before she was hired, when she was a Stanford undergraduate studying science, technology and society, an interdisciplinary major. She wrote her senior thesis on why Facebook beat out rival college social networking site Club Nexus at Stanford. (Club Nexus was started by Stanford student and Turkish software engineer Orkut Büyükkökten, who went on to create Orkut, Google's first attempt at a social network.) Getting in on the ground floor at Facebook made her feel like she was taking part in something bigger than herself, the same feeling she got volunteering for six months in a refugee camp in Botswana, she said.

Growing with Facebook: Gleit helped Facebook push beyond colleges to high schools and eventually to everyone. In late 2007, when the torrid growth pace temporarily cooled, Zuckerberg tapped a team of five to reignite it and asked Gleit to lead product management. It fell to the growth team to identify the obstacles to the company's momentum. In a company ruled by engineers, Gleit, who never studied programming, earned respect with her analytical approach and intuitive understanding of people. "I always believed that growth was the most important thing, the most important way to impact the company," she said. There are now more than 150 people on the team. "It's been an incredible learning experience," she said. "Each year is different."

That magic moment: Those who work closely with Gleit say part of her success early on was her ability to seize on the "magic moment" that makes users fall in love with Facebook. She made it simpler to sign up, and she helped people find friends as soon as they joined. She also helped Facebook spread quickly to new countries by enlisting users to translate the service into more than 80 languages. Gleit helps her team parachute into new markets and traverse less-familiar languages and cultures. It's something that comes from her own passion to see the world and have new experiences. She has taught on a Navajo reservation and lived in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.

One billion users: Around noon Sept. 14, Zuckerberg gathered with Gleit and dozens of employees in front of a big screen as the number of Facebook users crossed 1 billion. "The scale was insane," she said. "But that is not the goal. When Mark talks about his vision for Facebook, he talks about being able to connect everyone in the world to the people that they care about and provide some value for them every single day."

A problem solver: Zuckerberg calls on Gleit for high-profile projects. In May 2010, when Facebook was under siege because of how it was handling users' personal information, he put Gleit in charge of simplifying privacy settings. Last year she worked on a popular feature that lets users subscribe to a News Feed without having to become Facebook friends.

Betting on mobile: Now Gleit is focused on the future: mobile devices and how they can unlock emerging markets. Gleit knew back in 2011 that people would begin to log on to Facebook from mobile devices in greater numbers than from desktops, particularly in the developing world. So she traveled to Tel Aviv to buy Snaptu, which makes software that helps people on low-tech phones access Facebook, and she brought the whole team back to Silicon Valley with her. Now Facebook is surging in popularity on mobile devices in Tokyo and Nairobi, Kenya. "I have always been interested in technology and how it can be used to improve lives," Gleit said.

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

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Violence in America? We're all responsible

For years, the National Rifle Assn. has been telling us that guns don't kill people, people kill people.

In the wake of the Newtown shootings, the group has added a twist. Guns don't kill people; television, film and video games do.

Breaking its days-long silence, the NRA on Friday offered its solution to making American schools safer — armed guards — and laid the blame for the seemingly endless cycle of mass shootings on "a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people."

PHOTOS: Mourning after the massacre

That would be the entertainment industry, which as Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's vice president, went on to explain, creates violent video games, films and television shows that inundate our youth with "the filthiest form of pornography."

Citing, rather inexplicably, old films including "American Psycho" (which was an adaptation of a novel), the NRA condemned Hollywood for its addiction to violence.

This is a complete cultural contradiction. If we are to be a society that celebrates firepower, that believes the answer to violence is violence, then it would follow that our art forms would reflect that.

Which, of course, we are and which, of course, they do. As far apart as the NRA and Hollywood may seem from each other politically, they are two of the more powerful forces affecting popular culture. Intentionally or not, their relationship is symbiotic.

As we have been told repeatedly during the last week, the gun lobby is among the most powerful in Washington, able to cow politicians and presidents into policy often in direct opposition to their personal and publicly stated opinions.

The ban on assault weapons was allowed to lapse because even President Obama, so often labeled as ultra-liberal, didn't want to waste his currency of compromise in a fight he didn't think he could win. And so, as pointed out in a Times opinion piece by U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns, who made a conservative jurist's case for an assault weapons ban after sentencing Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner, half of the nation's deadliest shootings occurred after the ban expired, including the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary.

FULL COVERAGE: Connecticut school shooting

Yet to the NRA, the real villain is the entertainment industry, with its serial-killer serials, bang-bang franchises and first-person shooter video games. Never mind the wide availability of military-style assault weapons; "Batman" and "Call of Duty," the gun lobby would have us believe, is more to blame for all the recent mass shootings. Reality is merely imitating art.

There is no denying that there is too much violence in film and television today, too many video games centered around high and bloody body counts. But how could this not be the case? We live in a country where the suggestion that civilians should not be able to own weapons designed to kill a large number of people quickly is inevitably dubbed as unconstitutional.

The NRA believes that the ability to own guns and use guns defines us as Americans. So how can it blame Hollywood for creating the kind of films and television shows that do precisely the same thing?

No doubt Hollywood will respond swiftly with words we've heard before — violence is essential to drama, art is a way to diffuse the aggressive tendencies we naturally have, imagery cannot become reality if the weapons aren't available, etc., etc. We will be treated, no doubt, to the sight of two self-important, overly influential groups standing on either side of 26 utterly inexcusable graves, pointing fingers at each other.

Accusations of making a national tragedy political have already begun, but it's actually worse than that. We're just making it theatrical, with all the usual suspects reciting all the usual lines, criminally diminishing the lives taken at Sandy Hook to a posturing rerun.

We have all failed. As Americans, as adults, as human beings. As creators and consumers, as politicians and voters. If 20 first-graders shot in their classroom is not proof that things have gotten out of control, then it's hard to imagine what is. Both sides, all sides, need to take responsibility.

Trumpeting a "more is more" mentality, Americans find it increasingly difficult to contemplate the restriction of anything; many of us can't even lose the weight that threatens our lives. The NRA's suggestion that what we really need is armed guards at schools sacrifices not just the notion of a peacetime nation (the terrorists have indeed won, except the terrorists are us) but of civilization itself. Are we really willing to return to the days of the Wild West?

But their point about our art forms, though posed rather hysterically, is not without truth. Too many of our prestige TV shows, our blockbuster films and our popular games revolve around violence. More important, they celebrate people and actions we would deplore in real life.

And while there is value in exploring the outer limits of both human valor and depravity, there is also such a thing as wallowing, of substituting shock for illumination. A high body count, a charming psychopath, should not be a prerequisite for a hit film or show.

In Ang Lee's beautiful film "The Ice Storm," adults argue and engage in endlessly self-absorbed drama while one of their children, unnoticed, forgotten, walks down an empty frozen street, where a power line falls and electrocutes him.

This is not the time for the grown-ups to argue; we have been arguing for far too long, and while we argue, our children die. This is the time for us all to take responsibility, make it not so easy for a young man to imagine a hideous act of violence, and not so easy for him to actually commit it.

mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

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Brain Benefits for the Holidays? Stuff the Stocking with Video Games

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Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ashton Kutcher filed court papers Friday to end his seven-year marriage to actress Demi Moore.

The actor's divorce petition cites irreconcilable differences and does not list a date that the couple separated. Moore announced last year that she was ending her marriage to the actor 15 years her junior, but she never filed a petition.

Kutcher's filing does not indicate that the couple has a prenuptial agreement. The filing states Kutcher signed the document Friday, hours before it was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Kutcher and Moore married in September 2005 and until recently kept their relationship very public, communicating with each other and fans on the social networking site Twitter. After their breakup, Moore changed her name on the site from (at)mrskutcher to (at)justdemi.

Kutcher currently stars on CBS' "Two and a Half Men."

Messages sent to Kutcher's and Moore's publicists were not immediately returned Friday.

Moore, 50, and Kutcher, 34, created the DNA Foundation, also known as the Demi and Ashton Foundation, in 2010 to combat the organized sexual exploitation of girls around the globe. They later lent their support to the United Nations' efforts to fight human trafficking, a scourge the international organization estimates affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.

Moore was previously married to actor Bruce Willis for 13 years. They had three daughters together — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle — before divorcing in 2000. Willis later married model-actress Emma Heming in an intimate 2009 ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands that attended by their children, as well as Moore and Kutcher.

Kutcher has been dating former "That '70s Show" co-star Mila Kunis.

The divorce filing was first reported Friday by People magazine.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP.

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UPS drivers go digital with hand-held computers

When Keith Short began delivering packages for United Parcel Service Inc. 23 years ago, he used bulky pads of paper to track parcels and pens that froze in the cold. Today, he scans packages on and off his truck with a hand-held computer that tells him what to deliver where and when, and can even direct him turn by turn.

"The whole route is in here," Short said about his DIAD, or Delivery Information Acquisition Device.

The hand-held computers — now in the fifth generation — have made UPS drivers' jobs more efficient, especially during the peak holiday season, when the Atlanta shipping company picks up and drops off millions of packages each day.

The ideas for improving the technology percolate in the offices of UPS' Information Services Group in Timonium, Md. A team of 80 mathematicians and engineers makes forecasts about the shipping world of the future. Statisticians perform advanced math to figure future shipment demand, industrial engineers conduct time- and work-flow studies and software designers write the programs to apply what is learned.

It all ends up in the technology behind the routing and dispatching of packages handled by the brown delivery trucks.

"It's my job to set up a road map of where we need to be," said Jack Levis, an engineer and director of the group, "and look out 10 years."

Years ago, the group foresaw the growth of the Internet as a marketplace for buying and tracking goods that UPS would need to deliver, but few could have predicted exactly how e-commerce would reshape the shipping business.

The growth of online shopping has brought rising expectations. Consumers want free shipping incentives, shorter delivery times and more last-minute shipping options, such as same-day shipping, and even the same-day delivery that some retailers have begun promoting, experts say.

To offer same-day shipping, retailers have resorted to sending packages from their store inventory rather than from a warehouse, said Al Sambar, a retail strategist with consulting firm Kurt Salmon. Those promising same-day delivery might use couriers instead of conventional delivery services such as UPS or FedEx to get it there on time, he said.

"You really see the dates expanding much closer to the holiday than you would have seen in years past," Sambar said. "Many, many more retailers have added or expanded their ability to ship same day by creating the ability to ship from their own store inventory. [That way] they can ship even later into the season."

Anticipating what customers will want years down the road is part of the role of UPS' "package process management group" in Timonium.

At the core of what the group oversees is something called "package flow technologies," a data project started in 2000 and first used in 2003 that was aimed at more efficiently moving packages through hubs and loading them on trucks. Before 2003, workers who loaded delivery trucks had to memorize as many as 2,000 pieces of information and undergo six weeks of training to master the system.

The Timonium group turned the data behind the delivery operation into a computerized system that relies on "smart labels" that tell where packages go, while enabling UPS to customize deliveries.

"The old system worked fine," Lewis said, "but everyone had to have the knowledge of the operation in their heads. Before, we were training thousands of people where packages went. Now we just update a database, and we've made our models smarter and smarter."

Mirabella writes for the Baltimore Sun/McClatchy.

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A tortilla flap over whether Henry's Tacos folds

The first time Matthew Schwartz ditched junior high in the early 1980s, some upperclassmen smuggled him in the back seat of a car and drove to Henry's Tacos.

"We could have gone anywhere, but we went to Henry's," said Schwartz, 42, a Pasadena lawyer. "It was the place to go."

Schwartz has been coming to the taco stand in Studio City since he was a second-grader. Other than price inflation, the bare-bones menu has stayed the same for 51 years: ground beef tacos, refried bean and orange-cheese burritos, and "taco burgers."

"Is it authentic Mexican food? No. But it is a classic example of what I call gringo-Mex, in the most loving sense I could possibly mean that," he said.

To its fans, there is something quintessentially L.A. about Henry's Tacos, which was opened in 1961 by a white guy from Nebraska, had bit parts in movies and TV shows like "Adam 12" and boasted loyal customers ranging from working Joes to Hollywood celebrities.

So when the owner announced earlier this month that Henry's Tacos would close at the end of year, fans rose up in protest.

Suddenly, long lines started forming around the modest midcentury stand at the corner of Moorpark Street and Tujunga Avenue. Celebrities such as Aaron Paul and Elijah Wood showed up to buy tacos and lend their support. And a Web campaign has taken off, including Facebook groups like "Occupy Tujunga" and hundreds of Twitter posts with the hashtag #SaveHenrysTacos.

The battle focuses in part on whether Henry's is more than a taco stand — whether it's actually a piece of history worthy of official preservation. In a city that boomed after World War II, L.A. has debated giving historic status to a car wash and space-age Googie buildings. But for devotees of Henry's, it's less about the architecture than the lifestyle it conjures.

"Every place has different landmarks that help define it, and for the Valley its history is mid-20th century," said Adrian Scott Fine, director of advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy. "A place that was built in 1961 and is still there today says a lot because so much has changed in the Valley over the years and you have so few places that have stood the test of time."

Henry's Tacos is the latest food stand involved in a fight to win some level of historical status. In 2005, West Hollywood made national headlines when it named the Irv's Burger stand on Santa Monica Boulevard an official "cultural resource." Two years ago, preservationists in Hollywood lost a fight to keep the historic Molly's Burger stand on Vine Street going. For years, fans have hoped that the Tail O' the Pup, the famed hot-dog-shaped stand that used to be near the Beverly Center, would reopen (the stand is now in storage).

Henry's Tacos' impending closure is the result of year-long dispute that started when owner Janis Hood applied for a historical monument designation for the stand last year. Hood said her landlord increased her rent 50% and has refused to renew her lease since last December.

Hood believes the landlord, Beverly Hills businessman Mehran Ebrahimpour, was irked because a historical designation would put land-use restrictions on the property. Ebrahimpour could not be reached for comment through his lawyer.

L.A.'s Cultural Heritage Commission unanimously approved Henry's as a historical landmark last year, but the city's Planning and Land Use Management Committee postponed a vote on it earlier this year until Hood's lease was renewed.

Hood has lined up several prospective buyers, but all have been turned down by the landlord, she said.

The restaurant has always been a family business. Hood's grandfather, Henry Comstock — the stand's namesake — moved from Nebraska in the late 1950s and became interested in the concept of a roadside taco stand. He opened less than a year before Taco Bell was founded in Downey in 1962. Hood's mother later owned the restaurant for 47 years before she died in 2009. Hood then took over.

The support for Henry's has been overwhelming, she said. More than 5,600 people have signed an online petition to save the restaurant, and loyal patrons have posted video testimonials online.

"I knew I wasn't the only one who grew up with Henry's and loved it," said Hood, of Sherman Oaks. "Henry's is one of the very few places that is still around and hasn't changed. Someone said it's like eating a memory."

Last Sunday, the stars came out in support.

Wood and Paul were among hundreds of hungry customers who braved the rain and stood in a line that snaked around the block. Wood told paparazzi that the soft-shell beef tacos are his favorite, and he later posed with Hood in front of the restaurant.

Comedian George Lopez paid for everyone's food for an hour — ringing up a $945 tab, Hood said.

Food stands like Henry's Tacos began popping up around Los Angeles in the 1940s and became popular quick-lunch destinations in a city with a mild climate. Many have closed in this era of the drive-through, but Fine said it's no surprise residents cherish those that remain.

"Communities care about their locally owned Main Street businesses. People have a connection to it because it's local," he said.

Schwartz made his pilgrimage back to Henry's on Tuesday and waited in line with more than 20 people doing the same.

The stream of memories kept coming. In fifth grade, his friends would eat at Henry's and dare one another to drink hot sauce straight out of the cup — a childhood rite of passage.

"After you drank one, it would be how many can you do?" he said. "Henry's is an icon of the community, and it would really be a shame for it to go."

ben.poston@latimes.com

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Twitter post offers clue to The Civil Wars' future

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — While there still remain questions about the future of The Civil Wars, there's new music on the way.

Joy Williams, one half of the Grammy Award-winning duo with John Paul White, said Thursday during a Twitter chat that she was in the studio listening to new Civil Wars songs.

It's a tantalizing clue to the future of the group, which appeared in doubt when a European tour unraveled last month due to "irreconcilable differences."

At the time, the duo said it hoped to release an album in 2013. It's not clear if Williams was referring Thursday to music for a new album or for a documentary score they have composed with T Bone Burnett. They're also set to release an "Unplugged" session on iTunes on Jan. 15.

Nate Yetton, the group's manager and Williams' husband, had no comment — though he has supplied a few hints of his own by posting pictures of recording sessions on his Instagram account recently. The duo announced last summer it would be working with Charlie Peacock, who produced its gold-selling debut "Barton Hollow." The photos do not show Williams or White, but one includes violin player Odessa Rose.

Rose says in an Instagram post: "Playing on the new Civil Wars record... Beautiful sounds."

Even with its future in doubt, the duo continues to gather accolades. Williams and White are up for a Golden Globe on Jan. 13, and two Grammy Awards on Feb. 10, for their "The Hunger Games" soundtrack collaboration "Safe & Sound" with Taylor Swift.

Williams' comments came during an installment of an artist interview series with Alison Sudol of A Fine Frenzy sponsored by The Recording Academy.

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Online:

http://thecivilwars.com

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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Op-Ed Contributor: Labs, Washed Away

BEDPAN ALLEY is the affectionate name given to a stretch of First Avenue in Manhattan that is packed with more hospitals than many cities possess. This stretch also happened to be right in the flood zone during Hurricane Sandy. Water damage and power failures closed down all three of the New York University teaching hospitals — Bellevue Hospital, Tisch Hospital and the Manhattan V.A. Two months later, they are still not admitting patients, though two are on schedule to begin doing so shortly.

The harrowing evacuation of hundreds of patients made headlines nationwide. The disruption of regular medical care for tens of thousands of outpatients was a clinical nightmare that is finally easing. And the education of hundreds of medical students and residents is being patched back together.

All academic medical centers, however, rest on a tripod — patient care, education and research. The effect of the hurricane on the third leg of that tripod — research — has gotten the least attention, partly because rescuing cell cultures just isn’t as dramatic as carrying an I.C.U. patient on a ventilator down flights of stairs in the dark.

But, of course, there is an incontrovertible link between those cell cultures and that patient. For every medication that a patient takes, someone researched the basic chemistry of the drug, someone designed the clinical trial to test its efficacy, and of course a volunteer stepped forward to be the first to take the pill. Scientific research has engineered the impressive advancements of medical treatment, and every patient is a beneficiary.

When the hospitals were hit by Hurricane Sandy, hundreds of experiments were obliterated by the loss of power. Precious biological samples carefully frozen over years were destroyed. Temperature-sensitive reagents and equipment were ruined. Medications and records for patients in clinical trials were rendered inaccessible. And sadly, many laboratory mice and rats perished (though 600 cages of animals were rescued during the night by staff members who used crowbars on inaccessible doors and carried the cages out through holes cut in the ceiling).

On a slushy, rainy day earlier this month, I sat in on a meeting of N.Y.U.’s research community. Hundreds of scientists packed the chilly lecture hall to discuss what the future might hold. It was clear that the damage to laboratories and samples would not be amenable to easy repair. Some 400 researchers were being relocated to a patchwork of temporary sites so that they could restart their work.

But scientists can’t just walk in to a new space with a lab coat and a notebook; they need centrifuges, deep-freezes, lab animals, electron microscopes, incubators, autoclaves, gamma counters, PET scanners. They come with graduate students, lab techs, post-docs and collaborating investigators. For clinical researchers, there are also the patients enrolled in their clinical trials, with their medications and voluminous records.

Even beyond their eagerness to get back to work, researchers felt a sense of loss, not just in time, money, momentum, samples and grants, but of a part of their lives. Some senior scientists lost decades of archived samples. Others lost irreplaceable mice with genetic mutations for studying how coronary plaques resolve, the role of inflammation in lymphoma and the development of neural networks. At the other end of the spectrum were post-docs whose nascent careers were suddenly up in the air. Some were in tears.

Walking down First Avenue after the meeting, I passed a young researcher pushing a cart laden with cages, transporting lab rats to their new home. There was a blanket over the cages to protect them from the rain, but it kept slipping. She slogged up the wet avenue, one hand pushing the cart, the other struggling to keep the cover over her charges.

The logistical efforts to relocate and reignite such a vast research enterprise are staggeringly complicated. But the administration has cataloged each person’s research needs to match them with available space elsewhere, and hundreds of researchers have successfully rekindled their investigations despite the prodigious challenges.

Bellevue and Tisch are returning to their clinical operations and will be able to admit patients shortly. But even after the hospital wards and clinics are bustling at full capacity, the ribbon won’t feel ready to snip until the researchers are restored to their homes as well. For many patients, the thrum of research within a medical center is invisible. But it is an integral — and very human — part of a hospital. When a hurricane disrupts research, it is a loss that resonates well beyond the laboratories.

Danielle Ofri, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine, is the editor of the Bellevue Literary Review and the author, most recently, of “Medicine in Translation: Journeys With My Patients.”

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Bernard Madoff's brother is sentenced to 10 years in prison

NEW YORK — The brother of imprisoned financier Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 10 years in prison for crimes committed in the shadow of his notorious sibling by a judge who said she disbelieved his claims that he did not know about the epic fraud.

Peter Madoff, 67, agreed to serve the maximum sentence allowable to the charges of conspiracy and falsifying the books and records of an investment advisor that he pleaded guilty to in June.

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain urged him to tell the truth even after he reports to prison Feb. 6 about what he knows about the multi-decade fraud that cost thousands of investors their original $20 billion investment.

The judge said Peter Madoff was "frankly not believable" when he said at his plea that he learned about the fraud only when his brother revealed it to him just before he surrendered to authorities.

Peter Madoff spoke only briefly Thursday before he was sentenced, saying: "I am deeply ashamed of my conduct and have tried to atone by pleading guilty and have agreed to forfeit all of my present and future assets."

He added: "I am profoundly sorry that my failures let many people down, including my loved ones."

Two investors spoke during the proceeding, which ended in less than an hour.

Investor Michael T. De Vita, 62, also demanded that the truth be forced out.

"I believe it to be physically impossible for a single person to carry out such a gargantuan task all by himself," he said.

De Vita said investors "have waited four years for others to accept responsibility for this massive crime. We are still waiting for that today."

"All of this was preventable if only one person was willing to do the right thing and stop this in its tracks years ago. Peter Madoff could have been that person," he said.

The sentencing comes four years and a week after Bernard Madoff first revealed the fraud, which occurred over several decades as the former Nasdaq chairman built a reputation for delivering unparalleled investment results, even in bad times. The revelation came only days after the business sent out statements that made investors think their investments had grown to a total of more than $65 billion.

Peter Madoff said at his plea that he had no idea his brother was running a massive Ponzi scheme, paying off longtime investors at times with money from newer investors.

"My family was torn apart as a result of my brother's atrocious conduct," he said. "I was reviled by strangers as well as friends who assumed that I knew about the Ponzi scheme."

But he conceded that he followed his brother's instructions and helped him decide which favored friends, clients and family members would receive the $300 million that remained in the company's accounts. The checks were never sent.

Peter Madoff, who joined his brother's firm after graduating from Fordham Law School in 1970, has been free on $5-million bail after he agreed to surrender all his assets.

Before the sentencing, his lawyer, John Wing, said in a memorandum that Peter Madoff will "almost certainly live out his remaining days as a jobless pariah, in or out of prison." He called him a victim of his loyalty to his brother, saying he had been mistreated by the sibling who was eight years older and was viewed as "the prince" by his mother.

As part of a forfeiture agreement, Madoff's wife, Marion, and daughter Shana must forfeit nearly all of their assets. The government said those assets and assets that will be forfeited by other family members include several homes, a Ferrari and more than $10 million in cash and securities. It said his wife will be left with $771,733. Besides the Madoff brothers, no other family members have been arrested.

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Robert H. Bork, pivotal figure in Supreme Court history, dies at 85

Robert H. Bork, the conservative legal champion whose bitter defeat for a Supreme Court seat in 1987 politicized the confirmation process and changed the court's direction for decades, died Wednesday. He was 85.

The former Yale law professor and judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit died at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., from complications of heart disease, said his son Robert H. Bork Jr.

A revered figure on the right, Bork inspired a generation of conservatives with his critiques of the liberal-dominated high court in the 1960s and '70s. In speeches, law reviews and op-ed articles, Bork argued that the liberal justices were abusing their power and remaking American life by ending prayers in public schools, extending new rights to criminals, ordering cross-town busing for desegregation and striking down laws on birth control, abortion and the death penalty. Bork said the Constitution, as originally written, left these matters to the wishes of the majority.

Bork was more than a legal theorist. He was also a highly regarded constitutional lawyer. When he served as U.S. solicitor general under Presidents Nixon and Ford, the Supreme Court justices praised Bork as one of the finest advocates they had ever seen.

As solicitor general, he served as a footnote to the Watergate scandal that brought down Nixon. In what became known as "the Saturday Night Massacre," the embattled chief executive ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox because he had demanded Nixon's secret White House tapes. The attorney general and then the deputy attorney general resigned rather than carry out the order. Bork, who was then in the No. 3 post as solicitor general, carried out the order and fired Cox.

When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, Bork's name rose to the top of the list of potential court nominees. Reagan aspired to transform the Supreme Court, and Bork, then teaching law at Yale, was offered a seat on the Court of Appeals in Washington. It was seen as a stepping stone to the high court.

But it turned into a long wait for Bork.

Reagan chose Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981, fulfilling a campaign promise to appoint the first woman to the Supreme Court. A fateful moment came in 1986 when a second seat became vacant. Reagan and his advisors passed over Bork for his younger colleague, then-Judge Antonin Scalia, who won a unanimous confirmation in a Senate still under Republican control.

Bork's time finally came in the summer of 1987 when Justice Lewis Powell, the swing vote on the closely divided court, announced his retirement. By then, however, the Democrats had taken control of the Senate, and Reagan had been weakened by the Iran-Contra scandal.

On July 1, 1987, Reagan introduced the burly, bearded Judge Bork as his nominee, but within an hour the president's words were drowned out by a fierce attack from Capitol Hill led by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, [and] rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids," Kennedy said. No one could remember such a harsh assault on a president's court nominee, and it set the tone for a campaign-style attack that lasted into the fall.

Bork gave the Democrats plenty of ammunition, however.

As a Yale professor in 1963, he had condemned the pending civil rights bill that would have given blacks an equal right to be served in hotels, restaurants and other public places across the nation. He called this a threat to individual freedom, and he advised Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee, to cast a "no" vote against what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bork wrote critically of the Voting Rights Act and various school desegregation measures. He also denounced the court's "right to privacy" rulings that led to the Roe vs. Wade decision guaranteeing a woman's right to have an abortion.

When Bork made his case before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he faced a hostile majority of Democrats, including its new chairman, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. Because of his long "paper trail," Bork had no choice but to try to explain his views. He did so, at length, but he did not win over many converts. And viewers watching on television told pollsters they saw the stiff, scowling judge as an intimidating figure. Bork helped his opponents paint a portrait of him as a nominee who was more attuned to legal theory than to doing justice. When asked why he wanted to serve on the nation's highest court, Bork told one senator the job would be "an intellectual feast."

When the hearings ended, the Reagan White House knew Bork could not be confirmed. But the judge refused to withdraw, and the Senate rejected his nomination on a 58-42 vote.

Conservatives were furious, insisting that partisan attacks had maligned the reputation of one of the most accomplished jurists to come before the Senate. The phrase "to bork" became shorthand for inflicting a harsh, unfair public attack. Liberals and Democrats countered that Bork went down to defeat because most Americans did not share his views.

But no one disputed that the Bork battle changed how presidents choose nominees and how the Senate debates them. In the wake of Bork's defeat, presidential legal advisors looked for judicial nominees who had said or written little on the major legal controversies. In 1990, for example, President George H.W. Bush chose a little-known New Hampshire judge for the Supreme Court because his views were unknown. Justice David H. Souter easily won confirmation, but then surprised his Republican backers when he became a reliable liberal on the court.

Court nominees after Bork refused to follow his tack of seeking to explain his views in answer to questions from senators, instead choosing to duck them. Bork's defeat also had a profound and lasting impact on the Supreme Court itself. Had Bork won confirmation, the court's conservative bloc, led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, would have had a majority to overturn Roe vs. Wade as well as the strict ban on school-sponsored prayers and invocations. Instead, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Reagan nominee who eventually filled Powell's seat, cast a deciding vote in 1992 to preserve the right to abortion and the ban on school prayers. Kennedy has also been a strong foe of laws that discriminate against gays and lesbians, and he is seen as holding the decisive vote in the upcoming cases involving same-sex marriage.

Bork's influence on conservative legal thought was also lasting. In the 1970s, he was among the first to argue for interpreting the Constitution based on its "original intent," an idea that was later championed by Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas.

As a scholar of antitrust law, Bork helped fundamentally change the thinking behind the law. He criticized those who targeted "big" businesses as monopolies and said antitrust law should focus instead on the welfare of consumers. At Yale, students joked that Bork taught "pro-trust," not antitrust. But his views are now widely accepted.

Bork stepped down from the bench a year after his Senate defeat, and he wrote several books renewing his criticism of liberalism. In the last year, he served as a chairman of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's advisory committee on the judiciary and the courts.

Scalia praised Bork as "one of the most influential legal scholars of the past 50 years. His impact on legal thinking in the fields of antitrust and constitutional law was profound and lasting. More important for the final accounting, he was a good man and a loyal citizen."

Bork was born in Pittsburgh on March 1, 1927, and served in the Marines. He graduated from the University of Chicago and its law school and worked as a lawyer in New York and Chicago before joining the Yale faculty in 1962.

His first wife, Claire Davidson, died in 1980. He married Mary Ellen Bork, a former nun, in 1982. She survives him, along with three children from his first marriage, sons Robert and Charles Bork and daughter Ellen Bork, and two grandchildren.

david.savage@latimes.com

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