No. Nonononononononononono. Ab. So. Lute. Ly. No.

The city of Los Angeles is a half-billion dollars in the hole. Layoffs. Furloughs. Potholes unfilled, trees untrimmed. Animal services, the ethics commission, whack whack whack.

So why, why, in any rational universe, should the city of L.A. pick up the policing tab for Michael Jackson's obsequies at Staples Center?

For the Lakers' victory parade -- certainly a more civically significant event than the excesses that follow Jackson in death as they did in life -- the city found private donors because of the pushback of public opinion over subsidizing the athletic triumph of, as they say, millionaires working for billionaires.
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So why is there now any thought at all of dipping into a city fund for ''extraordinary events'' to subsidize this one -- which, if a ''public viewing'' becomes part of the memorial, will turn the whole thing into a Michael Jackson corpse carnival?

An earthquake is an extraordinary event. But Michael Jackson's family deciding, gee, let's invite the world (or at least something above 17,000 members of the world) to mourn our relative -- extraordinary to them, and to Jackson fans, certainly, but hardly enough to stick it to the taxpayers of LA.

Council member Jan Perry said the city would ''deeply appreciate'' any private citizen coming forward to pick up the tab. ``Any company, entity, individual who would have such great love, the city would welcome the support,” she told the New York Times.

I nominate the Jackson family to pay the bill, perhaps going halfsies with AEG, which owns Staples (and was the promoter on Jackson's planned comeback concerts). The Jackson estate stands to benefit enormously from this. The undoubted live, free, worldwide news coverage of the memorial, the frenzy of 10, 20, 30 times more fans clamoring outside than can possibly cram into Staples, will generate mind-boggling sales of MJ music. The Staples name will figure into every video clip.

So why should the Jacksons' private arrangement with Staples to commemorate the passing of a man who was almost pathologically averse in life to the public's gaze become, in the end, a public burden?

Hint: that's a rhetorical question.

Gov. Sarah Palin just announced that she will not be seeking re-election for her position of governor of the great state of Alaska in 2010. Her Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will replace her when she steps down on July 26 after the Governor's Picnic, in her effort to reject the "Lame Duck" status.

Is it because she's hoping for a presidential run in 2012? The Washington Post thinks yes:

Recent polls showed that her popularity in Alaska has been faltering, though she was expected to be the front runner for re-election.

So instead of waiting out the end of her term, her final year, she's stopping this month to avoid being a lame duck:

So essentially she's quitting on her state -- a great start to a successful Republican presidential bid, wouldn't you say?

She would counter that her stellar record as governor will carry her though the primaries, and she made sure everyone knew her accomplishments before her departure, just in case they forgot.

Palin has been riding the conservative merry-go-round as of late, making her first out of state appearance after the November election at the largest pro-life fund-raising banquet in the nation, according to the latest Vanity Fair article about the governor. She's most definitely preparing for the candidacy, surrounding herself with her closest friends and conservative allies who will continue to tell her how great of a chance she has for the Oval Office against Barack Obama.

I hope I'm right when I say, "In your dreams."

Photo: US Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin blows a kiss at her family while addressing the Republican National Convention at the Xcel Energy Center in St Paul, Minnesota, on September 3, 2008. Palin announced July 3, 2009 in Wasilla, Alaska, that she will not seek a second term as governor of Alaska and that she was resigning the office. Credit: PAUL J. RICHARDS / AFP / Getty Images

Wow. I didn't see that coming. But I have to say I think it's a great chess move on her part. Honestly, if only Palin's intellectual abilities matched her political instincts she would be truly formidable.

Here's how I read it:

There's a huge void in the Republican Party and she's moving to fill it. So watch out Rush!  Sarah Palin vs. Rush Limbaugh. What can this resignation mean except a frontal assault on talk radio? Because she can't seriously be thinking she can one day win the Republican Party nomination and maybe take on Barack Obama.

Before that happens, Newt Gingrich will savage her. Yes, I know he defended her during the election, but that's when she didn't have a chance of winning. He fully expected her to go back to Alaska and become irrelevant. Psyche! She's making a power play.  Bobby Jindal will talk her into a coma (like he did the rest of us) and Mitt Romney will go toe to toe with her on the issue of who is prettier. And his family is photogenic as all get-out. If she thinks she can out-folksy Mike Huckabee, well, he'll teach her the meaning of 'gosh darn.'" I just don't see her surviving the gantlet.

But it's still a smart move. She got a ton of money with that book deal, so she doesn't need the job. And now she avoids the charge of shirking her duties every time she flees the state to attend a fancy dinner in the lower 48. I bet Alaska didn't have a chance of keeping her after floods forced her to stay home and be gubernatorial while Todd had a ball at the White House Correspondents' dinner.  You know she just hated missing that.

While I simply cannot believe Palin would make a serious run at the presidency, I'm certainly hoping she will. And if she's resigning to start her presidential campaign, then I'm more than pleased. It brings us one step closer to my dream ticket for 2012:

 SARAH PALIN/MICHELE (Obama is going to put us all in re-education camps)  BACHMANN!

Seriously. I can think of nothing that would yield more hilarity.

And speaking of humor, I hope Tina Fey's contract -- the moral one she has with the entire country -- links automatic SNL appearances with Sarah Palin gaffes. I've really missed her.

Photo: Robert DeBerry / AP

Break out the fireworks, strike up the band and throw on a wig -- the Dodgers' hitting machine, Manny Ramirez, is back.  Tonight Manny will play in his first Major League game since his 50-game suspension for using banned substances.  Unfortunately for Manny fans in LA, unless you're willing to travel to San Diego, New York or Milwaukee (is any player worth going to Milwaukee for?), you'll have to wait until after the All-Star break to see him play in person.

I've never asked Dodger fans for a favor before, but I have one request now:  When that first home game comes on July 16, for one night, one at-bat or at least one swing, boo Manny. I'm not asking you to burn your coveted Man-wig, hide the name on the back of your No. 99 T-shirt under duct tape or torture yourself by watching Angels games. All I ask is that if you attend Manny's first home game, you boo. Once, at least.

I'm asking you to set aside the fact that the Dodgers will need Manny to win anything beyond the division crown in the pathetic NL West, and to forget that with a Manny-free lineup, your Dodgers have been scoring runs less frequently than your daughter's t-ball team (eight measly runs in five games).

In an op-ed Thursday, Greg Burk wrote: "Fans will have their chance to transfix the black sheep with stares of disapproval. And they will. We love to pretend our team is shiner and holier than others."

I hope he's right, but I think he, like Dodgers hitters, is off base. It's hard to believe that Dodger fans who wore "Free Manny" shirts after the suspension was announced and continue to wear his jerseys will show any ire. But they should.

Dodgers fans should boo Manny for one at-bat to make sure he knows his actions were unacceptable. The obvious reasons are often floated about when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs: it might spurn younger kids to use steroids, it's selfish, and it is disrespectful to the game.

Those arguments and their counters are uttered almost daily. The main reason Dodger fans should boo, however, is to let Manny know they will not be had with a few home runs and a smile. They need to say to Manny, "We're the ones who pay to watch you, and we demand better."  What does it say about fans if out of the gate they embrace a blatant cheater?  Doesn't it tell him, "Hey, you have free rein to do whatever you want, as long as you put runs on the board"?

Steroids is not something that will easily be uprooted from baseball. Their use was a pandemic, one that (unfortunate as it might be) probably saved the league as it was tumbling in popularity -- or at least fueled its resurgence. But as James Earl Jones reminded us, the one constant in America has always been baseball. It will move beyond this troubled era.

Fans are tired of steroids, but they cannot eradicate their presence if they pick and choose what rule-breakers they back based on the name emblazoned across their chests.  If Dodger fans boo Barry Bonds, A-rod, Sammy Sosa and the like for their transgressions, they should also boo Manny.

I'm not asking Dodger fans to hate him for the rest of his career. All I'm asking is that, for the good of the game and team, for one night Dodger fans should "Think Boo."

Photo: AP Photo / Gus Ruelas, File

Amnesty International, a London-based human rights group, released a report today accusing Israel of "wanton destruction" and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas of "war crimes," each committed during the 22 violent days last December in the Gaza Strip.

But both Israel and Hamas deny the claims and are shouting, yet again, about why the other side didn't receive more of a rebuke for the atrocities committed.

Said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, "Things presented as facts are untrue and have no connection to reality." He was most likely referring to the high death toll the report cited and the judgment that Israel's attacks could not "be justified on grounds of military necessity."

On the other side, Hamas rejected the report because it did not chastise the Israeli military enough for the actions it committed against Palestine.

The report, as with the United Nations' inquiry that is currently gathering evidence on the conflict, sought to dispel the myths and rumors that have added to already high tensions in the region, particularly the assertion that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields (a claim the report said had no basis in fact). Instead, the report said Israeli soldiers effectively turned Palestinians into human shields by forcing them to stay in the homes that soldiers used as makeshift military bases.

As with any dispute between Palestinians and Israelis, there was no admission of shared fault, no statement that "we both committed war crimes, killed civilians and launched rockets across borders." That seems hard to contest, yet each side tried its best to do so -- as it always does. A microcosm of the larger conflict, the reactions to the report show why no progress is being made, and why this event will leave a scar on the relationship for years to come.

Photo: Palestinian children play in front of their ruined houses, hit during Israel's 22-day offensive over Gaza, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip today. Credit: Said Khatib / AFP/Getty Images

Today, July 1, marks Canada Day. "America's hat," as some have referred to the lovely North American behemoth, celebrates its 142nd birthday.

In honor of this special occasion, Ipsos Reid conducted a poll on behalf of the Dominion Institute to see just how many Canadians recognize their important political and historical figures.

Turns out not too many.

I'm imagining this playing out like Jaywalking, former late-night (now prime-time) host Jay Leno's signature segment where he interviews passers-by about basic facts that they get horribly wrong. While only four out of every 10 Canadians knew who their first prime minister was from a picture, nine out of 10 could pick out 90s pop sensation Celine Dion and eight out of 10 recognized hockey star Wayne Gretsky (the only two people I could identify as Canadian off the top of my head).

Granted, some of the "top 10 Canadians" included the man named the Father of Medicare and 2004's Canadian of the Year, as well as the guy who won the Nobel Prize for discovering insulin. I wouldn't be able to recognize the faces of the American equivalents of those historical figures either.

But not first Prime Minister Sir John McDonald -- whose face is on the $10 bill -- and your current ceremonial leader, Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean (whom only 50% recognized)? That's a little sad. I would seriously hope that most Americans could pick out George Washington and Barack Obama from 10 photos. But then again, the Jaywalkers could (and often do) prove me wrong.

All joking aside, Canadian leaders seemed a bit dismayed by the results.

Some Canadians attribute these less-than-stellar polling results on the country's lack of storytelling, crediting the United States for having a great deal of national pride that has not immigrated north.

Perhaps for its 143rd birthday, Canada's goal should be to tout more of its history so its citizens can learn the stories behind the figures they celebrate on Canada Day.

Photo: Residents of Kimmirut, Nunavut, join crowds as they take part in Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada on Wednesday July 1, 2009. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Sean Kilpatrick)

An international poll comes along showing that although Americans are fairly knowledgeable about Charles Darwin, they don't hold much truck with this whole theory-of-evolution business.

Some 71% of Americans know of Darwin and at least a little about his theory of natural selection, a number right up there with Great Britain, according to the poll of 10 countries conducted by the British Council, which describes itself as "the UK's international body for cultural relations." And if 71% seems sort of low, compare it with South Africa, where 73% had never even heard of Darwin.

But knowing isn't necessarily loving. Among those who are familiar with the author of "On the Origin of Species," only 41% of Americans agreed with the statement that "Enough scientific evidence exists to support Charles Darwin's theory of evolution." Where were the believers in evolution most likely to live? India, with 77%. And we wonder why that country is renowned for its good education, especially in the sciences--and why this country historically tests in the mediocre realm.

Photo by Darko Vojinovic/AP
 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republicans in the Legislature are playing hardball with their Democratic counterparts: No new taxes, balance the budget with cuts and -- as Schwarzenegger ordered earlier today -- force state employees to take a third monthly furlough day, further reducing their pay. According to The Times' article, thousands of public employees plan to show up in Sacramento today to protest the additional pay cut.

The third imposed furlough day opens a deeper divide in one of the more drawn-out battles of this year's budgeting process: the one pitting public-employee unions and their Democratic allies in the Legislature against Schwarzenegger and state Republicans, who seemed to have rekindled their relationship after the May 19 special election. It's a topic being debated in this week's Dust-Up exchange between Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. and John Tanner, executive director of SEIU Local 721, which represents tens of thousands of government employees in Los Angeles County (their third and final exchange, in which they mull ideas to preserve state services in this budget crisis without reducing pay or laying off workers, will be posted later today). In the comments board for Monday's Dust-Up installment, several readers have come down on the side of Schwarzenegger and the GOP, posting comments similar the one left by "Pete":

Photo: Service Employees International Union protest Schwarzenegger's proposed furloughs and state employee pay cuts Tuesday, June 30 (Rich Pedroncelli/AP) 

Here at the Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division, we like to check in on how our editorials and Op-Ed articles are doing -- and where they are going -- in the blogosphere. What follows is a sampling of blogs that have picked up our opinions and generated opinions of their own.

Jerry Roberts' and Phil Trounstine's Op-Ed listing six factors that are at the root of California's inability to be governed caught the attention of several blogs this week. The Housing Chronicles Blog linked to a post about its own theories on California's detrimental changes:

Bob Burnett of the Huffington Post linked to the piece in his take on California's growing troubles and who's to blame:

On FarmPolicy.com, a blog dedicated to news about the farming industry that took particular interest in the climate change bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, linked to The Times' editorial that supported the bill. It seems the farm industry, based on the blog's long and varied list of supporters and naysayers, is quite conflicted on this issue. The Harvesting Justice blog came out slightly more strongly against the editorial's favorable position on the bill, offering this comment (which I believe is meant to be sarcastic?):

Another example of the excesses of the "greedy growers," as former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson used to say.  We poison the environment and our farmworkers and agribusiness continues to lobby for the ability to continue to do so, while getting paid subsidies not to do so.

On June 26, The Times ran an Op-Ed by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton -- a controversial figure in the world of diplomacy -- that encouraged the United States to support regime change in Iran. Not surprisingly, several bloggers had a lot to say in response. The Citizens blog said Bolton's argument is a veiled call for war:

The UN Dispatch blog offered a similar reaction, and added that the target of Bolton's attack was clearly the Obama administration, and even worse, offered no real solution to his goal. It was written for a partisan purpose and little else, the blog said.

Gregory Tejeda, a Chicago-area freelance writer and former UPI reporter, took issue with Zev Chafets' Op-Ed, in which Chafets argued that Latino baseball players are being singled out by the Hall of Fame for their use of steroids. Tejada said he knows just as many non-Latino ball players who were disgraced by their drug use:

And finally, Noel Sheppard on the NewsBusters blog was quite taken aback by Karen Bass's statement during an interview with Patt Morrison that Republican radio talk-show hosts were "terrorizing" their fellow Republicans in the California legislature.

Photo: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses a joint session of the state legislature in Sacramento on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. Schwarzenegger urged state lawmakers to act quickly to close a $24 billion deficit that opened in the state budget because of the worst U.S. recession in half a century. Credit: Ken James/Bloomberg News

I'm not a doctor, and the guy who tried to revive Michael Jackson is. But it's hard to avoid having questions about how Dr. Conrad Murray went about administering CPR to the pop star.

Why did he perform the chest compressions while Jackson was still in bed rather than move him to a firm surface? On a bed, the victim is simply pressed deeper into the mattress. According to reports, Murray tried to overcome this by bracing Jackson's back with one hand, which left the doctor only one hand to do compressions. Usually, the rescuer uses two hands, interlocked, pressing down with the heel of the lower hand. It's hard work to get a compression deep enough.

Murray also, according to his lawyers, performed the technique for 25 minutes or so before having an ambulance called. But according to the CPR classes I've taken, the procedure seldom revives a patient; it's more a technique to keep blood flowing until an ambulance arrives. Rescuers also generally aren't supposed to try to do CPR for such a long period even if an ambulance isn't immediately forthcoming. They're supposed to show someone else how to do it as they do it, and have that person spell them for awhile. It's exhausting to give CPR properly, and studies show that rescuers, without noticing, start to let up on the speed or depth of the compressions after a few minutes.

It's early for anyone to be passing judgment on how things were handled in Jackson's particular situation, but it would be helpful to have some top experts come forward to comment on how people should handle CPR in an emergency. Given the phenomenal interest and concern in this case, doctors and public-health officials have been presented with a teachable moment that might be used to save other lives.

Photo: A July 2006 photo of Dr. Conrad Murray. Credit: AP Photo / Houston Chronicle

On the Op-Ed page today, John P. Hannah, security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney during President George W. Bush's second term, evaluates whether Iraq is ready for the looming withdrawal of U.S. troops from its cities. His conclusion is that President Obama is effectively giving up on Iraq before the job is done:

While Hannah argues that Obama's focus in the Middle East has shifted to Iran and he'd rather be done with Iraq, isn't the pulling out of troops and the handing of power to a government we helped build part of getting the job done? Even Bush was not planning on staying in Iraq forever, but that's the track we've been on since the 2003 invasion. Retreating our troops so the Iraqi police can take over the security of Iraqi cities may be the right step to the conclusion for which Hannah is calling.

Criminal Justice Professor Eric J. Williams writes to another aspect of the Bush administration's legacy: Guantanamo Bay. Williams specifically responds to the surprise expressed by many Republican politicians over a myriad of rural towns asking for the Gitmo detainees, as prisons have become an economic remedy for such towns that have lost staple industries.

The two other Op-Eds today offer more hopeful ruminations.

The long-distance reporting about Michael Jackson’s death, and the swarm of press people soon descending from elsewhere, inevitably made for some goofy geography. The mansion Jackson rented was in Holmby Hills, but who in most of the rest of the world knows Holmby Hills?

So the exact location of the Jackson house that appeared on the TV screens and Web sites ranged and changed, almost all over the map. It was the broadcast version of rushing frantically, like Keystone Kops, from Bel-Air to Hollywood to Los Angeles to … what’s that place again? Holmby Hills?

The default assumption by some out-of-towners seemed to be that a) all rich people live in Beverly Hills, and b) Michael Jackson was rich, therefore c) Michael Jackson lived in Beverly Hills.

L.A. is so vast that even some residents admit they don't know what city they live in. Even harder for outsiders to appreciate is just how much territory L.A. actually encompasses, from poor neighborhoods of the northeast end of the San Fernando Valley, to the harbor at San Pedro, to Holmby Hills, which is just one more neighborhood -- albeit a very rich one -- within the limits of the City of Los Angeles. Would it help to know that Walt Disney lived there? Or this hint -- the Playboy Mansion is there. But Beverly Hills, its own city, is not part of the city of L.A. Perfectly clear now?

Our elusive geography makes for some amusing mistakes. After the space shuttle landed at Edwards Air Force base in October 1994, the New York Times headline was "After Detour to California, Shuttle Returns to Earth." The newspaper’s magazine asked a month later whether the new place to rival New York’s 42^nd Street as a world capital could be ‘’the intersection of the Hollywood and Santa Monica Freeways.’’ Maybe -- if that intersection existed. (The closest you could suggest to it is the East L.A. interchange, where, somewhere in the complex, the 101 Freeway slides into the Golden State/Santa Ana Freeway, the 5, as the San Bernardino Freeway takes flight to the east -- but not to the west, to Santa Monica.)

The most egregious Michael Jackson geo-error of the story: A colleague watching one of those instant canned network documentaries the night of Jackson’s death heard Neverland Ranch, in Santa Barbara County, relocated by the magic of network television to ‘"Northern California."

The Wall Street Journal today reveals yet another reasonwhy federal legislation is needed to beef up food safety in this country: the Nestle USA plant in Virginia had a history over the past five years of refusing to let Food and Drug Administration inspectors view their records on consumer complaints, pest control and other safety issues.

That would be the same plant that produced the Toll House cookie dough implicated in an outbreak of illness cause by E. coli. Food companies aren't obliged to show their records to inspectors. Some do, others don't.

The so-overdue bill to give the FDA the authority it should have had from the start -- as well as step up inspections and allow the FDA to issue recalls -- recently won the unanimous support of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but Republicans (heeding the complaints of the food and agribusiness industries) have been weakening it all along the way.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

As the California State Assembly adjourned around 11 a.m. today (that's, what, a 3 hour workday?) with no apparent progress made in crafting a budget the Governor would sign by the Tuesday deadline, Assemblymen Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland) and Mike Davis (D-L.A.) suggested it was time to buckle down and figure this out.

Er, no, wait. They stood to honor Michael Jackson as the King of Pop that he truly was, and Farrah Fawcett as every man's favorite pin-up girl, before taking the rest of the day off:

It's all well and good to honor notable Californians who have passed away. Still, I would have preferred to hear such tributes at the end of a normal business day -- or, in the case of this group of legislators, an extraordinary day -- in which some movement were made toward enacting a new budget. Especially considering that the alternative is California issuing IOUs for the next fiscal year.

Photo: Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, chair of the budget conference committee, left, consoles State Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, chair of the Senate budget committee after the Senate fell short of the necessary two-thirds vote to approve a package of budget related bills at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, June 25, 2009. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

In just the last 13 days since the disputed June 12 election, Iran has become the world's leading jailer of journalists.

A report released Tuesday by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran listed the names of 23 Iranian journalists who have been arrested and detained by the government. Additionally, more than 100 political personalities and members of the reformers' presidential campaigns have also been arrested. The group confirmed 31 dead (though only four named), many of whom were students like Neda Aghasoltan, now the face of the opposition movement.

The report also revealed that many of those arrested were detained in their own homes by plain-clothed police officers -- and many were not participating in protests when arrested.

In a blatant disregard for freedom of speech, a right Iran vowed to protect when it signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, government officials raided the Kalameh Sabz on Monday, June 22 -- a reformist newspaper owned by opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Every person in the office at that time was arrested (CPJ estimates that number to be around 25 people), bringing the total number of Iranian journalists arrested up to about 40 -- most of whom are still in custody.

Currently, there are two foreign journalists also being detained, one Iranian-Canadian journalist and one Greek photo journalist working for the Washington Times. Iason Athanasiadis, whose work was on exhibit at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles in January, attempted to capture facets of Iranian life and culture -- especially of the youth -- since the 1979 revolution.

The climate in Iran is such that no journalist can safely report the events in Iran, said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, program coordinator of the Middle East and North Africa program for the Committee to Protect Journalists. The few foreign reporters who have not been either kicked out by an expiring visa or the government's fist are told that they are not allowed to leave their offices and can only rely on reporting done over the phone or use information fed to them by the state media conglomerate. How can those of us outside Iran trying to peer in get a decent glimpse of what's actually happening?

It seems that we cannot. And while Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, among other social networking sites, have been instrumental in showing the world at least part of what's happening, Dayem warns that it's often not the full -- or correct -- story.

There is a great amount of information that came out [through social networking sites]. Had those services not existed, that material would have not reached a worldwide audience as journalists have been sidelined. You do have to weed through a lot of inaccurate information and outright falsehoods and false truths and everything in between.

Abdel Dayem said that the Committee to Protect Journalists cross-checks every lead they get on Twitter or Facebook, but the verification process can be painstakingly lengthy, sometimes taking more than 10 days just to find out if one journalist has been arrested or not.

So Iran has effectively taken control of the mainstream media, taking extra care to filter what information is released and what gets reported. But the newly sworn-in government is doing so at a high cost. With its swift denial of the inherent freedom of speech and expression, Iran has lost credibility and trust with its citizens and the world over.

Photo: A picture shows the June 13, 2009 issue of Iranian newspaper Kalemeh Sabz (Green Word), owned by defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, in Tehran on June 24, 2009. Iran has arrested 25 journalists and other staff working for the newspaper, one of its editors told AFP on June 24. The arrests come after Kalemeh Sabz was shut down by the authorities in the wake of the June 12 disputed election that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office. BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images.

The climate-change bill has, under the hands of various Congress members, become a weak cousin of what it could have been, the editorial board complains. Sections have been reshaped to benefit the farm industry, while other important sections have simply been gutted. Still, it represents the first real effort by the United States to grapple with global warming, and should pass, as the board concludes:

The House should pass the Waxman-Markey bill, and the Senate should speedily follow suit. Even congressional Republicans can't generate as much hot air as the billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide it would eliminate.

The board also bemoans a court ruling that badly weakens the powers of the Los Angeles controller's office. Under Laura Chick, the office produced important watchdog reports on the operations of city government; now it is in danger of becoming weaker than it was even in the days before Chick. The board calls on the City Council to restore these powers legislatively but doubts, considering that council members also could find themselves the butt of the controller's investigations, that it will.

On the other side of the page, thoughts on Iran dominate the page. Renowned former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky advises the West to listen more closely to the dissenters in oppressive regimes such as Iran. They might lack money, power and sophistication, Sharansky writes, but they know more about the evolution of the national mindset.

People in free societies watching massive military parades or vociferous displays of love for the leaders of totalitarian regimes often conclude, "Well, that's their mentality; there's nothing we can do about it." Thus they and their leaders miss what is readily grasped by local dissidents attuned to what is happening on the ground: the spectacle of a nation of double-thinkers slowly or rapidly approaching a condition of open dissent.

And John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, criticizes President Obama for soft-pedaling his response to Iran. The president will never succeed in persuading Iran to forgo its nuclear initiative, Bolton argues, so there's no point in playing nice.

Photo by Giuseppe Cacace/ AFP/Getty Images

Allow me to post a column I wrote back when Michael Jackson was, as the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution says is his right, ''confronted with the witnesses against him'' in the child molestation trial in Santa Maria. That was a little more than four years ago -- March 23, 2005, to be exact.

Remembering everything you've written is beyond most of us who write for a living, but this one had kept haunting the halls of memory, and came back to me again today, as I thought over what sort of man it was who had just died, a man who had been both so public and so elusive.

California Dream's Peaks and Valleys

Michael Jackson, like so many others, paid dearly for a Golden State utopia.

Could there be a bigger story under the great big California sun than the trial of Michael Jackson?

Could anything top the topsy-turvy fortunes and misfortunes of a brilliant pop star who has sold about as many albums as there are people living in this country? A black man with moon-white skin? A former child star accused of child molesting? A multimillionaire with penury said to be snapping at his heels?

Yes, absolutely. This latest trial of the century will also pass off the front pages in time. Jackson will go to prison or go free. If reports of his financial straits are founded in truth, he may go broke too. And that is where Jackson becomes a part of this larger story, the story of California, the blank-slate state that has room enough for every utopian and dystopian who has a notion to put himself at the center of his own universe -- and room enough to swallow them all up again.

Michael Jackson and William Randolph Hearst would understand each other. Hearst was an amateur tap-dancer, and I imagine a moonwalking, tap-dancing pas de deux with the Chief and the King of Pop. Hearst's San Simeon land holdings were nearly 100 times larger than Jackson's, almost a quarter-million acres, but each dreamily called his place a "ranch."

Both would speak the language of acquisitiveness: Jackson totted up a $6-million tab in a televised shopping spree in Las Vegas; Hearst emptied the great houses of Europe one linenfold-paneled chamber at a time. My favorite Hearst story has him lusting after some antique he saw in a magazine, sending his buyer out to track it down and bag it. Some time later, the buyer reports back: "Mr. Hearst, you bought that three years ago."

The newspaper genius and the musical genius would be in perfect sync with their determination to be creator and master of their utopian kingdoms, to create a bubble of perfection amid vast imperfection, insulated from the buffeting world by a moat of money.

Hearst spent millions on La Cuesta Encantada (Enchanted Hill), and it came close to beggaring him. Jackson now may find Neverland beyond even his enormous means.

Neither man invented the California utopia; they only planted their flags on its peaks. Nearly five centuries ago, in about 1510, a Spanish writer who had never seen the place willed into being a paradise ruled by an Amazon queen in golden armor and guarded by flying, male-flesh-eating griffins. "Las Sergas de Esplandian" wielded so powerful an influence on poor old Don Quixote that his friends burned it because of the "mischief" it wrought by giving wings to the old man's dreams.

California, half a millennium later, is still an assembly-kit paradise to every newcomer, from the first little R-1 tract house toehold to the topmost tower of San Simeon. California history would not exist without the handiwork of its extreme dreamers, secular and spiritual. Death Valley Scotty and his desert compound ... Simon Rodia's scrap-heap turrets, the Watts Towers ... Jim Jones and the exaltation and isolation of People's Temple before it moved fatally to South America ... the Topanga nudist colony founded by a refugee from Chicago winters ... the Llano del Rio cooperative in the Antelope Valley, briefly home to Aldous Huxley, who wrote of it as a place where "everything that ought not to have been done was systematically done."

A prosecutor has said Jackson is arguably "on the precipice of bankruptcy," a "spendaholic" with a billionaire's tastes and a millionaire's income. A bankruptcy on Jackson's scale would not be a mere reckoning of red ink and black. It would be a magnificent bankruptcy, a not-a-whimper-but-a-bang bankruptcy.

California history is full of those too: Oliver Morosco's, the theater impresario whose name burned in lights and who was in the end run over by a Los Angeles streetcar, with barely enough money in his pocket to pay a streetcar fare. Thomas Thorkildsen's, the early 20th century "Borax king" whose cleaning products were in every kitchen. Carol Burnett would later buy one of his houses, and Brad Pitt bought another, but Thorkildsen died a pensioner in a La Puente nursing home.

Alleged child molesters have no doubt come to the bar of justice in Santa Maria's courthouse before, and they will no doubt again. What becomes of Michael Jackson at trial will occupy a footnote in criminal history, but in his reach and his grasp at that singular utopia of his own invention, he will have written another chapter in the saga of California, a place that exalts and destroys with equal dispassion.

Top photo: Michael Jackson, arriving at the courthouse in Santa Maria in March 2005, Credit: AP Photo / Kimberly White, Pool. Bottom photo: William Randolph Hearst in 1935. Credit: AP Photo.

What felt the most shocking, as the first reports of Michael Jackson's death rolled out, was how expected the news was. Maybe not today exactly, but if there was ever a Greek tragedy that seemed to be forming in the very first years of a man's life, this was it.

The adorable and preternaturally talented boy who could sing his heart out. The engaging cartoon that made the Jackson 5 a household presence Saturday mornings. The dancing skill that evoked praise from a marveling Fred Astaire. Then came "Thriller." The album exploded on the music scene like a super nova and the creepy/funky video changed the genre forever. But it also changed Jackson. He too burned white hot, and the flames revealed an unknown dark side: the ambitious, and as Jackson described it, abusive father. The stunted childhood. The career so fully engulfed in glitz and money -- and so removed from anything resembling normal life -- that there was little opportunity for the singer to learn a few home truths: that we don't get everything the way we want it, that we have to take responsibility, that sleeping in bed with young boys isn't OK, that dangling babies over balconies and draping their faces, or breezing through expensive tchotchke shops pointing at the million-dollars' worth of goods we'll buy, reflect an inability to reckon with what life is about. The successive plastic surgery that ultimately made his face look like a badly sculpted clay mask.

We saw him dazzle with individuality and originality in "Thriller," then saw him wither away to the frail middle-aged man who was dragged to court in his pajamas. Ultimately there would be no comeback.

Photo: Michael Jackson thanks the audience during the Radio Music Awards in 2003. Credit: AP Photo / Joe Cavaretta

The Times editorial page today comes to the end of the first year at Los Angeles Unified School District's troubled Locke High School under charter school operator Green Dot Public Schools and finds progress, disappointment and hope. And change:

What makes Locke different under Green Dot...isn't that the charter operator has the magic formula for successful schools. It's that the people in charge don't spend years obfuscating, defending and delaying when things don't work. They do something to fix it.

The Times has been following the Locke Green Dot experiment closely. See reporter Howard Blume's articles from earlier this week here, here and here, and the editorial page's year-long series, A Year at Locke, here, and its earlier editorials like this one at the birth of the Green Dot experiment here. And don't miss editorial writer Karin Klein's many blog posts, including yesterday's post from the graduation, with its chilling quote:

 "It's happy, but it's also sad," [a parent said]. I waited for the predictable next words - happy because his child had grown up, sad because...well, his child had grown up. Instead, he continued, "Because you know after today some of these kids are going to die. Some will go down a bad path and get taken out too young."

In Op-Ed, this just in from calbuzz.com's Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine: California government is hard to handle. The two bloggers probed and have discovered that the problems include Proposition 13, voter initiatives, gerrymandering, term limits, a volatile tax structure, and the two-thirds rule for adopting budgets and taxes. Who knew? And guess what? It turns out some people are calling for a constitutional convention.

They made me look up the word bibulous, and now I'm embarrassed I didn't know it before, so I deny it.

Roberts, by the way, is the former political editor, editorial page editor and managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and was the embattled editor and publisher of the Santa Barbara News-Press before his well-chronicled battle with owner Wendy McCaw. He wrote about one episode here.

He and Trounstine last wrote for the Times Opinion page here in March on whether Dianne Feinstein would run for governor.

Trounstine is former political editor of the San Jose Mercury News, communications director for California Gov. Gray Davis and founder and director of the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University.

Elsewhere in the page, filmmaker Todd Darling writes in favorof the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, but says it's not enough. By the way, catch the trailer from his film, "A Snow Mobile for George," on YouTube here.

And columnist Meghan Daum wonderswhat the deal is with J.D. Salinger, who went to court to block publication of a book in Sweden about his Catcher in the Rye character Holden Caulfield. Say what you will about Salinger, who Daum points out has dabbled in (gasp) Zen Buddhism. But even at 90, he's no phony.

Photo: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

The universal chestnut about graduation days is that they're about endings and beginnings, joy and sadness.

But the sentiment was framed in a startlingly different way Wednesday at the Locke High School commencement, held on the expansive athletic field of the Watts school. Security was heavy; beefy guys wearing shirts that identified them as anti-gang detail looked out of place next to the beaming students in their pastel blue caps and gowns. Locke has been much safer during its first year as a Green Dot charter school, but a student was shot just outside the campus in April. Surrounded as Locke is by gang activity and violence, school officials were clearly aiming to keep any trouble at bay.

I was sitting in the bleachers next to proud dad Gregory McMiller, snappily dressed for his son Johnathan's big day, hanging on to a gigantic mylar balloon that he gallantly tried to keep from batting me in the head every time the breeze picked up.

"It's happy, but it's also sad," McMiller started. I waited for the predictable next words  -- happy because his child had grown up, sad because ... well, his child had grown up. Instead, he continued, "Because you know after today some of these kids are going to die. Some will go down a bad path and get taken out too young."

Not everything about commencement -- like the belief that the grads are headed to limitless futures -- is universal.

So it turns out that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was not, in fact, hunting wolverines in Alaska with at 12-gauge. Amid swirling rumors about his unexplained absence after he returned to the U.S., having spent Father's Day weekend in Buenos Aires, he admitted today to having an affair with a woman in Argentina. According to The State's Gina Smith, who broke the original story, the governor's whereabouts were unknown to his aids, who previously said they thought he was hiking in the Appalachian mountains. His wife, Jenny, told CNN Tuesday she didn't know where he was either: "I am being a mom today. I have not heard from my husband. I am taking care of my children."  

With his admission, Sanford followed Nevada senator John Ensign, pied-piper style, off the politically relevant cliff. Democrats are already taking swipes and calling for Sanford's resignation. 

Sanford left last Thursday without leaving so much as a post-it note telling his aids where he went.  While he denies intentionally deceiving his staff, he also described his own actions as "shrouding." 

Wait, wait, since when was "shrouding" not the same as deceiving? Also, since when did trans-hemispheric e-mail conversations start leading to politically damaging physical relationships?  It is one thing to need some vacation time -- don't we all -- but it is another to leave without telling anyone. As a governor, Sanford has given up the luxury to travel wherever he pleases without anyone knowing. 

Photo credit: Davis Turner / Getty Images

The Op-Ed page revisits the turmoil in Iran, with Stuart A. Reid, an assistant editor at Foreign Affairs magazine, endorsing President Obama's "muted response" to the regime's blatant election-stealing. Reid's piece offers a counterpoint to yesterday's Obama-torching column by Jonah Goldberg, but he appears to have been overtaken by events -- note how the president sharpened his rhetoric Tuesday, possibly after considering Goldberg's ever-helpful words of advice. Meanwhile, columnist Tim Rutten writes about the "hybrid journalism" coming out of Tehran, i.e., the blend of grass-roots reporting and professional analysis. It's a perceptive piece about the impact of new technologies for gathering and sharing information, especially coming from a guy who neither blogs nor Twitters.

Elsewhere in Op-Ed, journalist Harold Meyerson promotes the indefensible position that the federal government should bail out California:

The feds should approach California as they did General Motors -- demanding a fundamental restructuring of state finances as a condition for loans. In return for proffering, say, $8 billion in loans, the White House should demand $8 billion in tax hikes and $8 billion in cutbacks. It should also demand changes to the state's Constitution that would upend California's dysfunctional system of finances, sweeping away the two-thirds requirement for passing budgets and raising taxes, restoring local governments' ability to fund themselves through property taxes and putting a stop to budgeting by initiative. The feds' loan could be conditional on the state's voters ratifying these changes in November.

Jeez, where to start? Do we really want the Treasury Department deciding the appropriate mix of tax hikes and spending cuts? Should Tim Geithner hold an $8 billion gun to the head of California voters, insisting they abandon the major provisions of Proposition 13 as well as the potential for future initiatives about government funding? And if this is such a good idea, shouldn't Meyerson be just as comfortable if a Republican administration in Washington were setting the terms? (For the record, the Times' editorial board has already weighed in against even a limited a federal bailout.)

Finally, baseball historian Zev Chafets sees trouble ahead for the Baseball Hall of Fame in the eligibility of numerous star Latino ballplayers who've been tarnished by steroid allegations.

On the editorial page, the Times board blasts a bill in Sacramento to increase the maximum payday loan from $300 to $500, and bemoans how a dispute over gun control has derailed a bill to give the citizens of Washington, D.C., a voting member in the House of Representatives. It also welcomes the full attention of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa back to our fair city (for the second day in a row!), just in time to deal with a thorny budget problem and an electorate that wants more for less cost:

Three out of four Angelenos polled rated the city's budget difficulties as a serious problem, but majorities oppose slowing down police hiring, laying off city workers or raising fees for city services. Two-thirds oppose a tax hike to pay for fire services, and nearly 60% oppose increased taxes for other services.

But hey, that's why they pay the mayor the big dollars.

Photo: AP/ Jim Buell

Comments continue to cascade in response to  Catherine Lyons' thoughtful post on the president of France's broadside against burqas. I thought I'd add my 2 cents' worth, even they're pennies I spent in 2004 when I was writing for another newspaper. In a column headlined "Scarves and Smugness," I suggested that Americans ought to refrain from judging the French too harshly for their ban on the wearing of headscarves -- and other religious garments and adornments -- in state schools.

That policy had drawn criticism from the Bush administration, criticism  echoed by President Obama in his June 4 speech in Cairo. Freedom in America, he said, " is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it."

In my column (full text here) I wrote:

"Official tolerance for religious diversity in this country is a relatively recent phenomenon. It wasn't until 1987, in response to an adverse Supreme Court decision, that Congress allowed Jewish military officers to wear yarmulkes with their uniforms. Only recently have Christmas pageants in public schools been repackaged as ecumenical 'holiday celebrations' that also make note of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. . . .

"It is tempting to recommend to the French that they copy the U.S. First Amendment, which the Bush administrations seems to think offers simple answers to the question of religious expression in state schools. But that amendment itself pulls in two directions: prohibiting governmental 'establishment of religion' but guaranteeing the 'free exercise' of religion. Into which category should we place an exception in a school dress code for religious apparel?
 
"The sort of 'multicultural' pluralism the Bush administration recommends to France took time to develop in this country and in England, where until the 19th century Roman Catholics and other 'Nonconformists' were second-class citizens. Earlier than that, in Elizabethan times, Catholics were presumed to be traitors because they answered to a pope who had excommunicated England's Protestant queen. The line between religion and politics in those days was a blurred and bloody one. So it is, some would argue, in contemporary France with its large Muslim minority."

"Some would argue" was a hedge on my part, and I'm still torn about whether France should bolster its wall of separation between church and state. I do think that the burqa controversy raises the question of whether Americans should equate the particulars of our democracy or civil society with universal imperatives like representative government, separation of church and state and fair trials. Take the question of an independent judiciary, which appears on the checklists of most definers of democracy. In this country, an independent judiciary includes the right of the Supreme Court to nullify unconstitutional statutes. Britain historically has not gone that far, not surprisingly given its lack of a written Constitution. But British justice, though sometimes flawed (as is American justice), has a deserved reputation for political independence. And while the British have an encouragingly expansive understanding of freedom of religion, they also have an Established Church.

Banning women from wearing the burqa anywhere strikes me as a violation of the basic principle of religious freedom. Banning headscarves and crucifixes from state schools, not so much.  France is more of a stickler for secularism than the is United States, because of its history and culture and not just out of concern about unassimilated Muslims. I'm not quite willing to say  "Vive la différence," but neither will I excommunicate France from the free world.

In the Waziristan province of Pakistan, a stronghold of the militant Taliban group, a U.S. drone killed more than 40 people and wounded dozens of others attending a funeral for a Pakistani who was killed earlier that day -- by a drone. 

Though there are conflicting reports over whether these casualties were civilians or Taliban militant fighters mourning the death of their comrade-in-arms, the fact remains that such an attack on a funeral will have a backlash, no matter who was hit.

The drone, according to Reuters, was gunning for Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Taliban movement and the alleged plotter behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Of course, he escaped unharmed -- a familiar tag line in these tales.

Though the drones -- pilotless, missile-packing aircraft that patrol Pakistan's treacherous terrain -- are amazingly capable of spotting and hitting their targets, doing so at a funeral is only fanning the flames. Funerals are no less important a ceremony to Muslims and Pakistanis as they are to Americans. Is desecrating such an important cultural occasion -- Taliban or not -- a smart thing for the United States to do? 

While the drone's sortie Tuesday could be seen as making a dent in the Taliban militia, perhaps even more dangerous than the militia itself is the passionately angry sentiments that may come from such an attack -- and the retaliation that anger provokes.

Photo: Supporters of Islamic political party Jamat-e-Islami shout slogans in Peshawar Pakistan on April 24 during a protest against US drones attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas near the Afghan border. Credit: Arshad Arbab / EPA

The editorial board applauds Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's decision to stay in Los Angeles and forfeit a gubernatorial run (in 2010, at least), calling the decision a second chance for both the newly re-elected mayor and the city of Los Angeles to "prove they were right for each other":

Voters elected Villaraigosa in 2005 in the belief that he would do that. They reelected him -- a smattering of them did, anyway -- this year in part because their mayor was so skilled at getting the most viable challengers not to run. The city now wrestles with a palpable disappointment in Villaraigosa, not just because of budget woes or bad schools but because of his failure to live up to expectations that he helped to inflate. That's a hard way for a mayor to enter a second term. Still, we credit him for deciding to enter it with both feet, instead of one pointed toward Sacramento.

The editorial board also supports President Barack Obama's continued prudent response to the increasingly violent Iranian protests and his refusal to make any strong statements toward the government or the opposition:

A fraught U.S.-Iranian history argues against more direct intervention, starting with the U.S. role in overthrowing elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, and including U.S. support for the shah over the revolutionary forces that brought the Islamic government to power in 1979. Add in the subsequent hostage crisis, plus decades of mutual hostility over regional conflicts and nuclear weapons, and it becomes clear why more forceful action from Obama could backfire. He must continue to protest the bloodshed, but he cannot hand Iranian hard-liners a stick with which to beat the opposition.

And the board welcomes the U.S. Supreme Court's upholding of a key provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the notion of pre-clearance, meaning that states and localities with a history of abridging the right to vote must get clearance by the federal government before changing their election laws.

On the Op-Ed side of the fold, one finds a different take on many of the same issues. Politico-turned-academic Dan Schnur, while not surprised by Villaraigosa's decision not to run in the governor's race, said he expects the mayor to run for the U.S. Senate in 2012. Columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that Obama cannot win with his stance on Iran and must give up his "ideological" approach:

As an unnamed Iran expert in contact with White House officials told Foreign Policy's Laura Rozen, "Obama is dedicated to diplomacy in a manner that is almost ideological.... He wants to do some stuff in the Middle East over the next eight years. He may not be able to achieve half of them unless he gets this huge piece of the puzzle [Iran] right."

Finally, author Greg Critser warns of the dangeous effects of air pollution not just on heart and lungs but also on brain and fetal development. A solution? Researchers are working on it, Critser writes, but in the meantime, government should enforce the new regulations on truck exhaust as well as those that require improved filtering systems in schools, and map "emissions hot spots" in Los Angeles so people know which areas to avoid.

A would-be Republican challenger is trying to capitalize on Sen. Barbara Boxer's now infamous reprimand of a general for addressing her at a hearing as "Ma'am" instead of "Senator." According to Chuck DeVore, Boxer's dressing down of Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh of the Army Corps of Engineers reflected liberal contempt toward the armed forces and was just what you'd expect from a Vietnam War protester.

But you don't have to be a Republican to be appalled by Boxer's display of pique, which has become must-gag TV on YouTube. "Do me a favor," Boxer told Walsh at a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Could you say 'Senator' instead of 'Ma'am?' It's just a thing; I worked so hard to get that title, so I'd appreciate it." To his credit, Walsh didn't reply: "Yeah, you did raise a lot of campaign contributions, Senator." Later, a Boxer aide said she and the general were pals.

Maybe, but Boxer had better forget about a campaign contribution from Miss Manners. As bloggers have pointed out, "Ma'am" is a term of respect comparable to "Sir," which is the way military officers address the president. It's also a contraction of "Madam," as in "Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton." (Walsh began his testimony by addressing Boxer as "Madam Chair.")  If "Ma'am" is good enough for the Queen of England, it ought to be good enough for Boxer. Yet it was the senator, not the monarch, who was not amused.

What's really galling about Boxer's snit is her refusal to give the general the benefit of the doubt. My mother taught her children that if someone knocks you over on a bus, assume it's an accident even if you suspect otherwise. There's no evidence that Walsh was deliberately belittling Boxer, but she flamed him anyway -- before TV cameras. That would be gauche even if Walsh were in the habit of referring to male senators by their proper title but not female senators. But Boxer didn't make that accusation.

Correcting the way someone addresses you almost always makes the other person uncomfortable. Reporters covering the Supreme Court cringed when the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist would correct a nervous lawyer who addressed him as just plain "Justice Rehnquist." Pointing out an error can be awkward even when you're demoting yourself -- which is why I no longer object to being called "Professor" by students who don't realize I'm a lowly adjunct instructor. Cardinal Newman (or maybe it was my mother) said that a gentleman never offends. Neither does a lady senator.

* Photo of Sen. Barbara Boxer by Rich Pedroncelli / AP

Earlier today, in a wing of the opulent Palace of Versailles -- a symbol of France's once-grand monarchy -- President Nicolas Sarkozy addressed Parliament for the first time in (yes) almost 150 years with a message just as old: France will keep its values, and those who come here must adhere to them.

Much to the chagrin of many French political parties (the Green and Socialist parties did not show up) and an already divided French population on this issue, Sarkozy once again condemned the wearing of burqas by Muslim women in France. According to BBC News, the president declared the following:

For at least the past five years, wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf, or hijab, has been under attack in France. In 2004, former President Jacques Chirac signed off on a ban on wearing all religious dress (including headscarves) at public schools. What lies at the heart of the French skittishness toward exotic religious garb isn't pure xenophobia, but rather the country's tradition of assimilation. Far more than most Western cultures, the French are known for insisting that all people, especially immigrants, subordinate their religious and cultural beliefs to a common French identity.

This approach differs quite drastically from both the United States and the United Kingdom, whose leaders speak eloquently in favor of freedom of religious expression -- even if that expression is extreme by Western standards. President Obama pointed out in his speech in Cairo earlier this month, "The U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it." Likewise, Great Britain has supported its subjects' right to wear the hijab in public.

Sarkozy's motivation -- assuming a reasonable absence of political calculation -- is admirable: No woman should be forced to be hidden behind a veil. Still, many women choose to wear burqas as a show of respect for their religion, not out of subservience. Strangely, Sarkozy has put himself in the paradoxical position of appealing to modern Western ideals of universal human dignity to make the case for antiquated French values. The result is precisely the opposite of Sarkozy's rhetoric: By singling out burqas as an abomination to French culture, the president has reinforced the discrimination faced by many immigrants by contributing to their marginalization. These residents, after all, are simply trying to adhere to the beliefs they held long before becoming subjects of the French assimilation machinery.

Photo: Two women, one wearing the niqab, a veil worn by the most conservative Muslims that exposes only a woman's eyes, right, walk side by side, in the Belsunce district of downtown Marseille, France (Claude Paris / AP).

Did my ears deceive me?

L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, announcing on CNN that he won't be running for governor (this time), talked about the ''abomination'' of what's going on in Sacramento, referred to his teen-aged daughter as ''the apple of my eye'' and ''my precious'' (shades of ''Lord of the Rings''), and then delivered what was for me the stunner. He said one of the reforms we need in California is ... open primaries.

Just about the only thing the Democratic and Republican parties have deeply and truly agreed on of late is that open primaries are anathema to the party system. They've gone to court in years past to keep primaries closed.

And now here's Villaraigosa, former Democratic speaker of the state Assembly and chief wrangler of Democrats there, saying that we need open primaries?

Beyond the fact that voters love the idea as much as political parties hate it, the mayor's remarks suggest that he thinks he may do better in open primaries than closed ones. Is his relationship with his own party changing? It's an interesting notion, but now we won't be able to explore it until 2012 at the earliest, if the mayor does run for partisan office, and if the ballot is thrown open to all comers.

Party on, mayor!

Photo credit: Damian Dovarganes / AP

Putting more than full term's worth of speculation to rest, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced this afternoon that he will not join state Atty. Gen. (and former two-term governor) Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in seeking the Democratic Party's nomination in 2010 for California governor. Having grown up in Southern California, I can't help but point out the most profound implications of Villaraigosa's decision: The 2010 gubernatorial will lack a viable candidate from Southern California (Newsom's fealty to the Bay Area is obvious, Brown was Oakland mayor from 1998-2006, and Republicans Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner are both techy gazillionares from the Silicon Valley.) Perhaps we should ask the candidates to promise not to chant "Beat L.A.!" at Giants-Dodgers games.

Apologies; I had to get that out of my system.

There's been much speculation on our pages -- online and in print -- about Villaraigosa's extra-mayoral ambitions. A few days before the mayor was re-elected to his second term in March, Marc Cooper implored Villaraigosa to "unequivocally declare he will absolutely, positively not run for governor next year," a position echoed by The Times' editorial board in its endorsement of the mayor for a second term. Weighing on the other side was former state Sen. Tom Hayden, who wrote that in a race against Brown and Newsom, voter demographics favor Villaraigosa. Later this afternoon, The Times will post its editorial on the announcement, in which the paper's editorial board reacts favorably to Villaraigosa's decision.

What do you think about the mayor's decision to stay in L.A. (for now, anyway)? Take our poll, leave a comment or both.

UPDATE: The Times' editorial is up; click here to read it.

Photo: Stephen Dunn / Getty Images

The Times editorial board focuses on the failing healthcare system in the United States, urging Congress and all parties involved to start the reform process now before it's too late. Despite sharp disagreements over some of the proposed fixes, the board notes the broad consensus about three main problem areas: rising costs, incomplete coverage and questionable quality:

On the Op-Ed side of the fold, Steven Hill proposes several ways that California can approach a constitutional convention that will potentially remake the state into California, Version 2.0. The problem, he writes, is how to choose delegates. He concludes that random selection -- as done in Canada, among other countries -- may be the best and fairest option. Gregory Rodriguez discusses the danger of urban downsizing and the Obama administration's consideration of a plan to shrink deteriorating cities by bulldozing neighborhoods:

And Susan R. Barry reflects on the beauty of a 3-D world as well as the potential benefits of 3-D movies in spotting visual defects in children.

Photo: Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee hold a rally in Washington, D.C., for their healthcare overhaul bill on June 16. Credit: Robert Giroux / Getty Images