Comeback kind: Lou Cannon says Schwarzenegger's likability puts Westly and Angelides in the shade (illustration by Roman Genn)

The primary election is just a week away, which for most voters means fumbling through misleading voter information guides, picking Superior Court judges' names at random, or just staying home. Here's some notable recent election coverage in the opinion and news pages to get you in the voting mood:

Lying guides: The Times' Robert Greene dissects the state's Official Voter Information Guide. He writes: "The Official Voter Information Guide (available, by the way, in seven languages, and costing $9.3 million this year to print and mail) becomes an extension of the pro and con campaign mail that floods mailboxes a few days before each election. Backers and opponents of ballot measures can, and often do, say pretty much anything to get you on their side."

Election fatigued: Too many elections make Jack a bored voter, says analyst Tony Quinn. He writes:

"The biggest decision on the ballot is whether Democrats prefer state Treasurer Phil Angelides or state Controller Steve Westly as their candidate for governor. Neither has stirred much political excitement, a state of affairs reflected in the relatively large number of voters still undecided. Tired voters may do what they always do when bored by politics — stay home.

"A low turnout usually means an older, more conservative electorate. In 2002, nearly as many Republicans as Democrats voted despite the fact that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 1.5 million voters. If that happens in June, Proposition 82, the measure to raise income taxes on the rich to pay for universal preschool, will probably lose. Polls show voters are split on the proposal."

Schwarzenegger's baaack: The Austrian-born mumbler has rumbled back into the thick of the gubernatorial race, writes author Lou Cannon. Why? He's just too darn likable to let a few political stumbles get in his way:

"The biggest single reason that Schwarzenegger is favored to win reelection is that a significant majority of voters, including those who take a dim view of his policies, like him. He descended into politics as a popular celebrity known from his movies, particularly the 'Terminator' films, and this aura still clings to him despite his many political mishaps. A poll in March by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that, his policies notwithstanding, 71% of prospective voters said they liked the governor.

"When any incumbent enters an election with the personal approval of more than 70% of the electorate, he has a leg up on his opponents. 'There's a reservoir of goodwill for Gov. Schwarzenegger,' said H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs at the state Department of Finance and the governor's chief spokesman on fiscal issues. 'People want him to succeed because they want the state to succeed.' "

Sandbox standoff: The debate over Proposition 82, the universal preschool initiative, is a chalkboard scratch-off. Clouds of chalk dust fly as foes scribble numbers and try to wipe out their opponents' fuzzy math. Here's a taste from two recent op-eds:

From opponent Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley education prof: "Lower-income children would get less than half of the estimated $2.4 billion in new annual pre-school funding that would be raised by taxing the wealthiest Californians. That's partly because over half of these children already attend free preschool. At least $1.4 billion would go to subsidize better-off parents who can already afford to pay for preschool."

From proponent Arthur Reynolds, a Minnesota child development specialist: "A much-discussed 2005 Rand Corp. study found that a universal program of high quality for all California 4-year-olds would return to society from $2 to $4 for every dollar invested. That's a conservative calculation."

Go HERE to read the full op-eds and cast your vote.

Want more? Here's an op-ed by Stanford economist Michael Boskin arguing "Proposition 82 is the latest in a string of terrible initiatives that seek to micromanage the state by creating unnecessary, inefficient, multibillion-dollar programs financed by ever-higher tax rates."

The Superior Court guessing game: Times reporter Jessica Garrison writes about the uninformed scramble for state Superior Court spots: "Chances are, most voters won't have heard of any of the prospective judges whose names will appear at the bottom of their ballot next month. Chances are, most voters will vote anyway." Judges with unusual names are especially at risk of election challenges. Example: experienced jurist Dzintra Janavs, whose campaign consultant believes was targeted because of her tongue-twisting name.

Want to skip the guesswork? See the Times endorsements for Superior Court, the nation's largest trial court. And yes, the Times endorses Janavs, whose white-bread challenger Lynn Diane Olson put lawyering on hold to run a Manhattan Beach bagel shop. "Olson may make the better bagel. Janavs would remain by far the better judge," write the Times editors. See all Times endorsements at www.latimes.com/endorsements.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with Mexican President Vicente Fox at the Getty Center

As the city shut down for the Memorial Day weekend, Mexican President Vicente Fox wrapped up his four-day U.S. tour in L.A. today — the end of his first California visit in five years. Fox met with two leading local immigration-reform backers, Mayor Antonia Villaraigosa and Cardinal Roger Mahony, as well as labor leaders. The Times reports tomorrow that Villaraigosa tried to avoid talking about immigration, which he called a federal matter. The mayor stuck to his trade-mission talking points with reporters, while Fox said "a legal, safe, orderly immigration policy will benefit the security and prosperity of both our nations."

Spanish-language daily La Opinion reported that Fox applauded yesterday's Senate vote for comprehensive immigration reform, saying it would help the two countries focus their attention on security and economic growth. "We are your allies in the war against drugs and crime," he said in a meeting with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yesterday Fox told reporters Mexico is "promoting economic growth and social opportunities so that migration is no longer a necessity," the Times noted. Since Fox was last in California, some 5 million people have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Niall Ferguson: World Markets' Wild Ride
Economic volatility is back with a vengeance.

George S. McGovern: The End of 'More'
A Democratic stalwart warns that labor's old strategy can't win against a new competitive reality.

Gershom Gorenberg: Paying for Israel's Makeover
U.S. funds for a controversial settlement pullback could help advance a peace agreement.

Editorials

Gitmo, Get Gone
Running out of excuses for not removing a national blight.

If we build it, they will ride
The Red Line could be expanded to Fairfax without local money, but only if county leaders show guts.

End Ethanol Subsidies Now
There's no reason to artificially prop up energy prices.

Selected Weekend Commentary:

Tom Blanton: The Lie Behind the Secrets
The government's secrets claim crushes the rights of whistle-blowers and mistaken detainees.

Michael Skube: Get out, But Leave the Quesadilla
Why Americans get clingy about carne asada but are ready to give Spanish-speaking immigrants the boot.

Peter Dreier: The Condo That Ate My Rental
Converting apartment buildings into condominiums is killing affordable housing.

Jonathan Chait: The Right Discovers Bush's 'Honesty'
Conservatives are finally getting a taste of his misleading rhetoric.

Selected Weekend Editorials:

No on Proposition 82
Universal preschool is too expensive, too bureuacratic, and could harm K-12.

No Más in the Senate
'National language' amendment illustrates how immigration debate brings out the worst in Washington.

Act Before Midnight Nov. 7!
Desperate senators peddle the Constitution to the lowest common denominator.

The LAT delegation dined on Wednesday with three impressive female entrepreneurs in a hip restaurant that once served as an imperial ice house. I sat next to Wang Lifen, a producer whose show "Win in China" debuted this week on state TV. The hit sensation is the People's Republic version of Donald Trump's "The Apprentice," which of course means it is far more capitalistic.

Here the winning five contestants -- who undergo business trials and interviews and will have been picked from an original 20,000 applicants who learned about the show from the Internet -- will not end up with a salaried job working for an egomaniac developer. They will each end up with their own company so they can become their own egomaniac. Foreign venture capitalists have ponied up millions of dollars for the new companies and they will end up with a stake in them. Because hey, you never know....

But wait, there's more. The truly brilliant twist -- I think I said "wow, that's amazingly clever" to Ms. Wang like six times over dinner, though she understood me the first time -- is that viewers, in addition to getting to vote in the winnowing proces, get a chance to win shares in the company too! A few hundred viewers who text-message the show will be chosen to share a 15% stake in the company. I think the winner has about a 20% stake. And of course, the state TV company will end up with a stake, too. Because hey, you never know....

As I often say back home: What a country!

Actually, the next morning brought me back down to earth, or at least to the odd PRC version of it. I bought The Economist magazine at the hotel lobby, only to discover a couple of hours later that a page had been torn out of it.

How rude is that?! It took about five seconds for my mind to process that this wasn't some ordinary consumer gripe, but ludicrously low-tech censorship. Judging by the small bottom corner of the page that had survived the tearing, the article had something to do with Sino-Japanese relations. Later in the newsstand I picked up another copy of the magazine, which had a cleaner tear, no corners left.

Thursday night, at a cocktail party at the China Club, I met David Brooks, the country manager for Coca-Cola. China is now the company's fourth biggest market, volume-wise. What's fascinating is that countries like Mexico and the U.S. (Coke's two strongest markets) consume more than 400 annual Coke servings per capita. China is only up to 17. Again, like Hollywood and other industries -- and missionaries before them -- Coke can engage in some pretty mind-boggling number-crunching: "If we can get Chinese to consume a quarter as much Coke as Mexicans consumers, then...."

What I wouldn't have given to have had a Coke readily available the last time I was in China, 21 years ago. I spent the summer of 1985 studying here in Beijing, and lived on the campus of Normal University. The only place to have a Coke during that brutally hot, sticky summer was in one of the hotels around town, which we ventured to a couple of times. One of the high points of that summer was a July 4th party at the U.S. embassy because -- I will never forget this -- they flew in McDonald's from Hong Kong. Now, of course, the golden arches are ubiquitous here, but who needs them amid all the good restaurants?

In terms of how much the city has changed, I feel like my previous visit here had been in 1758.

I did wander around Tiananmen Square this afternoon, and that hasn't changed much, except for the large number of undercover cops making sure no one congregates. It is hard to stand there and not feel nauseous, and, well, ashamed. The 1989 massacre, truth be told, helped accelerate much of the prosperity-creating economic reforms, even as the government clamped down further on the political side. And yes, the party's gamble seems to be paying off, and we (me personally, my country, the Olympic movement, my favorite beverage company, you name it) are all complicit in this devil's bargain. And yet I am not sure there is a better alternative -- in terms of our options, that is.

A historian here told me that a class at Beijing University was recently shown the iconic Tiananmen picture of the lone student halting the progress of tanks, but today's students were unable to identify the context of the photo.

The tearing of pages can be taken to frightening degrees....

Today's rich Opinionny goodness:

Steve Olson: We're All Jesus' Children
'Da Vinci Code' got its genealogy wrong. If anyone is descended from Jesus, it's all of us.

Rosa Brooks: 'Girlie States' vs. Knuckle-Draggers
Is sexual inequality dividing the world into nice nations and bruisers?

Bernardo Alvarez Herrera: In Defense of Venezuela
Ambassador to U.S. says his country is democratic, not terroristic.

Richard Rodriguez: America's Impure Genius
A new, yet ancient Latin American sensibility is being born in the U.S.

Editorials

Shame in San Pedro
Homeless agency flips donated Navy land for real estate profit.

Enron Arrogance on Trial
A jury is set to rule on the energy raider's dubious duo.

Sacrilege as MacGuffin
'Da Vinci' portrays gospel according to Hitchcock.

Laura K. Donohue: Battlefield: U.S.
Pentagon spies are treating the homeland like a war zone.

Michael H. Schill: UC Profs Aren't Overpaid
Top teachers require market prices, says UCLA's law dean.

Patt Morrison: Public Art Follies
A great L.A. mural is hidden by hokum on Olvera Street.

Jonah Goldberg: It's Iraq, Stupid
Why isn't Bush getting credit for economic growth on his watch?

Editorials

Murky Transparency
Bush cares more about confirming Hayden than about coming clean on the NSA.

A Tale of Two Mayors
Villaraigosa makes lemonade out of Hahn's lemons.

D.C. in the House
The nation's capitol deserves a House seat, but not at the expense of giving one to Utah.

Our offerings in today's Opinion Section:

Karl Fleming: Looking Back at Being Stomped in Watts
Forty years after being beaten senseless by an angry black mob, a white reporter recalls the civil rights struggle between nonviolence and rage.

Max Boot: Forget Privacy, We Need to Spy More
Electronic surveillance is a key weapon in the war on terror. Don't handcuff the president and the NSA.

Erin Aubry Kaplan: Good Riddance, Exit Exam
Underdog high-schoolers won the battle against the test, but the fight for racial justice has just begun.

Pico Iyer: How Can a Botox Nation Boo Barry Bonds?
It's not the baseball player who needs an asterisk, it's the rest of us.

Editorials

No Drilling Off Our Coast
The House should reject needless calls to lift the ban on offshore gas drilling.

For Public Instruction Chief
The position shouldn't exist, but incumbent Jack O'Connell should be re-elected.

The EBay Effect
Supreme Court ruling on auction pioneer could usher in long-overdue patent reform.

Another dispatch from Editorial Page Editor Andrés Martinez (click the links for parts one and two):

The LAT delegation got a rare glimpse of the government's inner sanctum on Monday when we were granted an interview with Tang Jiaxuan, the Party Central Committee member who oversees foreign affairs, in the sprawling Zhongnanhai compound adjacent to the Forbidden City (a friend who is a New York Times correspondent here was green with envy that we'd gotten in). Our intrepid bureau chief, Mark Magnier, wrote a news story about the substance of Mr. Tang's remarks, so I should just add that I have never been in a room with more chandeliers, and that the Communists are not above employing some glitzy sensuality to score points.

The session was quite a ceremonial affair with our team asked to file in order of seniority. A corresponding number of ministerial underlings filed in, as if we were groomsmen and bridesmaids matched up. The sensual glitz, however, was provided by two statuesque women in traditional pink dresses who strolled the length of the room to open the proceedings, with perfectly synchronized movements, to distribute hot towels and then tea. OK, maybe you had to be there.... Before the meeting we also got a peek at the lake in the compound where Chairman Mao used to swim. "Can I come back to run around here in the morning?" I asked, to nervous laughter. Crazy Americans....

On Tuesday afternoon, we spoke to journalism students at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua Journalism School. Dean Baquet told them a newspaper's mission in America is to serve as an aggressive adversary to government, to keep it honest. He told the attentive audience about the time CIA director George Tenet called him to ask that a story not run, lest the LAT endanger national security. "I didn't think he made a compelling case," Dean told the students, "so we ran the story." I added that in America, two major national newspapers (the LAT and NYT) editorialized against the decision to invade Iraq, and that this is not deemed unpatriotic in our society (well, I didn't get into certain Fox News talking heads...). I explained to the students that Dean oversees news coverage and has nothing to do with our opinion pages, and that I conversely have nothing to do with news coverage. The main challenge was to get through this point without uttering the words "Chinese wall."

I ended the session by asking the kids whether they believe -- by a show of hands -- that they live in a truly communist country. Only about five hands went up, and somewhat hesitantly at that. I told them it didn't feel all that communist to an outsider (especially one who was in Cuba last month), what with all the rampant consumerism and private enterprise. And it's no wonder these kids don't feel like they're living in Utopia -- they have to pay a steep tuition!

Earlier in the day, Victor Yuan, a Beijing-based pollster who proudly wears a "Veritas" watch plugging his alma matter in Cambridge, told us that his polls show only 3% of Chinese self-identify as communists. That's fewer commies than Christians, who come in at 4%.

Of course no one disputes that the Chinese government remains a ruthless, hardcore Leninist structure. The Communist Party retains all power, still fancying itself the all-knowing vanguard of the Revolution. It's just that the Revolution has shed all its Marxist ideology, or at least its economic theory. And Marxism or communism minus the economic doctrine is like Christianity minus the resurrection. An ostensibly communist country with economic freedom begins to look suspiciously like Pinochet's Chile.

The Party's bet is that no one cares about any of this, so long as it continues delivering 10% annual GDP growth, and hundreds of millions of Chinese continue emerging from abject poverty. According to Yuan's polls, more than 80% of Chinese feel the country is on the right track. There is a palpable optimism here, and since a vast majority of the population is appreciative of how much individual autonomy they have gained in last few years -- in terms of being able to decide for themselves where to live and work -- maybe they're not too eager to clamor for democracy writ large, especially if such clamoring would threaten the unprecedented stability that has proven so profitable.

Still, as an American, I can't help but hope the Party has miscalculated -- that in the end, all of this economic freedom will make its political totalitarianism an unsustainable anachronism.

One cloud looming in the horizon is the growing inequality wrought by the new prosperity. Rural resentment aimed at city elites is a timeless theme in Chinese history, and one of the priorities for the new Hu Jintao administration is to address the inequality.

Another intriguing issue identified by Yuan the pollster is the generational divide in China. Plenty of other places identify different generations with different letters -- Y, X and so on -- but in China kids in their 20s and younger represent a dramatic break from previous generations in that they are mostly products of the one-child policy. In how many ways will a generation dominated by only children -- "Generation S" -- be different?

Mae M. Ngai: How Grandma Got Legal
Illegal-immigration foes say today's migrants are different from their own forebears. They don't know U.S. history.

Daniel Cohen: Kadafi Killed My Child
The U.S. has forgiven him, but we'll never forget who bombed Pan Am Flight 103.

Diane Ravitch: PC Textbooks Full of Flawed History
California has tinkered with the past in a foolish attempt to make students feel good about themselves.

Joel Stein: Angels With Ammo
The Bible gets fully automatic in a new video game offering a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse.

Editorials

The Right Words
President Bush talked a good game, but will Congress listen?

A Church-State Rescue Mission
Earthquake-damaged Mission San Miguel Arcangel needs an engineer, not an ugly 1st Amendment fight.

Letting Libya up
The nation's atonement for its terrorist past shows that tough U.S. diplomacy can work in the Arab world.

"Mi3" may already be available on the streets of Shanghai, but the censors here in China haven't yet decided whether to approve the movie for theatrical release. It's not just about the Oprah couch incident. The film was partly filmed in this city, and that seems to be a strike against it. Word is that censors are worried that the movie suggests a certain lack of competence on the part of Shanghai's law enforcement, what with all the mayhem depicted.

Much to Hollywood's frustration, only 20 foreign films are allowed in for theatrical release each year. And while the studios once expected China to be their El Dorado -- as did Christian missionaries before them -- the nation's entire box office last year was in the neighborhood of a measly quarter-billion dollars. Ticket prices are outrageously expensive, another source of frustration for studios. On average, Chinese go to the movies once every five years, which must provide studio number-crunchers with all sorts of dizzying scenarios -- "if only we could get all Chinese to see one movie in the summer and one during the holidays, then...."

Meanwhile, the pirated DVD market is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $3 billion. Given that only a few titles get approved for theatrical release, can't the flood of pirated DVDs be considered a digital-era form of samizdat influence undermining the party? Just a thought....

Communist censors in Beijing do have different standards when evaluating movies for theatrical release, as opposed to releases on DVD (even legitimate). Older party apparatchiks recall using cinema to advance their propaganda, so they still get a bit jittery about the power of watching suggestive material with hundreds of other people, as opposed to watching it at home. So, for instance, "Last Samurai" was rejected for theatrical release, but ok'd for DVD. Not sure whether it's a go for in-flight entertainment....

On Friday we had lunch with a couple of architects and urban planners, among them Ben Wood, who has recently moved to Shanghai. Wood, an alum of the Rouse Co., which developed Baltimore's Inner Harbor and a lot of other such projects, was responsible for the Lincoln Ave. project in Miami Beach, and most recently, the refurbishing of Chicago's Soldier Field. He and another expat architect got into an interesting debate over whether it's an inherently Chinese yearning to create gated residential communities within cities -- your own version of the Forbidden City -- or whether the trend is a way of aping a foreign vogue.

Wood designed a wildly successful retail development in Shanghai, Xintiandi, which preserved the look and feel of a traditional neighborhood in the old French concession area of town. The result is like a Chinese version of The Grove, minus the streetcar. A few blocks away is the house where the Chinese Communist Party was founded, covertly, in 1921. The Founding Fathers no doubt were animated by a yearning to see a Vidal Sassoon salon and a Starbucks established in their neighborhood, and after a long march, their dream has been realized.

One of our nights here I met up with an old friend of mine, a law school classmate who heads up the Shanghai office of a big U.S. firm. We dined at Jean Georges on the Bund, the sister restaurant of the New York eatery, and then headed to Bar Rouge, where expats on the prowl mingle with young Chinese yearning to be eurotrashy. The Bund is the old colonial riverfront quarter. The outdoor deck afforded an awesome view of Pudong, the new city rising on the east side of the river. My friend Mark and his fellow expats residing in Shanghai can barely contain their "this-is-history-in-the-making-and-we're-here-baby" exuberance. And it's hard to be in this city-on-steroids and not be awed, and humbled, and not realize how silly we Americans are to feel like we live in the center of the universe.

That said, it's important, if hard, for visitors to Shanghai to keep in mind that this city is not representative of the real China, and the still-humble life of hundreds of millions of peasants in the countryside. It's easy to see how foreign investors come here, eat at Jean Georges, count the number of skyscrapers and Gucci stores, and say "I'm in." I myself am tempted to divert my monthly paycheck deduction devoted to Tribune Co. stock into a Shanghai-based REIT.

But lest you think foreigners here are all about making money, kudos to Burger King for spreading democracy in this communist country. The burger joint posts a playful bilingual "Bill of Rights" on its wall. The English version starts off by saying you have the right to have things your way, and so on, then gets progressively sillier ... "you have the right to laugh until soda explodes from your nose like a broken water main" ... but then, WHAM -- "You have the right to have an opinion on anything."

WHAT?!?! You most certainly do not, not here anyways. Did censors in Beijing approve this?

Not sure if the Chinese version of the Burger Bill of Rights next to it tracks the English exactly (I snuck into this fine eatery behind the backs of our paper's crack China-based staffers). But those characters do seem awfully familiar. Maybe they simply read: "Who would pay full price for Versace?"

In today's Opinion section....

Tyler Cowen and Daniel M. Rothschild: Hey, Don't Bad-mouth Unskilled Immigrants
You don't have to be a computer genius to be good for the U.S.

Catherine Price: M&M Math for Fat Kids
Candy-counting books are teaching our children to pack on the pounds.

Martin Dugard: Was Columbus Really Italian?
A DNA discovery could rewrite 500 years of history.

Niall Ferguson: The Cold Wars Are Coming
The U.S.-Soviet nuclear rivalry was scary enough. Now imagine a world with multiple atomic antagonists.

Editorials

Soft on Sleaze?
Lobby reform efforts on Capitol Hill are falling short.

Yes on Prop. 81
Why Californians should approve a bond to build more libraries.

Affordability Through Coercion
The City Council is wrong to address the housing crunch by restricting property rights.

And some selected commentary from the weekend you might have missed:

Jonathan Chait: Bankrupted by Voodoo Economics
While Republicans tax-cut and spend, research shows increases lead to reduced government.

Ross A. Baker: A Bull's-eye on Pelosi
While Republicans tax-cut and spend, research shows increases lead to reduced government.

Joel Kotkin: Why Perth Is Booming
Cities with low taxes and big oil deposits are the new boomtowns.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra: Journalism vs. Security
Leaking classified information puts American lives at risk, says Republican congressman.

IP-address APB: LAPD's Bratton is on the blog

Times newshound Patrick McGreevy reports that L.A. Police Chief William Bratton is getting into the computer age. No, we're not talking about the long-delayed, court-ordered officer-tracking system. We're talking blog.

With LAPD Blog, Bratton joins a suddenly crowded field of civic bloggers, including Councilman Eric Garcetti and animal services manager Ed Boks.

(Note: As of 1 p.m. Friday the main LAPD site was redirecting users to a non-LAPD "under construction" page offering free ringtones and links to an education news blog that wasn't the Times' perky School Me!) UPDATED 3:48 p.m.: www.lapdblog.org now appears to be working.

The blog's first posts take a more confrontational approach than the generally upbeat attitude of other civic blogs. An unsigned response to a Daily News editorial alleging he cooked crime stats begins, "Your recent article and editorial regarding the Los Angeles Police Department crime statistics require a deeper explanation and discussion than you have allowed." Bratton told the Times he sees the blog as "an opportunity for me to respond to those issues where I feel the department is being misrepresented." Watch out, trolls! 

The story says Bratton will post regularly on the departmental blog, but a staff member will administer the blog.

The chief hasn't given up on old media, though. Last week he defended the department in a Times op-ed arguing the post-Rampart consent decree not be extended when it expires next month. Bratton wrote:

This is a new LAPD. Fully one-third of our officers have been hired since the consent decree was implemented in 2001, and more than two-thirds have joined the department since 1995, when the Justice Department began its investigation. So, a significant percentage of our officers accept these "new" practices as normal operating procedure. Among the changes: watch commander review of arrestees and booking charges, stringent selection standards for anti-gang and field training officers and creation of a specialized division to investigate uses of force.

Plus, he didn't add but could have — we're bloggin'.

LAPD Standoff: A federal judge will hear arguments May 15 about whether to extend the consent decree two years or let it expire next month. Read Erwin Chemerinsky, Catherine Lhamon and Mark Rosenbaum's oped about why the LAPD still needs policing, and Bratton's op-ed about the new LAPD, and cast your vote.

Paging Dan Glickman: On my first day in China, I stumbled upon pirated DVDs of "Mission Impossible 3" at the sprawling Xiangyang Fashion and Gift Market. Fake Lakers jerseys are also popular, though not as hot as the faux Nike Barcelona Ronaldinho jerseys. My favorite items at the market were the huge Cultural Revolutionish bilingual banners at the entrance of this piracy haven. In English they read: "Assert intellectual properties is our common duty." But who knows about the accuracy of the translation? As far as I know, the Chinese characters could actually read "Who would pay full price for Versace?"

Some folks in Shanghai do pony up for the real deal, whether it's Versace or Ferragamo or Zegna.... Shanghai isn't just the most bourgeois communist city I have ever been in, it may be the most bourgeois city I've ever been in, period. Within a five block radius of my hotel, I count four Beverly Center-sized malls. The one next door, Plaza 66, is a gleaming glass pavilion with all the swank brands being peddled at the Xiangyang market. It's way too upscale for tourists. The mall feels like it belongs in Vegas, attached to one of the high-roller casinos. And I am sure some of the cash-rich Chinese customers are Steve Wynn's baccarat players.

You see two types of gawkers wandering around Shanghai in disbelief at all the new wealth -- foreigners, and Chinese from the provinces.

6. Andres Martinez, Los Angeles Times editorial page editor

When Michael Kinsley left the L.A. Times, everyone thought they were going to get rid of my column. Then this guy takes his place, invites me to breakfast and tells me he's keeping me. That's a first.

9. Lisa Stein, sister

She spends a lot of time with my mother. Hopefully, she realizes that will continue when mom suffers from dementia and incontinence.

15. Dora, proprietor of Yuca's Taco Stand

After a year of weekly lunch visits, I still don't know what pibil is, but oh, she feeds me good.

22. George Cosette, Silverlake wine owner

That Kerner was mad fresh. And the Moulin-a-Vent? Worth the cash. Those tastings are getting rowdy, though, bro.

37. Luis and Carlos, illegal Guatemalan immigrants outside U-Haul

At least I think those were their names. Sure, they kept raising their price throughout the day, and at the end it worked out to more than $60 an hour, significantly more than professional movers, but getting worked over like that gave me faith that Latin American immigrants will do well in this country.

39. Luis and Carlos, gardeners

Again, not sure of the names, because I've never met them, but these guys show up every week, pick up the $25 Cassandra tapes to the door, and do gardening stuff. I don't know if I need gardening done, but it makes me feel rich. And evil.

58. Michael Kinsley, ex-L.A. Times editor/columnist

Sure, he's crazy smart, but when he talks about girls, it's like you're hanging with Snoop.

62. Tony Snow, White House press secretary

Back when he was a TV/radio host, he interviewed me about a column I wrote about not supporting the troops. And, though, like any normal person, he disagreed with me, he was thoughtful, curious and interested in my points. If he kept his cool then, he'll be fine at the new job.

You may recall Jonathan Chait's recent column about not letting the activist left -- "a pack of crazed, ignorant ideological cannibals" -- defeat the otherwise objectionable Joe Lieberman in the upcoming Connecticut primary. Chait's conclusion:

[T]he anti-Lieberman campaign has come to stand for much more than Lieberman's sins. It's a test of strength for the new breed of left-wing activists who are flexing their muscles within the party. These are exactly the sorts of fanatics who tore the party apart in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They think in simple slogans and refuse to tolerate any ideological dissent. Moreover, since their anti-Lieberman jihad is seen as stemming from his pro-war stance, the practical effect of toppling Lieberman would be to intimidate other hawkish Democrats and encourage more primary challengers against them.

If Lieberman loses, he'll play the same role as before, only this time with the power of martyrdom behind him: the virtuous anti-Democrat, too good and honest for his party. If you think Lieberman is sanctimonious now, wait until you see him in defeat.

The reaction by said "fanatics" has (unsurprisingly) not been particularly charitable, triggering a train-wreck of a ruckus on the left side of the commentariat about "civility," Stephen Colbert, circular firing squads, and shifting the goalposts on the ideological debate. Valley lefty Steve Smith called Chait's column "a bizarre apologia for Joementum," adding:

Hell, I think Lieberman's being scapegoated, being held to account for sins other Democrats have committed with the same enthusiasm. But primary challenges are a good thing; they prevent incumbents from taking the base for granted. And the Democratic Party has suffered for too long from elected officials who value the office more than the people they represent. We shall not be free until the last corporate Democrat is strangled by the entrails of the last liberal hawk.

Ezra Klein called Chait "surprisingly incoherent," explaining:

So Lieberman should win not because the critique of him is wrong, but because his critics think in slogans? How bizarre. If the netroots are right on the merits, and Chait's reluctance to substantively defend Lieberman suggests he thinks they are, then their simplistic sloganeering belies subtle, sophisticated political minds that he might wish to listen to. After all, they're right. As for the netroots' supposed inability to tolerate ideological dissent, I happen to know that's untrue. Why? Because this guy Jon Chait, a couple paragraphs earlier, smartly explained that "lots of Democrats supported the Iraq war initially and believe now that we can and must win. Moderates such as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton say this all the time. But you don't see anybody trying to oust them." In other words, the test isn't ideological at all, as evidenced by the netroots' full acceptance of Democrats ideologically indistinguishable from Lieberman.

Chait responded to his lefty critics over at New Republic's website. A sample:

Daily Kos has taken particular umbrage. He introduces me as a writer for Lieberman Weekly, the left-wing blogosphere's term for TNR. (It seems not to occur to him that the fact that I wrote a mostly anti-Lieberman column itself undermines the accuracy of their epithet. He evidently cannot imagine a magazine where different writers have different opinions on a topic.) After quoting my column, he proceeds in the next two paragraphs to call my column "obvious crap," "intellectually dishonest," and "bullshit." Oh, and he also calls me a "moron." Atrios, for his part, has taken issue as well. His counterargument, which I hereby quote in its entirety, is this: "Wanker of the Day."

Simple slogans? Refusing to tolerate dissent? Can't imagine where I got that idea.

To which the Washington Monthly's Irvine-residing blogger Kevin Drum reacted by musing about the alleged far-leftiness of lefty bloggers:

Chait calls the Kos/Atrios wing "left-wing activists." Marshall Wittman more colorfully calls them "McGovernites with modems." But this is a serious misreading. In fact, if I have a problem with the Kossite wing of the blogosphere, it's the fact that they aren't especially left wing. Markos in particular specifically prides himself on caring mostly about winning elections, not fighting ideological battles. [...]

So is the liberal blogosphere liberal? Of course it is. But to compare it to the left-wing radicals of the early 70s is to misunderstand it completely. Netroots favorite Howard Dean is no lefty radical, and at a policy level most of the high-traffic liberal blogs are only modestly to the left of the DLC — except on Iraq.

Chait's response?

This is true if you consider only their policy agenda in a vacuum. But it's not true if you take account of their political style, which is distinctly New Left. It's a paranoid, Manichean worldview brimming with humorless rage. The fact that the contemporary blog-based left, unlike the McGovernite New Left, lacks a well-formed radical program is some measure of comfort. However, I think there's lots of evidence to suggest that this style of thinking is suggestive of a tendency to move in more radical directions over time. That, of course, is exactly what happened to the New Left, many of whose members starting off as relatively sensible liberals, or left-liberals before veering into the abyss.

Drum calls this restate a "pretty weak brew," then provides a short-list of policies he thinks most lefty bloggers agree on. Chait's last word here. Meanwhile, there is a parallel fooferaw between the Atrios/Kos wing, and those on the left who didn't find Stephen Colbert's hilarious Beltway takedown to be hilarious. In the crosshairs of that fusillade is UCLA professor Mark Kleiman; read his two posts, and follow the links accordingly.

Last word in this catfight goes to Steve Smith:

The most noxious trend among lefty bloggers in recent months has been the abandonment of any pretense that people who take contrary positions can do so in good faith. It is not enough that someone has an opposing viewpoint; they must be lying as well. Or if the media doesn't report a story, or give emphasis to the right set of "facts", it's because they're in bed with the Bushies.

Liberal bloggers seem to have looked at the weapons the right uses in playing the political field, what with talk radio, FoxNews, etc., and decided that the tone of political discourse doesn't need to be changed, but copied. It's as if there has been a collective decision that what's objectionable about Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter is their ends, not their means.

He's like the wind: Sheriff Lee Baca in a 5K benefit run in February (AP)

Independent Sources blog does a close reading of the Times and finds L.A. Sheriff Leroy Baca would beat Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ... in a 10K footrace: "The Los Angeles Times' recent story on Antonio Villaraigosa’s active schedule included a picture of the LA Mayor running the 5K Run for Victims’ Rights 5k. They noted that his time of 22:58 was quicker than his LAPD body guard. This is indeed impressive unless of course you compare it to the running exploits of Sheriff Lee Baca [....] If Villaraigosa were to run a 10k and slow [his] pace only to around 7:30/mile (a conservative estimate) because of the longer distance, Baca would beat him by a about a mile." Catch up with Baca in Times reporters Robin Fields and Stuart Pfeifer's Sunday story about the "quirky sheriff."

Columns:

Satoru Iwata: Video Games: All Gore and Bore
Like big-budget movies, today's games look great, but they're failing to connect with players, says Nintendo's president.

Joel Stein: Welcome to the Dollhouse
A power lunch at the American Girl store.

Seth Faison: A Communist-Catholic Clash
China and the Vatican are back on familiar unfriendly ground.

Jorge G. Castaneda: Mexico: Up for Grabs
The radical left is holding its presidential candidate hostage, while Vicente Fox flourishes.

Editorials

The Wrong Spy Chief
Nominee Michael Hayden has a worrying track record on civil liberties and executive power.

Police After Hours
Even squeaky-clean cops shouldn't be able to moonlight as private investigators.

Cool it, Sheila
Assemblywoman Kuehl is going too far by trying to force textbooks to celebrate historical contributions of gay and transgendered Americans.

Aid at work: A doctor writes a boy's weight on his arm in Congo (Getty Images)

Last week in the Times, economist William Easterly argued spending mountains of cash on a campaign to end poverty is getting us nowhere. Yesterday, academic and advocate Jeffrey Sachs took aim at Easterly and other foreign-aid "skeptics." Read the op-eds here and decide who's right — then cast your vote on who won.

Gustavo Arellano: Why the O.C. Hates Mexicans
The land of Mickey is the Mexican-bashing capital of the U.S.

Niall Ferguson: Leftism Is a Stealth Disaster
Forget Iranian nukes and avian flu. The political swing to the left should have you running for the hills.

Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini: L.A. Art Peddlers' NYC Connection
The Getty's problems started at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Editorial

Vote Moonbeam
Times endorsement for attorney general.

Napster's New Target
Radio stations are the latest to feel the heat from the groundbreaking music service.

Chartered Territory
The LAUSD needs to figure out its approach toward charter schools.

In case you missed it...

Op-ed: Andrew Klavan orders George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Sean Penn into battle. Richard Parker salutes superstar economist John Kenneth Galbraith. NEA chairman Dana Gioia lives it up in literary L.A. Matthew Cobb dispels the fear factor over maggots.

Columns: Gregory Rodriguez pooh-poohs Latinos' political clout, praises their bootstrap beliefs. Jonathan Chait told liberals to lay off Lieberman. Meghan Daum took Freud on a first date.

Editorials: Praising Santa Monica's program for the chronically homeless. Bashing Bolivia's oil-field takeover. Warning against spying overreach.

Columns:

Arthur J. Magida: Disco Doomsayer
Geologist M. King Hubbert saw our energy future in the swinging '70s, but no one listened.

Rosa Brooks: Battered Congress Syndrome
The president's slapping the legislative branch silly.

Lester Grinspoon: Marijuana: Better When You Inhale
Why make cannabis in oral form when smoking's where it's at?

Ezra Klein: Rising Tide Lifts Only Yachts
The economy is growing, but it doesn't feel that way to most Americans.

Editorials

Someone to Watch Over Blue
The LAPD has come a long way, but it still needs federal oversight.

The Right to Point Fingers
Supreme Court affirms an important right, while reminding us DNA evidence isn't bulletproof.

Taking the Fizz Out of School
Cola companies are right to withdraw from campus.

Well, it's an e-mail/blog hoax. To see the truth, as best we have determined, check out Swati Pandey over at our Borderline blog.

Not the Deep South: The view from Virginia Sen. George Allen's hometown

There's a new installment in the New Republic's attempted takedown of Virginia Sen./prospective presidential candidate/Southern-Californian-in-denial George Allen. The son of former Rams coach George Herbert Allen, the first-term senator "has emerged as the principal conservative alternative to John McCain" for the 2008 Republican nomination, according to TNR's Ryan Lizza. But how will Allen's history of Confederate flag-waving, first displayed at Palos Verdes High School, affect his candidacy? Lizza quotes some of his former classmates:

In high school, Allen's "Hee Haw" persona made him a polarizing figure. "He rode a little red Mustang around with a Confederate flag plate on the front," says Patrick Campbell, an old classmate, who now works for the Public Works Department in Manhattan Beach, California. "I mean, it was absurd-looking in our neighborhood." Hurt Germany, who now lives in Paso Robles, California, explodes with anger at the mention of Allen's name. "The guy is horrible," she complains. "He drove around with a Confederate flag on his Mustang. I can't believe he's going to run for president." Another classmate, who asks that I not use her name, also remembers Allen's obsession with Dixie: "My impression is that he was a rebel. He plastered the school with Confederate flags."

The articles cite a Times report during Allen's successful 1993 Virginia gubernatorial run: "Though a product of Southern California, he enrolled in the University of Virginia in 1971, and within weeks, he was a Southern good ol' boy. He wore boots, chewed tobacco and displayed a Confederate flag in his room, friends recalled. He also became a master of Thomas Jefferson trivia."

Allen's seeming self-invention as an unreconstructed Southerner has some conservatives rethinking, and some hitting back. At the Red State blog one anonymous poster finds the Confederate trappings "troubling." Another calls it "smoke and spin, hype and hate."

Orlando Sentinel columnist Kathleen Parker writes, "I'm not here to defend Allen or the Confederate flag," and then, well, sort of does both: "I know that the Confederate flag is a complicated symbol that means different things to different people. Racist to some, for sure, it is a symbol of history and family valor for others. I also know that if we're going to scrutinize people's high school records as we vet them for public office, nobody gets to run." She takes a broad swipe at the left coast: "In California in the early '70s, when everybody was smoking dope, protesting the Vietnam War and waging lovefests, slapping a Confederate flag sticker on your red Mustang and wearing a Confederate lapel pin was most likely the act of a rebel, not a racist."

Allen responded last weekend to Hotline that the story was "erroneous" and "vicious": "It does not reflect my views, record or what I aim to do in the future." He said the Confederate flag "means different things to different people," including "valor" and "lynching." "It means all these things," the senator said. Also on Monday, the Washington Post reported on Allen's "journey of racial conciliation" to a former segregationist stronghold and his semi-endorsement of a congressional apology for slavery.

Palos Verdes principal Chris Bowles told Opinion L.A. that he has approached the senator about speaking at his alma mater, but Allen has so far declined, citing scheduling conflicts. Bowles isn't aware of any reaction to the New Republic story on campus, where racial conflict doesn't resonate deeply. "It's upper-class, upper-middle-class, it tends to be more on the conservative side, but it's still California," he said. "This isn't the Deep South."

Columns:

William E. Odom: Just Pull Out
Invading Iraq was not in our national interest, says Reagan's NSA chief.

Jonah Goldberg: Stupid Gas Tricks
Democrats are pumping out bile, but Congressional GOP are the real boneheads.

Leslie Sanchez: May Day Was More Watts Than Selma
Boycott and protests were a radical-left provocation.

Patt Morrison: The Immigration-Oil Connection
America's hooked on cheap gas and cheap labor.

Editorials

America, We Won
Sentencing Zacarias Moussaoui to life was the right decision.

Rare Kudos for the LAUSD
Troubled district had a good week. Bravo.

Not in Their Backyard
How NIMBYs keep the homeless centralized on dangerous Skid Row.

Today's criticism/praise of the L.A. Times....

* Downtown civic activist Brady Westwater rips apart the factual descriptions in an article on Eastside politics, and then gives a big are you kidding me? to this post-march account's assertion that in downtown L.A., "seldom is anyone seen walking."

* Patrick "Patterico" Frey is puzzled by the paper's public explanation of l'affaire Hiltzik:

Other than the brief Editor's Note from the other day, no story on this issue has appeared in the L.A. Times. Nothing has appeared to explain the background of how Hiltzik’s pseudonyms came to light.

This means that the very readers who are going to lose his column are also the people who are most left in the dark as to why.

* Contra Patterico is "scribes" over at Martini Republic, who excerpts some anti-illegal immigrant comments from Frey, and then questions

the ethics of a guy spouting about the nuisance of undocumented citizens while working on the County nickel

* Rabble-rouser Bob Morris gives kudos to today's May Day roundup:

The L.A. Times has excellent coverage this morning. They’d seemed somewhat opposed to the marches during the buildup, however today they have comprehensive reporting.

* TakeBackTheTimes blogger Ken Reich offers these roses (complete with thorns) to the Opinion Section's leadership:

The article in the L.A. Times' Current section Sunday recounting a visit to Cuba by Times editorial page editor Andres Martinez was well worth reading and marks the steady improvement of Current under the deputy editorial page editor, Michael Newman.

Martinez, whose bland editorials continue for the most part, had an incisive report on Cuba in a state of waiting, waiting for Fidel Castro to die and wondering what will happen to the Communist system when he does go. [...]

This article again confirms my impression that Martinez writes better articles and columns than he does editorials.

More at the link dissecting the Opinion Section. Point of clarification -- Current is under the stewardship of Nicholas Goldberg, not Newman.

* It's neither precisely criticism or praise, but Media Bistro's FishbowlLA has a daily feature called LAT in 90 Seconds that's usually worth the minute-and-a-half.

Op-ed

Ralph Shaffer and Walter P. Coombs: The 'Star-Spangled Banner' Was Made to Be Mangled
There's nothing sacred about the national anthem's past.

John Kenney: A Marching Manhattanite
In my country, we march all the time. We call it "walking."

Eliseo Medina: Immigrants Awake
A march to citizenship, not prosecution, has begun, says a union leader.

Joel Stein: Rick Springfield Is a Dork
The life of a soap-opera star can be really annoying.

Editorial

The Human Face of Immigration Reform
Demonstrators again refused to live down to expectations.

Kick Sudan's Door Down
U.S. and its allies need to end the dithering over Darfur.

'United 93': A Movie for All of Us
Victims' families don't own 9/11 tragedy's meaning.

... is, obviously, the several hundred thousand people marching in the streets of L.A. to agitate for immigration reform. For links to reportage, commentary, and reader-comments on this momentous day, please visit our Borderline blog.