Thursday's editorial and op-ed pages:

Jonah Goldberg:We're all Progressives now
Conservatives and liberals are shifting. Both are finding faith in the power of the state.

Bill Stall: Draw the line on redistricting mischief
Take the legislative map out of the politicians' hands and give it to an independent panel.

Arianna Huffington: Don't be a hack, Hillary
Sen. Clinton's calculations on Iraq and flag burning leave Americans cold.

Julie F. Kay: Ideology won't prevent cancer
A vaccine that would reduce the risk of cervical cancer faces a challenge from the religious right.

Editorials

Abort this space shuttle mission
Why NASA should keep Discovery grounded on Saturday.

Union bosses today, school bosses tomorrow
In the muddled deal for authority over L.A. schools, one thing is clear: The teachers union would win.

Use restraint, Israel
Gaza incursion risks marginalizing Palestinian moderates.

Wednesday's opinion page goodness:

Meryle Secrest: Art lust
Why does a portrait by Klimt -- or by any other artist for that matter -- fetch $135 million?

Max Boot: Staying the wrong course in Iraq
A troop drawdown would lead to less security and further the perception that the U.S. is losing.

Erin Aubry Kaplan: Dead-ends and no sidewalks
The whitewashing of history may make America feel better, but it ignores ongoing African American struggles.

Editorials

Arresting prison reform
After starting strong early in his term, Gov. Schwarzenegger has backpedaled on important changes.

Court rules correctly on clean money
Restricting Vermont's limits on campaign contributions confirms the wisdom of a 30-year-old ruling.

Confusion instead of school reform
The state's plan for Los Angeles Unified's schools has too many ingredients and dices responsibility too finely.

Remember, you can comment on the editor's note here, or in the comments below.

Some preliminary blogosphere reactions to Baquet's column:

* Former Times staffer Ken Reich at Take Back the Times says: "For me the bottom line is that the press, on its side, should go back to its World War II policies and, fundamentally, side with the war effort."

* Armed Liberal at windsofchange.net says: "By the standard Baquet holds up here, any and all surveillance programs are up for disclosure, no matter how legal or effective - simply because the controversy exists. I guess I'd like to know where Baquet draws the line."

* Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt: "Only a fool would believe [that the LAT is not out to get the president] given the Los Angeles Times' endless and almost unbroken war on the war over the past three years. And if Baquet believes it, he's completely out of touch with his paper's staff and their agenda journalism."

* Don Surber says Baquet gave a "reasonable explanation": "At least [the] LAT recognizes that there is an enemy."

* Nathan Goulding at the National Review's Media Blog: "It surprises me greatly that the L.A. Times considers itself to be the best judge of both 'legitimate public interest' as well as the 'cost to counterterrorism efforts.' Herein lies the arrogance."

* Patrick Frey at Patterico's Pontifications: "Baquet fails to offer any compelling justification for eviscerating this legal and successful counterterrorism program. And Baquet fails to recognize that his decision was made on the basis of woefully inadequate information."

* Political Fan writes: "The LA Times views the 'potential' abusive power of the Bush administration to be greater than that of the terrorists."

* Blue Crab Boulevard writes: "Nowhere in my well-thumbed copy of [the constitution] do I see any mention of the press having an oversight role on the government."

* Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly's Political Animal: "Can anyone think of a serious case in the past few decades of a newspaper withholding an entire story like this simply because the government asked them to?"

* Ron Chusid of the Democratic Daily summarizes blogger reaction to the publication of the story: "While it is impossible to survery all the blogs, I found that generally the centrist blogs and those which describe themselves as 'moderate Republicans' were supportive of the newspapers, while the far right continued their authoritarian streak. "

Tuesday's dispatches from the opinion page:

Dean Baquet: Why We Ran the Bank Story
The Times editor on the paper's decision to expose U.S. money monitoring.
Please remember you can comment on Baqet's explanation here, or below.

Joel Stein: Misguided at Universal
A tour of the real Hollywood.

Kerry Madden: Surviving Senior Year
A parent copes with a terminal high-schooler.

Jerry Ellig: Politicians Shake Down the Net
Fights over issues such as 'Net neutrality' bring loads of campaign cash.

Editorials

Reactionary Train Wreck
Legislation inspired by the Glendale train tragedy would be costly without improving safety.

Buffett Spreads the Wealth
Astonishing $30-billion gift could spark a revolution in philanthropy.

The Case for Flag-Burning
An amendment banning it would make America less free.

In today's Times, Editor Dean Baquet wrote a column on "Why we ran the bank story." We'll have a more extensive post later rounding up public reactions, but for now we want to ask you -- what did you think of Baquet's column, and of the Times' decision to publish the controversial article on the secret government program to monitor international financial transactions?

The decision by the New York Times and L.A. Times to publish articles exposing a secret government program that tracks international bank transfers has drawn conserable fire. Both papers flouted a government request not to publish, and posted their versions online simultaneously last Friday. (The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post also published follow-up articles.).

President Bush today described the decision to publish as "disgraceful". Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) has called for the criminal prosecution of the NYT's "treasonour" behavior, and the conservative National Review seconded the motion. Both papers' articles included statements by their respective editors maintaining that the exposure of the program was in the public interest. NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller expanded on that statement in an open letter. Meanwhile, LAT columnist Patt Morrison interviewed Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus on KPCC (archived here).

The blogosphere reaction has been strong on both sides, with much of the criticism focusing on the other Times:

* Conservative Radio Host Hugh Hewitt bemoaned the impact this would have on national security, responding to McManus and Keller:

I think it would be a very good thing if we could chill the media's publication of national security secrets the release of which aid terrorists. This very narrow restraint on the press in no way fetters its general and robust freedom to investigate and publish.

* Patrick Frey at Patterico's Pontifications joins Hewitt against McManus, and ponders the legality of program, while defending the Wall Street Journal):

Among the editors’ primary concerns in deciding whether to publish the story [...] is whether the program was legal, whether it had adequate safeguards and controls, and whether it was subject to sufficient oversight. [...] The odd thing is that the articles published by the Los Angeles Times and New York Times indicate that the probable answers to all these questions was “yes” — yet the newspapers decided to publish anyway.

* Heather MacDonald and Gabriel Schoenfeld, writing in the Weekly Standard, attack the NYT and argue why it should be prosectued:

BY NOW IT'S UNDENIABLE: The New York Times is a national security threat. So drunk is it on its own power and so antagonistic to the Bush administration that it will expose every classified antiterror program it finds out about, no matter how legal the program, how carefully crafted to safeguard civil liberties, or how vital to protecting American lives.

* Roy Greenslade of the UK's left-wing Guardian newspaper disagrees:

The sad truth is that the New York Times is making up for the fact that it did such a poor job in holding the Bush administration to account for going to war in the first place. Its new-found spirit must not be crushed.

* The Progressive's Matthew Rothschild also defends the Times:

What King, Cheney, Bush, Gonzales, and many rightwing pundits don’t seem to appreciate is that we, the American people, need to have a free press to check the excesses of government.

* The Volokh Conspiracy has compiled some of its recent blog posts about prosecuting journalists. A choice quote from Volokh's Jonathan Alder:

Sensitive information should be treated sensitively, even by journalists. Conservatives, however, should be wary of novel applications of vaguely worded criminal statutes, particularly in the face of clear constitutional text.

Weekend and Monday Opinion from the LA Times:

Antonia Juhasz: Trading on Terror to Profit a Few
The U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement deserves greater scrutiny as it makes its way in Congress under the radar.

Karl Fleming: Twilight Softens This Tough Guy
Once a gritty journalist, he can finally show affection in his final years.

Denise Dresser: What They Hate Him, but They Made Him
Policies that favored Mexico's wealthy spawned the populist presidential candidate.

Editorials

The Dems' Iraq Gap
Senate Democrats' resolutions on the war are dubious from both a policy and political standpoint.

French Apple Mush
Why is Europe giving copyright holders veto power over technology?

Straighten Up and Fly Right
Sheriff's droning publicity stunt crashed.

Selected Weekend Commentary:

Roy Romer: The Mayor's Bad Deal
Villaraigosa's school plan is about power and money, not kids and reform, says the superintendent.

Anne Lamott: At Death's Window
The trauma, sorrow and bittersweet love that come with helping a friend to end his life.

Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger: Hollywood The GOP Knows You Don't Like Anchovies
Unpopular Republicans still own the art of politicking.

Azadeh Moaveni: 'The Great Satan' Makes a Comeback
Iranian public sympathy toward the U.S. has soured in a hurry.

Samuel Walker: Scalia Twisted My Words
Criminologist says his work was used to reach its opposite conclusion in Hudson.

Jonathan Turley: 'Big Brother' Bush and Connecting the Data Dots
The Total Information Awareness program was killed in 2003, but its spawn present bigger threats to privacy.

Meghan Daum: Coulter's a Satirist -- Really?
The fire-breathing commentator has her liberal critics up in arms.

The debate over Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan to take over LAUSD continues (as it no doubt will for quite a while). There are two stories of note in today's Times. In the first, Duke Helfand and Joel Rubin detail opposition from teachers and principals. In the second, Rubin explores Villaraigosa's connections to teachers unions. Meanwhile, blogosphere reaction continues, most of it negative:

* Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub writes that Villaraigosa's plan

should not be approved quickly, without a thorough public airing and debate. The biggest potential problem with the plan is that it blurs the lines of authority and accountability.

* Joe Scott at The Body Politic assesses the plan in the context of the mayor's overall performance (italics his):

The popular Villaraigosa’s charisma and passion is not in dispute. Rather, after all the political theater, accountability remains the issue. On the eve of his first year in office, there is a concern among many supporters that he has spread himself too thin, made too many promises he cannot keep and appeared too anxious to put his future state and national political ambitions first.

* Dave at Friends of Dave is also pessimsitic:

I hope in a year, as the mayor begins his third year in office that we can all look back on the progess LAUSD has made in the preceding 12 months and feel good about it. My fear is that we'll look back and wonder how we wasted yet another year and how yet one more group of students missed out on the public education they deserve.

* Ezra Klein colors himself skeptical as well:

I'm a wonk and I'm confused. This strikes me as a clear case of Villaraigosa feeling the pressure to deliver on a campaign promise and preferring to return with bad policy that's nevertheless an "accomplishment" than empty hands. Not good.

Friday’s wonderful opinion:

Gabriel Schoenfeld:Tough Talk on Korea, Too Late
Now they talk like hawks on North Korea, but former Clinton advisors acted like doves in the 1990s.

Rosa Brooks: Somalia's Deadly Lesson
Memories of dead soldiers dragged through the streets of Mogadishu help push U.S. foreign policy to extremes.

Henri J. Barkey: Amnesty For Insurgents Would Work
It would help stabilize Iraq and hasten an exit for U.S. troops.

Lincoln M. Lease: Pardon the Killers? Never!
A GI blasts Iraq's proposed amnesty for insurgents who kill U.S. troops.

Editorials

Dont Believe Net Neutrality Hype
When both sides are alarmist and wrong, bad legislation is just around the corner.

From Hungary '56 to Iraq '06
President Bush strains a historical analogy in the friendly confines of Central Europe.

Battling Over Bishops
Gender and sexuality trouble in the Episcopal Church.

The biggest news of the past 24 hours has been Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan to increase mayoral influence over the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Times, which has been in favor of mayoral control for almost a year, came out against the mayor's plan, writing that it dramatically reduces accountability, thereby undermining the main goal of mayoral control. Villaraigosa shot back in an op-ed, defending his plan and saying it would bring education to the forefront of mayoral and city politics. Reaction across the blogosphere has been mixed:

* Bob Sipchen and Janine Kahn at the Times' School Me Blog have been tracking the likelihood of a mayoral takeover. They woke up this morning with more questions than they had yesterday:

It's good that teachers will gain more control over cirriculum--unless the bad ones protected by union aversion to firing use their freedom to dodge responsibility. And who's going to step in? The board? LA's mayor? Superintendent-in-waiting Jackie Goldberg?

* Shari L at "An Old Soul..." writes:

I don't like it, and I suspect it'll be worse for the kids in the long run. I think increased diffusion of responsibility, especially with new governing parties introduced into the pot, will make it more difficult to get anything done, this in a system when it already is just about impossible to get things done.

* Boi From Troy says: "Romer is against it, so it may not be so bad after all."

* Roger L. Simon asks:

Will this new bueraucracy structure change what's fundamentally wrong with LAUSD (i.e. fiscal and staffing disinvestment, unequal distribution of resources, placing priorities of passing standardized test as opposed to real, life-long learning, et al) or will it just pass the buck and make it worse?

* Insane Teacher smells a conspiracy:

But with one person, and the mayor able to veto anyone he doesn't like, making the decision for spending over $25,000, look-out world, LAUSD is about to over-pay for some more falling-apart and falling-down buildings!

* And Mike Antonucci at Intercepts agrees with the Times:

The deal does provide one critical element that all parties to the agreement want: ass-covering. When this goes wrong (and believe me, it will), no one can be singled out for blame.

Thursday's opinion drama:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa:'It's a Great Deal For Our Kids'
The mayor explains his compromise plan to reform L.A.' s public schools.

Jonah Goldberg: The Web's Yellow DNA
Online punditry harkens back to Old Media's populist roots.

Edward Serotta: A Painting With a Rich History
Just The 92-year-old Klimt portrait is the story of empires, wars -- and victims.

Patt Morrison: Kill Barbie
Better to euthanize the 46-year-old doll than subject us to another fanciful makeover.

Editorials

This Is Reform?
Mayor Villaraigosa pledged to take over L.A. schools. But what he's getting is something less dramatic -- and less helpful.

Bullet Bill Right on Target
Stamping cartridges willl help solve murders with missing guns.

Whaling On Japan
Country tries to oppose hunting ban, even though its own citizens gave the meat up years ago.

The Chandler-Tribune fued has triggered two L.A. Times items of interest the last few days.

The first was a profile of Tribune Co. CEO Douglas FitzSimons by Thomas Mulligan in Tuesday's paper.

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt called the piece an all-out attack on Tribune by its ungrateful and unreformable employees:

This is a classic hit piece, standard fare for the Times, but usually reserved for a politician that the paper has decided must go.

Former Times staffer Ken Reich at Take Back The Times attacked FitzSimons, saying that the piece showed the Times feels mistreated:

This is no surprise. It means what has become obvious, that FitzSimons cares far more about making money than he does about journalistic quality. He has even selfishly raised his own salary, while Tribune fortunes sink.

The second piece is a column by Steve Lopez, who attacks Tribune executives as "corporate profiteers," and tries to convince local billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, among others, to buy the paper.

Wednesday's opinion and editorials:

Alan Hirsch:Overzealous Prosecutors, Cross-Examine Yourselves
Hunger for convictions leads many prosecutors to hide evidence that could prove innocence.

Max Boot: NATO's Afghanistan Challenge
Alliance faces its greatest threat in the same place the Red Army foundered.

Erin Aubry Kaplan: UCLA's Do-Nothing Admissions Solution
Only 96 black students are entering in the fall, but underrepresentation isn't a new problem.

Karen Klein: One Year of Classroom Torture Will Do
L.A. proposal to assign students the same teacher for four years ignores that some teachers are, well, bad.

Editorials

The GOP's Immigration Shame
Republicans choose divisive campaign politics over urgently needed policy.

Tested by North Korea
Kim Jong Il's missile madness reinforces need for a multilateral approach.

An Unpopular Export
How a reviled Bush might begin to woo the grumpy Europeans.

Tuesday's opinion page:

David Feige:Shredding a Constitutional Protection That Isn't Even Used
Exclusionary rules were the exception, not the rule. Now they're history.

Robert W. Poole Jr.: The Light at the End is a Tunnel
Digging the 710 underground is a feasible first step toward relieving freeway congestion.

David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey: The ACLU's Tortured Logic on Gitmo
Bush critics won't accept that detainee abuse is the exception, not the rule.

Joel Stein: Lessons From Professor Partrige
Danny Bonaduce teaches us it's OK if people hate you.

Editorials

Confronting the LAUSD Naysayers
Mayor Villaraigosa is right to challenge the Sacramento status quo.

Subsidizing Yesterday's Telephones
Phone monopolies and Congress are wrong to want Internet phone companies to pay service fees.

Restoring Sanity to the Interior
New secretary Dirk Kempthorne withdraws Gale Norton's poisonous National Parks plan.

On Saturday, The Times editorialized that the unusually high levels of fraud in the wake of Katrina were not unexpected, and that cutting back immediate aid in the future was a bad idea. Not everyone agreed. Some samples from across the blogosphere:

* Seth at Standing Up For Nothing says, "FEMA did the virtuous thing poorly, while scores of Katrina victims did the immoral thing excellently, and we can criticize FEMA but not the thieves?"

* Kirk at Just My Opinion writes, "what exactly are these people a 'victim' of in this particular context?"

* David Markland at Metroblogging Los Angeles says, "I certainly would have thought twice had I known where some of this money would have gone. Maybe, at the very least, I'd have given 16% less."

* Scott at Environmental Republican writes, "Let's imagine if FEMA had put serious restrictions on the program and busted people using the funds for non-emergency needs, don't you think the Times would've been blasting the agency for not being compassionate?"

* Politickchick says, "Yeah, that really makes a whole lot of sense, considering the people using the money fraudulently weren't exactly victims."

* Old Soldier at My Republican Blog writes, "Hurricane victims (and others) who defrauded FEMA became criminal perpetrators and FEMA became a victim. So, the unknown editor is correct in that the 'victim' should not be blamed; but in this case the victim is FEMA, not the perpetrators of criminal fraud."

* Laura at Laura's Miscellanious Musings says, "Darn straight I'll blame the victim and be shocked, when my own hard-earned income is taken by the government and then passed on to others to be spent on sex change operations, porn movies, and divorce fees, not to mention season football tickets and tropical vacations."

* McQ at the QandO Blog writes, "They are crooks. And the LA Times should know better than to try to cast crooks as 'victims.'"

* Brendan Loy at The Irish Trojan's Blog says, "When people wilfully abuse a system that is designed to help them get the essentials that they need, OF COURSE they should be blamed!"

* Mark Epstein at The Ultimate Truth writes, "Contrary to the editorial mindset at the LA Times, it is FEMA’s responsibility to obsess over the spending habits of more than 16,000 people; 16,000 people who engaged in deliberate defrauding of the American taxpayer."

* Right Thinking Girl says, "It was basically a little bit of bad weather and it sent the whole country into a tailspin [...] the money was wasted the instant it was given to those people."

* Michael at In Defense of America writes, "I swear, the more I hear about NOLA the less I want to rebuild it, and the more I want to cut these leeches off."

We have one defender of The Times' position: Christopher Wavrin at commentarypage.com:

Considering the spending habits of Americans, I'd say if 84 percent of the people spend their money wisely, then that's pretty good.

Similarly, Chris Martel at Metroblogging New Orleans also agrees that misuse of money was inevitable:

You know what I spent my FEMA money on? A laptop, booze, eating out, music, seersucker suits, etc. Luxuries. Friends spent it on flying V guitars, drugs, etc. Note that I did not ask FEMA for $2,000, nor did I ask for the subsequent $2,300 in rental assistance. In fact, I was living rent free and still being paid by my employer the entire time, but they still put the cash directly into my bank account.

Monday's opinion, plus hilights from the weekend:

The L.A. Times has found itself increasingly in the headlines this week. First came the news that local luminaries such as Eli Broad, Peter Ueberroth and Ron Burkle may be interested in buying the Times.

Former Times staffer Ken Reich, proprietor of the Take Back the Times blog, was, not surprisingly, elated:

A restoration of the L.A. Times to home ownership would be a boon to California as a whole and, naturally, to the beleaguered Times staff.

Mick Stockinger of Uncorrelated was a bit more skeptical:

While the LA Times represents considerable political influence to an activist owner, the mentioned buyers are prmarily known as investors. Either they have a plan, or they've been seduced by the glamor of owning a legendary franchise.

Then came news of a boardroom fued between Tribune executives and the Chandler family, which owns 12% of the Times's parent company. The Chandlers are loudly lobbying Tribune to split its television and newsprint assets. Tribune Co. fired back by denouncing the paper's former owners.

Brady Westwater calls this "The Time Warner & AOL merger of jounralism":

A lot of ink has been spilled about the vanishing of stockholder value when Time Warner merged with AOL - but exactly the same thing appears to have happened in the Tribune's purchase of the LA Times

Reich thinks this is just posturing by the Chandlers to force a sale:

The skillful Chandler maneuvering being advised and possibly led by Tom Unterman could lead to a consensus board decision to change position and put the Times, or maybe the whole company, up for sale.

The American Journalism Review's Rem Rieder, however, faults the Chandlers:

Well, there's no doubt Trib's performance has been disappointing. All those dreams of riches beyond belief stemming from its ballyhooed synergy strategy have failed to materialize. The idea of owning newspapers and TV stations in the same market turned out to be not so much the magic bullet. [...] But that being said, it's pretty tacky for these Chandlers to raise this kind of ruckus, and not just because it was their decision to cash out for $8 billion.

The two A's of state and local politics -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- top the most interesting blog chatter today.

The Times' Duke Helfand and Nancy Vogel report state Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez publicly warned Villaraigosa that his planned takeover of the Los Angeles Unified School District may be floundering in Sacramento. Villaraigosa is headed to the capital on Monday to lobby for his plan. But Mayor Sam wonders if the whole thing is just an orchestrated publicity stunt:

Do you think the plan is actually in danger of collapsing in the Legislature? Or is this instead just a "set-up" by the Mayor and Nunez to create the appearance of a challenge that the Mayor, through charisma, hard work, and airfare, will overcome?

The other big Sacramento news is the state budget, which founders annually. The Times' Evan Halper says Schwarzenegger has split with state Republicans over healthcare program for low-income children. Republicans oppose the program because they say it will aid illegal immigrants, but Schwarzenegger supports a scaled back version of the Democrat-led bill. Because of the disagreement, the budget once again missed the constitutionally-imposed June 15 deadline, extending a streak that started in 1987.

Boi From Troy lambastes Republicans for their position:

First, as a policy, not even Republicans should be opposed to providing services to minors who, if here illegally, are not so on their own free will. It’s evil and mean-spirited.

But politically, heading into an election, it would be nice of Legislative Republicans to get over it and hand Governor Schwarzenegger a major accomplishment–passing an on-time budget–showing that he is actually improving the political climate in the Capitol.

LA Weekly's Bill Bradley says both sides have a lot at stake:

It’s not clear that either legislative Republicans or Democrats have thought through the implications of this budget dust-up over “budget dust.” The Republicans run the risk of looking churlish, with members of their own party in local office around the state supporting Schwarzenegger and the Democrats’ extra $22 million for existing children’s health care coverage. The Democrats run the risk of early exposure of a potential Achilles heel of a big initiative this fall, that would raise the tobacco tax to pay for health care. Much of the money would go to the care of illegal immigrants.

Friday’s wonderful opinion:

David Cole:Manzanar Redux?
In an echo of Japanese internment, a judge's ruling allows foreign nationals to be rounded up on the basis of their race or religion.

James D. Houston: Native Hawaiians Find Their Voice
But the U.S. is still devaluing its island allies.

David L. Ulin: Cars Don’t Have Thumbs
Just asking: How did those talking cars in 'Cars' build everything?

Rosa Brooks: A Man, A Plan … Baghdad
The president's secret trip to Iraq yielded a new strategy: Let the Iraqis figure it out.

Editorials

Court to Cops: Knock the Door Down
Supes irresponsibly remove penalties for police who don't ring the doorbell.

Class Action Backatcha
Milberg Weis, masters of the class-action lawsuit, now faces an unpleasant suit of its own.

Bill Gates Reboots
Microsoft founder's retirement could prove a boon to the world of charity.

They were all featured on today's Times editorial page!

Gustavo Arellano: Raza Isn't Racist
The Latino student club MEChA is more about culture and education than reconquista.

Patt Morrison: Ex-cons Need Not Apply
Why should a prison past keep someone from punching a time card?

Jonah Goldberg: Abortion Rhymes With Death
Let's cut the euphemisms and start debating abortion for real.

Timothy Garton Ash: Asia's Captive Heroine
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will turn 61 in forced solitude.

Editorials

Let Gay Men Donate Blood
A 1980s-era ban no longer makes any practical sense.

YouTube, not SueTube
Music labels should continue working with sites like YouTube instead of fighting them.

Dig the 710
Completing the freeway through Pasadena underground is the best solution yet to an old problem.

The biggest waves in the LA blogosphere are being created by the eviction and arrest of farmers and protesters at an urban farm in South Central Los Angeles yesterday (Read the Times editorial here):

On the pro-farmer side, Green Party organizer Linda Piera-Avila writes (via a posting by Politics in the Zeros' Linda Taylor) that:

The news keeps reporting Horowitz’ side, but very little mention of the Farmers’ side - that the land was sold out from under them in a back room deal three years ago [and] the money to buy the farm was raised, but he refused to sell to the Farmers because he “doesn’t believe in the cause.” I guess that means he doesn’t eat. [...]

My heart is heavy this morning as I reflect on what has been lost and the foolishness of the City of L.A. in not nuturing [sic] this gem, this oasis in the midst of urban grit and greed. All the players’ excuses and disclaimers only serve to confirm the disease of our dominant culture and the idolatry of private property rights to the exclusion of the commons and human need.

Tony Pierce at the LAist takes a more realist tack:

This is LA. If you don't have the paperwork that says you own the land, and if you don't have a team of mighty lawyers to present that paperwork, you should probably feel fortunate that you were able to farm that land rent-free for the last 14 years.

Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy is more anti-protestors, writing that they did more harm than good:

If they get their way, they might be able to save this particular garden. But if landowners such as Ralph Horowitz learn that once you let people garden on your property, you in effect lose your rights and can never remove the garden, they are likely to refuse to allow the creation of urban gardens on their land in the first place.

Mayor Sam largely agrees and also directs culpability to those other than Horowitz:

I agree that Horowitz has the right to do with his property as he wishes. The real villians here are the City, who bought the property through eminent domain back in the 80s, and then sold it back to Horowitz for $5 million (the property is now said to be worth $16 million). The other villians are the political organizers who sold the farmers a bill of goods in representing them. It was their behaivor [sic] and tactics that made a deal with Horowitz impossible.

The Times drew some fire and praise over the weekend for its coverage of the military and corrupt Las Vegas judges. In Current, Marine dad Frank Schaeffer bashed the paper for not giving war heroes an A-1 parade. According to Schaeffer:

I haven't seen one recent story dedicated to the heroism of our troops given such consistent prominence in The Times or other leading papers. Nor have I read a front-page headline about a military medal ceremony and the story behind it, although every year I see front-page treatment in The Times of who wins the Oscars.

Meanwhile, the Times’ "Juice vs. Justice" series on judges in Las Vegas (Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) has been generating controversy.

Our paper’s own Las Vegas blog details the reaction from the tight-knit Las Vegas legal community. The Las Vegas Sun reports that the selection of judges in Vegas may be overhauled. And Sun columnist Jon Ralston expresses the city’s profound shame:

I'm embarrassed. For the local judicial system. For the valley's media. And for Southern Nevada.

It took an out-of-state newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, to publish one of the most devastating pieces about Las Vegas that we have seen in many years [....]

While Ralston praises Times for devoting resources to the Las Vegas investigation Cal State Fullerton's Jeffrey Brody criticizes The Times for just that (via LA Observed). Brody writes:

A newspaper that has its core business in Southern California, and is losing circulation, needs to pay attention to the communities in its own backyard. Study after study stresses the importance of local news. The Times has many skilled journalists who could do a great job in Southern California. Better to focus on prize-winning reporting in your circulation area than risk losing more readers and face a sale to a media company that will diminish the quality of the institution.

But local blogger Brady Westwater defends the series:

First, Las Vegas is in the LAT's market. Second, Las Vegas is to a certain extent a suburb of Los Angeles since LA supplies the largest number of its visitors, many of its second home buyers and a lot of now full time residents who are still interested in Los Angeles.

Most importantly, though, many of the people most affected by the crooked judges in Nevada are Los Angeles business people and visitors to Vegas.

First of all, I'm Adam, an editorial pages intern this summer. I'll be doing some posting to this blog. Without further ado, today's local opinion chatter...

Mayor Sam writes about Los Angeles’ abysmal election turnout. His conclusion:

Its [sic] a sad state of affairs, and until more people stand up and say they've had enough, it will continue. Its truly sad when at the same time in countries all over the world, people are literally dying for the right that we take for granted.

LA City Nerd discusses possible locations for a Natural History Museum move:

If the Museum of Natural History was to move, I would put it in a few potential places:
1. Logically, on Museum Row in the Miracle Mile (the vacant parking lot across Wilshire from LACMA)
2. In Lincoln Heights near Lincoln Park or The Brewery (shared parking?)
3. In the Valley in NoHo (transit hub) or along the Orange Line in Van Nuys near the Valley's Civic Center (land would have to be acquired)
4. In the Westlake/MacArthur Park Area near the Redline Station - a few more parcels added to the existing Metro-owned property would enhance the area and make sense[....]

* Follow incoming results at the L.A. County website, and at the California Secretary of State.

* Other blogs to follow as the evening wears on: The San Diego Union-Tribune's Chris Reed, the Sacramento Bee's Dan Weintraub, the LA Weekly's Bill Bradley, Flash Report's Jon Fleischman, and the Orange County Register's Total Buzz. Also, Nancy Pelosi's daughter Christine is live-blogging from the HQ of Francine Busby, who's vying to make Duke Cunningham's seat an upset victory for the Democrats.

* Election-blogger Brad Friedman links to voting-machine trouble in four California counties, including Los Angeles.

* At Blogging.la, Christina Dominguez shows how crooked (literally) local ballots can be.

* BAGnewsNotes offers an intriguing deconstruction of a New York Times words-and-pictures profile of Attorney General candidate Jerry Brown, or what it calls "a front page character assassination."

* Perhaps as an indicator of how boring this election is, even to Democrats, the mostly lefty and California-based Huffington Post has nary a single blog item among its 30 or so today talking about it (at least as far as we could tell by looking at the headlines & excerpts). Then again, the HuffPost's California-based right-leaning doppleganger, Pajamas Media, doesn't have much either.

* At Claremont's Local Liberty blog, Richard Reeb gives his theories for the 30-year trend toward increasing California voter apathy.

* Meanwhile, Franklin Ave. offers perhaps the most appropriate method for choosing between Steve Westly and Phil Angelides.

When sludge collides: This is what democracy looks like

Last-minute dispatches from a primary-campaign race Times reporters say nobody seems to be watching (Click here to get the Times editorial pages' printable picks for tomorrow):

Mark Z. Barabak posed the big question facing tuned-out, turned-off voters: "Do I bother?" Despite a nail-biter between Democrats Phil Angelides and Steve Westly for the governor spot, "the state is in a sour mood." ...

Michael Finnegan popped the big question facing the Democratic gubernatorial candidate: "Would a liberal or a moderate stand the best chance in the fall?" ...

Eric Bailey said the top-cop race is bringing out the tough in Jerry Brown and Rocky Delgadillo: "The Democratic attorney general wannabes are performing like so many political peers hefting a full set of X and Y chromosomes, strutting their tough-guy stuff on the campaign trail." ...

Robert Salladay and Seema Metha covered "Democrat-on-Democrat clashes" over a Westly ad that dredged up Tahoe sludge-dumping allegations ...

Columnist George Skelton dredged up DiFi recall-race regrets ("If Feinstein had run for governor three years ago in the Gray Davis recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger would not have dared. That's my guess.") ...

Columnist Steve Lopez surveyed the sludgy scene in a column about the "clean money initiative" campaign ("California's Democratic primary for governor ... is an affair so sleazy and vicious it would inspire revolt, except that no one is paying attention.") Last week Lopez deliciously baited recall loser Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, now shedding pounds in his quest to become the Democratic candidate for insurance commissioner.

Ready for some futbol? Brazil's Ronaldo last week (Getty Images)

With soccer's World Cup just days away, Times staffers looked at the sport's global reach in Sunday's Current. Editorial pages editor Andres Martinez checked out the heavyweight fight in China between basketball and soccer and what it means for the fortunes of U.S. professional sports elsewhere:

According to independent marketing surveys cited by Fischer, 33% of the Chinese population are "avid" World Cup fans and 30% are "avid" NBA fans. But among those ages 15 to 24, the NBA counts more avid fans by a similarly narrow margin. As Fischer points out, it isn't even a fair contest because the NBA is a regular sports league and the World Cup brings together national all-star teams only once every four years.

China is a bright spot in a largely anemic colonialist record for American sports. U.S. pop culture may reign supreme around the world, but the troika of our games — basketball, baseball and "American" football — hardly reigns supreme anywhere else, which is why we console ourselves by calling the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago White Sox "world champions."

Mexico City correspondent Reed Johnson explores the political futbol of how Mexico's World Cup soccer fortunes will affect the upcoming presidential election:

In World Cups past, the Mexican team, cursed with repeated bad luck, has performed in valiant but underachieving fashion. But this year's team has aroused high hopes. Its controversial Argentine coach, Ricardo La Volpe, has practically guaranteed that his squad will advance at least to the tournament's quarterfinal round, just a couple of days before the presidential election. This is where the theorizing gets fun.

Paris staffer Sebastian Rotella profiles Zinedine Zidane, the hard-working, soccer-playing son of an Algerian immigrant who could "help decide the survival of a French government endangered by unrest, scandal and political and economic crises":

Like a reluctant gunslinger accepting a last showdown, a beloved statesman returning from exile, he will play in this World Cup before he retires for good.

Once again, the story will be bigger than sports. Until 1998, the French middle class tended to snub soccer in favor of such genteel pastimes as tennis. The immigrant working class often rooted for teams from family homelands.

But Les Bleus, as the blue-shirted national squad is known, have united both worlds with the kind of passion that can topple rulers and start wars in wilder, less Cartesian countries.

Tokyo bureau chief Bruce Wallace tracks the cleat-marks the Croatian team planted in a small Japanese town at the last World Cup.

Sports-page provocateur T.J. Simers scoffs at soccer's claim to world domination:

Unless it's the Yankees against Boston in June, there's not much to get excited about. And as I understand it, only seven countries have won the World Cup Championship since 1930, so unless it's Brazil versus Germany, what's the point?

Editor's note: Boston will play four games against the Yankees in New York starting Monday. The World Cup starts Friday. Fans of both sports will be spared a Solomonic choice.