The Center for American Progress' John Podesta and Larry Korb dropped by for a meeting with the Times editorial board a few days back, and shared an interesting take on the veto brouhaha that is roiling the capital right now. Like many people who come in to see us, the two former White House staffers (Korb was an assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan and Podesta was deputy chief of staff in the Clinton Administration) were dissatisfied about an editorial stance: specifically the Times' already fabled "Do we really need a Gen. Pelosi?" That piece infuriated many on the left and was cheered by many on the right—including, as Sonni Efron has noted, the current occupant of the White House. It also, Podesta asserted, was a departure from the Times' otherwise creditable editorial policy on the Iraq war.

I think it's no big secret that the current editorial board composition is substantially different than it was in 2003, when we were among the few U.S. papers to editorialize strongly against invading Iraq. Sadly, those old arguments are no longer available, but you'll be interested to know that we said the president's argument "loses us and, we suspect, many other Americans," called the administration's justifications for quick military action "confusing and unfocused," noted presciently that nation building "would probably mean U.S. occupation of Iraq for some unspecified time, at open-ended cost," criticized the president for "insist[ing] on immediate war just as the political pressure and military threat appear to be having a positive effect," and (ouch!) confidently pronounced, "It is well established that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

Where I departed from Podesta (and like Franklin D. Roosevelt, I hate war) is that I don't see any contradiction between these two editorial positions. It's fair to say that the Times' arguments against invasion did not carry the day in 2003, and the nation has been engaged in war or conflict or police action or something in Iraq ever since—all of it under color of a still-in-effect congressional "use-of-force" authorization (the rough equivalent of the letter of "marque or reprisal" mentioned in the Constitution). The issue now is one of separation of powers, not strategy. As noted in the Gen. Pelosi editorial, Congress (whose own composition has changed quite a bit since aught-three) has powers of the purse and the power to declare war. It now has the option of withholding funds or of withdrawing its use-of-force resolution, and it is unwilling to exercise either option, so what have we got to talk about? Moreover, Congress, for better or (in my opinion) worse, has taken a supine role in every war in the history of the United States; legislators can't bow to the president fast enough when it comes to both declaring and managing the countless conflicts this peace-loving nation manages to get into. And this is a habit that both Korb and, to a much greater extent, Podesta were happy to accept when they worked for great presidents of yore.

To his credit, Podesta didn't dispute any of this, and in fact expanded on his own impatience with congressional opposition to Bill Clinton's adventures in the Balkans. His argument, which is particularly interesting in light of the ongoing vote/veto/vow-to-work-together kabuki, is that all this grandstanding has its own value, that effectively the president's sole authority as commander in chief can be challenged short of a constitutional crisis. Korb and Podesta are hawking a set of post-veto proposals that nicely aim to move the president's position with all sides maintaining plausible deniability. So, for example, Congress won't hold war funding hostage, but maybe just detain it a little bit while working on concessions from the White House; the president on the other hand doesn't concede his warmaking authority to Congress, but just sort of agrees on the need for some target dates for getting out of Iraq.

Podesta was as candid about all this as only a former government employee can be, and when I presented my own scenario—that it's 2009 and President Clinton is now facing congressional opposition to her widely unpopular humanitarian intervention in Darfur—he acknowledged that at that time he'll be shocked, shocked to find that Congress is trying to overstep its constitutional role in policymaking. I dig Podesta, and I appreciate the reminder that for all the seemingly sacrosanct delineations of authority in American governance, there are many ways to make a sausage or unmake a war.

Like couples who renew wedding vows or costumed history nerds who re-fight Revolutionary War battles, immigration protestors will mark the anniversary of a major march by reenacting it. Hundreds of thousands of marchers are expected to show up in downtown Los Angeles tomorrow to repeat the call for immigrant rights. In the spirit of reenactment, we'd like to do some reposting.

The power of the Internet (and the compulsion of many Internet users to forward anything marked "forward" that lands in their inboxes) has kept a list of mostly incorrect immigration myths in circulation for over a year. Because many of these myths had been attributed to The Times, this blog debunked them in two earlier posts. Now we present them again below, hopefully preempting any flurry of email-forwarding that may follow tomorrow's protest.

Here's what we posted on Feb. 5:

"Fact" 1: Less than two percent of illegal aliens are picking our crops, but 29% are on welfare.
Factual basis? Pew Hispanic Center found last year that four percent of illegal immigrants work in farming (compared to 0.5% of the native population). Most illegal immigrants work in services (31%) or construction (19%). Illegal immigrants are generally barred from receiving welfare (they can access emergency medical care and a K-12 education). The tough-on-illegal-immigration think tank Center for Immigration Studies reports in 2004:

In terms of welfare use, receipt of cash assistance programs tends to be very low, while Medicaid use, though significant, is still less than for other households. Only use of food assistance programs is significantly higher than that of the rest of the population.

CIS goes on to state that, on balance, illegal immigrants take more in services than they pay in taxes, but that is disputed.

In the op-ed pages, Joe Queenan writes that poor people need to spruce up their act:

Poor people rarely set aside sufficient money for retirement. Poor people are reluctant to send their kids to private schools. Poor people do not network. Worse, many poor people have scary tattoos. This is not the way Tom Joad went about winning the hearts and minds of Americans....

[The United States] cannot expect the upper class to provide strong moral leadership because the upper class is filled with people who work for Halliburton. It cannot expect the middle class to assume that burden because the middle class has always suffered from a certain moral flabbiness as a result of commuting long distances to jobs they hate. Realistically, only the poor are in a position to provide inspiration to the rest of us because they have the most time on their hands.

Columnists Gregory Rodriguez and Niall Ferguson look at the country's economic picture as well. Rodriguez wonders if Colorado's prison labor program shows that Americans don't see much difference between convicts and illegal immigrants. Ferguson marvels at the soaring American economy that doesn't seem to notice that Iraq is burning.

The editorial board takes note of a survey [pdf] showing that young Californians are tolerant on race and firm on family values. It chastises Congress for launching one too many investigations and letting sugar subsidies remain in place.

On the letters page, Ross Kaminsky of Colorado says California should be free to make mistakes when it comes to global warming policy: "[W]hile the EPA would be doing Californians a favor by keeping it from enacting laws that are close to economic suicide, the long-term success of our nation requires that we let states make mistakes."

The legal blogosphere continues to buzz over the fact that all five Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold a federal ban on “partial-birth” abortions are Roman Catholics. Especially interesting is an exchange between two law professors, Geoffrey Stone and Rick Garnett, both teaching at the University of Chicago.

In the spirit of Christopher Hitchens, Stone refers to the five Catholics as “faith-based justices,” and notes that “the four justices who are either Protestant or Jewish all voted in accord with settled precedent.”

Garnett counters  with the observation that “the Catholic understanding of vocation, and of justice under law” invites a Catholic judge to “work conscientiously in every case to identify not her own preferred or ‘faith-based' outcome’ but the answer that is given by the relevant legal texts, rules, and precedents.”

Barnett has a good point, and I myself have pooh-poohed the idea of a “Catholic justice." On the other hand, it makes me nervous to read that Catholic bishops are celebrating the decision in a way that encourages the notion that the ruling was a victory for “the effort to build respect for life in the country.”

Columnist Joel Stein grabs his spork and digs into lunch at Garfield High School's redesigned cafeteria with its healthier offerings:

Student Eduardo Escalante Jr. sat next to me and told me he doesn't eat all day until he gets home. "It tastes like cheap microwave food," he said. When pressed about the improvements, he said that "it used to taste like cheaper microwave food." When [School Board President Marlene] Canter asked me what Escalante said, I kind of lied. She's working so hard to do the impossible — serve an edible $2.40 lunch to fast-food-savvy kids from different cultures in a place that doesn't have a real kitchen — that I had to let her dream.

Stein's in-depth work aside, investigative reporting may be a dying breed, according to Greg Palast. But at least the whole country isn't on the verge of extinction, says columnist Rosa Brooks, chiding politicians for assuming Americans live in dire fear of terrorist attacks. Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief Roger Snoble argues that 86 cents a ride won't hurt anyone, either.

The editorial board calls Sacramento's prison reform package a cop-out, chides the federal government for trying to regulate violence on television, and asks the Supreme Court to reconcile free speech with the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

On the letters page, Steve Paskay of Marina del Rey is upset that The Times ruined his breakfast: "Are you telling me there's not enough news in the world, both good and bad, that The Times has to fill the front page with a breakfastkilling photo of Phil Spector?"

Historian Mark Kurlansky remembers the world's outrage at the bombing of Guernica seventy years ago today:

Two days after the attack, London Times correspondent George Steer's eyewitness account was published in the London Times and the New York Times, and the world responded with outrage at this new type of warfare — randomly attacking civilians from the air on a large scale. It was widely seen as a crime that should never be allowed to happen again....

But 70 years after Guernica — after the bombings of Coventry, London, Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hanoi, Hue, Beirut and Baghdad — it has become clear that modern war is fought from the air and that the greatest number of casualties are civilians.

English professor Drew Limsky discusses a smaller-scale crime that also inspired art — a suburban California murder captured in Joan Didion's "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" — and compares it to last weekend's murder at the Montage resort at Laguna Beach. Aaron Friedberg and Dan Blumenthal explore the U.S. alliance with Japan on the day of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's visit, while William Ury has hope for reconciliation between grocery chains and unions.

The editorial board doesn't like secret jurors, even if they're hearing the high-profile Phil Spector case, nor does it like giving human drugs to beef cattle. The board also applauds Mexico City for giving women abortion rights, despite the country's strong religious sensibility and strict laws.

On the letters page, there's support for George McGovern, for 1972 and 2008, memories of writer David Halberstam, and there's skepticism that global warming makes other environmental issues irrelevant. J.W. Miller says that human population growth is the biggest problem, and would trade saving the whales for turning them into sushi.

A new poll [pdf] from WorldPublicOpinion.org caught the editorial board's eye today with its conclusion that allied Muslim majority countries still don't think too highly of the U.S.:

More alarming is the support among citizens of allied countries for attacking U.S. troops in Iraq. That includes 91% of those polled in Egypt, 68% in Morocco, 35% in Pakistan and 19% in Indonesia....

Many apparently rationalize their support for Al Qaeda by concluding that it wasn't behind 9/11. Despite Bin Laden's televised boasting, fewer than one in four surveyed — and just 2% of Pakistanis — say they think that Al Qaeda masterminded the attacks. This depressing landscape suggests a steep uphill climb for the United States.

The board also argues that it's common sense to give passengers in cars the same 4th Amendment rights as drivers, and volunteers to clean up brush if Caltrans won't do it.

On the op-ed pages, columnist Ronald Brownstein compares President Bush to a polar bear, Doug Kaplan says developers don't need extra money, and former New York Times Asia correspondent Barbara Crossette writes that not everyone wants democracy, including the Bhutanese. From Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the multinational corps, writes in defense of security barriers.

Letter writers chime in on the Baghdad barriers, and most aren't happy about them -- for R. Donald Snyder, they're not far off from the Jewish ghettos of World War II: "Wall off all of the Sunnis into one area of the city where they are easier to exterminate?"

Should members of the U.S. Senate file their campaign reports the old-fashioned way – in which (and I’m quoting Sen. Dianne Feinstein) “paper copies of disclosure reports are filed with the Senate Office of Public Records, which then scans them, makes an electronic copy of them, and sends that copy to the FEC on a dedicated communications line” ? Or should they join the House in filing electronically, giving the public an earlier glimpse at sources of support.

It seems like a no-brainer in this interactive age, but for unspecified reasons Republicans have put a procedural hold on the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act  reported out of the Rules Committee.

Last week, as the measure was on the verge of approval, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) (who supports electronic filing) objected on behalf of an unnamed Republican colleague.

Amid a guessing game about just who objects to this good-government measure, a group called The Sunlight Foundation is urging readers to call Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky)  to pressure him to “out” the objector. Before that happens, the mystery senator would be wise to let go of his "hold."

As predicted, today President Bush wrapped "his double-talking mouth around one of the most curiously persistent debates in modern geopolitics: Whether to call a 92-year-old genocide a 'genocide.'" Here's how the Leader of the Free World avoided the G-word:

Each year on this day, we pause to remember the victims of one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, when as many as 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, many of them victims of mass killings and forced exile. I join my fellow Americans and Armenian people around the world in commemorating this tragedy and honoring the memory of the innocent lives that were taken. The world must never forget this painful chapter of its history.

That "never forget" line's always a nice touch. Other non-"genocide" phrases included "horrific events" and "terrible struggle." For a few other tidbits in the terrible struggle over genocide-recognition on this National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man, read on after the jump.

The editorial board marks the passing of Boris Yeltsin without quite mourning him:

He embraced the rhetoric and ideals of democracy but cultivated none of its habits. He was erratic, autocratic, arrogant, unforgiving and drunken. He plowed salt into the political earth that his successors would have to cultivate when he administered economic "shock therapy" without the anesthetic of a safety net or the rule of law, allowing communist bureaucrats to morph into oligarchic kleptocrats before Russian citizens knew what hit them. He invaded Chechnya against the advice of every advisor who knew the region and waged a war of shocking brutality against civilians.

The board is kinder to Nigeria (seeing the glass as half full for the country's shaky democracy) and drug users (supporting a program to give them treatment instead of time).

On the next page, former presidential nominee George McGovern says Dick Cheney wrongly compared the current Democratic platform to McGovern's 1972 plan. Columnist Jonah Goldberg probably finds that scuffle unnecessary, since he notes today that most Americans are completely clueless. Contributing editor Max Boot keeps hope alive on Iraq, noting that once-violent Ramadi is now fairly calm.

Virginia Tech still dominates the letters page. See what an Asian American psychotherpaist has to say about mental health in the Asian American community, and why Elayne Rodriguez-Haven thinks The Times' coverage is "overly sensationalized" and "appears to blame Seung-hui Cho's family and culture for the killings."

It's painful to side with Karl Rove on anything, much less on a subject like global warming on which his attitudes are so ignorant and wrongheaded that they threaten the future of life on Earth. But at least Rove is consistent. I'm not so sure about Sheryl Crow.

The rock star and "the architect" made a loud and doubtless embarrassing (for those capable of feeling shame, which may exclude Rove) scene at Sunday's White House Correspondents Assn. dinner, after producer Laurie David confronted Rove on his stance on climate change, and Crow piled on. Crow has been doing a tour to promote awareness of global warming, which is great, and David's environmental credentials as producer of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" are pretty unimpeachable. But Crow would have more credibility on this issue if she weren't shilling for gas-guzzling SUVs.

Subaru isn't the worst environmental offender among automakers. But it's bad enough; most of its vehicles are all-wheel-drive wagons or SUVs that get well under 30 miles per gallon on the highway. Crow's tune "Every Day Is a Winding Road" became the company's new marketing theme under a licensing deal last year. It seems that when she and Lance Armstrong split up, she got the Subaru deal--Armstrong had previously been the automaker's pitchman.

If Crow wants to be taken seriously as a global warming crusader, she should put her endorsement money where her mouth is.

Feds ordered V.Tech campus police to stand down and not pursue killer Cho?

Cho's Princetonian sister working at McNeil Technologies for multi-billion-dollar Iraq Reconstruction Management Office?

Cho a Mind Controlled Assassin?

Mounties involved?

Some of these are verified claims. Others are what you might call very unverified claims, but at the colorful, prickly, often NSFW Citizens for Legitimate Government, Lori R. Price is pulling them all together into what will no doubt be a postmodern mosaic.

In today's op-ed pages, Anna Hurasaka of the International Rescue Committee explains how a victim of terrorism can, by dint of U.S. law, be branded a supporter of terrorism:

The hairdresser is a single mother. She received threats by phone and in writing. She was told to close her salon, judged as unacceptable by Muslim extremists. In 2005, a man in a black hood entered her shop, beat her, pulled the crucifix off her neck and raped her. A week later, her son was kidnapped and the same man called; she recognized his voice. He demanded $10,000. She gathered $7,000 and paid the ransom. Her son was returned, and she fled the country with him.

At issue here is whether the rapist/kidnapper is a member of a U.S. government-documented terrorist group. Even ransom can constitute "material support" of terrorists.

Columnists Niall Ferguson and Gregory Rodriguez take on Seung-Hui Cho and whether he's a black swan or a red-blooded American, while Jeff Chang and David Zirin point out that hip-hop isn't all racism and misogyny.

The editorial board wants to close the gun control loophole that let Cho slip through and speculates who the next attorney general may be, should Alberto R. Gonzales resign. Finally the board takes on Ticketmaster for being an "800-pound gorilla" but still finding reason to complain about the ticket sale market it rules.

As I mentioned in a recent post, a lot is being made—too much, I think—of the fact that all five Supreme Court justices in the majority in the "partial-birth" abortion case are Catholics. Predictably, at least one editorial cartoonist was unable to resist the temptation to portray the Catholic five as wearing bishops’ miters. Equally predictably, the head of the Catholic League has jumped on the cartoon.

What was interesting to this former altar boy was that the Catholic League described the miter as a “papal hat.” Yes, the pope can be seen wearing a miter (though not the skyscraper model that went out of fashion after Vatican II). But the miter is not a peculiarly papal chapeau. It is worn by every Catholic bishop—not to mention Anglican ones.

The distinctive papal hat is the bejeweled tiara or "triple crown" that was retired when Pope John Paul I simplified what used to be called the papal "coronation." The tiara hung on in papal heraldry for a while after that, but in Benedict XVI's coat of arms it has been replaced by the relatively humble miter.

Conservative Catholics, who are eagerly awaiting an order by Benedict permitting wider use of the Latin Mass, would love to see the tiara make a comeback, too. So, I suspect, would editorial cartoonists.

If this were a TV show, it would still be making a fortune for all the years it's been in syndication: the argument that more guns make a safer nation.

They've applied the resuscitation paddles to it again in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings; former House speaker Newt Gingrich remarked, ``There have been incidents of this kind of a killer who [was] stopped because, in fact, people who are law-abiding, who are rational and people who are responsible, had the ability to stop them.''

Let's say every student at Virgina Tech was permitted -- even expected -- to carry a weapon. How many students might have been saved from Seung-Hui Cho's rampage -- and how many inadvertently wounded or killed in trying to shoot him down to stop it? For that matter, what might the campus gunplay death toll have been over the years from accidents, from suicides, from escalating arguments at beer busts, long before Seung-Hui Cho ever enrolled? How many memorial benches and fountains would have been raised up to the memories of those dead?

Ever watch a Western? In the movies, everyone seems to be packing -- and except in Main Street duels, it's the first gunman who gets the drop on the others and gets off his shots who's got the advantage -- probably the same advantage he'd have if his target weren't carrying a gun at all. The likelihood of using a bullet to stop a bullet is about the same as the odds of the Reagan-era ``Star Wars''  program to intercept the bad guys' missile with one fired by the good guys.

Why stop at arming schools? Why not open churches and nursing homes nationwide to loaded guns, as George Bush did as Texas governor? Why not let let people pack non-concealed weapons even into the halls of Congress? Surely if there were any kind of ruckus -- as happened in 1954, when Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from a gallery and wounded five members of Congress -- then the Congressmen themselves could have drawn their own weapons and gunned down the shooters.

Surely that kind of risk is a small price to pay. Surely political leaders who think students should be able to carry guns on campus would not deny the same right to those who visit Congress -- in a city where, as Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King has declared, his wife, to take an example, is ``at far greater risk being a civilian in Washington, D.C. than the average civilian in Iraq.''

Pope Benedict XVI's decision to do away with limbo, the nether world to which popular Catholic teaching consigned unbaptized babies, comes too late for my mother. Anxiety about limbo led her to perform a “kitchen baptism” on a grandson who subsequently went through the ritual in the conventional way.

Yet my mother was also the one who told her six children that it was inconceivable that God would dispatch anyone to hell—or limbo, Purgatory or the Phantom Zone, for that matter—simply because he hadn’t been lucky enough to be born into a Christian family. She passed along to us what she had been told by one of the nuns who taught her as a child—that the "savage" who doesn’t know any better than to worship a rock could still go to heaven.

Nevertheless, Mom hedged her bets with her grandson, emulating my favorite poet X.J. Kennedy, who wrote (in “Cross Ties”) that:

          ...When I spill
The salt I throw the Devil some, and still
I let them sprinkle water on my child.

In her own folksy way my mother was recapitulating a development in Catholic theology that foreshadowed the junking of limbo. I'm referring to the doctrine of "baptism of desire," which according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church can lead to salvation even for unbaptized persons who "would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity."

Lawyers would call this a loophole (it bears an amazing similarity to a legal fiction known as a "quasi-contract") and fundamentalists an abomination, but Jesus probably would approve.

Still, you don't have to be Thomas Aquinas to see that cutting some slack for the unbaptized could lead to a lessening of missionary zeal. I'm not sure Mom the Baptist would think that was such a bad thing.

In my column of today, about the curious political potency and shameful recent American track record of recognizing the Armenian genocide as a "genocide," I wrote the following about Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice:

Watching Rice's linguistic contortions in response to harsh congressional interrogation by [Rep. Adam] Schiff, who has become the Armenians' great House champion, is profoundly dispiriting; it makes one embarrassed to be American.

Too purple? Watch the video and conclude for yourself.

The indispensable consumer-electronics blog Engadget reported today that, according to a Chinese newspaper, the lead manufacturer in the One Laptop Per Child initiative has pushed the debut shipment back from July until late this year. It's hard to fault Quanta, the manufacturer, for the latest delays, given the ambition of its effort to build an efficient, WiFi enabled laptop for $150 or less. But the success of the project has always depended on the uniqueness of the value proposition, and that uniqueness took a blow this week when Microsoft announced plans to make basic versions of its operating system and productivity software available to students in developing nations for $3 per computer. To qualify, governments would have to pick up at least half the tab for the PC on which the software was installed, and it wouldn't have to be a new PC. As ZDNet columnist Adrian Kingsley-Hughes points out, this is what makes the move by Microsoft so intriguing. A refurbished unit could be had for $50. Throw in a CRT monitor for $50 and you've got a very affordable computer. Of course, the operating costs may be significantly higher than the OLPC model, given the higher power consumption and the need for an assortment of anti-malware products. But at least it improves the odds for Microsoft, which can't afford to see the developing world move en masse to the Linux-based OLPC and its open source applications. Of course, the bountiful supply of pirated Windows and Office software helps to keep the developing world in the Microsoft camp, too, albeit as non-paying members.

Jim Newton will be chatting live Wednesday, April 25, at 2 p.m. Newton was recently named editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, with responsibility for the newspaper's editorial, Op-Ed, letters and Sunday Opinion sections.

A California native, Newton has spent much of his life covering and writing about the politics, government, and legal affairs of Los Angeles and the state. He joined The Times in 1989 and covered federal law enforcement and the Los Angeles Police Department from 1992 through 1997, a period that included the 1992 riots, the federal trial of the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King, and the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. He also was the paper's lead reporter responsible for the mayoral administration of Richard J. Riordan during Riordan's second term. In 2001, he was named California government and politics editor, in charge of Los Angeles and Sacramento government coverage. Most recently, he was the paper's city-county bureau chief.

Now's your chance to give Newton a piece of your mind. Go to chat.latimes.com for free registration, then follow the link to "Opinion Chat." If you can't make it to the chat, email us at chat@latimes.com or leave a message in the comments, and we'll pass your question along to Newton.

(If you have any problems with login or chat, please let us know at chat@latimes.com.)

Electronics retailer Circuit City, best known lately for its disenchantment with well-paid sales clerks,  is trying again to sell downloadable songs through its website. This time, its partner is Napster (the legal version, not the original file-swapping network). Read more about Circuit City's not-so-enviable track record in this field at the Bit Player blog.

Pepperdine University professor James Q. Wilson joins the post-Virginia-Tech gun control debate to defend the maligned firearm, noting that guns don't kill people, Americans do:

If we want to guess by how much the U.S. murder rate would fall if civilians had no guns, we should begin by realizing...that the non-gun homicide rate in this country is three times higher than the non-gun homicide rate in England. For historical and cultural reasons, Americans are a more violent people than the English, even when they can't use a gun. This fact sets a floor below which the murder rate won't be reduced even if, by some constitutional or political miracle, we became gun-free.

Columnist Joel Stein defends another American weapon of choice, the cigarette, while Rosa Brooks wonders why Americans like vicarious trauma. On the lighter side, University of Chicago Law School prof Cass R. Sunstein sees the silver lining in the Supreme Court's abortion ruling.

The editorial board criticizes the state for its shady secret death chamber and the country for letting an admitted terrorist walk. But the board has mostly nice things to say about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's newly released city budget.

Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa paid us a visit this morning, scorching the Times for its tepid reception to his State of the City address, and providing some more detail on his plans to keep hope alive for AB 1381, the state school-takeover law that has now been struck down and struck down again by the courts. The mayor has vowed to keep fighting, and in his comments to the editorial board today, he outlined his own legal theory on how the decision could be appealed to the California Supreme Court:

ARV: This is what was amazing about their [the California 2nd District Court of Appeal's] opinion: They said all we had to do was a charter change. That just isn't true. They [the plaintiffs, including the L.A. Unified School District] didn't base the lawsuit on the [city] charter; they based it on the [state] constitution. We have to change the constitution statewide, and that's what they said in their opinion. It was amazing, how clearly they didn't understand the essence of this. Some argue that in addition to changing it in the constitution we also have to change it in the charter. We're not completely sure of that because some lawyers say you just have to change it in the constitution, but no lawyer has said you don't have to change it in the constitution.

LAT: Because the district crosses the city limit?

ARV: No. The whole basis of the lawsuit was that the constitution says there's a bifurcation of governance. So we would either have had to do just state or state-and-charter, but not just charter. And hitting your point, if we just change our charter, what about those other 27 cities? So that was another complication. I'm not a lawyer here; I don't understand that. The only thing I did understand as soon as I went through the opinion was that they just completely missed the whole point.

Here's the text of the 2nd District's ruling in Mendoza v. State of California:

The citizens of Los Angeles have the constitutional right to decide whether their school board is to be appointed or elected. If the citizens of Los Angeles choose to amend their charter to allow the Mayor to appoint the members of the Board, such amendment would indisputably be proper. What is not permissible is for the Legislature to ignore that constitutional right and to bypass the will of the citizens of Los Angeles and effectively transfer many of powers of the Board to the Mayor, based on its belief, hope, or assumption that he could do a better job. The trial court’s order granting the writ prohibiting the enforcement of the Romero Act in its entirety must be affirmed.

Is that enough to hang an appeal on? Here's the mayor's own assessment:

LAT: Have you made any decision about whether to appeal the decision?

ARV: We've got great lawyers, and we're making the legal assessment. But I think right now our own lawyers, and also experts we're talking to, say it's a pretty uphill fight. They [the state supreme court] don't have to take the case, and this is a court, as you guys have written in your reporting, that has historically been kind of reluctant to do so... As I said last night, I'm not quitting.  I am passionate about this issue. Which is why I take so much umbrage about your editorials on it, because I am passionate about these kids. And people can say what they want, but what we have now is that everybody agrees we need reform. And while there's not the urgency, they're responding, and they are because I put the heat on them. Lexis search it: You can't find one press conference where I called a person a name. I don't criticize the council and school board members. I talk about the institution and the bureaucracy; I never talk about individuals. I don't even do that with people I don't like. It's just not my nature.

We haven't made an assessment about whether we're going to appeal. We very well may. But obviously, we're moving ahead with the school board elections. I hope to be successful there. And very importantly, trying to engage in some very concrete discussions with the school board about implementing much of what was in AB 1381.

It's all too easy nowadays to stir up feelings of ill will against Muslims. But Muslims (or people who look like Muslims) and airplanes -- well, you've got yourself a fear-mongering career!

Writer Annie Jacobsen has made a pretty good living doing precisely that since she penned an alarmist column for Women's Wall Street almost three years ago, in which she documented the purportedly suspicious behavior of 14 Syrian passengers on board Northwest Airlines flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles. Jacobsen's lengthy "Terror in the Skies" reads like a chapter from a Louis L'Amour novel, gripping readers with the harrowing tale of a woman enduring three hours at 30,000 feet of powerlessly watching would-be terrorists methodically taking turns building a bomb in the lavatory.

The column seems to make a compelling case for racial profiling; indeed, Jacobsen wrote in the first paragraph that the flight made her "question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats." She accuses the federal government of all but purposefully turning a blind eye in the name racial hypersensitivity to an air travel system practically begging for another terrorist attack. The problem is, Jacobsen's column is full of distortions, disputed claims and outright falsehoods about aviation security that could have been fact-checked by any marginally skeptical reporter. (I won't take the time to pick apart Jacobsen's original column, which has been thoroughly debunked here, here and here. The New York Times, which doesn't provide its older content online for free, also published at least one news article questioning Jacobsen's account.)

So why dredge up a years-old column that may have been a reaction not unlike others after 9/11? Am I just piling on a tired column for the sake of mean-spirited punditry? No -- it's Jacobsen who won't let her alarmism fade and humbly accept the fact that, like many passengers who fear flying, she simply overreacted. Since her July 2004 column, Jacobsen has written 27 (!) follow-up pieces under the banner "Terror in the Skies," her most recent installment posted online this week, April 18. I hope it's her last.

If you missed or TiVo'd and haven't yet watched last night's "American Idol" (or if you tried to ignore it only to be forced to read about it on a blog where you thought it was safe), Sanjaya Malakar finally got the boot. Did his weeks-old haircut sap him of his strength? Did his grace under fire finally pale in comparison to true talent? Don't you just wish I would shut up about him already so he can resume his suburban teenagehood in a shroud of privacy, or at least on a stage no greater than that of a regional dinner theater? Allow me one final blog post.

For all his "pitchy" singing and ritualistic hair care, Sanjaya does have a legitimate claim to fame. He's the first Indian American who not only broke into pop culture, but who also managed to escape ethnic categorization. There haven't been too many Indians in the public eye at all; those who do fall under its gaze are often the "first Indian (fill in the blank)" or outright if lovable stereotypes.

Time will tell whether Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling on “partial-birth” abortion is the beginning of a rollback for women’s rights or a self-contained setback for an unusual and unsettling abortion procedure. But two less important aspects of Gonzales v. Carhart are attracting interest.

The first is that all five members of the majority, including Chief Justice John Roberts, are Roman Catholics. But before pro-choice forces sniff out a papist plot, they should reflect on a couple of facts.

First, the late Justice William Brennan, a strong supporter of legal abortion, was a Catholic.

More to the point, Justice Anthony Kennedy, the author of this week’s decision, also signed the 1992 opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirming the “essential holding” of Roe v. Wade. If the Vatican were going to excommunicate Catholic judges for joining in pro-abortion rulings, Kennedy's vote in Casey would count as a mortal sin, while his vote in Gonzales would be a venial one.

In any event, the religion of the five justices in the partial-birth majority is probably less relevant than the fact that Republicans appointed them all. If John Kerry had beaten George W. Bush, the Catholic monolith might not have existed.

A second, less discussed, oddity of this week’s decision is the concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas. Most attention has focused on the fact that the Thomas opinion (joined by Antonin Scalia) agitated for overruling Roe v. Wade. But con-law junkies will note something else: a concession by Thomas that the federal partial-birth bill might be unconstitutional under Thomas’ own judicial philosophy.

In a passage that probably baffled some readers, Thomas wrote: "I also note that whether the Act constitutes a permissible exercise of Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause is not before the Court."

Huh? What does the Commerce Clause of the Constitution have to do with abortion? Well, it’s that clause that has allowed Congress to regulate lots of matters that conservatives think should be subject only to state law.

But if it’s overreaching for Congress to regulate medical marijuana, as Thomas believes, where does it get the authority to pass the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003? You guessed it: The Commerce Clause! The law itself says: "Any physician who, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both."

I have written about this paradox before. As with so many principles, whether one believes in a strong Commerce Clause depends on whose ideological ox being gored.

The editorial board takes on the Supreme Court again today for its decision to uphold a ban on a rare abortion procedure. The Court ignored precedent and didn't seem to mind that the ban made no exception for a woman's health:

This muddled decision doesn't attack the basic holding of Roe vs. Wade, and it will have no effect on the vast majority of abortions performed in this country. But Ginsburg is right that it is a retreat, and one that can't be explained by anything other than a change in the court's membership.

The board also tells Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa that "dreamtime is over" and writes a preview of U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales' appearance today before the Senate Judiciary Committee (for the latest check here).

On the next page, Opinion contributing editor Jonathan Chait says the Gonzales scandal is a sign that the Bush administration wants to use the judicial system as an arm of the Republican party. Candy reviewer Cybele May breaks it to the Food and Drug Administration that chocolate-loving Americans will know the difference between real chocolate and cheap substitutes.

Two Cal Poly Pomona professors say "charter mania" could backfire on California's tradition of free, universal public education. And Patt Morrison recalls that before Don Imus got fired, two journalists were pink slipped for criticizing President Bush's reaction to 9/11.

J. Michael Kennedy, a foreign correspondent for The Times, took a close look at Tehran for the Sunday Opinion on April 18, 1982, in the second year of the Iran-Iraq War.

From the war front near the Iraqi border to the clogged streets of Tehran, Iran is a crazy quilt of contradictions. This country eludes definition, teetering back and forth between the past and the present.

It fights a war with modern machinery, but counts as its best weapon the young men willing to clear mine fields by running through them.

It desperately needs peace to salvage what is left of the economy, but instead vows to continue the campaign against enemies of Islam.

Kennedy highlighted the all too familiar clash between fundamentalists and moderates, particularly as it played out among and within recently repatriated youth.

The son of the revolution had a question. Until that moment, he had been doing his job, proselytizing for the Ministry of War Propaganda about Iran's military superiority. But then Ali Shojanoori turned to face the back seat of the American-built station wagon.

'Is it true that John Belushi is dead?' he asked. 'And what about Johnny Carson? Is he still on the air?'

FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps came by the Los Angeles Times today to share his views about a number of policy issues, including media consolidation and spectrum auctions. Naturally, we were curious how he viewed the proposed sale of the Tribune Co., our employer, to Chicago real-estate tycoon Sam Zell in a debt-laden deal worth $8.2 billion. Copps said he was keeping an open mind, but planned to give the deal "intense" scrutiny. When pressed, he defined "intense" as a 5 on the 1-to-5 scale.

That's not surprising. Copps, after all, is a regulator who believes in regulating, and he's not at all persuaded that the vast changes in the media and information markets have lessened the need to keep local broadcast stations and newspapers from being owned by the same company. The Tribune has received waivers from the FCC to operate TV stations in several of the same markets where it runs major local newspapers, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Before Zell can take over the conglomerate, the FCC would have to approve the transfer of those TV stations' licenses to him. This would be a non-issue if the commission had loosened the TV-newspaper cross-ownership ban, as Chairman Kevin Martin has advocated. But Copps said neither he nor Martin has the data to back his position for or against the current rule; they're both awaiting a new batch of studies that should be completed in the next few months.

News-oriented websites around the country continue to burst with pieces about the Virginia Tech massacre two days after the fact, as befits a killing spree of historic proportions. Just to keep things in perspective, though, you might note another event that's drawing only one story per site. A bombing several hours ago in a Baghdad neighborhood claimed more than three times as many lives as the Virginia Tech shootings (the LA Times story says 115 dead; the NY Times says at least 140, with an additional 150 wounded). A car blast in the same neighborhood in February took 130 lives. I'm not making the comparison to downplay the tragedy in Blacksburg in any way. It was an act of singular, crazed inhumanity, and it resonates in part because it seemed so random. The victims in Iraq were chosen with a degree of randomness, too, but at least they fit into a framework that's comprehensible. To wit, war is hell. Still, it's worth wondering what the effect would be if the same kind of saturation coverage that Cho's rampage in Blacksburg has received (profiles of all the victims, reaction from friends and families, extensive analysis of the killer's background and motives, etc.) were given to the latest incident in Baghdad.

The scandals rocking the student-loan business have Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, on the warpath. Today he called on the Education Department to issue emergency regulations to stop lenders from buying goodwill with college and federal financial-aid officials. He also wants the department to halt "preferred lender lists," which college aid officials provide to students and their parents, "until we can ensure that these lists no longer feed corruption and cronyism, which they apparently do now."

Such criticisms are too broad. Miller admitted that he didn't know if the problems in financial aid offices were isolated or widespread. Typically, those officials compile preferred lender lists because students and parents don't have the time or the ability to find the best deals. But the recent scandals certainly have undermined their reputation as honest brokers, and Miller's push reflects those doubts. The Times' editorial page has called for a simple, bright-line solution to the problem: a complete ban on financial relationships between colleges and lenders. That would go a long way toward assuring that lenders make it onto preferred lists because they provide better terms and service to students, not to financial-aid offices.

Major news events, good or bad, typically bring in press releases from websites touting how much their traffic surged or how they mobilized to superserve the public. This practice is mildly irritating when related to the Super Bowl, but exceptionally tacky when connected to a tragedy on the order of Monday's shootings at Virginia Tech. Much of the public's interest is driven by the society's fascination with violent death, as reflected by the success of TV shows like the "CSI" franchise and "24." And it just seems wrong for companies to trumpet how well that mordant curiosity has worked for them. Issues of taste and propriety, however, did not deter MSNBC from sending out two releases yesterday: "Msnbc.com Creates 'On the Scene' Blog for Virginia Tech Tragedy" declared the first, followed by "Record Numbers Turn to Msnbc.com for Coverage of Virginia Tech Tragedy/Video Streams Top All News Sites At 10 million." What can we say, but, "Congratulations, Msnbc.com!" Today it was ABC News' turn. Its headline: "Landmark Numbers for ABC News Digital for Coverage of Virginia Tech Tragedy." Well, at least these guys recognized it was a tragedy, not just an opportunity.

I don't speak Spanish, but I'm intrigued by this translation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It appeared in a nice thorough EFE explainer that made it to the front page of yesterday's La Opinion:

"Una milicia bien regulada, en caso de ser necesaria para mantener la seguridad de un Estado libre, el derecho de la gente a tener y portar armas, no debe ser infringido", dice la Segunda Enmienda, escrita en 1787, hace más de 200 años.

(I even like the goofy gloss, which instructs or reminds you that the Constitution is more than two centuries old.)

If you recall Dennis Baron's recent OpEd on the question of the "regulated, being" controversy, you'll be pleased to note that the Spanish translation places the same commas in the same places. However, note that the phrase "en caso de ser necesaria" removes the indeterminacy that the founders' dangling participle introduced. Babelfish translates this one back into English as: "in case of being necessary..."

Of course, translating very libremente, we can find all sorts of gems, like the "security of a free state" line (which in some ways I prefer to "the common defense"). Here's what Babelfish makes of the entire Enmienda:

A regulated affluent military service, in case of being necessary to maintain the security of a free State, the right of people to have and to carry arms, does not have to be infringed.

What's weird is that, leaving out the funny stuff [that, by the way, is another dangling participle that introduces ambiguity into this sentence], this re-trans does convey important pieces of the Second Amendment's meaning. "The right of the people to keep and bear arms," for example, survives with remarkably little disfigurement.

Anyway, I have neither axe to grind nor gun to check on this matter, except to note what every translator knows: Nothing means exactly what it says. Speakers of Spanish and eager learners alike are urged to try and do a better translation, in either direction.

The Los Angeles County budget is balanced and in on time. Shouldn't that be enough to satisfy the editorial board? It isn't:

In most organizations, a well-crafted budget reflects a rational structure, skilled management and careful oversight. But L.A. County's fiscal achievements are instead paired with dysfunctional, and sometimes deadly, programs.

Read the rest here. The board also weighs in on the Supreme Court's refusal to hear a whistle-blower's hostile workplace suit and the U.S.'s trade complaints against China.

On the opposite page screenwriter Wesley Strick wonders exactly when actress and murder victim Lana Clarkson went from making B-movies to living them, and how, as a Southern California girl, she didn't learn from the cautionary tale of Sharon Tate. Edward Taehan Chang asks if the Virginia Tech gunman's Korean ethnicity really matters, while columnist Ronald Brownstein reflects on the Tech tragedy, President Bush's role, and prevention.

Kudos to City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo for creating a new system under which someone can have his name removed from a gang injunction. Since 1993, when gang injunctions came into popular use by law enforcement, not one Angeleno has managed to successfully challenge the system. And that can't be becaus