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In today's pages

The editorial board points out that the road to stopping genocide in Darfur travels through Beijing's 2008 Olympics:

[W]hen director Steven Spielberg, an artistic advisor to the Games, sent a personal letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao requesting a change in policy toward Sudan, it got attention. Shortly afterward, Bashir permitted the 3,000 U.N. peacekeepers, and the timing may not have been coincidental.... China, which sees the Games as a sort of coming-out party, is desperate to avoid an embarrassment like the 1980 boycott of the Moscow Olympics.

Taking up the cause of the little (or littler) guys in two other editorials, the board suggests Microsoft may not be able to bat down the open source movement, and asks the Securities and Exchange Commission to support the UC Regents in their case against Enron's bankers.

On the op-ed page, former Associated Press Venezuela correspondent Bart Jones describes the shenanigans got RCTV kicked off air by Hugo Chavez. George Washington University's Walter Reich explains why King Herod's tomb is the latest hurdle for peace in the Middle East. Patrick Brady asks for amnesty for doping cyclists, and columnist Ronald Brownstein asks why Democrats are harking back to Clinton-era healthcare reforms.

On the letters page, Darcy Vernier of Marina del Rey has figured out how to get U.S. troops out of Iraq: "When every family is looking at their son (and maybe daughter) possibly heading off to deadly war, the resultant outcry will bring the country and the war to a stop."

Online, Tom Tanton of the Institute for Energy Research and Judy Dugan of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights discuss rising gas prices in this week's Dust-Up. Today they consider whether there's a right price for a gallon of gas.

 

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Mark @ News Corpse

In Bart Jones' editorial on Chavez vs. RCTV he asks, "Would a network that aided and abetted a coup against the government be allowed to operate in the United States?" Here's the answer from the just-released Congressional Research Service report, Exceptions to the First Amendment (PDF):

"...the Court has decided that the First Amendment provides no protection to obscenity, child pornography, or speech that constitutes 'advocacy of the use of force or of law violation ... where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or Produce such action.'"

Sadly, this won't stop the hypocrites at Fox from condemning Chavez' actions.


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The Opinion L.A. blog is the work of Los Angeles Times Editorial Board membersNicholas Goldberg, Robert Greene, Carla Hall, Jon Healey, Sandra Hernandez, Karin Klein, Michael McGough, Jim Newton and Dan Turner. Columnists Patt Morrison and Doyle McManus also write for the blog, as do Letters editor Paul Thornton, copy chief Paul Whitefield and senior web producer Alexandra Le Tellier.



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