What I didn’t see in last week’s obituaries of clothing designer Liz Claiborne was the odd, ugly and creepy Internet-based crusade against her as a racist and Satanist.

First, the racist rumor: that sometime in 1990 or 1991, Claiborne had been a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show, where she announced –- and here’s the first not-credible moment – that she doesn’t design for black women, because their hips are too big, or because they make her clothes look bad, or because she doesn’t need the money. In the second non-credible moment, Oprah is described in these mass e-mails as wearing a Liz Claiborne dress -- hard to believe even in Oprah’s pre-billionaire days. Oprah then supposedly stormed off the set, declaring that she will ‘’never’’ wear a Liz Claiborne dress, and returned wearing a bathrobe – a nice touch that, as the Mikado said, added verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

This urban legend was given voice by director Spike Lee: ‘’it definitely happened,’’ he was quoted as saying in the October 1992 ‘’Esquire,’’ and he was quoted as urging every black woman in America to throw out any Liz Claiborne items in her closet and never buy another Claiborne garment again.

Claiborne had already retired from her company in 1989, and she never did appeare on Oprah. But never mind – this was too juicy not to pass along. And I received over the years several e-mails declaring this as fact and asking me to boycott Liz Claiborne and to urge my friends to do so.

Ditto the equally groundless Internet declaration that Claiborne had been on Oprah’s show – it was unclear whether this was the same appearance or a different one – and declared that she gave 30 percent of her dough to the Church of Satan..

Now had any of this been true, Claiborne shareholders would have fallen all over each other racing to court to file lawsuits.

Anyone who’s opened an e-mail in the last decade has received some of these Internet urban legends. Perfectly sensible people [including some of my relatives] who would never give a moment’s credence to a poison pen letter, or to the ‘’hook on the car door’’ or ‘’black widows in the beehive’’ tales, have no qualms about swallowing and forwarding, eagerly and gullibly, any curious rumor that lands in their in-basket, whether it’s political or cultural, alarming messages about gas boycotts and fast food telemarketing and tainted tampons and gang initiation rituals and dying children trying to set a world record for receiving greeting cards.

Almost all of these can be easily checked out and knocked down by using the same tool – the Internet – at debunking sites like snopes.com. Sometimes I take the time to look them up and send the facts back to the sender. Sometimes …  well, our tendency to kowtow to both ‘’authority’’ voices and to technology combines for the worst of both: if it’s on the Internet, it must be true.

The late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan famously said that the most important skill required of a justice was the ability to count to five—five being a bare majority on the nine-member court. Alas, the mathematics of Supreme Court decisions isn’t that straightforward.

Consider the decision Thursday in which the justices held that an appeals court could presume the reasonableness of a criminal sentence that fell within guidelines established by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The New York Times described U.S. v. Rita as an 8-to-1 decision, while the L.A. Times editorial board said the court ruled "6 to 3 that appeals courts could presume that judges who sentence within the guidelines are acting reasonably."

Which numbers are right? They both are. Eight out of nine justices agreed that the perjury sentence of Victor Rita was reasonable, but only six signed the section of Justice Stephen Breyer’s setting forth the "substantive" principle that within-the-guidelines sentences can be presumed to be reasonable. This sort of mixing and matching means that court watchers have to do more than count to five.

Sometimes, even a five-vote majority can be undermined when one member of the five "writes separately." The late Justice Lewis Powell was fond of that practice. In Branzburg v. Hayes, a 1972 decision, Powell was among the five justices who ruled (Boo!) that reporters don't have a First Amendment right to protect their confidential sources. But Powell also wrote a concurring opinion that seemed to hold out hope that reporters could assert a confidentiality privilege in some circumstances. Some lawyers refer to Branzburg as a 4-1-4 decision.

My favorite splintered decision was a 1989 abortion case called Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. The mathematical complexity of the various justices’ votes is evident in this mind-numbing summary provided by the court itself:

REHNQUIST, C.J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court with respect to Part II-C, the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II-A, and II-B, in which WHITE, O'CONNOR, SCALIA, and KENNEDY, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts II-D and III, in which WHITE and KENNEDY, JJ., joined. O'CONNOR, J., p. 522, and SCALIA, J., post, p. 532, filed opinions concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. BLACKMUN, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which BRENNAN and MARSHALL, JJ., joined, post, p. 537. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, post, p. 560.

Got that?

Columnist Rosa Brooks doesn't think too highly of Hillary Clinton's democratically elected campaign song, Celine Dion's "You and I":

"You and I" is not exactly in its first run as a theme song. It has already been used by Air Canada. Not just "used": Air Canada commissioned the song, and the airline's advertising consultant wrote the lyrics. (Art at its purest, it ain't.) This isn't the first time a presidential campaign has relied on a song that's basically an advertising jingle, but I think it's the first time a campaign has relied on someone else's advertising jingle.

That the "someone else" is a foreign country's national airline doesn't help.

Columnist Joel Stein is already jealous of people who will soon own iPhones. David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who served in the Reagan and H.W. Bush Justice Departments, tell Bush to call congressional Democrats' bluff on subpoenas in the attorney general investigation. USC's Muhammad Sahimi argues that one of the Iranian Americans detained in Tehran isn't receiving the support he deserves in the U.S. because he's not a hard-liner.

The editorial board wonders if L.A.'s top law enforcement official should have to answer to the same standards as a police officer (which would mean getting the axe). The board also thinks the U.N.'s new human rights panel isn't much better than the old one. Finally, the board praises the Supreme Court for bringing some clarity to federal sentencing guidelines.

Letter writers react to Bush's veto of stem cell funding. Burbank's Bill Haakana writes: "So, our decider-in-chief has vetoed another bill supporting stem cell research out of respect for the sanctity of human life. Apparently, that respect stops at the Iraqi border."

Columnist Patt Morrison recounts East Los Angeles' repeated attempts to become its own city:

[H]ere in "East Los" 20 years ago, Richard Anthony Marin — Cheech, short for "Chicharron," Marin — starred in the comedy "Born in East L.A.," about a Mexican American mistakenly deported to Mexico; some things, as recent headlines prove, do not change....East Los has been trying to become its own city since Cheech Marin was a teenager.

The first time, about a week after the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, the bid lost by 340 votes. The second time, in 1964, cityhood supporters couldn't get enough signatures on the petitions. The third time, in 1974, the idea got clobbered by East L.A. voters and buried so deep that it hadn't been undertaken again in more than 30 years.

Contributing editor Gustavo Arellano explains how Orange County has whitewashed its history, ignoring Latino influence. And UC Davis' Daniel Sperling agrees that carbon taxes are a fine idea, but also advocates new robust carbon standards.

The editorial board notes that BBC journalist Alan Johnston has spent 100 days in captivity, and wonders if Hamas will act responsibly and arrange for his release. The board praises British grocer Tesco for opening a store in South L.A., and marvels at the idea of a presidential debate with video questions culled from YouTube.

Letter writers disagree with Cullen Murphy's op-ed claiming that the Roman Empire provides an instructive example of how to handle immigration. Anaheim's Dorothy Bucklew puts the difference simply: "[The Roman Empire] did not welcome immigrants because it used slaves from its conquered territories."

What would Jesus drive? Who knows? But the Vatican knows how Christians should drive—that’s right, carefully.

A new Vatican document titled "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road" contains, yes, Ten Comandments for safe driving. Here beginneth the lesson:

I) Thou shalt not kill.

II) The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.

III) Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.

IV) Be charitable and help your neighbour in need, especially victims of accidents.

V) Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.

VI) Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

VII) Support the families of accident victims.

VIII)  guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.

IX) On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.

X) Feel responsible towards others.

This Decalogue for drivers may be infallible, but it isn’t exhaustive. I would expand the list to make room for an Eleventh Comandment ("Exchange insurance information"), a Twelfth Comandment ("Don't go 55 in the passing lane") and, for cell-phone addicts, the Thirteenth ("Thou shalt shut up and drive").

There’s more to this document, by the way, than the Top Ten List. It also includes a section titled: “Pastoral Ministry for the Liberation of Street Women”!

Finally, a note to conspracy theorists: The Vatican issued its rules of the road on June 19, only a day after the U.S. Supreme Court—which has a Catholic majority—unanimously ruled that passengers in cars are protected by the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment. Coincidence? Or maybe St. Christopher, the patron of travelers, really existed after all.

The editorial board wonders what North Korea will do next, now that its assets have been unfrozen:

[T]he money was the easy part. Much thornier are the negotiations about when, how and in what order North Korea will own up to and begin to dismantle its nuclear programs. It's vital to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons that the United States and its allies try to agree on a roadmap for Pyongyang's full nuclear disarmament. Further delays, distractions or failures now would be an implicit admission that North Korea has become a nuclear weapons state — and that the world is powerless to do much about it. Tehran will be watching the outcome.

The board criticizes politicians who are using new stem cell science to block further stem cell research, and it says L.A. residents must support Police Chief William J. Bratton if he is to have a successful second term.

On the op-ed page, the Shalem Center's Jacob Savage argues for a "three-state solution" for the Middle East, while UCLA's Saree Makdisi explains why the West likes Fatah and why the Palestinians don't. Columnist Ronald Brownstein thinks Speaker Nancy Pelosi could take a lesson from her predecessor, Newt Gingrich.

Letter writers respond to the exploits of City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo. Montrose's Kathleen Boss notes, "maybe it's a good thing to have celebrities around, if only to keep our local elected officials in check."

Is there a teaching job open in the journalism school at USC?

Because City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo knows what’s news, all right.

He shouldn’t be surprised that his wife’s driving record -- smashing the back end of his official SUV while driving with a suspended license, and tooling around town in the family car with no insurance -- makes big headlines.

After all, his own office sent out an e-memo last December about what is ‘’newsworthy.’’ In the course of reminding attorneys in his criminal branch not to talk to the press without clearance, the e-mail offered some pointers on what makes news:

``Cases involving celebrities [no matter how minor],'' along with ``cases involving an elected official, political figure, community leader or other notable person … ‘’

Class, we've got ourselves a twofer: Paris Hilton, a celebrity, drives on a suspended license, and goes to jail for probation violation – and Michelle Delgadillo, the wife of an elected official and political figure, drives her husband’s city-owned SUV on a suspended license and backs it into a pole -- and the city pays for the repairs, until Delgadillo writes a check nearly three years later.

What else makes news in the Delgadillo School of Journalism? When the victim sustains ``unusually serious injuries.’’ Hello, sweetheart, get me rewrite: it may turn out that the chief casualty of Delgadillo’s wife’s poor driving and his poor judgment … is his own political standing.

You, the FLP, react to recent Opinion Dailies.

My daily "Semper Fidel" draws a hip-hip for Castro from Los Angeles' own Matthew Glesne:

Did I miss the larger point of today's broadside against Fidel Castro, or was it really just about calling the international left "pathetic" as well as naming and shaming those who dare visit Cuba? If so, one could be forgiven for having a different opinion about who is looking desperate and pathetic at this moment in time, particularly given the distortions and things left out of the piece.

As an opening salvo, you inexplicitly call the leaders of Vietnam, Venezuela and Bolivia a "murderous row of left-wing luminaries." While this sort of baseless name calling is not new in the US press, I would not expect it from an editorial page editor of the LA Times. The leaders of the dozens of other nations that have visited Cuba this year are apparently not as exciting to mention. Neither is the fact that Cuba was elected to head the Non-Aligned Movement - still the largest, most important bloc of developing countries in the world.

While you seem to certainly have some fascination with Cuba, it is a shame you apparently do not care to scratch the surface of the events you're commenting on. If so, you'd would have found that the Vietnam visit was long in planning, and from the way Fidel went on and on about their country's successes, it appears both countries see benefit from cavorting with the other. Ortega and Chavez on the other hand, were in Havana for working meetings based around the recent ALBA conference, whereby those country's comparative advantages are able to be put to use. Thousands have sight, health care and affordable energy supplies for the first time out of the deals.

Cuba is said to have produced a "catastrophic economic model." While this is certainly conventional wisdom, an actual glance at statistics might propel one to think otherwise. During the decades of great neo-liberalism, Cuba has been one of the best performing economies (even with a horrendous depression after the fall of the USSR). For three years in a row Cuba and Venezuela have had the top growing economies in the region (the CIA pegs it at 8%, using an outdated formula tailored for capitalist countries. Cuba says 12%).

You call Castro's writing "absurd and paranoid," apparently unimpressed by the US' sordid history on the island or that the US maintains a policy of regime change, has recently spent millions on creating a "plan for transformation" and created a new CIA office dedicated to Cuba and Venezuela. Never mind the illegal and immoral embargo that gets shot down at the UN by a new record landslide each year (184-4 this year I think).

Sincerely disappointed
Matthew Glesne
Los Angeles
aviewtothesouth.blogspot.com

Eric Root takes a gander at Michael McGough's "We're all scandal-plagued attorneys general now," and lays down the law:

Being Hispanic is not enough.  Gonzales has violated his oath of office, the Constitution, the laws and treaties of the United States, and any reasonable standard of administrative competence.  If that record is not enough to have him removed from office, by firing or impeachment, then we are no longer a nation of laws.  Since the Bush Administration's record shows that our President intends turn the United States into something other than a nation of laws, the impeachment process must begin.  Political calculations are not enough; this is not business as usual. 

Eric Root

Something that hasn't been mentioned in the pie fight over Barack Obama's infamous (D-Punjab) memo: The mainly agricultural Punjab region does not appear to be a major factor in the concerns over outsourcing to which Obama and Clinton have both, at various times, payed demagogic lip service. If we're talking economics it's all about Karnataka, or maybe Andhra Pradesh. Can we just state the obvious? Neither Clinton nor Obama has a clue about Punjab, and the reason Clinton made her original getting-elected-in-Punjab wisecrack and Obama used it to smear her is that they're both thinking of Daddy Warbucks' lethal manservant.

That's just the tip of what the two candidates don't know. Kerry Howley puts some perspective on the matter by noting that Obama should be apologizing not only for putting down Indian Americans but for pandering to anti-trade buffoons:

It would be a mistake to confuse the posturing of presidential politics with actual policy. Obama’s views on trade remain buried in the equivocating palaver he advances as policy positions. Clinton voted against CAFTA and expressed opposition to the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement. She has attacked the Bush administration for saying that outsourcing makes the economy stronger. If Clinton's rhetoric is less hateful, her policies may not be much different.

Still, the willingness of campaigns to stoke fear of peaceful exchange with outsiders is disconcerting. During the 2004 Democratic National Convention—Obama’s coming out party—the Illinois state senator spoke out against “those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers.” It’s nice, I guess, that Obama wants to bring people together. Now perhaps his research team can find a social glue superior to a shared xenophobia.

Related: Rock to the mellow tones of Panjabi Hit Squad.

This week's U.S. Supreme Court decision protecting the privacy rights of passengers in cars is notable not only for its unanimity but also for its reliance on common sense—a virtue lacking in the California Supreme Court ruling the justices overturned.

You don’t have to be Oliver Wendell Holmes—or David Souter, the author of this opinion—to recognize that passengers in a car stopped by police would think twice about skedaddling before officers could question or search them. Common sense also tells lawyer and layperson alike that a lot of mischief—and some mayhem—might ensue from a legal rule that passengers with something to hide should bolt from the scene.

Less obvious is another observation in Souter’s opinion: that a holding that passengers are not “seized” for Fourth Amendment purposes “would invite police officers to stop cars with passengers regardless of probable cause or reasonable suspicion of anything illegal.”

A man's car is not his castle. Police can still stop a vehicle for minor infractions and subject driver and passenger alike to uncomfortable if not unreasonable searches. But it’s good news that justices as diverse in their views as David Souter and Samuel Alito recognize that the idea that stopped passengers are free to go is a legal fiction.

One of the buslines on my route has been canceled as of the end of this week. 

As of the beginning of this month, my fare increased 20%, with the approval of the editorial board.

So if price increases 20% and service decreases 50%, how fast does a light rail train need to be traveling in the opposite direction for the collision with my bus to put me out of my misery?

Demographer Richard Alba argues that the Senate's revived immigration plan could preclude racial justice for native-born Americans:

Rather than having to invest in the often deplorable schools attended by home-grown minorities — disadvantaged African Americans and the children of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia — the U.S. could simply attract the cream of the talent from other countries, individuals whose educations have been paid for by their home societies.

It's true that many of these immigrants also will be nonwhite — the racial diversity at the top of American society seems certain to increase either way. But failing to exploit the impending opportunity to reduce our racial cleavages will leave a huge native population to continue to suffer from blocked opportunities.

Author Pico Iyer explains the funny economics of flying business class, and Benjamin Zycher argues that divestment won't work against Iran. Columnist Jonah Goldberg wonders if Americans are the only ones who want a peaceful, democratic Middle East.

The editorial board demands a vote for the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives. It criticizes California Assembly members for reversing years of local campaign reform efforts, and keeps an eye on City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, who reluctantly came clean on who crashed his city car.

Letter writers react to The Times' coverage of Gaza. South Pasadena's Robert Aronoff asks, "In all fairness, will The Times now refer to Gaza as 'occupied Gaza'?"

You, the FLP, weigh in on Ronald Brownstein's Opinion Daily "Border brouhaha baffles Beltway"...

Says Joe H.:

Ronald Brownstein's analysis of the immigration bill presently before the Senate was terrible. Smells of intellectual dishonesty. He ignored the past history (1986 amnesty) that very little enforcement will be carried out by under funding or government excuses as to why they cannot enforce the law against employers. Business past and continuing history of corrupting the visa programs which they will do with guest worker programs by simply ignoring the requirements. And it the latter two problems are improved the illegal immigrants can be counted on to ignore the requirements because what reason does a person have to expend the time, energy and money to try to work here legally when lying and deceiving have been so easy in the past and will continue to be.

From Westlake Village, Peggy Albrecht teases:

Dear Mr. Brownstein,

I write for a blog, and the easiest way to explain what I'm hoping the Times will give a lot of attention to, is to refer you to part of my post. This is something that has eluded the press, for the most part, and is very alarming to many of us who do know about it. Can you, or someone at the L.A. Times write about this?   

Thank you!

Here's an excerpt from my post:

President Bush, without so much as issuing a press statement, on May 9 signed a directive that granted near dictatorial powers to the office of the president in the event of a national emergency declared by the president.

John Forbes gives the raw truth:

The problem is the raw hypocrisy of folks like McCain arguing for "comprehensive" reform on the absurd premise that everything needs to be fixed at once.

First, we need a technofence to control the border.

Second, we need serious penalties for employers who hire illegal aliens, thus drying up the demand.

Then, 5 years from now, the U.S. could have a more rational discussion about whether to reward illegal immigrants for breaking various laws (such as identity theft) and whether they have to pay back taxes.

From Tulsa in the Sooner State, Steve Bowen pulls the trigger:

I chose to not read past Mr. Brownstein's endorsement of the preposterous "triggers" in the new immigration bill.  The "sense of congress" is that all triggers will be competed within eighteen months.  No credible person actually believes that all the processes required to begin the work of the triggers will be in place in eighteen months, let alone have all of them completed.  These so-called triggers are nothing more than brazen deceit.  That Mr. Brownstein harbors such duplicity brings little honor to the Times.

This legislation is no more than another attempt to fool the American people with promises that, historically, have shown themselves to be of no value; that is always watch what they do, not what they say.  The immigration system of this country is not broken.  Nobody knows whether or not it actually works, because it remains a system that those charged with enforcement have chosen to ignore.  And most Americans are clamoring to know what will happen if the government will simply enforce the current laws--before we are again lined up to become suckers for more of the same.  That's what should be given a chance to work.  Not this charade.

In England, judges tend to mouth off more than their American counterparts, especially when it comes time to impose a sentence. It’s not much of a trial if the sentencing judge doesn’t deliver a lecture in which he calls the convicted defendant “wicked.” Only the other day the Daily Express quoted Mr. Justice Butterfield (a real person, not a character from  “Rumpole of the Bailey”) using the W word in sentencing seven convicted terrorists.

Is U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who sentenced Scooter Libby to 30 months in prison, a closet Anglophile? You have to wonder in light of Walton’s tongue-wagging over a brief filed on Libby’s behalf by a dozen legal scholars. With heavy sarcasm of the high school variety, the judge  responded by saluting their “impressive show of public service” before suggesting that they offer their services on a similar basis to less well-connected defendants:

"The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics' willingness in the future to step up to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions." Burn!

Or maybe  he doesn’t want top legal talent to  “step up to the plate” in lower-profile cases after all. In spurning the legal luminaries' suggestion that he allow Libby to remain free during an appeal,  Mr. Justice Walton cracked that their brief was "not something I would expect from a first-year law student.” Double burn!

At least he didn’t call them wicked.

The ever-reliable PaidContent.org recently reported that Sony is all but yanking the respirator out of Connect, its online store for downloadable music, video and e-books. Connect launched with an airborne concert by Sheryl Crow, but that was the only part of the venture that ever took flight. Read more at the Bit Player blog.

The editorial board thinks Hamas' Gaza takeover is a disaster:

The emergence of "Hamastan" between Israel and Egypt is an unqualified disaster for the world. It's especially cruel for the 51% of the Palestinians in Gaza who did not vote for Hamas in 2006 but now find themselves living under an illegal, self-declared Islamic republic. This outcome is further evidence that President Bush has spent six years allowing a terrible foreign policy problem to grow unimaginably worse. The Hamas takeover is a victory for its key patron, Iran. The only consolation for the U.S. is that relations between Hamas and Al Qaeda, which does have some presence in Gaza, are poor.

The board is pleased Congress is finally asking for answers about the Bush administration's use of "alternative" interrogation techniques, and urges Bush to allow his aides to testify on the record about U.S. attorney firings.

Columnist Niall Ferguson remembers the British maxim of divide and rule, and argues that the Middle East has plenty of the former and too little of the latter. Columnist Gregory Rodriguez says Los Angeles has to shift its focus from first generation immigrants to their children. Boston University professor Andrew J. Bacevich argues that a bigger army will only bring more problems, and Cal State Fullerton's Jeffrey Brody recalls meeting Vang Pao twenty years ago, and reflects on the charges against him of plotting to overthrow the government of Laos.

Letter writers react to the tragedy at King-Harbor hospital. Washington state's Gordon Tagge notes, "What we saw on the video at King-Harbor is healthcare delivered DMV-style. Is that really what we want?"

You, the Fabulous Little People, weigh in on recent Opinion Dailies:

Of "Battle Royalty," Jon Healey's savage nightmare journey into the coming internet radio apocalypse, David Young of Wilmington, N.C. writes:

In point of fact, a Happy Meal is only $3.29. 

Seriously, though, Mr. Newhouse seems to ignore the fact that the rates set by a separate CARP for Satellite Radio deemed fair compensation for labels and artists to be just 7.5% of revenue.  By avoiding that little tidbit, Mr. Newhouse seems to be ignoring the fact that as a percentage, webcasters are being asked to pay anywhere from 75% to upwards of 200% of gross revenue in royalties.  Bear in mind that gross revenue has not been adjusted for overhead, operating costs, etc.  So, while what webcasters are being asked to pay may amount to TWO happy meals in terms of actual dollars (per listener, per year), as a percentage of their revenue, it is grossly overreaching….especially when contrasted by what Satellite Radio is required to pay (a mere 7.5% of gross revenues).  There may be issues needing to be addressed by the current business models for Internet Radio…but belittling the plight of current webcasters in such a biased manner is simply asinine, in my view.  The way in which the rates were set for webcasters goes against the very nature of what is fair and just in this country.  If 7.5% of revenue is acceptable to labels and artists for Satellite Radio, it stands to reason that it should also be acceptable for Webcasting.  Why the need for the double standard?

In my point of view, this whole affair basically comes down to an issue of controlling content dispersal on the web.  Right now, the labels don’t control the distribution channels on the web.  By eliminating smaller webcasters, and subjecting larger ones to ever-increasing fees, it seems to me the RIAA and SoundExchange are seeking to regain control of all music distribution.  Were I Pandora, Live365 or other webcasters, I would be charging a “finders-fee” for each and every song that is purchased and downloaded through a link from my service.  It’s only logical that if the labels and artists expect to be paid for use of their music, that a service that directly connects a listener to an online store where that listener can instantly purchase a song should be compensated for providing that service in the first place.

Omaha, Nebraska's own Jim Daskiewicz has had enough:

As a listener fed up with the big entertainment giants, sign me up as fan of niche music.

I'm with the Save Net Radio Coalition.

Note to the big producers, I'm not stealing your stuff, I'm just not interested.  My money goes to the labels and producers that provide music I want to listen to.  And, oh yes, netcasters aren't decreasing my purchases, they are introducing me to new artists who are reaping the benefits.

Related: If you, like David and Jim, have an internet radio jones, you may also want to plug your earphones into this week's Dust-Up between Jay Rosenthal and Kurt Hanson.

Michael McGough's poignant yet bold profile of the junior senator from the Ocean State, "Whitehouse takes Gonzales to the woodshed," draws the following response from Jason Brown in Germany:

Thank you for writing about this.  My grandfather, Martin Rossman, worked at the LA Times for 30 years until approx. 1992, primarily on the Foreign Desk.

I currently live in Germany and follow your paper online everyday.  I was quite pleased when you (finally) changed course on your opinion of the Iraq War.  It was probably illegal and now is only a chance for weapons manufacturers to please stockholders, young kids (both American and Middle Eastern) to die needlessly and a chance for the rest of the world (except for Albania, apparently) to think we are a rogue nation.

Please keep up on the Attorney scandal.  I have been following this case since late January and am convinced that the politicization of our Justice system might be the worst part of the Bush Administration, and that is saying a lot.

Please look more into Debra Yang (former USA in LA) and her apparent 1.5 million signing bonus (like she's Russell Martin on the Dodgers or something) for leaving public life and taking a job at the very law firm who is representing Jerry Lewis, the same man she was investigating before leaving her job.  Was she forced out as well?  Imagine if the law firm was encouraged by the White House to make Yang "an offer she couldn't refuse", 1.5 million bucks and now all her info on the case is perhaps lost because she works for the law firm that represents him.

Please check and see if major investigations in LA and SD are still moving forward or have they been stalled since this debacle in December 2006.

Congresswoman Sanchez is of Lakewood district is doing an excellent job of questioning justice department officials in House Judiciary Committee hearings.

All right, I've got to teach a university class on American newspapers here in Germany and will probably use your editorial on Senator Whitehouse in class this week or next, thanks!

cheers
Jason
www.jasonconga.blogspot.com

My searing-in-its-intensity woolgatherer on Carol Shloss' suit against the Joyce estate, "Portrait of the old man as a copyright miser," draws a cheer from Orlando, Florida's Gregory W. Herbert, Esq....

thanks for the in-depth reporting and analysis.  important topic for IP lawyers and anyone interested in the internet too.

...and a jeer from Shloss herself:

I read Tim Cavanaugh's "Portrait of the old man as a copyright miser" (5 June 2007) with interest. Being the "plaintiff of choice" in the case, I can tell you that the suit was not a "laundry-list" suit, nor did it involve issues of privacy that gave Stephen James Joyce some "sentimentally compelling" argument. It involved real damage. Mr. Joyce condemned my biography of Lucia Joyce without having read a word of it. He did not object to the content of the book (how could he?) but to its very right to exist. Having engineered an expurgated text with his refusal of permissions, he argued that the resulting narrative was not scholarship, but "a joke." Having created a hellish situation for everyone involved in publishing the book, he called the suit a "nuisance."

Mr Cavanaugh, who has obviously not read the book either, concludes that it is a "sordid family history few of us would want to see made public." Had he bothered to open the covers of the biography, he would have discovered a disturbing narrative without a demonstration of its veracity--the very qualities that stoked Katie Roiphe's disparaging review. Precisely.

This is the issue that prompted the lawsuit in the first place. The harm done by overly aggressive and controlling estates is not only real but far reaching, as Cavanaugh's opinion piece continues to demonstrate. He simply recirculates the negative judgment of a carefully researched work that was damaged by the extension of copyright laws, by the litigious nature of an angry heir, and by the fear engendered by his aggression.

Thank heaven for the Stanford Fair Use Project that, at this moment, is one of the few resources for scholars who have difficult stories to tell and who need the truth provided by historical evidence to confirm their work. Carol Loeb Shloss

These are the runners up. The clear winner in recent reader mail volume is Ronald Brownstein's "Border brouhaha baffles Beltway," whose correspondence we'll be publishing in a separate post. Thanks a lot for writing, and keep those cards and letters coming!

Thomas Scully, former administrator of the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs who helped craft a bailout of L.A. public hospitals over four years ago, says closing King-Harbor isn't the answer:

So, when the federal government sees a hospital repeatedly fail its surveys, doesn't it have an obligation to pull its federal funding or shut the hospital down? Yes, and the government does, if there is any viable option. But shuttering King-Harbor is really not a smart or realistic long-term move. It may make for good TV, but it won't help the next Edith Isabel Rodriguez, and it won't help the next kid who gets into an ambulance in desperate need of a nearby hospital.... Given the situation, the best the federal government can do is to poke, prod and push the hospital — and the county — to improve.

UC Irvine professor Jack Miles remembers surviving a perforated bowel — the same ailment that killed Edith Isabel Rodriguez at King-Harbor — thanks to the Arcadia Methodist Hospital ER. Columnist Rosa Brooks wonders if Albanians are the only fans that Bush has left, and columnist Joel Stein considers what may happen to syndicated "Law & Order" episodes if star Fred Thompson runs for president.

The editorial board says democracy isn't dead, even if it's causing civil wars in the Middle East. It responds to Los Angeles schools Supt. David L. Brewer's state of the schools address, and encourages  solar power legislation for the state.

Letter writers react to the tragedy at King-Harbor. Garden Grove's Margery Sucher says: "I recall Yvonne Brathwaite Burke about two years ago saying, 'That hospital will be closed over my dead body.' Well, Yvonne?"

The editorial board thinks Bush should pay attention to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's missile proposal:

Kremlin watchers warn of the ascendance of hard-liners who favor rapprochement with China and expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to include Iran and add a security treaty. That would be an ominous step toward a new Cold War. President Bush took a welcome step toward easing tensions last week by pledging to give due consideration to Putin's proposal to base missile defenses in Azerbaijan. (Bush was also smart to invite "Vladimir — I call him Vladimir" — to his summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, over the Fourth of July holiday.) Putin's gambit could be a cynical ploy to try to split the U.S. from its Czech and Polish allies. Still, that offer and other moves signal an important change in Moscow's position on Iran, which it has never considered an enemy.

The board says that L.A. residents may have do more than their city officials have asked to conserve water. The board also sees no problem with a Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger. 

Columnist Patt Morrison wonders why she doesn't care about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's marital woes. Contributing editor Jonathan Chait says it's okay to change your mind on Iraq, and the Brookings Institution's Bruce Riedel outlines Islamist threats against France. Author Kenneth D. Ackerman asks if the war on terror will spawn its version of J. Edgar Hoover.

Letter writers want answers from City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo. See why Hollywood's Rosemarie Wheeler thinks Delgadillo's wife "seems to be on a par with Paris Hilton."

We recently urged the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has been criticized under chairman Christopher Cox for cozying up to Wall Street, to push the Supreme Court to hear Regents of the University of California v. Merrill Lynch.  The suit, filed on behalf of Enron’s investors, seeks damages from Enron’s bankers for their part in the Houston energy company’s fraudulent activities and subsequent implosion. 

We argued that the SEC owed its support to investors and to itself.  Because of the legal principle at stake, not allowing the suit to proceed would amount to offering financiers a “get-out-of-jail-free” card: carte blanche to commit fraud at a handsome profit. It would also undermine the SEC’s ability to enforce its own regulations and protect shareholders, possibly eroding confidence in American securities markets.

Happily, the SEC sided with Enron’s investors in a 3-2 vote, with Chairman Cox joining the majority.

Not so happily, Solicitor General Paul Clement, who files friend-of-the-court briefs at the urging of executive branch agencies like the SEC, chose to disregard the recommendation.  Instead, he stayed silent, swayed by Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson, who spoke up on the bankers’ behalf, arguing that the possibility of third-party liability would roil the U.S. financial markets.  (How about the possibility of unchecked third-party fraud?  Wouldn't that roil markets, too?)

President Bush also chimed in on the matter.  He said that the expense of “frivolous” shareholder lawsuits was too great to allow cases like the UC Regents’ to move forward.

It’s nothing if not predictable.  The Bush Administration has asked the Supreme Court to restrict the legal rights of investors before. 

The Regents' lawyer says a cynic might argue that Cox’s vote to back shareholders was little more than a face-saving ploy.  Certain that the Bush Administration would never urge the courts to take the Regents’ case, he could support it—and appear sympathetic to the shareholders he’s supposed to protect—without doing real harm to his Wall Street friends.

Who knows if there’s any truth to that.  But, thanks to the Administration, the end result is the same. Shareholders, you're increasingly on your own.

Photo credit: Filmakers Library

Determined to lose no chance to infiltrate the mighty lot of Paramount Pictures, I caught a screening the other day of the Michael Winterbottom joint A Mighty Heart, with Angelina Jolie playing Mariane Pearl and a guy named Dan Futterman playing murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (with juicy supporting roles for Irfan Khan and Will Patton). This is not a review, but for the record: The movie was much better than I had expected, with the caveat that I was expecting it to be terrible. The computer and cellphone procedural stuff was mercifully free of OVERRIDE-SECURITY-SYSTEM-type flapdoodle; the post-Sodergodardantino jump-cut/time-shift hokum was unobtrusive though regrettably not absent; and the depiction of police torture (a practical example of the mostly theoretical ticking-time-bomb dilemma, by the way) was bracingly ambiguous.

This is one of those movies where they regularly flash timestamps and datelines up on the screen, so my blazing glimpse of the obvious came in the constant reminders that the events depicted occured in January and February of 2002, barely a year into the Bush Administration, and more than a year before the invasion of Iraq supposedly created a zillion jihadists. I'm not defending the invasion of Iraq, which I knew was a bad idea even back when it was just a government-mandated inevitability. But something bears repeating: Big bad President Bush didn't create the jihad. Long before he grew into his historic role, cunning people were willing and able to kidnap and behead a cautious, well connected reporter and broil 3,000 Americans (and others) to death, all for the crime of being Americans. (Someday Allah will explain to me the irony that these same people are so ignorant of their enemies' culture it's possible they didn't even know Daniel Pearl was Jewish before they grabbed him.)

The anti-dhimmitude zealots, who always seem to think I'm against them, deserve credit for remembering this truth. (Why haven't these guys discovered Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, with its description of Sunnis as people who have "carried on, through all ages, an hereditary war with all mankind, though they neither covet nor envy their possessions?") One of the by-products of super-euphemized diplomatic speech (using words like engage, disarm or intervene to mean inflict violence upon, for example) is that people start to treat the metaphors and euphemisms literally. It's easy enough to believe the invasion of Iraq has given new life to the international jihad, but listen to enough OBL stemwinders about Andalusia and you start to realize the stuff we think will infuriate Islamists is often different from what actually infuriates them. (As for the hypothetical fence-sitter, who was just about to become a notary public when the invasion of Iraq drove him into the arms of al Qaeda, well, there may be many of those people, but just how many is something former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld would have called an "unknown unknown.") At some level, violence and suppression are tools that need to be used against violent fanatics, and the question is how well you use those tools. That Bush so far seems to have failed at this test (or has he?) doesn't mean the test has gone away.

Garrison Keillor learns to love Los Angeles:

A Midwesterner goes to L.A. and feels a certain sense of moral disapproval. The squalor, the opulence, the expense of natural resources to support middle-class life in an arid place, the fascination with the misshapen lives of young celebs. It isn't the Canaan it was for our grandparents. We look at it and see a rundown bungalow selling for half a million and cars inching along the 405 and say, "No thanks."

But it's good to know there's another point of view. The sun does shine there, and people enjoy their lives — the spirit of la pura vida, or the love of life for its own sake, the opposite of Calvinist America.

Editor and author Adam Bellow (son of Saul) gives recognition to his Papa Joe and other stepdads in time for Father's Day. Former Mexican foreign minister Jorge G. Castaneda points out that the immigration bill -- dead or alive -- has a significant geopolitical impact, and columnist Ronald Brownstein profiles "the two Hillarys."

The editorial board is skeptical about Sudan's recent acceptance of U.N. peacekeepers. It advocates shutting down Guantanamo as the first step to restoring American values, and says that a lawsuit against the Department of Water and Power is a loss for taxpayers no matter who wins.

Letter writers wonder if the Bill of Rights should extend beyond our borders. Los Angeles' Ronald O. Richards notes: "Of course, the Bush administration has shown no interest in protecting constitutional liberties even within the borders of the United States, much less outside of the country, so it would appear that this will continue to be a moot point, at least until January 2009."

Columnist Jonah Goldberg has a not-so-modest proposal to get rid of public schools:

[O]ne of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run 90% of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run 90% of the schools — particularly when it gets terrible results?

Dickinson College's Crispin Sartwell remembers Richard Rorty, while the U.S. Naval War College's Christopher J. Fettweis declares the Iraq war lost, and lays out what that means. Erika Schickel reminds the South Coast Air Quality Management District that humans have a "prehistoric jones" for fire.

The editorial board calls for immediate peace talks in Iraq, serious energy reform in the Senate, and a payroll system that actually works for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Letter writers respond to Sally Denton's assessment of how Mitt Romney's Mormonism will impact his campaign. See why Robert P. Sechler of Seal Beach thinks "an analogy between Romney and John F. Kennedy is a bucket with some big holes."

Online, in this week's dust-up, publisher Kurt Hanson and attorney Jay Rosenthal discuss the economics of online music. Today they ask if webcasting should be open to hobbyists, or just those who can make money for labels and artists.

Magazine editor Michael Patrick Leahy writes this week's blowback, critiquing coverage of the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

God knows that George W. Bush mangles the English language. So does David Letterman, who mines Bush gaffes for his “Great Moments in Presidential Speeches” feature. So, presumably, do Pope Benedict XVI and his entourage.

That’s why I’m skeptical about news reports that Bush “drew gasps” at the Vatican for addressing the pope as “Sir” instead of “Your Holiness.” The vaunted Vatican diplomatic corps must have prepared the pontiff for the president’s problems with protocol. And some of the American monsignori are probably Letterman fans.

There are plenty of reasons to beat up on Bush, but dissing the pope isn’t one of them. Besides, Bush is in good company. The great Catholic poet Gerald Manley Hopkins addresses God himself as “sir” in his poem "Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord." And "Sir" is a title of respect derived from "sire."

More to the point, since Vatican II it has become more acceptable to dispense with medieval courtesy titles in addressing the clergy, though traditionalist Catholics bewail this practice. At my previous newspaper, the non-Catholic editor consulted me about how he should refer to the Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh. I assured him that "Bishop" was appropriate and that he needn't address the bishop as "Your Excellency" (or kiss his ring).

It wasn’t always thus. I remember, as a Catholic schoolboy, being startled when Ralph McGill, the famous editor of the Atlanta Constitution, addressed a Catholic bishop as "Sir" on a Sunday TV talk show. And I recall the trouble visited on one of  my classmates at our Christian Brothers school when he said  "Yes, sir" to Brother Michael, our typing teacher. "I am not a sir," the good Brother thundered. But that was 1965.

The pope has been called worse things than "Sir." I suspect he reacted to Bush's "gaffe" with papal indulgence.

The editorial board writes at length about how to get a revised Kyoto Protocol back on track:

What's needed is a new, improved version of Kyoto that brings India and China onboard and commits them to "grow green," but still leaves the tougher cuts up to those nations better able to make them, such as the U.S., Canada, Japan and Europe. A better treaty would scrap the unworkable carbon-trading scheme and instead impose new taxes on carbon-based fuels.

On the op-ed page, University of Michigan law professor Samuel R. Gross discusses the likelihood of false convictions, debunking conventional wisdom that the rate is far less than one percent. Columnist Gregory Rodriguez explains why moving away from family-based immigration isn't the American way, and columnist Niall Ferguson recaps the G-8 summit and whether it should really be the G-11. TV writer and kids' baseball coach Jeff Strauss pens a letter to his teams' families.

On the letters page, readers react to the immigration bill impasse in the Senate. Santa Ana's Dan Naber asks what's on a lot of minds: "Is it going to be the same government as the one that can't get a passport out in three months that will be responsible for enforcing whatever regulations come from an immigration bill?"

Back in the early aughts, I wrote a column about the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) that came to an angsty, forelock-tugging, hand-wringing, chin-stroking inconclusion: MEMRI's agenda was pretty obviously to find the most extreme and daffy points of view in Arabic and Farsi media and present those as representative of the mainstream, but (forelock-tugging alert) it was also true that the kind of wackiness found at MEMRI had far more mainstream currency than many Americans (still in the grip of the unexamined except-for-a-few-bad-apples-most-Muslims-are-good-hardworking-folks platitudes that had currency at the time) were aware. So who was to blame? MEMRI for trying to make Muslims look like nuts, or Muslims for making MEMRI's job so easy? How to decide? My hands wrung, my heart ached, beads of cartoon flopsweat flew from my brow...

A few years on, I think there's less need to draw the conclusion, because to a substantial degree the dilemma has gone away. Liberal and rational Arab pundits—once as rare as Halley's Comet in the MEMRIverse—now appear with great regularity (albeit usually posed against fiery imams or maniacal theologians in televised debates). Whether this is a matter of conscious choice by MEMRI or a reflection of greater openness in the increasingly competitive Arab media market is an interesting question, but it certainly makes for a more entertaining selection. Case in point is this edited Al Jazeera exchange between Arab Students Union Chairman Ahmad Al-Shater and Syrian author Nidhal Naisa, featuring some astonishingly forthright criticism from Naisa:

Nidhal Naisa: "This decline is evident in... Take, for example, that show, 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.' This shows demonstrates the degree of decline in values and knowledge in these societies. With all due respect to the host of the show, this isn't the issue... He sits opposite that 'genius' guest, who came from I don't know where. They bring this young 'genius' guest, and he brings along his wife and his whole tribe. They sit the guest down opposite the host, who asks him: 'What is the capital of Egypt - is it Cairo, Mairo, Fairo, or Makro?' The 'genius' scratches his head, and says: 'Could you please eliminate two answers?' The host eliminates two answers, and leaves Cairo and Mairo. Then he says: 'Can I please phone a friend?' He phones a friend, and the whole neighborhood comes over..."

Faysal Al-Qassem: "It's not as bad as that, Nidhal."

Nidhal Naisa: "I swear, Dr. Faysal, it happens with even more idiotic questions."

More of those comedy stylings in the transcript here, but it's worth watching Naisa's televised performance with subtitles, because his delivery is as sprightly and absurd as something out of Moliere. The reason satire closes on Saturday night (or I guess Thursday night in Qatar) is that telling audiences they're stupid is never much of a crowd pleaser. But there's also a truth that the clergy never forget: Making fun of a pious extremist is a great way to get under his skin.

I haven't given up my ambition to write a song using all these cutesy acronyms for Middle East watchdog/research/anti-defamation groups, something like: "My CAMERA brought back the MEMRI of  the FLAME of our love when we still CAIRed for each other out on the MESA." Meanwhile, it's encouraging to see Naisa and others like him working the comedy club/religious debate circuit. 

Steve Landesberg used to tell a joke about a hyperpatriotic Southern sheriff who is cruising along in his police car when he hears a song on the radio that celebrates burning the American flag. The sheriff's reaction: "Disgusting—but kinda catchy."

I had the same reaction to Rep. Tom Tancedro's comments about immigration at Tuesday's Republican presidential debate.  With the clarity that only extremists can summon, Tancredo offered this singable indictment of the immigration bill that stalled in the Senate later in the week:

"We're not just talking about the number of jobs that we may be losing, or the number of kids that are in our schools and impacting our school system, or the number of people that are abusing our hospital system and taking advantage of the welfare system in this country, we're not just talking about that. We're talking about something that goes to the very heart of this nation â-- whether or not we will actually survive as a nation."

Crucial to Tancredo’s doomsaying about national unity is the supposed threat to the dominance of English. Asked later in the debate if his campaign would air advertisements in Spanish, Tancredo replied: "No, I would not advertise in Spanish. Believe me when I tell you this, English — the preservation of the English language is important for us for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because it is what holds us together. It is the glue that keeps a country together, any country. Bilingual countries don't work, and we should not encourage it."

The really catchy line was Tancredo's explanation of how long a a "timeout" for even legal immigration should last:"It'll take this long: until we no longer have to press 1 for English and 2 for any other language."

That comment brought applause in New Hampshire. A couple of days later the  Senate  amended the ill-fated immigration bill by calling on federal agencies to "preserve and enhance the role of English as the national language of the United States of America." (Hedging its bets, the Senate also passed a watered-down version recognizing English as the "common language.")

As supporters of immigration reform regroup, they need to find a way to address the cultural anxiety that Tancredo plays upon so effectively. Clearly it's not enough to point to studies suggesting that the children and grandchildren of Mexican and other immigrants will speak English fluently and will have no need of pressing 2 for Spanish on their cell phones. To drown out the siren song of people like Tancredo, immigration-reform advocates need to sing a different tune, one that make it clear they think assimilation of immigrants is not only inevitable but also desirable.