On Friday, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez came by The Times to give updates on his comprehensive health care plan, and to talk up his latest redistricting proposal for California. Some quotable quotes on the health care negotiations:

"I think we have ample time to put together a plan almost as significant as AB 32."

"I think we're on the verge of doing something huge."

"I think if we fail to deliver comprehensive heatlh care reform between now and Sept. 11 that we're going to set this country back, and I feel the weight of that responsibility."

"[The governor's] got a business issue, I've got a labor issue. and we're both going to have to figure it out. We're both going to have to be Nixon in China."

"The longer I serve as speaker, the more frustrated I become with the federal government and congress -- Democrat or Republican -- because they've done very little on the domestic front, and they haven't delivered for California. They've failed to do anything on heatlh care, they've failed to do anything on transportation. And then when the state doesn't do something, we get beat up for it."

Nuñez also reiterated his enthusiasm for a ballot measure dropping the budget-passing requirement from two-thirds of the Legislature to a simple majority:

"I think next year we run the risk of a very protracted budget battle. But I think that would probably be the last one. And it's going to set us up perfectly for the initiative."

"As long as we don't ask for a simple majority vote on raising taxes, I think the voters will be very amenable to allowing us to do a budget with a [simple] majority."

Tony Snow, who announced today that he's stepping down as White House press secretary, is well liked by reporters not only because of his grace under the pressure of serious illness, but also because he has been good copy and good video. He has star quality, which is what you want in someone in his position, which ought to be called "minister of Information." ("Minister of Propaganda" has unpleasant overtones, but it's also an accurate job description. Presidents need propagandists.)

There was more truth than jollity in President Bush's comment that "it's been a joy to watch him spar with you." Sparring with reporters while the cameras are on was Snow's primary job, and he did it well. He could be funny as well as argumentative, as witnessed by this exchange from a press briefing on Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case:

QUESTION: Are the American people owed some kind of apology from someone in this administration for the leaking of a CIA person's name -- personnel's name?

SNOW: Yes, it's improper to be leaking those names.

QUESTION: You say improper -- you say someone, someone in this administration owes the American public an apology.

SNOW: I'll apologize.

That's entertainment, but it's also a legitimate function for a press secretary, who in the era of televised briefings is essentially doing for the president what Robert Novak and Michael Kinsley used to do for "the right" and "the left" on "Crossfire." He's an advocate, a spinmeister, not a conveyor belt for information about the federal budget or troop levels in Iraq. It's a bonus if the talking head is also a thinking head, and Snow was.

Update: An earlier version of this post contained a photo credited to Carrie Devorah, which was used without her permission.

Our week-long Dust-up about Jerry Brown vs. insufficently environmental localities draws to a close today with a little proposal from Mike Spence:

Rick, next time I'm in Ventura I'll give you some sales tax money at a mixed-use project. That will be my contribution toward a sustainable Ventura. But like most Californians, I will come by car.

To which Rick Cole replies:

I hope you'll visit us often in Ventura to keep tabs on our efforts to revitalize older neighborhoods and recycle old oil fields for high-wage, high-value jobs (we're home to a growing number of green business leaders like Patagonia, Agromin and Stewart+Brown). I hope you'll consider coming by train (Metrolink or Amtrak), and, on arrival, that you'll enjoy our public transit choices. You can hop the No. 12 shuttle (a CNG-powered vehicle painted to look like a classic surf "woody") that runs on compressed natural gas between our downtown and harbor, serving all our major hotels.

Our goal is to be a model of environmental responsibility, thinking globally and acting locally. If you do come by car, I hope you'll consider a hybrid. I'd be happy to give you a tour in my Prius the next time you're in the neighborhood.

Coming up next week: A fat-fight over obesity between professors John F. Banzhaf III and Paul F. Campos. Watch this space!

Would you buy a used car from George W. Bush? Maybe not, but in announcing plans to help homeowners threatened by the subprime mortgage slump, Bush made use of a euphemism often used by car dealers.

Bush said he would help the Federal Housing Administration “to reach families that need help, those with low incomes and less-than-perfect credit records or little savings.” 

When I hear “less than perfect credit” in a television or radio ad, my internal translation machine instantly renders it as “deadbeats.”  It’s the same apparatus that converts “at-risk youth” to “juvenile delinquent.”

Very few people have perfect credit, in the sense of not a single late payment sometime in their life. Very many people are high-risk borrowers whose business is still of interest to finance companies as long as the interest rate is commensurate with their, er, imperfection.

Let’s hope Bush’s use of this term doesn’t carry over into other policy areas. I don’t think Congress will be reassured, for example, if Gen. David Petraeus reports next month that the leaders of Iraq have made “less than perfect” progress toward a reconciliation that would allow U.S. troops to come home.

Columnist Rosa Brooks suggests we succeed in Iraq by withdrawing:

The honest (though not very satisfying) answer is that no one really knows what will happen in Iraq after the United States leaves. Interestingly, a poll in March found that a majority of Iraqis thought the security situation would improve immediately after a U.S. withdrawal. But things could also get worse -- and anyone who claims to have a crystal ball is lying.

We long ago squandered any capacity to guarantee a happy ending for the Iraqis. But, as several other recent Center for American Progress reports suggest, there are still steps we can take to minimize the chance that a U.S. withdrawal will make things worse for them.

Contributing editor Ian Buruma notes that Asians freed Asia, contrary to Bush rhetoric. Peruvian playwright Alonso Alegría points out how politics has intruded on quake relief efforts in his country. And columnist Joel Stein dreams the impossible dream -- of a home urinal.

The editorial board says long waits on death row don't justify sped-up executions. The board also examines the Bush administration's loosening of mining regulations, and Viacom's attempt to rebrand "South Park" through the web.

Readers respond to Tamar Jacoby's fears that new immigration rules will hurt the economy. Irving Moskovitz of Pacific Palisades says, "I guess the Confederacy was right. Without slavery, the entire agricultural (and industrial) economy will collapse."

Friday, Aug. 31 is the 100th birthday of Augustus Hawkins, groundbreaking Los Angeles politician, civil rights crusader and the oldest living former member of Congress. L.A. looks and feels as it does today in part because of Hawkins' work to reshape it, and in part because many of his efforts were overcome by time and shifting political winds. He imprinted his vision on the state and national scenes: lawyers, labor leaders and policy wonks who talk about the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act are referring to one of his landmark legislative accomplishments. He established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. California's Rumford Act, mandating an end to housing discrimination, was introduced years earlier by Hawkins. It was overturned by voters but ultimately reinstated by the courts, and it set the stage for the end of racial restrictions in housing.

Hawkins, a New Deal (and later a Great Society) Democrat, was the second African American elected to the California legislature. He got there in 1935 by defeating the first, Republican Frederick M. Roberts (the great grandson of Sally Hemings and, Roberts claimed, Thomas Jefferson). He was elected to Congress in 1963, became a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and served until 1991, when he was succeeded by Maxine Waters.

Reading the transcripts of a 1992 oral history in which Hawkins speaks to interviewer Clyde Woods is an astonishing history lesson and imperative background for understanding Los Angeles, the state, and the national scene today.

It's hard to believe Hawkins is talking about Los Angeles. He discusses the battles of blacks just to be considered for jobs as streetcar janitors and describes Gilbert Lindsay, head janitor at the Department of Water and Power, whose office became a power center for black job-seekers. In the days when it was still impossible for a black person to be elected to city office, Lindsay and other aspiring African American leaders began to go City Council meetings each day, sit outside on benches, and vote on matters that came before the council. Lindsay, of course, ultimately was elected to the council.

Hawkins discusses the importance of Sargent Shriver — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's father-in-law — in getting Martin Luther King-Charles R. Drew Medical Center started. The discussion is, of course, particularly bittersweet when read today, given the hospital's recent closure.Today there is a park named for Hawkins that brings wetlands to South Los Angeles and a mental health clinic, still operating, on the campus of King-Drew hospital.

But despite his undisputed role he has not attracted the renown of leaders like Tom Bradley. That's a shame. Not knowing Augustus Hawkins is not knowing Los Angeles, or the history of labor, civil rights and equality under the law in the U.S.

Happy birthday, Augustus Hawkins.

Oil on canvas by Joseph Maniscalco courtesy: Collection of U.S. House of Representatives.
Photograph of Hawkins teaching courtesy: Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library.

On Tuesday, the school board voted voted 5 to 2

to extend health benefits to more than 2,300 part-time cafeteria workers at an estimated annual cost of $35.5 million.

The move came over warnings from staff and Supt. David L. Brewer that no money was budgeted to pay for the benefits.

It also came over the objection of both the Editorial Board ("The district's budget is already in trouble, and neither the board nor administrators know where to find this money") and op-edder/LAUSD parent L.J. Williamson, who made a similar argument:

Part-time food service employees are seeking the same health benefits -- including coverage for their families -- that their full-time counterparts enjoy. Extending these benefits to cafeteria staff who currently work only three hours a day would cost an estimated $40 million a year, according to school board calculations. [...]

This is fat that the food service's too-lean budget simply doesn't have. If health benefits were extended to these part-time workers, the CFPA estimates it would mean that the per-plate meal budget would be reduced from 85 cents to 49 cents. Making healthy food available for that amount would take a miracle of biblical proportions. So we'd be improving the healthcare of nearly 2,000 part-time workers at the expense of the 500,000 children who eat in public school cafeterias every day.

But lefty bloggers, beginning with an uncharacteristically ranty Kevin Drum, smelled a heartless rat:

I would happily pay for universal healthcare just so I never had to read an op-ed like this again. It's not that Williamson doesn't have a point, it's just that this beggar-thy-neighbor attitude is enough to make me retch, and I see it all the time. I don't get dental coverage, so why should grocery workers? My copay went up last year, so why shouldn't everyone else's? I don't pay for healthcare for my housecleaners, so why should I pay it for school cafeteria workers? Our wretched private healthcare system has turned us into a nation of spiteful and small-minded misanthropes.

It's true that the growing gap between public workers and private workers is a real problem. In the past, there was something of a tradeoff: public sector workers generally got paid less than private sector workers but made up for it with job security and benefits. Today, though, public workers generally get higher salaries and better benefits and more vacation and earlier retirement and more lucrative pension packages compared to comparable private sector workers. And private sector workers are understandably annoyed by this. But their annoyance would be better directed not at the lucky public sector workers, but at the mahogany row executives and conservative politicians who pretend that the only possible use for the mountains of cash generated by decades of economic growth is to give it all to mahogany row executives and the billionaires who contribute to conservative politicians.

More where that came from, and a bit of a response, after the jump.

It’s been over a week since the release of rapper M.I.A.’s sophomore album and nearly a month since she played two nights to packed crowds at the Echoplex in Echo Park. (Grown men reportedly cried when turned away at the door.) A friend and I did make it inside and, when we weren’t being stepped or spilled on, we were amused by the crowd. Skinny underage white boys moshed alongside the stray South Asian American girl and Free Palestine kids waving kefiyas. The rapper, born Maya Arulpragasam, wore slim-fitting sequined pants and an oversized brown T-shirt that read “Darfur”.

It was a fitting image for M.I.A., with her loosy-lefty global politics and her hybrid beats and samples. She's rehabilitating the idea of world music and translating the hip hop boast to third world concerns. (“If you catch me at the border/ I got visas in my name/ If you come around here/ I make ’em all day,” she says on  “Paper Planes.”) But I was most surprised by her lyrics about Indian women, though they unfortunately appear on one of the worst tracks of the album, a sentiment I share with The Times’ music critic. Obviously, if M.I.A. weren’t a South Asian woman (Sri Lankan via London, to be precise), it’s the sort of thing that would get her into trouble....

Day 4 of our Jerry Brown vs. polluters Dust-up is now available for your reading enjoyment, musing on the topic of regional differences in policies and politics of climate change. Rick Cole makes some interesting points about governance:

For example, the slammed-together $42-billion bond package passed by voters last year. It included a hodgepodge of specific earmarks and vague categories that emerged out of Sacramento deal-making. Why not require cities and counties to work together on regional water, transportation and flood control plans and projects, instead of giving the governor and Legislature control over billions of dollars in pork? What if there was also a clear scoring system to ensure that regions that successfully focus on results would get bonus funding?

Requiring localities to cooperate with their neighbors to be eligible for statewide funding would be a great way to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. Today cities typically compete for sales tax revenue by subsidizing new retail development. That comes not only at the expense of their neighbors (and local taxpayers), it produces longer shopping trips and more congestion. If sales tax dollars were instead apportioned regionally and cities were given incentives for reducing vehicle-miles traveled, wouldn't they be more likely to promote shopping and workplaces closer to home?

While Mike Spence counters with the Population Card:

We have over 35 million people in California. More people are being born. Life expectancy is increasing. More are immigrating here. Millions more. Tens of millions more. What do you do with all the people?

Marin County won't take more people. They don't fit its collective value system. There is a limit to how many "transit villages" can be built and sustained.

And this brings me to an issue no one raises in this "state versus local communities" debate. That is individual rights. It is just not the state that is micromanaging local agencies, it is government limiting the opportunities for families and individuals in their pursuit of happiness.

Today's Los Angeles Times cover photo and accompanying story about the return of the cupola to the top of former St. Vibiana's Cathedral on Main Street dredges up the sorry (and funny) story of the city's rush 11 years ago to tear the place down.

As reporter Bob Pool notes, the cathedral sustained damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles wanted to demolish it and build a grand new cathedral on the site, restoring lost luster to Main Street. City officials began to envision the street as a civic thoroughfare connecting the old Plaza north of the Hollywood Freeway with City Hall and, south to Second Street, a great public ceremonial plaza fronting the new cathedral.

So church officials started knocking St. Vibiana's down, beginning with the cupola. Quietly. On a Saturday morning, when the courts were closed. But the demolition was illegal, since the cathedral was listed on the city's register of historic-cultural monuments. Listing meant no demolition permit could be issued for six months, to allow preservationists to find a solution that would keep the building intact.

Under pressure from the archdiocese, every member of the City Council except for arts and cultural champion Joel Wachs voted to remove the cathedral from the list. The explanations were uproariously funny. See, the cathedral (built in the centennial year of 1876) was historic when the council first listed it back in the 1960s. But time had gone by, and it had gotten old — so it was no longer historic.

The Los Angeles Conservancy successfully challenged the delisting in court, arguing that the move required an environmental impact report. The archdiocese, meanwhile, argued that city preservation law didn't apply to churches under the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion (the current flap over a synagogue in Hancock Park raises similar land-use-versus-First-Amendment issues). In oral argument at the Second District Court of Appeal hearing — although not in court papers — archdiocese lawyers invoked the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (which the Supreme Court later partially invalidated). Archdiocese lawyers and spokesmen also insisted that the church was beyond reproach on questions of art and preservation — and should be able to decide for itself whether the 19th-century building was a part of the city's heritage — since it was protecting so many priceless works in the Vatican and elsewhere around the world.

The Times editorial page warned that if Cardinal Roger Mahony wasn't allowed to demolish the old cathedral and replace it with a new one on the same site, "there will be little new development left to energize a downtown revitalization."

Yeah, too bad that downtown revitalization never happened.

The preservationists won, the archdiocese built Our Lady of the Angels on Temple Street, and the St. Vibiana's cupola lay on its side in the cathedral courtyard for more than a decade. Until yesterday, as reported by Pool.

Two-time Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto sets her agenda for her home country:

I know that some people have been surprised that I have been negotiating a transition to democracy and talking about the future of Pakistan with Musharraf. On dictatorship, there can be no compromise. The parliament must be supreme. That's why I have made it clear to Musharraf that my party, the Pakistan People's Party, supports the constitution, which requires that the president be a civilian who is legitimately selected by the parliament and provincial assemblies. After much negotiating, I announced on Wednesday that Musharraf had decided to resign as army chief.

But that is not the only issue. The ban on twice-elected prime ministers, like myself, holding office again was not part of Pakistan's constitution and must be abolished.

Author David Ehrenstein talks about the "Tearoom Trade" that Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) proves is still alive and well. Greg Critser explores diabetes from an evolutionary standpoint.

The editorial board laments that even as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is trying to reform schools, the new school board is making its first misstep by trying to shift kids' lunch money to healthcare for part time workers. The board also asks that the EPA tighten air quality rules for ozone-laden counties like L.A., and that Florida stop trying to move its primary to January.

Readers react to the Larry Craig crime. Huntington Beach's Tim Geddes says, "Craig has about as much chance of being reelected as the Idaho Vandals have of beating the USC Trojans on Saturday."

Did Conny B. McCormack retire from her post as Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/clerk, or did she resign in protest? Did she recklessly damage voter confidence in the nation's most populous county by sticking around as long as she did, or is she recklessly abandoning the county just before the 2008 primary? Or all of the above?

All of the above, according to the Brad Blog and other critics of electronic voting systems and of registrars, like McCormack, who defend them. The blog is giving readers a chance to vote (electronically) on where they think McCormack will work next, with the choices including the four allegedly tainted companies: Diebold/Premier, Sequoia Voting Systems, Hart, and Election Systems & Software Inc. All produce voting systems decertified several weeks ago by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen.

In her retirement statement McCormack said she wanted to shift her "energies and experience to election administration and research and consulting both within the U.S. and worldwide." This evening she said that didn't mean going to work for one of her department's voting equipment contractors. "You won't find me as a Diebold spokesman, or ES&S, or any of them," she told me.

Still, to critics of electronic voting, McCormack will likely continue to be dismissed as a shill for vendors who at best want to foist bad software and faulty machinery onto the public, at public expense, and at worst are part of a cabal to allow conservative Republicans to steal elections.

There is no denying that McCormack foolishly allowed her photo to be reproduced on a Diebold brochure, giving fuel to assertions that she is looking out for the interests of voting companies. She didn't help her case any when she told county supervisors that vendors wouldn't make much money in Los Angeles County if they have to pay for every ballot to be hand-counted.

What McCormack could have said, and should have said, was that the county could be left without vendors of election machines at all if they can't make any money here. That outcome may be just fine, especially if the companies produce systems that are easily corrupted. The point is that McCormack had frontline, practical experience in running elections in the nation's largest county. That may have led her to be too close to vendors; it also provided the county with fairly smooth voting days here, especially considering the number of elections (88 cities, the county, statewide elections) and the volume of ballots. If California's February primary also goes smoothly, McCormack will no doubt be blasted for having complained that Bowen's decertification decision [pdf] would throw voting day into chaos. If there are problems, she'll be branded as the person who left things in disarray.

The Times editorial page noted the severe problems found in Bowen's top-to-bottom review of California voting systems and backed her decision to decertify. But the page also expressed alarm at the politicization, however unintentional, of the process. Bowen, a Democrat, reversed certification decisions made by her predecessor, Republican Bruce McPherson [pdf], six months earlier. The next secretary of state could reverse all over again--unless certification decisions are turned over to a nonpartisan (or at least bipartisan) panel, as they once were in California.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa stopped by the office yesterday to sell his new school partnership that, according to the news department:

will provide the mayor with a scaled-back version of the authority he has sought over city schools.

Villaraigosa and his senior education aides will play a major role in overseeing two of the city's lowest-achieving high schools and the middle and elementary schools that feed them under an agreement with the Board of Education and schools Supt. David L. Brewer.

In his back-and-forth with Opinion and News staffers from The Times, the mayor stressed metrics:

We will have on the Internet what our goals are, what outcomes we expect. We'll have an annual report card, it'll be on the Internet, it'll be on the wall -- on probably more than one wall in the school -- to remind everybody this is where we've got to go. I don't know if it's going to have a thermometer by it or whatever. [...] Not just the API scores: We're going to look at safety, we're going look at the dropout rate, especially in high schools and middle schools, we're going be looking at a number of, you know, parent satisfaction, you know, whatever happened to the consumer here? [...]

When you look at [Chief] Bratton -- and you know I'm a big Bratton fan -- and he'll tell you all, I mean, the city's safer than at any time since 1956 on a per capita basis. But you look at what Bratton's done and he's used the numbers, you know, this whole CompStat process. We're going to be data-driven.

The mayor's schools will also likely have uniforms:

I'm passionate about it. [...] I hated, when I was in Catholic school, the once-Friday-a-month when we had, you know, free dress, because I didn't have the clothes, and I hated it. And it was embarrassing. And I think that's true for a lot of kids. And you know I'm a big believer in uniforms, and obviously we're going to get our stakeholders excited about that effort as we are about parent and student compacts and a lot of the other initiatives.

Only once did his personal life come up, in passing, in a question from Editorial Page Editor Jim Newton:

Q: Change the subject a little bit -- you twisted a lot of arms in Sacramento to get the bill, obviously got the bill but didn't produce what you wanted. You had a summer when there's been a lot attention to your personal life, your marriage. Do you enter this process in your third year now with the same kind of political or public clout that you had in the first year or two?

A: I can't speculate on that, I couldn't tell you if I have clout or not; I'll tell you I have the energy and the passion. I walk in here and I see all of you, some of you have written, some of you haven't, on things about me including my personal life, and you see me look you in the eyeball, and move ahead. I an very committed to this process, I'm passionate about these schools. And you're going to see me apply the same passion, the commitment that I have done to everything I've done in my public life. I can't tell you though that I have X amount of, you know, capital or not, I can only tell you I intend to move ahead as if I did.

Greg Braxton's Calendar-section examination of Hollywood's "Black Best Friend" (BBF) phenomenon was reminiscent not just of the classic Hollywood-stereotypes flick Hollywood Shuffle, or its white-guilt mirror image in Crash the Short Cuts to the Grand Canyon, but also to one of my favorite bits of recent L.A. Times op-edifying: David Ehrenstein's Obama the 'Magic Negro.' Which itself, in another fantastic leap of inversion, was converted into a Rush Limbaugh song to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon" ("Barack the Magic Negro," don'tcha know).

Ain't America grand?

This week's online dust-up in the Opinion factory is between California Republican Assembly President Mike Spence and Ventura City Manager Rick Cole, debating whether Attorney General Jerry Brown is doing the right thing in fighting climate change from Sacramento. Today's installment ponders the proper role of Brown's office. Spence says "A.G." stands for "aspiring governor," and suggests Jerry's aggressiveness toward counties like San Bernardino amounts to cheap campaigning:

The phrase "climate change" is brilliant; climate is always changing. This issue of "global warming" has become the perfect political issue for Brown. There is no risk in fighting it. You don't need arrests, convictions or trials. All you need are media cameras to show the world and potential voters how hard you are fighting it.

Cole counters that Californians have already made their views on global warming clear, which Republicans can deny at their peril:

There are lots of "feel good" panaceas out there that may distract us from more effective actions. By denying the role of greenhouse gas emissions in the global climate crisis, you risk marginalizing yourself from the mainstream debate. That's not only bad for your party's political fortunes, it's bad for California. Republicans should play a vital role in shaping sensible climate-change policy because the market and business can -- and must -- play a vital role in tackling this shared challenge.

Yesterday they debated the efficacy of citywide general plans, and Monday they marveled at the staying power of Jerry Brown.

A readmyblog from one Norman Christian Hoffmann raises the question: They have a Marijuana Department in Canada?

You know what Canada needs, a prison. Especially the lower mainland of British Columbia. For too long now they have been stealing all of our money by refusing to adequately police their own police and especially their neglect falls upon deaf shoulders and ears in the marijuana department. Canada is known as the worlds number haven and despot for drug dealers and international couriers of crystal meth and cocaine as well as heroin and pcp.

This is all because this country does not see fit to police it's own mandated rules and laws beyond the eye of the beholder. And to us in America we can not stand for this any longer. This is a threat to our economy, an indignation to our national pride and a sheer lunacy to keep allowing our nearest trading partner and ally to keep selling us drugs when our borders are supposed to be open and free.

But what that really means here in Canada is let's open up the trade supply lines to all the poisonous chemicals we can because we can not see it fit or in our right minds to respect our neighbor to the south enough to even police our own rules, turn a blind eye on this matter and profit at their expense. Canada has become a money laundering machine worldwide and globally it is in the next spot of enumeration as a Cuba.

I for one see it fit and globally responsible to fit the ankles of these local politicians and bad boys with the ankle bracelet technology the so deserve and need to bring this country into reign and check. Please petition your local government for more mandates surrounding the marijuana issue and let's take a good long hard look and stance at our neighbors to the North because this needs to be rectified immediately.

---

Please feel free to enjoy more of my comments and suggestions at the following address: http://theamericanilluminati.blogspot.com/

Sincerely yours,

Norman Christian Hoffmann
Syndicate Publications
PiggyPalace@GoodTimesSociety.Net

Reason Magazine's Nick Gillespie says the GOP needs to get government out of the bathroom, so Republicans like Sen. Larry Craig don't look like hypocrites:

It seems nothing short of pathetic that Craig, who had brushed off rumors of homosexual activity for years, would deny the option of matrimony to some of the same men from whom he supposedly sought sex in restrooms. (Craig said Monday that his actions had been misconstrued and denied engaging in any inappropriate conduct.)

But the Craig scandal also provides the Republican Party, battered into minority status in Congress after years of domestic and foreign overreach, a golden opportunity to recover its attractive minimal-government heritage, at least when it comes to using the state to police sexual behavior among consenting adults.

Writer Michael Tisserand discusses how kids comprehend Hurricane Katrina, and columnist Ronald Brownstein offers President Bush lessons from Reagan's productive final years in office.

On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the editorial board remarks on the red tape that has thwarted a full recovery in New Orleans. It also comments on a court battle over land for a synagogue in Hancock Park, and asks Hillary Clinton to release papers from her days as First Lady, since the National Archives says it can't do it till after the election.

Readers react to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales' departure. Mel Powell from Sherman Oaks says, "Don't let the Constitution hit you on the way out."

Hugh Hewitt:

I realize that I did not say this about Senator Vitter, but Craig's behavior is so reckless and repulsive that an immediate exit is required.

Kevin Drum, noting that a Vitter resignation (unlike Craig) would likely produce a Democratic senator, says:

Lots of conservative bloggers, following Hugh Hewitt's lead, have called for Larry Craig to resign even though they didn't call for David Vitter to resign when he was outed for visiting prostitutes last month. [...] Of course conservatives are turning against Craig secure in the knowledge that they're running no actual political risk.

Tammy Bruce:

Well, not only are not all gay men engaging in tawdry bathroom sex with strangers, not all gay people think "hate crimes" legislation is good idea, either. Some of us would rather not become the establishment Thought Police, with laws that position some people as more equal, more important, than others.

Boi From Troy:

Meanwhile my straight friends are having trouble understanding that tapping one’s foot would constitute a solicitation of a sexual encounter. I had to explain that from places like Frankfurt Airport in the tunnel beteen terminals B and C on the train station level below the USO to the USC Campus on the second floor of Waite-Phillips Hall, some restrooms have a reputation of being cruisy and any such gestures can be interpreted as such…especially for those who were around before the internets were the main vehicle for arranging anonymous sex.

Roger L. Simon:

Human sexuality could be called the world's epicenter of hypocrisy. And the intolerance of this gay man in the Senate toward other gay people is mean and almost sadistic. He should resign, not for his behavior in the bathroom, but for his creepy political phoniness.

And Glenn Greenwald has a post too long to bother excerpting, filled with quotes and links from right-wing commentators (including Jonah Goldberg) from before the November 2006 election, after Craig had been "outed" by journalist Mike Rogers.

Readers give Michael McGough whatfor over his recent Opinion Daily "If Gore had won ... "

Robert Land goes to Godwin's Law hell and back, and becomes the umpteenth person to discover the stunning Moe Howard/Hitler connection:

Clinton was wrong in signing the republicanazi bill 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, under pressure from the Republcanazi Concress.

Bush and his fellow Republicanazi's, supported by stooges like the Times' senior editorial writer. who shamelessly finds ways to excuse the excesses of a government not dedicated to the well being of her citizens, but dedicated to consolidating control over those citizens, are simple profiteers bleeding the USA dry and attempting to establish a HOMELAND like DER FATHERLAND.

Just like a fellow with a funny mustashe did a few decades ago in a small European country, assisted and enabled by people like The Times' senior editorial writer.

Ziggy Heil to you and your new Fuher.

Robert Land

From the Volunteer State, Todd and Deb and Ricky and Tom and Diane, with Carol and Ted and Alice abstaining, vote against revenge:

Dear Mr. Michael McGough,

If Gore had become Prez. instead of the Texacutioner, 9/11 wouldn't have happened. It's as simple as that.

The Dow would be at 15 and the NASDAQ would be a 6.

Everyone knows it. Everyone sees the con, just as we have for the past 7 years.

So let's not screw up and vote for revenge again.

Have a great day...!

Todd/Deb/Ricky/Tom/Diane

Nashville Memphis TN

Jim Hassinger makes it hurt:

In order to come to your conclusions, you just have to ignore every single word that Gore has spoken since 2000. Must hurt to be a Bush apologist when your guy is a complete psychopath.

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"... the bulk of your natives [are] the most pernicious race of  little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." Jonathan Swift

Jim Hassinger

From Oak Park, Ill., city of wide lawns and narrow minds, Benjamin Iglar-Mobley gets the restore-Gore movement underway:

Michael McGough stretches credulity to the breaking point in trying to equate a President Gore with our current White House occupant. The very domestic spying programs McGough claims Gore would have sought had he gained the presidency in 2000 are the ones Gore denounces in his book 'The Assault On Reason.'

I feel sorry for those like Michael McGough trying to come up with excuses for the worst president in US history; they have an impossible task. However, he concludes with "We'll never know for sure" how Al Gore would have conducted himself as president. There's a fairly obvious way we can find out: restore Gore to his rightful office in 2008.

Benjamin Iglar-Mobley

Gretchen Kranch says the dead don't need civil liberties:

In response to your article about whether our civil liberties would still have been intact after 09/11 if Gore had won the election. Yes.... of course they would have been. I believe this to be the case since I have no doubt at all that President Gore's work day on 09/12/01 would have been no different from his work day on 09/10/01. Like Mr. Clinton after the first World Trade Center attack he would have responded by telling the nation not to be alarmed since this was no big deal. Then he would have resumed dialing for Buddhist dollars.

Since a Gore Administration would have been loath to term what happened on 09/11/07 as an attack there would have been no follow-up action taken to prevent more of them. Therefore there would have been no resulting 'assault on civil liberties'.

And please don't insult my intelligence by asserting that President Gore would have invaded Afghanistan. At the time, the Democrats were opposed to even doing that much.

Of course, this would only have emboldened the terrorists to level more attacks at us leading to thousands more deaths and injuries. But at least the civil liberties of the dead would have been protected. I'm sure their families would have appreciated that.

g.kranch

Former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon wrote a discussion-generating Sunday piece for the L.A. Times about the "four main misconceptions" that foreign emissaries have about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Before getting to the reax, a refresher on the four myths:

1) "[T]hat solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prerequisite for stability in the Mideast."

2) "[T]hat Israeli territorial concessions are the key to progress.

3) "[T]hat 'the Occupation' blocks agreement between Israelis and Palestinians."

4) "[T]hat the Palestinians want -- and have the ability -- to establish a state that will live in peace alongside Israel."

Now, the reaction, starting with Carl in Jerusalem, who thinks Ya'alon should be the next prime minister, and (more importantly?) informs us that Moshe's nickname is "Boogie":

After leaving the IDF and letting his 'cooling off' period pass, Yaalon joined the Likud, where he is not even an MK - yet. Yaalon has the kind of fresh thinking that has not been corrupted yet by Israeli politics. He's a straight shooter. [...] Yaalon's fresh thinking and refusal to abide by political correctness are just what this country needs.

Matthew Yglesias in Adams-Morgan does not subscribe to this point of view:

One can sympathize to some extent with Israeli officials feeling like their country attracts a disproportionate quantity of busybodies pushing peace plans, but while it would be one thing for Ya'alon to genuinely argue that Israel should be left to its own devices, it's another thing entirely to say that the United States should just be totally indifferent to how our most generously subsidized client state relates to its neighbors and to the millions of stateless Arabs over which it rules.

For more raspberries & attaboys, read on after the jump.

The Wall Street Journal's Brody Mullins, camera in hand, treks out to the badlands of San Mateo County to find the seemingly modest house of the Paw family, who in conjunction with their associate, New York-based wheeler-dealer Norman Hsu, have made generous contributions to the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-New York). The numbers:

Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.

That total ranks the house with residences in Greenwich, Conn., and Manhattan's Upper East Side among the top addresses to donate to the Democratic presidential front-runner over the past two years, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of donations listed with the Federal Election Commission.

The article takes hypothetical pains not to say that the Paws are being given money by wealthier people to invest in Clinton's political future, but just to note that if, in some alt.reality, they were doing that, it would violate campaign finance laws. The story is far from probative: The Paws have a large family with some seemingly successful children (one manages a mutual fund). Their son Winkle acknowledges the family's association with Hsu (excuse me, Mr. Hsu), and least persuasive of all is the campaign-finance-investigation-by-architecture-review portion of the story:

The Paw's Daly City home is a one-story house in a working-class suburb of San Francisco. On a recent day, a coiled garden hose rested next to a dilapidated garden with a half-dozen dried out plants. The din of traffic from a nearby freeway was occasionally drowned out by jumbo jets departing San Francisco International Airport.

Don't let that "working-class" business fool you, comrade. Daly City, a little slice of Purgatory just below the Heaven of San Francisco, is as outrageously priced as only a town on the Peninsula can be. I know an Orthodox priest who spent nearly $800,000 on a D.C. dump not much different from the one in Mullins' photo — and that was in the late nineties, long before the market peak. I find it not at all surprising that an extended family that can get its paws on this lime-green palace would be able to spend $200,000 becoming "Hillraisers." Still, this is an interesting piece of enterprise journalism, even if you, like me, are one of those crazy people who believe how you spend money in exercising your First Amendment right to express your political views is your own damn business. And with the warning that life ain't easy for a boy named Hsu, I commend you to the full story.

The editorial board says the next U.S. Attorney General should be the un-Gonzales:

The next attorney general shouldn't be chosen because of an inspirational life story or because he is a "close friend" of the president (Bush's description). The Senate shouldn't accept anything less than a distinguished lawyer who can be trusted to insulate criminal prosecution from even the appearance of partisan meddling. But Senate Democrats should be careful not to demand more -- a nominee whose policy views match theirs.

The board criticizes Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget cuts that favor yacht owners over the elderly, and wonders why, of all the streets in the city, councilman Richard Alarcon chose to re-zone the stretch where his new wife lives.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg offers a less-than-fond farewell to the attorney general, and California Assembly speaker Fabian Nunez explains why his healthcare plan is the best plan there is. Parent of an L.A. Unified second-grader L.J. Williamson doesn't think schools should fund healthcare for part-time cafeteria workers at the expense of kids' already low-budget meals. And Alan M. Collinge asks Congress to stop giving the student loan industry so much leeway in collecting debt and high fees.

Readers offer their thoughts on Moshe Ya'alon's take on the Middle East. Wiley Cunningham of Los Angeles writes, "To suggest that the issue is between ideological Islam and the West is part of a dangerous ideology that will only alienate our allies and turn the entire Muslim world against us."

Our relatively newish Blowback feature -- or, as Jeff Jarvis describes it, a "lame" and "very controlling effort to add just a little bit of interactivity" to L.A. Times content -- has its latest installment up now: Rocket Boys author Homer Hickam giving our beleaguered Paul Thornton a what-for about the wisdom of NASA re-conquering the moon. This Hickam passage is well worth the price of admission:

When I was a West Virginia lad of 17, I met a Massachusetts lad of 42 by the name of John F. Kennedy. At the time, I was in a bright orange suit that I had just purchased to wear to the 1960 National Science Fair, where I hoped my home-built rockets would win a medal. Kennedy was in West Virginia trying to win the state's presidential primary. We met just as he finished a speech designed to convince a crowd of less-than-enthusiastic coal miners to give him their vote. When he asked for questions, I raised my hand and, for some reason, he noticed me right off. Because I was a rocket boy, I asked him what he thought we should do in space. He turned it around and asked me what I thought we should do, and I said we should go to the moon. When he asked me why, I looked around at all those coal miners and said, well, we ought to go up there and just mine the blamed thing! The miners all laughed, and so did Kennedy, and when he agreed with me, he secured all their votes that day. For the longest time, I took credit for the Apollo moon program and, though I'd been shipped off to Vietnam when we got there, I followed the moon flights with a certain personal pride.

Other recent highlights from the Blowback archive -- Diane von Furstenberg disagrees with our editorial against fashion copyrights, Riverside professor R. Stephen White rebuts our "No to nukes" editorial, and dog-lover Robert Hotckiss challenges Joel Stein to pistols at dawn.

However legal historians evaluate Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, compilers of journalistic cliches are likely to enshrine him in a pantheon reserved for celebrities who came to be known by distinctive epithets.

It’s a select but motley  group: Slain civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.; fugitive heiress Patricia Hearst; disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff; presidential assailant John W. Hinckley; and, my favorite, domestic diva Martha Stewart. (If she had not reported to prison and was shot, she could have been "disgraced slain fugitive domestic diva Martha Stewart.")

But Alberto Gonzales has given them some stiff competition with his custom-designed epithet, which popped up tonight on ABC News’ story about his resignation. You guessed it: “embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.”

It would be easy to excuse a newcomer to this country who thought that “embattled” was actually part of Gonzales’ official title. I did a Nexis search and found 318 EAGs in the past three months alone.

Now that he is stepping down, Gonzales should take a vacation -- maybe in earthquake-shattered Peru or (formerly) strife-torn Northern Ireland.

An Al Gore fan takes issue with my Opinion Daily asking what if Gore had been elected in 2000 and 9/11 had happened? I floated the possibility, based on the Clinton administration's anti-terror initiatives, that a Gore administration might not have been the diametric opposite of the Bush administration when it came to wiretapping and other controversial techniques in the "war on terror."

Unfair, suggested my correspondent. Hadn't I read The Assault on Reason, in which Gore lambastes the Bush administration for, among other sins, subverting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? In the same vein, Media Matters took me to task for not quoting Gore's voluminous criticisms of Bush's surveillance/security policies.

I have read Gore's critiques of Bush's Terrorist Surveillance Program, in his books and elsewhere. (They read as if they were cribbed from L.A. Times editorials!) But the answer to my "What if?" is still blowin' in the wind, because Al Gore the would-be president and Al Gore the actual president are still two different entities.

A President Gore might well have sought congressional approval of NSA wiretapping, but he might also have been moved to the right on this issue by the arguments of intelligence professionals (not to mention Vice President Joe Lieberman). We'll never know for sure. That said, I should have cited non-President Gore's criticism of Bush's policies. 

Elections do matter, and I don't accept Mort Kondracke's dictum that, no matter who wins, the president is always Gerald Ford. But holding office does make a difference, which is why no one pays attention when presidential candidates promise to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Oh, and remember how candidate George W. Bush trashed nation-building?

With the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching, six New Orleans experts comment on how far the city has come and how far it has to go. Vogue contributing editor Julia Reed writes:

Pre-Katrina New Orleans was a schizophrenic place. Insular and complacent on one hand, and resting on the laurels and the habits of its storied past, it was also world famous for elevating living in the moment to an art form. "Laissez les bons temps rouler" wasn't just a tourism slogan, but a genuine attitude. Tomorrow -- when you live between a notoriously restless river and a 40-mile lake -- may well never come.

But there was a tomorrow after Katrina. And while the respect for history and joie de vivre that had set us apart from other places was not destroyed, the complacency that gnawed at New Orleans, as well as the utter disregard for the future, are all but gone.

Contributing editor and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers charts a course for the economy after the sub-prime crisis.

The editorial board encourages the U.S. to keep its promises in Afghanistan and explores a German engineer's inexpensive ways to turn cars green.

Readers respond to the notion that the Pentagon is "Christianizing" soldiers. Northridge's Barbara Aquino says, "They may call themselves Christian, but those who follow the teachings of Jesus Christ strive to love their enemy and do not kill others."

As measured by visits to the website, between Aug. 17-23:

1) Death by numbers, by Meghan Daum.
2) Not so fast, Christian soldiers, by Michael L. Weinstein and Reza Aslan.
3) The journalism that bloggers actually do, by Jay Rosen.
4) The misleading Vietnam analogy; Editorial.
5) Stonehenges all around us, by Craig Childs (from Feb. 16, 2007).
6) Blogs: All the noise that fits, by Michael Skube.
7) Debates that say something, by Newt Gingrich.
8) 'Sanctuary' as battleground, by Ronald Brownstein.
9) Drunk on ethanol; Editorial.
10) The lost Padilla verdict, by Stephen Vladeck.

What were they saying about last week's #1, Meghan Daum's meditation on the hierarchy of death? A selection from the reaction.

Stan Larson: "The recent mining accident provides a great segway for my second beef with cable news. I'm so fed up with local tragedies absorbing all of the national news airtime. It's not that I don't care. It's just that I know there are thousands of tragedies unfolding around the world every day, many with much greater human consequences than the events the media chooses for us. Why do we allow the media to pick a tragedy for us, and then beat it into the ground until ratings start to drop, before serving us a new tragedy. Do they use focus groups to select the most interesting calamity? Better yet, why don't we point the media spotlight on looming tragedies that can be avoided or mitigated."

Prince Lackadasia: "In every American city I've ever lived, a murdered white suburbanite is worth more in column inches and air time than any three black inner city bodies. And the disparity between our interest in the fate of Americans and the nameless hordes of dark-skinned suffering others is simply obscene. Roughly 3000 children die every day of malaria in the developing world, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, with hardly a flicker of attention in the news."

noahnoah: "I want to end this blog entry with a simple calculation: In the last 5 days, more American citizens have died of cancer than the amount of Americans killed on 9/11 and in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars combined."

John Daly (not the famous golfer): "[People] are likely to overestimate the problem with mine safety and underestimate that with road safety, to overestimate the danger of terrorist attack and underestimate the risks of eating too much!"

John Daley (also not the famous golfer): "With my luck an asteroid would hit me while I was crossing one of those structurally deficient bridges."

Jan-Willem de Lange: "De LA Times zet ook in op perspectief. Volgens de krant stierven vorige maand in de Verenigde Staten 3500 mensen door een auto-ongeluk, en overlijden iedere maand 42.000 mensen aan kanker. Aan hartkwalen gaat iedere 36 seconden een Amerikaan dood."

Whether you're an Amerikaan dood or non-American dudette, now's the time to comment on Daum's deathwatch, or any of our other chart-toppers. Perhaps someone can answer the eternal question, Why the Stonehenge??

If you weren't reading this week's mano-a-studento Dust-up debate over the L.A. Unified School District, you really missed a thing or two. Not least of which was some insight into the worldview of five organizationally active high school students, bouncing their ideas for reform off of recently departed LAUSD board member David Tokofsky. Some highlights:

Downtown Magnets High School junior Jordan Senteno:

The No Child Left Behind standardized test treats students of color as inferior, not good enough. The test marginalizes non-English speaking cultures. It makes students feel as if their culture isn't good enough because they must change or hide their culture to learn English so they can pass these tests. Students who come into this world learning English as a second language have their intelligence silenced.

The Los Angeles Unified School District takes state-approved textbooks, curricula, teachers and tests, and puts them into a school such as Crenshaw, where fewer than 1% of the students are white, or Garfield, where 37% are English-language learners. Is it a wonder that so many students are failing? Then, they expect the students to be engaged in learning from the European point of view while their culture is kicked to the curb. The school district still wonders why a majority of students drop out and fail? Instead of changing this problem, they point the finger at the students. Strike three.

Wilson High School senior Paola Tejeda:

Since before the East Los Angeles Chicano blowouts of the 1960s, students have been asking their schools to make learning more relevant. This is not an excuse. It's a demand! [...]

Somos Raza attracts students to learn because they study the problems facing them as Latinos, and challenge what they are taught in regular classrooms. Members meet after school and on the weekends, organize rallies, unite black and brown students, and clean the streets to improve their communities. They believe that schools are lying to them, so they study the beauty of their culture and learn about their true history.

By not learning the truth, Latinos are learning how to continue their own oppression. Crenshaw High School Somos Raza member Jonathan said, "They're brainwashing us in school."

Opportunities Unlimited Community High School senior Amandla Traylor:

Some of the most influential people in our communities are gangbangers. They do whatever it takes to get what they want. Most people feel the gangbangers' goals are wrong, but at least they follow through on what they started. Teachers who just pass students along are giving up on their goals and quitting on what they came to our schools to do.

If schools gave gang members more opportunity, they could become positive role models instead of negative ones. Don't give up on them so easily, because if you believed in them, they could be future teachers. [...]

We need to find a way to make these people the teachers. Gang members are not just ignorant; they're misunderstood.

Crenshaw High School junior Leslie Campos:

I understand that money is not easy to come by, but our schools should be top priority. I don't have the answers for that, but the fact that we give so much of our national budget to our military and so little to our schools tells us that our priorities are more on aggression toward others than affection toward our youth. Let people live, and let our children learn!

King/Drew Medical Magnet High School 10th grader Carla Hernandez:

The No Child Left Behind Act and its definition of a highly qualified teacher does not work well in our communities. The act defines a teacher as "highly qualified" when he or she has subject-matter qualifications and university teaching credentials. But how about communication qualifications and culturally empowering credentials? If you don't have credentials we can respect, then you don't have the quality we need.

Are the kids all right or all wrong? Or somewhere in between? Let 'em know.

Not since Frank Gorshin and some other guy played the black/white, white/black haters on Star Trek have space people been as fired-up as they are over Paul Thornton's Opinion Daily "Space program lunacy." And some of the rage is warranted: Our gaffe in the original story about the connections and lack thereof between NOAA, NASA and the QuikSCAT satellite has been corrected, and we apologize for the error. Paul knows he's made some very poor decisions recently, but he can give you his complete assurance that his work will be back to normal. He's still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.

Wendy Dunham gives Paul a Gopher State whuppin':

Yeah, and I can write an article that reports what NASA actually HAS done for the Earth that would blow this article out of the water. Obviously, a good word smith can spin a story like this any way you like, talk about the million dollar toilet, etc, focus on the seeming  wastes, but if you dug down into the facts and saw all the stuff that HAS come from NASA that is improving the real world (and it's a lot more than pens that write upside down or Tang), that list that would eclipse any further "what have the