What can we learn from this week's top traffic-getters in Opinion?

• David Ehrenstein and Andrew Breitbart are bigger than The Beatles, taking first, second and fifth places in the ratings, and the last installment in their Dust-Up on Hollyweird's un-American values isn't even counted here.

• The death of dead-tree media has not been greatly exaggerated, as yet another web-only feature — our Primary Source with Jack Cole and David Fleming discussing the failure of the war on drugs — grabs a spot in the hall of fame.

• You may score big numbers with immigration and affirmative action, but you can never go wrong making fun of Dan Rather.

Keep those cards, letters and clicks coming. Here are the numbers:

1) What are Hollywood values? by David Ehrenstein and Andrew Breitbart
2) Antiwar season by David Ehrenstein and Andrew Breitbart
3) Letters to the editor
4) We're losing in Afghanistan too by John Kiriakou and Richard Klein
5) Hollywood reporting for duty? by David Ehrenstein and Andrew Breitbart
6) Drug war takes a flying LEAP with Jack Cole, David Fleming and the Ed Board
7) Does affirmative action hurt minorities? by Vikram Amar and Richard H. Sander
8) Rather's unraveling anchor cult by the Ed Board
9) Fewer migrants mean more benefits by Mark Krikorian
10) O.J., straight and cold by T. Jefferson Parker

Columnist Joel Stein asks if Paris Hilton is a plagiarist:

I've spent five weeks e-mailing and calling Elliot Mintz, Hilton's publicist, making it clear that the L.A. Times was about to run a story about this accusation. Though he said he'd get back to me, he hasn't. I'm guessing when you're Hilton's publicist, you're a busy guy. In retrospect, I should have gotten his attention by saying Hilton wore the same dress as [Judi] DeBella.

Meanwhile, DeBella's family and friends -- who mocked her ruthlessly when she told them she was writing letters to Hilton -- are encouraging her to sue.

Columnist Rosa Brooks imagines the Columbia University president introducing Bush the way he did Ahmadinejad. Claremont McKenna's John J. Pitney Jr. explains why the California GOP is at war with itself. And Ohio State Univeristy's Daniel P. Tokaji argues that asking for ID at the polls could burden poor and minority voters.

The editorial board advises the governor how to reach his goal of reduced carbon emissions by 2020. The board shows how a pro-choice group has inadvertently made a strong case for net neutrality, and praises the mayor for bringing in a major private donation for L.A. schools.

If you haven't been reading this week's Dust-Up on Hollywood political values, you've missed one of the most pull-no-punches debates we've hosted. Today, media mavens Andrew Breitbart and David Ehrenstien answer the question, "Where are all those Holly-cons?" A little from Breitbart:

Conservatives do exist in reasonable numbers in greater Hollywood. However, the vast majority hold "below the line" jobs. That's Industry-speak for the less sexy middle-class tasks such as lighting, transportation, bookkeeping, etc. Show business' silent working-class mass exists in a right/left ratio far closer to its split in American society. And because they get paid far less than the "talent," they live in the far suburbs of L.A., including the flats of the San Fernando Valley

...

David, you've been baiting me to mention George Soros and MoveOn.org throughout this weeklong exercise. Here it finally goes: The prominent Hollywood non-liberals that come quickly to your encyclopedic mind are mostly past their prime and opened up about their atypical politics during the popular Reagan era. Bruce Willis has not talked much politics since. He's smart. And Schwarzenegger, the governor, got almost no institutional support from his Hollywood peers during his run.

Ehrenstein:

Returning to the "conservative" pity-party, the most important right-wing writer-director Hollywood has seen since DeMille, John Milius ("Apocalypse Now," "Big Wednesday," "Red Dawn"), has forsaken Tinseltown entirely for the lucrative cyber-shores of video-game creation. Shouldn't he be making "Red Dawn II: Al Qaeda in America"? Give him a nudge, won't you? I'm sure it would be as big a box-office winner as Mel Gibson's "NASCAR Jesus" (a.k.a. "The Passion of the Christ").

Having achieved not only box-office success but Oscar glory with "Braveheart" -- his epic tribute to 13th century Scottish face-painter William Wallace -- Gibson followed up with "Passion." But failing to see the wisdom of yet another film about the founder of Christianity, the major studios gave Gibson a pass on what has turned out to be his signature project. And, all glory to capitalism at its "invisible hand" best, the independently financed result was one of the greatest box-office bonanzas of all-time.

...

As always, money talks, and should Mel elect to make a film out of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," I haven't the slightest doubt he'd get a backer -- even in "liberal" Hollywood.

Click on the jump to read what others are saying about the Ehrenstein-Breitbart battle.

With the first primaries only a few months away, the field of presidential candidates remains confusingly full. So many choices, so many issues! Thankfully, the helpful folks at Minnesota Public Radio have developed a 12-question survey that tries to match you with the candidate from either party that best reflects your views and priorities. Sure beats watching those debates, now doesn't it? For those who don't have time for 12 questions, or who simply don't want to think about bombing Iran, WQAD in Moline, Ill., offers a shorter version that steers clear of President I'm-a-dinner-jacket.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa revealed that he and Hillary Clinton talked about the affair that helped break up his marriage, and she said ... what? We don't know, because Michael Eisner, who used to interview Mickey Mouse at the start of Disney programs on ABC but now interviews movers and shakers on his CNBC talk show, barely let Villaraigosa get in a word edgewise.

Eisner spoke with, or rather to, Villaraigosa on a program that aired last night. The segment was sandwiched between two parts of an interview with Kiss rock star Gene Simmons, who took the opportunity to hold forth on the sanctity of marriage.

You can watch part of the Villaraigosa segment, although not all of it, here.

About Hillary Clinton:

Eisner: She's never -- because you were very close to her before it came out that you were having martial problems, let's say. She's not annoyed at you like she was annoyed at her husband?

Villaraigosa: We actually had a very good conversation about that and I am without question someone who intends to work really hard on behalf --

Eisner: She asked you about that, though?

Villaraigosa: We had a conversation about it.

Eisner: That's impressive. What are the big things you have to accomplish in the next two years?

The program bills itself as recreating "the experience of being at a power lunch with the giants of their industries."

The editorial board asks if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really matters:

To what extent are his views shared by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who really calls the shots in Iran? Ahmadinejad is reported to enjoy the supreme leader's full support. Certainly Khamenei is as rhetorically anti-American and mistrustful of Western intentions as his protege. Yet some see signs -- in Iran's dealings with the International Atomic Energy Agency and in the recent release of four Iranian Americans held in Tehran, among other moves -- that the quiet Khamenei may be less eager than the flamboyant Ahmadinejad to provoke a confrontation with the West.

The board praises the governor's decision to get tough with prison guards, and thinks it's time nations of the world did something to stop the brutal crackdown in Myanmar.

Columnist Patt Morrison objects to a Republican plan to divvy up California's electoral votes. Writer Kate Johnson and Assn. of Flight Attendants for Northwest Airlines vice president Albert Garcia tell the story of the man who fought discrimination to be a flight attendant. President of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative Seth Berkley urges scientists not to give up the quest for a vaccine. And the World Bank's Vinod Thomas discusses how to save the tiger from extinction.

On the letters page, Garden Grove's Chi Huu Do asks, "The symbolic and peaceful form of resistance executed effectively by the Buddhist monks makes one wonder: What if the religious factions in the Middle East conflicts chose to apply it to resolve their perennial differences?"

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, law professor Ilya Somin lays an eight-post smack-down on an issue near and dear to my 25-year-old heart -- forced or induced government labor of young citizens, otherwise known as its more politically appetizing title of "national service." In an Opinion Daily column last week, I wondered exactly what it is about we sub-30ers that inspires presidential candidates to call for our government servitude. Somin answers:

Why then the focus on the young? I suspect it is because they are politically weak. Research shows that 18-21 year olds are less likely to vote, less likely to engage in political activism, and have lower political knowledge levels than any other age group (see e.g. - this book). Obviously, they also have less money, make fewer campaign contributions, and are least likely to actually hold positions of power in government. The AARP would crucify any politician who had the temerity to suggest that the elderly be required to do forced labor. Unfortunately, the young lack that kind of power.

Somin also points out the obvious moral repugnance of national service:

It would still strike at the heart of the liberal idea that each person owns his or her own body, and cannot justly be compelled to work for others merely because it might be convenient to do so. Short of outright slavery or the murder of innocent people, it is hard to think of anything that violates individual liberty more clearly than forced labor.

The rhetoric of "national service" obscures the true nature of the idea, perhaps intentionally. It suggests that forced labor at the orders of the government ("national service") is somehow morally different from forced labor at the behest of other private individuals. But there is no intrinsic moral difference between the two. Yes, forced labor for the government might benefit the nation (though that result is by no means guaranteed). But so could forced labor for a private enterprise. Indeed, even outright slavery was regularly defended on the grounds that the labor of slaves produced valuable benefits to society as a whole.

Media Matters has a new report about the “conservative advantage in syndicated op-ed columns.”  Its  title — “Black and White and Re(a)d All Over” — is presumably a reference to “red” as in “red states,” not, as in my formative years, to Communism. (Maybe Media Matters can follow up with a report on Republican-leading TV and radio and call it “Red Channels.”)

If you accept Media Matters’  division of columnists into “progressive,” “centrist” and “conservative” — a big if, at least if you’re a libertarian — the results are interesting in the way that the results of any quantitative analysis are interesting. But they don’t prove that the “liberal media” are really the “conservative media.”

One quibble:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom suspended a county supervisor Tuesday for alleged misconduct and immediately appointed and swore in a replacement.

So is that such a big deal? Yes. It's further proof that San Francisco, although physically on the Pacific, is an East Coast city in spirit and law, and not even remotely in the same universe as Los Angeles. The mayor is firmly in charge up there, and can boot another elected official (although, true, only temporarily). That will never happen in L.A., at least not under the laws as they are written today. By culture, history and temperament, residents here would never allow their mayor to kick out a city council member. And that's fine. Still, San Fran may have some lessons for this town.

First, the details: San Francisco is a city. But it's also a county. Everything is wrapped up together. No fights between the city and the county over how to handle homelessness, housing or anything else. The mayor is in charge of the whole thing. The legislative branch is the county board of supervisors, which is also the city council.

S.F.'s city attorney began investigating Supervisor Ed Jew's residence after evidence emerged, as it did here with Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke, that he didn't live in the district he represents. Meanwhile, the FBI had opened a corruption probe on Jew.

Unlike here, the San Francisco mayor can start misconduct proceedings, oust the charged supervisor and appoint someone to replace him pending a final determination. The city's ethics commission will hold a hearing and make a recommendation on whether to permanently remove Jew from office. The Board of Supervisors has the final say.

It's different here, and supposedly less political. Only a court, the voters, term limits or the grim reaper can remove an elected official from office in L.A. (see Article II of the Los Angeles City Charter). The full City Council (but not the mayor) can suspend a member, but only pending a criminal trial. If there are no criminal charges, the best the council do is censure one of its own. If a member isn't living in his or her district, it's the apolitical city clerk, not (as in San Francisco) the elected city attorney, who has the task of asking the attorney general to remove the person from office.

In L.A. County, there is no mayor to suspend a supervisor. In the city of Los Angeles, the mayor can't touch a council member. It's less political here. More professional. Less efficient. More convoluted. In San Francisco, the mayor is in charge, and if the voters don't like him, they kick him out. In Los Angeles, it's, well, complicated. Better? Worse? Let's just say it's different.

Law professors Vikram Amar and Richard H. Sander ask if affirmative action hurts minorities:

The schools involved are dozens of law schools in California and elsewhere, and the program is the system of affirmative action that enables hundreds of minority law students to attend more elite institutions than their credentials alone would allow. Data from across the country suggest to some researchers that when law students attend schools where their credentials (including LSAT scores and college grades) are much lower than the median at the school, they actually learn less, are less likely to graduate and are nearly twice as likely to fail the bar exam than they would have been had they gone to less elite schools. This is known as the "mismatch effect."

The mismatch theory is controversial.

Former New York Times correspondent Barbara Crossette says that while industrialized nations worry about their declining populations, developing countries face a bigger problem -- uncontrolled growth. Columnist Ronald Brownstein wonders if Bush will veto a bill to expand kids' health insurance, which was once a priority of the president's.

The editorial board says speeches at the U.N. by Bush and other leaders revealed that the new big debate in the world is between liberty and inequality. The board also asks Gov. Schwarzenegger to save the condor instead of pandering to the gun lobby, and argues that companies should have to ask consent before selling customer data.

Letter writers react to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speeches and the editorial board claim that the audience was rightly laughing at him, not with him.  Santa Monica's Edward Singer says, "There is no humor when a leader who has the power, means and intent to bring about evil speaks. Both Columbia University and your editorial board need to grow up." 

What did you people want to read last week? Gloom about war, all things Chemerinsky, and whatever Ronald Brownstein wrote. But it's Jonah Goldberg who takes the top spot:

1) Bashing Bush with Greenspan, by Jonah Goldberg.
2) Petreaus on Britney, by Joel Stein.
3) What about Larry?, by David E. Bernstein.
4) Dumped over an Op-Ed, by Erwin Chemerinsky.
5) The risk of President Giuliani, by Niall Ferguson.
6) Will Iraq sink the GOP?, by Ronald Brownstein.
7) Why I let Chemerinsky go, by Michael Drake.
8) Republicans run right, by Ronald Brownstein.
9) Letters to the editor
10) We're losing in Afghanistan too, by John Kiriakou and Richard Klein.

Michael Moore crusading against the machinations of the healthcare industry is one thing. But when the American Cancer Society takes up arms against low-quality healthcare with a $15 million campaign, it looks like the beginning of a good long siege.

Normally the organization devotes its campaigns to the dangers of cigarettes or the benefits of regular cancer screenings. But after crunching the numbers, CEO John Seffrin told NPR, it was clear that

Lack of access to timely and adequate healthcare has now become a major cause of cancer deaths in America. We were advertising to get people in to do the colonoscopy ... or to stop smoking, and the truth is that many people said, we couldn't get in to get it done, or it cost too much, or I couldn't afford it, or my insurance didn't cover it. So we began looking into it and sure enough — more than race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education — it's whether you're covered with insurance that most correlates to excess cancer mortality in America.

Seffrin said he hopes that the effort will motivate all presidential candidates to come out with platforms on healthcare. He's probably halfway to that goal — many of the major candidates have produced some vision for affordable universal coverage, and HillaryCare 2.0 is generating respectable buzz.

If candidates are already touting their positions on healthcare, what does the cancer society's pitch have over them? Simple: It's not a candidate. It has little political capital to gain from using the problem as an election '08 hot topic. Chiming in to the national dialogue on healthcare adds both value and urgency — and in the midst of campaign frenzy, provides a stark reminder of what's truly at stake.

Day Two of this week's Hollywood politics Dust-up is now posted for your amusement, on the topic of Hollywood's proper role in the national discourse. Andrew Breitbart suggests an artistic New Deal of sorts:

Given that you are a gay expert of gays in cinema and an upstanding liberal Democrat, and I'm straight with four kids and have voted consistently Republican over the last 10 years, I propose that we start a bipartisan, bisexual artistic commission to fix the mess we've gotten ourselves into. [...]

It won't be about "identity" politics; it will be about American politics. It will be a publicly funded national artistic reunification project -- like something FDR would've implemented -- where Tim Robbins and his common-law wife will actually get to hear the other side. Maybe she'll even take off her shirt like she does in all her movies. But this time it will be for America!

David Ehrenstein, meanwhile, says we've always been at war with Eastasia:

Let's jump into the Wayback Machine and return to the early 1940s, when the Soviet Union was America's ally (yes, you read that right), and Hollywood was devoted to creating fanciful melodramas of its brave efforts to counter the Nazi menace. One of them was "Days of Glory" (1944), directed by Jacques Tourneur, and starring prima ballerina Tamara Toumanova and (in his motion picture debut) Gregory Peck. The script by Melchior Lengyel (a Hungarian emigre who co-scripted "To Be or Not to Be" and "Ninotchka" for Ernst Lubitsch) and Casey Robinson (a veteran screenwriter whose most famous titles are "Now, Voyager" and "Kings Row") is a fairly standard action-and-romance presenting Russian villagers as really nice people who don't deserve to be attacked by Hitler's armies. Nothing teribly special about it, other than Peck's obvious star potential.

As you might expect, a film like this looked a lot different by the war's end, when the U.S.-Soviet alliance was not only over but being treated as if it never happened, to judge from testimony given by numerous stars and studio chiefs before the House Un-American Activities Committee. This decidedly Orwellian turn of events (sorry, but no other word applies) was made complete by the 1950s with the "Cold War" in full swing. By 1958, "Days of Glory" director Jacques Tourneur could be found at the helm of "The Fearmakers" -- a bizarre little number in which Dana Andrews undoes a plot by evil commies Mel Torme and Veda Ann Borg to create biased opinion polls, the better to influence the media and elections. Interestingly enough, the script was based on an anti-Nazi World War II era novel by Darwin L. Teilhet. With a tap of the typewriter Nazis became commies

Click the whole thing to see stuff like hyperlinks, and to leave comments at the bottom.

In my Opinion Daily from last night about the Dodgers' bullying P.R. and the organizational incoherence underlying it, I made passing comparative reference to the on-the-same-page success of the Los Angeles Angels of not-Los Angeles.

As if by magic, The Times' Hall of Fame baseball writer Ross Newhan, an original-Angels beat writer and author of the only quality book-length history of the team, penned a fine feature that describes an Angels organization meeting in the fall of 1999 introducing then-newbie General Manager Bill Stoneman and Manager Mike Scioscia to, among other people, the team's P.R. staff:

Stoneman and Scioscia heatedly and pointedly declar[ed] the need for an overhaul of focus and direction in an organization that had known mostly failure, frustration and frequent fluctuations in personnel and philosophy during the 45 years Gene Autry owned the team and the four that Disney had.

"What happened," said a person who was in the meeting, "is that Bill and Mike kept getting peppered by questions from the marketing staff as to which of the players they would build an advertising campaign around since, as one of the marketers said, they were not going to win a World Series and it would be foolish to build a campaign around the team.

"Bill and Mike looked at each other incredulously. I thought they were going to come out of their chairs. They'd been on the job for only two weeks and they were being told that the organization's expectations didn't include a World Series. Well, both of them laid it out right there, saying that every day they came to work the goal from top to bottom should be and would be to reach the postseason and to win the Series."

Like a lot of good management stories, this sounds both trite and right (and is pure crack to us management-by-baseball fanatics).

Some reaction to my column at an Angels site, and at a non-Angels site.

Sara Bongiorni tells what it's like to boycott Chinese goods for a year:

China makes 56% of the household kitchen appliances, such as toasters, 86% of the lamps and 80% of the luggage imported into the country, according to 2006 U.S. International Trade Commission figures. The commission may have found that only 56% of small appliances were imported from China, yet when I scoured the store shelves for an ordinary coffee maker, I couldn't find one that wasn't.

During our yearlong boycott, those numbers translated into futile searches for birthday candles, flip-flops and cheap sunglasses. The boycott rearranged our lives in little ways. We boiled water and poured it into a filter over mugs after our coffee maker quit and we couldn't find an affordable non-Chinese alternative. The kitchen junk drawer was jammed shut all year because the part to fix it was made in China. We found the words "Made in China" in unexpected places, such as on a box of discount candy canes and on wedding dresses in the J. Crew catalog.

Jonah Goldberg dissects Rudy Giuliani's attempt to pander to the National Rifle Association. Jamie Court of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights thinks mandatory health insurance isn't true reform. And Georgetown University's David I. Steinberg parses the latest protests in Burma.

The editorial board is all for letting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak at Columbia University because he's his own worst enemy. The board praises San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders for his change of heart on same sex marriage, and notes that a congressional hearing on rap is only going to give the genre more credibility than it deserves.

Readers think Israel should try for peace. Benjamin Solomon of Evanston, Ill. puts it in context: "Israel has gained a valuable slice of the West Bank but at the cost of the intensified hostility of the region and the impossibility of attaining peace."

MoveOn.org's excessively discounted broadside against General David Petraeus in the New York Times two weeks ago won't rank as its most successful tactic. The full-page nastygram appears not only to have solidified Republican opposition in the Senate for proposals to curtail the Iraq war effort, but also to have shaken the group's rich Hollywood funding base.

So it's not too surprising that the liberal advocacy group would be a mite touchy from all the blowback online, even though it should be used to the abuse by now. So touchy, in fact, that it's been sending out cease-and-desist letters to CafePress, a website that lets people offer custom-designed t-shirts, coffee mugs and the like for sale. Last week it demanded that the site remove eight items, arguing that they violated MoveOn's merchandising trademarks.

Trademark law doesn't confer monopoly rights over all uses of a registered phrase or symbol, however, and it wasn't created simply to protect the trademark owner's interests. Instead, it's designed to protect consumers against being misled or confused about brands. The courts have repeatedly ruled in favor of parodies and critiques; that's why www.famousbrandnamesucks.com doesn't violate famousbrandname's trademark. And most, if not all, of the items targeted by MoveOn were clearly designed to razz it, not to trick buyers into thinking they were the group's products.

Beyond that, it's amazing that MoveOn would try to squelch political speech. That's another clear purpose of the targeted items. Take, for example, this message on a t-shirt designed by a lifelong Democrat from Southern California:

General Petraeus has done more for this country than MoveOn.org. MoveOn.org, the worst friend a Democrat could have! Move Away from Move On!

To its credit, CafePress refused to take down five bumper stickers, and it reinstated a t-shirt that it had taken down briefly in response to MoveOn's initial request. "While we understand that negative commentary is unsavory, our shopkeepers’ parodies of the MoveOn.org trademark are permissible here, especially when one considers the First Amendment implications raised by the social and political importance of your organization, the policies it advocates, and the countervailing messages conveyed by the parodies," wrote Daniel Pontes of CafePress to Carrie Olson, MoveOn's chief operating officer. Olson had been the one requesting the takedown.

CafePress and MoveOn declined to discuss the episode on the record. The anonymous designer of the t-shirt mentioned above withdrew her creation anyway, explaining in a note on her CafePress page that she didn't want to fight "a large group with the money to run ads in the NY Times demeaning a four star general." Not that her t-shirts were flying off the virtual CafePress shelves; she'd yet to record her first sale after a week and a half on the site.

Perhaps the most delicious irony here is that MoveOn hasn't exactly been scrupulous in its regard to other people's intellectual property. After all, it seems to have borrowed the Petraeus/Betray Us rhyme from a familiar radio host -- without crediting him, of course.

What does a fall movie season rich in high-profile movies with antiwar messages say about modern Hollywood politics? Not much, writes David Ehrenstein in the opening shot of this week's Dust-Up debate between him and fellow new-media maven and author Andrew Breitbart. This fall's political movies are more about genre than politics, using the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as subtext, Ehrenstein writes. More:

What the fall season tells us is that Hollywood is a lot faster on the uptake with this war than it was with Vietnam. Back then the first blip of the cinematic radar came in 1967 with Roger Corman's "The Trip," when a stoned Peter Fonda broke into a neighbor's home where the TV was playing actual news footage. Just a reference, but it really counted for something. The following year John Wayne's 21-gun salute, "The Green Berets," premiered and was a big hit. After that audio-visual silence reigned until 1978, long after Vienam had ended. The pro-war "The Deer Hunter" won an Oscar for best picture, while the antiwar "Coming Home" won "Hanoi Jane" (as the right loves to call her) her second statuette. The country was indeed "split" about Vietnam, and so was Hollywood (about 60% against and 40% for). But if the latest polling figures are to be believed (and I for one have every reason to give them credence), the Iraq war is about as popular as AIDS.

Looking at the slate of current and upcoming releases, Hollywood is staying true to cautious form, with "criticism" of the war couched in familiar genre terms. "In the Valley of Elah" is a melodrama about a war vet gone missing after returning stateside, and how it affects his family. "Grace is Gone" concerns a road trip taken by a man (John Cusack) whose wife has been killed in Iraq. In light of the right's brass-knuckles treatment of antiwar mom Cindy Sheehan, I expect no end of jokes will be made at the expense of this film by the ever-sensitive Ann Coulter and her ultra-scrupulous confederates.

Breitbart counters that the '07 fall movie season is in line with Hollywood's "40-year streak of working against the United States' strategic objectives at a time of war." More from Breitbart:

To the Hollywood defeat set the Iraq War is painted as Abu Ghraib and a soldier raping an Iraqi 14-year-old girl and killing her family. Anomalous hideous behavior for which the perpetrators are rightfully prosecuted is used to slander the majority in the pursuit of political propaganda intended to demoralize a nation in the pursuit of ending the war. Brian De Palma admitted as much. Shameful. Predictable . . .

For those who see the world through art, my side -- which strongly sees radical Islam as a growing anti-democratic, anti-liberal global threat -- is not represented because our dissent is deemed "hate speech." (War was so much easier when the Nazis were white.) Hollywood acquiesces when CAIR and other pro-Islamist interest groups demand that Muslim extremists not appear in film portrayed as terrorists. If only the Pentagon had the same sway! Sure, my side has talk radio, best-selling books, top-rated cable news shows, blogs, Op-Ed columns and even the presidency to make our points. But we do not have even a minority position to tell the most important stories of our time because of the politically correct architecture of the creative process in Hollywood.

Be sure to check back all this week, in which Ehrenstein and Breitbart will discuss studios' role in the national discourse, "Hollywood values," and whether the movie industry even matters politically.

A high five -- or a low, furry-pawed four -- for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sheila James Kuehl, two names you don't often read together in the same context.

The California Republican governor just signed a bill by the Democratic state senator that allows criminal and family courts to include family pets in domestic violence protective orders.

People laughed at that renowned "National Lampoon" cover, "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog."

But in the real world it's not remotely funny. The FBI links violence against animals as a predictor of violence against humans. Kuehl cited a 1997 survey of 50 of the nation's largest domestic violence shelters that concluded that 85% of women and 63% of children coming into the shelters mentioned pet abuse, and far more than half of the women looking for shelter from abusive partners say their family pets were threatened, hurt or killed. And children who witness or suffer abuse are themselves likelier to hurt a pet in turn.

"This legislation will prevent abusers from harming or threatening to harm animals in order to exert power and control over their human victims," said Kuehl.

Even if you don't care much about animals, you can appreciate that some domestic abuse victims stay in the house -- and put themselves and maybe their children at greater risk -- because they have no place to take the pet, or they refuse to leave a defenseless creature behind to the "mercy" of the abuser, or both.

The Kuehl bill addresses part of the problem, but not all of it. Police, district attorneys and animal welfare groups supported the bill, but the Oroville, California Mercury-Register reported that a local domestic violence shelter took no stand on the bill because of concerns that shelters can't house the imperiled pets.

It's a valid point. It's all well and good to extend paper protection to pets, and long overdue, but unless there's a place to shelter them, as there is for the families who love them and fear for them, the protection is just paper. Only other pieces of paper -- the legislation and the money to back it up -- can give this law ... well, there's no other way to say it -- real teeth.

My old colleague Ron Bailey gives a hip hip to this column by Michael Gerson that takes Israel Lobby authors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer to task for crypto-anti-Semitism. FWIW, I have some severe reservations with their argument and their book, which departs from an interesting study of special-interest politics in D.C. to drag out such tired accusations as the supposed "second-class citizen" status of Israeli Arabs. (I have no doubt that Israeli Arabs get picked on as does any minority in any society, but if I were an Arab from whatever you want to call the former British Mandate territory, I'd rather live in Israel than in any Arab country with the possible exception of Jordan.)

Gerson also makes the valid point that Walt and Mearsheimer's case for the Israel lobby's having helped promote the invasion of Iraq is apparently complicated by the hesitation many actual Israeli leaders felt about the invasion — though to be fair they do not argue that the lobby gets orders directly from Jerusalem but that it is its own extreme player, largely unmoored from Israeli governance and in fact frequently counterproductive to the best interests of Israel. (One argument they make, which in other contexts I think both Ron and I would find compelling, is the moral hazard claim: that unconditional support from the U.S. encourages the Israeli leadership to make stupid decisions without feeling the consequences.)

Beyond that, Gerson's piece is pretty heavy on Godwin's-law fouls, caricatures of the argument under review and slopes so slippery you'd need a greased pole just to climb up to them...or something like that. But I was interested in this bit:

Perhaps many Americans actually prefer Israel's flawed democracy to the aging autocrats and corrupt monarchies of the region.

I didn't include this part of the discussion in our original Primary Source from Mearsheimer and Walt's visit, but their failure to appreciate how fond the American people really are of Israel is a central weakness in their argument. So I asked them about, and you get to read the response at no additional charge:

Tim: There's another side to this, though, and I appreciate your question earlier about, if you wanted a political future would you strongly criticize Israel. I wasn't aware of the Brezinksi episode you mentioned, and certainly we all live in 24-hour horror of Alan Dershowitz...

Stephen Walt: Jimmy Carter is another example.

Tim: Yeah, but you know, the American people support Israel, in their hearts, and how convinced are we that they had to be argued into that position?

Susan Brenneman: That's my question too, and does this book look at the kind of grassroots culture, that we all grew up believing Israel was our brother, sister, you know?

Stephen Walt: Well [to Mearsheimer], I'll, I'll add anything that you leave out.

John Mearsheimer: There's no doubt that if you look at American public opinion, Americans support the existence of Israel and think that Israel is a net plus. No question about that. But it's largely a myth that there is broad and deep support for Israel in the American body politic.

Stephen: It's, it's I think a myth that the American people want the United States to give it unconditional support.

John: Well let me unpack the argument. Uh, I mean, I believe that one of the reasons that the lobby works so hard to, to shape the discourse in a pro-Israel direction, and is so concerned about people like me and Steve is in large part because they understand that the support is not that broad and not that deep. As Steve pointed out, we're talking about support for the present policy — we're not talking about support for the existence of Israel. And as Steve pointed out, we're talking about support for the existing policy. Let me say a few words about that.

The Pew Foundation has done polling between 1993 and the present, asking people whether they favor the Palestinians or the Israelis. And although it's clear that most Americans favor the Israelis over the Palestinians, only once in that entire period have more than 50% of Americans said that they favor the Israelis over the Palestinians. In most cases you find a huge chunk of people favor neither side. It's also clear from some polls of the Pew Foundation that a large number of Americans, over 70% of foreign policy people understand that one of the principle causes of global discontent with the United States is Israel. So American elites are well aware that this has gotten us into a lot of trouble. Unconditional support. And again, the American people are not as kneejerk as one might think, in their support for this, uh, present relationship.

With regard to the depth of the commitment, it's quite clear if you look at poll data that most Americans don't support the existing policy of unconditional aid and our one-sided policy in favor of Israel over the Palestinians. In fact polls show that roughly three-quarters of Americans believe that the United States should favor neither side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Including an Anti-Defamation League study from 2005; that's three-quarters of the American people who believe that the United States should favor neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis in settling that conflict. And this runs contrary to what the actual policy is. And one final point on this: 60% of Americans, according to a Pew survey, favor withholding aid from Israel if it resists U.S. pressure to settle the conflict with the Palestinians.

So again, the point here is not that the American people want to jettison Israel, or that Americans don't have respect for Israel, or that Americans don't believe the United States should work to ensure the survival of Israel. That's not in doubt, and it's certainly not in doubt with regard to me and Steve. The point is that the idea that the American people are demanding that we give Israel unconditional aid because they're so deeply attached to it does not mesh with the available poll data.

Mearsheimer and Walt are currently in heavy We're-not-anti-Semites mode, which is pretty much the definition of a no-win situation: Nothing sounds more anti-Semitic than telling people "I'm not an anti-Semite..." You could say that they have only themselves to blame for that, and their broadly distributed claim about how critics of Israel are silenced is self-refuting. Still, attacks like Gerson's fail even to do any damage to the target.

Paging Dr. Oliver Sacks! The neurologist and author of "Awakenings" and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" should look into the case of William McCartney-Moore. Ten year-old William came out of brain surgery speaking not with his own unfashionable Northern English accent but with the refined accent known in England as RP, for Received Pronunciation (or Really Prissy).

You can read all about it in the Daily Telegraph, under the rather tabloid-like headline "Vowel Surgery: Brain Op Boy Baffles Doctors After Waking Up with 'Posh' RP Accent."

William's mother told the Telegraph: "We went on a family holiday to Northumberland and he was playing on the beach and he said 'Look, I've made a sand castle' but really stretched the vowels, which made him sound really posh." For an American analogue, think of Joe Pesci getting bashed on the head and waking up sounding like George Plimpton.

Having lived in England for a while, I know that accent still matters (to paraphrase the title of an entertaining book on the subject). An English friend who speaks RP has two children who adopted the flat vowels of their mother, who hails from the North. Unlike their father (and the new posh William McCartney-Moore), they pronounce "castle" to rhyme with "vassal," not "jostle." Tres déclassé!

In the down-market dialect which William mysteriously has lost, there's an old saying: "There's nowt as queer as folk." (The rough American translation is: "People are weird.") The question, one that medical ethics makes unanswerable, is what the wee bairn would sound like if they noodled his noggin again. Maybe the next time he'd sound like Michael J. Fox -- or Michael Jackson.

Have you been following our "Great fat debate" Dust-Up this week, between professors Kelly Brownell and Paul Campos? If not you've missed some doozies, for instance Campos' assertion today that

The fundamental strategy of the war on fat is to universalize the attitudes of middle- and upper-class white American women toward weight, food, dieting and exercise. Such women are taught from a very early age to hate their bodies, to be terrified of fat and to turn eating into an endless moralistic struggle between the imperative to eat appropriately petite portions of supposedly "good" foods while avoiding the quasi-erotic seductions of "bad" foods. [...]

Needless to say, both diet companies and obesity researchers are doing their best to change this unacceptable situation. Thus we have researchers advocating "the development of culturally sensitive public health intervention programs ... to encourage black youth to achieve a healthy and reasonable (sic) body size." Translation: Let's make black and brown girls feel as bad about their bodies as we've managed to make the average white girl feel about hers.

Or this bit from Brownell:

One myth rises above all others. It affects public opinion about what drives America's diet, how politicians respond to increasing obesity, what we permit of the food industry, and the health of the nation.

It is captured in two words -- personal responsibility -- and relies on several assumptions: a) adverse changes in the nation's diet and exercise result from irresponsible behavior; b) there is no social or corporate responsibility; and c) people who suffer from problems such as diabetes bring it on themselves.

The myth has strong, well-funded and politically powerful proponents, most notably the food industry, its trade associations and political figures influenced by industry lobbyists.

Read the whole thing!

A provocative piece in the Washington Monthly poses (and sort of answers) the question “Why Is Bob Herbert Boring?”  Herbert is the columnist who, along with the brief-exceeding economist Paul Krugman, anchors the left side of the New York Times op-ed page. The author of the Washington Monthly article, T. A. Frank, is pretty brutal about Herbert’s marginalization by the chattering class:

I've spoken to a couple dozen journalists of the center-left variety, and most, after insisting on being off the record or unnamed, confess to reading Bob Herbert rarely, if ever. "I've literally never heard someone say, 'Hey, did you read Bob Herbert today?' Never in my entire life," said one reporter for a Washington political magazine. Said another: "I haven't read him in years." The New Republic may have captured it in a recent headline for a hit piece on John Tierney: "How could a New York Times columnist be more boring than Bob Herbert?"

For the record, I don’t think my Pittsburgh pal John Tierney’s N.Y. Times op-ed column was boring. But I see why Herbert gets accused of failing to interest readers. It’s partly because of the theory floated in the sub-headline on Frank’s piece: "The Perils of Punditry for the Powerless."

One of my favorite quotations, variously attributed to Jean de la Bruyere and Horace Walpole, goes: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think." Herbert, as Frank notes, feels for "the disadvantaged and disenfranchised of America," but not in a way that engages hyper-educated NYT readers who drool over Maureen Dowd’s drollery. Frank suggests that if Herbert were to "think about who his audience is and what he wants it to do, he could be one of the most powerful liberal voices in the country."

Maybe, but as long as Herbert is preaching, even to the converted, he may have to reckon with Sam Goldwyn’s famous observation that, if you want to send a message, call Western Union — or, these days, send an e-mail.

If you haven't taken a gander at our Primary Source from Gov. Schwarzenegger's visit, hop on over and check it out. And if that doesn't fill you up, here's some additional schwarzenschmoozing, in which the governor provides his views on budget discipline, real estate and my weight problem...

Tim Cavanaugh: You just mentioned a lot of Democratic names, and I'm wondering, how far do you think you can continue to push your own party with comments like "Dying at the box office" and things like that. I mean, is there a little bit of buck-stops-here-ism, given that it was your own party that was holding up the budget?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: If it is, if I am the leader of the party, then I take credit for it or I take the blame for it. But that's not the way it works in California. That's the way it works in Great Britain, that's the way it works in Germany and Austria, that's the way it works in other states. You know, if you talk to, you know, Crist, he would say you know, I did this, through the party, then I came in, changed things around, put my guy in, and now they are the party that is in a sense, me, and in a sense my philosophy. Well that's not the way it works in California. Maybe that's the way we should do it, but I mean that's not the way it works.

So what I do is, I do that, if I see you, um, you know, gaining weight, and gaining weight and gaining weight and gaining weight, I will eventually say — if I care at all about you — I would say, You know something? If you continue this way, you may get into serious trouble, and you'll maybe get a heart attack, or maybe, you know, have problems with diabetes and stuff like that and you can't move around as quickly and you will get tired, and, blah blah all those things. But, here's what I'd do if I were you: I would go and exercise every day, stop eating at night, eat only two meals, be disciplined, and blah blah and all those kinds of things, I would give you a plan. I'd say either you can follow that plan or not. So it's not really that I'm criticizing you, it's just that, look, I care about you, and I want you to live and feel good, as good as I do. And do as well as I do.

So that's what I basically did with the Republican Party, is to go to them and say, Look: Here's the, the swing voters, here's the independents, here's the majority of Republican voters, that actually love the health care proposal, that a majority of them voted for, and any of the polls show that they like what we're doing, they like the idea of taking care of the environment and fighting global warming. They like that I signed AB 32. I say, there's an endless amount of situations where the voters, the Republican voters, are with me. But not the politicians and not the party guys. So what I'm saying is, You should start looking at that. So if you want to become the majority party, look at those things, and look at those independents, and you will see: If you will be inclusive, and if you start changing some of the policies, and direct, you know, do things more for California than just for this one group, I think that we could be again the majority party, and that's where the action is.

Keep reading for more from the ed board, and the governor's real estate tips for smart shoppers...

The editorial board explores racial tensions in Jena, La.:

Jena, La., has been portrayed by big-city reporters, who swarmed to the small town Thursday when it became the center of a racial protest, as a place caught in a time warp. African Americans, who make up about 12% of the town's population of 3,000, live in their own neighborhood, are buried in their own cemetery and reportedly can't even get their hair cut at the white barbershop. The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have likened Jena to Selma, Ala., which became a national symbol of Jim Crow repression in the 1960s.

Many white residents, meanwhile, find such criticism bewildering. To them, Jena is just a pleasant, friendly place to live and work. They say everything would be fine if all the media and outside protesters -- agitators, they would have been called in a not-so-bygone day -- would just clear out and leave them alone.

The reality is probably somewhere in between.

The board says Dan Rather's lawsuit is killing the cult of the anchor, and notes that campaign-money "bundlers" should be subject to disclosures laws.

Columnist Rosa Brooks rails against the Bush adminstration's auctioning off its war duties in Iraq, while Army Infantry captain Timothy K. Hsia says contractors are necessary to supplement over-stretched troops. Columnist Joel Stein reports back on his night at the Emmy Awards, and attorney Laine T. Wagenseller wonders if the city can zone away her love handles.

Readers respond to Republican senators' refusal to change war strategy. Laguna Niguel's Kurt Page says, "Another campaign slogan down the drain. 'Family values' is a goner, and now so is 'support the troops.'"

So you think you've heard all there is to hear about Chemerinskygate? Wrong again! (For a refresher on the basics, see our previous posts here, in chronological order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.) Since then we've also had a David E. Bernstein Op-Ed about politically correct campus speech-smashing entitled "What about Larry?" (meaning Summers); and wee rant from me called "'Fess up, Chancellor Drake."

Well the big news today is that Chancellor Drake did not fess up in a Wednesday interview published one hour ago in the L.A. Times, aside from acknowledging that he "bungled." Some excerpts:

"This is certainly something that I bungled and I regret it completely and totally," Drake said. "I am always trying to do what I can to enhance the institution and have it move forward. It's awful that all this has blown up like this. I couldn't regret it more." [...]

"The why of it is straightforward, but I think it's going to be unsatisfactory," he said. "It was a personnel issue and there are a lot of things that go into that. We as a university have a policy that we don't talk about personnel decisions.

"First, I don't want to talk about it," he added, "but second, it wouldn't be appropriate to do that." [...]

"This has been an awful period," Drake said during the interview. "I would have wished that I could have avoided it. I'm pleased that we got it back on the right track. The most important thing now really is the school and developing the school going forward. That's really what it's all about ultimately." [...]

Drake declined to comment on allegations that he faced pressure to dump Chemerinsky from well-connected Orange County conservatives and potential donors to the law school.

"There's a lot of information out there that doesn't come from me and I have no comment on that," he said. "No one pressured me. That's all I can say." [...]

"It would be easy to say here's what happened. What we need to do is do it right going forward. We have come to an agreement, and I think it's an exciting agreement for a really outstanding law school."

"There's no particular smoking gun," he added. "I just don't know what to say."

And though the controversy in question has mostly been resolved, the reaction keeps on chugging. To read about anti-Semitism, the L.A. Times' "crusade," and some defenses of Chancellor Drake, click the jump for more!

Metal Edge magazine editor Philip Freeman says the album isn't dead:

Yes, album sales for the first half of 2007 were down 15% compared with the same period last year, and the record industry has entered what seems like a perpetual state of panic. And yes, most music that's being downloaded legally is bought a la carte, song by song. But that doesn't mean albums, or even CDs, are doomed.

Certain genres -- pop, hip-hop, dance music -- have always been, and will always be, about the perfect song. Albums are more contemplative, presuming and demanding both commitment and patience on the listener's part. But for those of us who love the idea of being permitted into an artist's world for an hour or so, that's how it should be -- and these are good times.

Ambitious, personal music, frequently in lavish packaging, whether by arty metal acts such as Sunn O))) or rap mega-stars such as Kanye West, is reaching the fans it's meant for.

Pediatrician Harvey Karp and attorney Rachel Gibson argue against toxic chemicals in kids' toys. The Reason Foundation's Shikha Dalmia and Leonard Gilroy answer conspiracy theorists' fears that a Texas highway project will hurt U.S. sovereignty. And columnist Patt Morrison thinks identity politics are so 20th century.

The editorial board isn't surprised that L.A. leads the nation in traffic congestion. The board notes a bipartisan consensus on healthcare in Sacramento and says it's time to make a deal. And finally the board comments on Europe's ruling that Microsoft engaged in anti-competitive behavior.

On the letters page, readers react to the Blackwater controversy in Iraq. Santa Monica's Forrest Murray asks, "Is there a difference between an 'enemy combatant' and a privateer Blackwater contract player with state-of-the-art weaponry?"

The editorial board responds to the Blackwater USA investigation in Iraq:

The accusation that the Blackwater security guards mistakenly opened fire on Iraqi civilians is devastating. But no matter what misdeeds Blackwater personnel may have committed in the past, the guards must be considered innocent unless proved guilty in a court of law. According to the State Department, the contractors operate under the same rules of engagement as the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security personnel. These rules are more defensive and circumscribed than those that govern U.S. military operations in Iraq, but they still permit the use of deadly force. It is possible that the Blackwater personnel erred, yet still acted legally within rules of engagement that are in need of an overhaul.

The board also argues that the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts were a smart move even if they sent mixed signals. Finally, the board encourages the Los Angeles school district to learn some lessons from its award-winning southern neighbor.

George Mason University law professor David E. Bernstein says that even if Erwin Chemerinsky is back at U.C. Irvine, academic freedom remains elusive in the face of the far left. Columnist Ronald Brownstein compares Hillary Clinton's latest healthcare plan to her failed 1993 initiative. New America Foundation fellow Douglas McGray writes in support of the DREAM act, which would grant conditional citizenship to young illegal immigrants. And writer Erika Schickel thinks parents could use a ditch day.

Readers respond to columnist Niall Ferguson's claim that Rudy Giuliani is a risky choice for president. Irvine's Amy Smith says, "The one issue on which Rudy Giuliani is staking his campaign is 9/11. He ties everything to that event, no matter how absurd...."

The editorial board comments on the new O.J. Simpson saga:

The events that transpired Thursday at the Palace Station Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas remain murky to all but their participants, who are giving contradictory accounts. The facts were at first murky in June 1994 too, when the only things the world knew were that Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and a male acquaintance were found murdered outside her Brentwood condominium and that O.J. was the prime suspect. This time, age and the knowledge that he can get away with anything seem to have mellowed Simpson; rather than