Notes from two debates:

Homeland security? Please. At the GOP candidates' debate Wednesday in Simi Valley, you could walk in with pretty much anything and no one would know. Cell phones, Blackberries, etc. were not allowed, but guests were on the honor system: You could take out your Personal Digital Assistant and check it, but if you wanted to keep it in your pocket, no one would be the wiser. No ID checks, no pat-downs, no metal detectors. If you're in Simi Valley -- and the Reagan Library, no less -- you must be OK.

At Thursday's Democratic debate in Hollywood, forget it. No cell phones, no exceptions. And no place to check them -- what is this, a welfare state where you want the government to solve your problems? And yes, there were metal detectors. And better get that driver's license out. Democrats may love you, but they don't trust you.

After the Dems' debate, by the way, there were plenty of parties -- but by invitation only. You'd better know someone. And if you got to the Kodak Theater too late, sorry, the bar is closed. For the Republicans, it was generous entitlements all around. Come one, come all -- full bar, roast beef, turkey, vegetables (just in case there was a Democrat in the crowd), full dessert array, and individual servings of red, white and blue jelly beans. This is Reagan Country, after all.

Of course, sometimes Republicans are just Republicans. If you wanted to get to the GOP debate by some way other than a car -- well, you can't. Why don't you have a car? You could see the hoi polloi with their signs and chants (lots for Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee, and one lone Fred Thompson holdout), but only through your car window. Going to the Kodak on Thursday, car or no car, you had to quite literally rub shoulders with, and push your way through, the chanters, enthusiasts, pamphleteers, conspiracy theorists and activists. Getting in was chaos. No special privileges for members of the City Council, the Assembly, the Senate, who had to elbow their way through the masses along with everyone else, hold their driver's licenses aloft and plead with the harried people behind the check-in desk to get their paper bracelets.

That's more like it -- Democrats acting like Democrats, Republicans like Republicans. The world's order is restored.

The biggest ovation at Thursday evening's Democratic primary debates went to former California Gov. Gray Davis.

Art Torres, the state Dems' chair, was introducing the state party's A-list at the beginning of the program. When he got to Davis, there was a smattering of applause as the bigwigs on the floor craned their necks to see where the ex-guv was. Then they spotted the shock of white hair way upstairs, in the first balcony, in the back. The smattering turned into affectionate cheering, which turned into a standing ovation in his balcony, then the other two balconies, finally the floor.

Torres jumped in: Which governor had the biggest deficit? (Hint: Not Davis). More clapping. The warm reception outdid even Hillary's big applause line of the night -- the one about needing a Clinton to clean up after the second Bush, just like the first.

At the GOP debate in Simi Valley the night before, the reception for the man who ousted Davis -- current governor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- was polite enough, no doubt in part because he escorted Nancy Reagan into the room.

The issue of waterboarding drowned out almost all other concerns about Attorney General Michael Mukasey during his confirmation hearings last year, and it could wipe out today's confirmation hearings for Mark Filip, slated to become the next deputy attorney general. From Congressional Quarterly:

Senate Democrats plan to delay a floor vote on President Bush’s nominee for the No. 2 post at the Justice Department until the department responds to several Judiciary Committee oversight letters.

Mukasey had managed to stay afloat and pass muster by the smallest margin in 50 years. At the time, he hedged wildly on waterboarding, protesting that he didn't know enough to make a judgment.

Yesterday, judgment day came. And the verdict? That he can't issue one.

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick has a scathing critique of Mukasey's logic:

Mukasey won't speculate about future water-boarding, either, claiming he will not be drawn into "imagining facts and circumstances that are not present and thereby telling our enemies exactly what they can expect in those eventualities." He also refuses to tell "people in the field ... what they have to refrain from or not refrain from in a situation that is not performing."

Just to be clear then, to the extent that there is any purpose to the law, i.e., to punish past bad acts and to alert people as to what types of conduct will be punished in the future, the attorney general has just obliterated that purpose. Unless someone were to actually be water-boarded before Mukasey's eyes at the witness table in the Hart Senate Building, America's lawyer cannot hazard an opinion as to its legality.

But Mukasey calls out the senators as well -- and he has a point, says CBS News analyst Andrew Cohen:

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, especially Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), want Mukasey to do their heavy lifting. They want him to proclaim by legal memorandum what they have so far been unable to accomplish by political power. It would be nice if he were willing to do so. And you can bet that if a majority of Republicans and the President were calling upon Mukasey to say the magic words he’d be game. But they aren’t and he isn’t and it’s time Leahy and Company moved on.

Judging by their toying with today's confirmation hearings, it doesn't seem like they're ready to take Cohen's advice just yet.

The Times reports today that the mayor of Ecapetec, a suburb of Mexico City, has declared his town a sanctuary for Central American illegal immigrants, many of whom pass through on their way to the U.S. Mayor Jose Luis Gutierrez has asked law enforcement not to harass or question migrants — a provision that several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, have instituted as well.

But those provisions aren't enough for immigrants in those cities. In Chicago, which has sanctuary rules, Flor Crisostomos is claiming "sanctuary" in the same church where now-deported Elvira Arellano stayed. Of course, she isn't just looking for safety (though she is facing deportation). Like Arellano, she wants to draw attention to the illegal immigration issue.

Is it a good strategy? Some bloggers have taken it up already. Post your thoughts below.

Perhaps it's time to finally ditch the oft-made comparison between Southwest Airlines and Ryanair, the uber-low-cost European carrier that makes the former look positively first class. Sure, Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary drew his initial inspiration from Southwest, but take a look at this article and the accompanying photo:

Ryanair has locked horns with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over a newspaper advert featuring a "saucy schoolgirl", the BBC reports.

The advert punting cheap flights, which appeared in the Herald, Daily Mail and Scottish Daily Mail, shows a teen temptress (right) with the strapline “Hottest back to school fares”. . .

According to the ASA adjudication, Ryanair "disagreed that the ad suggested sexual connotations" and further "believed it was obvious that the image was of a woman fully clothed and that the short skirt and bare midriff were representative of the type of clothing that was fashionable among young women in the UK".

Ryanair defended that it "believed the ad was likely to be found offensive only by the minority of people who were likely to find any such representation objectionable".

Yep, Southwest sets a different mood by dressing its flight attendants in more casual, shorts and T-shirt uniforms, while Ryanair entices passengers to its planes with pictures of....jail bait — how far we Americans have yet to go. And this is the lesser of Ryanair's current adventures in advertising faux-pas.

Anyone remember Hooters Air?

Patt Morrison waggles a finger at mail-in voters who jumped the gun:

Now aren't you sorry?

Two or three weeks ago, maybe even earlier, you zipped through that absentee ballot, check check check, and hustled it off to the mailbox as if you were claiming a lottery prize.

And see what you missed? So much has happened since then that it's barely the same election it was on Jan. 7.

Also on the Op-Ed page, author David Callahan sees a sea change in U.S. businesses' attitudes toward their role in society, and David A. Lehrer and Joe R. Hicks of Community Advocates Inc. urge the state Senate to kill a bill that would require nonprofits to disclose employees' gender, race, ethnicity and orientation. Rosa Brooks proclaims her support for all things Obama, and cartoonist Matt Davies watches the Bush administration navigate the twin specters of war and recession.

The editorial board finds that the front-loaded primary schedule has been a surprisingly good deal for voters, and pokes fun at Huntington Beach for its trademark battle with a a Santa Cruz beachwear shop. On a more serious note, it condemns Sacramento for failing to pass a major healthcare reform bill:

Whatever direction the conversation takes, [Assembly Speaker Fabian] Nuñez and [Gov. Arnold] Schwarzenegger should keep the focus on comprehensive reform and the notion of shared responsibility. Their great achievement was forging a broad coalition for change. Their greatest failure would be letting it disintegrate.

Readers rebuke Melody Petersen's Op-Ed on the pharmaceutical industry. "Petersen does a disservice, through bias, ignorance or her profit motive, to an industry that is heavily regulated," writes Angelo P. Calfo. "If she had her way, healthcare professionals would be spending their weekends digging herbs."

Seven pickets in a row: Survey finds 100% opposition to L.A. Times

Seven picketers on the line outside CBS this morning. I stopped to chat them up. To the following question...

Do you think the L.A. Times' coverage of the strike has been horrible?

...I got seven affirmative responses.

Optimism unbound

Nikki Finki, who has actually covered world issues as a foreign correspondent, hears optimism coming from the labor side of strike negotiations. And more optimism. Nothing but optimism for five days or so. Even the Oscars may go forward.

Who's the only loser in this? I am, the guy who wants the strike to continue for at least one full calendar year.

The editorial board says President Bush is right to scrutinize earmarks, but he might be using it as a way to extend executive power:

More scrutiny of earmarks is an undeniably good thing. Lawmakers' pet projects account for a slender slice of the federal budget -- about one-half of 1% -- yet they feed much of the cynicism that the public feels about Congress and its penchant for spending. Bush's stance, however, betrays more concern about executive branch power than about taxpayer dollars poured into questionable projects.

The board examines the crisis in Lebanon spurred by two bombings this month. The board also asks City Hall to be pragmatic with its plans to remake downtown's Broadway.

Columnist Tim Rutten takes a look at another would-be downtown makeover -- this one a developer's dystopian, "Blade Runner"-inspired vision. USC's Harry P. Pachon and Columbia University's Rodolfo O. de la Garza say Hillary Clinton can count on Latinos. Author Michael D'Antonio argues that Explorer may not have beaten Sputnik to space, but it did represent a greater scientific breakthrough. And state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas thinks the now-defeated ABX1 1 was California's best chance at healthcare reform.

Readers react to historian Sean Wilentz's argument that there's no comparing Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln or John Kennedy. See why Los Angeles' Donald Cosentino says, "A scholar ought not to disguise such partisan rants as historical analyses."

Last week's Bigfoot on Mars story demonstrates two important truths: 1. This wonderful age of human discovery and achievement is too good for many if not all of the humans lucky enough to live in it; and 2. the evil MSM can't win.

First point: When you see a picture like the one at right, a panorama of a valley in the Gusev Crater on a planet five-to-ten light-minutes away from us (see the picture in its full-sized glory here), is your first reaction: a) to get misty thinking of the intellects vast and cool and partially sympathetic who managed to send robot envoys on this magnificent journey; b) to consider the barren, nearly airless, geologically inert rustscape and consider what it has to teach us about our own prehistory and ecology; or c) scan the picture carefully looking for evidence of a boring old hoax by a bunch of rustics?

C was the choice of observers who found evidence of Bigfoot taking a load off out on the surface of the Red Planet. Here's the detail, an optical illusion that was treated to some deadpan news coverage, a few revealing enhancements and a (clearly unnecessary) debunking. I'm not sure anybody actually believed the humanoid-form-on-Mars story, and at least this news cycle wrapped up more quickly than the Face-On-Mars fad that endured through most of the nineties and even inspired an expensive NASA-assisted Hollywood movie. But really, there's something off about this need to find the most banal, people-sized mysteries, whatizzits lifted from old Six Million Dollar Man episodes, in a field that doesn't lack for real, interesting mysteries. Accept the verdict of science, earthlings: You ain't all that.

On the second point, one Bigfoot buff uses this story to generate (what else?) a bloglashing of the mainstream media, which not only refuse to accord this story the respect it deserves, but allegedly used the same deride-and-conquer strategy to dismiss the 2006 O'Hare airport UFO sighting. As it happens, the O'Hare story is precisely the wrong example to pick if you're looking to reprimand the MSM in this way: The tale got a fresh wind and much wider distribution thanks to some FAA shenanigans that were revealed thanks to a FOIA request from that obscure blog The Chicago Tribune.

Images courtesy of NASA.

Driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants remains a major crash-and-burn issue in California. Some fear they could be used to prosecute license holders, while others don't want to give illegal immigrants anything except a kick across the border. As the San Francisco Chronicle points out, even Hillary Clinton backed off the issue after voicing support for it in a debate last year. So why would Barack Obama be fueling the fire by revving up his support for the measure?

Because he really, really needs that jump start in the polls among Latino voters. According to the Field Poll, he's trailing Clinton by 40 points — 19% to her 59%. She's banking on her name and nineties nostalgia. Apparently, it's working.

Some also argue that it has to do with racism against African Americans — an idea Gregory Rodriguez trashed yesterday. Along with Rodriguez and Roberto Lovado at the Huffington Post, San Diego Union-Tribune's Ruben Navarrette Jr. partly blamed this popular misconception on the media, who often "don't know much about Latinos." Some say Sen. Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Obama will bring in more Latino voters; then again, Clinton now has some Kennedys of her own.

In any case, Obama stands to benefit from taking a stronger position on licenses in two ways: He distinguishes himself from Clinton on a policy matter (which has become increasingly dificult as the campaign continues) and he could lure some Latino voters away from the Clinton camp.

But, the SF Chronicle article points out, Democratic pollsters say two thirds of voters oppose the licenses. So is the gamble really worth the risk?

Probably. Because even if he gets negative publicity, it's still publicity — which could boost name recognition among Latinos. And right now, he needs as much of that as he can get. From last week's Times:

A Spanish-language news report from the Nevada caucuses described some voters as unclear even as to the name of Clinton's prime challenger. "They were looking for an Omega, not an Obama," Pachon said. "So his name is just not recognized yet."