After at first refusing to leave their homes during the evacuation of Gold Canyon, five residents are now asking to be rescued. Right now that's not even a possibility, but fire crews are looking for ways -- or a change in conditions -- that might make rescue possible.

Situations like this crop up in many fires. People feel that they can save their homes; after all, no one will try as hard as they will to keep the flames at bay. But what should this mean in a mandatory evacuation? Should people be allowed to stay? And if so, should fire crews try to bail them out when things get tougher than these stalwart -- or simply stubborn -- folk anticipated?

Photo credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

--Karin Klein

Anytime I'm in the car and there's a fire in these parts, I've gotten used to (metaphorically) twirling the radio dial, AM and FM, searching for news flashes.

So, flash this: KFWB, once the other all-news AM station in LA, is reinventing itself after four decades. It’s been carrying weekend infomercials and advice for some time now, and in about a week’s time, it will pretty much give its weekdays over to talk radio.

In its earlier news days, KFWB came off as the scrappy little news station. Unlike KNX, which was rooted in its network broadcasts of national and international news from CBS, the "Tiffany network’’ of Murrow and Cronkite, KFWB seemed to my ears to be entirely local in reporters and outlook. Sure, it was owned by Westinghouse, but “Westinghouse’’ made me think of appliances, not network journalism. Some of its reporters had the distinctive voices I associated more with character actors than news reporters, like Cecilia Pedroza, and Gary Franklin (sign-off: "Gary Franklin … Car 98 … out.").  

Westinghouse took over CBS radio nearly 15 years ago, yet the two local news stations still battled away at each other. Until now.

Even though I knew the change was coming, not hearing KFWB on the air reporting from the fire-lines was a bit of a shock to my Angeleno ears. Even the veteran KFWB newsman Pete Demetriou, without whom no brushfire or police chase feels complete, now signs off with "KNX."

As of September 8, it'll be a different KFWB, with some local news but a lot of conservative talk radio and KFBW’s new star, national radio fixture Laura Schlessinger, the popular advice and counseling host better known as "Dr. Laura." Angels baseball still rules at game time, at least through the season.

By which I mean the baseball season, not the fire season.

-- Patt Morrison

The change in administrations has led the Department of Homeland Security to adjust its much-maligned policy regarding laptop searches at the border. It's not going to search fewer laptops, iPods or other electronic devices, necessarily; it's just going to take more care not to disclose any sensitive information it finds on them.

As News.com's Declan McCullagh reported, the Obama administration continues to take an extremely permissive view toward the power of federal agents at the border. The new directives from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection reiterate the Bush administration's stance that agents have the authority to search any digital storage device entering the country, even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing. They'll need to show probable cause only if they want to seize the device or retain copies of its contents. The primary change in policy is more administrative oversight over how the devices and data are handled after they're seized....

An extraordinary lawsuit--one that could change the balance of power between multinationals and the indigenous people in the countries where they pull resources from the ground--is nearing verdict in Ecuador, where extensive damage was caused by years of oil extraction: In the first of a two-part series, the editorial board reflects on the damage and the changes in corporate behavior that might come about as a result:

Today, a swath of the Ecuadorean Amazon the size of Rhode Island remains contaminated beyond imagining. At one site after another, oil hangs in the air, slideson the water's surface and saturates the land. Pipelines and waste pits left behind years ago still drip and ooze. Advocates for the plaintiffs have called the former Texaco concession area the "Amazon Chernobyl." Were it in the United States, it would easily qualify as a Superfund site. Neither side in the case disputes the devastation, only who should pay for it. Chevron says it is the state-owned oil company's responsibility; the plaintiffs say it is Chevron's.

On the other side of the fold, the op-ed page offers a trio of tributes to people of accomplishment who have contributed to modern society:

A former aide of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy reveals another side of the Senate powerhouse. He describes the personal, empathetic man who understood what it was like to lose loved ones and regularly called people who were mourning terrible deaths--such as the victims of the World Trade Center attack-- spending expansive amounts of time sympathizing and even crying with them.

Jim Newton, editor of the editorial pages, pulls from his years of experience covering City Hall to pay tribute to Robin Kramer, chief aide to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (and previously, Richard Riordan), who resigned from the mayor's office. Calling her L.A.'s leading grown-up, Newton praises the focus and level head she has brought to Villaraigosa's operation and wonders, with a measure of nervousness, what the mayor's operation will be like without her.

And two academics who have co-authored a book honor the iconic African American civil-rights figure T.R.M. Hunter--flamboyant big-game hunter, plantation owner, and surgeon to the poor. What, never heard of him? That's exactly the point. Now you will have.

--Karin Klein

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

 

GOP Chairman Michael Steele was for Medicare before he was against it, which was before he couldn't give an answer to the question of whether he was for or against it. In other words, the leader of a major political party is confused about his position on a massive government program that consumes more than one-fifth of total federal budget and has been around since the Vietnam War.

The question that comes up is how this guy ever managed to become the leader of a political party. Having looked through our archives for coverage of Steele's selection earlier this year as GOP chairman, it's apparent that he wasn't a very inspired pick by Republicans. Here's an excerpt from a Times news article published on Jan. 31, the day after his election:

What Steele needed to do was shore up party support. Instead, he engaged in a useless public turf war with Limbaugh for which he later apologized. In a preview of his current indecisiveness over bread-and-butter issues for Republicans, he suggested that abortion is an individual choice. And after promising to make the GOP available to "every corner, every boardroom, every neighborhood, every community," he threatened to withhold party funds from moderate Republicans who voted for President Obama's stimulus package.

So now we're on to healthcare reform, and enormously complex field of public policy. Republicans, don't say you didn't see this train wreck coming.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: Steele speaks at the annual Indiana GOP state dinner in Indianapolis July 8. Credit: AP Photo / Tom Strickland.

 In today's Los Angeles Times editorial pages, author Ethan Rarick finally gives Nevada the business, so to speak. In case you've missed the flap, Nevada is the latest in a long line of states to spend money making a play for California businesses, which claim to be mistreated and which others claim are deserting the state in droves. Not happening, Rarick says, picking up on stats that the Public Policy Institute of California put out a couple of years ago. 

The Times editorial board remembers Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Here's someone whose life actually measures up to the tributes.

The ed board also checks in on Tuesday's school board vote to, in essence, get the board out of the business of running more than 100 Los Angeles schools.

And columnist Meghan Daum nails the entire generation: we're still trying to figure out how to be grownups. The dead giveaways are the similarities, and differences, between "thirtysomething" and "Mad Men."

Photo: AP Photo / Charles Krupa

--Robert Greene

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a new forum this week for Californians to pitch their ideas for how to fix the state's problems. But at MyIdea4CA.com, there's not much room for explaining how to implement an idea, what the benefits might be or how much it might cost. In fact, there's not much room, period. That's because the site publishes the ideas that people submit via Twitter, which has a 140-character limit on its messages.

That doesn't strike me as the greatest way to tap the public's imagination and resourcefulness, particularly not when dealing with issues as complex as the state's budget mess. Then again, I write long. Even my emoticons run longer than 140 characters. Besides, people can always include links in their tweets to lengthy blog posts or white papers about their ideas, as Paul Benedict (aka paulbenedict7) did in the following tweet on the state budget: "Reduce costs by fewer gov rules that must be enforced: http://www.nolanchart.com/article6524.html." Most of the others weighing in on the budget problems, though, went with simple one- or two-sentence prescriptions, such as "automate unemployment biweekly claims. Permit online filing and direct deposit like tax returns" and "Add variable gas taxes, when it's low in way to obtain money for debts." Then there's this from Francisco MelliHuber (aka fmelli): "get a new governor who's not insane."

Got a proposal for the Gubernator? Send out a Tweet with the hashtag "#myidea4ca." But remember, keep it short. He's running out of time.

Photo: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger chats (briefly) with Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams. Credit: Justin Short, Office of the Governor.

-- Jon Healey

Today the Opinion Manufacturing Division takes both sides of the debate over whether to investigate CIA interrogators, with columnist Tim Rutten lamenting the appointment of a special prosecutor and the editorial board applauding it. Rutten argues that it would be a "travesty" to charge the small fry without going after the higher ups in the Justice Department and the White House who egged them on. And that, he says, is a road to a place we don't want to go:

The editorial board, on the other hand, sees wisdom in having a respected career prosecutor conduct a limited inquiry into whether interrogators violated laws against torture or exceeded the "minimal" limits imposed by the Justice Department. It also opines:

The board also questions the motives ...

If critics of Obamanomics won't listen to the Opinion Manufacturing Division, perhaps they'll listen to Rush Limbaugh. It's just not socialism, people!

According to the liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America, El Rushbo declared on his program today, "We've gotta stop calling it socialism, folks, 'cause socialism's lost its bite, and what he's doing is really not socialism anyway. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production." (Italics added by me.) He goes on to say -- and this is the part featured on the RushLimbaugh.com homepage today -- "Fascism is where politicians run it, but it's privately owned. We are fascists. Obama has turned this into a fascist nation -- think Mussolini." (Actually, the site's version of the quote is a little different: "Fascism is where the private sector still owns what it owns, but the politicians run it -- and fascism is exactly what we're getting under Barack Obama.")

There you have it. We can now proceed to having a rational discussion of whether Obamanomics and its ever-growing deficits amount to fascism (as defined by Rush, Jonah Goldberg or Il Duce himself), Keynesian economics or simple tax-and-spend liberalism.

Photo credit: AP Photo / John Bazemore

-- Jon Healey

It is said that the bandit Juan Flores -- who had a brief but legendary career that included ambushing a sheriff and his posse and temporarily evading arrest by plunging down a granite cliff  face, such a daring feat that the peak was named for him -- was hanged in 1857 at what is now the Beaudry Avenue headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The event was watched by an angry crowd of 3,000 people, practically the entire population of the pueblo.

The crowd could approach that size today at Beaudry as the school board gets ready to vote on a resolution that would let outside operators such as charters and the mayor's education partnership submit proposals to run 50 schools opening up in the next few years. The new version of the proposal would do the same for the 200 or so existing schools that are considered failing under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Charter and community organizations that favor the proposal have been mobilizing parents to show up as early as an hour and a half before the board even brings up the resolution to let board members know that they will not be happy if the resolution is rejected.  United Teachers Los Angeles, the most high-profile opponent, has also called out its troops to "pack" the board meeting.

In the early days of the summer, the resolution's chances looked iffy at best, but parents groups are pushing hard to send trustees a message that if they don't vote for the resolution, they can expect a political hanging when they face re-election. Conversely, UTLA bankrolled a number of the campaigns that put the current board in power.

The Times' editorial board has enthusiastically endorsed the resolution as one of the most promising, child-centered initiatives to come along in the district over the last several years, as long as it is passed without several poison-pill amendments that also were placed on today's agenda.

The vote could be close. One thing is certain: The search for a parking space around Beaudry today will be tougher than the posse's job tracking down Juan Flores.

-- Karin Klein