I suppose you could chalk up to rage the total lack of coherence or structure in Michael Moore's "open letter" to President Obama on sending 34,000 more troops* to Afghanistan. Getting through the letter is difficult enough, so I'll comment only on the part I find most interesting: the opening paragraph (convenient, eh?), which contains the lefty meme that the president's perceived rightward shift on certain policy matters represents some kind of personal betrayal to liberals:

In other words: Not only is this decision bad for the country, but you've betrayed us, Mr. President, the very people whose work and votes won you your job.

Two things: First, this is a particularly personal (and, in my view, lame) form of umbrage-taking that assumes the election of a Democratic president in a polarized two-party contest represents some kind of validation of a host of liberal positions. This line of thinking isn't confined to war. In a Times Op-Ed article last August, Anne Lammott expressed a similar form of disillusion over the president's perceived lack of progress on healthcare reform. 

Second, I'd sympathize with Moore and liberals who express similar disappointment if there were something about Obama's decision to actually feel betrayed over -- but there isn't. Recall that the buzz surrounding Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's call in August for more troops was whether the president would fall in line with his campaign rhetoric by sending more Americans to Afghanistan. Even Obama's most ardent supporters should have understood the president would be faced with such an ugly decision if the war in Afghanistan were to take a turn for the worse. It did, and the president's decision shouldn't be terribly surprising.

Anyhow, what are your thoughts on sending more troops to Afghanistan? Take our unscientific poll, leave a comment or do both.

-- Paul Thornton

*UPDATE (9:25 a.m., Tuesday): Today's reports put the number of additional troops to be sent to Afghanistan at 30,000.

Reactions to the crashing of a White House state dinner have run the gamut from A (for alarm at the security breach, such as it was) to Z (zingers aimed at arrivistes Tareq and Michaele Salahi).

The idea that someone would assault the president with silverware strikes me as improbable. In fact, that scenario reminded me of the state-dinner scene in "Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear," in which Leslie Nielsen's dimwitted detective commits mayhem against Winnie Mandela. As for the tastelessness of the national home invasion -- well, social climbing is as American as cherry pie.

Another angle: Should the leader of this country be holding invitation-only fancy-dress affairs at all? A friend reacted to outrage over the crashing with this populist post on Facebook: "This is an outrage. The next thing you know, the public will be thinking it's THEIR government."

I don't think Obama should follow Andy Jackson's example and invite the rabble to trudge through his house. On the other hand, this is not a monarchy, and so a little restraint and republican virtue might be in order. Black tie shouldn't be optional at a state dinner in a democracy -- it should be forbidden. Then maybe the crashers would stay away.

1) I was struck traveling on Wednesday by how many uniformed soldiers clotted my planes and the airports, and how young they were. (A couple of reservists were carrying skateboards.) It put faces to all the TV talk about our "brave young men and women in uniform." Not in itself an argument about Iraq/Afghanistan, but a human factor I'm sure President Obama considered during his "dithering" over more troops.

2)  Watching "CNN Heroes" out of the corner of my good eye, I again marveled at the Zen-like paradox behind tributes like this. Good Samaritans do good things with no thought of recognition, so then we recognize them.

3) As a fan of regional differences, I was thankful this morning to see (and hear) that the staff at a Starbucks in my home town of Pittsburgh seemed less haughty and less pretentious than their fellow baristas in D.C., NYC and L.A. No Steelers jackets though.

The Wall Street Journal has published on its website the text of the proposed 10-point checklist for determining whether a Republican candidate is orthodox enough  to benefit from the party's endorsement and fund-raising.

The affirmations issues are quite a mixed bag. Some are perennial and cosmic, such as: "We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership." Others are micro-specific and could be obsolescent by the time they are proposed to the Republican National Committee in January.  Take: "We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare." In January, they  might have to change "oppose" to "opposed."

And, even if you're a true-blue conservative, is legislation opposing "card check" as a way to organize unions as big a deal as abortion or the right to keep and bear arms? Presumably not, but all of the propositions are weighted the same. As George W. Bush said of Al Gore's economic proposals, this is fuzzy math.

-- Michael McGough

The New York Times reports that conservatives  have been drawing up a 10-point checklist -- to be printed on litmus paper? -- against which the Republican National Committee should measure prospective GOP candidates.

There's nothing surprising about the contents of the proposed creed (for example, opposition to government funding of abortion and President Obama's "socialist agenda"). Nor is the idea of a conservative loyalty test. It was implicit in the muscling by true believers of a Republican nominee for a House seat in New York who didn't toe the ideological line.

Never mind that Democrats captured that seat after the withdrawal of the scorned RINO (Republican in Name Only). Conservative Republicans increasingly seem willing to sacrifice electoral success on the altar of philosophical purity, and moderate Republicans are increasingly are an endangered species. That's good news for Democrats, but bad news for those of us who believe that a modicum of diversity in both parties is conducive to compromise and good government.

But back to the surprising thing about the proposed Index of Acceptability: the fact that 70% is a passing grade. Answer seven questions right and you get an endorsement and funding. Get six right and you flunk.  ("Bummer! I messed up that abortion question. Maybe I can do something for extra credit.") If too many candidates fall short, the party may have to start grading on the curve.

-- Michael McGough

A new Associated Press poll, done by Stanford University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, provides more evidence that the public wants comprehensive healthcare reform but rejects just about everything that implies. Although you should take a moment to look at all the results -- and comment on them below! -- here's a quick summary.

As shown in the screen shot to the right, people are eager for major improvements to the healthcare system. They want someone else to pay for the changes, however.

In particular, they strongly oppose raising income taxes or taxing health insurance benefits, but almost 60% favor dunning the rich. They like the idea of requiring everyone to obtain insurance, but they hate the idea of financial penalties on those who don't. Similarly, they want a mandate on businesses to provide insurance, but are lukewarm about enforcing it. Finally, more than 70% said insurers are too profitable and medicines too expensive, but most opposed raising taxes on them, drug companies or medical device makers.

My interpretation: the survey is yet another indication that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats haven't persuaded Americans, most of whom have health insurance and aren't seriously ill, that the proposed reform will benefit them, too. Not convinced that they have much to gain personally, they're not willing to pay more to achieve it.

About 1,500 randomly selected adults were surveyed, giving the poll a margin of error of  plus/minus 2.5%.

-- Jon Healey

LONDON -- Like most Anglophiles, I feel cheated when I cross the pond and find myself listening to American accents or walking past Burger King and McDonald's in search of a British pub, only to find the bar cluttered with Rolling Rock and Bud taps. What we want is contrast (like Conservative proto-Prime Minister David Cameron embracing the National Health Service, a.k.a. the public option, as he did in a speech today).

Likewise, I relish reading the British papers with their accounts of endless "rows" -- an all-purpose, headline-friendly word that covers everything from mild disagreement to nuclear war -- even though I do keep up with the Times (our Times) online.  From my first visit to Britain as a high school student, coming here has been a trans-dimensional experience.  As they used to say of Earth-Two, the parallel universe in DC Comics, Britain was a world like our own, but with subtle and interesting differences.

That's less and less true in London with its similarities to other cosmpolitan, multicultural cities like L.A., New York and D.C.  But London isn't Britain (or even England) in the way New York isn't the United States. Thus I was chuffed, as they say here, to spend Sunday in the country celebrating (with 90 others) the christening of the son of an old friend. From the Saxon church where the baby was sprinkled by a Central Casting English vicar, we repaired to the manor (no kidding) for a post-baptismal repast.

An Anglophile's dream, but -- Globalization Spoiler Alert -- U.S. politics intruded even in this settiing. I found myself sitting with an American who engaged me in a mostly friendly discussion about whether Obama was really born in the U.S. (and where's that original birth certificate?). The really depressing thing wasn't that a fellow American asked for my view of the Birthers, but that English heads inclined interestedly to hear my answer (which, by the way, was "bunk').

More tea, Vicar? -- and how about that Glenn Beck?

--Michael McGough

An ounce of enforcement is worth a pound of new laws. Or something to that effect. The editorial board points out today that Los Angeles could more effectively limit the proliferation of marijuana clinics by enforcing existing state law against for-profit operations than by dithering over municipal restrictions.

The board mourns the deaths of more than 100 men, women and children in a Pakistani car-bombing, saying that such terrible events should convince Pakistanis that the fight against violent Islamic extremism is their fight too:

More than anything [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton can say, a series of assaults that have taken the lives of more than 500 civilians this year should serve to convince typical Pakistanis that this is not just a U.S. war. The United States and Pakistan have a common enemy in Islamist extremists, and the Pakistani state is fighting for its survival.

And the board urges President Obama to stand by his deadline for closing Guantanamo:

The legal axiom that "justice delayed is justice denied" applies with special force to Guantanamo. Whether they are dangerous terrorists or, like many of those already released, bystanders caught up in a post- 9/11 dragnet, these detainees have languished for years without adequate due process.

On the other side of the fold, a consultant to a documentary on convicted murderer Leo Frank writes about his 1915 lynching in Georgia. The subsequent campaigns either to vilify him or clear his name echo today, with haves and have-nots viewing the same events from markedly different perspectives.

Bernstein is just plain wrong that the organization's Middle East program focuses on Israel's alleged human rights violations while ignoring those committed by Arab governments and the Iranian regime. Even a quick glance at Human Rights Watch's website, where recent reports are posted, shows that the majority of those on the Middle East relate to countries other than Israel. According to Human Rights Watch, it has produced 1,776 total documents on the Middle East since 2000 -- 250, or 14%, of which were devoted to Israel.

--Karin Klein

Photo of the aftermath of the Pakistan bombing, Credit: Arshad Arbab / EPA

The police commission picked three finalists in its search for Los Angeles' new police chief, and the editorial board says each possesses many of the qualities needed to succeed atop the LAPD. Just so there won't be any confusion on that point, the board also describes what those qualities might be. The board also notes that two proposed ballot measures are due to be submitted today to enable and call a state constitutional convention, and it all but endorses them in a near-desperate plea for functional governance in California.

On the Op-Ed page, Raphael J. Sonenshein, former executive director of the city's charter reform commission, accuses rookie City Atty. Carmen Trutanich of not understanding what a city attorney is supposed to do in this town. Columnist Tim Rutten gives a highly nuanced defense of the push to reveal who is contributing to efforts in other states to put Prop. 8-style bans on gay marriage on the ballot. Musing about the Northwest Airlines flight that overshot its destination by 150 miles, Peter Garrison, a pilot and contributing editor to Flying magazine, reveals just how boring it is to fly a modern airline jet. And columnist Doyle McManus dissects the Obama administration's decision-making process on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan:

Credit: Ted Rall / For The Times

-- Jon Healey

Manny Garcia's AP photo on the left, Shepard Fairey's poster on the right.

For those who just tuned in, Fairey's the guy who created a poster supporting Barack Obama's presidential bid that was an impressive bit of retro iconography -- a cross between Andy Warhol and mid-20th century propaganda. Not sure why Obama supporters thought this was a good thing, but then, Mao's been dead for a long time (insert sarcastic emoticon here). Anyway, the Associated Press objected to the poster, saying Fairey had violated a copyrighted photo shot by the AP's Mannie Garcia at a National Press Club event in Washington, D.C. Fairey, who asked a judge to declare that the poster was a fair use (the AP later countersued), maintained for months that he'd used just a portion of a larger image that featured Obama sitting next to George Clooney. That's important, legally, because one of the four fair-use tests is whether the new object uses the entire original or just a portion of it. But the AP argued from the outset that Fairey's work reproduced virtually an entire close-up that Garcia had shot at the event.

This month, Fairey disclosed that he'd lied about which photo he had based his poster on. It was, as these things go, a whopper of an admission. This is from Fairey's website:

While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong.

In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images. I sincerely apologize for my lapse in judgment and I take full responsibility for my actions which were mine alone. I am taking every step to correct the information and I regret I did not come forward sooner.

In retrospect, Fairey's initial contention just wasn't credible. I mean, how many times has George Clooney been cropped out of a shot? More important, Fairey's case raises a great issue: how far does one have to go in transforming a photo for the use to be considered fair? Garcia's photo is easily recognizable in the poster, yet the latter has a completely different context. The original is a headshot of a politician. Fairey's poster, on the other hand, invokes the idol worship of Dear Leaders of yore. It's both hagiographic and, to me, subversive. The copyright lawyers I've talked to say that there's not a lot of case law regarding fair use and photographs. Although each fair-use claim is decided on its own merits, Fairey's has the potential to help clarify the boundaries for remixers, collage artists and others who make new works out of existing photographs without licensing them. But Fairey's lies already have weakened his case -- his legal team told the AP that it will ask the court's permission to drop out. That's just the start of the possible fallout, which may be severe enough to prevent the interesting legal questions his work raises from being answered.

-- Jon Healey