Newsweek correspondent and author Michael Hastings knows too well that war is more than statistics:

While I was in Iraq covering the war for Newsweek for two years starting in 2005, the woman I planned to marry was murdered in Baghdad by insurgents on Jan. 17, 2007. Her name was Andi Parhamovich; she'd come to Iraq to work for the National Democratic Institute, an NGO....

We -- Andi, me, Jeff, Greg, Scott, Ferris -- all chose to go to Iraq, volunteers for our respective causes. We were under no illusions about the risks, though that's a glib way of putting it. I don't think anyone can fully grasp the risks until whoosh, wham, through the looking glass you crash on the way to the rehab center at Walter Reed or a funeral parlor in Ohio.

Iraq often gets treated by pundits, writers and politicians -- all those thoughtful cheerleaders turned war critics -- as an intellectual exercise. It's not.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez reports that people will often ignore their self interest if they can get a fair deal. And New Republic assistant editor James Kirchick says South African President Thabo Mbeki shouldn't stand by as Robert Mugabe ruins Zimbabwe.

The editorial board says no on Prop. 98, yes on Prop. 99, and asks why phone customers should have to pay to keep their numbers unlisted.

On the letters page, Long Beach's Iris Ingram says to those who would ask Hillary Clinton to quit the race: "The primary season ends in June. So suck it up and stick it out."

What would the U.S. do if this happened here? AFP reports:

Authorities have lost track of 41,000 people ordered to leave Canada, and in most cases have stopped looking for them, said a federal watchdog Tuesday.

In a scathing report, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said most of the missing were failed asylum seekers allowed into the country on temporary permits while their immigration or refugee cases were assessed.

However, some of them "may pose a threat to public safety and security," she added.

Oh, wait -- it did happen here.

A Homeland Security Inspector General report (pdf) released last year said that the backlog of immigration cases involving immigrants ordered to leave the U.S. had reached 600,000 -- and the whereabouts of many of those, whether criminal offenders or non-criminal deportees, couldn't be determined. It's important to note that this number represents the backlog, not the number of people missing, as in Canada.

The report put the blame for the backlog, which had been increasing since 2001, on insufficient detention space and systems, along with inadequate staffing. (This focuses on ICE rather than CIS, so it doesn't take into account the long lines legal immigrants face to get in or change their status if they're already here.)

There hasn't been an internal assessment of where the "fugitive" backlog stands more recently. And though Homeland Security has received more beds and staff, it has also stepped up its enforcement efforts, so the backlog may very well still be rising, if at a slower pace.

The Canada case gives occasion to recall that this country's ad-hoc enforcement-first approach doesn't necessarily work as smoothly as advocates hope. And, as the editorial board would argue, it isn't the best approach for the country even when it works as intended.

Whether you're for or against immigration reform, some issues transcend those political borders. The NY Times' report on deaths in detention is one of them:

Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive.

But outside, for five days, no official notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. When frantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb. 5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later without ever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to find out why.

Twelve of the 66 deaths occurred in California, and some of the listed causes are frighteningly vague (from "internal injuries [self-inflicted]" to "unresponsive"). You can view the full list here.

This isn't the first time this issue has come up, but it's really been a bad few weeks for immigration enforcement: Homeland Security is facing lawsuits over care in detention facilities, and the feds recently admitted to negligence in the death of Francisco Castaneda, who testified in front of Congress last year:

While at the San Diego Correctional Facility, he notified immigration officials that he had a large, painful, growing lesion on his penis.

Despite recommendations from several doctors, the cancer was never biopsied and Castaneda received no treatment except for pain pills during his 11 months in detention, government records indicated.

A doctor at the Division of Immigration Health Services would not admit Castaneda to a hospital, saying her agency considered it "an elective outpatient procedure."

Castaneda was released last year, went to a hospital and was diagnosed with metastatic squamous cell carcinoma. He died in February.

The pressure seems to have spurred some action: California's own Zoe Lofgren is sponsoring legislation that would set standards for healthcare and require all deaths to be reported to the Justice Department and Congress. While we're waiting for meaningful reform, check out this interactive map courtesy of the Detention Watch Network.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) points out that the John Yoo torture memo is but one example of President Bush's hidden laws. High school junior Tom Stanley-Becker explains why opting out of an Advanced Placement class was a smart move. Columnist Patt Morrison says L.A. muralists have to fight for their work on two fronts -- taggers on one side, and numbskulls with paint rollers on the other. And columnist Rosa Brooks acknowledges that Hillary Clinton may have a right to keep campaigning, but says it isn't the right thing to do:

Tell an American he shouldn't do something, and odds are he'll respond by insisting that it's his "right" to do it, regardless of how pointless, destructive, offensive or downright stupid it may be....

Tell your 10-year-old daughter she's not allowed to buy thong underwear emblazoned with sexy slogans, and she'll give you an angry lecture about her free-expression rights.

Don't fall for it.

The editorial board agrees that it's over for Clinton:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has run a long and admirable campaign for president of the United States. The prospect of her presidency has energized voters, particularly but not exclusively women, and offered working people a champion for their cause in this time of economic malaise. She has demonstrated resolve and character. And yet, she has lost.

The board also praises the Los Angeles Unified School District's new deputy superintendent for disciplining LAUSD officials in a school sex case, and explores whether a new Sprint Nextel broadband venture could expand service across the country.

On the letters page, some readers aren't as enamored with taco trucks as the editorial board. East L.A.'s Omar Loya says, "I now have to deal with grease stains on the street, trash on the sidewalks, generators running late into the night and extra traffic."

Columnist Jonah Goldberg says issues that may seem irrelevant actually give us clues about the candidates:

Whatever the true import of Obama's relationship with Wright may be, or whatever the proper weight voters should give to his view that poor whites "cling" to guns and religion because they've suffered under bad economic policies, or, for that matter, what Clinton's "sniper fire" story says about her, it strikes me as absurd to argue that these data are meaningless but their stance on a gas-tax holiday is of enduring importance.

Pacific Council on International Policy adjunct fellow Joshua Kurlantzick profiles China's educated, wealthy next-generation nationalists who aren't afraid to be aggressive toward the West. And USC's Sara Catania has an idea for the Silver Lake Reservoir: a new kind of urban park.

The editorial board thinks a tax on services might work for California if done right and explains why Yahoo and Google's teaming up on advertising would be bad for consumers. The board also responds to the death of racehorse Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby last weekend:

As we explore the limits of physical performance, sports trend toward the more extreme, even if it harms rather than enhances the athlete's health. Steroids in baseball, eating disorders in prepubescent gymnasts, whatever it takes to win, until there's a public pushback that threatens the sport. Without industry reform in the near future, it's easy to imagine such a pushback against the biggest athlete of all -- the racehorse.

On the letters page, readers discuss May Day. Chino's Raul Perez asks, "How is it that I have to have a passport to enter the country in which I was born, raised and served in the armed forces while others come and go as they please?"

... and soars on hot air from the blogosphere.

After more than a month of studied silence, the reverend has stepped into the public spotlight to defend his controversial remarks on race in America -- and make veiled criticisms of Sen. Barack Obama in the process. On Obama's repudiation of his incendiary statements, the minister had this to say: "He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician."

Obama reacted angrily to his former pastor's comments, calling them "a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth." Jonah Goldberg gleefully celebrated Wright's coming-out as "every bit as radical as his detractors claimed."

They're not the only ones with choice words about Wright's recent performances:

The Times' own Top of the Ticket blog asks, "Was Jeremiah Wright's speech set up by a Clinton supporter?"

... we should have been paying a little less attention to Wright's speech and the histrionics of his ensuing news conference and taken a peek at ... who was sitting next to him at the head table for the National Press Club event.

It was the Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds ... an ardent longtime booster of Obama's sole remaining competitor for the Democratic nomination, none other than Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. It won't take very much at all for Obama supporters to see in Wright's carefully arranged Washington event that was so damaging to Obama the strategic, nefarious manipulation of the Clintons.

Jeffrey Weiss over at the Dallas Morning News' religion blog wonders why pundits can't take Obama out of the equation:

After the NAACP speech, the all-news networks talking heads were mostly falling all over themselves to do political analysis about whether or not the speech would help or hurt Barack Obama, rather than attempt even a moment of thought about the meaning of what Wright actually said.

The Caucus over at the NY Times does a roundup of its own, observing:

Voices around the blogosphere say they’re tired of the media kerfuffle surrounding Barack Obama and his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., but they certainly keep writing about it.

They also say they’re sick of the expression “thrown under the bus,” but they keep using it.

For some Wright-Obama commentary with both local and international flavor, Ha'aretz's Shmuel Rosner invokes the "Bradley Effect," but also snarks at the minister's comments about Israel:

At moments he came off as mocking and somewhat vain, but made an effort to soften the hardliner perception his speech had left behind. He was also asked about his views on Israel. "Apartheid?" he asked, adding that Jimmy Carter used this term, not him.

Israel, Wright said, "has a right to exist". His only desire was that the Israelis and Palestinians live in peace. He made no reference to the sermon in which he connected the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the September 11th attacks, but he did make sure to emphasize his "Jewish friends". As it turns out, Jeremiah Wright also has a couple of those.

Daniel Nichanian at the Huffington Post compares Wright's position to one of the 2000 presidential election's most beleaguered political players:

Wright has no obligation to put Obama's interest above his own; dragged through the mud for news, the pastor has an opening to make people listen to him and hear the full context of his theology. Those who today profess themselves appalled that Wright would throw Obama under the bus miss the point that Wright does not think of himself as having any allegiance to Obama or to his election, just as Ralph Nader had no any allegiance to the Democratic Party making it hard to understand why 2004 was "a betrayal."

Wonkette agrees, in an offbeat sort of way:

He's blowing open the racial politics that Obama wants to close and claiming that Obama is insincere when he rejects Wright's "extreme sermons"; he's trying to balance a deserved self-defense with the collateral damage that that brings on Obama. He has an ego. Most importantly, he's just some old preacher and not Obama's surrogate father. He can say whatever he wants and Barry will just have to deal with it. Individual people have a right to defend themselves, and politicians have a right to disown them. That's all, goodnight.

While Sen. McCain had the plug pulled on the North Carolina Republican Party's ad highlighting the Obama-Wright connection, it seems the state party leaders will be getting the airtime they wanted for free.

According to a New York Times article, “Pants May be Touted as the Coming Thing, but Women Seem to Prefer Dresses.” Included as evidence? Quotes from the 1941 classic “Citizen Kane” and allusions to a decades-old short story, “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses.”

If you assumed the piece to be an old nugget from the archives trotted out for amusement (like we do here, on occasion), you’d be wrong. Here’s a choice bit:

I am not eager for women to become “a little more hard-core, a little more androgynous, a little more butch.” Yes, gender play is fun, and trousers are a useful wardrobe default for the woman in business. But unless you are Thomas McGuane and find nothing sexier than a woman with crow’s feet, tight Wranglers and suede chaps, you will have to concede that, for flattering a woman’s body, nothing is quite like a dress.

The sentiment alone—men like women in dresses—is too obvious to be objectionable. That the story tries to couch the sentiment as advice for women is plain silly, as is the idea that New York City women would wear summer dresses in winter, or the dreaded “trousers” in summer (we in L.A. can pull both off a bit more easily).

But there are some objectionable things here: the peeping-tom creepiness; the weirdly old-fashioned gender ideals; the patronizing slide-show title, “Enjoy Being a Girl”; the clear and cruelly-put preference of the writer for the young and full-figured; and the dismissal of successful women in the fashion industry. (How dare those power-grubbing witches anoint pants trendy and ruin it for the men!)

Kishore Mahbubani of the National University of Singapore explains why China sees Tibet quite differently than the West:

Chinese history records dominion over Tibet as far back as the 13th century. China's control has ebbed and flowed -- but this is equally true in many other parts of China. Central control by the capital has never been consistent, shifting with the strength of the central government. But this much is certain: China has been in control of most of its territories longer than some Western nations have existed.

More important, the Chinese recall that the latest efforts to separate Tibet from China came as recently as the 1940s and 1950s, when British and U.S. agents were seen to be encouraging Tibetan independence while the new People's Republic was still weak.... Virtually no Chinese believe that Western governments have a strictly moral interest in Tibet. They are convinced that their efforts are only the latest efforts to dismember or derail China.

Author Carolyn See navigates Santa Monica sans car, and columnist Joel Stein finds a place for thoughts that aren't even well-formed enough to be blogposts: the tumble and the twitter.

The editorial board encourages Congress to extend unemployment benefits, urges California to fight proposed federal fuel emissions rules, and says there are small signs of a thaw in Turkey-Armenia relations.

Readers discuss McCain's disability pension and whether it raises questions about his ability to serve as president. L.A.'s Anthony Filosa says, "I'd like to remind The Times that Franklin D. Roosevelt's significant disabilities did not affect his ability to successfully lead this country through some of our most tumultuous times and be remembered as one of our greatest presidents."

And Long Beach's Barbara Hubbs hopes that "McCain is donating that money to the disabled veterans who were not able to put their lives back together."

Right-wing Dutch politicos-turned-producers watch out — free speech cuts both ways. From NPR:

A video portraying aggressive behavior by Christians matched with verses from the Bible is gaining traction on the Internet.

Raed al-Saeed, a young businessman from Saudi Arabia, is the creator of Schism, a six-minute video response to Fitna — a short film released last month that portrays Islam as a violent, fascist-like ideology. "Fitna" provoked anger in many parts of the Muslim world.

In case you don't remember, Fitna (a word meaning "ordeal" in Arabic) overlaid verses from the Quran over acts of violence — suicide bombings, beheadings, planes crashing into the World Trade Center. It was produced by Geert Wilder, a Dutch politician who happens to be unabashedly anti-Islam. Some found the film to be an act of bravery — Jonah Goldberg compared it to the Darwin fish — while Dutch Muslims greeted it with disgusted silence.

Nonetheless, it's interesting to see a response to Wilder's celluloid screed — the point being that you can find nasty bits in many different religious texts, including Christianity. Unfortunately, Saeed didn't find footage of many nasty people saying those verses out loud — and his substitution of the political for the religious (such as images of the bombing of Baghdad and the beating of prisoners) detracts from his point.

But, to my utter surprise, Saeed did strike darkly comic gold with some unassuming Christians whose rhetoric runs pretty close to that of radical Islamists. One woman — who looks like she could have run my preschool daycare — explains , "I wanna see [young people] as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are in over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, because we have — excuse me, but we have the truth!"

And later, at the center of a roomful of kids, upper arms jiggling with righteousness: "Take these prophecies ... and make war with them .... This means war! This means war!"

But Saeed is quick to point out that this video isn't an attack on Christianity or any other religion. The final text of the video reads,

It is easy to take parts of any Holy book that are out of content and make it sound like the most inhuman book ever written. This is what Geert Wilders did to gather more supporters to his hateful ideology. To create schism.

A fair observation, spelling errors aside — and yet, according to NPR,

A day after Saeed posted his video on YouTube, it was taken down for having "inappropriate content." He immediately reposted it with a message arguing that if his video was inappropriate, then Wilders' Fitna also should be removed. For now, both videos are available on the site.

And it still is. Go check it out — there are a few versions up, but the most-watched one has racked up more than 350,000 views so far, and more than 4,000 comments. Looking through what people had to say about Islam and Christianity made me wonder: How many viewers who made generalizations about Islam based on 'Fitna' were fully prepared to give Bible-lady's comments a pass?

And while the film means to make a point about not judging a religion by radicalism, I have to say, those angelic-looking children dancing around with what looks like warpaint on their faces is a little too Lord-of-the-Flies for me to handle.

Remember that Red Sox jersey that a construction worker — who also happened to be a Sox fan — dropped into the wet concrete of the New York Yankees' fresh, new stadium? And how the Yankees spent a cool fifty grand to dig it right back out, fearing a Red Sox curse embedded in their home field — a decision the editorial board called "a reminder that for all of humanity's pretensions to modernity and reason, we are essentially just bald monkeys who wear shoes"?

Yeah, now it's on eBay. Just posted yesterday — and as further demonstration of humanity's supersitious nature and penchant for totems, it's already racked up 116 pre-approved bids and is sitting pretty at $37,600. But if you think it's going to go to cover the Yankees' deconstruction costs, you don't give the baseball industry enough credit: Proceeds go to the cancer-fighting nonprofit Jimmy Fund. Proof that while you couldn't make this stuff up, that doesn't mean there can't be a happy ending. Or at least, a face-saving one.

*Photo courtesy AP.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says the science of intelligent design is science fiction:

If we were visited by aliens from a distant planet, would we fall on our knees and worship them as gods? The difficulty of getting here from even our nearest neighbor, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, constitutes a filter through which only beings with a technology so advanced as to be god-like (from our point of view) could pass. The capabilities and powers of our interstellar visitors would seem more magical to us than all the miracles of all the gods that have ever been imagined by priests or theologians, mullahs or rabbis, shamans or witch doctors....

But now the question arises: In what sense would the god-like aliens not be gods? Answer: In a very important sense.

Columnist Joel Stein compares the cost of home cooking to restaurant dining.

The editorial board argues for food labels to include country of origin, says the Supreme Court's lethal injection ruling raises some questions, and wonders how much we should blame a candidate for his or her friends: 

We can learn about a candidate from the people who have had demonstrable influence on his or her thinking. Such people include personal and political mentors, business partners and major donors, lovers, spouses, close friends and, especially, advisors. It's certainly fair to judge politicians by who they've worked for, hired, appointed or fired.... But it's unfair and unwise to judge a candidate by family members (remember Roger Clinton?), or by constituents they're sure to rub shoulders with, or by casual associates who run in the same crowd.

On the letters page, readers discuss The Times' editorial on California's tax system. Valencia's Patrick Lewandowski says, "Why do The Times and many politicians feel a need to blame Proposition 13 for California's financial woes and to tinker or even eliminate it so that unaffordable, if not unwarranted, pet projects can continue?"

*Photo courtesy Hulton Archive, Getty Images

Hey would-be Beijing protestors, watch out for Jackie Chan. The Hong Kong action hero isn't putting up with any lip, as Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bill Zwecker reports:

Chan told me he's also going to be part of the torch relay once it nears Beijing. Demonstrating one of his famous kung fu moves with his hands, he quipped, "Demonstrators better not get anywhere close to me" -- a clear challenge to those who might want to disrupt his and the torch's progress.

How would Chan hold up in a head-to-head with a certain celebrity Tibet champion? No, not Steven Spielberg, but Steven Seagal. The two martial artists are friends, or at least so says IMDB, but to settle this subject, they might have to take it outside. Who'd win?

The winner: Jackie. Now enjoy some of his best fights.

Author David K. Shipler explores how candidates' words can strike a nerve:

Whether by calculation or coincidence, Hillary Clinton and Republicans who have attacked Barack Obama for elitism have struck a chord in a long-standing symphony of racial codes. It is a rebuke that gets magnified by historic beliefs about what blacks are and what they have no right to be.

Clinton is no racist, and Obama has made some real missteps.... But when his opponents branded him an elitist and an outsider, his race made it easier to drive a wedge between him and the white, rural voters he has courted. As an African American, he was supposedly looking down from a place he didn't belong and looking in from a distance he could not cross.

Columnist Tim Rutten analyzes Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's State of the City address. Internist Albert Fuchs says the only way for a doctor to do a good job and make a living is to reject insurers. And contributing editor Gustavo Arellano notes that Fullerton's efforts to paint over murals is par for the Orange County course.

The editorial board maintains its anti-execution stance as the Supreme Court considers whether to allow the death penalty for rapists, and comments on the start of SAG negotiations. Editorial writer Lisa Richardson writes in from San Francisco, where Chevron Corp. faced off against a couple Ecuadorean environmentalists.

Readers discuss Irvine's Great Park. L.A.'s Danila Oder says, "The American 20th century experience was an anomaly and should be treated by governments and builders as such. The environmental factors that are assumed to underpin bonds for the Great Park project are no longer operative."

Columnist Joel Stein makes New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson work for the money:

Impressed by his confidence, his integrity and this vague threat of being around "possibly nationally," I offered Richardson $20 if he'd record my outgoing answering machine message. He immediately agreed. Unfortunately, callers to my house now hear a long speech about how they should give Richardson money instead of the little speech I asked for, which said that even though I wasn't home, he fully endorsed me.

Yale's Laura Frost says forget about FIA president Max Mosley's Nazi role-playing S&M romp, and focus on the post-coital cup of tea. MIT's Lester C. Thurow thinks solutions to high oil prices, the housing crisis, and outsourcing will require some sacrifice.

The editorial board considers the costs of the Iraq war, explores how airlines can get safely back in flight, and praises Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for taking up immigration again.

Readers discuss protests following the Olympic torch. Claremont's Daniel A. Guthrie says, "China's behavior toward Tibet is no different from our behavior. I wish Americans would be as concerned about their own disgraceful past as they are about the behavior of other countries."

Columnist Rosa Brooks reminds everyone that despite the attention on the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton mudslinging, it's the GOP that's losing ground:

Although Democratic Party infighting makes good copy, the intense media focus on the Obama-Clinton battle obscures the fact that it's the Republican Party that's in deep doo-doo. The very factors that make us wish we could forget about the war in Iraq are driving a seismic shift in the American political landscape: the likely reversal of years of GOP electoral dominance.

Speaking of the GOP's losing ground on war issues, former NATO commander Wesley K. Clark and Iraq vet Jon Soltz wonder why John McCain isn't stepping up to support a new GI bill. Columnist Patt Morrison remembers when ethnic campaigning was as simple as eating a knish and spinning pizza dough. And author Daniel Imhoff says the farm bill is too porky. 

The editorial board hopes for stronger rule of law in Pakistan, takes a look at shocking inmate conditions in Orange County jails, and says the Senate's housing relief plan is a mixed fix:

The tax breaks in the Senate bill would help home builders that profited handsomely during the boom. They would also prop up the price of foreclosed properties with $7,000 subsidies for the purchase of those homes. But the goal isn't to stop the boom-and-bust cycle from running its course or causing losses. It's to prevent the bust from being so sudden and severe that it chokes off credit, stifles consumer spending and wrecks the economy.

Readers react to Gen. David H. Petraeus' and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's testimony before Congress. Bob Constantine of Placentia has a suggesetion: "Next time Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are scheduled to report to Congress, skip the personal appearances and merely play the tape of the previous testimonies."

Columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that a narrow definition of genocide often lets mass murderers off the hook:

This can lead to a dangerous way of thinking in which people who are perceived to be standing in the way of progress -- middle-class farmers opposed to collectivization, aristocrats, reactionaries -- can be more forgivably slaughtered than ethnic groups because they're allegedly part of the problem, not the solution. After all, you've got to break some eggs to make an omelet.

In general, the Soviets and the Red Chinese elude the genocide charge -- and hence the status of ultimate villains -- despite having murdered scores of millions of people in the 20th century, in large part because their victims stood in the way of progress.

Historian Martin Meredith laments that Robert Mugabe's hunger for power prevented him from becoming another Nelson Mandela. And contributing editor Max Boot says the U.S. can still win in Iraq if the troops just stay put.

The editorial board encourages Congress to approve a trade pact with Colombia, observes that the Supreme Court will once again consider a display of the Ten Commandments, and wonders if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both obscuring their true feelings on trade.

Readers react to columnist Patt Morrison's piece on billboards in L.A. Culver City's Gene Rothman updates Ogden Nash:

I see again an outdoor panel
It's another from Clear Channel
If from its stock we all withdrew
Perhaps we'd hear another view.

Considering that other than the occasional round of Wii Tennis, I haven't played a video game since I failed to beat "Legend of Zelda" in the late 1980s, I'm not the best person to comment on the medium.

But an educational immigration game arrived on the Internets not too long ago, so I gave it a try. (OK, actually, it was kind of long ago, it got some news last year, and an official release came out in February.)

The game is from Breakthrough.tv and it's called "I Can End Deportation," or ICED, for short (a play, of course, on the agency in charge of said deportation). You pick one of five characters -- from an undocumented Mexican immigrant to a Japanese student to a girl who thinks she's a citizen -- and try to avoid getting deported, while learning about what trials immigrants, legal or not, have to suffer.

It's a conversation-starter about an aspect of immigration policy avoided by many moderates, who need to be tough on enforcement or who may simply assume that the deportation process works well enough (unlike, say, actual worksite or border enforcement). They don't worry much about the process, unless it goes seriously awry.

And though the game may be criticized as such, it isn't a primer for anyone who's actually evading authorities. Of course, the name alone makes it clear that the game makers weren't exactly trying to avoid controversy. (See what the game's creator has to say about the reaction she has received here.)

This post updated as of 12:10pm Thursday. See below:

I'm a fan of vestigial cultural survivals, but even I reacted to news of the shutdown of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio Orchestra with an incredulous "There are still radio orchestras?" To give some perspective, the legendary Arturo Toscanini-conducted NBC Radio Orchestra was disbanded way back in 1954, and there may be a reason that the Vancouver-based CBC outfit has long held the dubious distinction of being the sole extant radio orchestra in North America. *

Now the life of a working musician is tough, though arguably no tougher now than it's been for the past, say, 10,000 years. And I get the impression that a belief, realistic or not, that Canada's cultural attainment is high has always been a favorite bragging point for our friends to the north. So a little expression of regret is understandable. But take a look at the protests that followed the announcement of the orchestra's closing and you may ask what eon these people are living in. CBC has a little coverage, with video, and the Globe and Mail gives more detail. "No Kitsch! No Philistines! Don't Mess With Our Music!" reads one protester's sign. A music teacher brags of having canceled her class with the following message to her students: "I said this is the most important assignment you could possibly have; to rescue the great culture of your country."

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) notes that sexual assaults are frequent -- and frequently ignored -- in the military:

Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq....

At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007, including 1,259 reports of rape, were referred to courts-martial, the equivalent of a criminal prosecution in the military. Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through "nonjudicial punishment," which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist.

Writer Andrew Gumbel knows why Hillary Clinton is fighting so hard to stay in the race -- because it works. Columnist Gregory Rodriguez says Americans have a habit of hero-worshipping candidates, and it tends to backfire. Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff argues that we need to hit bottom before we can recover from the housing crisis.

The editorial board wants better beef tracking, and more nuanced exploration of the links between race and gangs. The board praises the FCC for taking a broad view of media competition in approving the XM/Sirius merger.

Readers react to a shift in John McCain's rhetoric. L.A.'s Susan North says:

Listening to McCain's speech before the World Affairs Council made my brain hurt. In the speech, he admonished America to listen to our democratic ally nations. Would that be all those same nations that have been crying out, for months now, "Surge? Are you people nuts?"

Contributing editor Ian Buruma says Tibetan culture may not survive China's modernization, except among the diaspora:

The Chinese have exported their version of modern development to Tibet, not just in terms of architecture and infrastructure but people, wave after wave of them: businessmen from Sichuan, prostitutes from Hunan, technocrats from Beijing, party officials from Shanghai, shopkeepers from Yunnan. The majority of the people living today in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, are no longer Tibetan. Most people in rural areas are Tibetan, but their way of life is not likely to survive Chinese modernization any more than the ways of the Apaches did in the United States.

George Washington University's Jonathan Turley wonders why you can be competent to stand trial, but unfit to represent yourself. And Hope College's David G. Myers says primal urges are to blame for March madness.

The editorial board warns taxpayers that they'll face new risks as Fannie and Freddie buy more mortgages thanks to a rule change. The board also wants to know where scientific exhibits got their cadavers, and thinks the Supreme Court erred by not giving Jose Medellin, a Mexican national on death row in Texas, another day in court.

Readers discuss discussing race. Torrance's David Nelson says, "The article begins: 'How do we start a national dialogue on race?' A better question is: Why should we?"

On the heels of the Iraq war's fifth anniversary comes another somewhat arbitrary but far more grim milestone: 4,000 American soldiers have now died in the conflict, though casualties have been low so far this year. The editorial board didn't remark on the death toll when it hit 2,000 (in October 2005) or 3,000 (at the end of 2006), even though those points coincided with some other big events -- the ratification of a draft constitution and Saddam Hussein's execution.

The board did write when the death toll hit 1,000, highlighting the randomness of marking a number of dead (sorry, no link):

Six U.S. soldiers were killed, two Italian aid workers were kidnapped and warplanes bombed a Sunni enclave in Fallouja, a city mostly off-limits to coalition troops. It was just another day in the war Tuesday, except for the numbers. By this morning, Iraq time, the Associated Press count of casualties stated that 1,000 U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq, aside from more than 100 other coalition soldiers and thousands of Iraqi noncombatants. And many thousands more have been wounded.

It is an obvious point at which to ask: To what end are U.S. personnel continuing to die? What is it that commanders should tell their troops as they head into lethal streets?

The board noted another, less round number in January...

It's not just the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. It's also the fifth anniversary of misleading or plain wrong statements about it and the war on terror. Here's a few.

"This long-term struggle [against terror] became urgent on the morning of September 11th, 2001. That day we saw clearly that dangers can gather far from our own shores and find us right there at home.... Understanding all the dangers of this new era, we have no intention of abandoning our friends, or allowing this country of 170,000 square miles to become a staging area for further attacks against Americans."
--Vice President Dick Cheney
(Making the 9/11 connection is a more delicate dance than it was five years ago, but Cheney keeps finding ways to make the leap.)

"I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you...in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."
--President George Bush
(Warfare as romantic? No one's bought this line in five years, or for that matter, five decades.)

"Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate."
--John McCain
(Iran certainly trains extremists and ships 'em to Iraq, but they're not affiliated with Al Qaeda.)

"The surge is working. And as a return on our success in Iraq, we've begun bringing some of our troops home. The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around -- it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror."
--George Bush
(Salon does it better than I could.)

For a few bloviator blasts from the past, see Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky's Op-Ed.

And of course, not everyone was off....

Columnist Joel Stein asks the question on everyone's mind -- what exactly do you get for $1,000 an hour?

I called a high-end escort in Las Vegas who charges $500 an hour -- but gives, according to her website, a discount to educators and political activists. The escort , it turns out, is a huge fan of Spitzer, particularly his prosecution of Wall Street crimes when he was New York's attorney general. "I liked him. And I don't like many politicians. I have nothing but respect for him," she said. "It's a shame politicians can't have sex like everyone else."

The roughly $1,000 an hour that Spitzer paid for time with "Kristen," she told me, was not, as I assumed, to guarantee secrecy.... And the exorbitant rate wasn't a premium for weird or talented sex.

Former soldier and military historian Ed Ruggero notes near the 40th anniversary of the My Lai massacre that war is never simple. And the Center for American Progress' Lawrence J. Korb and Sean E. Duggan argue that if Gen. David H. Petraeus testifies alone, we'll never get the full picture of Iraq.

The editorial board examines new mortgage regulations proposed by the Bush administration, and says that after 136 years, it's really about time for a new mining law. Finally, the board urges the state to do away with another historical relic -- loyalty oaths.

On the letters page, readers react to Max Boot's take on Adm. William Fallon. Escondido's Blaise Jackson cracks, "So armchair-admiral Boot crawls out from under his ideologue rock to toss dirt at the departing Fallon; what a surprise."

Several immigration stories arising this week should remind candidates, congressional reps, and voters what's the bottom line when it comes to immigration policy.

Yesterday came news that a bailiff in Arkansas left one undocumented immigrant woman locked in a cell at a courthouse for four days without food or water, a bathroom, or any bedding. The bailiff, who has since been suspended, said he simply forgot her when he locked up for the weekend. Earlier, she had pleaded not guilty to selling pirated DVDs; the judge had required her to be held because she was an illegal immigrant. Though it was probably an honest, if awful, mistake, the woman's lawyer, for one, says its symptomatic of a wider problem: "They treat Hispanics like cattle, likes less than human," Roy Petty told the New York Times.

Today, The Times reported that 15 illegal immigrants were found adrift offshore near San Diego, after a failed smuggling attempt, languishing for a day and a half without food or water. Worse still is another account from today's Times, of immigration officials' alleged refusal of medical tests and treatment demanded by doctors for a detainee who later died of penile cancer. The officials allowed only antihistamines, ibuprofen, and extra boxers. A Los Angeles federal judge ruled [pdf] that Francisco Castaneda's family can seek damages, and had scathing things to say...

Columnist Rosa Brooks explains what the Spitzer scandal means for the Clinton candidacy:

This gets to why this scandal has the potential to be more than just distracting and uncomfortable for Clinton. Spitzergate -- and Hillary's ambivalent response so far -- reminds us that Bill wasn't the only member of the Clinton family who let women down when he was in the White House.

Remember 1992? Hillary got in hot water for telling "60 Minutes" that "I'm not ... some little woman, standing by my man like Tammy Wynette."

But later, as Bill's career became mired in scandal after scandal, it became all too clear that Hillary was willing to tolerate pretty much anything he did.

George Washington University's Patty Kelly thinks Spitzergate could have another effect -- convincing Americans it's time to decriminalize prostitution. Contributing editor Timothy Garton Ash says Britain needs to define what it means to be British. And columnist Patt Morrison argues for our right to gripe.

The editorial board explains the battle of the brass that may have felled Adm. William J. Fallon...

Whatever you've got to say about the murder of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw or the arrest of 19-year-old Pedro Espinoza for the crime, start your engines. Please keep it clean: no threats, bullying, bogarting or unamusing ad hominems will be accepted. I'll approve as fast as I can. Some scenes from Shaw's funeral may give the conversation a little focus.

The editorial board examines global insurgency after a violent few weeks around the world:

Last week's news underscored the problem. In Afghanistan, Taliban fighters, who enjoy sanctuary in Pakistan, blew up a fourth telecommunications tower as part of a campaign to silence cellphone service at night. In Pakistan, missiles of unknown origin smashed into a Taliban compound in what appeared to be the second unacknowledged U.S. Predator strike into that country this year. Turkey struck at Kurdish rebel enclaves over the border in northern Iraq. From Gaza, Hamas pelted Israeli towns with increasingly longer-ranged missiles. And Colombia, fed up with attacks by guerrillas from jungle camps in Ecuador, staged a cross-border raid and was denounced across Latin America for violating Ecuadorean sovereignty.

Wiping out terrorist sanctuaries after 9/11 wasn't supposed to be so difficult -- except that it always has been. The Bush administration assumed that swift and massive U.S. military might, followed by democracy and massive infusions of money for development, would sweep the terrorists into the dustbin of history. It hasn't happened anywhere.

The board also looks at California's electricity deregulation ten years later, and says a new cap-and-trade plan could be just as disastrous.

As if global insurgency weren't bad enough, author Philip Jenkins thinks conditions are ripe for home-grown terrorism. And East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice director Angelo Logan says that a firm that wans to expand port service isn't as green as it claims. Craving more bad news? The University of Vermont's Robert Costanza says the latest recession is small fry compared to the three-decade decline in the American quality of life. Finally, some levity: Columnist Gregory Rodriguez wonders if appearing on "The Colbert Report" to hawk his book makes him a sell out. (If you missed it, watch it here.)

On the letters page, readers react to the latest false memoir scam, this one by a white Sherman Oaks woman writing as an African American surviving foster care and gangs in South L.A. San Diego's Michael Bolger gives her some comeuppance: "I was in three foster homes, a continuation of the hell I lived with my mother in the San Fernando Valley. Having survived to become a high-functioning member of society, I have thought often of writing a memoir. But morally bankrupt individuals like [Margaret] Seltzer make it harder for others to tell their stories of survival."

In the eternal struggle against The Jews, there can be no deserters.

That's pretty much the takeaway from this astounding interview that Norman Finkelstein, the historian, communist provocateur and academic-without-portfolio, gave last month to Lebanon's Future TV. Among many other Finkelsteinian aperçus: Any Arab who fails to resist the Israeli juggernaut to his last bullet will become a "slave of the Americans" reduced to "crawling on your knees"; interviewer Najat Sharafeddine reveals herself as neither a serious nor a level-headed person for suggesting that the 2006 attack on Lebanon could have been avoided; Hitler would have prefered to achieve his goals through peaceful means (I am not making that up); anybody who prefers survival to glorious death in service of the international Shiite jihad deserves no respect; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a "human freak"; any Lebanese who is presently alive has "no self-respect"; and of course, every situation everywhere always is exactly analogous to Hitler and the Nazis.

It's a mind-bogglingly arrogant, condescending, creepy, ill-informed performance. And in fact an overtly imperialist one that erases all marks of local politics and individual choice in order to make room for great-power conflict. In true Leninist fashion, Finkelstein does not believe in bystanders; any Arab who chooses not to engage the international struggle against the Zionist/capitalist enemy is not only expendable but beneath consideration. (Allah only knows what Fink made of Future TV's founder, the late rentier oppressor of the proletariat Rafiq al-Hariri.)

I've never given much thought to Finkelstein, who seems to have done some interesting historical (or at least historical-debunking) work, and my view of his long-running feud with Alan Dershowitz has never gone beyond a vague wish for both sides to lose. But at least Dersh contents himself with being a stateside nuisance of no danger to anybody except the wives of insulin-happy bazillionaires. Finkelstein, however, is speaking in the context of a goodwill tour of Lebanon on behalf of Hizbollah — whose views, don'tcha know, have been too long ignored in the United States. (Speak for yourself, Norm!) This is where the cesspool of leftwing extremism eventually flows, into a full-hearted alliance with any scuzzbucket willing and able to kill people. At Reason, Michael Young (who has had his own apparently bruising exchange with the no-nonsense Sharafeddine) expands on the pathology at work:

This behavior comes full circle especially for the revolutionary fringe on the left, which seems invariably to find its way back to violence. In the same way that Finkelstein can compare Hezbollah admiringly to the Soviet Red Army and the communist resistance during World War II ("it was brutal, it was ruthless"), he sees in resistance a quasi-religious act that brooks no challenge, even from its likely victims. What is so odd in Finkelstein and those like him is that the universalism and humanism at the heart of the left's view of itself has evaporated, to be replaced by categorical imperatives usually associated with the extreme right: blood; honor; solidarity; and the defense of near-hallowed land.

Full interview (courtesy of the invaluable MEMRI) and transcript.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez finds out who's behind the hit blog, Stuff White People Like:

Six weeks ago, 29-year-old Culver City Internet copy writer Christian Lander started a blog, stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com, on a whim, thinking he'd poke fun at himself and fellow white people....

Lander, who arrived in L.A. from Toronto 2 1/2 years ago, came up with the idea for the blog after talking to a Filipino friend about how much they both liked the HBO police drama "The Wire." For some reason he's already forgotten, they both wished that more white people watched the show. Which got him thinking: What exactly do white people like?

Author Christopher D. Cook says mass recalls show we're all playing meat roulette. Writer Jim Henley argues that an $8 million program isn't enough to get Americans reading again. Yale Law School student Ronan Farrow explores a growing conflict in Ethiopia, where the army is attacking its people.

The editorial board launches