The backlash isn't dying down so fast over the passage of Proposition 8, which gives signs of being one of those events that transform a group into a force. Proposition 8 has brought gays and their many supporters to a new level of anger and determination that the initiative's backers probably hadn't foreseen.

There are the ongoing protests, the legal challenges. There are the calls to boycott all things Mormon because the church strongly and successfully called on its members to donate and work for the Yes on 8 campaign, and even the movement to boycott all things Utah (including the Sundance Festival, hardly a bastion of social conservativism). And now a gay-rights group in Utah (not quite the oxymoron you might think) plans to use the words of the church itself to launch legislation there that would expand civil rights for gays.

In an apparent effort to soothe scorched feelings after the vote, Mormon Elder L. Whitney Clayton  said that in general, the church does not oppose civil unions and domestic partnerships created to extend equal benefits such as health insurance and property rights to gays and lesbians. Taking him at his word, Equality Utah says it will help draft five bills for the Utah Legislature seeking these as well as equal rights in employment, housing and probate. The idea is that the church, a powerful force in the state, is faced with a choice of either favoring these rights or coming off as less than honest.

Church spokesmen are mum on this issue so far.

Mormons have been beset this week by news that tends to cast their community in a negative light. A Holocaust survivors' group stopped all discussions with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, saying that despite a 13-year-old agreement to stop the practice, Mormons continue to posthumously "baptize by proxy" Jewish Holocaust victims as Mormons, a practice that deeply offends most Jews. And a judge has ordered the University of Phoenix and its parent company to pay $1.88 million to settle accusations that it discriminated against its non-Mormon employees.

Photo by Chris Detrick/AP

Barack Obama isn't even president yet, and he's already committed his first "gaffe."  At his proto-presidential news conference on Friday, Obama was asked which former presidents he had consulted about how to discharge his new duties. The puckish president-elect replied: "I have spoken to all of them who are living. I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any séances." Later, Obama apologized to Nancy Reagan for the allusion to her practice of consulting astrologers (not mediums) in planning her husband's schedule.

The apology may have been a political imperative, but I loved Obama's original comment. It showed that he has a smartass streak, which high office tends to suppress. Only rarely do figures of the magnitude of Obama let their inner wisguy escape.

It happened a couple of times at the Senate confirmation of hearings of John G. Roberts as chief justice.  Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah (in the self-referential habit of senators) told Roberts: "I read an interesting book over the weekend, Cass Sunstein's recent book published by Basic Books. Now, he discussed various philosophies with regard to judging. And I just would like to ask you this question: Some of the philosophies he discussed were whether a judge should be an originalist, a strict constructionist, a fundamentalist, perfectionist, a majoritarian or minimalist -- which of those categories do you fit in?" Roberts replied: "I didn't have a chance to read Professor Sunstein's book. He writes a different one every week; it's hard to keep up with him."

Speaking of the Supreme Court, when I was covering the court, schoolkids on pilgrimage to the nation's capital were often dragooned into watching oral arguments before the justices. At the end of one particulary soporific session, a group of junior high schoolers was taking a shortcut out of the courtoom through the press gallery. I asked their teacher if her students had enjoyed the argument. One boy piped up: "Yeah, I was riveted to my seat." Ah, I thought, a kindred spirit! At his age I also was a smartass. (It runs in the family.)

Life is tough for little smartasses -- or mavericks, as John McCain and Sarah Palin might describe them. McCain, by the way, fought smartassery with smartassery while campaigning in New Hampshire. When a high school student asked McCain if at 71 he was too old to be president, the candidate shot back: "Thanks for the question, you little jerk.  You're drafted.'' That moment was the closest I came to supporting McCain.

It's a good thing there won't be time for small talk when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. stands up on Jan. 20 to administer the oath of office to President Barack Obama. Ordinarily one might think that the two alumni of the Harvard Law Review -- Obama was president, Roberts managing editor -- would glide easily into a reminiscent groove, cheerily comparing notes about professors and pizza parlors in Cambridge. But any conversation might be awkward, because Obama, unlike 22 other Democrats, voted against Roberts' confirmation.

Worse, if The Washington Post is to be believed, Obama stiffed his fellow Ivy Leaguer by flip-flopping from support to opposition.

The Post reported:

"It was the fall of 2005, and the celebrated young senator -- still new to Capitol Hill but aware of his prospects for higher office -- was thinking about voting to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice. Talking with his aides, the Illinois Democrat expressed admiration for Roberts's intellect. Besides, Obama said, if he were president he wouldn't want his judicial nominees opposed simply on ideological grounds.

"And then [Pete] Rouse, his chief of staff, spoke up. This was no Harvard moot-court exercise, he said. If Obama voted for Roberts, Rouse told him, people would remind him of that every time the Supreme Court issued another conservative ruling, something that could cripple a future presidential run. Obama took it in. And when the roll was called, he voted no."  (Ironically, political calculations may have inclined Obama to condemn a recent decision in which Roberts was in the minority -- the court's ruling that child rapists can't be sentenced to death.)

It's well known that Roberts was surprised when senators he thought were going to support him switched sides. That he was confirmed anyway, with votes from half the Senate's Democrats, may have softened the blow. And Roberts has the comfort that he is likely to hold on to high office a lot longer than Obama will. Still, it's just as well that the two men won't have to chit-chat before Roberts exercises a privilege Obama didn't want him to have in the first place.

We get a lot of press releases here at the Opinion Manufacturing Division that pass without comment, but today's missive from the Western Business Roundtable is such a masterpiece of obfuscation that it cries out to be posted here, especially because it repeats similar baseless accusations against Barack Obama that were raised today by vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Here are the first two paragraphs of the release:

A bipartisan coalition of business leaders is calling on governors, state legislators and members of Congress to publicly express their opposition before tomorrow's election to proposals to "bankrupt" the U.S. coal industry and threaten to put out of work several hundred thousand Americans who work in coal-related industries.

The call was issued by the Western Business Roundtable following news reports that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama intends to make it so costly to build advanced clean coal power plants with carbon capture and sequestration that it will "bankrupt" any company that tries to do so.

Well, no. The "news reports" refer to tapes that appeared Sunday on YouTube, which were excerpted from a discussion held by Obama with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in January. Here's what Obama said that has raised the ire of both Palin and the Western Business Roundtable:

What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter.... So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as an ideological matter, as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

Note carefully what Obama is saying here: He wants a cap-and-trade program that would set a price for greenhouse-gas emissions. That would make it prohibitively expensive to build new conventional coal plants, because they emit vast amounts of carbon. Yet that's not the way the Business Roundtable, a marketing organization for a coalition of Western CEOs, puts it. Its release says Obama's proposal would make it impossible to build "advanced clean coal power plants with carbon capture and sequestration." Actually, if the technology to capture and bury carbon emissions from coal plants existed (it's still under study, and may never be commercially viable), such a plant would emit only trace amounts of carbon, and thus be perfectly viable under Obama's cap-and-trade scheme.

This is why business groups get a bad name for trying to "greenwash" environmentally destructive projects: The roundtable clearly objects to Obama's stance on dirty, conventional coal, but in order to look as if it cares about the environment, it's pretending that Obama actually opposes carbon-capture technology, which he has repeatedly backed (that's what Obama meant when he said "if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it").

The Business Roundtable still could take a few pointers on Doublespeak, though, from the master: Palin. In a campaign appearance in Ohio, Palin brought up the same YouTube tape to blast Obama's stance on coal.

He said that, sure, if the industry wants to build new coal-fired plants, then they can go ahead and try. . . but they can do it only in a way that will bankrupt the coal industry, and he's comfortable letting that happen.

What Palin neglected to mention is that the guy she's running with, John McCain, favors a cap-and-trade program very similar to Obama's, which would have the exact same impact on conventional coal plants. No matter who wins, the coal industry is going to be in trouble. Maybe after the election we can all stop pretending otherwise.

* Photo by Charlie Riedel / AP

The editorial board expected a lot of response to its most recent editorial analyzing the misleading campaign claims of the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign, and got it, just as most postings on the proposition do. (Previous editorials tackled the education and constitutional issues.)

Several of the commenters noted, not happily, that the editorial slamming the bigoted nature of the proposition was framed on the website by Yes on 8 ads. Why was the Times willing to sell ads to a campaign its editorial board so clearly denounces, they wondered?

Of course, advertising is one operation and editorial another. But aside from that easy answer is the more important role of a news-disseminating operation to provide for a wide variety of opinions. The editorial column is the space in the paper where the opinion staff details its analysis and recommendations of the issues at hand. Most of the newspaper belongs to the full range of opinion, including the letters to the editor, the op-ed page, the news and features pages, the ads, and the heated comments coming from both sides to the editorial and to the postings on this blog.

It's the editorial board's job to research the issues, discuss and critique them and finally deliver its considered opinion. But squelching either side of any debate is nothing we would like to see happen.

The sad word just came across that Bill Stall, a fellow editorial writer here at the Times until a few years ago, died today of emphysema.

What you'll probably see first in obituaries about Bill is that he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, and he did indeed produce an outstanding series of pieces in 2004 that analyzed with extraordinary clarity and conciseness the shenanigans and dysfunctions of state government, and offered common-sense remedies.

But I didn't mention that first, because even his depth of knowledge about important matters, and ability to put that into prize-winning prose, isn't what I remember most about him. Bill was at retirement age when I first joined the department; he already was frequently unwell from emphysema. But nothing slowed his unflagging devotion to his job and his commitment to bringing critical analysis of major issues to readers. He was a plain-spoken guy, but a true gentleman who was unfailingly helpful to me as a beginner in the department, generous with ideas and sources. And when my mother died of Alzheimer's and I had to take off some time, Bill stepped up to take on the editorial I was working on so that it wouldn't be abandoned.

Bill and I exchanged a few emails last week when he was in hospice care. He expressed avid concern about Tuesday's election, about the environment, which was always a great interest of his (He was determined as an editorial writer to keep the number of snowmobiles in Yellowstone from escalating), and about the future of newspapers. Even the nearness of death couldn't quell the intensity of his interest in the affairs of the world at large.

Photo by Gary Friedman/LA Times

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who tried to convince a Washington jury that he didn't have to report gifts from wealthy supporters because, well, he considered them loans (even though he never returned them), got what he richly deserved today when he was found guilty of all seven felony counts against him. But that raises some very interesting questions -- like, if Alaska voters elect him to another term anyway, what happens? Will he be voting on bills from a prison cell?

Stevens is in an extremely tight race against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Most candidates who are convicted of several felonies the week before an election can be safely ruled out, but not Stevens. He promises to continue his campaign, he is extremely well-loved in Alaska (a state that hasn't had a Democrat in the Senate since 1981), and this is the state that put a little-known hockey mom from Wasilla in the governor's mansion.

There is nothing in Senate rules that would prevent Stevens from serving if he's elected, but Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr. serves as an instructive example. Like Stevens, Williams was an institution in his home state, frequently referred to as New Jersey's "senator for life." But then he got caught up in the Abscam sting, in which FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks offered bribes to members of Congress, some of whom, like Williams, took them. He was convicted in 1981 on nine counts of bribery and conspiracy, but refused to leave office. That set up a bruising effort to expel him by the rest of the Senate; Williams resigned in 1982 just as the Senate was on the brink of getting the 67 votes needed to kick him out. He would have been the first senator to be expelled since the Civil War.

Stevens will doubtless appeal, and he would have to exhaust his appeals before the expulsion process could begin. He could do himself, and the country, a big favor by dropping out now.

* Photo by Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Good grammar doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy presidential campaign. But listening to Barack Obama give his stump speech in Indiana on Thursday, I was annoyed anew by his reference to the need for "good paying jobs." Obama's not the only one, of course. "Good paying jobs" is a mantra for politicians from both parties. I don't understand why.

OK, maybe someone -- though not Joe the Plumber, who's pretty articulate-- once said: "This job pays good." But is that any reason for otherwise grammatically scrupulous candidates to talk about "good paying jobs"? Whats next: A claim that George W. Bush presided over a "bad fought" war in Iraq? Or that Sarah Palin "rich deserves" the lampooning she has received from Tina Fey?

Maybe a retired English teacher should be given a well paying job correcting the candidates' grammar.

Photo: Mark Randall, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Like every journalist, I have kicked myself after conducting an interview for not asking an obvious -- in retrospect -- follow-up question. So I don't want to be too harsh on Brian Williams. Nevertheless,  Williams bungled big-time when he allowed John McCain and Sarah Palin to exploit Joe Biden's knuckleheaded prediction that a new President Barack Obama would be tested by America's enemies.

Contrasting himself with Obama, McCain said: I've been tested." Then he harped on the fact that Obama is "young and untested," and Palin chimed in, calling Biden's comment the "most telling" utterance of the campaign.

Whoa! "Young and untested"? Isn't that also a description of Palin, who as even her supporters acknowledge is a foreign-policy novice? Wasn't the obvious follow-up for Williams this zinger: "If, Senator McCain, you had a fatal heart attack on Jan. 21, would our enemies be tempted the next day to provoke a crisis to test President Palin?"

True, Williams later asked the Republican couple to comment on Colin Powell's criticism of McCain's choice of Palin, which evoked a defense by Palin -- who didn't want to toot her own horn -- of her executive experience. But the subject was foregn policy, wasn't it?

I have no brief for Rep. John Murtha, the arrogant and embarrassing Pennsylvania congressman and Abscam survivor. But Murtha is being unfairly pilloried for telling my former employer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "There is no question that Western Pennsylvania is a racist area." Like my parents and grandparents before me, I am a native Western Pennsylvanian  with a family fondness for my native region, though I'm not much of a Steelers fan. But I understand what Murtha was getting at in his politically incorrect outburst.

I began (and ended) my involvement in politics in Pittsburgh in 1968 when, as a high school student, I enlisted in the insurgent army of anti-war candidate "Clean Gene" McCarthy. But that didn't stop me or my political-junkie pals from scoping out other candidates in both the primary and general elections. One of our stops on the campaign trail was an appearance by George Wallace, which provided us with the frisson of attending what we considered the equivalent of a Nazi rally.

Wallace didn't disappoint, turning the crowd against protesters in the balconies ("Get a haircut!") and dusting off familiar applause lines about pointy-headed bureaucrats. I seem to recall Wallace telling the audience that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," but that might have been at another rally.

What I am sure about is that labor unions in what then was still the Steel City were terrified that enough of their members would defect to Wallace that Richard Nixon would take Pennsylvania's electoral votes away from Hubert Humphrey. The unions mobilized an effort to point out how anti-union Wallace had been as governor of Alabama, but then, as now, cultural issues sometimes trumped economics. Granted, by 1968 Wallace wasn't running as a segregationist but as a populist, but even as a 17-year-old I knew that a lot of Wallace's appeal to my fellow Pittsburghers was his racist record.

As aging people are always saying to the younger generation: You had to be there. And "there" in this case includes our living room, where I remember an uncle-by-marriage from Alabama arguing to my parents that their Pittsburgh friends were just as racist as whites in Alabama; the difference was that there was more hypocrisy in the North

But that was 40 years ago, right? Right, and Barack Obama seems to be heading to solid victory in Pennsylvania. Yet a lot of the 35-year-old Western Pennsylvania white guys who warmed to Wallace in 1968 are now 75-year-old retirees, and it was to them that Murtha was referring. His full quote: "There's no question Western Pennsylvania is a racist area. The older population is more hesitant."

I wouldn't defend Murtha's subsequent reference to Western Pennsylvanians as "rednecks." (For one thing, Pittsburghers also have a prejudice against the South, which may have cut into Wallace's vote.) But Murtha's original comment vindicated Michael Kinsley's observation that a "gaffe" is Washington-speak for telling the truth. Murtha would have been smarter to stop with "Go Steelers."

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has tickled the press corps' funny bone with an unorthodox opinion dissenting from the court's refusal to hear a search-and-seizure case from my native Pennsylvania. Here's the money, I mean funny, quote:

Narcotics Strike Force, North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three-dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He'd made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.

"Devlin spotted him: a lone man on the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn't buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyer. Sure enough: three bags of crack in the guy's pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office.

Roberts' parody of hard-boiled detective fiction -- which reporters variously characterized as channeling Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler -- was clever, but hardly a laugh riot. The sensation it caused may be explained by the fact that, as Sam Johnson famously said,  "it is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all." Johnson was referring to a woman preaching, which he compared in its exoticism to "a dog walking on his legs."

Judges who crack wise in their opinions are almost as rare as bipedal beagles. But they do exist. Long before Roberts put on his stylistic fedora, Justice Mike Eakin of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was notorious (at least among readers of the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia papers) for writing opinions in verse -- or doggerel, depending on your critical standards. For example,while serving on a state appeals court, Eakin rendered an opinion about a prenuptial agreement in a divorce case in four-line stanzas like this:

He'd had a prenup with his previous wife
And sought to avoid any mischief or strife
By asking his bride for a prenup himself
To allow her to insulate personal wealth.

Eakin eventually took his versifying to a new level -- the state Supreme Court -- and inspired dissents from two colleagues who thought his "poetic justice" detracted from the dignity of the court. No word on whether some of Roberts' colleagues are offended by his excursion into detective-speak. But at least one, Justice Anthony Kennedy, signed the opinion, offering Roberts some encouragement to wax literary again. Maybe he'll take a cue from Justice Eakin and attempt an opinion in verse. But what rhymes with "Guantanamo"?

If Tuesday's presidential debate had been more compelling, I might not have noticed two peculiarities about the event: the bizarre behavior of moderator Tom Brokaw and the inertness of the audience of "real people" from Nashville.

Brokaw already has been scolded for a schoolmarmish insistence on holding Barack Obama and John McCain to the arcane rules of the format, lest they actually engage each other in a debate. But the oddest aspect of his moderation was an insistence on introducing the questioners at the "town hall" by referring to the section of the hall in which they were seating as if it were a town.

At the beginning of the debate Brokaw said that "we're going to have our first question from over here in Section A from Allen Shaffer." Later he introduced "Oliver Clark, who is over here in section F." Later still: "The next question does come from the hall for Sen. McCain. It comes from Section C over here, and it's from Ingrid Jackson." And so on. So often did Brokaw mention sections that he sounded like a Broadway usher.

Odd as it was, Brokaw's obsession with where people were sitting was out-weirded by the audience. Regardless of the section they occupied, they were to a person eerily immobile and expressionless, so much so that I was surprised when a seemingly stiffened teenager actually blinked his eyes. The pod people from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" were more animated than this group. Maybe the drinking water at the debate was spiked with curare. Or the debate staffer who wrangled the audience "undecided" with "undead."

Photo: AP Photo/Jim Bourg, Pool

Never, ever underestimate the power of advertising. If they can sell you on his-and-hers personal lubricants, they can even sell you on changing state law to forbid same-sex couples to marry. The latest CBS 5 poll (conducted by SurveyUSA for a San Francisco TV station) finds that support for Proposition 8, the initiative that would embed a ban on gay marriage into the California constitution, leads by five percentage points. Eleven days ago--before a blast of ads for the proposition--it trailed by five points.

Now, the change was among young voters, who can be hard to gauge on polls. Initiatives can be particularly hard to poll accurately. They tend to do worse on Election Day than over a telephone survey. On the other hand, people tend to be uncomfortable about saying they don't like homosexuality.

But the lesson to take home on this one is that Proposition 8, which the Times editorial board is dead set against, is no sure bet one way or the other. Second lesson: Incredibly, some people--especially young people, apparently--actually believe and are swayed by campaign ads. I've been reading about the Proposition 8 ads--the claims (false) that California schools would have to teach gay marriage to children, that it paves the way (false) for people to be sued over their personal beliefs and that churches would lose their tax status (false) if they refused to change their policies to conform with same sex marriage.

I have to read about the ads because they tend to be so irritatingly misleading (not to mention scream-out-loud repetitive) that watching or listening to them is out of the question. Campaign season is no time to be without a "mute" button.

AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari

Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation" between church and state has always been a porous one, even after landmark Supreme Court decisions outlawing official prayers in public schools and some (but not all) postings of the Ten Commandments on public property. On Sunday there was a religious service that some see as a minor gap in the wall of separation, but which some First Amendment purists see as  sinister. I'm referring to the Red Mass celebrated in St. Matthew's Cathedral the day before the opening of the new term of the U.S. Supreme Court. Five justices – four Catholics, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and one Jew, Stephen Breyer -- attended.

The service produced a photo (at right) that I'm sure strict separationists saw as a neo-medieval alliance: Archbishop Donald Wuerl, mitered and holding the crosier or shepherd's crook, and Roberts, who, unlike the archbishop, wasn't wearing his robes.

The Red Mass in Washington is sponsored by a Catholic group and asks for divine guidance for lawyers and public officials.  Americans United for Separation of Church and State looks askance at the fusion of the secular and the spiritual, though it conceded in its report on this year's event that Cardinal  John P. Foley's sermon "was rather mild when it came to judicial lobbying." Instead of the veiled condemnations of abortion in past Red Mass sermons, Foley said "that all of us may see law as a reflection of God's loving care," and he reminded the justices to follow God's guidance in building a society "of justice, of peace and of love."

As long as the sermons at the Red Mass aren't exercises in lobbying or scolding the Supreme Court justices in attendance, they don't set off a First Amendment alarm for me. I recognize that sincere separationists see it differently, as do old-fashioned anti-Catholics who worry that the court now has a Catholic majority. (No one complained when it had a Protestant majority.) The larger point is that supporters of separation of church and state, a group in which I include myself, need to lighten up and recognize that some breaches in the wall of separation are what lawyers call de minimis  -- loose translation: "no big deal."

On the first Monday in October, the Times editorial page crosses its collective fingers and hopes the U.S. Supreme Court's docket of low-profile cases will mean a relatively apolitical, civil and consensus-seeking year.

The page also takes a very non-picturesque look at very real and very non-jolly pirates, and criticizes the penny-wise, multi-million-dollar-foolish Bush administration order that California change the way it tallies illegal immigrants who use a state family planning and health treatment program. California's Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment Program reduces abortion rates and saves $1.4 billion in welfare and other costs so, of course, the administration can't let that go on.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez calls for a different way of looking at why people are religious, and Cal State Northridge economics Professor Shirley Svorny weighs in on the side of the market in the continuing saga of U.S. health care. The market breeds innovation, Svorny says, and innovation delivers lower costs:

For all its faults, America's healthcare sector has its advantages. It produces some of the highest survival rates in the world for cancer and other serious illnesses. Patients generally don't have to wait a year for a hip replacement. Being 70 doesn't make you ineligible for a kidney transplant. And U.S. medical innovations benefit other countries that suffer from the lack of them in their government-run schemes.

Rather than give up on all that, let's deregulate medical care so that providers can find innovative ways to deliver high-quality care cheaply. Let's eliminate the increasingly strict education requirements for clinicians and let medical professionals offer walk-in physicals or other services at competitive prices. Like Wal-Mart and MinuteClinic, they will rely on brand name and reputation to assure quality.

Washington, D.C., attorneys David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey express some alarm, or at least concern, over the increasing frequency of "universal jurisdiction" to bring indictments in one nation against accused criminals in another.

What we are seeing is not the birth of a global rule of law but a type of worldwide judicial anarchy. Spain's judges should not be driving foreign policy at the United Nations -- but they are. That is a problem, just as it would be a problem if some other country's judiciary were doing it. There is, in the end, a difference between an independent and an imperial judiciary.

Graphic: Christopher Serra, For The Times

If you think that Congress is having a tough time nailing down the terms of a $700-billion bailout because of high-minded concerns about fairness, proper use of taxpayer funds or regulatory oversight, think again. Actually, it seems much of the horse-trading is over the amount of pork lawmakers can get away with inserting into the legislation.

Bloomberg News reports that dozens of tax breaks for a wide assortment of business interests are being added to the bailout package, mostly in an effort to bring recalcitrant Republicans on board. So, for example, Rose City Archery, an Oregon company that makes bows and arrows for kids, might be the beneficiary of a provision inserted by Oregon senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith to end a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows. Talk about giving taxpayers the shaft -- it's mystifying how these senators think we're going to pay for this bailout when they're busy cutting deals on behalf of special interests.

Not all the new provisions are bad, and some might even be good for the overall economy, such as a tax break for movie and television producers who film in the United States, which would stem runaway production and thus might even raise overall tax revenues from Hollywood. But mostly all this deal-making raises worries about the future of a country that solves its lending crisis by cranking up the national debt and then reducing the taxes that will be needed to pay it off.

Before Monday's report on the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, Alberto R. Gonzales was forgotten and gone. He's back in the news with a finding by two Justice Department watchdogs that the former attorney general (and his deputy)  “abdicated their responsibility to safeguard the integrity and independence of the department…”

Gonzales' AWOL management style was perhaps not foreseeable in 2005 when he went before the U.S. Senate for confirmation hearings. But other problematic qualities were obvious -- notably his chumminess with George W. Bush going back to Texas and his compliant attitude toward cutting corners in the war on terror. So how did he win confirmation on a 60-36 vote?

One clue came in the opening statement of Sen. Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in charge of Gonzales' confirmation: "Judge Gonzales comes to this nomination with a very distinguished career; really a Horatio Alger story. Hispanic background, of seven siblings, the first to go to college, attended the Air Force Academy for two years and then received degrees from Rice and Harvard Law School" (emphasis added).

Not for the first time, a nominee successfully played the race -- or ethnicity -- card. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was confirmed with plenty of votes from Democrats who overlooked his conservative philosophy because he would be the first Italian-American to serve on the court. Justice Clarence Thomas may have owed his much narrower confirmation to his race -- and his rags-to-Republican resilience.

"I've overcome a lot of obstacles in my life to become attorney general," he told reporters. As Sarah Palin may also demonstrate, an inspirational biography is not necessarily a qualification for public office.

Heck hath no fury like a talk-show host scorned. So it wasn't surprising that David Letterman threw a hilarious hissy fit after John McCain canceled on him as part of McCain's return to Washington to solve the financial crisis. Except, of course, as Letterman revealed, McCain was still in New York  getting made up for an interview with Katy Couric.

McCain defenders say Letterman's tantrum proves that he's part of the MSM anti-McCain lynch mob. But Letterman has treated McCain respectfully in the past, and his jokes about McCain's age have been good-natured. Clearly, however, Letterman was stung by the snub. So is this proof that entertainers have placed themselves above their station, as they say in Britain?

I don't think so. Politicians have admitted comedians and actors into their charmed circle, with both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton making cameos and "Saturday Night Live" and McCain himself announcing his candidacy on Letterman's show. So why wouldn't a talk-show host stiffed by a candidate be just as aggrieved as a ward heeler on learning that a presidential candidate was a no-show?

Approval of the Bush administration's financial rescue plan has been slowed by, among other things, a proposal to dock the severance pay of executives of bailed-out companies.  Such limitations, though hard to enforce, would amount to a kind of rough justice for the profligacy of some Wall Street hotshots (though there is less enthusiasm for slapping the wrists of homebuyers who decided to live beyond their means.) But the disgust over excessive executive compensation predates the current financial crisis, and isn't really about punishing bad judgment.

People were offended when the leaders of even successful companies were given kingly compensation packages, including stock options. The antipathy to multi-million-dollar pay packages and golden parachutes is rooted less in notions about performance and more in a combination of envy and aesthetics. The underlying attitude is that "no one should make that much money," even if (as in happier times economically) the recipients had to be lured to take the job by fabulous pay.

I don't quarrel with this sort of populism, and have no problems either with sticking it to executives of mismanaged companies or allowing shareholders a say in executive compensation. But, like earmarks, executive pay is a drop in the fiscal bucket.

The same is true of at the public revulsion over pay raises for public officials, including federal judges -- though few people on the public payroll receive CEO-style salaries. At my former newspaper, letter-writers and one of our own columnists went on ad nauseam about the perfidy of legislators voting themselves a pay raise. The satisfaction of beating this decomposing horse was that it didn't require any interest in or mastery of the issues these overpaid legislators dealt with.

"Pay grabs" for public officials were the ultimate equal-opprtunity outrage -- even if the raises  were approved by an independent commission. Legislators were in a no-win position: If they raised their own salaries, they were self-dealing. If they empowered an outside group to set their salaries, they were cowards. The result was that legislators would forgo raises for a long time, then try to "catch up" with large increases that the anti-pay-grab forces could denounce as excessive.

Opposition to higher pay for public officials has always struck me as the poor man's snobbery. People on the public payroll are the one group ordinary citizens can feel superior to -- despite the paradoxical fact that they voted for these same miscreants. The implication seems to be: "If I chose you, you couldn't be worth much."  Not exactly a ringing endorsement of democracy.

*Photo of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke--and a bailout protester--at a Tuesday Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

I want to say one word to you, George W. Bush, just one word. Are you listening?

Plastics.

The plastics in our baby bottles and canned goods -- or more specifically, a chemical that hardens those plastics called bisphenol A -- may be scrambling children's brains and screwing up their hormonal systems. I say "may be," because nobody really knows. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration said the amount of bisphenol that leeches out of food containers is too small to harm even infants. But today another group of government scientists from the National Toxicology Program reiterated its earlier claim that the risks to humans can't be ruled out.

So which scientists do we trust? Confronted with the choice, it's always best to pick the ones least vulnerable to political influence from the White House. By now it's common knowledge that Bush's political hacks have suppressed, downplayed or misrepresented the work of scientists in any agency whose conclusions have differed from the administration's viewpoints. Most of the interference has happened in the environmental arena, particularly in regard to findings on global warming by such agencies as NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but it has happened in public health, too; two FDA commissioners overruled their own advisory panel and in-house staff when they banned over-the-counter sales of a morning-after contraceptive, and the National Cancer Institute has suggested a link between abortion and breast cancer that isn't supported by research.

Government regulators are supposed to protect citizens, not an ideology. In the case of bisphenol, I'm more inclined to believe the National Toxicology Program than the FDA, because the former is supervised by a broad committee of federal agencies and relies on multiple external groups for advice, making it harder to manipulate. The American Chemistry Council rightly points out that most of the studies on bisphenol have been performed on animals and the results don't necessarily apply to humans, which is why there is so much uncertainty about the chemical. Until more is known, though, parents would be wise to feed their babies out of glass bottles like the one in the photo above.

* Photo by Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

We'll be hearing a lot in the next few days about all the things Sarah Palin brings to John McCain's campaign (anti-abortion cred, status as a reformer, magnet for angry Clinton supporters, yada yada yada), but there's more than one area where she'll do the Arizona senator more harm than good. The obvious one is that she's completely unqualified to be president if anything happens to the 72-year-old McCain, but the less obvious one is that her devotion to Big Oil almost makes Dick Cheney look green.

No Alaskan is really qualified to weigh in on the U.S. energy debate: This is a state whose government budget is almost entirely underwritten by oil companies, which send each resident an annual royalty check to boot. Palin gets some credit for rejecting the suspect relationships with oil companies that have brought down nearly the entire state's Republican old guard -- in fact, her meteoric rise from mayor of Wasilla, pop. 8,000, to the governor's mansion can be traced to the ongoing corruption scandal -- but that doesn't exactly make her a maverick. She is a stalwart proponent of drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge as well as stepped-up offshore drilling, while her major accomplishment as governor so far has been to make Alaskans even more reliant on Big Oil by increasing their "resource rebate" to $1,200 per household.

Even the environmentally challenged Bush administration is too tree-hugging for Palin, who sued the U.S. Department of the Interior for listing the polar bear as a threatened species. She doesn't deny that global warming is happening -- its effects are too obvious in Alaska -- but doubts that it has man-made causes. That doesn't just put her at odds with nearly every credible climatologist on Earth, it puts her at odds with John McCain. And her positions on drilling will only fuel the Obama camp's line that Republicans are too cozy with oil companies to end the country's petroleum addiction.

* Photo by Kiichiro Sato / AP

As a theologian, Nancy Pelosi is a great politician. This was evident in her unnecessary foray on “Meet the Press” into the history of Catholic thought about when human life begins. The San Francisco Democrat's statement “as an ardent, practicing Catholic” that “doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition” was imprecise and impolitic. It also deprived pro-choice Catholic politicians of the best counter-argument to the idea that they should vote their faith on abortion issues.

First to what Pelosi got right: As in many other areas, Catholic teaching on abortion has undergone an evolution. The current insistence that life -– or a human soul –- begins at conception was not always taught by theologians. Some favored the notion that ensoulment takes place at quickening (the stage of pregnancy when the fetus can be felt to be moving).

As a Catholic, Pelosi is free to argue even to the pope that conception is not milestone for ensoulment or personhood. That theory is not infallible pronouncement. But using theology to justify a pro-life position in the political arena confuses the realms of politics and religion in a way that John F. Kennedy was careful not to do in 1960. The better response for Catholic politicians is to argue that personal faith and public duty do not perfectly overlap. Sometime legislators feel bound to vote the way her constituents want her to do.

It’s ominous that Pelosi was scolded not only by conservative Catholic bishops but also Archbishop of Washington Donald Wuerl, who has been a moderate in the debate over whether pro-choice Catholic politicians should be denied Holy Communion. As Tim Rutten observes, the Pelosi flap benefits Republicans in the current election campaign. Pelosi should discuss theology with her priest, not with Tom Brokaw.

The image of the Speaker of the House comes from this week's Democratic National Convention, courtesy of AP Photo/Matt Rourke.

Michelle Obama is rightly being praised for her charming speech Monday night to the Democratic National Convention. If anyone -- say, low-IQ New Yorker readers -- thought she was a radical, her self-portrait should have disabused them of that thought. As one commentator put it: "Michelle Obama's speech reflected great nobility. She presented herself as a loving wife and mom, and she presented herself as being in sync with the values of most Americans." In other words, she was June Cleaver, mother of the Beaver.

Fair enough, but she also is a lawyer with the same blue-chip education boasted by her husband. Apparently, campaign tacticians decided that she should de-emphasize that aspect of her persona, much as Hillary Rodham did when she belatedly took the Clinton surname.

Speaking of radical, here's a suggestion that will never be adopted: Make party conventions and other political events off-limits to spouses, parents, children, siblings, high school coaches and pets. The practice of politicians proving that they are family men (or women), which was satirized as early as 1956 in the great political novel "The Last Hurrah," isn't just cheesy. As Larry Craig, Elliot Spitzer and John Edwards can attest, it also can set you up for a fall big-time (as Dick Cheney would say).

But Americans will never give up on the family portrait as a political symbol. The other day a poll was released showing that a majority of Americans would be willing to vote for a gay or lesbian candidate for president. I suppose that means that in the future, life partners of nominees will be coached to portray themselves as "being in sync with the values of most Americans."

Photo of Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver and Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver courtesy of Billingsley's MySpace page

James Carville may think he was a show-stopper –- in the bad sense. But for me there was a poignancy to former Iowa U.S. Rep. Jim Leach’s soporific speech Monday night at the Democratic National Convention. Leach is a member of that vanishing breed, the liberal or Rockefeller Republican, and there was a freak-show aspect to his appearance in Denver. In justifying his defection, Leach offered a selective litany of progressive positions taken by past Republican presidents and lamented the loss of bipartisanship in Washington.

I have a soft spot for liberal Republicans partly because they held sway in my home state of Pennsylvania for so long. Governors like Bill Scranton, Ray Shafer, Dick Thornburgh (before his drift to the right) and Tom Ridge were the mainstream of the Republican Party in the Commonwealth. Rick Santorum came from a different wing of the party, which remains the new mainstream despite Santorum’s defeat two years ago.

That John McCain is considered a moderate Republican is a measure how much the center of gravity in the party has shifted. Genuine moderate Republicans remain in the Senate, but they are an endangered species. I count four: Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania; Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine; Dick Lugar of Indiana.

My nostalgia for liberal Republicans is as much cultural as it is political.  The pejorative term for them is “country club Republicans” who, like Leach and the first President Bush, often belonged to the Episcopal Church, a denomination disproportionately represented in power élites and in news coverage (what editor can resist a gay-bishop story?).

I may be the only one to see this parallel, but liberal Republicans have always struck me as the political equivalent of Anglo-Catholics: those high-church Episcopalians who in their liturgy with its “smells and bells” are more Catholic than the pope they don’t acknowledge. Liberal Republicans live a similarly paradoxical existence in the political world, espousing positions (at least on social issues) more common in the opposing party. We should pray –- in an Episcopal Church, of course –- for their resurrection.

AP photo by Charlie Neibergall

The editorial board wonders what happened to the Reagan Republicans it loved (err, OK, maybe "admired in principle" would be closer to the truth) in Sacramento:

There was a time, not too long ago, when the state's GOP lawmakers would engage with Democrats to craft sustainable spending plans that helped the state pay its bills without simply pushing its problems onto future generations. But as Republicans veer toward endangered-species status in the Capitol, in terms of raw numbers, those who remain appear to have rebranded themselves. The prior insistence on fiscal conservatism has been replaced by a willingness to accept fiscal chaos -- as long as taxes never go up.

Click here to post your angry comments while the steam is still pouring out of your ears. Elsewhere in the stack, the board urges state legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (who on fiscal issues does a pretty good imitation of a Reagan Republican) to support a compromise version of a bill to bar predatory lending practices. And it finds a silver lining for democracy in Pakistan amid the chaos likely to ensue now that Pervez Musharraf has stepped down as president.

Over on the op-ed page, columnist Tim Rutten urges the FBI to dispel the rumor and innuendo swirling around City Attorney (and occasional Times op-ed scribe) Rocky Delgadillo, whose wife reportedly has caught the bureau's interest. The editors compare 40-year-old snapshots that photographer Marketa Luskacova took during the Soviet invasion of her native Czechoslovakia with images from this month's Russian drubbing of Georgia. And author Andrew Meier, a former Moscow correspondent for Time magazine, defends the indefensible proposition of inviting Russia into the NATO fold. Who was it that said he wanted to keep his friends close and his enemies closer? Here's a snippet from Meier, on Russia's need for a group hug:

The end of the U.S.S.R. opened an era of unprecedented promise. But while Russians openly yearned for closer ties, the West only pushed back -- expanding NATO into former Warsaw Pact countries and former Soviet states.

Photo of Russian tanks rolling through Czechoslovakia Georgia by Marco Longari, AFP/Getty Images

Am I the only viewer of Rick Warren presidential forum to cringe when Barack Obama and John McCain offered their bona fides as believing Christians? Granted, the forum was at a church and Warren, who asked them about their faith, is an evangelist. Granted, also, that neither candidate discussed doctrine in detail. Still, consider these professions of faith: Obama avowed that "Jesus Christ died for my sins and that I am redeemed through him." McCain said that being a Christian meant that "I'm saved and forgiven."

These are arguably boilerplate statements of Christian belief, and both candidates quickly segued into the political applications of their faith. Still, given the audience, the professions of faith bordered on pandering. Of course, I still think John F. Kennedy was right when he told Protestant ministers in 1960 that "I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office."

That statement sounds quaint now. McCain encountered little flak when he he expressed his belief that the president should be a Christian. Reflecting the conventional wisdom  that Democrats must engage "people of faith," Obama has recanted his previous view that "we live in a pluralistic society, and ... I can't impose my religious views on another." I think Obama was right the first time, if by "religious views" one means "Jesus died for my sins" as opposed to a nonsectarian formulation like "all men are created equal [and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

Also weighing in my reaction is the way religion has been politicized in this presidential campaign. From Mike Huckabee's video Christmas card to McCain's jettisoning of John Hagee to Obama's agonizing over whether to repudiate the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the "naked public square" has been clothed with some pretty garish vestments.

Los Angeles Times photo by Genaro Molina.

Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubbs, meeting with Russian officials in Moscow Aug. 12. (Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images.)

Some of these folks, like U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Joseph Davies, were simply useful idiots who just never met a tightly controlled society they didn't like. Others, like the writer Dalton Trumbo, were actual yeggs getting their orders from the Kremlin. Collectively, they provide us a shameful but valuable lesson in the dangers of thug apologism, as we try to assess how much, if at all, the Georgians are to blame for their own predicament.

I wish I could say today's Los Angeles Times were immune to kneejerk anti-westernism, but back in the days before Otis Chandler, the paper was still under adult supervision. Here's how the ed board described Stalin's invasion at the time:

The Green Line in South Los Angeles may be the oddest light-rail line in California, notorious for going from nowhere to nowhere. Sen. Jenny Oropeza, one of the key lawmakers who has been blocking progress on a ballot measure that would improve L.A. County's public transit system, wants credit for changing that. Because of her obstructionism, there's a good chance that the Green Line will run from somewhere to nowhere. Yippee.

Oropeza, a Democrat out of Long Beach, is one of several local politicians who have been holding Measure R -- a ballot initiative that would impose a half-cent sales tax increase on L.A. County residents to pay for public transit -- hostage. Like most of the others, Oropeza wanted to make sure a good share of the proceeds went to her district. Today, she sent out a news release crowing that AB 2321, which would place Measure R on the ballot, now includes language guaranteeing funding to extend the Green Line to Los Angeles International Airport. The bill, with the opposition from Oropeza and others withdrawn, has now passed through the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The Green Line runs along the 105 Freeway in South L.A. from Norwalk to... almost... LAX, and then south to Redondo Beach. Bizarrely, it stops two miles short of the airport. Fixing that might end a historical oddity and make life a little easier for airport workers, but it won't do much to improve traffic around LAX or ridership on the Green Line. Those who take the line to the airport are mostly people who work there, not the thousands of airline passengers driving to the airport daily, very few of whom are coming or going from Lynwood.

Oh well. Oropeza got what she wanted, and as a result, L.A. voters might get a chance to vote on the sales-tax measure. Whether it will end up funding the most needed projects, rather than the ones with the most powerful political backing, is another matter.

* Photo by Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

Mark David Chapman, the deeply disturbed, possibly schizophrenic killer who gunned down John Lennon in 1980, was denied parole today for the fifth time. It was the right decision, even if at this point it's unclear whether society needs to be protected from Chapman or Chapman needs to be protected from society.

There was never any trial for Chapman, who was sentenced to 20 years to life after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. To many Lennon fans, that seems like an injustice given that by Chapman's own admission the 1980 killing was premeditated: Chapman staked out Lennon's Central Park apartment building, the Dakota, for days before the opportunity arose to pump four hollow-point bullets into the former Beatle's back. That should have guaranteed life without parole if not the death penalty for Chapman, except that the killer was so unhinged that had the case gone to trial there's a strong chance he would have gotten off on an insanity defense.

Today, Chapman is housed apart from the general population at Attica prison because of his notoriety. But if he's in danger from Lennon fans among his fellow prisoners, it's not hard to imagine (no pun intended) somebody pulling a Jack Ruby on him if he ever gets out. I'm all for being sympathetic to the mentally ill, but Chapman should stay in prison until he dies.

So much for that speaking engagement at the Democratic National Convention. John Edwards is admitting to an affair with Rielle Hunter, AP reports:

Edwards told ABC News that he lied repeatedly about the affair but said that he didn't love the woman. He said he has not taken a paternity test but knows he isn't the father of her child because of the timing of the affair and the birth.

Uh, wow. So, if he doesn't love the other woman, that makes it okay? And he said this to the media? Out loud?

Okay, we've heard enough about John. Here's my question:

Tell us why below.

The backers of Proposition 8 argue that the ban on same-sex marriage is about protecting school children.

From what?

According to the pro-Prop. 8 ballot argument -- which is being challenged in court, with the case expected to be heard today -- same-sex marriage isn't about "live and let live." No, it contends, a continuation of same-sex marriage would force on our children, from the earliest years of grade school, a curriculum that teaches that gay marriage is fine.

"State education laws require teachers to instruct children as young as kindergarteners about marriage," the argument reads. "If the gay marriage ruling is not overturned, then teachers will be required to teach young children that there is no difference between gay marriage and traditional marriage....That is an issue for parents to discuss with their children according to their own values and beliefs. It should not be forced on us against our will."

The only problem is that everything about this argument isn't just specious, it's just wrong.

NASA's pretty amazed these days because it's found perchlorate on Mars.

Now, perchlorate has its uses, in things like fireworks and air bags and rocket fuel. But when it shows up in our water and cow's milk, as it does, it's bad stuff. Perchlorate interferes with the thyroid gland's iodine uptake. In other words, it's not something we'd be thrilled to find around our drinking supplies.

It shows you that, even where perchlorate is concerned, it's all about location, location, location. NASA scientists are excited about this finding; they think perchlorate could even be an indicator of life on Mars. At least, life of the microbial sort, not the kind we think about getting together with at intergalactic mixers. Not the sort of life with whom we'd want to go out drinking. And their fireworks are probably very tiny.

Before we get too entirely riled up about China rousting its beggars, pickpockets and, most recently, its petitioners from the streets of Beijing in an attempt to pretty up the city's image for the Olympics, let's take a quiz. When does this headline date from?

"City Polishing Its Image For Olympic Visitors"

If you guessed 1984, you are a smart reader who looked at the title to this blogpost. The Los Angeles Times story from July 21, 1984, about preparations for our own Summer Games, starts out like this:

"Los Angeles police have added 30 horse-mounted officers downtown and stepped up their stopping nd questioning of Skid Row homeless in an effort to clean up the city in time for the Olympics....Many of the homeless--most often drunks, the mentally ill or others down on their luck--have apparently relocated to other downtown areas to escape the police pressure."

It goes on to quote a police captain saying, memorably, "We're trying to sanitize the area."

Certainly, nothing on the same scale as Beijing is attempting. But among our memories of the tremendously successful Summer Games, let's not forget to include a sliver of embarrassment about the people we tried to sweep aside.

*Photo:  TEH ENG KOON / AFP / Getty Images

November 2008 election? That is so last month. March 2009 city election? Boring! Let’s move directly to 2010 and the race to be the next governor. In a shocking surprise to no one, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s understudy, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, makes it official today: He wants the job. Still.

Garamendi is instantly the most experienced candidate, meaning he has more experience running for the office than anyone else. He tried in 1982 and 1994, but until today he had yet to log in for the 2000s, unless you count his ever-so-brief candidacy in the 2003 Gray Davis recall. That puts him ahead of even Jerry Brown, although Brown actually won the two times he ran (so far).

Garamendi has been defeated by a who’s-who of California’s Democratic political establishment: Tom Bradley aced him out of the 1982 gubernatorial primary, Davis beat him for controller in 1986, Kathleen Brown (Jerry's sister) beat him for governor in the 1994 primary.

But he was a strong, consumer-oriented insurance commissioner twice – the state’s first elected commissioner in 1991 and, restoring order after the rocky and abbreviated tenure of Chuck Quackenbush, in 2003. He’s widely considered a hero to consumer advocates and the bane of the auto insurance industry.

He’s a vigorous Californian in the old-school image – born in the Mother Lode country. Cattle rancher. Environmentalist. He was deputy U.S. secretary of the interior. He has famous barbecues at his Sacramento delta spread. He’s got a Vise-Grips handshake and a flashing smile that are simultaneously comforting and intimidating. But with all that, is he just a little too, well, you know – boring – when stacked next to the likes of colorful mayors, current and ex, like Brown, Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa?

By the way, everyone knows that Villaraigosa and Brown have filed to run – except they haven’t. Not yet, anyway.

On this last day of July, here's a recap of the month's developments in the 2010 race to succeed Schwarzenegger. Democrats first, since we're already on their case.

At the L.A. Times it often seems that the only kind of colleagues we have are former colleagues, so it's nice to see them turn up in the legitimate media. I couldn't decide whether the most accurate news story of the past month was The Onion's "Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In" or The Onion's "'Time' Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece." But I've got to give the nod to the Obama media-crit article, because its roundup of journalistic talking heads includes one of our many former editors:

"The sheer breadth of fluff in this story is something to be marveled at," New York Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet said. "It's all here. Favorite books, movies, meals, and seasons of the year ranked one through four. Sure, we asked Obama what his favorite ice cream was, but Time did us one better and asked, 'What's your favorite ice cream, really?'"

Whole article. The Onion is a satirical newspaper, even though it is all true.

Early reports say that government officials are hands-off, leaving it to Australian airline Qantas to investigate this "explosive decompression" that poked a gaping hole in its fuselage and forced an emergency landing in Manila. Guess it's understandable if the Manila officials dont want to get involved. But wouldn't aviation authorities in England, where the plane took off, and Australia be flying investigators to the site, with orders for Qantas to keep hands off?

If this was crime-related, should amateurs be messing with the scene? If it was a maintenance problem or airplane malfunction, should the people with a vested interest be messing with the scene?

UPDATED: The Times got hold of a draft order (pdf) from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cutting the pay of state workers until the budget dispute is resolved (so did the Sacramento Bee).

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) responded twice:

6:18 p.m. --

I don't think the Governor should put public servants in the crossfire of this budget battle. But his action speaks to the need for all us -- including the Governor -- to negotiate a balanced, responsible budget that protects our schools and the safety net before we run out of cash.

Translation: He wouldn't dare!!

6:29 p.m. --

I don't believe the Governor would put public servants in the crossfire of this budget battle. But this action would speak to the need for all us -- including the Governor -- to negotiate a balanced, responsible budget that protects our schools and the safety net before we run out of cash.

Translation: He wouldn't dare.

Long-sought war crimes suspect caught in Serbia: Radovan Karadzic is accused of genocide against Bosnia's Muslim population.

More.

More.

Christian Bale arrested for allegedly assaulting mother, sister.

More.

More.

All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Joe Mathews' Blockbuster Democracy blog has this link to a Field Poll out this morning showing that Californians are leaning against Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot to restrict marriage to a union between a man and a woman.

If it passes, what would be the effect of the state Supreme Court's May 15 ruling legalizing marriage for same-sex couples? The court called marriage a fundamental right. Can voters revoke a fundamental right by initiative?

Opponents of Proposition 8 said no, and asked the court to remove the measure from the ballot. On Wednesday, though, the justices declined, without comment.

Los Angeles Superior Court research attorney Kevin Norte has been warning that the court's failure to act may result in repeated ballot measures to restrict marriage. Even if Proposition 8 fails, he argues, lack of court action to bar similar ballot measures will result in one initiative after another, forever, much like the parental consent/notification measures that Californians have seen three times in the last three years. The latest version, Proposition 4 (also known as Sara's Law), is on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Norte calls the potential phenomenon the "Gay Marriage Industrial Complex." Read his quote in the Metropolitan News-Enterprise story.

Meanwhile, there's an online petition to recall Chief Justice Ron George for the "travesty" in ruling and writing the opinion in the In re Marriage Cases decision, but it's not an official petition qualified by the secretary of state.

The Los Angeles County version of the city's Proposition S may soon be coming to a voting booth near you. But the half-cent sales tax to fund transportation projects may not. It's up to the county Board of Supervisors to decide, on Tuesday, whether phone taxes or sales taxes or both will be on the November 4 ballot.

Let's deal with the MTA sales tax first, because it's shorter. Kind of. Supervisor Michael Antonovich is asking his colleagues to adopt a resolution supporting yet another measure on the November 4 ballot that would prevent the revenue from the sales tax, if it passes -- and in fact any transportation tax revenues -- to be spent equitably. Whatever that means. Those equitable principles have yet to be drafted, but it comes down to this: the MTA wouldn't be able to use its new tax revenue solely for the subway to the sea, also known as the Red Line extension.

Here's how Antonovich puts it in his press release:

County taxpayers deserve to see the tax dollars they generate fund transportation projects in their communities. The "Fair Share" initiative provides fairness for the 60% of the County’s population that live outside of the City of Los Angeles and generates 67% of County sales taxes.

Here's a link to the agenda item (pdf), but if you're in a rush, here's the key language: the initiative would "specify principles for subregional allocation of future sales tax increases." Just how those principles would look in print is a matter for speculation, but I'm guessing it will take more than a couple days to hammer them out.

Can Antonovich pull it off? He'd have to get by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who supports using the sales tax revenue on the projects outlined in a bill by former state lawmaker Kevin Murray. And that's just on the Board of Supervisors. Those five supes make up just over a third of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is leading the subway-to-the-sea charge. By the way, the MTA board will take up the sales tax plan on Thursday.

Now, to the phone tax or, more correctly, the utility user's tax. Cities around California having been asking voters to ratify and in some cases lower their existing taxes on telephone calls, all in response to lawsuits challenging the legality of applying those taxes to cell phones. The Los Angeles County version sent to the supervisors by Chief Executive Officer Bill Fujioka would reduce the rate from 5% to 4.5%. Of the state's 58 counties, Los Angeles and three others -- Alameda, San Francisco and Sacramento -- also have phone taxes.

Opinion L.A. has documented the recent surge in California cities updating, and in some cases reducing, their phone or utility taxes here, here, here and here. The big one was the city of L.A. on Feb. 5, along with Pasadena and Huntington Park, and April votes in Culver City, Malibu, Sierra Madre and June votes in Covina and Torrance. Each of those measures to ratify the phone tax passed.

Why do voters have to ratify their existing phone taxes? The history is complex and convoluted, but in a nutshell it goes like this: Local governments began applying a tax to phone calls and other utilities in the 1960s, and they modeled it on an existing federal tax that dated back to the Spanish American War. As you may have guessed, there were no cell phones back then, so it was easy to figure out who paid. Callers didn't cross jurisdictions while talking on the phone.

The city of L.A. added its tax in 1967, but other cities and counties really jumped on the bandwagon in the early 1990s in response to the wholesale grabbing of local funds, by the state, to pay for schools.

Los Angeles County adopted its 5% tax in 1991 (If you want to find it, follow the instructions laid out here). It applies to phone calls, natural gas and electricity, but just in the unincorporated areas of the county.

But county officials wrote their law as if telephone deregulation had not yet occurred, so they made no provision for the plethora of new companies and technologies that were already changing the way people make calls. If you're calling on a cell phone instead of a landline, does the person making the call get taxed, or the person receiving it? Do they get taxed the rate in effect where the caller lives? Or where the caller is calling from? Or where the caller gets the bill?

In 2000 a federal law helped clarify how to bill, and cities and phone companies negotiated how to tax cell calls. Local tax laws were updated accordingly. But several years earlier, in 1996, California voters adopted Proposition 218, which required any new local tax to be put before voters. So -- does clarifying the phone tax to make sure it applies to cell phones trigger Prop. 218? It does. Verizon challenged many of the cell phone tax laws, and courts have been ruling that cities and counties must go to the voters.

County supervisors have been trying for more than a year to fight or settle a cell phone tax case brought by Joe Oronoz and other plaintiffs. On July 1, they settled the case in closed session, but they have yet to release the details. But it's a good bet that the settlement and the decision to put the tax on the ballot -- with a reduction -- are somehow related.

The various city tax "updates" have followed one of two paths -- the straightforward (We want to keep taxing you at the same rate but could be stopped in court unless you give us your permission) and the quasi-sneaky (Hey! We have a plan to lower your taxes! Vote for it!). The county's proposal follows the second model. To be fair, it's not the ballot measures that have been sneaky, but the campaigns for them.

Opinion L.A. follows phone taxes far more than is generally deemed to be safe or normal; but check back here, and at Vote-O-Rama, for updates.

Also go to Vote-O-Rama to keep score on the growing November ballot.

Tired of the New Yorker cover controversy? Just in time, JibJab has a new video. The Venice Santa Monica-based entertainment company hit the viral video jackpot in 2004 with its video of John Kerry and George W. Bush singing "This Land is Your Land." They've been churning out new material between presidential election years, and "Time for Some Campaignin'" is the first for the 2008 season.

Whether because it avoids imagery that could be considered racist or religiously bigoted, because its attacks are bipartisan, or because it's sing-songy, the video seems like a salve for anyone rubbed the wrong way by the New Yorker. Not to mention that the Clintons, a favorite target of media left and right, and longtime punchlines President Bush and Dick Cheney have bit parts.

While John McCain suffers his usual lumps -- that he's too old and sick and reliant on his Vietnam vet image -- the video also manages to do what various pundits and comics had begun to worry was impossible: mock Barack Obama. The candidate's caricature, surrounded by lovestruck little animals, sings his way through a lush forest like Aurora from "Sleeping Beauty," repeating the word change over and over. It doesn't have the bite of the New Yorker cover, or the fine-tuned if controversial Obama imitation of Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen, but it's something.

*Photos courtesy JibJab.com and NBC Universal Inc.

The future of same-sex marriage in California remains in limbo, but the ripples from the state Supreme Court's May 15 ruling allowing gay marriage have already spread across the nation. In Massachusetts, the state Senate voted Tuesday to nix a nearly century-old law forbidding out-of-state gay couples from tying the knot. From the Los Angeles Times:

Those who fought to repeal the 1913 statute said Tuesday that the move — together with the California court decision — could amplify political momentum nationwide. Hundreds of same-sex couples have taken their vows in California since June 16, when local jurisdictions began accepting civil marriage applications.

"The California ruling was a wake-up call for Massachusetts," said Marc Solomon, campaign director of MassEquality, a coalition backing same-sex unions. "We had to remove the last vestige of marriage discrimination on the books here."

This was the same law that former presidential hopeful and then-Gov. Mitt Romney used to stop couples from getting hitched in 2004, when the state first legalized same-sex marriage. The statute was understood to have targeted interracial unions — an overlap that coincidentally played a key role in the reasoning of California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George when he overturned California's gay marriage ban:

[A]s he read the legal arguments, the 68-year-old moderate Republican was drawn by memory to a long ago trip he made with his European immigrant parents through the American South. There, the signs warning "No Negro" or "No colored" left "quite an indelible impression on me," he recalled in a wide-ranging interview Friday.

"I think," he concluded, "there are times when doing the right thing means not playing it safe."

Even lukewarm supporters can cite the positive economic impact of gay marriage, says NPR — a boon that many California businesses can already vouch for.

Massachussetts is moving forward even as the battle in California heats up:

Proponents of same-sex marriage are calling for a boycott of two prominent San Diego hotels because their owner, Doug Manchester, contributed more than $100,000 to the campaign for Proposition 8, the ballot measure that would amend the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Although they expressed outrage about the boycott and a rally planned for Friday, opponents of gay marriage also immediately began using it in their fundraising appeals. ...

Boycotts as part of political campaigns are relatively rare. It is a tactic more often employed by civil rights groups. The dust-up in San Diego — which follows a march last month against another Proposition 8 supporter, Carlsbad car-dealership owner Robert Hoehn -- is another indication that same-sex marriage is a combustible political topic and is viewed by gay marriage advocates as a civil rights issue.

Let's take the pulse of Times readers in the wake of the Prop. 8 controversy:

The first vote on Proposition 8 comes in today, reports Robert Greene. Stay tuned to Opinion L.A. for his follow-up, and for breaking-news updates on all your elections-related needs. Meanwhile, check out the top of Vote-o-rama for comprehensive opinion coverage on gay marriage.

UPDATE: SAME SEX MARRIAGE BAN TO STAY ON BALLOT

*Photo: Rujira Roongruang, an employee at Cake And Art, prepares a special fantasy cake for a same-gender wedding at the shop in West Hollywood, Calif. (Reed Saxon / Associated Press)

Los Angeles Downtown News:

City Readies a Beautiful 'Vista'
Park on Long-Troubled Belmont Learning Center Site to Open This Week
by Anna Scott

Jewelry District Loses Its Gleam
Price Hikes for Precious Metals, Economic Woes Lead to Industry Slowdown
by Anna Scott

The Wall Street Journal:

Europe's Economy Takes a Hit
U.S. turmoil raises odds of slump; bankruptcy rocks spain
By Marcus Walker in Berlin, Joellen Perry in Frankfurt and Jonathan House in Madrid

Beetle Bailey's Long March:
Classic cartoons search for a home
Strip's creator, 84, had comics collection worth $20 million, and no place to show it
By Mary Pilon

Financial Times:

GM suspends dividend payment and looks at selling more assets
Carmaker outlines cuts aimed at raising $15 bn
By Bernard Simon in Toronto

Gloomy warning from Fed
Bernanke points to 'numerous difficulties'
Asian and Europe markets fall sharply
By Krishna Guha and James Politi in Washington and Michael Mackenzie in New York

Metromix:

Some like it HARD
N*E*R*D brings star power to downton's renegade cultural mash-up
By Scott T. Sterling

Art attack: Rozi Demant's 'Lovebirds'
Drippy, sexy work hits L.A. from down under
By Alie Ward

Los Angeles Times:

Confusion at IndyMac fuels customers' anger
Some wait in line for hours, then find they can't get all the money out of their accounts.
By Andrea Chang, E. Scott Reckard and Kathy M. Kristof

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE:
Citizens in cross hairs of drug war mayhem
A girl's death violent death strikes a nerve in a chaotic border town
By Tracy Wikinson

Los Tiempos de Nueva York:

Homes at risk, more owners consider taking in boarders
By John Leland

Poll finds Obama candidacy isn't closing divide on race
By Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee

Orange County Register:

Home hunters spear deals
Buyers find bargains — and headaches — picking up foreclosed properties which make up a fourth of all Orange County home sales.
By Jeff Collins

Pensions could go to voters
A supervisor wants increases on the ballot.
By Peggy Lowe
[Not found online]

La Opinión:

Panorama económico aún más sombrío
No se ha sentido del alza de precios, dice Ben Bernanke
Róger Lindo

Amplían facilidades para el pago de agua y energía
DWP aumenta margen para familias de bajos ingresos e incrementa porcentaje de descuentos
Eileen Truax

Daily News:

Valley landmark Sportsmen's Lodge to close
History: Clark Gable, John Wayne and Bette Davis were among its many patrons
By Dana Bartholomew

Study: Trade, tech, tourism bolster L.A.
Economy: Other areas make quiet slide into recession
By Gregory J. Wilcox

USA Today:

'Payback' for debt-fueled growth?
By David J. Lynch

FAA to require fuel-tank changes
Rule comes 12 years after 747 exploded
By Alan Levin

... comes tomorrow, when the state Supreme Court decides at its Wednesday conference whether to accept or reject a petition to throw Proposition 8 -- the initiative to ban same-sex marriage -- off the Nov. 4 ballot. Additional possibilities include calling for more briefing or even setting a date for oral argument. But time is of the essence, because ballot materials go to the printer next month.

To recap: On May 15, the Cal Supremes invalidated the state's prohibition on same-sex marriage, adopted by voters in 2000 in the form of Proposition 22. Soon thereafter, an initiative petition to go the other way, enhancing the ban by making it a constitutional amendment, qualified for the ballot and was designated Proposition 8. On June 20, victorious parties in the court's May same-sex marriage decision and other opponents of Proposition 8 asked the justices to strike the measure from the ballot.

There are two main arguments. The first is that in the wake of the court's May decision, Prop 8 would so completely change the meaning of equal protection in the state Constitution that changing it wouldn't just be an amendment, but something far more sweeping -- a revision. Revisions can't go to the voters unless they were put on the ballot by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature or by a constitutional convention.

The simpler argument is that people who signed the petition were told that same-sex marriage in California already was barred. Of course, it was true at the time they signed, but it's not now that the measure is about to go before voters.

Find information about the case before the court tomorrow here. It's entitled Bennett v. Bowen. It is near the top of the list of cases to be considered tomorrow morning in San Francisco. You'll find results posted tomorrow afternoon at he court's site here. For background on the case and links to more detailed analyses of the legal arguments, see last week's Perpetual Election update here.

Los Angeles Times:

Police show up at IndyMac Branches in Encino, Northridge as waiting customers clash
People in line seeking to withdraw their money are told to remain calm or face arrest. A disruption reportedly occurs when some try to cut in line outside the failed institution.
By Andrea Chang and Andrew Blankstein

Banks hit by fallout from the crisis at IndyMac
Worried depositors swarm the seized thrift. Other firms assert strong cash positions.
By E. Scott Reckard and Andrea Chang

Los Tiempos de Nueva York:

Cconfidence ebbs for bank sector and stocks fall
Lines form at lender
As regulators reassure depositors, analysts point to problems
By Louise Story and Eric Dash

La Opinión:

Alto a miles de embargos
IndyMac suspende esas transacciones mientras clientos acuden a retirar su dinero
Yolanda Arenales e Iván Mejía

Sistema hipotecario en suspenso
Problemas de Fannie y Freddie harán más difíciles los préstamos
Yolanda Arenales

Orange County Register:

Lenders' woes cause jitters
IndyMac reopens as worried customers check on accounts or withdraw their funds .
By Mary Ann Milbourn

Daily News:

Run on IndyMac continues
We want our cash, worried account holders say
By Gregory J. Wilcox

USA TODAY:

Anxiety sends regional banks' shares plunging
By Kathy Chu and Jefferson Graham

Financial Times:

Bail-out fails to calm nerves
Large regional banks suffer in wide sell-off
Shine taken off Fannie and Freddie backing
By Francesco Guerrera, Saskia Scholtes and Henny Sender in New York and James Politi and Krishna Guha in Washington

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced today that he has appointed actress Bo Derek to the California Horse Racing Board. She writes about horses and campaigns for their welfare. Other important data: Derek lives in Santa Ynez, she's 51 and she's a conservative Republican.

Here's the official word from Schwarzenegger's office:

She has been an actress since 1974. Derek has served as spokeswoman for the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act since 2003 and has owned Bless the Beasts since 2000. She has served as chairperson for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Rehabilitation Special Events since 2000. Additionally, Derek has served as the special envoy of the Secretary of State on Wildlife Trafficking and has served on the board of WildAid and the Galapagos Conservancy, Ecuador. She previously served on the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees. This position requires Senate confirmation and compensation is $100 per diem.

The subtitle of Derek's  book, "Riding Lessons," is "Everything That Matters in Life I Learned From Horses."

Oh, yeah, Schwarzenegger also appointed TV writer/producer and sports columnist David Israel to the commission. He's president of the Coliseum Commission, and an L.A. mover and shaker.

But, come on. I mean — Bo Derek!

Wall Street Journal:

U.N. Warming Program Draws Fire
Fund Designed to Spur Renewable Energy Subsidizes Gas Plants
By Jeffrey Ball

To Be Or Not To Be a Beekeeper Is the Question Facing Hobbyists
Towns, Neighbors Abuzz Over Hive Control; For Mr. Ghayebi, a Sting from City Hall
By Robert Tomsho

The Orange County Register:

TURF WAR
Debate heats up over merits of real and fake grass
Where grass is greener, some residents see red
Bans, restrictions hamper some who put in synthetic grass to save water and get a rebate
By Melanie Hicken

EX-KICKER FACES RAPE CHARGES
Tony Zendejas, a placekicker for the Los Angeles Rams in the early 1990s, was arrested at his home in Yorba Linda and charged with rape. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office says Zendejas, 48, in January drugged a female customer at his sports bar and Mexican restaurant in San Dimas, and then raped her.
By Erin Welch

Hoy:

Hermanos se reúnen después de 24 años
Programa de radio hace posible que se encuentren después de su trágica experiencia
Por Paula Díaz

Llegó la hora de Miss Universo
Elegirán este domingo a la nueva reina de la belleza en Vietnam. Photo: Miss Mexico
Por Tommy Calle

La Opinión:

Extorsiones y secuestros en aumento
Madre inmigrante asegura que fue amenazada desde su natal Guatemala
Agustín Durán

Millares juran la bandera de EU
En LA serán más de 150 mil, la mayoría nacidos en México
Jorge Morales Almada

USA Today:

Women find more paths to top of tech
A new wave of female CEOs is taking the reins. Photo: Google's Marisa Mayer
By Jon Swartz

Amtrak expands security sweeps
Team of special agents part of 'playing defense'
By Mimi Hall

Daily News, L.A.:

Golden fleet for county
Report: Dozens of officials are driving luxury vehicles, the grand jury finds
By Troy Anderson

Lawyer: Upbringing warped Alvarez
Defense: Mother tells of rape, incest, beatings as convicted killer grew up.
By Tony Castro

Financial Times:

Buffett helps Dow pay $19bn for Rohm
Deal shows changing face of global finance
Company will cement its ties with Kuwait
By Francesco Guerrera, Julie MacIntosh and Henny Sender in New York

Freddie and Fannie plunge on bail-out talk
By James Politi in Washington and Ben White and Saskia Scholtes in New York

Los Angeles Times:

McCain's broken marriage fractured other ties as well
The breakup shortly before he remarried alienated key friends. His account conflicts with public records.
By Richard A. Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian

COLUMN ONE: In Syria, hacking for politics, profit
Like a cyber-Robin Hood, a software pirate says he's acting ethically in the face of U.S. sanctions. But he doesn't mind Western clients.
By Borzou Daragahi

Los Tiempos de Nueva York:

Serenity Prayer Stirs Up Doubt: Who Wrote it?
By Laurie Goodstein

For Harlem Congressman, 4 Cheap Apartments
By David Kocieniewski

Barack Obama and high-profile African American ministers just don't seem to mix. First there was Rev. Jeremiah Wright damning America, and now Rev. Jesse Jackson is threatening to cut off the Illinois senator's unmentionables:

The civil rights leader apparently did not know that his microphone was on when he made the whispered comments to another guest as he prepared to do an interview on "Fox & Friends."

"Barack, he's talking down to black people," Jackson said in a short clip the network aired this afternoon on "Special Report with Brit Hume."

Hume reported that Jackson also "threatened to cut off a certain part of Obama's anatomy."

Ouch. That must hurt -- especially since Jackson, who endorsed Obama, has called the White House hopeful Illinois' "favorite son."

It's quite possibly the most highly anticipated accidental slip ever. Even the reverend has apologized in advance, the Caucus reports:

Presumably trying to get ahead of the controversy, Mr. Jackson also appeared by telephone on CNN Wednesday afternoon. He said the remark was “very private, and very much a sound bite,” and added that he had called Mr. Obama’s campaign to “send my statement of apology.”

Time Magazine provides Obama's short-but-not-sweet statement:

“As someone who grew up without a father in the home, Senator Obama has spoken and written for many years about the issue of parental responsibility, including the importance of fathers participating in their children’s lives.... He will continue to speak out about our responsibilities to ourselves and each other, and he of course accepts Reverend Jackson’s apology,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

The campaign may not have much to say, but bloggers are stepping up to the plate. "This has to be some sort of new speed record," marvels The Swamp, and Comedy Central asks the burning question:

What the [bleep] is wrong with him? If I were a controversial black Democrat, I wouldn't even think disparaging comments about Barack Obama near a Fox News microphone.

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin gleefully snarks, "But, you know, it’s us meanie conservatives who are responsible for all the race-based smears. Uh-huh." But Salon, unperturbed, takes the longer view: 

To be politically crude about it, it's hard to imagine that Barack Obama, whose African-American support is rock-solid, is going to be hurt by an off-the-record complaint by Jesse Jackson that he's being too morally demanding, particularly as reported by Fox News.

No live mic here, just a poll:

*Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press

Sorry for the daylateness...

Los Angeles Times:

Accused abductor is struck and killed by bus in Mexico:
The O.C. man reportedly stepped in front of the vehicle.
His son, left at a church, returns home.
By David Reyes and Paloma Esquivel Page B3


La Opinión:

Ryan Ramos vuelve a casa:
Confirman la muerte en Ciudad Juárez de su padre que lo había plagiado en Orange
Agustín Durán, La Opinión Pág. A3


Daily News L.A.:

[Boy found online, but new mystery emerges: Where is Cathy Franklin? Her story vanished in paper-to-e transer]

Not online:
Boy reunited with mom; fugitive dad killed by bus
By Cathy Franklin, City News Service page A5

Online:
Missing OC boy found in Mexico in Mormon church building
Father who abducted him killed by bus
By Gillian Flaccus The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 07/07/2008 10:31:37 PM PDT


Orange County Register:

BACK HOME SAFE AFTER ORDEAL:
Ryan Ramos, 9, is reunited with his mother as his father is reported dead Page A1
IN DEPTH NEWS 3:
TEARS ARE SHED AS BOY AND MOTHER REUNITE
Ryan Ramos, 9, returns safe to Orange County, as his father is reported dead
By Erika I. Ritchie, Greg Hardesty and Salvador Hernandez Page A3

[Spotted in this story: Change from leapt to leaped in paper-to-e transfer]


And Rightly So:

Attaboy Karma!
Posted by Duncan on July 8th, 2008
Copyright © 2008 And Rightly So!


LoneWacko:

[Brick]


The New York Times:

[AP copy linked above.]

Happy Birthday to Ringo Starr! The interwebs are lighting up for the 68-year-old ex-Beatle.

The L.A. Times just yesterday published a story on Starr's new album:

"The inspiration is love," he says, pronouncing it "luv" as only a Liverpudlian can. "If you look at the titles of my songs, 80% have 'love' in them. . . . It's where I'm at, promoting peace and love. . . . I hope the message is getting across. I always say it feels like my shows are a peace-and-love fest."

To that end, he's mounting his answer to Lennon's “Give Peace a Chance” efforts by inviting fans to flash the two-fingered peace sign and say the words "peace and love" at noon today -- his 68th birthday.

"Wherever you are in the world -- if you're in the office, on the bus, shopping -- put your peace and love hands up," he said. "I'll be doing it."

The Chicago Tribune reports that Starr's birthday bash downtown was a rousing success:

Outside Chicago's Hard Rock Hotel on Monday, ex-Beatles drummer Ringo Starr glanced at his watch and threw his hands in the air.

"Twelve o'clock—peace and love!" he yelled, flashing double peace signs with his fingers.

Move over, Condi. Ringo'll make it happen.

On a grimmer note, Times Online seizes the moment and decries the imminent demolition of Starr's pre-Beatles home:

Applications had been made to save the house, which is in an area of mid-Victorian buildings singled out as important by the architectural writer Sir Nicholas Pevsner, but it is doomed.

In contrast, Sir Paul McCartney’s childhood home was bought by the National Trust in 1997 after John Birt, then the director-general of the BBC and a Liverpudlian, argued for its purchase. John Lennon’s home, where he lived with his aunt Mimi, was given to the trust by his widow Yoko Ono in 2002 after she had bought it. Both houses are now seen by thousands of visitors a year. ...

To add insult to injury for Starr, the home of Pete Best, the drummer the Beatles dumped in 1962, was listed by English Heritage in 2006.

Ouch. Tell us what you think:

*Photo: Charles Osgood / Chicago Tribune

State's budget no role model: California's fiscal crisis is worse than most. Much of the fault lies not with the economy but with bad policies. By Evan Halper

ON CALIFORNIA: A workaday road that cuts through the state's back story: Two-lane Highway 33 isn't a fabled route, but it's rugged and real. By Peter H. King

Zimbabwe sex slave confides her ordeal: The 21-year-old says she is forced to go to a militia base daily: 'If I run away, my mother will be killed.' From a Times Staff Writer

Not merely tennis, this was a match made in heaven By Bill Dwyre

Calling the shots on war movies: The Army, scathed by 'the crazy Nam vet,' tries to shape a new era of films by trading access for influence. By Julian E. Barnes

Backfire is right and wrong: Two brothers use the tactic to keep the Big Sur blaze from their compound. But one is arrested for doing so. By Eric Bailey and Deborah Schoch

Inside Today's Times:

In the spotlight at the economic summit: Japan, host of this year's G-8 talks, is in a strong position to talk about the environment. World, A4

An L.A. boxing legend dies: Mando Ramos won a title at 20 but lost his career to alcohol and drugs. He was 59. Obituaries, B7

Weather: Get ready for it to heat up this week. Downtown: 85/65. B8

Here's how you know your president is truly powerless: when he publicly announces that he'll show up for the summer Olympics opening ceremonies in a communist country. Guess it isn't 1980 anymore. Note how the White House press staff snuck in this nugget of juicy info as part of a larger announcement that President Bush and his wife will embark on a brief tour of several Asian nations (emphasis mine):

In South Korea, President Bush and President Lee will discuss regional and global security issues as well as their commitment to getting their respective legislatures to ratify the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement, which will bring important benefits to workers, farmers, ranchers, and entrepreneurs in both the United States and Korea. The President will then travel to Thailand to celebrate 175 years of the U.S.-Thailand relationship and to discuss issues bilateral and regional issues with Prime Minister Samak. In China, the President looks forward to seeing President Hu and other senior Chinese leaders for discussions on a wide range of issues including the way ahead on North Korean denuclearization. The President and Mrs. Bush will attend the Opening Ceremonies of the Summer Olympic Games on August 8.

Talk about burying the lede. Presidential candidates, start your condemnations.

La Opinión:

LIBERADA: Tras seis años en manos de las FARC, Ingrid Betancourt es rescatada junto con otros 14 rehenes VIVIANE SEQUERA

Crisis empeora a los enfermos: La situación es aún más difícil para los indocumentados YURINA RICO

Orange County Register:

RALPHS PULLS GROUND BEEF: Chain removes dubious hamburger from its stores and tells shoppers to check what they've purchased. By NANCY LUNA

Reading in Spanish can help English Focus|IN DEPTH 'NEVER TOO YOUNG' A program helps Latino toddlers learn a love for language before they start school. By AMY TAXIN

Daily News, L.A.:

'08 gang crime in decline: NoHo sees biggest Valley drop; homicides inch up By Rachel Uranga

Layoff threat empty at city: DEFICIT: Just four workers could lose jobs despite warnings by Villaraigosa. By Kerry Cavanaugh

Los Tiempos de Nueva York:

On Campus, the '60s Begin to Fade as Liberal Professors Retire By PATRICIA COHEN

Cost of Driving Does What Law Was Trying To By WILLIAM NEUMAN

California, meet San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. From today's Times:

Newsom, who built a national reputation pushing cutting-edge -- and controversial -- policies on same-sex marriage, healthcare and other issues, launched an exploratory bid for governor Tuesday.

His move placed the 40-year-old, two-term mayor out in front of a large Democratic field eyeing the race to succeed Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is barred by term limits from running again in 2010. Newsom said he expected to decide by year's end whether to proceed with a full-fledged candidacy

The City by the Bay's golden boy isn't shining as brightly as he was just a few years ago, though, having admitted to an affair and claimed to have alcohol problems. Then again, neither is our very own Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, whose gubernatorial hopes have also been tarnished by an extramarital relationship. The Times also points out,

The first open-seat governor's race in 12 years is expected to draw a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls, including former governor and current Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi and former Controller Steve Westly, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2006.

Since it's anyone's race, I have to ask:

Got another candidate in mind? Post your suggestions below.

Los Tiempos de Nueva York:

Stock Exchange's Former Chief Wins Court Battle to Keep Pay
By Jenny Anderson

In Weighing Death Penalty A Flaw in Fact:
Blog points to a change justices overlooked. By Linda Greenhouse

Helmsley, Dog's Best Friend, Left Them Up to $8 billion By Stephanie Strom

Daily News, Los Angeles:

Firm's bid and lips are sealed:
Silent about LAUSD payroll mess,
Deloitte seeking $1.5 billion state court-case deal
By Troy Anderson

Mobile Clinic checks up on Valley needy:
Health care becomes low priority for many as food, gas costs keep rising.
By Susan Abram

Orange County Register:

FIREWORKS HIT MARKET: In five cities, sale begins of legal varieties.
Police vow crackdown on others.

THE MORNING READ: Autism is treatable, she insists:
O.C. mother leads uprising agains accepted views. By Sam Miller

At CSUF, gender gap is reversed:
Decades after a historic lawsuit, women in sports outnumber men.

Frustrating time for border hawks:
Foes of illegal immigration turn their backs on the presidential election.
By Erin Carlyle

La Opinión:

EnvÍan a la cácel a más migrantes:
Organizaciones critican tendencia del
Departamento de Securidad Interna
JORGE MORALES ALMADA

La atención médica está en riesgo:
Tema del recorte en pago a doctores
hace peligrar la atención a pacientes en el país
MARIBEL HASTINGS

USA TODAY:

Chemical weapons' transport opposed:
Plan to speed disposal in U.S. risky, critics say By Tom VandenBrook

Free-college programs multiply
By Mary Beth Marklein

...featuring a command performance by one of Opinion L.A.'s own:

Huge raid targets gang: More than 500 agents storm an insular L.A. neighborhood in a federal racketeering case. By Joe Mozingo, Sam Quinones and Molly Hennessy-Fisk

Justices slash Exxon Valdez verdict: Fishermen and others hurt by the oil spill are to share $507 million, a fraction of the initial punitive award. By David G. Savage

State acts to fight global warming: In a pioneering blueprint, the air board proposes to slash greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels. By Margot Roosevelt

Pastor rallies clergy against gay marriage By Jessica Garrison

COLUMN ONE: Do you take this stranger? A visit to India offers a new look at arranged marriage By Swati Pandey

Mandela condemns Mugabe By a Times staff writer

Inside Today's Times:

Hollywood items entering new stage: A touted memorabilia collection is moving to be auctioned.

A sub-prime day? Countrywide shareholders ratify its sale, and the state sues it.

Golfers, this section is for you: Get tips on your game and information on every public-access course in the Southland.

Watts pool rebellion: trouble turns to terror.

The story of Sunday's lifeguard-dunking mêlée at the 109th Street Swimming Pool is climbing the charts of the L.A. Times' top stories, and I notice one detail:

Some of the adults were complaining about the $2.50 fee to enter.

Officially, it does indeed cost two bucks and four bits for an adult to enter the pool. But as I wrote last year in a story about my own misadventures at our city's public pools, the problem is that most pool users do not have to pay an entry fee:

When I asked why the city doesn’t just charge a real but reasonable fee for entry, he said, “We’d love to do that,” but described a waterlogged tragedy of the commons: In 1999, then-Mayor Richard Riordan made all city pools free for minors. Last summer, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa extended that welcome to all adults with library cards. Effectively, the pools are free for everybody, and although that doesn’t seem to have brought out more swimmers (attendance has been dropping since 2002), it has produced an it’s-so-crowded-nobody-goes-there result.

Think of it this way: The pools are now free for all residents, just like high school. And so you get something that looks and feels very much like high school: a prison-like environment for teenagers in which all property must be surrendered, all activity is strictly circumscribed and all adult supervision is provided by apparatchiks.

For the record, neither I nor the L.A. Times supports throwing city employees, or any other unwilling people, into swimming pools. But this is the result you can expect when you combine a high-security environment with no barrier to entry. (Go ahead and use the immigration analogy against me if you're inclined.)

Predictably, activists and city officials are urging heavier security, zero tolerance, and so on. The one suggestion you don't hear: Charge pool users a price reflective of the cost of maintaining and patrolling a public swimming pool, then let them enjoy the facility with something approaching dignity. This wouldn't keep out all the riffraff. (An official I spoke with last year noted that the 109th Street pool has a problem with people jumping off a roof next door to get into the pool area.) But it's more effective to filter out trouble at the front gate than try to suppress it on the inside.

It's also a nonstarter. What politician wants to go down in history as the genocidal monster who took away free swimming pools in the middle of a heat wave?

Update: Actually, in addition to raising the adult entry fee from $1.50 to $2.50, the Citywide Aquatics Division has taken another step in the right direction: A library card only gets you 50 cents off now, not free admission. That seems to have been done in the name of budget necessity, not better resource allocation, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Given Barack Obama's astronomical fundraising numbers, it was only a matter of time before he decided to eschew public funds to finance his campaign. From today's Times:

Democrat Barack Obama today rejected public financing for his presidential campaign, changing an earlier stand and becoming the first major party candidate to drop out of the system since it began after the Watergate scandal....

Early in the primary season, Obama had said he would use public financing if his Republican opponent did. But that was before the presumptive Democratic nominee harnessed the Internet and became a fund-raising powerhouse.

This move not only makes Obama the first major candidate in more than 30 years to reject public funding (which forbids candidates from raising private funds), but also goes back on his very public indications he would agree to public funding. (See an earlier Times' editorial admonishing Obama for waffling on his pledge.)

Needless to say, McCain has been gleefully calling foul all morning — he can afford to point fingers, in part because his fundraising numbers are pretty anemic compared to Obama's.

But McCain is no angel, either. Remember when he allegedly used public funds as backup to apply for a loan, and then tried immediately to withdraw from the public funding system?  (Attempting to escape, ironically, from the very system he helped set up.) The outraged Dems filed suit shortly thereafter. The Federal Election Commission, lacking quorum, couldn't do much about it, either — which probably suited McCain just fine.

That incident aside, there are plenty of other loopholes that allow the private sector to creep in, a point Obama drove home in a video released this morning:

It's not an easy decision, especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections. But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system. John McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interests PACs. We've already seen that he's not gonna stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.

Swiftboating, anyone?

Tell us what you think:

*Photo: Joshua Roberts / Bloomberg News

Sen. Barack Obama has been locked in endless combat with a viral rumor that he's Muslim. His profession of devout Christianity has never quite put that story to rest.

That said, this doesn't excuse the behavior of two Obama volunteers, who refused to let two women wearing headscarves into a campaign photo-op. From Politico:

Building a human backdrop to a political candidate, a set of faces to appear on television and in photographs, is always a delicate exercise in demographics and political correctness. Advance staffers typically pick supporters out of a crowd to reflect the candidate's message. ...

In Detroit on Monday, the two different Obama volunteers -- in separate incidents -- made it clear that headscarves wouldn't be in the picture. The volunteers gave different explanations for excluding the hijabs, one bluntly political and the other less clear.

The campaign has since apologized to the two women. Still, it's indicative of how, even in a campaign supposedly built around unity and inclusiveness, anti-Muslim sentiment creeps in. As Politico's Ben Allen points out:

The incidents in Michigan, which has one of the largest Arab and Muslim populations in the country, also highlight an aspect of his campaign that sometimes rubs Muslims the wrong way: The candidate has vigorously denied a false, viral rumor that he himself is Muslim. But the denials at times seem to imply to some that there is something wrong with the faith, though Obama occasionally adds that he means no disrespect to Islam.

Occasionally? That's good to know. Still, anyone willing to bet those women will be offered prime seating at the next Obama event? Didn't think so.

Time to put yourself in those volunteers' shoes:

*Photo: Paul Sancya / Associated Press

It's official: Same-sex couples in select counties across California can now tie the knot, The Times reports.

Some counties have embraced the ruling -- L.A.'s first couple to get hitched filed the original lawsuit that took the issue to the California Supreme Court.

But not everyone has been so enthusiastic: Officials in Kern, Calaveras and Butte counties have said they'll hold off on weddings for all couples. See Patt Morrison's column and Rick Wartzman's Op-Ed on the subject, and check out The Times' editorial condemning public employees who refuse to perform same-sex marriages.

All the hullabaloo has raised interest in the question: What makes you gay? The Times explores the issue through science, and reports that gay men's brains look a lot like straight women's. (Shocking.) On the relationship level, NPR has an interesting interview discussing how same-sex couples' dynamics shed light on their heterosexual counterparts:

We have this mentality of "men are from Mars and women are from Venus," so you throw up your hands and say, "oh, he's avoiding, that's just what men do," or "my wife is nagging again, that's just what women do," and it's really not like that. Some of these roles might flow from other factors ... it's not that there's something essential or fundamental about being a man or a woman that's leading them to these positions -- as you see from watching gay and lesbian couples fall into exactly the same types of patterns.

Not to ruin this joyous occasion, but Cardinal Roger M. Mahony took the opportunity today to condemn gay marriage -- and it's unclear how many couples are going to jump on the bandwagon until the issue is finalized in the Nov. 4 election. The Opinion desk's Robin Rauzi gives a more personal explanation why here.

Some also took the opportunity to reflect on precedent. CNN takes a look at gay marriage in Massachusetts, four years after it was legalized, and Dick Gordon of The Story recently discussed the legal difficulties surrounding the right to gay divorce.

On a lighter note, the Travel & Deal blog already has some advice for same-sex honeymooners. For full Times coverage of same-sex marriage issues, click here.

*Photo by Luis Sinco, Los Angeles Times

A third bond measure qualified today for the November ballot, adding $9.8 billion to the potential indebtedness Californians could vote for themselves and their heirs. That makes $20.78 billion to pay bondholders over the next three years if we pass a high-speed train bond, a children's hospital bond, and this latest one — a bond to pay me back for buying my Prius.

It applies to other people too. There would be cash payments of up to $50,000 for buying high fuel economy or alt-energy cars and incentives for renewable energy research.

This is a really good idea, because without these bonds there is currently no incentive for people to reduce their consumption of gasoline or research alternative fuels. Only if the price of gas went up past, say, $3 a gallon would there be enough pressure in the market to move away from traditional vehicles and fuels. And, really — $3 a gallon? Could never happen. You'd have to pay full price for a Prius. Automakers would start working on more efficient hybrids. There would be revolution.

Here's the title and summary:

BONDS. ALTERNATIVE FUEL VEHICLES AND RENEWABLE ENERGY. STATUTE. Authorizes $5 billion in bonds paid from state’s General Fund, allocated approximately as follows: 58% in cash payments of between $2,000 and $50,000 to purchasers of certain high fuel economy and alternative fuel vehicles; 20% in incentives for research, development and production of renewable energy technology; 11% in incentives for research and development of alternative fuel vehicle technology; 5% in incentives for purchase of renewable energy technology; 4% in grants to eight cities for education about these technologies; and 3% in grants to colleges to train students in these technologies.

Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal
impact on state and local government: State costs of about $9.8 billion over 30 years to pay both the principal ($5 billion) and interest ($4.8 billion) costs on the bond. Payments of about $325 million per year. Increase in state sales tax revenues of an unknown amount, potentially totaling in the tens of millions of dollars, over the period from 2009 to beyond 2018. Increase in local sales tax and VLF revenues of an unknown amount, potentially totaling in the tens of millions of dollars, over the period from 2009 to about 2018-19. Potential state costs of up to about $10 million annually, through about 2018-19, for state agency administrative costs not funded by the measure. (Initiative 07-0101.)

The bond is the 10th initiative on the inflating Nov. 4 California ballot.

Drudge, the WashPost and CNN's election center all have variations on the same story: Hillary Clinton is set to throw in the towel Friday (or Saturday), suspend (or terminate) her campaign and express (or pledge) her support to Barack Obama. Here's the gist from the tireless Nedra Pickler:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton planned to throw support to Democratic rival Barack Obama Friday and call on Democrats to unite against Republican John McCain, her campaign announced Wednesday.

"Senator Clinton will be hosting an event in Washington on Friday to thank her supporters and express her support for Senator Obama and party unity," her communications director Howard Wolfson said.

As possibly the only person in America who grew more fond of Hillary Clinton the more stubborn and difficult she proved to be, and as somebody who has been frankly baffled at the way my colleagues in the MSM all seem to want her to go away (you're in the news business, people; why would you want the story to end?), I say, fare thee well, Hillary Clinton. Age can not wither nor custom stale the infinite awesomeness of the 1990s, when the Clintons were in the White House and all was right with the world...

The man named Bill Johnson/Daniel Johnson/William D. Johnson/James O. Pace has been handily defeated in his quest to be elected to the Los Angeles Superior Court. Read up to learn why, but here's the short version: he wrote a book calling for non-whites to be denied U.S. citizenship and deported. He led an organization advocating for a constitutional amendment toward that end. More recently, he helped a ridiculous write-in campaign against six Latino judges. He was bested in the race for Office No. 125 by Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner James Bianco, whom the Times endorsed.

By the way, this was at least the fourth political campaign for Johnson, who ran as a Republican for the Hawaii state Assembly, a Republican for Congress from Wyoming, and a Democrat for Congress from Arizona.

Also winning outright are Deputy District Attorney Kathleen Blanchard (who also won a Times endorsement) in Office No. 123; Deputy D.A. Jared Moses (ditto) in Office No. 119; and Superior Court Commissioner Patricia Nieto (ditto) in Office No. 95. That makes four new judges.

It's great news in the case of Blanchard and Moses, not just because they'll make good judges, but also because their opponents were so eminently unqualified. It's good news in Nieto's case too, but a shame that her opponent, Deputy Attorney General Lance Winters, cannot take the bench as well, since he is also a great candidate. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, take notice when it's next time to appoint someone to the bench in Los Angeles.

The only sitting judge to be challenged, Ralph Dau, also easily won election in Office No. 4, as did those six Latino judges against whom no write-in challengers ever materialized.

The balance of the Superior Court races appear to be headed toward November runoffs.

Here is a complete list of the Times editorial board's endosements and here we make the case for our judicial choices.

More than half the vote is in, but Mark Ridley-Thomas has less than half of it. That means he and Bernard C. Parks are in for five more months of campaigning as they head toward a Nov. 4 runoff in their battle to become the newest member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Hey, you members of the campaign donor class -- open your wallets. Again.

It's bad news for the county, as its government prepares to deal with Martin Luther King Medical Center and other health issues in South Los Angeles; and state budget cuts; and a host of other problems -- with a long period of uncertainty about the future.

It also throws a wrench into the works of special elections to fill either Ridley-Thomas' Senate seat or Parks' Los Angeles City Council seat. Which seat will open up? When will the special election be?

There likely will be several runoffs for Los Angeles Superior Court judicial seats. With more than 60% of the vote counted, these runoffs appear likely:

Office No. 72: Hilleri Merritt and Steven Simons

Office No. 82 Cynthia Loo and Thomas Rubinson

Office No. 84 Pat Connolly and Lori-Ann Jones

Office No. 94 Michael O'Gara and C. Edward Mack

Office No. 154 Michael Jesic and Rocky Crabb

Things could change as more votes come in. But don't hold your breath.

Environmental hero Fran Pavley, the former assemblywoman who authored California's landmark global warming bill, appears to be heading back to Sacramento after two years off. It looks like she's easily defeating current Assemblyman Lloyd Levine in the hard-fought Democratic primary battle for state Senate district 23.

That's the more-liberal-than-thou district that takes in parts of the West San Fernando Valley, some of the Westside, Santa Monica, Malibu and on up the coast a bit. Sheila Kuehl is being termed out of that seat this year. One odd thing about the district -- it abuts the Senate district that currently is held by congressional candidate Tom McClintock, perhaps the Legislature's most ardent conservative. How do those political map-makers pull these things off?

With just over a quarter of the votes counted statewide, victory has been declared by the campaign to defeat the Proposition 98 quest to protect property from some government takings and phase out rent control. They are the same folks who put together Proposition 99, a sort of taking-reform-lite.

Here's part of a statement from Tom Adams, president of the California League of Conservation Voters board:

Twice now - with the defeat of Prop. 90 in 2006 and Prop. 98 tonight - voters have rejected fraudulent initiative schemes by special interests. Despite the fact that landlords spent nearly $8 million to fool the voters about Prop 98, the voters once again showed that they see these cheesy schemes for what they are.  Hopefully, this will send a strong signal to others that the voters have little tolerance for dishonest tactics.

There was a little deception all around. The No-98/Yes-99 folks put out lots of mail featuring elderly renters worrying about being evicted with the repeal of rent control laws. In fact, rent control would have continued to apply until they vacated their apartments. But the fact that repeal of rent control was slipped into the measure without much fanfare apparently was enough to turn off a majority of voters, not to mention a majority of newspaper editorial boards. The Times editorialized against 98 and for 99.  So this time, at least, we had company. Not like in February, when our page came out in favor of Prop 93 term limits reform, along with pretty much nobody else -- except the papers in Vallejo and Vacaville.

Update from AP: Not even close.

As other election news swirls, the Daily Breeze has this seemingly tiny but in fact very important story: Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) has let go of her previously tenacious support for Hillary Clinton and is now a Barack Obama supporter.

The move is significant to anyone trying to figure out what Clinton meant when she said she wouldn't be making any decisions this evening. Is she really going to try for the VP spot, or is she taking this all the way to the convention? Waters' move signals that Clinton's bid for the top spot is over.

Obama clinched the nomination based on primary results today in Montana and South Dakota.

Waters is an enormously influential figure in South Los Angeles and African American Democratic Party politics. Her endorsement is crucial to local candidates like Bernard C. Parks for county supervisor and Ron Wright for state Senate. Her slate card packs tremendous clout with voters.

She has been under tremendous pressure from other African American leaders to jettison Clinton for Obama, but she held firm. Until now.

Somebody -- anybody -- please just get 50% plus one tonight. Otherwise, like the folktale of the political consultant who comes out of his hole on election day but doesn't see his shadow (that's how the story goes, right?) we have five more months of campaigning.

But it's looking grim in these early hours. With a still-paltry 1.35% of precincts reporting, Mark Ridley-Thomas has a comfortable lead over Bernard C. Parks in the race for Los Angeles county supervisor in the Second District. But it's not comfortable enough. Ridley-Thomas has 47.12% of the vote to Parks' 35.57%, but he needs 50% to avoid a runoff.

That might be tough. There are seven other candidates in this race, and even if none of them captures more than a few thousand votes, it could be enough to prevent anyone getting a majority. As it stands now, even Morris "Big Money" Griffin, the man who came up with the idea of an "ethnic lottery" so that winnings would only go to people of the same ethnic group as those who bought tickets, has 2% of the early vote.

So if the campaign ending now was all about Ridley-Thomas and Parks, the next five months will be, well, more Ridley-Thomas and Parks.

It's that way in any non-partisan race with more than two candidates. There will likely be at least a couple judicial runoffs in November.

It's a good opportunity for the New America Foundation to move forward with its plan for instant runoff voting, in which the runoff takes place simultaneously with the election. San Francisco currently uses IRV, as the insiders call it. Hear KPCC's Frank Stoltze report on New America's presentation yesterday at Los Angeles City Hall.

By the way, this 50% plus one issue doesn't apply to partisan primaries, like state Senate and Assembly. A Democrat just needs one more vote than his or her competitors -- same for Republicans -- to win the primary. There is a general election between party winners in November, but most districts are virtually owned by one party or the other, so it's really all being decided today.

Three years ago, a devastating train crash near Glendale killed 11 passengers and injured 180 others, and the courts are still struggling with the fallout. Fortunately, a state appellate court today put to rest one allegation that could have hurt rail commuters all over the country.

The derailment was allegedly caused by a suicidal man who parked his SUV on the tracks, then apparently got cold feet about killing himself and fled. He's now on trial for murder, but he's not the only one with legal problems. The families of the victims sued Metrolink for negligence. Among other things, they claimed that the agency should have known that operating trains in "push-pull" mode was unsafe.

Push-pull is common at transit agencies nationwide. Basically, the locomotive at one end of the train can either pull it down the tracks in one direction or push it down the other; that way, the train doesn't have to turn around when it gets to the end of the line. Some claim it is easier for a train to derail when it's being pushed. The train involved in the Glendale crash was in push mode, but a study by the Federal Railroad Administration concluded that the incident would have been just as deadly if the locomotive had been in front.

The appeals court today essentially threw out the portion of the lawsuit that claims Metrolink was negligent for pushing the train rather than pulling it. The suit continues, because the families have other negligence claims against the agency. But the decision could save hundreds of millions of dollars and head off cuts in rail service, because if Metrolink had been found negligent for pushing trains it would have raised serious liability problems for every transit system that operates the same way. They would have had to either buy locomotives for both ends of the train or come up with other costly fixes in order to solve a nonexistent problem. People didn't die because of the locomotive was at the back of the train, they died because of one man's aborted suicide attempt. That may not be satisfying to those seeking restitution from the agency, but other transit riders shouldn't have to suffer because of their pain.

You will be propositioned at least eight times on November 4, so you might want to carry a can of mace. Oh, and you'll be needing your wallet, as well.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen said today that she has certified four new ballot measures for the presidential ballot. There's one (number five) to revamp sentencing for drug and other nonviolent offenders; it would cost more than $1 billion a year. Ah, but it would also save more than $1 billion a year. Or so the attorney general speculates.

And there's measure number six, state Sen. George Runner's anti-gang initiative. It would increase penalties for some crimes, and deny bail to illegal immigrants who also are members of gangs. This one would run the state about half a billion dollars a year, not including the extra costs for county jails, prosecutors, etc. Just a quick reminder: the state will likely have to add $7 billion to the $17.2 billion deficit that (today, anyway) already is going to mean deep cuts and/or tax increases. Why? We already can't manage our overcrowded prisons, and an overseer appointed by the federal court is empowered to take that $7 billion off the top of the state treasury. So how are we going to pay up? A bond -- a ballot measure -- is expected to come before voters. In November. So make that nine propositions. Now where were we?

Oh, yeah, number seven: A renewable energy mandate. It would require utilities to generate 20% of their energy from renewable sources by 2010. And 40% by 2020. And 50% by 2025. This one would cost a relatively paltry $3.4 million a year, paid for by fees. But rate payers would get off cheap, because it would require all the costs to be borne by fat-cat utility executives! OK, just kidding about that last part.

Number eight: You were expecting this one -- it would amend the state constitution to provide that the only kind of "marriage" recognized in California is one between a man and a woman. Cost: nothing! Except our humanity. Come to think of it, both sides will probably make that argument.

Did I say nine? Make that 10. In addition to the likely prison bond, there is also a very likely redistricting revamp. Also bubbling under: a victims' rights initiative and an alternative fuels bond. So make that 12 ballot measures.

In case you forgot, measures one through four deal with a high-speed rail bond, a humane treatment of farm animals law, a children's hospital bond, and parental notification for minors' abortions.

But that's just State of California. The City of Los Angeles may have a parcel tax for anti-gang programs and an instant-runoff voting measure. The county and/or the city may have a transportation tax. The deadline for the city to act is July 2, so in theory we could get even more.

If you're keeping track -- and of course you are -- you'll find conflicting theories about What It All Means. Democrats will come out in droves to vote for president, so now is the time to get a new tax on the ballot. Or, Republicans and John McCain have an outside shot at California's electoral vote, so now is the time for a law-and-order measure, abortion notification and anti-gay-marriage to keep their interest up.

Get ready for fund-raising pitches. Wealthy Republicans, expect to be asked to pay out for those three conservative measures just mentioned. High-flying Democrats, plan to be called to help fund the sentencing, renewable energy and farm animals initiatives.

If campaign consulting firms and the companies that produce political mail were publicly traded, brokers would be recommending a strong "buy" order right about now. Alas, they're not publicly traded. Yet.

It's a California phenomenon more predictable than earthquake, drought or wildfire: a ballot measure to require parental notification, or some kind of emergency waiver, or both, before a minor girl can get an abortion.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced today that she has certified a parental notification initiative for the Nov. 4 presidential ballot. Here it is:

WAITING PERIOD AND PARENTAL NOTIFICATION BEFORE TERMINATION OF MINOR’S PREGNANCY.  CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.  Amends California Constitution to prohibit abortion for unemancipated minor until 48 hours after physician notifies minor’s parent, legal guardian or, if parental abuse reported, an adult family member.  Provides exceptions for medical emergency or parental waiver.  Permits courts to waive notice based on clear and convincing evidence of minor’s maturity or best interests.  Mandates reporting requirements, including reports from physicians regarding abortions on minors.  Authorizes monetary damages against physicians for violation.  Requires minor’s consent to abortion, with exceptions.  Permits judicial relief if minor’s consent is coerced.  Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst  and  Director  of  Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government:

Potential unknown net state costs of several million dollars annually for health and social services programs, court administration, and state health agency administration combined.

So -- is the parental notification measure, together with a (likely) referendum asking Californians to overturn the state Supreme Court's decision on same-sex marriage, going to draw enough voters to give John McCain a good shot at the state's electoral vote? Or will enthusiasm over Barack Obama -- OK, or Hillary Clinton, it's still technically possible -- be enough to help kill both ballot measures? Things are getting interesting.

Californians defeated parental consent or notification for abortion measures in 2005 (Proposition 73) and 2006 (Proposition 85). I guess we had last year off for good behavior.

Already on the November ballot are a bond measure for a high-speed rail system, a children's hospital bond, and an initiative to require better treatment of farm animals. Others you can expect: The same-sex marriage referendum; at least one redistricting reform; a prison bond; perhaps a legislative foster-care funding measure; and those are just the state measures. Check Bowen's office for details. Oh, yeah, we're also electing a president that day.

Get up to date on all things election -- for November, for next Tuesday, for next March -- at Vote-o-rama.

No need for a spokesperson for the ex-press secretary. Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan appeared on NBC's "Today" show this morning to discuss his upcoming book, "What Happened." Some of his comments from his interview a few hours ago:

The larger message has been sort of lost in the mix ... The White House would prefer I not speak out openly and honestly about my experiences, but I believe there is a larger purpose.... I had all this great hope that we were going to come to Washington and change it.... Then we got to Washington, and I think we got caught up in playing the Washington game the way it is being played today....

My hope is that by writing this book and sharing openly and honestly what I learned is that in some small way it might help us move beyond the partisan warfare of the past 15 years. There’s a larger purpose to this book. It’s about looking at the permanent campaign culture in Washington, D.C., and how we can move beyond it....

McClellan references the Valerie Plame affair and the president's declassification of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq for political purposes (when the administration publicly expressed disdain for leaks that hurt its political image) as two major "turning points" in his transition from loyal Bush flack to disillusioned ex-spokesperson.

Most striking to me is that McClellan appears decidedly soft in his attacks on the administration officials whom he says disillusioned him the most (Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney) and faults mainly Washington politics for corrupting otherwise well-intentioned people. When interviewer Meredith Vieira presses him on why he stops short of saying the administration "flat-out lied" in the run up to the Iraq war, McClellan replies, "Well, actually, I say in the book, I say that this was not a deliberate or conscious effort to do so. What happened was that we got caught up in the excesses of the permanent campaign culture in Washington, D.C."

Continuing on the general theme of evil Washington politics corrupting even the most well-intentioned of presidents, McClellan says of Bush's vision in Iraq:

He absolutely cares very passionately about what he talks about, which is the freedom agenda and spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. It’s a very idealistic and ambitious vision, and that was really the driving motivation that pushed him forward in Iraq -- this chance to, in his view, to really transform the Middle East by making Iraq a linchpin for spreading democracy.

I'm planning on reading McClellan's book, but I know now that I shouldn't count on any thoughtful critique of the administration's policies. Evidently, McClellan hasn't abandoned every inclination to defend his former boss.

Can anyone find Scott McClellan? Following all the Bush administration blowback and media commentary today over the ex-White House press secretary's book on his apparently miserable years serving the president, McClellan and his publisher have responded with a resounding, "No comment." From CNN.com's morning write-up:

In a brief phone conversation with CNN on Tuesday evening, McClellan made clear that he stands behind the accuracy of his book. McClellan said he cannot give on-the-record quotes because of an agreement with his publisher.

The former Bush press secretary "cannot give on-the-record quotes" per his publisher's orders? Sure, writing a tell-all political memoir has become a rite of passage for disgruntled former Bush administration officials, but McClellan was not just another policy-wonk bureaucrat. His job was more or less to make reporters and the public have a positive opinion of the president. Hell, this guy was a hyper-loyal Bushie dating back to the commander-in-chief's days as the likable governor of Texas. Having McClellan out there defending himself against the administration he so vigorously flacked for a few years ago should make any book publisher drool.

Speaking of defending the administration, McClellan had a few words of his own in 2004 for Richard A. Clarke when the former counter-terrorism expert penned his political memoir "Against All Enemies":

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book. 

UPDATE: McClellan gave an interview on NBC Thursday morning. Click here to read my observations.

The baggage-fee-proliferation watch goes on, but so far American remains the only airline charging customers a fee for checked bags.

L.A. Times readers are speaking out on the new fee. Some highlights:

With obesity at an all time high, airlines should start charging by the weight of the person flying...

This helps the airline, actually, as fewer families will fly on the airline yet more business people (who norm ally only have a briefcase or such) will fly on the airline...

If they are going to charge for luggage, I say we only pay the charge if we get it back!...

Are the executives at AA not smart enough to just add $15 to the price of a ticket?...

I find this as pure discrimination as well. If you are a man you can easily fly without packing all of your toiletries, but since TSA has their 311 rule most women who care about their appearance and have long hair far exceed this rule...

So much for my not-so-secret desire to start rocking full drag... I've never had much time for complaints about air travel inconveniences. I don't like air travel or think of it as a right. Instead, I hate air travel but respect it as an achievement that should not be considered any less wondrous just because it's been publicly accessible for nearly a century. That's a point I tried to make the last time I editorialized on this topic, in the halcyon days of Ol' '99, when customers were attempting to stage a congressional revolution against the uncaring airlines:

If you keep your sense of entitlement under control, you remember that being able to fly is something you should be grateful for under any circumstances. Anybody who isn't sufficiently impressed by the intrinsic luxury of being packed into a metal tube and whisked across continents in a matter of hours — who insists that the miracle be accompanied by chicken or beef, honey roasted nuts, and uninterrupted screenings of Chairman of the Board — deserves to be wheeled and swung into the sunlit silence without further oxygen.

In fact, the dogfight over in-flight customer service is a textbook example of the principle that service with a smile just makes people miserable in the end. You'll never see a fight over the lack of complimentary cocktails aboard a bus — the mode of transportation that, when all is said and done, most closely approximates the experience of air travel (while being inexplicably more expensive). In fact, we believe the whole issue will be solved not by better customer service but the absence thereof. If passengers are ever to learn the true nature of High Flight, it will be by getting less of what they want and more of what they deserve — no food, no movie, no windows, less leg room, and no service crew (except maybe a security officer who's not shy about using the Taser on anybody who speaks out of turn).

How times have changed (and how history might have turned out differently if the airlines had just followed my taser-armed-security-officer advice back then). Nobody talks about passenger bills of rights anymore, and with good reason: The airlines are going out of business because they're charging less for the service they provide than it costs them to provide it.

That structural problem seems unlikely to be addressed by a $15 fee, but as one of the commenters above notes, it may have the effect of driving away customers who should be taking land transport anyway (I'm looking at you, passengers with kids in tow). Whether you're into reducing the carbon footprint, upholding a rational and transparent market or ending our "addiction" to foreign oil, all trends point in one direction: Air passengers need to be paying a price that more accurately reflects the costs of flying people around in jet airplanes.

On the other other hand, I got this Spirit Airlines spam today...

Think we've got too many furriners in this country? Check out what the furriners themselves have to put up with:

Italy: Berlusconi government may be backing away from tough new immigration enforcement — under pressure from what AFP calls an "ironic" alliance (oh yeah?) between the Catholic Church and an ex-communist president. Rome also gives Spain the fig after the deputy Spanish prime minister critizes Italy's anti-immigrant mood.

Canada: New Democrats say they'll use every trick in the book to block changes that would give our neighbor to the north's immigration chief more power to approve and reject pending applications.

Australia: This time it's the left trying to put the brakes on immigration, as New South Wales Senator-elect Doug Cameron wrings his hands and warns about a coming worker backlash against immigration, citing the United States and United Kingdom as negative examples. "In the UK, the British National Party have used this issue of migration to build a support base for an extreme right wing group and I don't want to see that happen within Australia," Cameron says.

New Zealand: The other Down Under coughs up an even weirder story as former head of the Immigration Service Mary Anne Thompson comes under investigation for claiming a doctorate from the London School of Economics that seems to be as fake as Waleed al-Shehri's visa application. On the plus side, New Zealand seems to be better than we are at dealing with errant immigration officials: Thompson resigned last week after the story came to light.

Wait a second: We've got Italians, Kiwis and Italians growing Kiwis? Confusion like this is why we need comprehensive immigration reform now!

Los Angeles County's clerk — the guy who handles marriages, among other things, in the nation's biggest county — told the Times in a story Saturday that he might find a way to let staff who feel, uh, uncomfortable performing a same-sex ceremony to opt out.

No way, says Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. In a letter today to county Board of Supervisors chair Yvonne B. Burke, Delgadillo wrote:

Mr. Logan has no legal standing to grant County employees the authority or ability to choose which marriages they wish to officiate at based upon official views regarding an applicant's sexual orientation.

He wrote a similar letter to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen.

Of course, Delgadillo is the city's lawyer and has no authority or ability to tell Dean Logan or any other county employee what he can or cannot do. Expect a long, delayed and secret memo on the issue to come Logan's way from the county counsel at some undetermined time in the future.

The Times reports some bad news from South Africa. Immigrants there, particularly those hailing from Zimbabwe, have been targets of attacks by South Africans (whose grievances sound familiar, though of course they're being expressed more disastrously): 

[H]undreds of Zimbabweans and other foreigners fled their homes in Alexandra, a teeming crime-ridden township, on Sunday and Monday to escape xenophobic attacks. Some hid in the nearby bush or in police compounds.

"They were saying, 'Go back to Zimbabwe, we don't want to see you here, you're taking our jobs,'" [immigrant Isaac] Moyo said Tuesday. "They said, 'Go back to [Zimbabwean President Robert] Mugabe.' They took everything, saying, 'You didn't get this from Mugabe; this is our property.' "...

[S]ome township dwellers who believe that Mugabe is a cruel leader say it is because of something innately cruel in Zimbabwe's society. They tend to blame South Africa's high crime rate on the influx of Zimbabweans.

As the article notes, 100 foreigners were injured and at least two people were killed. Zimbabweans trying to escape economic woes and violence in their country have entered South Africa by the hundreds of thousands. Many of them work for a few dollars a day, and are adding to the burdens of a country which already suffers 40% unemployment.

The mass migration was already creating problems for South African President Thabo Mbeke, who has been attempting to influence Mugabe with a "quiet diplomacy" rather than denouncing outright his human rights abuses and political power grabbing. The violence may make his position more precarious.

For more on the politics between the two countries, and a debate over whether Mbeke is right to be "quiet" on Mugabe, see New Republic assistant editor James Kirchick's Op-Ed, "South Africa's unseemly alliance" and Philip L. Christenson's Blowback response, "Defending Thabo Mbeke."

The California State Supreme Court just overturned the ban on gay marriages.

I'm really happy for all my gay friends, but personal bottom line? This is going to cost me a fortune in wedding presents.

Not white and black, or red and blue ... Given how well their campaign slogans mesh together, it's no wonder John Edwards put his defunct catchphrase to good use and backed Barack Obama for president.

The Obama campaign has turned big-name endorsements into an art, revealing a few key supporters every time Hillary Clinton's fortunes seem to be on the rise. Edwards' announcement is no exception — Clinton just swept the West Virginia primary, and according to ABC's Political Radar, had been planning some key fundraisers over the next few days. In addition to hitting her debt-ridden pocketbook, the votes Obama will likely receive from Edwards delegates more than offset the pledged delegates she won last night.

It's not just delegates: As the Radar points out, the move was "a dramatic attempt by the Obama campaign to answer concerns regarding Obama's appeal to working-class voters." The Wall Street Journal's Political Wire sneers:

Edwards could give a boost to Obama’s candidacy by attracting the exact sort of voter that has been Clinton’s strength — white, working-class voters from rust-belt states who are drawn to a populist political philosophy. ...

People close to Edwards have said that he sees deep flaws in both Clinton and Obama. He thinks Obama lacks the fire to wage war against special interests in Washington, and objects that Clinton takes money from lobbyists and is part of the inside-the-beltway aristocracy, which he considers to be the problem with American politics.

If you're looking for hard numbers, NPR points out that 7% of the West Virginia vote went to the former vice presidential candidate, even though he's no longer running. And, at a point when Obama is campaigning against John McCain rather than against Clinton, Edwards might help him finally close the deal — or end the agony, as The Washington Post's The Fix observes:

Edwards is widely seen as one of the major party figures who had remained on the sidelines in the race between Clinton and Obama. That he has stepped in to the fray in hopes of, perhaps, bringing this race to an end should send a powerful signal to undecided superdelegates about the direction of the contest. 

Edwards is the picture of modesty about the power of his endorsement in this MSNBC interview, but you have to wonder about the timing on his end: Is he late to the party or the crucial tiebreaker? Is this a bid for the vice presidency? They'd certainly make a cute ticket.

The Moderate Voice isn't enamored, though. They have a thing or two to say about unifying the party:

If the endorsement is meant to show solidarity by one party member toward one of the candidates, that is a fait acoompli. Unifying the party at this point is likely premature. Unifying isnt done by one person saying ‘unify now.’ It is a far more many layered process that includes more meeting and greeting with many groups and people. That would be later. Not now.

Slate's Trailhead blog, however, says Edward's swing Obama-ward "isn’t the last round of battle; it’s the first round of cleanup":

Enter John Edwards. By endorsing Obama now, Edwards isn’t handing him the nomination. He’s minimizing the damage wrought upon the all-but-inevitable nominee. Clinton insists a drawn-out election isn’t hurting the party. But it is clearly exposing huge holes in each candidate’s armor. By weighing in now, Edwards is reassuring Democrats—and perhaps telegraphing to Kentucky voters—that Obama is a safe choice.

John Edwards: Kingmaker? Deal-closer? Irrelevant? VP material? Post your take below. Also, check out Google's quotes page to judge if Edwards let the cat out of the bag days ago.

Since I'm the resident thought-tormented Ron Paul fan on staff, I've taken a special interest in the Paul supporters who are objecting to the attention we've paid to the white-supremacist past of Paul-connected judicial candidate Bill Johnson.

Thanks, everybody, for commenting. Some clarifications are in order:

Commenter "Tracey," declares that Johnson is not the author of the so-called Pace Amendment. This is incorrect. Johnson confirmed in a phone call with our own Robert Greene that he is indeed the author of the Pace amendment and of the "James O. Pace" book Amendment to the Constitution.

Commenter "blakmira" calls us "lower than scum" for the "smear" on Paul in our editorial about the Johnson campaign, which noted that Johnson had affiliated himself with the Paul-for-president campaign; apparently our mentioning that was clear evidence of counter-rEVOLutionary tendencies. In any event, Paul himself appears to be taking the matter seriously enough that he has renounced his end of the affiliation. Here is an email we just received from Paul's congressional chief of staff Tom Lizardo:

Over the past several weeks, I have also been involved in assisting Dr Paul with the consideration of candidates who are seeking his endorsement for their campaigns.  We have gone through the process of setting up a method by which candidates are to be considered for such endorsements.  During that period, we have also received and reviewed requests from dozens of candidates.

Although Bill Johnson's name ended up on the endorsement list, he did not go through this process.  In light of this fact, and in light of the revelations regarding his past statements and associations, Dr Paul has retracted the endorsement and hopes that, in the future, the process that has been put into place will mitigate the likelihood of similar errors.

Several commenters claim that they know Bill Johnson and he couldn't possibly be a racist. We make no judgments on what Johnson believes in his heart, only on what he has publicly advocated. But Paul, whose attentiveness to such matters has not always been impressive, deserves credit for taking quick action in this case. The claim by another commenter that Johnson is part Japanese is also incorrect, though Johnson does speak fluent Japanese as a by-product of his LDS mission in the land of the Rising Sun. We can confirm that "Turning Japanese" by the Vapours remains one of the finest works of rock orientalism ever recorded.

Finally, a commenter at dailypaul.com claims that our staffer is the same Robert Greene who writes self-help books on "How to crush your competitor," "How to secure the corner office," "How to take over your supervisor's position" and "The 48 Laws of Power." I can confirm that Greene is not that person and that if he ever wrote a self-help book it would be about how you can become a better person by scrupulously reading the fine print of voter information packets in obscure municipal elections. Nor is he the Robert Greene who denounced Shakespeare in his "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a million of Repentaunce." Moreover, Robert Greene confirms that he is a Stratfordian in good standing, though if pressed he would put Pericles, Prince of Tyre in the "disputed authorship" category.

Hope that clears things up.

Mayoral candidate Walter Moore said Thursday he has begun a drive to put "Jamiel's Law" on the March 2009 Los Angeles city ballot — the same one in which he is trying to unseat Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

If adopted, the law would permit Los Angeles police officers to arrest gang members for breaking U.S. immigration law. It would supersede Special Order 40, a 29-year-old LAPD policy that bars officers from arresting or questioning people solely on suspicion of being in the country illegally. Moore told a crowd of about 200 people — gathered at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre to hear about his proposal — that he decided on an initiative after hearing no response from City Council members to his request for an ordinance.

Jamiel's Law is named for Jamiel Shaw II, 17, who was shot to death by suspected gang members on March 2 close to his Arlington Heights home. Police arrested Pedro Espinoza, 19, who reportedly entered the U.S. illegally at age 4. Police say Espinoza is a member of the 18th Street Gang. He was released from jail, where he was being held on a weapons charge, a day before the killing.

Espinoza had been arrested by Culver City police and jailed and released by the Sheriff's Department, so the LAPD and Special Order 40 did not come into play. But Moore has dismissed that point, saying, in effect, that if his law had been in place, LAPD officers at some point prior to his weapons arrest would have seen Espinoza, identified him as a gang member, and arrested him on immigration charges.

The killing of Jamiel Shaw II, and Moore's advocacy for the change in the law, has united some black and white illegal immigration opponents, threatened to widen a gulf between African Americans and Latino immigrants, and forced city officials to refocus on Special Order 40. At least some LAPD officers appear to believe, incorrectly, that the policy prevents them from cooperating or even communicating with immigration authorities. A senior lead officer who misquoted Special Order 40 in a March newsletter, adding in anti-cooperation language, acknowledged that he got the wording not from the LAPD manual but from the American Patrol anti-illegal-immigration web site.

LAPD Chief William J. Bratton said he would clarify the policy for his officers. He also told the Times editorial board that he would make no changes to the order.

Moore repeated his assertion that the Times caters to Latino illegal immigrants because its parent company, Tribune, also owns the Spanish-language paper Hoy.

"The mayor, the City Council, and L.A. Times/Hoy won't take action," Moore said. "It's up to you."

Also speaking at the event were KRLA radio personality Kevin James and the young victim's father, Jamiel Shaw Sr.

James called for audience members to support Moore's campaign financially. "It's really expensive to run for mayor of Los Angeles against a former gang member who is the incumbent," James said.

Villaraigosa was not a gang member, but the claim that he was has become popular among illegal immigration opponents.

Shaw criticized the deputy district attorney prosecuting Espinoza, saying he worried she would try to portray his son as a gang member because he was carrying a red Spiderman backpack. "I want everybody to know," he said, "the fix is in."

Lest we think the Special Order 40 controversy is just an L.A. thang, the Arizona state legislature has voted overwhelmingly to prohibit local police departments from instituting similar rules. According to AP:

The bill also would prohibit county and city governments from having policies that prevent or restrict them from receiving or exchanging information about people's immigration status in certain instances. Those cases include determining the eligibility of people for public benefits that are off-limits to illegal immigrants and confirming the identity of arrested people.

The bill also encourages local cops to get federal training in immigration enforcement. Here's the full text.

In Maricopa County, America's Toughest Blowhard Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, isn't waiting for the governor's signature to begin his own campaign of immigration raids.

Pope Benedict XVI’s  comment on his flight to the United States that “we are deeply ashamed” of pedophile priests may not appease Catholics in Boston who are upset that his American tour will bypass their archdiocese.

But the pope’s full remarks also may  discomfit conservative Catholics who argue that a supposed tolerance of gays  by the “liberal” post-Vatican II church somehow played a role in the scandal.  (The preferred liberal Catholic meta-explanation is that the celibacy requirement contributed to priestly abuse.)

In response to a question about the scandal, the pope said: "I would not speak in this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia, [which] is another thing. We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry, this is absolutely incompatible. And who is really guilty of being a pedophile cannot be a priest.”

The pope’s common-sense refusal to equate pedophilia with homosexuality raises the question of why he would support restrictions on even chaste gays becoming priests. Yet it was during his pontificate that the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education issued a directive saying that seminaries should not accept candidates with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” even if they don’t act on them.
In justifying the directive, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski offered this out-of-this-world analogy: "It's not discrimination, for example, if one does not admit a person who suffers from vertigo to a school for astronauts." But wouldn't celibacy be just as dizzying an experience for priests with heterosexual "tendencies"?

Both liberal and conservative Catholics are spinning Pope Benedict XVI’s  visit to America and he hasn’t even landed.

The website of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good offers a pre-visit briefing for journalists (listen for my question) featuring several liberal Catholic luminaries, including Father Thomas Reese, the deposed editor of the Jesuit magazine America. Commonweal magazine on its Website recycles a golden oldie, an analysis of Joseph Ratzinger's theological evolution.

On the right side of the nave, the conservative  Cardinal Newman Society — "dedicated to renewing and strengthening Catholic identity at America’s 224 Catholic colleges and universities" — offers a series of essays looking forward to the pope’s speech on Catholic education, which, depending on whom you believe, will either be an anathema against Catholic colleges that play host to pro-choice speakers and "The Vagina Monologues" or a gentle reminder that colleges should retain their Catholic identity.

A non-ideological but indispensable source for followers of the pope’s visit is Rocco Palmo’s Whispers in the Loggia. And  those who share my eccentric  interest in the pope as a fashion trend-setter can keep up with the pope’s wardrobe at the site of the New Liturgical Movement, which also offers (with disapproval) a snippet from a song you’re not likely to hear the U.S. Marine Corps Band play when the pope visits President Bush:

Long live the Pope His praises sound again and yet again
His rule is over space and time His throne the hearts of men
All hail the Shepherd King of Rome The theme of loving song
Let all the earth in glory sing And heav’n the strain prolong.

I think even the pope would prefer "Kumbaya."

This just in: The White House website has provided the textof the Vatican National Anthem.

In more than 20 years as a journalist in Pittsburgh, I used to listen with fascination to strange tales from the political subculture of Pennsylvania’s other metropolis: Philadelphia. Candidates for statewide office from the western part of the state would confide in our editorial board that “it’s like another world over there.”

One feature of that world was the practice of providing campaign workers with copious amounts of “street money” to boost voter turnout. Cash sometimes changed hands on Election Day in Pittsburgh, too, but, as with murder rates, the Steel City was a piker compared to the City of Brotherly Love.

Now the cost of doing political business in Philly is tripping up Sen. Barack Obama. According to a Times report, Obama is balking at disbursing dollars to party faithful, a decision that could save the Obama campaign as much as $500,000 on April 22, the day of the atypically important Pennsylvania primary, while costing him an undetermined number of votes.

Obama’s priggishness about street money contrasts with the situation ethics he has displayed on the question of accepting public financing –- and spending limits –- if he is the Democratic nominee. As the Times pointed out in an editorial last month, Obama promised to accept public financing if the Republican nominee did. After John McCain agreed to that deal, the Obama campaign began to waffle.

Now Obama is arguing that his campaign has created “a parallel public financing system where the American people decide if they want to support a campaign they can get on the Internet and finance it, and they will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful.” Parallel universe is more like it.

If private Internet fundraising can be repackaged as public financing, so can street money for mercenary campaign “loyalists.” As George Costanza might say, it’s financing and it’s handed out in public ... so it’s public financing.

The November ballot just got bigger. Secretary of State Debra Bowen certified an initiative measure on humane treatment of farm animals. Here's the title and summary from the attorney general's office:

Treatment of Farm Animals. Statute. Requires that an enclosure or tether confining specified farm animals allow the animals for the majority of every day to fully extend their limbs or wings, lie down, stand up, and turn around. Specified animals include calves raised for veal, egg-laying hens, and pregnant pigs. Exceptions made for transportation, rodeos, fairs, 4-H programs, lawful slaughter, research and veterinary purposes. Provides misdemeanor penalties, including a fine not to exceed $1,000 and/or imprisonment in jail for up to 180 days. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Probably minor local and state enforcement and prosecution costs, partly offset by increased fine revenue.

For the full text, go to the attorney general's site here. Check out the proponents here.

Unlike the June 3 stealth election ballot, the November 4 election is expected to draw a huge turnout because, of course, it is the presidential election. The conventional wisdom calculates lots of liberal Democrats voting, which could bode well for an animal rights measure.

So far there are two ballot measures in November. The other one is a bond for a high-speed passenger train system.

The kingmaking Kennedys may be the most high-profile family whose allegiance has split along Clinton-Obama lines, but the Murdochs offer their own intriguing form of political discord.

If you think they're dealing with a red-blue divide (as when Republican presidential hopeless Rudy Giuliani's daughter endorsed Obama — ouch), think again: The infamously conservative media mogul responsible for FOX News' impeccable journalism has actually put his money on Hillary Clinton. The International Herald Tribune explains:

Rupert Murdoch is a well-known conservative, and his New York Post newspaper was a longtime foe of former President Clinton and Hillary Clinton during his two terms in the White House and her first run for the U.S. Senate in New York in 2000.

Since then, the couple have worked to reach a detente with the paper and its owner. The Post endorsed Hillary Clinton's re-election bid in 2006, and Rupert Murdoch hosted a fundraiser for her senatorial campaign.

In January, however, the Post endorsed Clinton's rival, Obama, for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

The Post may have broken away from Murdoch, but his daughter Lis, a TV tycoon in her own right, has upped the ante by hosting a fundraiser for Obama at her London digs. Further proof that, no matter what commenter Michael says about Jane Fonda over at Top of the Ticket, no endorsement (however weird) is a bad one. Unless it's from President Bush.

In short, politics makes for fascinating family drama — and the whole epic "the future is at stake" angle is a crowd pleaser. Seriously, when are we getting the reality TV show about celebrity campaigners? CNN can't have all the fun. Besides, straight news is beginning to sound like it's in reruns: Obama! Hillary! Race! Gender! Scandal? ... Repeat.

This post was updated at 11:48 am Thursday. See below:

From that great city to the north comes news that some art is so shocking even San Francisco hipsters will censor it. An exhibition by the French artist Adel Abdessemed at the spectacularly located S.F. Art Institute has been shut down following an outcry and threats from pro-animal activists. Kenneth Baker's review in the Chronicle describes the show and notes that complaints also were lodged by folks who in other circumstances might be the ones looking to épater le bourgeois:

The animal rights protesters were inflamed by Abdessemed's six very brief video loops, played on separate monitors, each showing an animal - a horse, a pig, a goat, an ox, a deer and a sheep - being killed, apparently without bloodshed, by a quick hammer blow to the head. Abdessemed shot the videos himself in rural Mexico, merely documenting passages in the town's customary food production.

But text accompanying the videos' presentation at SFAI left Abdessemed's role ambiguous.* A viewer had to wonder whether his hand wielded the hammer rather than the camera, whether he shot the video or merely commissioned it, and whether he commissioned the animals' execution.

The shock of the protest lies not only in its vehemence but also in the fact that it involves the rare spectacle of artists, including many SFAI faculty members, advocating censorship.

You could argue that censorship isn't the proper word here, since the objection raised by Eagle Rock's own Diana Thater and apparently others was to the killing of the animals, not necessarily to the art itself. But Thater herself gives that game away by denouncing the show as a "sick exhibit" that "represents the very worst impulses of the human imagination," fails to "raise people's consciousness"  and "will encourage them to accept animal abuse." Those are objections to expression of ideas, not to the acts themselves. (Whether the strict argument against killing the animals holds up is also open to question, since by general agreement these were all feed animals that were going to be done in whether there was a hoity-toity conceptual artist present or not.) *

Anyway, this is just a roundabout way of teasing my long-ago piece "Artists for censorship." Sez me, artists are no more or less censorious than anybody else. Writers and musicians have always believed some ideas needed to be suppressed. The urge to censor is particularly strong when the objectionable ideas show up in a medium other than your own (surprise, surprise). And there may even be some value in the impulse to "take seriously the idea that there may actually be dangerous ideas, and dangerous artistic vehicles for communicating them."

* According to an SFAI representative, the ambiguity Baker refers to is at most a red herring: the artist merely documented an existing procedure. "These pictures were taken by him in an abattoir and not staged," she says, "and he did not participate in slaughtering the animals." If true, this would eliminate the argument over the welfare of the animals (though you might be able to craft a case that the individual animal has a death-with-dignity right that would protect it from non-consensual documentation of the killing), and leave us only with the argument over expression. It may be helpful at this time to reiterate that the show was closed due to threats of violence against the institute, not due to the objections we've been discussing.

A reader takes exception to my comment in an earlier post that California's constitution lacks the equivalent of a 2nd Amendment "right to keep and bear arms."

But even 2nd Amendment enthusiasts admit (and lament) that California is lacking a guarantee for either a collective or an individual right to keep and bear arms. Commenter Tom points to Article I Section 1 of the state constitution declaring: "All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty..." Tom concludes, "I  seem to have the inalienable right to defend my life."

But Pennsylvania's constitution, which does have a robust (or wacky, depending on your point of view)  right to keep and bear arms also includes boilerplate similar to California's: "All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing and protecting property and reputation, and of pursuing their own happiness." So, if Tom is right, Section 21 of Pennsylvania's Declaration of Rights — "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned" — is, as Chief Justice Marshall would say, mere surplusage.

Our sister LAT blog “Babylon & Beyond” has an affecting article (with a fantastic photo) about the mourning in Iraq for Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic prelate who died after being kidnapped near Mosul. The death of the archbishop is another blow to Iraq’s Christian community, including the Chaldean Catholic Church, an ancient community in communion with Rome. The exodus of Christians from Iraq in the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein goes a long way toward explaining why the Vatican was opposed to the American invasion. It also explains why Chaldean Christians in America resent Bush’s war.

Aside from the carnage unleashed by the invasion, which appalled Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the invasion and the subsequent creation of an Islamist-friendly regime have made life hazardous for Iraq’s Christian minority. Saddam Hussein may have been a ruthless dictator, but, like the equally autocratic Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, he was better for Christians than the alternative. (During a visit to Cairo several years ago, I noticed portraits of Mubarak in the vestibules of Coptic Orthodox churches and was told that Christians considered the dictator a bulwark against persecution by Islamic extremists.)

The effect of the invasion on Christians in Iraq is only one of the unforeseen consequences of the neocons’ cocky campaign to transform the Middle East. But it is an especially painful one for Christians including the pope, who last year appointed the Chaldean patriarch to the College of Cardinals as a gesture of solidarity with Iraqi Christians.

The hemorrhage of Christians from Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East — including Palestine — is traumatic for Christianity because the religion began there.  Chaldean Catholics, and their cousins the Assyrian Christians, traditionally celebrate the Eucharist in Syriac, a language similar to the Aramaic spoken by Jesus and his disciples. They are in a sense living fossils who remind Western Christians of their faith’s Semitic origins. It would be ironic if a military operation likened by Muslims to the Crusades succeeded in depopulating Iraq of its Christians.

What a two-week punch it's been for New Jersey. First Wall native Ashley Alexandra Dupré, a.k.a. Kristen, proved to be the only sensible character in the Empire State's Spitzer farce. Now the ashes of Dina Matos McGreevey's divorce from former N.J. Gov. James McGreevey have returned to blue, hot life with revelations from an actual graduate of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

By way of both praise for truth-seeking and caution about evaluating claims made by adultery correspondents, please take a look at Andrew Strickler's piece highlighting the sharp dissonance between Kristen's unflattering description of the Jersey Shore and the awesome, awesome awesomeness of the actual Jersey Shore. I don't believe Dupré should feel compelled to deflect or soften or in any way defend her personal reputation, and I wish her hard work and success in whatever path she chooses to take. But just because the bluenoses are ganging up on you is no excuse for dumping on the Garden State.

Theodore Pedersen, the Scarlet Knight now at the center of the toothache-probingly annoying-but-compelling McGreevey saga, emerges as a 29-year-old philosopher. As he tells America's finest newspaper, the Newark Star-Ledger:

"[Dina Matos McGreevey]'s trying to make this a payday for herself. She should have told the truth about the three of us." Pedersen did not say if he was gay or bisexual and only described having contact with Matos McGreevey during the trysts. He also said he never knew for sure if McGreevey was gay.

"I had heard the rumors in circles outside of work," he said. "In hindsight, there might have been light interest (in me), but it didn't seem like he was gay. It did enhance their sexual relationship having me be a part of it."

Even casual Savage Love readers will recognize that the tripartite alignment alluded to here does not dispose of the question of any participant's permanent sexual orientation, if permanent sexual orientation does in fact exist. The Star-Ledger quotes a four-sentence passage from Matos McGreevey's book which is equally nebulous on the matter:

In her memoir, Matos McGreevey says little about the sex life she had with her husband, except to say that it never gave her any reason to doubt he was straight.

"The sex was good," Matos McGreevey wrote.

It's worth noting that both Matos McGreevey and Pedersen could both be telling the truth (at least as quoted here; I have not read Silent Partner, so I don't know if she makes any falsifiable claims about specific romantic activities). In fact, more credit to Matos McGreevey if it is true, for trying to make the most of her mate's special interests — though others may take a less tolerant view than I do, particularly when full custody of a child is at issue. At Matos McGreevey's request, Pedersen has given a sealed deposition in the McGreeveys' divorce case, reports the Star Ledger, which also quotes Pedersen's useful seduction tips:

"The more we spend time with each other, the more we begin to trust each other with non-professional things," he said. "That relationship starts to progress, to transform into subtle hints, flirts."

Yes, Pedersen is fine! But how will this affect James McGreevey's efforts to become an Episcopal priest?

Because the news out of South L.A. often is of crime and poverty, it's easy for those who don't live there to forget that these are neighborhoods, and often beloved neighborhoods. Nothing brings that home faster or more painfully than seeing residents pleading not to have a new school built at a certain location because, through eminent domain, it would displace so many of them. That was the scene at part of Tuesday's school board meeting for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The message, delivered by a parade of older African American residents with strong ties to the neighborhood, was unwavering: We love schools, we support schools, but many of these people are elderly, we are all friends, we are connected, please don't disrupt our lives. The story of one 72-year-old woman, especially, made listeners wince with sympathy. She had been a longtime teacher in LAUSD and had lived in her home for 30 years. Her community was there. Her friends were there. Everyone she interacted with on a day-to-day basis was there.

The change confronting this community was made all the more obvious by the sole speaker in favor of the school — a young Latino woman, holding a preschooler and speaking through an interpreter. The school was necessary, she said. Nearby elementaries couldn't follow normal two-semester schedules because of overcrowding.

There wasn't much the board could do for the first group. It already had delayed its decision to see if there were options. There were no options; no one had been able to locate another suitable piece of land in the neighborhood. If overcrowding weren't reason enough, the district is under a consent decree to restore normal academic calendars to all its schools. The school would be built.

Neighborhoods of older, settled people give way to the future. But then there's that 72-year-old woman. She was probably certain that at this point in her life, after having given years of service to young people in the city, she was settled down to quiet golden years in her neighborhood, with everyone familiar.  Chances are it won't be that way, and it's not easy to chase away imagined images of her in a disorienting new setting, searching for familiar faces.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer's meteoric fall from power after being linked to a prostitution ring has come to a pretty spectacular crash — but instead of focusing on his smoldering career, the media's gaze is lingering on his wife, Silda. From today's Times:

It was the way she stood there, enduring.

Silda Wall Spitzer did not say a word as her husband, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, brusquely apologized to his family and the public after he was allegedly caught on a wiretap doing business with a high-priced prostitution ring. Her face was drawn. But she took her husband's hand as they left the room.

And of course, the question everyone seems to be asking is, why? What point is there in standing by your man?

Patt Morrison wanted Silda to "let him twist in the wind alone," and I'm not going to lie, I was kind of hoping she would leave him hanging at his resignation speech. Nevertheless, the bipolarity of the discussion is tiresome. Commentators either attack her integrity or demote her to Stepford status. Top of the Ticket says many women consider this "a hard-to-fathom decision" even as other news sources sympathize with "The awful life of a political wife" (though the New York Daily News objects heartily to that characterization). You'd think, with such a venerable American tradition of political sex scandals, we'd have some new angle to take.

The thing is, Spitzer's standing by her husband may not be an admission of helplessness or a statement on self-respect. It could just be a big fat middle finger in the face of the media and her critics, since keeping her emotions to herself makes it harder for commentators to perform gleeful autopsies of her emotional state.

One person who isn't holding back any tears, though, is "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer. A longtime friend of the Spitzers, he had defended the governor when the story first surfaced, and seemed genuinely heartbroken over the sad affair. After watching an interview on the Today Show, I felt more sorry for him than I did for Silda:

Cramer was close to tears as he spoke about Silda Spitzer and the marriage he had observed as a close friend of both spouses.

“I think she loves Eliot. I know he’s always worshipped her,” he said. “I don’t want to make any excuses for what he did. I can’t believe it. But she loved him. I feel bad for them. I feel bad for the girls. That’s what I said to him. I said, ‘Let me speak to Silda.’ It’s Silda that you feel bad for.” ...

Cramer didn’t say he felt betrayed by his friend, but that was the implication as he struggled before the cameras to make sense of it all.

“Look, I’ve just known them for a long time,” he concluded, his voice starting to choke. “I obviously didn’t know him as well as I thought.”

Sounds like it's time for couples counseling.

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.

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has resigned.

"I look at my time as governor with a sense of what might have been," Spitzer lamented.

On behalf of all who sigh in relief that what might have been wasn't, I wish the family the best. Spitzer showed no quarter to his enemies and should expect none now, but for what it's worth I oppose demand-side as well as supply-side applications of force in regulating prostitution. And I hope this vast shame will prove instructive to the parties involved and to the voters of the Empire State.

Will the entire ed board weigh in? Reply hazy, try again.

On a reread, I think I may have made the case that Thomas P.M. Barnett is an insufferable windbag a bit too strongly a few years ago. Nevertheless, Thomas P.M. Barnett is an insufferable windbag, and it's disconcerting to see the global-strategy seer so centrally located in the downfall of Adm. William Fallon.

Barnett is not addressing the news at his site yet — though he is recounting his Fallon interview in a self-dramatizing play-by-play that features Chuck Norris-type factoids like the following:

I drove the 160 miles nonstop, changing my suit to travel clothes as I drove.

Barnett did address part of the controversy a few days ago, and in fairness, the idea that Barnett's Fallon profile in Esquire is what drove the Centcom commander to resign strains believability; there must be bigger disagreements at stake — which is the central point Barnett was making in his article. Here's how Barnett, in happier times, described Fallon in a breathless lead paragraph:

If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it'll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends call him "Fox," which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago. Forty years into a military career that has seen this admiral rule over America's two most important combatant commands, Pacific Command and now United States Central Command, it's impossible to make this guy--as he likes to say--"nervous in the service."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Fallon's departure does not portend a change in Iran policy. Kevin Drum notes that Fallon's mellower course on Iran was clear back in September. Lawrence J. Korb sends along the following:

Admiral Fallon's abrupt retirement as the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East is the latest sign that the Pentagon's top brass do not agree with the direction in which the administration is heading in regard to the war in Iraq and the global war on terror.

Hopefully Fallon's resignation will force the administration to listen to his position on Iran and prevent them from ignoring the advice of their respected military advisors as they did with General Colin Powell and General Erik Shinseki when it came to waging the war in Iraq.

Danger Room has more reactions.

I'd refer you directly to Top of the Ticket's coverage of the primary results but I insist you read Andrew Malcolm's very gracious tribute to the Pauline Order of Ron first. As Dave Weigel anticipated eight days ago, Rep. Paul (R-Texas) easily defended his House seat in a primary. (Was I the only one who nursed a small mad hope that Paul might lose the primary and become motivated to pursue a third party presidential run?)

After you've read that, mosey on over to the results, Demican and Republocrat. There's no way around it: We have been denied our escape from the ninth circle of liberal self-regard. Speaking strictly for myself, I much prefer to get the Obama-McCain bloodletting underway, but as previously noted I would fight on too if I were Hillary Clinton. Mock on, Mock on, Obama, Clinton...

I will not be live-blogging the primary results (you're welcome), but as of this moment it's looking like the Democratic contest will be dragging its slow length along for another few weeks (months?). Here are the returns so far, courtesy of the obscure "Yahoo" blog:

Texas Primary Totals
Democrats
Obama 54%
Clinton 45%
Republicans 
McCain 56%
Huckabee  32%
Paul 5%

» 3% of precincts reporting

Ohio Totals
Democrats
Clinton 60%
Obama 38%
Republicans 
McCain 58%
Huckabee  32%
Paul 5%

» 6% of precincts reporting

Tuesday's Winners
Democrats
Clinton RI
Obama VT
Republicans
McCain OH, VT

We'll see how it actually shakes out tomorrow, but pace Jonathan Chait, if I were Hillary Clinton I'd keep fighting.

Three cheers for Prince Harry, who is now serving with the British army in Afghanistan; and four cheers for British authorities, who managed to keep the world in the dark about the younger prince's December deployment until now. Early last year, Harry was supposedly on his way to Iraq, a move that the editorial board applauded:

Nearly every British war features a version of this drama, in which cautious elders try to dissuade a young noble from putting himself in harm's way but the young noble insists on serving his country without special treatment or advantage. This supposedly private drama of stoic courage inevitably receives extensive press coverage, and Harry's case is no exception. But, in the end, it's hard to gainsay the physical courage required to deploy to Iraq at all.

Replace "Iraq" with "Afghanistan" and remove references to extensive press coverage and you have our position. Last May, when it was announced that the Iraq deployment was off, I  backed away from the earlier praise in a disappointed blog post. Thanks to Tribune's idiotic and suicidal policy of deleting the older stories that make up the overwhelming majority of our traffic (for the umpteenth time, I apologize; supposedly it's going to change soon), you can still read the post but not the original editorial. Anyway, props to the prince.

And no, he's not running for president, people. But! He still has plenty to say about partisanship, rhetoric and business as usual. From today's NY Times:

Over the past year, I have been working to raise issues that are important to New Yorkers and all Americans — and to speak plainly about common sense solutions. Some of these solutions have traditionally been seen as Republican, while others have been seen as Democratic. As a businessman, I never believed that either party had all the answers and, as mayor, I have seen just how true that is....

More of the same won’t do, on the economy or any other issue. We need innovative ideas, bold action and courageous leadership. That’s not just empty rhetoric, and the idea that we have the ability to solve our toughest problems isn’t some pie-in-the-sky dream. In New York, working with leaders from both parties and mayors and governors from across the country, we’ve demonstrated that an independent approach really can produce progress on the most critical issues, including the economy, education, the environment, energy, infrastructure and crime.

I agree with Bloomberg, but it's a little anticlimatic. The title of his Op-Ed kind of says it all: "I'm Not Running for President, but ..." But what, yeronner? But we should still listen to what you have to say?

Granted, a Bloomberg presidential campaign wouldn't have garnered much support from either end of the political spectrum. Besides, there are plenty of people out there who aren't running (and some who aren't superdelegates, even) whose voices still seem to matter in the race. And since the independent mayor of New York has reserved the right to throw his support behind one the the candidates in the future, he could still play a role moving those key unaffiliated voters.

And perhaps removing himself from the contest does take the showboat factor out of the whole endeavor, so people (unlike me, apparently) may actually listen to what he has to say.

Not that he has any problem with third-party candidates, as he told AP a couple days ago:

This business of Ralph Nader being a spoiler — you know, in any three-way race, two of the three are going to be spoilers. Come on. Everybody's got a right to do it — you're not spoiling anything ... If people want to vote for you, let them vote for you, and why shouldn't they?

You tell 'em, Mike.

Last Thursday's primary debate in Texas between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was supposed to provide Clinton a chance to find a chink in Obama's armor. Unfortunately for Clinton, she never really succeeded. And maybe that's why her campaign seems to have grown more aggressive, tossing strategy out the door in favor of shooting blind and hoping something makes a dent. (So far, it's mostly resulted in friendly fire.)

The New York Times calls it a "five-point attack." Politico calls it "highly improvisational". A Clinton aide christened it the "kitchen sink" method. If you want to judge for yourself, here are some gems from the past few days:

The xerox zinger: In the debate, Clinton defended her accusation that Obama plagiarized Massachussetts Gov. Deval Patrick. "Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox," quipped the junior senator from the Empire State, who has never lifted a phrase in her life. That didn't go over so well with the audience, judging from all the boos.

Kiss and make up: Later in the same debate, Clinton practically sang an ode to Obama. "I am honored -- I am honored -- to be here with Barack Obama," she said, offering her hand to her opponent. Awww... But wait, there's more:

Whatever happens, we're going to be fine ... I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people. And that's what this election should be about.

A gesture of concession? Hardly. More likely it was a move to undo the damage wrought by the Xerox quote -- and to woo back key demographics, especially white women. That sugarcoated moment earned her a standing ovation.

Oh, oh, do the one of Barack, that's my favorite: The warm fuzzy feeling soon wore off, though -- instead of sticking to her "ready on day one" pitch at a Sunday rally in Rhode Island, Clinton did her best Obama impression (gesticulation included) for an appreciative crowd:

I could just stand up here and say ‘Let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified.’ The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.

Straight out of "Karl Rove's playbook": At a rally in Ohio, a supporter handed Clinton pamphlets the Obama campaign was distributing on her healthcare plans -- information she called misleading. "Shame on you, Barack Obama," she scolded afterward, brandishing the offending fliers at reporters. (Who wants to bet that supporter was prompted?)

My best constituents are black! In a more passive-aggressive show of strength, Clinton was the only candidate to appear at the annual State of the Black Union in Louisiana last weekend (Obama offered to send his wife Michelle instead). There's nothing better than courting a reluctant demographic and kicking your rival under the table at the same time.

What's in a turban? Obama staffers wigged out at a Drudge report that Clinton campaign members had been circulating photos of the Illinois senator donning local dress in Kenya. It's not like he's the first public figure to don the local garb -- check out Calvin Coolidge in a Native American headdress. The campaign took hours to deny any role in their distribution, but given the long leash Clinton has given to overenthusiastic staffers (up until she fires them) it's hard to take them at their word.

How many kitchen appliances do you think she's got left for tonight's showdown? Post your thoughts below.

I'd say this beats the "post-9/11 world" hands-down: the post-Fidel world. Add to the list another foreign policy item that will doubtless be a major focus of the next administration. So what are the candidates saying?

John McCain plays the tough guy and lays out an action list for Fidel Castro's brother Raul. Excerpt:

Yet freedom for the Cuban people is not yet at hand, and the Castro brothers clearly intend to maintain their grip on power. That is why we must press the Cuban regime to release all political prisoners unconditionally, to legalize all political parties, labor unions and free media, and to schedule internationally monitored elections.

Hillary Clinton touts her (what else) experience and promises to engage Cuba with other Latin American and European countries. By far, her tone is the most diplomatic. Excerpt:

As President, I will engage our partners in Latin America and Europe who have a strong stake in seeing a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba, and who want very much for the United States to play a constructive role to that end. The United States must pursue an active policy that does everything possible to advance the cause of freedom, democracy and opportunity in Cuba.

The events of the past three days, including elections in Pakistan and Kosovo's declaration of independence, are a vivid illustration of people around the world yearning for democracy and opportunity. We need a President with the experience to recognize and seize these opportunities to advance America’s values and interests around the world. I will be that President.

Barack Obama sounds every bit as tough as McCain and hopes to see U.S.-Cuba relations normalize. Excerpt:

Cuba's future should be determined by the Cuban people and not by an anti-democratic successor regime. The prompt release of all prisoners of conscience wrongly jailed for standing up for the basic freedoms too long denied to the Cuban people would mark an important break with the past. It's time for these heroes to be released.

If the Cuban leadership begins opening Cuba to meaningful democratic change, the United States must be prepared to begin taking steps to normalize relations and to ease the embargo of the last five decades. The freedom of the Cuban people is a cause that should bring the Americans together.

And out in right field, Mike Huckabee doesn't see anything changing until El Jefe is six feet under. So much for a culture of life. Complete statement (it's the shortest of the four):

The Cuban people deserve nothing less than free and fair elections which would provide the only hope for a prosperous and democratic Cuba. Until Fidel Castro is dead there can be no significant movement towards reform in Cuba.  Raul Castro has proven that he's as much a tyrant and dictator as his brother Fidel.  Simply providing more power to another dictator does nothing to promote freedom and democracy to the Cuban people.

Feel free to share your thoughts on the post-Fidel world by leaving a comment.

Ron Paul is scaling back his presidential campaign, conceding the impossibility of having an impact at the GOP convention. His announcement is several shades less absurd, and orders of magnitude more candid, than Mitt Romney's war-is-too-important-to-be-left-to-the-shape-shifting-ex-governors announcement earlier this week.

But it's still disheartening: A month or so of straight-up campaigning between Paul and John McCain would have been hopeless from Paul's perspective, but it would have clarified in stark terms how far the Republicans have drifted from the libertarian core that Ronald Reagan once called "the very heart and soul of conservatism." But as I noted before, one of the particular features of the Paul campaign was that it wasn't conceived, and certainly wasn't executed, as a message-sending effort. For better or worse, the campaign ended up turning on Paul himself, not the broader range of libertarian appeals that overlapped with his platform. Here's what the ten-term congressman from the Lone Star State's 14th district had to say:

With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties -- just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican.

I also have another priority. I have constituents in my home district that I must serve. I cannot and will not let them down. And I have another battle I must face here as well. If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas. I cannot and will not let that happen.

Best of luck to Rep. Paul in retaining his congressional seat. The House would be an even poorer place without him.

Another Pauloid tidbit at Top of the Ticket. And for more of what it all meant, check out frequent L.A. Times contributor Brian Doherty's "Scenes from the Ron Paul Revolution." 

With the news that Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, the late alleged murderer of two police officers and three city officials in Kirkwood, Missori, was a well known city-council gadfly, we set the wayback machine to 2003, for a Los Angeles Times story by Hugo Martin, explaining some of the tensions involved in giving broad leeway to public blowhards. Here it is in full print-spec glory:

Los Angeles Times
Wednesday September 24, 2003

THE STATE
COLUMN ONE
Freedom's Test, or Just a Pest?
* Gadflies deemed out of order are arrested or ejected from some public meetings. The 1st Amendment and decorum are at odds.

Home Edition, Main News, Page A-1
Metro Desk
53 inches; 1834 words
Type of Material: Column

By Hugo Martin, Times Staff Writer

After greeting the San Bernardino County supervisors with a mock Nazi salute, Jeff Wright, a homeless Air Force veteran, stepped to the public microphone to complain about being arrested at a regional transportation meeting a few months earlier.

Board Chairman Dennis Hansberger told him to stay on the topic under discussion, which was the salaries of county attorneys. Wright then threatened to seal the supervisor's mouth with duct tape, which he had brought with him.

Hansberger responded by ordering sheriff's deputies to eject Wright, who was led out of the building in handcuffs, screaming about police brutality.

It was nothing new -- for Wright or for the board of supervisors.

The March incident was among the more than 100 arrests or ejections deputies have carried out at meetings of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors since 1989, according to an unofficial tally by one local activist.

Although law enforcement officials say they cannot confirm the exact number, they put the tally in the dozens.

In 2000, reports of those arrests earned the Board of Supervisors the "Black Hole" award, a dubious distinction given by the California First Amendment Coalition to public agencies and officials that the group says show disregard for open government and 1st Amendment rights.

In the past year, the pace of arrests and removals at San Bernardino County supervisors' meetings has increased to about one per month, with most speakers being removed for failing to stick to the agenda and then refusing to surrender the lectern.

"The most reliable friend you can have in American politics [is] ready money." So spoke Republican presidential hopeful Phil Gramm in 1995, and he wasn't kidding. Greenbacks have long been the barometer of the health of a campaign, and recent revelations — that Mitt Romney is "suspending" his campaign, and Hillary Clinton just gave her own bid a $5-million shot in the arm — only serve to emphasize that. Here's a quick round-up on former and current hopefuls, and how the money talked:

THE DEMOCRATS

Barack Obama: Obama is breaking all kinds of records — his campaign just announced that it collected $7.2 million in just the two days following Super Tuesday. That’s partly because while the Obama campaign brings in the big donors to rival Clinton’s, he also taps a vast reservoir of people who give in smaller amounts. It’s an interesting indication of the demographics the candidates attract, and a clue as to where the popular momentum is headed.

Hillary Clinton: The erstwhile frontrunner racked up some major wins on Tsunami Tuesday, California included — but not enough to secure a decisive victory. Having to dig into her own pockets makes her campaign look less promising. On the other hand, the Clinton campaign just released numbers that put its post-Tuesday fundraising at $7.5 million. 

John Edwards: Poor Edwards. He took the high road, committed to public financing and ran on a fraction of what his main rivals had in the bank. But in the end, the public let this populist presidential hopeful down.

THE REPUBLICANS

Mitt Romney: If using your own cash to beef up your campaign is a bad sign, Romney doomed his presidential bid from the start. The former governor of Massachussetts has poured around $50 million of his personal fortune into his now “suspended” campaign. If I were one of his grandkids, I’d be pretty pissed.

Winding up for the winddown

Yesterday at 8:30 a.m., I canvassed the four picketers then on line outside CBS on Beverly. Do they think the Writers Guild is close to a deal? Resonses:

1 qualified yea
1 wait and see
1 I dunno
1 I'm not on the negotiating committee

Same question same place same time same number of writers, this morning:

2 hope we're close
1 I'm on the staff so I don't want to be quoted in any way
1 Yes!

What did writers do online?

What will I miss most about the strike? I'll miss being able to nurse that mad hope that the big, steaming pile of creativity allegedly centered in Los Angeles might start to ooze into these here interwebs — that the experience of total fiscal drought might drive the writers to hustle and do it themselves, proving that they could master this whole online thingee without suckling from the massive studio apparatus.

Preliminarily, I'm saying the strike appears to be winding down with no important developments on the web. Speechless? Zero out of five stars. Why we fight? The entertainment equivalent of that nice boy who liked you way back when. Strike TV? As noted here previously, this effort to raise money and make work for jobless writers spent time in development hell and doesn't seem to have generated actual content (though the Strike TV myspace page did lead me to this, and who wouldn't like a less-challenging version of The Spot?). I'm waiting to hear back from a Strike TV spokeswoman about whether that group, or any other striking writers, did anything worth checking out online; I'll update if or when evidence comes in.

I also canvassed the editorial board for interesting filmmaking writers did online during the strike, with "interesting" defined as "anything more than one micron above the 'Speechless' series in terms of quality and compellingness." That search returned this and this, neither of which peel my banana — your mileage may vary. Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskowitz' experiment in beautiful-people Dada Quarterlife came right out of fantastically-successful-and-connected-award-winner left field to land a spot in NBC's February lineup. But I was kind of thinking of people at a lower level of attainment than master of the message Zwick, the show was shooting or shot before the strike even began and in any event I fully concur with Aaron Barnhart's ruling that it's "a show that old people might make about young people."

If you have other examples of good independent webshows made during the strike, send them my way.

Update: Strike TV press liaison Julie Rayhanabad (who's OK in my book because her one IMDB credit is for a Garret Morris movie) gets back with the following:

Strike TV: Hollywood Unplugged is ongoing.  There are a number of productions currently working towards completing material for the online channel - a few are still in preproduction, while others are in active production.  We haven't released anything yet. We will be doing an announcement closer to the release date, with information about the slates that are being released and the talent behind them. 

The beauty of the Strike TV: Hollywood Unplugged fundraiser is that its about writers doing what they do best, creating, while being proactive during the strike and gaining more experience in creating for the Internet. It's not really about competing with the networks or the studios, because it's not about those parts of the industry. It's about Hollywood being unplugged and seeing what writers can accomplish and what they can experiment with - it's coming straight from the creative people behind film and television production. Further, it helps raise money for the Writer's Guild Foundation's Industry Support Fund, raising money for non-WGA members that have been seriously affected by the strike... 

There have been a number of online pieces created by members that have been in support of the strike - including Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy), members of the writing staff from The Colbert Report and the Jon Stewart Show, members of the Samantha Who writing staff - just off the top of my head.   There's also the "Speechless" pieces and the "Voices4Action" pieces that are available. Those are all strike-related. Non-strike related, recently, a few series have been purchased that were originally webseries and are now going to be aired on network television.  The SCIFI Channel bought a web-series called Sanctuary that they're now planning on making into a series for the network.  Also, I'm sure you already have the information about Quarterlife, which was recently purchased for air on NBC (actually airing this february).

During our own Republican endorsement campaign, I lobbied first for Rudy Giuliani and then for Mitt Romney, not merely hoping to kill the market for Matt Welch's book, but because I believe opposing The New York Times in all things takes precedence over all other concerns. So I'm the one who should be forthright, gracious and magnanimous and admit that the other Times just beat the pants off us in endorsement power in our own state.

Final score: Times east, two for two; Times west, one for two.

For what it's worth, we removed the candidates' collective and individual probabilities of winning as a factor in determining 2008's semi-finalists, and I call that a wise decision. Nor did my dream race (Richardson-Paul to Obama-Paul to Obama-Giuliani to Obama-Romney, which I think is a song by The Who) differ substantially from that of the board. Why did your dream race change if electability was not a factor? you may ask. I can reply only that we do not live in dreams.

We also attempted to be as forthright, gracious and magnanimous in building our endorsement cases, to think through the meaning of our words and to try to get your input, as well as or better than any paper published on any of the terran planets. We look forward to continuing to serve you in the exciting election year we expect. Thanks for tuning in to Opinion L.A. and the L.A. Times, and we welcome your thoughts.

If you enjoyed John Mueller's recent Rambo charticle, which tracked the pneumatic commando's varied career along a rising death-per-minute axis, you were not alone. The United Kingdom tabloid The Sun got enough of a kick out of the Ohio State professor's math that it decided the most sincere form of flattery would be to make up some fake quotes and attribute them to Mueller. According to The Sun's story on the Rambo chart:

Mr Mueller said the movie, out next month, showed “the most depraved level of man’s inhumanity to man”.

Mueller has a different story. In an email to us, he states, "I just want to say that I never made the statement quoted — to the Sun or to anybody else." In addition to being concerned that the invented quote might allow an inference that he was reviewing the film rather than subjecting it to rigorous scientific testing, Mueller says he's troubled because "the words put in my mouth are so prissy and sanctimonious they make my skin crawl."

In case there's any doubt, Mueller adds, "I  hope I am not overly naive about the journalistic standards of the British tabloids... I have sometimes been misquoted in other papers — but in those the reporter at least actually  talked to me and was clearly TRYING to get it right. Total fabrication is new to me..."

Original charticle here.

Christopher Hitchens remembers Fleet Street in all its squalor here.

Robert Burns laments man's inhumanity to man (a phrase I always thought was invented by Mad magazine) here.

After having heard from scores of Democratic and decline-to-state Democratic voters about their soul-searching quandaries over which bubble to Inka-Vote come Tuesday, I've ginned up a shorthand assessment of their primary dilemma:

They'll hold their noses and vote for Hillary Clinton.

Or they'll cross their fingers and vote for Barack Obama.

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.

Columnist Joel Stein's Golden Globes invite lands him in a loud suit and a moral quandary:

[E! News anchor Giuliana Rancic] was concerned because at rehearsals a few hours earlier, the producers told her to ad lib an intro and she didn't know what to say. She was thinking of expressing support for the striking writers but was unsure.

This presented the greatest moral dilemma I had ever faced. I could help her -- and get a pro-union message broadcast on the three networks -- but I would have to violate the union's strike rules to do it.

Sometimes a man has to risk everything for what he believes is right. I wrote for Rancic. And I don't regret it. Though I do regret it wasn't funnier.

In another writers strike subplot, Directors Guild President Michael Apted issues an apologia for the union's deal with the studios. Former Housing and Urban Development secretary Jack Kemp throws his weight behind a bill that would save some homeowners from bankruptcy and foreclosure. Ronald Brownstein gives a rundown of the Republican race, and cartoonist Jeff Danziger sizes up the Democrats' high-stakes game in Nevada.

The editorial board hopes the striking writers will take their cues from the Directors Guild deal, and it cheers on billionaire Eli Broad's latest donation to charter schools. The board grows apprehensive at the unveiling of the affordable but pollutive Nano by Tata Motors, worried that "the vehicle's tiny price tag -- about $2,500 -- will make car ownership possible for millions of Indians, which could well render the rest of the world's efforts to combat global warming moot."

Readers run through options for the city's transportation problems. Writes Nihar Patel:

In truth, Los Angeles has only one hope to promote transit use among all income groups: increasing options with buses and trains. We need a grid where a day pass gets you off a train to a bus, or vice versa, as in London.

Until that day, from Hollywood, a 20-minute train ride downtown sure beats a never-ending rush-hour bus ride. Join me sometime if you disagree.

DGA and AMPTP settle

Contract negotiations between the directors and producers have concluded. Details from the DGA site:

Increases both wages and residual bases for each year of the contract. 
Establishes DGA jurisdiction over programs produced for distribution on the Internet. 
Establishes new residuals formula for paid Internet downloads (electronic sell-through) that essentially doubles the rate currently paid by employers. 
Establishes residual rates for ad-supported streaming and use of clips on the Internet.

Pickets' charge

Only eight picketers on the line at Paramount when I went by at 8:30 this morning. I didn't stop to say hello. As Dean Martin says in some movie: "I don't go into Hollywood anymore. Too depressing." It looks to me like the picket schedule is getting leaner too, but I don't have much historical data to go on.

Then again, don't believe any numbers coming out of me...

It's the 74th day of the strike, right? Not the 84th or 85th. I don't know what's more discouraging: that I keep getting this simple figure wrong or that nobody bothers correcting me.

Shield honcho: They're all against us!

Shawn Ryan, creator of The Shield and dead ringer for Michael Chiklis, believes the L.A. Times, Variety and the rest of the MSM are all against the Writers Guild, strongly implying that it's that ol' consolidated media at its shadowy work. Interestingly, he and his interlocutur in this interviewer both seem to think Nikke Finke, whom I would have characterized as pretty much a pushover for the writers' view, is a studio stalking horse. Nikki vants to be alone right now, so in the absence of a response I'm chalking this up to the writers' engorged sense of embattlement.

More persuasively, Ryan makes an interesting point about how the importance of secondary and international markets means American Idol's success doesn't count for as much as it might seem. As it happens, The Shield frequently films around the the L.A. Times building, and I am always impressed by the huge amount of waste that can be supported by a cable show: Double-digit numbers of large vehicles, scores of idle cast and crew members ambling around, and most importantly the catered breakfasts — and I'm talking about real breakfasts, with sausage and eggs and pancakes. Can a spot in the FX lineup, just a click or two away from a Deep Space Nine rerun on Spike, really generate such a vast economy? Apparently it can, thanks to secondary markets — though I had thought the point of this whole long-tail thing was that it didn't depend on blockbusters with big up-front costs.

More economic ignorance partially corrected

Boy do I not know how many people are entitled to catered meals in this town! Devoted Opinion L.A. readers, if such people exist, remember that I tried to dope out the average salary of late-night gabfest staffs back in December, by doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations from Bill Carter's claim that the hosts were paying figures "from about $150,000 a week to as high as $250,000 a week" to keep their non-writing staffs off the dole. This is now old news, but a quote from Jay Leno in an L.A. Times business story earlier this month makes a mockery of my confidence that you could pull off one of these shows with no more than 50 people. Said Jay: "We had to come back because we have essentially 19 people putting 160 people out of work." So that means the average Jay Leno non-writer is making anywhere from $48,750 and $81,250 per year. Much smaller ranges than I had guesstimated, but with a much, much larger staff.

So there you have it: 160 people, plus 19 writers, plus Jay, plus Mavis, to put out The Tonight Show. I repeat my earlier question about the lean, mean agility of this dynamic and rapidly changing industry.

If you're delivering stuff to a studio, schedule it for Friday

To end up my week of strike reports, I wanted to hit a different picket line this morning, and so went even further out of my way than usual, to the Fox lot on Pico and Motor...only to look like a cartoon jackass when I discovered that I'd been looking at a Monday-through-Thursday picket schedule from the WGA. There was nobody assailing the house Babes built, which was probably just as well since the surrounding streets house my least favorite form of life: busybody residents who finagle no-parking-any-time rules out of the city. (One of these days, zoning partypoops, the Cavanaugh reign of terror's gonna start!) In fact there seems to be very little picketing activity anywhere on Fridays. I put in calls to a few studios to see if they've begun to arrange their pickup and delivery schedules around picket lulls. Will follow up if I get an answer.

Mixing it up on the picket line, at last!

And here's what I missed at the Fox lot. A little old-school fisticuffs on the line! Nikki Finke blames the "Fox white collar worker" for the altercation, but is big enough to allow that she disapproves of aggressive tactics by the picketers too — although her example of the latter doesn't strike me as all that objectionable.

Please don't throw me in that briar patch, Brer Bear!

I have yet to hear anybody make a non-ludicrous case that waivers, exceptions and other side deals during a strike are anything other than straight-up good news for management and bad news for labor — though stay tuned to Blowback next week, when a guild member will give it another try. But here's an intriguing unsourced item from Nikki's catalogue of producer misbehavior:

Harvey Weinstein received a number of phone calls from the moguls warning him "You shouldn't do it," and "We can get this done with the DGA," when word leaked out that he was making a side deal with the WGA to be able to hire striking writers.

Presuming that there's any truth to this report, I'd expect Weinstein's logical response to be, "Think about it, dummy. Management doesn't need solidarity; labor does. My cutting a side deal is either a wash for you if you're a competitor or a benefit for you if you're a partner."

But it's a crazy world out there. If producers believe (and I mean actually believe, not just claim to believe for public consumption) they stand to lose through waivers and side deals, and writers believe they stand to benefit, I have no choice but to think there's something to this premise even though I see no logical basis for it. Am I missing something?

No Negative Globes, but a funny response

I was hoping at least New Yorkers, who are said to be a hardboiled bunch, might go in for a little gallows celebration of the ongoing awards-show apocalypse, so I asked the writer Rob Kutner where the Big Apple's best Negative Golden Globes party would be. His reply:

I would say Times Square, because nothing looks better on a massive Jumbotron than a star-unstudded press conference!

And now a word from the free market

One of my weird byways in the always tangled paths of libertarianism was to dissent from what I considered a too-forceful opposition to unions. Not that I support organized labor or condone its outsized political clout. But I've always been just a little too ready to view unions as private entities that are entitled to their own freedoms of association and action, and to resist efforts, like Gov. Schwarzenegger's Proposition 75 a few years ago, to rein them in. (You can read through my Prince Hamlet routine on that issue here.) But I do enjoy getting a bracing dose of individualist grit amid all the collective passion. Here's one I just received from the documentarian Dan Gifford:

My take on the Writer's Guild strike is that it is, at its heart, driven by class warfare and capital naivete about the fact that those who put up the money and take considerable financial risk to fund films want changes because they are not making a profit. A recent Global Media Intelligence/Merrill Lynch report made that fact crystal clear as well as the reason: "Most of the income - past and future - that studios and writers have been fighting about has already gone to the biggest stars, directors and producers in the form of ballooning participation deals" as one story summarized the study's findings. But that does not matter to most WGA members I talk to and overhear while attending many film screenings at the WGA. What is being said comports completely with Lawrence O'Donnell's characterization of the WGA several years ago on CNN's Reliable Sources: "The Writers Guild of America, my union, is at a minimum, 99 percent leftist liberal and, like me, socialist."  And the sentiment I hear O'Donnell's socialists consistently express is that "the rich" are just greedy pricks who don't want to share their wealth.

Dan

Our do-nothing president

I caught up with Melrose Larry Green this morning, while he was working the 76 station at the corner of Highland and his namesake avenue, waving a poster in support of Mitt Romney. Larry, who attended college in Massachusetts and admires Romney for his values and his leadership of the Bay State, despises the Clintons and had this to say about the Writers Guild of America strike:

"The strike is a disaster. The mayor, who has a background as a labor organizer, and the governor, who was a bigtime actor, ought to be working together every day to settle this thing."

Asked to pick a favorite between the two sides, Larry declined, saying, "Probably both sides are to blame. I think President Romney would have intervened, because this is not just Los Angeles; this is the whole country. I think President Bush should intervene and get this thing settled."

Strike TV, where art thou, or, it's 1997 all over again!

The prediction that the strike would lead to an explosion of new media creativity is looking creakier all the time. Strike TV, an online channel promising to feature new, non-strike-related work by WGA members, aims to raise money for the strike's fund. The channel is supposed to be coming in February to YouTube and Google Video, and Strike TV held a seminar yesterday, which is described in detail by Fun Joel.

I'm second to nobody in my nostalgia for the Clinton era, but are people really still holding conferences where they talk about the challenges of monetizing the Internet? There's even a reference to "Hollywood 2.0," a concept I loved when I saw it 11 years ago on the cover of Wired. Seriously, the point of these here interwebs is that you don't have to go to meetings or spend four months on a project. What do you think this is, Hamlet? You're competing against "Leave Britney Alone," folks. Let's see what you can do.

Self-criticism for the self-absorbed

At my Paramount spot today, I watched a BBC crew schmooze the picketing writers. The correspondent's questioning style was to hold forth on how amazingly fantastical the universal public support for the writers has been, and at one point he asked "But the real question is what will happen on Hollywood's biggest night of the year, The Oscars®?" And he said it with such deadpan Brit-fanboy breathlessness (you could actually hear the registered-trademark symbol) that I remembered why it's so hard to take seriously critiques of Hollywood like The Player and such: Because when you get down to it, Hollywood self-criticism is just another form of Hollywood tinsel.

Real criticism from the non-organized

I'm not as confident as the BBC in saying what the public feels about the strike. I spend some time around true Hollywood hangers-on who are not striking but out of work and/or business, and I keep hearing that the worm is turning against writers, with "greedy writers" commentary becoming more prevalent.

There doesn't seem to be much evidence for that claim. Here's an anti-guild screed from somebody whose husband's out of work; that's not exactly a groundswell. If web comments are any guide, the writers still have the upside in the PR war. And every day this week I've heard at least one horn-honk in support of the picketers.

How much value there is in the PR is another story. The ultimate arbiter of public opinion will be my favorite economic concept: revealed preference. If the people don't want to watch, nothing's gonna stop them. Public behavior on this issue may end up looking the way it does on so many other issues: Most people, as the BBC might say, just don't give a toss. That could be bad news for either side, or more likely for both.

Unanimous support found in four-person survey

A joke holds that Fox will lose more money if the Writers Guild of America grants a waiver for its broadcast of the NAACP Image Awards than it will if the show is canceled.

When I buttonholed a group of four WGA members — including but not limited to David N. Weiss, vice-president, board of directors; Skye Dent; and my friend David Wyatt — there was not much love in the air for me, with comments ranging from, "I don't know where you studied labor organizing," to "It's funny you say that because I know 26,000 journalists have been laid of in the last 10 years." But there was unamimous support for granting the waivers discussed in today's editorial, and for the guild leadership's strategy.

Welcome to Paramount

I will pursue no longer the question of blocking traffic flow at the studio gates. Wyatt's comment this morning: "We act as pedestrians. When the light is green we go; when it's red we stop." Weiss says some guild members have been ticketed for jaywalking, but according to him and a guild spokesman, no picketers been arrested since the strike began.

Dry sterile thunder without rain

I caused the most offense among this morning's sample by expressing my belief that the writers need to play harder ball. Weiss took umbrage at the suggestion of a Negative Golden Globes party, saying the cancellation of the awards show was nothing to celebrate. He also asked to be quoted in full as follows: "This is one of the premiere exports of this country. We don't export much anymore in this country. It generates billions of dollars of revenue, employs hundreds of thousands of people. You don't do that for a nickel and a dime. The notion of cutting the content creators out of the food chain is shortsighted."

The how'd-that-happen decade

My pals on the Paramount picket line were very critical of my non-objective, biased, know-nothing hackery, so I guess that frees me up to render a truly woolgathering opinion:

I used to think I lived in an inconsequential era, but now I think I live in a nonconsequential era. You can make decisions without taking any responsibility for the result. You want to invade a country but you don't want any soldiers to die. You want to go on strike but you don't want anybody to lose money. You want to buy an overpriced house but you don't want to have pay for it. Given the unidirectional nature of the time continuum, that's not really how grownups should be looking at the world. Maybe some presidential candidate needs to promise a cabinet-level department that will help make that point to all Americans. (And just to anticipate one potential consequence, I am speaking only for myself here, not the L.A. Times or the editorial board.)

This way to the egress

My hunch yesterday seems to have been accurate. The writers' blocking of the Paramount entrance was just for show. This morning they were back to waiting politely at the light while Paramount employees and visitors drove on and off the lot without incident. There was one guy dragging a wheeled basket who seemed to be making a point of clearing the intersection as slowly as possible, but that's too passive for even passive aggression. Business is being done at Paramount!

Welcome, Bridgewater College!

Among the loiterers at the Windsor entrance were a trio of chipper young Paramount hostesses in blue blazers, chinos and neckties, waiting to greet a bus tour from one "Bridgewater College." Whether that's actually Bridgewater State in Massachusetts or the Church of the Brethren-affiliated Bridgewater College in Virginia I don't know, but the latter boasts a "White, semi-conservative, [and] heterosexual" student body, so I say enjoy Hollywood with good cheer and an open mind.

What does the Paramount Tour consist of anyway? After living around the corner for nearly a year, I've never been curious enough to plunk down $35 to find out. To my suggestion that they needed to add an Indiana Jones' Ride of Doom to the itinerary, the hostesses only laughed politely.

Negative Golden Globes exert zero gravitational pull

The writers now hold the scalps of the Foreign Press Association, whose annual festivities are now in ruins. Wouldn't you think the WGA would be organizing a bash on Sunday, to boost morale and to celebrate the victory? Apparently not. I asked David Wyatt, who mans the tables at the Paramount picket line, where the best Negative Golden Globes party was going to be, but he didn't know of any parties at all (or so he claimed; this may be just be the principle that the best parties are the ones you don't tell anybody about).

Dreaming of a better-looking picket line

Two Screen Actors Guild reps were also standing behind the literature table this morning. They weren't taking any questions, however, and I'm not sure whether the show of support was for public consumption or for the writers themselves. In any event, the picketers could use the bucking up, even on a bright, cold day like this one. I've been struck by how glum the writers appear to be at a time when their position looks so strong. Then again, if you want a bunch of Knute Rocknes you're probably not going to find them in a writers organization.

Day 74, 75, 76?

I think I made the error of not counting November 5 itself in my calculation yesterday. I believe that makes today the 75th day of the walkout, right?

That's "heinously," Michelle!

Why is it corrections page never connect the stuff that actually needs correction. From today's For the Record section:

In a Dec. 31 Calendar article about how soap opera writers are coping with the Writers Guild of America strike, a comment by "All My Children" writer Michelle Patrick was not placed in the correct context. When she said, "The more heinous the producers behave, the angrier I get," Patrick was referring to members of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, not the individual producers of soap operas.

Prominent writer goes fi-core

John Ridley's taking flack for his decision. Watch for Ridley's own explanation tomorrow at latimes.com/blowback.

No Globes for you!

TV junkies and foreign-flagged dipsomaniacs, despair! Nikki Finke reports it's curtains for the Golden Globes.

Conversational snippets: Pickets brave cold, talk trash

Nobody was picketing CBS Studios on Beverly Blvd. when I drove by this morning (the WGA's picket schedule indicates I was too early), so I headed over to Paramount Pictures on Melrose to find a score or so striking writers working the block. Overheard while shadowing two different picket-line duos:

Writer A: There's fights, drinking, people passing out...

Writer B: Yeah, you see the overhead shot of everybody parked out there.

Writer A: There there are these people who set up an RV, flatscreen TV. They don't even go to the game. Illinois plates. They're at the game but they're not going to the game.

Second conversation:

Writer C: Between the two extremes, I'd rather err on the side of cold than hot.

Writer D: Huh.

Also the picketers this morning seemed at first glance to have given up on the civil picketing pattern I applauded earlier, in which the sign carriers stop at red lights to allow cars to enter and exit the studio lot. Picketers were making a point of blocking the driveway as drivers were trying to get in. But don't bet on this being some aggressive new strategy for the work stoppage. There was a CNN cameraman taping the whole thing, and I suspect the show of force was for his benefit.

A special Los Angeles minimum wage for workers at a handful of hotels near Los Angeles International Airport may take effect soon in the wake of an appeals court ruling today upholding a second attempt at a "living wage" ordinance.

The City Council acted in 2006 to extend to hotels near LAX the living wage laws that until then had applied only to businesses with city contracts. A coalition of business groups gathered signatures for a referendum to overturn the ordinance, and rather than go to the ballot the council repealed its law. Then they replaced it with a second ordinance that also compelled the hotels to raise their workers' pay and also committed the city to various property enhancements in the area. The business groups sued, asserting that the second ordinance was substantially the same as the first and, therefore, in violation of state election laws on referenda. The Superior Court agreed, but the Court of Appeal today reversed. Here's the opinion.

News releases abound. The hotels, as you would expect, are none too pleased with "a decision not supported by facts or precedent" in which the court "gutted the ability of Californians to challenge the acts of their government through a vote of the people."

The New Century Coalition, which campaigned for the special wage, said the ordinance is important "because often hotel owners don't pay a fair wage to their employees and this is a perfect example of what our public officials can do to reverse the growing gap between the rich and poor in our city."

Backers said today's ruling will lift 3,500 workers out of poverty. Opponents claim the ordinance is the first step of many to impose special wages on particular businesses based on their geographical location or their industry.

The Times editorial board opposed extending the living wage to the hotels. "The council should stop throwing good money after bad policy and instead withdraw the law," we said on January 3. "The living wage extension is an unwarranted and capricious government intrusion into private industry that could chase businesses out of Los Angeles while encouraging hotels to raise prices or lay off workers. It reinforces the growing notion that City Hall is not friendly toward employers."

When I was a lad they'd have been burning those cars!

Whatever your thoughts on the WGA strike, the writers deserve some credit for their civility. My route most days takes me past the CBS entrance that forms the fourth turn in the intersection of Beverly Blvd and one of those little streets running north (Orange? Ogden? Genesee?). There's a traffic light, barely required at what is effectively a three-way intersection, yet the writers honor it every time it changes, patiently waiting with their signs on both sides of the driveway, and allowing people to drive on and off the CBS lot. I go by Paramount's Windsor and Bronson entrances too occasionally, and observed the same behavior there this morning. I can't say as how the writers' respect for jaywalking laws is doing much to blast into atoms the remorseless gears of capitalism, but it shows good breeding.

That ought to get to the bottom of it...

If you haven't read Richard Verrier and Claudia Eller's 12/12 piece on the strike, be sure to read through to the end, for an appearance by our man in the Dust-Up Craig Mazin, as well as this bon mot:

[Unionized directors] are expected to be more flexible on terms and more sympathetic to studio arguments that Internet-related businesses are still in the formative stages and that there are many uncertainties about where and how soon those future revenues will pour in.

The Directors Guild has spent more than $1 million to study those very questions, hiring two outside firms to prepare a detailed report on new media. The findings will be presented at tonight's meeting.

Got your own strike observations, hints or allegations? Share your thoughts in the comments or by mailing opinionla@latimes.com.

The editorial board thought this would happen.

Congress has dropped its plan to expand the "hate crimes" category to include sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability. The Senate had attached the measure to a defense authorization bill; the House didn't. Now, during negotiations, conference committee members have stripped away the hate crime measure, hoping that will ensure timely passage of the defense package. Too bad, because although the White House issued a veto threat against a similar House measure (which wasn't attached to the defense bill), it was prepared to back down before the Senate plan.

Some cold comfort: hate crimes fell in California and Los Angeles. (Too bad they went up nationwide.) And maybe no hate crime law is the best hate crime law.

Do clothes make the pope? Liberal and conservative Catholics are pondering some sartorial signals from Pope Benedict XVI. The pontiff who has rehabilitated the Latin Tridentine Mass also has a fondness for the elaborate vestments of the pre-Vatican II church. In investing 23 new cardinals the other day, Benedict sported a miter — the tall, pointed hat worn by Catholic and Anglican bishops — originally won by Pope Pius IX, the 19th century pope famous (or notorious) for the Syllabus of Errors, an attack on “Modernism.”

Pio Nono’s miter was “Roman” style — ridiculously high, like the miters worn by the sinister bishops in Thomas Nast’s anti-Catholic cartoons. Since Vatican II, Roman Catholic bishops — including the late Pope John Paul II — have favored the more squat, less elaborate  “Gothic” miter also favored by Anglicans like the archbishop of Canterbury.

If rising and falling hemlines are a guide to the state of the economy, the height of miters could be a clue to the reigning theology in Rome. The ultimate “Back to the Future” fashion statement would be for the pope to revive the crown-like papal tiara. (Here’s Pius IX’s.)

Photo detail courtesy of AP.

It's almost too good to be true, particularly in light of the whole Hwang Woo Suk scandal a couple years back.

But in two separate studies, one from the University of Wisconsin and another from Kyoto, scientists found that skin cells can be manipulated to become pluripotent — the same quality that currently makes embryonic stem cells a hot commodity.

That's not to say the current methods are without risk:

... both sets of scientists admit that the retroviruses employed to insert genes into the human skin cells could cause tumours. They claim that research must continue to develop methods of reprogramming cells by simply 'switching on' genes.

Obviously, it's not a good idea to count your cells before they're reprogrammed. But if this technology bears fruit, it would effectively end the battle between advocates and opponents of embryonic stem cell research. Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of Pro-Life Activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, certainly sees this as a moral victory.

There are medical advantages over embryonic stem cells, too: Using patients' own cells in treatment would eliminate the risk of rejection.

Richard Murphy, interim president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, praised the findings (while also covering his bases, given that state voters have already committed to up to $3 billion in funding through Proposition 71):

Richard Murphy ... added that "these are very exciting new directions for stem-cell research."

Since voters created it in 2004, the institute's focus has been on human embryonic stem cell studies, because President Bush had restricted federal financing for that kind of research. But now that scientists can give skin cells properties similar to human embryonic stem cells, "we think that we need to have parallel tracks," with some studies on embryonic stem cells and others on reprogramming, Murphy said.

The institute already has given a few grants to scientists attempting to reprogram cells and Murphy said it intends to seek applications for more in the spring.

Jim Geraghty from the National Review Online does have one suggestion for people who might be somewhat peeved at this otherwise happy discovery:

Today's breakthrough is a big reason to celebrate...unless you saw fetal stem cell research as a useful wedge issue in 2008.

Can't say I'm too broken up about that.

Today was the day one of my journalistic chicken-littles came home to roost. After years of me sticking up for one of baseball's biggest all-time jerks -- bashing his tormentors the San Francisco Chronicle, lamenting the ritual shaming of athletes, serially mocking and scare-quoting the "House Committee on Government Reform," urging Congress to get out of the urine-testing business, and even writing a piece entitled (in all seriousness) "George Bush vs. Barry Bonds" -- baseball's all-time home run king has been indicted by a federal grand jury on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. If convicted, the seven-time MVP faces up to 30 years in the slammer.

So do I come here for forgiveness? Oh hell no! To see why, read on.

On the front page of our paper today you'll see a glorious full-color photo of Jay Leno handing out donuts on a picket line. You can find it on our site. On the front page of The New York Times you'll find a shot of Tina Fey rocking an earnest look among some other group of picketers.

Now, before you say I'm just letting my plutocratic need to batten on the blood tallow of the proletariat get the best of me, let me affirm that I am very happy the WGA strike is on and I hope the work stoppage lasts for at least one full calendar year.

But I mean, if Jay Leno's aims are the same as those of the writers on strike, then who can be considered management in this situation? Yes, yes, I'm sure he has a WGA card or some such thing, but it's The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. He's the boss of the show. He's the person who is ultimately responsible for attracting viewers. He's the one responsible for making sure the program brings in more money than it spends. He answers if the product fails. He's the one responsible for making sure new shows come out and get seen, and he will be, or should be, fire if that fails to happen.

There's a word for that kind of person. It's "boss." Not a union boss — a real boss. Are we supposed to believe nobody under the level of NBC-Universal chairman Bob Wright can be considered management? If Jay's labor, who's management? This is a real question, not a rhetorical question.

The debate over whether Robert Goulet should get a lung becomes moot, as the rafters-shivering singer dies at Cedars-Sinai. Information and slideshow here.

Ever since the dawn of man, us monkeys have been staring slack-jawed at the awesome sight of flame. For almost as long, we've been making up terrible poetry to describe it. What happens when the doggerel blends with, say, the perennial east coast desire to interpret the land of fruits and nuts for the civilized natives back home? Pure comedy gold, that's what!

From the letters section of the New York Times:

There was an eerie silence as I stood there in the orange smoky haze, ashes falling like snow on Mercury, and blinked two or maybe three times.

By motivation, this had absolutely nothing to do with the fire -- it just seemed like something that would happen in Southern California. As I quietly closed the door, I thought about Joan Didion; she would understand this.
Tom Impelluso

How could you not close the door "quietly" with all those heavy thoughts rattling around your noggin! Letter-writer Martin Kruming also added: "White ashes rain down from blackened skies; residents wear surgical masks outside; estates and homes crumble in seconds and tens of thousands flee."

Lest you think I'm being unkind to Seaboard proles, I give you Janet Fitch of the Washington Post:

All week, it has been like a funeral here in the city. The moon rose orange through the smoke. Although surrounded by miles of concrete, we could feel the million trees burning, taste the fear but even more the sadness in the air [...]

The funeral we Angelenos feel is the periodic funeral of all our illusions about the nature of this place. [...]

California is so dry now, a wet towel hung over a shower bar will be usable within half an hour. Street trees have been looking stressed all summer.

I come not to bury Fitch (or Didion, or Raymond Chandler, or Mike Davis), but to salute the whole lot of 'em for giving it the old college try while fighting an ultimately losing battle -- using the wholly inadequate medium of words to describe a force of nature that's all about the visuals. Like this one, by The Times' phenomenal Wally Skalij:

To see and celebrate the poetry no words can convey, keep on reading after the jump.

Armadillo Aerospace, John Carmack's Mesquite, Texas-based space startup, has flamed out in the 2007 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge — which was not actually testing competitors' ability to land on the moon but to demonstrate a rocket capable of moon-ready maneuvers. Carmack, whose development of the engines for fabled games Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Quake qualifies him for consideration as the Orson Welles of first-person shooters, has been an X Prize regular (and so far, bridesmaid) with the so-ungainly-it-looks-almost graceful modular "Pixel" vehicle design. The Northrop Grumman proving was held at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico over the weekend. Here's what pixel was required to do to win this year's prize:

The Competition is divided into two levels. Level 1 requires a rocket to take off from a designated launch area, rocket up to 150 feet (50 meters) altitude, then hover for 90 seconds while landing precisely on a landing pad 100 meters away. The flight must then be repeated in reverse—and both flights, along with all of the necessary preparation for each, must take place within a two and a half hour period.

In its attempt to get that first-level prize, worth a cool $350,000, Pixel went down in flames, according to Wired News:

"After a loud explosion, a pool of fire spread approximately 30 feet away from the rocket, according to one photographer watching through a telephoto lens. Firetrucks were summoned, but the fire was out before their arrival."

The money from this year's prize may be rolled over for 2008, and the big winner will be the developer who can perform not only the takeoff and landing feat described above but a more taxing second level:

The more difficult course, Level 2, requires the rocket to hover for twice as long before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface, packed with craters and boulders to mimic actual lunar terrain. The hover times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform the real lunar mission.

The awarding of X Prizes and related awards for engineering breakthroughs great and small has become a pleasing hum of progress. You may come down on the other side of the Hickam/Simberg divide in the development of space, but regular competition for incremental  improvements strikes me as a saner and more lasting way forward than massive do-or-die commitments to singular high-value goals. I'm sorry to see the Armadillo didn't pull this one off, but then I'm not sure how you can really simulate lunar-landing conditions on heavy old Earth. Do you just get the thing to fly and figure you'll divide all your specs by six when you get up to the moon?

Fire imp: id software; Pixel: Armadillo Aerospace

Local and non-local bloggers warm up to the fires raging throughout Southern California. Topics range from bad-taste wildfire cash-ins to who qualifies as a blogger (hang in there long enough and we may even get back to the old who invented blogging controversy), and there's some real public service going on as well.

The Fishbowl points out The Times’ continuous coverage, remarking,

The LAT's fire blog is exactly what newspapers will be doing with all breaking news coverage some day. And that's not a bad thing.

Thanks, we think. Meanwhile, a Times columnist finally gets his weblogging wings courtesy of Central City East:

Steve Lopez is even submitting his own photos, which in my opinion, by doing that, makes him a full fledged blogger.

Twitter Love gets kudos from Big Action for its role as

a valuable emergency communication tool.  People who probably had no clue about Twitter three days ago are using it to stay abreast of fire evacuations and the latest news. [...] Go Twitter.

LA Observed is also staying abreast of fire news, and posts a photo of a phenomenally dismal scene at Long Beach.

LA.com links to a post about a sushi chain that “turns tragedy into publicity”:

A good portion of the state of California might have been burning yesterday, but that doesn’t mean high-end sushi chain Nobu couldn’t turn tragedy into publicity by deciding to selflessly offer their delicious Miso Hamachi to Malibu firefighters looking for a little raw fish break from the flames swallowing the nearby homes. Nobu’s good deed was made even better by their just so happening to mention it to TMZ, who whipped up this cheeky little photoshop, slapped an “EXCLUSIVE!” on it, and gave it a hilarious headline (”Hottest Reservations In Town” - Get It?) for you to enjoy if your internet connection wasn’t on fire. Too bad the Tribeca Grill didn’t think of this during 9/11.

Laist.com wonders whether Orange County’s got the short end of the matchstick when it comes to resources, concluding,

The federal response is so shaky and unreliable that even Michael "heckuva job" Brown had the nerve to offer himself up for interviews on the fire response in a press release last night.

We may really have to reconsider California Secession after this.

While they urge readers to “keep this all in perspective,” the blog hosts another interesting post about the effects on LA sports teams:

- The San Diego Chargers are practicing in Arizona and may have to play their next game there, as over ten thousand evacuees are currently camping out in Qualcomm Stadium.
- Pepperdine's homecoming weekend was wrecked. Practices and games were canceled, and players returning from road games couldn't get back to campus.
- USC practices have been altered by the bad air quality.

Even Craigslist has jumped into the fiery fray, providing an all-purpose forum with everything form emergency information to lost-pet posts. Jason Burns at blogging.la:

Here's one entry that would make anyone tear up:

golden retriever found in santee < evacueedog > 10/23 19:52:47
we found a stray dog in santee golden retriever male looks like possible evacuee it drank three bowls of water and ate a bunch of food. call 858 414 1414.

It's fascinating, because it keeps updating. I can't seem to look away.

On a more human level, signonsandiego.com has also set up a blogspot not for news, but “A list of people, places and things to help San Diego live through and recover from the wildfires.”

From snarking at sushi restaurants to feeding lost pets, witness the power of the Web.

The DREAM Act — which would have let at least 100,000 young illegal immigrants work toward citizenship — lost a key vote in the Senate today. The measure, claimed by opponents to be a backdoor amnesty that may have legalized closer to two million people, fell eight yeas short on a cloture vote.

Of the four senators who didn't vote, two are presidential candidates: Chris Dodd, who cosponsored a very similar bill this spring but didn't join Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) on this bill or its vote, and John McCain, whose hot-and-cold relationship with immigration reform is well known. (Notably Sen. Edward Kennedy [D-Mass.], McCain's co-sponsor on the 2005 comprehensive reform bill that launched over two years of debate, also missed the vote.) Other presidential candidates in the Senate — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — voted in favor of considering the bill.

A round-up of reactions...

Truly, I did not think we made 'em that dim any more.

I was driving out of a Los Angeles hillside neighborhood today and I stopped for a red light. The driver of the car in front of me was smoking, languidly hanging his cigarette hand out of the window between drags.

The wind was up and dry leaves were stirring in the street. I watched his hand, his cigarette, the way the fellow in the crow's nest on the Titanic must have watched the looming iceberg.

And then he did it. He dropped the burning cigarette butt in the street.

No other word for it: I was gobsmacked. The radio was reporting more houses, more miles of land chewed up by fire. The sun was caramelized by the haze of smoke. The ash was still blowing in wisps off my windshield wipers. And this man flicked his lighted cigarette out of his car.

I leaped out of my car and hurried to stomp on the smoldering butt, grinding it out in the street. ''Are you nuts?'' I asked him. ''The state is burning up around here, and you toss out a lighted cigarette? That's how these fires start! Be careful!''

I half-expected a ''Geez, I'm sorry, I just wasn't thinking.'' Instead, I got a torrent of obscene abuse. Then the light changed.

I called the cops to report it, but they said they couldn't do anything. Yes, it's a misdemeanor, but they had to see it happen.

Something of the same happened to me in February, in stopped traffic on the Golden State Freeway — a man dropped his burning cigarette out of his truck. When I told him that he'd get a ticket if the CHP saw him, he assured me that they'd let him off — he was a sheriff's deputy.

I wonder about that deputy now. Is he out directing traffic as people evacuate their smoky neighborhoods? Does he live in Canyon Country or Santa Clarita, and is his own home threatened by fire?

And what do you suppose he'd do if it turned out some idiot tossing away a glowing cigarette butt had started the fire that burned down his house?

The Malibu Schadenfreude identified by Steve Lopez and others today contains a legitimate public-policy issue within its (even more legitimate?) naked class envy/hatred. Namely, that many rich folk who build mansions in canyons -- and their less-rich compadres who build McMansions in foothills -- do so with subsidized, artificially inexpensive, actuarily unsound, government-secured insurance of last resort, called the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, or FAIR for short (and ironic). FAIR, as I wrote after the last truly awful fire season, came into existence as a direct response to ... horrendous inner-city rioting in 1968. Insurers were refusing to underwrite housing in places like Watts, so Congress passed the Housing and Urban Development Act,

which allowed states to obtain federal reinsurance money if they established property insurance pools of last resort to make homeowner and business policies available to those who lived and worked in areas the insurance companies considered to be too "high risk."

It started in the ghetto, but soon branched out to floodplains, hurricane country, faultline-adjacent housing, and hillside homes in Santa Ana-bedeviled Southern California. I can't tell after a quick Internet search the raw number of California FAIR plans, and the breakdown on categories for uninsurability, but here's what I came up with four years ago:

California FAIR insures around 160,000 homes, 20,000 of which are in brush-fire areas, according to a Sept. 28 Los Angeles Times article. Of those 20,000, "about 80% of the plan's policyholders live in Southern California," the Times reported, "including pockets of Malibu, Bel-Air, Topanga Canyon, Laurel Canyon, Glendale, Pasadena and Arcadia."

That number is almost certainly higher as a direct result of the 2003 fire season, to which then-state insurance commissioner John Garamendi reacted by easing eligibility requirements.

"I want to send a message to consumers that they should never go without homeowners insurance," Commissioner Garamendi said. "And I want to emphasize to agents and brokers that this plan is now more widely available to property owners that they can't otherwise insure.

"Among the saddest things I've seen during the aftermath of the fires are people who lost their homes and did not have insurance. Not only are their homes gone, but their financial future is now incredibly bleak," the Commissioner continued. "I want to make sure that everyone who wants insurance has access to it in some form."

The order, which is effective immediately, allows homeowners to "self-certify" that they have conducted a diligent search in the private market for insurance, but were unable to secure it. Previously, applicants had to provide three written denials from insurance companies to become eligible.

The order also allows those who live in areas not specifically designated as FAIR Plan regions to more easily become eligible for coverage. The FAIR plan historically has served urban and designated brush areas deemed high risk.

"Many Californians, regardless of their location, are finding it more and more difficult to find homeowners coverage," the Commissioner said. "The FAIR Plan, in its expanded form, will provide a better safety net to help those who can't find a policy elsewhere."

The flaw in this approach is not hard to spot -- if private insurers refuse to underwrite a house because it's in too dangerous an area, maybe that's because it's in ... too dangerous an area. Further, if the state steps in to guarantee reasonably priced fire insurance in a fire zone, that wipes out most of whatever market there is for insurance priced to fit the risk. Top it all off with increased population and more intense fire seasons, and you have a recipe for actuarial failure, bailed out by all taxpayers, not just the ones who build in dangerous country.

Pointing this out, naturally, feels like an inhumane and even sadistic response to a fire that has already wiped out 1,100 homes and forced 500,000 evacuations (including that of my brother's family in northeast San Diego). Still, with the forthcoming public policy debate that is as inevitable as ash from the flames, it's worth pondering the July 2007 congressional testimony of Robert Hartwig, the president and chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute. A chunky excerpt after the jump.

He originated the role of Lancelot in the Broadway version of Camelot. He caused Elvis to shoot his TV. He's worked with Louis Malle and Tim Burton. And now he's gravely ill. If you have even one lung to donate to show business great Robert Goulet, his family would like your help:

Immediate Release: October 22, 2007

Robert Goulet, Internationally renowned singer/actor has been hospitalized for the past twenty-two days and is in critical condition.

Goulet, a Tony, Emmy and a Grammy winner, first experienced a slight shortness of breath a few months ago but dismissed it as insignificant. In mid August, after a shoulder surgery for a torn roatator cuff, the shortness of breath got worse and he consulted with his doctors. After returning from a concert in Syracuse , New York on September 20, he felt weak with increased shortness of breath. Goulet was rushed to a Las Vegas hospital on September 30, where he was diagnosed with Interstitial Pulmonary Fibrosis, a rare but rapidly progressive and fatal condition.

After 12 days in the Las Vegas hospital Mr. Goulet's medical team determined that without an emergency lung transplant he would not survive.

Since lung transplants are not performed in Las Vegas , his long-time physician, the renowned Dr. David Kipper, orchestrated his emergency transfer to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles which accepted him as a transplant patient on October 12.

Mr. Goulet was transported to Cedars-Sinai on Saturday, October 13. Currently he is critical condition, his life dependent on finding a donated lung. Cedars-Sinai medical transplant team, one of the best in the country, is doing everything possible to move forward.

One of the most dispiriting sights of Hurricane Katrina and its rescue efforts was how little was done for people's pets. People had scrambled to rooftops and cartops and treacherous little islands with their beloved animals -- and then were often told that if they wanted to be rescued, the pets -- sometimes the only thing they had left -- had to be abandoned, left behind.

ABC News reported earlier this year that at least one owner in St. Bernard Parish was forced at gunpoint by law enforcement to abandon her pet. Compounding grief with cruelty, another said a sheriff's deputy was overheard saying that once the people had left, "we're gonna have target practice tonight.'' A New Orleans grand jury indicted two deputies on felony charges of aggravated cruelty to animals; a Pulitzer Prize-winning Dallas Morning News photographer videotaped dogs being shot by law enforcement.

What does this have to do with California cities like Poway now being ravaged by the fires? Because Poway has made arrangements for small pets to join their people in emergency shelters -- and for the boarding of large ones, like horses.

People who don't love animals can't understand why it matters, and people who do love animals can't imagine thinking any other way. As massive fires swept Greece over the summer, two elderly people -- brother and sister -- insisted on looking out after their beloved donkey. All three died.

As for firefighters and rescuers and evacuation shelters, the formula is simple: helping to save the little lives will help save the big lives, too.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today declared his love of 3rd party applications for the iPhone, just a few weeks after Apple issued a software update for the iPhone that killed off all the 3rd party apps (and, in more than a few cases, killed the phone, too). The company plans to issue a software development kit for the iPhone early next year, giving developers an authorized route onto the phone's OS X-based operating system. That's bound to be easier than "jailbreaking" the phone in order to load a custom app.

It would be nice to think that Jobs changed course after reading our editorial on this issue, but that would be wrong. The best guess, judging by the hints made by Apple executives, was that Apple has long planned to develop an SDK for the iPhone. I makes no sense to do otherwise, especially when there are far more 3rd party developers coming up with novel mobile software than there are Apple employees. The only question was when to bring an SDK to market. According to Jobs' blog post, the main reason for the delay is the work required to protect iPhone users against malware. Of course, Apple could have designed the iPhone OS from the beginning to be a secure platform for 3rd party apps, as rival Symbian has tried to do with its operating systems (although not with complete success). Given the determination of the malware community, a more open iPhone presents some risk for Apple and its customers. But I suspect most consumers will gladly take that risk in exchange for a bounty of useful new apps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are very pleased to announce that Erwin Chemerinsky, the Alston & Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University, has been offered and has accepted the position of founding dean of the Donald Bren School of Law at the University of California, Irvine. As always, the appointment must be approved by the UC Board of Regents. We go forward with excitement and the unqualified belief that working together, we will create a truly outstanding law school.

Throughout the past week, we have maintained an open dialogue. Over the weekend,

Chancellor Michael Drake traveled to North Carolina to meet in person and at length with Professor Chemerinsky. Many issues were addressed in depth, including several areas of miscommunication and misunderstanding. All issues were resolved to our mutual satisfaction.

Our new law school will be founded on the bedrock principle of academic freedom.

The chancellor reiterated his lifelong, unqualified commitment to academic freedom, which extends to every faculty member, including deans and other senior administrators.   

Professor Chemerinsky expressed his excitement at working with campus leadership in founding the new school and in representing and leading the school during its growth and development.

We resolved to put recent events behind us and immediately begin to focus on our shared vision of creating a law school dedicated to providing the best education for future lawyers, to producing the finest legal scholarship, and to helping to address the legal needs of Orange County and the nation. The law school, like all great educational institutions, will be a place of great diversity, where differing viewpoints are nurtured, debated and cherished. 

Our goal is to create nothing less than one of the finest law schools in the country.

We believe that together, and with the many talented faculty and staff at the University of California, Irvine, we will succeed.

Michael V. Drake                        Erwin Chemerinsky

Chancellor                      Alston & Bird Professor of Law and Political Science

University of California, Irvine        Duke University

The big news for us Chemerinskygateologists is that some anti-Erwin right wing bogeyman have now been identified. Actually, they were identified as early as Sept. 12 in the Orange County Register, but I failed to fully notice. From the first OCR story:

Yet as early as Aug. 29, Republican political consultant Matt Cunningham said he received a forwarded e-mail in which Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich asked fellow Republicans how Chemerinsky's appointment could be stopped. [...]

Attorney Scott Baugh, chairman of the county GOP, said Chemerinsky shouldn't have been picked in the first place.

"It's not because he's a liberal," Baugh said. "It's because he's polarizing. You wouldn't hire Jerry Falwell to be the dean of religious studies at Berkeley."

The Associated Press then got the best quote of the scandal so far (I'll bold it):

A conservative Los Angeles County politician asked about two dozen people in an e-mail last month how to prevent the University of California, Irvine from hiring renowned liberal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as its founding law school dean, a spokesman for the politician said Friday.

Making Chemerinsky the head of the law school "would be like appointing al-Qaida in charge of homeland security," Michael Antonovich, a longtime Republican member of the county Board of Supervisors, said in a voicemail left with The Associated Press.

He was not available for further comment on why he was getting involved in the situation at a campus located outside his jurisdiction in Orange County.

Antonovich's e-mail "expressed his dismay with the choice for the dean of the law school and suggested that this was the wrong decision and it should be changed," said Tony Bell, a spokesman for the supervisor.

Antonovich, a local GOP stalwart, was first elected in 1980. He is a staunch conservative who has supported crackdowns on illegal immigrants, and voted against tax increases and HIV-prevention programs that distribute free syringes.

He clashed with Chemerinsky in the past when the professor supported the re