Decrepit as our Los Angeles International Airport is, at least it isn't named after a crook. The same can't be said for Anchorage's main commercial airport, which was re-christened in 2000 as Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in honor of the longtime Alaska senator and recently convicted felon who lost his once bullet-proof seat to Democrat Mark Begich.

One question for Alaska now, of course, is whether to strip Stevens' name from the state's biggest airport. But there is another lesson here: Perhaps it's best to hold off naming important landmarks after local heroes until they've either passed away (thereby leaving historians to reach a consensus on a legacy) or left political office. Either of the two conditions would have spared Anchorage's airport from bearing the name of the senator who grew to symbolize the GOP corruption that helped lead to two consecutive thumpings at the polls.

L.A. County is no stranger to politicians who'd rather not leave history to judge whether their names belong on landmarks. Take, for example, the Michael D. Antonovich Regional Park, the Michael D. Antonovich Open Space and the Michael D. Antonovich Antelope Valley Courthouse -- all named in honor of the alive-and-kicking, still-serving member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, Michael D. Antonovich. To be fair, Antonovich (who represents my district) is an important figure in L.A. County politics, having served on the board since 1980; he also worked tirelessly to secure the courthouse that bears his name for the Antelope Valley.

The lesson for Antonovich and other personality-cult pols? Keep the screw-ups to a minimum before leaving office. Or, better yet, blush a little at the idea of sharing your name with airports, parks and other public spaces (even at others' insistence) and let history sort out a few things first.

*UPDATE: Antonovich's office just called me to make clear that the supervisor did not have his hand in naming the Antelope Valley courthouse or any of the L.A. parks after him.

Top photo of Sen. Ted Stevens: Lauren Victoria Burke/AP
Bottom photo of Michael D. Antonovich: Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times

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

The chickens have  come home to roost on today's Opinion page, where Humane Society of the United States CEO Wayne Pacelle argues that egg-laying hens need more space. Proposition 2 on California's Nov. 4 ballot would force chicken farmers to use bigger cages that would allow hens to stand up and stretch their wings -- currently, they're confined to a space smaller than a "letter-sized sheet of paper." It also calls for larger confinement spaces for veal calves and sows. Writes Pacelle:

The greatest nation in the world, with the most innovative farmers, can do better than immobilize animals in severe confinement systems for their entire lives. Family farmers know food quality is enhanced by more humane farming methods, and they know there is a balance between animal care and economics.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg weighs in on Barack Obama, arguing that the only thing truly novel about him as a candidate is the color of his skin. His liberal ideology, on the other hand, dates back to Woodrow Wilson, who proposed that "the old concept of individualism needed to be replaced by a new system in which the citizen 'married his interest to the state,'" Goldberg writes. Other formative influences on Obama's thinking are the likes of Franklin D. Roosevelt and liberal philosopher John Dewey.

Dewey proposed that statism be taught as a kind of civic religion in our schools so that Americans could be raised to see the government as the solution to all of our problems.

While Goldberg beats up on Obama, author and Arizona State University Origins Initiative director Lawrence M. Krauss pounds John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin over their apparent disdain for science. Both have pointed to government funding of studies as a waste of taxpayer dollars, without recognizing the importance of the research. A $3-million study of grizzly bear DNA that was blasted by McCain is actually "essential to preserving a threatened species," Krauss writes, while Palin's casual dismissal of fruit fly research ignores the threat these bugs pose to American agriculture.

Over on the editorial page, The Times questions the timing of Sunday's raid by U.S. troops in Syria, believed to be the first U.S. attack on Syrian soil. The attack seems to be part of a continuing escalation of U.S. military activities within sovereign countries like Syria and Pakistan that are causing severe diplomatic headaches, worsening Western relations in the Middle East and complicating efforts to reach a security agreement in Iraq. If these strategic experiments by the Bush administration fail, it's the next president who will have to pick up the pieces.

Also worrying The Times is the Supreme Court's willingness to chip away at the concept of unanimous juries, allowing the state of Louisiana to convict an alleged killer even though all 12 jurors didn't agree. Only Louisiana and Oregon allow non-unanimous verdicts in criminal cases. "The unanimity requirement increases the credibility of verdicts by making it likelier that jurors will move beyond knee-jerk reactions to engage the arguments of both prosecution and defense."

Finally, The Times points out that Nebraska isn't the only state that has a problem with abandoned children. Though a poorly written law in that state led to a crisis in which parents were discarding young children and teenagers at hospitals without fear of prosecution, every state needs to do a better job of publicizing its counseling and intervention services for struggling families.

* Editorial cartoon by Tom Toles

Christopher Buckley, the son of famed editor, columnist and conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., is a fine writer and thinker in his own right, but seems to have achieved maximal fame only after slapping many of his father's biggest fans in the face.

Buckley was forced to resign as a columnist with National Review, the magazine his father founded, after endorsing Barack Obama in a blog post on The Daily Beast. The conservative reaction has been predictable: in a follow-up post, Buckley said the comments received at the Beast, an interactive venture backed by Barry Diller, has been running about 7-to-1 in favor, but at National Review it's been more like 700-to-1 against. A sampling of the reaction on Republican website gopusa.com shows many Republicans think Buckley is a communist and a traitor who should be disinherited from the grave; one commenter eloquently described Buckley's endorsement as "intellectual patricide."

But is it really? William F. Buckley, who died last February, was no fan of George W. Bush, whom he didn't regard as a true conservative, and toward the end of his life he seemed deeply dismayed by the influence of the evangelical movement over the Republican Party. Christopher Buckley, who says he was once genuinely fond of John McCain, switched over to Obama in part out of disgust at the way McCain has conducted his campaign, but largely because of his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. "What on earth can [McCain] have been thinking?" Buckley wrote. It seems almost certain that if Buckley's blue-blooded, Yale-educated father were alive today, he would have felt exactly the same way.

* Photo of Christopher Buckley by AP

That seems to be the gist of Sen. Hillary Clinton's latest ad, titled "Children":

It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.
It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?

As the voiceover continues you see, yes, a series of children sleeping peacefully. It's like the pre-slasher scene in a horror movie, just moments before they cue the creepy music and you know that shadow with the knife in hand is going to be creeping up the stairway within 30 seconds. The ad is a bold move -- though nowhere near Tom Tancredo's for sheer fear tactics -- but was it a smart one, given that "hope-mongering" is dominating the primaries?

Barack Obama, predictably, reacted to that very weakness. From the Houston Chronicle:

With the pivotal March 4 Texas primary just four days away, Obama said "the question is not who you want to pick up the call, the question is what kind of judgment will you exercise when you pick up that phone."

"In fact we have had a red phone moment when the decision was made to invade Iraq," he said, referring to the crisis line in the White House. "Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer."

Obama, who has taken a lead in most recent Texas polls, including one published today in the Houston Chronicle, said Clinton was trying to "scare up" voters with her latest ad.

Then again, the junior senator from New York wasn't gaining much ground with her "change through experience" pitch, so maybe scare tactics aren't such a bad idea. And of course, this TV spot openly plays on the maternal instincts of all those middle-class women (or the Security Moms, as Reason's David Weigel puts it) she's trying to hold on to for March 4. There's a big fat wad of irony in here somewhere ...

How in the world did I go four months without realizing that State Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), the two-time statehouse loser and one-man band for Golden State fiscal sanity (championed with suspiciously blazing eyes) has a blog! Some recent McClintockian wisdom:

On the new assisted suicide bill:

So why then is it so important to provide an official legal mechanism to do something every person is perfectly capable of doing to themselves anyway? [...] As a society, do we really want to stand on the pavement and shout, "Jump!"?

For the Left, I fear it is something far more insidious. The Left seeks to establish in law the concept that some innocent lives are not worth living, which becomes very useful if you believe the purpose of government is not to protect our natural rights – life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness (all that stuff) – but rather to "improve" society. The "Slippery Slope" argument isn't all that farfetched once you've taken a quick spin around the 20th Century.

On "escheatment":

Most Californians don't know that when they set aside money for a retirement account or put family heirlooms in a safe deposit box and leave it for more than three years, the state seizes and liquidates their holdings under a process called "escheat." [...]

Escheatment is actually a feudal concept that arose from the despotism of the dark ages. It stemmed from the principle that the feudal lord owned all within his realm, and when a person died or disappeared without heirs, his lands were property of the lord.

In 1958, this concept was revived in California, replacing the feudal lord with the state government, and the Controller was empowered to seize property that had been inactive for more than seven years.

During the budget crises of 1991 and again in 2003, this period was reduced first to five years and finally to three years for most types of accounts. This gave the state a one-time revenue surge each time, as it was able to seize three years of worth of property in a single year.

More McLiciousness, after the jump.

"Five years ago today, President Bush signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Today, American politics is so clean you could eat off it," says Ryan Sager in the New York Sun. That second sentence is sarcasm, dontcha know, and Sager rattles off the many ways the McCain-Feingold law, as it is popularly known, has either failed in its goal of cleaning up politics or succeeded in its goal of moving the political process further away from the citizenry.

The results so far: There is no evidence political corruption has been decreasing; major party candidates are on track to break all first-quarter fundraising records next month; incumbent-reelection rates—even in the face of last November's Democratic surge—remain well over 90% in the House and nearly 80% in the Senate; and the 2002 law has been used to punish small participants in the political process, not help them. I'll live the closing argument to Sager:

Last but not least—and here we get to the real nub of campaign-finance regulation—McCain-Feingold supporters promised that the bill would curb the scourge of "negative" and "dirty" advertising. "It is about slowing political advertising," Ms. Cantwell said during the debate. "Making sure the flow of negative ads by outside interest groups does not continue to permeate the airwaves."

Of course, curbing and "slowing" speech critical of politicians by "outside interest groups" (a.k.a. "citizens") is in no way a permissible goal under the First Amendment. But, ultimately, the politicians may have failed in this most nefarious goal. And it's not just the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who showed the way around it.

While the Supreme Court has so far upheld the patently anti-Constitutional ban on advertising by citizens' groups 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election, the rise of Internet politics may eventually supercede this atrocity. Witness the anti-Hillary Clinton "1984" ad that caused such a stir on YouTube just last week. Such ads, cheaper than dirt (it costs money to distribute dirt, YouTube's free), will only be more important with every election cycle.

For this reason, look for Congress to start taking an interest in "unregulated" Internet speech any day now. Money has never been the issue. Cleansing our speech of impure thoughts about politicians is the real agenda.

Courtesy of Brian Doherty.

The affable New Mexico governor and second-tier (so far) Democratic presidential hopeful stopped by our Editorial Board Wednesday for an on-the-record chat with both Ed Board members and some news-side reporters. Early on, he mentioned he was going to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. So by and by, we asked about how. Here's a transcription of the extended exchange:

How are you going to get us out of Iraq?

This is what I would do. It's clear, but it'll take a little while.

1) I would get us out of Iraq this calendar year. Without fail. When, I would let our military people decide that. But I would set a deadline determined by our military.

Number two, I would at the same time put it to the Maliki government that you've got to do three things: 1) You've got to convene a reconciliation conference of the three ethnic groups -- the Shia, the Sunni, Kurds -- and you develop a power transition of cabinet ministries, civil administration, and you use the leverage of a withdrawl to achieve that.

I would then convene a Persian Gulf Middle East peace conference that would deal with providing Iraq security, reconstruction, and their own transition.

More Richardson discussion of the peace conference, the Israeli-Palestine dispute, the Maliki government, Plan B, and the Cambodia option, all after the jump.

Over in the Calendar section, columnist Tim Rutten has an interesting review of William Middendorf's Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater's Presidential Campaign And the Origins of the Conservative Movement, and includes this charming personal anecdote about Goldwater:

Before his retirement from the U.S. Senate in 1987, I also dealt several times with Goldwater himself and always found him unpretentious, impatient with nonsense and likable — a gruff, profane, recognizably "salty" character to a fellow Westerner. Once, I rather reluctantly approached him about participating in a ridiculous discussion that had been dreamed up by one of my superiors. (As a class, editors are given to spasms of inexplicable enthusiasm and extravagant whim, which they routinely mistake for ideas.) In any event, when I finally spoke to Goldwater about it, he quite understandably took my head off. Then, sensing my embarrassment, he said, "Aw, forget it buddy. I know how those damn things get thought up. You're just doing your damn job."

Rutten ends on a question-begging note about how Goldwater would fit into today's GOP, but for that & some meandering "libertarian Democrat" links and comment you'll have to click on the jump.

In Philadelphia on Saturday, Sen. John McCain (whose politics I wrote about last week) delivered this zinger about the James Baker group's forthcoming don't-stay-the-course recommendations for Iraq: "Well in war, my dear friends, there is no such thing as compromise; you either win or you lose."

Nice one! Someone should tell ... John McCain.

In his 2004 book Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life, McCain wrote about two Navajo chiefs -- Manuelito and Barboncito -- who clashed with the U.S. Army. Manuelito was incredibly stubborn, war-like and brave; Barboncito could also fight, but he was more apt to ... compromise. In his summary paragraph on the two men, McCain reserves his highest praise for the compromiser:

One man had been strong and proud, a firebrand, who proved he had the courage to fight almost as hard and as long as his pride demanded. But neither his courage nor his strength, though very great, was inexhaustible. The other, wiser man also had exemplary courage and pride. He too could fight longer than others. But had the courage to endure defeat without despair, without losing hope. His courage proved the stronger and more effective of the two.