"If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon."

With those 10 simple words, President Obama said so much on Friday.

Obama was at the White House -- introducing his nominee to take over as World Bank president -- when he was asked by a reporter to address the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

He also offered this somewhat stock comment:

"I think all of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen. And that means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident."

Any president could have -- probably would have -- said that.

But it doesn't have the power of the "if I had a son" remark, or this:  

"Obviously this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids."

Never before has the killing of a young black man been quite so personal to one of our presidents. 

Oh, we've had presidents who did great things for civil rights -- Lyndon B. Johnson, for example.

But this is different. And it's one of the reasons that Obama's presidency is so historic, and so important to the United States.

Trayvon Martin is far from the first young black man to be killed in murky circumstances. The Times has reported on the troubling history of black residents and police in Sanford, Fla., where the shooting took place.  And The Times' editorial board weighed in on Florida's so-called stand your ground law, which may have played a role in this and a number of other shootings labeled self-defense in that state.

No, what makes this death notable is that this time our president -- and his children -- look like the victim. Heck, in other circumstances -- easily imagined circumstances, in fact -- one of them could have been the victim.

Obama did not judge anyone with his comments, did not label anyone. But when this president says, "I think all of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen" --– well, yes, any president could have said that, but there's a little something extra there.

The United States can be proud of the advances it has made in civil rights. Racism is nowhere near as overt and pervasive today.

But, of course, it's still there.

Only now, when our president speaks out about it, it's, well, personal.

And that's why it doesn't really matter if Obama is just a one-term president, or if he achieves little in terms of legislative triumphs.

Because of him, we as a nation will never be quite the same. In electing Obama, we have looked racism in the eye and said "no."  

And that's a great thing.  

ALSO:

'Obamacare' and the rationing myth

The Romney campaign's sketchy election strategy

Americans Elect -- bring democracy into the digital world

--Paul Whitefield

Photo: President Obama was asked about the killing of Trayvon Martin on Friday during a White House ceremony. Credit:  Haraz N. Ghanbari / Associated Press

There’s little doubt that technology is shaping how we live our lives, but is it also changing who is eligible for U.S. citizenship? In fact, it may be. Consider the case of Ellie Lavi, an American citizen who turned to in vitro fertilization to become pregnant. She gave birth to twins while living outside the United States. When she sought to obtain citizenship for her daughters, she discovered it wasn’t so easy.

In general, children born to or adopted by an American while overseas automatically acquire citizenship, according to federal immigration officials.

But in Lava’s case, her decision to use in vitro complicated matters.  U.S. Embassy officials in Tel Aviv informed Lavi that in order for her daughters to receive citizenship, she needed to prove that the egg or the sperm used to create the embryos came from a U.S. citizen, according to USA Today.

That’s not always so easy to prove. Clinics may not keep records of donors' citizenship status, making it nearly impossible to establish a biological link to an American citizen.

But Lavi’s case also raises a thorny issue in immigration law: Are all children of Americans born abroad entitled to citizenship?  The answer is complex and has changed over time. For example, the gender of a parent plays a key role.  In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked whether it was OK to require an unwed father to meet a higher set of standards than an unwed mother in cases in which a single parent wanted to impart citizenship to a child born overseas. The case involved whether a child born in Vietnam to a U.S. father and a Vietnamese mother who were not married was a U.S. citizen.  The high court found it was not unconstitutional to require different standards.

It will be interesting to see if the rules are challenged in court. Stay tuned.

ALSO:

--Sandra Hernandez

Photo: An egg is shown as it is prepared for fertilization. Credit: Béatrice de Géa / Los Angeles Times

The predictable plea in just about any tax campaign -- or for that matter, ad campaigns to get us to buy a small insurance plan, or some appliances -- is, "It's less money than your afternoon coffee." But like anything else, enough afternoon coffees add up to some real money.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified school board will hold a public hearing on a new parcel tax measure to raise $255 million a year, which is less than the state has been cutting from the district's budget. To get that amount, the voters would have to approve by a two-thirds majority a levy of $298 on each real estate parcel.

No sooner had the push been officially announced last week than Supt. John Deasy was breaking it down to what it would mean in smaller bites -- less than $25 a month. No one's gotten to the less-than-your-afternoon-coffee point yet, or the considerably-less-than-a-single-dinner-out-each-month point either, but it's surely only a matter of time.

All of this is absolutely true, but the question is whether this sort of breakdown is as effective as it used to be. The last few years have forced a lot of people to do away with a lot of niceties in life in order to pay down debts or overcome a period of unemployment. That one dinner out each month might be all they allow themselves, if they're still doing that. And seemingly every blogged bit of financial wisdom over the last year or two has started out with the folly of buying an afternoon coffee when you can make it at home for pennies.

People are trying to save for their retirements and for a rainy day; they've been told repeatedly about how they don't save enough, and there are signs that families are trying to improve on this score. The schools might be able to lay a claim on that extra almost-dollar a day, but for many, the rise in gasoline prices has already wiped it out.

None of this is to say that raising money for education isn't one of the finest things a society can do for itself and its children. It's just a question of whether the old sales pitches work, especially when they imply that people have adequate money and are simply being selfish or wrongheaded in the way they spend it. That might be more turnoff than incentive to vote yes.

The price of the tax isn't small. It's nearly $1,500 over the five years that it would be in effect. That's more than a few dinners -- for most voters, anyway.

Maybe a better message for our time is to acknowledge that this is a significant chunk of money but that the schools wouldn't be asking for it if they didn't need it in fairly desperate ways: to keep adult ed so illiterate adults can learn to read or new immigrants can learn the language of their adopted country, or to maintain preschool so children can enter kindergarten knowing some of those basics -- colors, letters, how to behave in a classroom -- that will be crucial to their academic success.

ALSO:

L.A., brace for balloting

A few stumbling blocks to better healthcare

'Doonesbury': The controversial abortion cartoon

--Karin Klein

Photo: LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy is seen during a regular meeting of the Los Angeles School Board on Feb. 7, 2012. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Unified School District appears poised to ask voters for a $298-a-year parcel tax. Parcel taxes are assessed on property owners and are the same regardless of the value of the land.

In a Friday press release, the district announced that the school board will consider at its meeting Tuesday whether to place the tax on the November ballot -- which pretty much means, expect to see it on the November ballot.

Two years ago, voters were unwilling to pass a much smaller parcel tax of just under $100 a year. These require a two-thirds majority -- not a common way for new taxes to go. And The Times' editorial board recommended a "no" vote, criticizing the board for not including a citizens oversight committee in the proposal, among other things.

The details aren't in yet on what this proposal would call for in the way of oversight. But certainly the schools are in much worse shape financially than they were a couple of years ago, and the economy is in somewhat better shape. Yet $300 a year isn't an insignificant sum for many families.

Would you vote for it?

ALSO:

California to some kids: No

California's flawed 'parent trigger'

Michelle Rhee's advice: Stop overpraising kids

--Karin Klein

Photo: John Deasy, Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

When it comes to raising achievement in public schools, theories abound. Not just theories. Absolute certitude. If only schools were smaller, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation used to think, before it pushed for and got such schools throughout the nation, and then its own studies found otherwise. If only we made all students take college-prep courses, others maintain, or if we linked teacher evaluations to their students' scores.

One of the more popular if-onlys, because it certainly makes sense, has been that if only we provided teachers with incentives, teachers would be more likely to stay at their schools and scores would rise. Not just extra pay for performance, but with more training, intensive mentoring and career paths that allow them to be promoted without becoming an administrator.

Chicago was among many school districts to try that out with its TAP program (Teacher Advancement Program), which it piloted in several schools. Now, a gold-standard study by the think tank Mathematica Policy Research finds that in its first four years, TAP did nothing for student achievement. It had a modest though inconsistent effect on teacher retention: 67% stayed for three years, as opposed to the 56% in schools without such a program.

This doesn't necessarily mean that teacher incentives can't work. The pay incentives for performance were not very large in the Chicago schools, averaging a little more than $1,000. Maybe the program just needs more time to show its stuff. Or maybe it needs some tweaking. At this point, though, it's just another silver-bullet theory that was far from hitting the mark.

ALSO:

Climate denial in the classroom

Sexual abuse, and LAUSD's overreaction 

Michelle Rhee's advice: Stop overpraising kids

-- Karin Klein

Photo: Javier Castillo, then a junior at Francis Polytechnic Senior High, attends an AP class. Credit: Katie Falkenberg / For The Times / May 18, 2011

Catherine Atkin, president of Preschool California, responds to The Times' Feb. 29 editorial, "California to some kids: No." Atkin's response is on behalf of the Save Kindergarten Coalition of school districts, superintendents, educators, parents, business and civic leaders and groups supporting full access to kindergarten for all children this fall. If you would like to write a full-length response to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed and would like to participate in Blowback, here are our FAQs and submission policy.

The Times' editorial board got it right that many children would benefit from transitional kindergarten, a developmentally-appropriate grade specifically designed to serve younger students who are unprepared for today's more academically advanced kindergarten.

Research shows that transitional kindergarten results in greater academic achievement, higher graduation rates and better jobs, and saves schools money by reducing the number of students entering special education and being held back a grade.

The Times got it wrong, however, about the governor's proposal to eliminate transitional kindergarten resulting in cost savings.

Cutting transitional kindergarten will save little to no money. Having already cut in half their estimates of the alleged cost savings, the governor's own staff doesn't even know how much it may or may not save. Nor do they propose to apply these supposed savings to the state deficit. This is because school districts have a strong financial incentive to provide transitional kindergarten for all students to avoid these additional cuts. That's why more than 100 districts have already come out and said they are enrolling children in transitional kindergarten despite the governor's proposal. 

Under current law, however, transitional kindergarten doesn't cost any new dollars until 2025. It doesn't expand the number of students enrolled in schools. It is simply a wiser way to spend existing funds in a more economical and efficient way to get our youngest students off to a smart start.

Cutting transitional kindergarten would be more costly in both the short and long term because it would result in more students being placed in special education, being held back or dropping out of school.

The Times also got it wrong by claiming that children will be more prepared for kindergarten merely by waiting an extra year.

Research by Deborah Stipek and others clearly shows that simply moving kindergarten entry dates back impaired students' academic performance, especially for low-income students. Being in school for a year, even in a classroom that is not developmentally appropriate, is still better than no school at all. 

What kind of a California are we creating if the Brown administration's proposal to eliminate transitional kindergarten goes forward? The proposal could deny 125,000 children their right to public school, and it is creating chaos and confusion throughout the state.

Already, some school districts are moving forward with implementation, while others are on hold. Next year we could see a child in the Los Angeles Unified School District having access to transitional kindergarten while another child in Inglewood or Compton would not. That's like offering second grade to some students but not to others. This would further widen the achievement gap and erode equal opportunity for success in school.    

Superintendents throughout the state, who are constantly asked to do more with less, are moving forward with transitional kindergarten registration because they recognize it as a wise investment. Parents, educators, business and law enforcement leaders also oppose the Brown administration's proposal.  

Although the future of transitional kindergarten in some school districts is uncertain, what is certain is that cutting transitional kindergarten is a shortsighted mistake that California can't afford.

ALSO:

The battle over 'Bully'

California's flawed 'parent trigger'

Michelle Rhee's advice: Stop overpraising kids

--Catherine Atkin

Photo: Shanette Song tells about her son's experience with learning and improving at transitional kindergarten at George Washington Carver elementary on Feb. 7. In the foreground is a poster showing the percentage of children who will be affected by Governor Brown's cutbacks. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Why, yes, he can. On Saturday night, a cast that was repeatedly called "star-studded" performed a dramatic reading of the play "8," which is more or less an excerpting of the transcripts of the federal trial on Proposition 8. Star-drenched would be more accurate.

My mother's theory was that the quality of any dramatic production tends to be inversely proportional to the number of big names in it, and more often than not, I think that holds. Fortunately, from where I sat, "8" was, for the most part, the exception. Not because the acting was necessarily special but because so many of the lines were. What makes that all the more exceptional is that most of the lines were taken straight from the transcript of the trial.

I certainly had read about the trial avidly while it was going on, but there is indeed something different about seeing it played out, even if that's an enactment. I sat there wondering, did that proponent of Proposition 8 really say something so easily picked apart? Or was the play, more likely, playing for cheap shots? After the play, I spent hours checking several out of the play's exchanges on the Internet. Yes, they were real. Perhaps they stood out more because the play only touched highlights -- although if there were any highlights that made Proposition 8's presentation look good, they were omitted.

Thankfully, the actors played it simply for the most part, letting the essential material shine through, and that includes Clooney, playing the celebrated litigator David Boies, who managed to turn the defense's single witness into more of a witness for the plaintiffs.

The least effective scenes didn't come from the trial transcripts. Those were little side dramas between the lesbian plaintiff mothers (played by Christine Lahti and Jamie Lee Curtis) and their two sons.  The scenes rang a little sappy and false to me.

But you can decide for yourself. The entire play is on YouTube for a few more days. (For some strange reason, it starts at 29:51).

ALSO:

California's lone wolf returns to Oregon: Why?

Mitt Romney, the pandering chicken hawk on Iran

Limbaugh drowns out his own message about the pill

--Karin Klein 

Photo: George Clooney, left, Martin Sheen and Brad Pitt are shown in a scene from the play "8," at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. Credit: Jason Merrit / Getty Images for the American Foundation for Equal Rights

So this is getting seriously stupid, all the campaign-season rhetoric about Iran.

First, President Obama, speaking Sunday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, says:

"I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power. A political effort aimed at isolating Iran; a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored; an economic effort to impose crippling sanctions; and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

"Iran's leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I've made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests."

Sounds clear and tough-guy enough, right?

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Presidential Election 2012

Well, apparently not to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who, The Times reported from Snellville, Ga., reacted to Obama's speech this way:

"If Barack Obama is reelected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change," Romney told a crowd of more than a 1,000 people at a pancake breakfast that his campaign hosted in this Atlanta suburb.

When an 11-year-old boy asked the candidate how he would keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Romney said Obama had not imposed "crippling sanctions against Iran." "He's also failed to communicate that military options are on the table and in fact in our hand, and that it's unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

"I will have those military options. I will take those crippling sanctions and put them into place," he said. "And I will speak out to the Iranian people of the peril of them becoming nuclear …. I'm not willing to allow your generation to have to worry about a threat from Iran or anyone else that nuclear material be used against Americans.”

Oh, and have some more pancakes, young fellow. I want you big and strong for when I send you off to war!

But seriously. Obama said all options were on the table -- and Romney still called him out. What is this, the second-grade playground?

C'mon, fellows, stop and think a minute. If you don't want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, does it make sense to keep bombarding it with threats of military action? I mean, I'm pretty sure they've got the picture by now. 

Do you really have to make a bunch of paranoid types more paranoid? Isn't this why Israel says it fears Iran -- because it has threatened to destroy Israel?

So how do all of these threats to attack Iran make it want the bomb less?

The bottom line: This is political gamesmanship at its worst. Romney and the GOP candidates court pro-Israel votes by taking an ultra-hard line on Iran. Which forces Obama to hew to a hard line as well.

But it's a very dangerous game. It could lead to war. It could get lots of people killed.

And yes, for me, it's personal too: I have two sons.One just turned 18, at which point you are -- yes, still -- required to sign up with the Selective Service System.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of hearing pandering politicians cast about for votes by offering up the lives of other people's kids in the name of national security.

Take Romney's sons: Did he offer them up as cannon fodder? Check out this New York Times story in 2007, the last time he ran, when he was asked about whether they had served in the military:

Mr. Romney expressed appreciation for the country's "volunteer army" and said "that's the way we're going to keep it." He explained his sons had made different career choices in life and had not chosen to serve in the military, but he mentioned a niece whose husband, he said, had just been called up by the National Guard ….

But he wound up his response with this: "It's remarkable how we can show our support for our nation, and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I’d be a great president. My son, Josh, bought the family Winnebago and has visited 99 counties, most of them with his three kids and his wife. And I respect that and respect all of those in the way they serve this great country."

Yes, well, Mitt, the campaign trail is a rugged place, that's for sure, especially in a Winnebago.

But ask the fathers and mothers and husbands and wives of the thousands of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan about real war.

And then, just maybe, you -- and, frankly, Obama too -- might decide to take your finger off the trigger.

And quit playing politics with the lives of American kids.

ALSO:

Afghanistan on edge

Staying out of Syria's conflict

Move over, Egypt, Iraq and Syria 

-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Mitt Romney speaks Sunday at a pancake breakfast at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Ga., outside Atlanta. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

You know what's so great about the world we live in?  It's that there are people out there right now inventing stuff you don't even realize you need.

Take Google. Its Google X lab is reportedly hard at work developing Google Goggles.

Despite the tongue-twister name, Google Goggles will apparently be the next must-have gadget. The so-called smart glasses (gee, who knew that regular glasses were "dumb"?) would somehow connect with the Internet to relay information in a heads-up display. (Shhhh. No one tell Rick Santorum. He'll want to pass a law banning Google Goggles. He thinks God gave us "eyes" for this sort of thing.)

Actually, Google Goggles remind me of Segways. You know, those really cool, high-tech scooters that relieve users of the chore of "walking"?

Anyway, here's what The Times said Wednesday about Google's latest ploy, er, toy:

Google Goggles uses photos, rather than text or voice, to conduct Web searches that can identify artwork, books, albums, contact information from a business card, logos, landmarks, wine bottles and even text to translate.

The experience offered by the glasses would be "Terminator-style" and would display information "based on preferences, location and Google's information," 9to5Google reported.

"The glasses will have a low-resolution built-in camera that will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby," the New York Times reported. Google intends that users not wear the glasses all the time, but only as needed, the report said.

Uh huh: "Only as needed." Not like that's a slippery slope or anything. Today's young people can't go five minutes without texting, surfing the Web or being on Facebook. (Heck, who am I kidding: A lot of adults can't go five minutes!) Giving these folks Google Goggles would be like those lab experiments in which rats push a button every time they want cocaine. What happens? Bing! Bing! Bing! Bye-bye happy rats!

I mean, didn't anyone at Google see "Brainstorm"? (R.I.P., Natalie Wood.)

However, it's not as if Google isn't taking precautions:

"Internally, the Google X team has been actively discussing the privacy implications of the glasses and the company wants to ensure that people know if they are being recorded by someone wearing a pair of glasses with a built-in camera," the New York Times said.

Which -- I don't know about you -- really puts my mind at ease. That should be an easy problem to solve. After all, Google is famous for worrying about privacy. (However, if Facebook is working on Friend Finder Frames, that's another story.)

OK, enough with the hyperbole. Here's what you really want to know:

According to the New York Times, Google wants the glasses on sale by the end of the year at a price ranging from $250 to $600 -- about the same as a smartphone.

Which is great -- because I thought they would be expensive or something.

Still, I'll bet Apple is toiling away right now on Apple Eyes (or would they be Apple i's?)

And why stop there? How about Nokia Noses, or Samsung Snouts, to help us smell better? And Ericsson Ears?

After all, my nose, and my ears, are pretty "dumb" too.

Bing! Bing! Bing!

ALSO: 

Google's embarrassing Safari exploit

'Creatocracy' and the Internet free-for-all

The Dow is climbing! The Dow is climbing!

 -- Paul Whitefield

Image: Illustration from a YouTube video of how Google's Google Goggles technology uses photos to conduct Web searches. Credit: Google Inc.

What do you call a 10-year-old boy in Afghanistan? Apparently, a suicide bomber.

The Times reported Tuesday that two 10-year-olds who had been arrested for trying to carry out suicide attacks, then released last year, had been rearrested -- for trying to carry out suicide bombings.

Provincial spokesman Zalmay Ayubi said the boys each had a vest full of explosives when they were detained along with three adults suspected of being militants, and that they told intelligence officers they had been recruited for suicide missions.

A statement from provincial officials quoted one of the boys, named Azizullah, as saying the pair had undergone training at a madrasa, or religious school, in Pakistan. The mullahs there told the boys they would be unharmed when they set off their bombs, Azizullah reportedly said.

News of the boys' arrest came the same week that Muslim militant Umar Patek appeared in court in Indonesia to answer charges related to deadly bombings a decade ago in Bali that killed 202 people in a nightclub. Oddly enough -- or perhaps not -- he was captured last year in Abbottabad, the Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was hiding.

But unlike the 202 people killed in the bombings, Patek gets a lawyer. And surprise, he downplayed his client's role: "His involvement in the Bali bombing ... [was] not as big as is being described. We will challenge that in a defense plea next week."

Also this week, a radical Islamic preacher, Abu Qatada, who had been under detention in Britain for most of the last 6 1/2 years, was released from jail Monday.

British officials consider him extremely dangerous, saying he encourages suicide attacks and terrorism, and they want him sent back to Jordan to face terrorism charges.

But Abu Qatada also is being given the benefit of the doubt in some legal circles. Last month the European Court of Human Rights blocked his deportation, saying he could face conviction on the basis of evidence obtained by torture.

And what do these cases have in common?  

They show the difficulty -- perhaps even the futility -- of trying to fight terrorism within the judicial system.

When religious leaders find it acceptable to use children as bombs, it says something terrible about the values of our enemies.

And although it's a tribute to modern society that we remain committed to legal rules, those same legal rules can be -- are being -- manipulated by those committed to our destruction.

It would be nice if there were an easy answer.  Perhaps the madrasas that are training children to be terrorists should be shut down?

Not likely.  As the recent controversy in the U.S. over health insurance coverage for contraceptives shows, government interference in religious freedom is a tough sell everywhere.

No, we're stuck. We must stick to our legal system. We must allow freedom of religion.

And we must fight our enemies and safeguard our soldiers and our nation.

But it would be nice if we could keep 10-year-olds out of the fight.

ALSO:

On Iran, a stark choice

Obama's contraception compromise

Goldberg: Free healthcare? That's rich

--Paul Whitefield

Photo: Taliban fighters walk with their weapons after joining the Afghan government forces during a ceremony in Herat province. Credit: Aref Karimi /AFP/Getty Images