It just goes to show what can happen if you don't pay attention to judicial elections. Los Angeles voters could unwittingly end up electing white separatist Bill Johnson to the court. Vote-by-mail ballots are available Monday, so it's important for anyone planning to vote anytime soon to first read an April 29 Metropolitan News-Enterprise profile on Johnson. The story by editor Roger Grace exposes the candidate as the author of a proposed constitutional amendment to reserve U.S. citizenship exclusively to white people "of the European race."

Last month The Times endorsed James Bianco for the Los Angeles Superior Court seat, saying that  Bianco was "impressive as a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner and would make an excellent judge." We didn't mention Johnson, his opponent, who ran for Congress in Arizona in 2006 on an anti-immigration platform; we simply focused on the fact that Bianco is the better choice.

I did note in a blog entry the previous month that Johnson helped circulate petitions for Carson minister Ronald C. Tan, whose petition campaign forced six Latino judges to be put on the ballot to face possible write-in opponents (none apparently have stepped forward).

Grace writes that Johnson wrote a 1989 book, under the name James O. Pace, called "Amendment to the Constitution," backing what became known as the Pace Amendment. Here it is, in part:

No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race, in whom there is no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more than one-eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is the British Isles or Northwestern Europe. Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States.

This would likely come as news to Reverend Tan, the Filipino-American minister who got Johnson to circulate petitions to help him oust Latino judges — so Tan could try to get Filipinos elected. Tan earlier claimed not to know that Johnson was active in the Ron Paul for president campaign; here's something else for him to be surprised about.

The MetNews story also notes that Johnson ran for Congress in Wyoming 1989 under the name Daniel Johnson in a special election to replace Dick Cheney, who had been named secretary of defense in the administration of the first President Bush. Times stories from the 1980s connect attorney Daniel Johnson with the League of Pace Amendment Advocates and identify him as the author of the Pace amendment.

So here's a candidate for judge who espoused (and may still support) disenfranchisement and deportation of non-whites, and who ran for Congress from two different states, once under a different name, while maintaining his law practice in Los Angeles.

(Full disclosure: I worked for Grace at the Metropolitan News-Enterprise for 11 years. But I wish I'd gotten this story before he did.)

Could voters elect Johnson? Yes, they could, if they don't learn anything about the candidates. The MetNews story — and, I hope, our link to it — will help voters make wise choices.

And in case there was any doubt, we still support Bianco, now more vociferously than before.

UC Santa Barbara professor Brian Fagan warns that our future survival in a drier world depends on our ability to adapt to our environment, and writer Francis Fukuyama blames the Chinese government's weakness, not strength, for domestic human rights violations. Economist Korinna Horta and attorney Delphine Djiraibe argue that Darfur cannot be saved without fixing Chad first, and Jonah Goldberg thanks the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for revealing how radical he really is:

Asked whether he stood by his assertion that the U.S. government created HIV as part of a genocidal program to wipe out the black race, Wright mostly dodged but ultimately offered this nondenial denial: "I believe our government is capable of doing anything." He also offered a zesty defense of Louis Farrakhan -- "one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century" -- and dismissed criticism of Farrakhan as an anti-Semite.

To cap it off, Wright threw Obama under the bus. First, the pastor explained, Obama himself had taken Wright out of context. Moreover, Obama neither denounced nor distanced himself from Wright. And, besides, anything that Obama says on such matters is just stuff "politicians say." They "do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls." So much for Obama's new politics.

The editorial board warns parents that avoiding vaccinations for fear of autism could result in a future epidemic, and gives a reluctant green light to MTA's decision to turn some carpool lanes into toll lanes. The board also condemns the Supreme Court for upholding Indiana's voter ID law:

Indiana has a right to safeguard the integrity of its elections, but its identification requirement imposes sufficiently burdensome rules that it raises the question of whether the state is actually trying to discourage certain types of people -- the poor, the elderly, the infirm -- from exercising their right to vote. It's one thing to deter fraud; it's another to deter voting, particularly by certain classes of voters.

Readers react to the Dodger Stadium makeover. Ken Chane writes:

The Dodgers' new stadium plan sounds and looks wonderful. But before it attracts larger crowds, the current chaotic parking situation should be corrected. Management keeps touting the "wonderful fan experience." No matter how great it may be, it dissipates quickly when it's time to go home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you do when a guy high in the running for most hated man in the world teaches at your law school? If you're Christopher Edley Jr., dean of UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall law school, you half-heartedly defend the professor while highlighting your powerlessness to do anything -- as he did last week did for his embattled faculty member John C. Yoo.

Yoo, of course, is the Berkeley law professor best known as the former Bush administration lawyer who authored the infamous "torture memo" of 2003. Besides laying out a legal argument he thought could protect practitioners of almost certainly illegal "enhanced interrogation" methods from prosecution, Yoo exhibited in his writings a stunning disregard for international law and a creepy nonchalance about expanding the president's terrorism-fighting authority. That much Edley denounces, just as the administration did when the public got wind of the memo. Edley's criticism of Yoo's work in the Bush administration isn't surprising.

More intriguing is how Edley approaches the question he set out to answer: Why is Yoo a professor at such a prestigious university when his legal advice to the most powerful man in the world has come under such resounding criticism by his colleagues? This is where Edley's insight sheds some light on the machinations of the great academy; ready why after the jump.

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.

Like the late Rodney Dangerfield, state constitutions "get no respect" in discussions of constitutional law. A rare exception came in this week's oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the District of Columbia's gun-control law. In trying to puzzle out the original meaning of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Justice John Paul Stevens asked Walter Dellinger, D.C.'s lawyer: "To what extent do you think the similar provisions in State constitutions that were adopted more or less at the same time are relevant to our inquiry?" Dellinger bobbed a bit, replying that various state constitutional provisions  on the right to keep and bear arms are written in "different terms."

Dellinger surely knew that at least one state, my native Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, has a venerable state constitutional provision dealing with guns that sounds as if it was written by the NRA: "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned" Hmm. maybe I was violating the state constitution when I was writing all those pro-gun-control editorials for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (I'm safe now; California's constitution lacks a little Second Amendment.)

Unlike the "real" Constitution, state constitutions are sometimes prolix documents. For example, their protections of religion and freedom of expression often read like the First Amendment on steroids. The First Amendment is content to say that Congress shall make no law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Here's the equivalent provision in the Pennsylvania Constitution's Declaration of Rights:

The printing press shall be free to every person who may undertake to examine the proceedings of the Legislature or any branch of government, and no law shall ever by made to restrain the right thereof. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and every citizen may freely speak, write and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty. No conviction shall be had in any prosecution for the publication of papers relating to the official conduct of officers or men in public capacity, or to any other matter proper for public investigation or information, where the fact that such publication was not maliciously or negligently made shall be established to the satisfaction of the jury; and in all indictments for libels the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.

Whew!

Ironically, in this case more (verbiage) is less: Pennsylvania's version of the First Amendment is less friendly to the press, particularly in libel cases, than the First Amednment as it has been interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hunting is big in Pennsylvania; so are libel suits by public officials, including judges. Too bad the framers of the constitution didn't write: "The right of freedom of the press shall not be questioned"

New York University professor Robert E. Wright argues that when it comes to the economy, America needs a second party -- since Democrats and Republicans offer no choice at all. "Prozac Nation" author Elizabeth Wurtzel wonders what happened to feminism in a "Girls Gone Wild" world, and Jonah Goldberg explains why Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright is wrong for Obama:

A Rasmussen poll released Monday found that 29% of blacks surveyed said Wright's comments made them more likely to support Obama, while only 18% said the opposite, and half said Wright's comments would have no effect on them.

That is a symptom of a problem that platitudinous "hope" cannot alone remedy.

The editorial board eyeballs a controversial gun-control case being heard in the Supreme Court today, and shakes its head at the Fed's short-term thinking in the Bear Stearns disaster:

The Bush administration tried to dole out a ration of calm Monday. The country is going through challenging times, President Bush said, but "our capital markets are functioning efficiently and effectively." White House Press Secretary Dana Perino later added, "This isn't about bailing anyone out." Neither happens to be true, though, and that's why the stock market gyrated from open to close.

Readers also react to Rev. Wright's racially incendiary comments. Richard Hawkins asks:

If Obama is to be dismissed for his pastor's rantings, how am I to judge members of the Catholic Church who still attend in spite of its crimes against children? How do I judge members of evangelical churches when their pastors cry out, "I have sinned against God"? How far do we take guilt by association? ... To bind Obama to his pastor's every word is absurd.

Cartoonist Tom Toles keeps score on the Bush administration's never-ending game of whack-a-mole in the Middle East, and Tim Rutten explores the appeal of made-up memoirs, after revelations that gang-life tell-all "Love and Consequences" was an elaborate hoax. Writer Jonny Steinberg says a human approach is the missing piece needed to solve Africa's AIDS puzzle, and "Ask a Mexican!" author Gustavo Arellano pulls on his cowboy boots to defend John Wayne Airport against an encroaching name change:

Five years ago, I would've been ecstatic about such a change. For myself and many other county residents, John Wayne Airport was an embarrassment ... And the statue! A 9-foot-tall bronze likeness of Wayne -- Stetson, boots, kerchief, vest, holster, bullets missing from his gun belt, next to a massive American flag -- stands near baggage claim, a towering reminder of our hubris and tackiness.

But with maturity, I've come to realize the name's necessity. John Wayne Airport represents much more about Orange County than a cursory glance reveals. It's the epitome of the aphorism from Wayne's 1962 classic, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance": When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

The editorial board hails the latest U.N. sanctions on Iran, and wonders what happened to Measure W's promise to build more parks and playing fields. The board also calls on the L.A. fire department to get a handle on workplace discrimination:

The Los Angeles Fire Department is breaking new ground in the landscape of mismanagement: It has so bollixed a case of harassment that it's paying off legal claims to the rank-and-file victim and to managers it claimed were responsible for the investigation....

Still, you can say this for the top brass: The Tohill and Burton case proves that when it comes to race-based mistreatment, they don't discriminate.

Readers react to a March 2 Op-Ed bidding farewell to "Israeli guilt." Arnaud Forestier writes:

Yossi Klein Halevi suggests the existence of Israeli empathy toward Palestinians. To take him seriously, one would have to revisit the definition of empathy as encompassing such things as a brutal 40-year occupation, large-scale bombings, collective punishment tactics and economic strangling ... If that is empathy, and if Israelis no longer have to feel guilty, then God help us.

Council on Foreign Relations senior fellows Charles Kupchan and Ray Takeyh advise the U.S. to find a new, nonaggressive strategy to "bring Tehran to heel," and cartoonist Lisa Benson wonders whether Texas will end up bucking Hillary Clinton in tonight's Democratic primary. Meanwhile, New Republic senior editor Jonathan Chait suggests Clinton admit defeat and "go gentle into that good night," and Temple University mathematics professor John Allen Paulos wonders why, in America's shifting religious landscape, atheists are still stuck at the bottom of the totem pole. George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley marvels at the manipulations of Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey:

I suddenly realized that there was something profound, even beautiful, in Mukasey's action.

In his twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey's Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president -- and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.

Such a perfect paradox is no easy task. Most attempts fall apart because of some element of logical consistency.

The editorial board serves up its recipe for streamlining the beleaguered Food and Drug Administration, and tells Mayor Villaraigosa's critics to quit complaining about his globetrotting ways:

Los Angeles had a stay-at-home kind of mayor and didn't much like it, so the city dumped James K. Hahn and voted in a player. Antonio Villaraigosa told voters they lived in a big city, one worthy of a big-city mayor who could hold his own not just with high-profile mayors from New York or Chicago but with presidents. He said he would go to Sacramento, Washington or anywhere else to put L.A. at the top of the national political agenda. On this point, he was as good as his word. It was no surprise when he went to Asia or Latin America. It should be no surprise now that he is spending so much time out of state in a last-ditch effort to salvage Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign.

Readers react to Gov. Schwarzenegger's plans to deal with the state's budget problems. "Real Republicans," writes Karen Reisdorf, "will stand up and declare that educating our children is more important than protecting their playthings, i.e. yachts, airplanes and luxury RVs. In the face of the unfunded mandate in No Child Left Behind, only a selfish juvenile would do otherwise."

Writer Andrew Keen rethinks "the civic value of anonymous speech in the digital age":

Today, when cowardly anonymity is souring Internet discourse, it really is hard to understand how anonymous speech is vital to a free society.... it is the responsibility of all of us -- parents, citizens and lawmakers -- to ensure that contemporary Web users don't behave like antisocial canines. And one way to achieve this is by introducing more legislation to punish anonymous sadists whose online lies are intended to wreck the reputations and mental health of innocent Americans.

Also on the Op-Ed page, Tim Rutten calls Catholics the last true 'swing vote,' and Meghan Daum digs into Michelle (and Barack) Obama's post-baby-boomer past to explain why Michelle recently said, "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country."

The editorial board wonders why L.A.'s award-winning tapwater still doesn't get any love, and urges state officials to take a broader look at the healthcare industry's suspect business practices. The board also tries to figure out how blowing up cell phone towers will help the Taliban gain popular support:

The question is, does the Taliban have to win hearts and minds to prevail in Afghanistan, or can it succeed simply by driving the foreigners out? If it cares about cultivating public support, then messing with people's beloved cellphones is a strategic mistake. But what if its strategy is to terrorize and intimidate the Afghan people, make Karzai and the West look impotent, sabotage progress and wear out Western patience? Will the Afghan people submit? Are their cellphones worth fighting for?

Readers react to Heather Mac Donald's Feb. 24 commentary, "What campus rape crisis?" Gemma Drouhard writes:

Although everyone is entitled to an opinion, and certainly the Opinion section is the place for this, newspapers have a responsibility to the dignity of human beings. If The Times believed this, it never would have printed Mac Donald's horrible article. Rape is never the fault of the victim, and it does no good to blame the women who must deal with this tragedy. In the future, think about who you are hurting before publishing such irresponsible journalism.

The efforts of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to differentiate themselves on the issue of gun ownership has been, like so many of their efforts to differentiate themselves, a kind of off-key opera buffa. Does Obama support individual ownership or a universal ban? Does Clinton really believe law-abiding citizens should be allowed to own guns? Do either of them believe the right of self-defense is anything but a quaint conceit? Are Second Amendment stalwarts right to view this as a choice between one gun grabber and another?

Richard Feldman, author of Ricochet; Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist, hips us to an obscure but telling difference in how the two candidates view these issues. It involves law-abiding citizens, shades into self-defense in its most elemental form and arguably reveals a great deal about how the two view the use of force — that is, the use of force against law-abiding citizens by the state. And there's a clear distinction.

I give you Vitter Amdendment No. 4615, which was voted on in the U.S. Senate at 6:13 PM on July 13, 2006. Here's the text:

To prohibit the confiscation of a firearm during an emergency or major disaster if the possession of such firearm is not prohibited under Federal or State law.

The amendment, which was attached to a Homeland Security appropriations package, was approved 84-16. The bill itself was signed into law in October 2006.

If the confiscation issue seems recondite, set your wayback machine to the post-Hurricane Katrina period, when wild and largely inaccurate tales of disaster-area pillage gave way to revelations about how incompetent police chief Eddie Compass and other authorities eventually went about pacifying the Big Easy. In particular, some footage of cops manhandling Patty Konie — an elderly resident seen holding (by the barrel) a revolver that looked like something that would have blown up in Wild Bill Hickock's tiny hands — provided a shock even to those who don't normally get excited about such matters.

This was the context in which the Vitter amendment was introduced. Here is how the Democratic front-runners voted:

Clinton (D-NY), Nay

Obama (D-IL), Yea

Neither campaign has responded to my request for more information on their votes and decision-making processes. Will update if they do.

There's an old tension here between individual rights and the need to establish (by force) police supremacy in a chaotic and dangerous situation. That question dates back to frontier times, or at least to George Romero's The Crazies, and it's not one we can answer here. But post-Katrina weapons confiscation did provide some pretty clear choices: If you really think legally owned handguns were degrading, or in any other way influencing, the security situation in New Orleans in 2005, you've got your ideology where your common sense ought to be. And if you don't believe in the right to bear arms to protect your life and home during a days-long period when the authorities are nowhere to be seen, well, how can you say you believe in that right at all?

Can anything or anybody replace Barack Obama in readers' hearts? Not this week: Despite a selection of hot topics from Scientology to gun control to torture to the Christian Oscars, and even a surprise return by perennial favorite Stonehenge, Sarah M. Miller's Obama Blowback drew more traffic than the rest of the Top 10 combined. Hats off to Obama for continuing to draw readers and voters, and to you for reading the L.A. Times Opinion pages.

1. Open letter to Barack Obama, by Sarah M. Miller
2. The invasion of America, by Andrew P. Napolitano
3. A leap beyond faith, by Michael Shermer
4. 'Prayers' just won't do, by Tim Rutten
5. Hola, Obama, by the editorial board
6. Stonehenges all around us, by Craig Childs
7. Peter Principle of award shows, by Joel Stein
8. Political surge in Iraq, by the editorial board
9. Fidel's slow fade, by Jon Lee Anderson
10. Shame, Sen. McCain, by the editorial board

Gregory Rodriguez defends the Hollywood sign against Chicago companies, and cartoonist Joel Pett comments on Barack Obama's Reagan-esque appeal. Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew P. Napolitano strikes out at the creeping invasion of constitutional rights to privacy, and Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer explains what recent protests by Anonymous reveal about Scientology and religion:

Envision converting to Judaism but having to pay to learn the story of Abraham and Isaac, Noah and the flood or Moses and the Ten Commandments. Or imagine joining the Catholic Church but not being told about the crucifixion and the resurrection until you have reached Operating Theological Level III, which takes many years and many tens of thousands of dollars.

That is, in essence, how the Church of Scientology dispenses its theology, leading ex-members, critics and journalists to divulge Scientology's sacred myth all over the Internet and in such national publications as the New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine, and even on the animated TV series "South Park."

The editorial board applauds the political surge in Iraq, and wonders whether Harvard professors' online publishing venture will ever have the cachet of "Obama girl." The board also defends philanthropist Eli Broad's art deal with LACMA:

LACMA has long struggled to rise above its mishmash of buildings and installations. Its new addition marks one more step in that continuing campaign, one that is promising if not always successful. With Govan's imagination and Broad's generosity -- whether in the form of loans or gifts -- it is solidifying a place at the center of California's high culture.

Readers react to an editorial on local teachers unions. "Finding solutions to ailing schools is never an easy task," writes Randi Weingarten, president of United Federation of Teachers, New York, "but pitting two unions against each other is not the answer."

Columnist Jonah Goldberg describes his experience as a guest on "The Daily Show":

It started civilly enough, discussing my new book, "Liberal Fascism." But things got sufficiently testy that we spent nearly 20 minutes swearing and sparring, and only six minutes aired. The result was "choppy as hell," Stewart had to concede.

Largely left on the cutting-room floor were some important points that might have made my book seem a bit more nuanced....

Former Gov. Gray Davis throws his support behind Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget cuts. Dickinson College's Crispin Sartwell examines the twists and turns in presidential candidates' image. Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman remind us that it's not 1973, and pro-choicers have to take back the moral high ground.

The editorial board also marks the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, supports Propositions 94, 95, 96, and 97, and says declining record sales mean time for the industry to rethink its business model.

Readers react to President Bush's proposed stimulus package. L.A.'s Scott Kaye says it could be Bush's "most cynical proposal since his post-9/11 recommendation that we go shopping."

Malakkar Vohryzek's recent Blowback on the L.A. Trade Tech raid inspired Jack Cole of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition to sit right down and write the L.A. Times a letter. We spoke with Cole a few months ago, and he's still fighting to bring the war on drugs to a peaceful conclusion:

As a retired police officer, I want to congratulate Malakkar Vohryzek on his superb analysis of the failed war on drugs (see "drug prohibition doesn't work," Los Angeles times, January 11, 2008).

For years our children have reported it is easier to buy illegal drugs than to buy beer and cigarettes because people selling illegal drugs don't them ask for age identification.

The Times' editorial board wraps up its American Values series with 'The blessings of liberty':

The Bush administration soon will be consigned to history, and not a moment too soon. The end of this cynical, mean-spirited presidency provides the opportunity for a renewal of generosity and hope, for a widening of political and cultural horizons, for a return to strength tempered by humility, for an era of decency and mutual respect rather than the blunt exercise of force.

That will be the mission of the next president.

The board also raises an eyebrow at a lawsuit filed by J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. seeking to block the publication of the "Harry Potter Lexicon."

The Opinion page caps off 2007 with a quiz on the year's "hard-to-forget moments," while columnist Joel Stein looks into his Magic 8 Ball and makes some predictions for next year. Under "Presidential election":

Barack Obama wins the general election but does not carry the Northeast, due to New Englanders' ingreasingly implausible excuse, "It's not that we're racist; it's just that the South would never elect a black person."

Readers weigh in on oil and green energy, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's hunting prowess and the billion-dollar child-support suit against Donald L. Bren. Snarks John Rabe,

I hereby publicly offer to be adopted by Bren. For a monthly remittance of $1,000, I promise to buy him one tie on Father's day, one pair of slippers and/or a robe at Christmas, and one joke card on his birthday....

For my part, the contract will be considered null and void if I get a DUI, disparage Bren in public or cause the police to be called to a noisy beach-house party.

As we have examined the values and candidates in this election, we, the members of The Times’ editorial board, have not had a lot of praise for President Bush. We disagree with him on the war in Iraq, on Guantanamo, on abortion, on the right of gays to marry, on global warming… I could go on.

That trend continues with today's piece in our series, as we have our issues with the president in areas such as healthcare and school vouchers. Still, we do sometimes agree, and two places where we converge are aired in today’s editorial. As we note, President Bush has been an important educational advocate and leader, and he has done his best to devise and win approval for comprehensive immigration reform.

So, while we’re not likely to find ourselves missing President Bush much after he goes home to Crawford, we appreciate that he has done much to elevate the place of education in our national dialogue. No Child Left Behind isn’t perfect — not by a longshot — but Bush’s advocacy of it helped bring Republicans into the conversation and expand the sense of a president’s responsibility in an area traditionally left to the states. Bush deserves credit, and we’re happy to give it.

On immigration, he has less to show for his work, but there, we can only hope that the next president will build on what Bush tried to do and finally create a mechanism for those who are in the country illegally to stay and become citizens. That’s a worthy goal for Bush’s successor. Unfortunately, the candidates so far aren’t doing much to inspire confidence that they’ll take up that cause.

As those of you who have been reading know, these editorials all have been framed in terms of eternal American values, but examining those values in fresh light yields some reminders. Education, for instance, now dominates much of our national political debate, but it barely existed as a public right in colonial America and through much of the 19th century. As a matter of “the general welfare,” then, it is a fairly new concept. Immigration, by contrast, was as vital to early America as it is today, testing some of our systems, yes, but also supplying the nation with new ideas and cultures and allowing to become a truly polyglot enterprise, unlike any country on earth. We only wish that more of our neighbors shared our faith in this country to absorb its migrants to adapt to them and with them.

Today’s editorial is the penultimate piece in our nine-part series, which we will conclude next week and then turn to our endorsements for president. We welcome your reactions — so far, we’re posted more than 125 entries on our discussion boards, and we’ve received several hundred letters and emails. The range of response has essentially covered the waterfront, from the much-appreciated admirer who wished he could elect an editorial page as president (who doesn’t?) to the less-impressed critic who this week wrote to say, simply: “your editorial again shows the world you are the scum of the earth.” Oh well.

Of the great purposes for which the Constitution was drafted — to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility and the like — the call for a “common defense” is perhaps the most readily acknowledged in modern life. No one disputes this nation’s right to defend itself or its allies.

And yet, our modern sense of defense is far different from the one the founders first struck. When “the common defense” first became an obligation of the government, the United States lacked and feared strong central authority, even as the states struggled without it. The Constitution supplied that authority, and gave the new nation the structural institutions that allowed it to grow.

Still, the development of a massive defense apparatus was slow. As America set out on the course that has brought us to the present, its early years were defined in significant measure by this nation’s physical isolation from Europe. Distance allowed the United States to mature without the same defense burdens shouldered by its allies, but as America’s remove from the world diminished, our sense of defense has altered as well.

Today’s defense is a gigantic obligation of the federal government and a singular preoccupation of many Americans. We are engaged in two wars at this writing, and there are those who want to fight a third, against Iran, before the sand runs from the glass of this administration. Meanwhile, the scale of our national defense would surely stagger any of those who drafted the nation’s founding language. As we noted in an editorial just last week, none other than Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates recently pointed out that the Pentagon’s healthcare budget alone is larger than the entire American investment in building alliances through the State Department.

But, as we argue in today’s installment of our series on American values and the national campaign, this administration has confused bellicosity with strength. The president has taken America’s exceptional history and place in the world to such an extreme that he and his administration have substituted bluster for leadership. The result is a more dangerous world and a more isolated America.

A final word on defense: It is tempting for every generation to see its challenges as singular to their time and place. But as we note in today’s Cold Copy, the last time the editorial board of The Times was contemplating a presidential endorsement, it did so in the shadow of the war in Vietnam. Despite their long appreciation for President Nixon — who received the last presidential endorsement by The Times — our predecessors took a firm and principled position in 1970 that the time had arrived for the United States to leave Vietnam. Earlier this year, we took a similar view of the war in Iraq. “Having invested so much in Iraq, Americans are likely to find disengagement almost as painful as war,” we wrote on May 6. “But the longer we delay planning for the inevitable, the worse the outcome is likely to be. The time has come to leave.”

That editorial made us the first very large American paper to call for such a withdrawal. As you consider our reflections on “the common defense,” I hope you’ll also take time to read the editorial from May and still another few moments to listen to the quiet call of history that comes through the Cold Copy pieces of the Vietnam era.

With today’s installment of our series on the 2008 campaign, we move the discussion squarely to our system of justice – and particularly to the stresses on our liberties that the war on terror has created. Liberty, the value we explore today, is an embattled American idea, one honored in peacetime and all-too often abrogated during war.

In the long and recurring clash between liberty and security, we side with liberty and maintain that America’s long-term interests are best served by the jealous protection of its freedoms. The Cold War, for instance, was a clash of governments, but also of ideas, including the question of how much personal liberty a society can and should sanction. In that international competition for loyalty, America’s freedoms – its civil rights movement, its open markets, its acceptance and embrace of unpopular ideas – proved a far more compelling ideology than that of communism. We won the Cold War in large part because ours was a freer country than that of our adversary.

That said, our predecessors on this page have not always seen these questions quite the way we do today.

In January of 1942, with Californians on edge since the bombing of Pearl Harbor and with their fears stoked by the release of a study of the attack that suggested support for it among Hawaii’s Japanese population, The Times joined a clamorous call for the removal of the state’s Japanese. “California is a theater of war,” The Times editorialized on January 28 of that year. “The time has come to realize that the rigors of war demand proper detention of Japanese and their immediate removal from the most acute danger spots.

“It is not a pleasant task,” we then concluded. “But it must be done and done now. There is no safe alternative.”

That was a shameful moment in the history of this paper – one barely made less odious by the fact that our predecessors were in good company. Such devoted civil libertarians as Justice Hugo Black, President Franklin Roosevelt and then-California Attorney General Earl Warren, who 11 years later would write Brown vs. Board of Education, were among those who supported the internment, which began soon after that editorial was published. The internment locked up 110,000 Americans who were charged with no crime, a deprivation of liberty on a vast and abominable scale.

But we learn from history, and today our faith in liberty is more resolute, less insecure than it was in those frightening first months of America’s World War II. We on the editorial board believe wholeheartedly in freedom. We rely on the Supreme Court to protect it. And we hope for a President who, unlike the present occupant of the office, shares our devotion to it and sees it as part of our strength, not as a weakness.

Remember California's short-lived experiment with open primary elections? After Proposition 198 passed in 1996, Californians were allowed to vote for any presidential candidate in a primary election regardless of party registration. Understandably, partisans found this a headach. State Democratic, Republican and other parties sued, and the U.S. Supreme Court nixed the California open primary in 2000, ruling that Prop. 198 violated a party's freedom of association.

Virginia has its own version of an open primary, and it too is a thorn in the side of the party establishment. So how does the state GOP respond? Vote Republican in the primary, and promise to vote Republican in the general election:

If you're planning to vote in Virginia's February Republican presidential primary, be prepared to sign an oath swearing your Republican loyalty.

The State Board of Elections on Monday approved a state Republican Party request to require all who apply for a GOP primary ballot first vow in writing that they'll vote for the party's presidential nominee next fall. There's no practical way to enforce the oath.

Virginia doesn't require voters to register by party, and for years the state's Republicans have fretted that Democrats might meddle in their open primaries.

Tit for tat — very creative. Perhaps California could've come up with a similar solution to save its open primary: You get to violate parties' freedom of association in February, and parties get to violate yours in November. Everyone's rights are violated. Or upheld. It's a wash either way.

Hat tip to the New York Times' Opinionator.

Columnist Rosa Brooks notices an unusual turn of events:

Peace in our time?

All of a sudden, we're getting foreign affairs news that seems, well, good. The Israelis and Palestinians are restarting the long-stalled peace process. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has stepped down as army chief of staff and promises henceforth to serve only as a civilian leader. And violence in Iraq appears genuinely to be down.

After years of unremittingly bad news, no one seems quite sure what to do with good news. Should we cheer? Take back all those mean things we've said about George W. Bush? Or check to see if we still have our wallets, because it's probably some sort of trick?

Yale University's Bruce Ackerman says Bush isn't the only decider, and can't lock in a new Iraq treaty without congressional approval. Michael Fullilove, of the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, explains what could happen now that one of Bush's staunchest allies has been ousted. And Jeffrey Korchek quits copywriting for detergent boxes, text messaging, and writing notes for his kids to skip P.E., all in solidarity with striking writers.

The editorial board objects to the unfair allocation of transportation bond funds, and OKs San Diego County's surprise walk-throughs of welfare applicants' homes. The board needles L.A. Unified for spending money on image instead of solutions.

Readers react to a city plan to speed up traffic along Olympic and Pico Boulevards. L.A.'s Ellen Smucker says, "We need to craft solutions that aren't focused on finding ways to move more cars more quickly past quiet residential neighborhoods."

Fatima Bhutto debunks her aunt Benazir's pro-democracy claims:

Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)

Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.

The Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy says the Supreme Court has a chance to reaffirm the right to own guns. Matthew DeBord says Zipcar and Flexcar's automobile-sharing revolution is about to begin. And Pamela Druckerman says that even expats get consumer fever around the holidays.

The editorial board evaluates Supt. David L. Brewer's first year, and the results aren't good. The board also follows up the the Los Angeles Unified School District's payroll problem, and lists the lessons the pope might learn on his visit to the U.S. in April.

Readers react to a two-part Times series on one marine's service in the Iraq war. Alhambra's Patricia Huff says, "After looking at the photo of the Marlboro Marine, it looks like Jesus wasn't the only one who took on the sins of the world."

Columnist Jonah Goldberg insists that rich people aren't rich enough for all the taxes Democrats would have them pay:

What does it do to a democracy when people see government as something only other people should pay for?

Let's take seriously for a moment the notion that rich people are an inexhaustible army of Energizer bunnies that just keep going and going, no matter what taxes you throw in their path. You can see where Democrats get this idea, after all. The top 1% of wage earners already provide nearly 40% of federal income tax revenues. And the bottom half of taxpayers contribute only about 3%.

Taxes are a necessary evil. But their silver lining is that they foster a sense of accountability and reciprocity between the taxpayer and the tax collector. Indeed, democracy is usually born from this relationship.

Eric J. Weiner offers a history of the latest financial bubble. Michael Rowan and Douglas Schoen ask if Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will slip the world into a recession if his countrymen grant him the power to restrict oil production. Blue Frontier Campaign president David Helvarg says the bay Otis Redding made famous is now desperately polluted after a fuel spill.

The editorial board says the LAPD's Muslim mapping plan sounds less like the modern, trustworthy force and more like the LAPD of old. The board also says Bush's "time bomb" defense of practices like waterboarding doesn't make sense. Finally, the board argues that, after easing crack sentencing disparity on Nov. 1, Congress should finish what it started.

Readers react to the LAPD mapping plan. L.A.'s Margaret Manning asks, "Until the LAPD eliminates the homicides, burglaries, rapes and other crimes actually within its jurisdiction, shouldn't it leave what sounds suspiciously like intelligence gathering and social work to others?"

Tina Dupuy says forget the cigarette tax and institute the snack tax:

Democratic leaders in the Legislature, in the latest bid to get uninsured Californians covered, this week proposed to tax (drum roll) . . . tobacco . . . .

I have a better proposal: a snack tax. We had one for about 18 months in the early 1990s. Granted, it was shot down in the polls by a huge margin, but that never stopped George W. Bush or Richard Nixon, or Dennis Kucinich for that matter, from making a comeback. In fact, a tobacco tax also was voted down here last year. So we're clearly not afraid of reruns.

I have a motto: Alliteration makes for good legislation. So we can sell the snack tax like this: Tack 10 cents onto anything beige, battered or bite-sized.

Demos fellow and American Prospect co-editor Robert Kuttner accuses government of forgotting the fiscal lessons of the 1920s. Akbar Ganji, a leading Iranian political dissident living in exile, calls Iran's government the master of the double standard. Former Times columnist and editor Bill Boyarsky tells how Jesse Unruh's shrewd power plays gave California its civil rights law.

The editorial board is grateful that the surge is bringing down violence, but notes that it hasn't sped up reconciliation or an exit strategy. The board examines targeted advertising, particularly the mixed-results model provided by social networking site, Facebook.com. And the board defends the 1st Amendment rights of a Kansas church, despite its hateful message.

Readers react to columnist Rosa Brooks' claim that torture is replacing abortion as the litmus test for GOP candidates. Mary MacElveen of Sound Beach, N.Y. asks, "Although I abhor torture because it goes against everything America stands for, as a person who recently changed her position from pro-choice to pro-life, I ask: Where are these same humanitarians when it comes to abortion?"

Columnist Jonah Goldberg critiques liberals and conservatives who place rhetoric over policy:

...both sides are certain they have staked out the intellectually superior ground. So they fixate on tactics, packaging and spinning. A lot has been written, including by myself, about how liberals consider political strategy more important than ideas. But it's worth noting that conservatives fall prey to such lines of thinking too, even as we take pride in our squabbles about liberty versus virtue.

Duke University professor Henry Petroski follows the evolution of the toothpick through human history. David A. Lehrer and Joe R. Hicks decry the Los Angeles City Claims Board's award of $95,000 to Gloria Jeff, linking it to "a worldview in which racial/ethnic identity is more important than any other factor in judging a person." Meanwhile, Mark Weisbrot cheers the role of Argentina's powerful first couple in their country's economic upswing.

The editorial board tips its hat to the Georgia Supreme Court for freeing Genarlow Wilson, originally sentenced to a decade in prison and branded a child molester. The board eyes upcoming water and power rate changes, and reminds NBC Universal and News Corp. that while joint project Hulu "seems to want complete control over the programming lineup ... the Net isn't television. Content may be king, but the mob rules."

Spooked by Joel Stein's recent column about tomorrow's sexed-up All Hallow's Eve, readers ruminate about the nature of sluttiness. Estin Stewart wonders, "Since when did underwear become a costume?" while Erin Tavano retorts:

Either Stein's column on Slutoween is unbelievably retrograde and sexist — a serious assertion that any woman who wears a sexy costume is a slut or a whore? — or a childish and tiresome attempt at being shocking.

Columnist Rosa Brooks has figured out why the Bush administration seems eager to start a new war:

Forget impeachment.

Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.

Because they've clearly gone mad. Exhibit A: We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation, do their best to tamp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But crazy people? They look around and decide it's a great time to start another war.

Contributing editor Timothy Garton Ash praises European multi-party democracy. Blogger Garin K. Hovannisian says the timing may actually be right for the Armenian genocide resolution. Columnist Patt Morrison is sure people don't go to fast food joints to eat healthy, so companies shouldn't mind posting nutritional charts.

The editorial board thinks the Senate's cap and trade plan to address global warming is second rate. It's also not wild about Countrywide's attempt to ease sub-prime loan pains. And finally the board explores why the Michael Mukasey confirmation process is growing more rancorous.

Readers react to the specter of another war on the horizon. L.A.'s Anthony Shay says, "If I were an Iranian official, I can think of no greater spur to developing nuclear weapons as quickly as possible than having the world's greatest war-mongering power threaten me...."

Times sportswriter Christine Daniels says that the transgender community won't let Democrats leave them out of anti-discrimination bill without a fight:

Big miscalculation. The strategy did not yield the usual we-got-ours run for safety. Lesbian, gay and bisexual activists stood alongside their trans sisters and brothers, and together we raised the roof. It was a beautiful noise, let me tell you.

It was so much noise -- about 140 gay and trans rights groups told Pelosi in no uncertain terms that protection for the transgendered needed to stay in the bill -- that she and Frank consented to delay a House vote until later this month. In these intervening weeks, Congress and America need to hear from the transgender people who live and walk and work among them -- you're reading one now....

Gioia Diliberto explores fashion's piracy paradox -- knockoffs fuel innovation but rob designers. And the University of Virginia's Larry J. Sabato thinks it's time the U.S. had a new Constitution.

The editorial board wonders why Rep. Jane Harman flip-flopped on the Armenian genocide resolution. It tells Gov. Schwarzenegger which of the many bills on his desk deserve approval, and argues in favor of the state's Dream Act, which would help undocumented college students.

Readers react to a first hand account of the Blackwater m.o. Ojai's Kathi Smith says "How much more good could have been done if [Janessa]Gans had written her Blackwater story about careening through the streets of Baghdad, terrorizing the populace, as soon it happened, rather than years later?"

When is a public library not a public library? When it’s a church. The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t offer that common-sense explanation — or, any explanation, for that matter — when it declined this week to  hear a challenge to Contra Costa County’s refusal to allow religious services  in library space made available to community groups. But the justices — liberal and conservative — may have been troubled by the real-world consequences of treating worship as a form of free speech.

The “wall of separation” between church and state described by Thomas Jefferson is necessarily a porous one, partly because of  a tension between the two so-called religion clauses of the First Amendment. One clause says that Congress (and by extension the states) may not legislate the “establishment” of religion; the other says that government may not prohibit the “free exercise” of religion.

But refusing to allow religious services in a public library is hardly a prohibition of the “free exercise” of religion, which is alive and well  in churches, mosques and synagogues that, along with secular non-profit groups, enjoy tax-exempt status. And, wisely, lawyers for Pastor Hattie Hopkins, who wanted to hold services at a library in Antioch, focused on a different constitutional  argument.

"Religious worship is not a second-class form of expression that the government may ban from a forum generally open for indistinguishable 'secular' expression," the lawyers said. This argument relied  on a  2001 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that a school district couldn’t bar a Christian youth group from meeting on school grounds on the same basis as other organizations.

This is  more a free-speech argument than a freedom-of-religion argument; still, given recent decisions about “equal access” for religious groups on public property, it’s surprising that at least four justices wouldn’t agree to take the case. So why didn’t they?

It may be that even conservative justices agree with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that there is a clear distinction between religious speech and worship. Or it may be that they had  a sudden vision of a library in which patrons would have to close their eyes or ears to escape the revival meeting or High Mass in the adjacent room. Pastor Hopkins’ church, in deference to the sensibilities of library patrons, agreed not use musical instruments or amplified sound. But other worshippers might not be so restrained in heeding the call of Psalm 100 to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord” — in a library!

Hundreds of California lawyers who gathered in Anaheim for their annual convention got an earful from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who told them that these days their profession often stands in the way of progress and equal protection. His chief exhibit: the two court rulings, one last year and one this year, that invalidated the legislation that would have transferred substantial control over the Los Angeles Unified School District from the school board to him.

"Let's face the hard truth," he told lawyers Friday. "The legal system no longer leads the way."

Villaraigosa compared the failure of public schools today to the era in which national guardsmen blocked the schoolhouse door to prevent black students from attending previously all-white schools. Treatment of students in Los Angeles schools, he said, is "as insidious as it was in the Deep South, when we see how few of our kids graduate from high school, and how many of them, if they do, are scoring in the bottom 20 percentile in the nation."

The editorial board comments on the new O.J. Simpson saga:

The events that transpired Thursday at the Palace Station Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas remain murky to all but their participants, who are giving contradictory accounts. The facts were at first murky in June 1994 too, when the only things the world knew were that Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and a male acquaintance were found murdered outside her Brentwood condominium and that O.J. was the prime suspect. This time, age and the knowledge that he can get away with anything seem to have mellowed Simpson; rather than lead police on a low-speed chase down the Strip in a white Bronco, he calmly granted media interviews in his hotel room until officers arrived to arrest him Sunday morning.

The board hopes Congress will protect attorney-client privilege no matter who the client is, and also evaluates Bush's nominee to replace Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that Alan Greenspan is no Bush-basher, contrary to liberal claims. Human Rights Watch U.S. program director Jamie Fellner says California's sex offender registries and residency restrictions may make us feel safer, but they don't really work. The University of Iowa's Kembrew McLeod reveals the story of 1970s psychic Uri Geller, who has the power to make embarrassing YouTube clips vanish, but possibly not the power to escape copyright laws. Doshisha University's Philip J. Cunningham visits China and finds that Mao Tse-Tung has become the very thing he worked to ban from China--a brand name.

Readers respond to the editorial board's take on the achievement gap. Los Angeles Leadership Academy executive director Roger Lowenstein says, "...your point that 'race' needs to be acknowledged is unfortunate and dead wrong."

As the Erwin Chemerinsky saga continues, the man himself writes in:

Tenure has many costs, but it exists so that academics will feel free to express themselves without fear of reprisal. It is based on the idea that everyone benefits from the free exchange of ideas. Without academic freedom, the reality is that many faculty members would be chilled and timid in expressing their views, and the discussion that is essential for the advancement of thought would be lost....

My concern is that the message from this episode, especially for my more junior colleagues who may aspire to be deans someday or, for that matter, judges, is that if you speak out -- liberal or conservative -- you may lose your chance at a position that you really want.

That's why I decided to answer questions about what happened and to accept the invitation to write this article. [UC Irvine] Chancellor [Michael] Drake initially asked that I simply say that we had mutually agreed to end my prospective deanship. I refused and said that all I wanted was that the truth be told.

Drake offers his side of the story. Columnist Rosa Brooks says that the Iraq war and the debate around it should make it clear why Americans lead the world in medical narcotics use. And columnist Joel Stein offers a no-nonsense assessment of career comeback benchmarks achieved by Britney Spears.

The editorial board thinks it's time for democracy to come to D.C., in the form of a House seat. The board also argues that, after the switch from analog television, newly opened spectrum 'white space' should be used wisely rather than left empty. Finally, the board laments that Sacramento failed at redistricting again.

Readers respond to the Chemerinsky hiring and un-hiring. A former student, Anthony Sbardellati of Los Angeles, writes, "I can attest that Chemerinsky never forced his political views on anyone in the classroom and always presented all sides of the constitutional issues he taught in an evenhanded manner."

The editorial board thinks up a few ways to spend what another year in Iraq will cost:

How about spending $20 billion on anti-poverty and education programs in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan, to give the population a reason to fight the Taliban? Or distributing $20 billion in emergency support to impoverished Iraqi families? Wouldn't $10 billion help repatriate the 2 million Iraqi refugees abroad and resettle the 2 million inside Iraq who have fled sectarian violence? Would $10 billion for child-health programs in Islamic nations help demonstrate that Americans are not, in fact, at war with Muslims?

The board asks what a new study that says liberals are more adaptable means for people who switch sides. And finally the board thinks L.A. students should have a wide choice of electives instead of doing teachers' chores for credit.

Columnist Ronald Brownstein says Washington needs to change its partisan style before asking Iraqis to learn to compromise and reconcile. The Humane Society's Michael Markarian praises soccer star David Beckham for wearing synthetic cleats instead of kangaroo leather ones. Writer Richard A. Viguerie and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) both write about choosing an attorney general.

Readers react to Gen. David H. Petraeus' report to Congress. Los Angeles' Doug Wichert says, "War is still too important to be left to the generals."