Sorry, Bill Johnson supporters, but your man really is the gift that keeps on giving.

Devoted Johnsonians will recall that the good judicial candidate first appeared on our radar screen thanks to his help with an effort to unseat a group of Latino jurists and get Filipino-Americans get onto the bench. That effort was led by a minister in Carson, who explained his ambition:

"When you're running against a Caucasian, it's kind of hard," the Rev. Ronald C. Tan of Carson said. "As Filipinos, our names are almost the same as Hispanics, so that puts us on co-equal ground."

In Johnson's book they're already on co-equal ground. Amendment to the Constitution, the 1985 book written by Johnson under the alias "James O. Pace," presents the text of the proposed "Pace Amendment" mandating expulsion of non-whites from the United States, along with an extensive, Federalist Papers-style unpacking of the proposed law's text. Here's what the book has to say on Filipinos in its explanation of how folks of various ethnicities will be sent packing:

Filipinos. The Filipinos are generally new arrivals, and many are still Philippine citizens. Accordingly, they can be repatriated without much difficulty. The Philippine government can be encouraged to assist.

This is more mildly worded than Pace's suggestions for assorted Latinos ("The Puerto Ricans should be returned to Puerto Rico," "Central Americans should be returned to Central America," "It should be noted that repatriation has become necessary primarily because of the abuses that the Hispanics have made of our system"). But while Pace allows that "Hispanic whites who are basically indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is the British Isles or Northwestern Europe, need not be repatriated," he is silent on the matter of Filipinos who can pass. (Are there any of those? Is there a whiteometer we can check?)

But I'd rather light a candle than curse anybody's darkness. A few days ago our news side had an interesting story about the proliferation of headline-driven legislation bearing names like "R.J.'s Law," "Adam's Law" and so on.

Would the Pace Amendment have fared better if it had a nice round name attached?

"Ziegfried's Law," maybe?

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

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

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

Don't fall for it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope that clears things up.

European policy experts John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell look to 'The Godfather' for diplomatic pointers:

[Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather"] is also a startlingly useful metaphor for the strategic problems and global power structure of our time. The don, emblematic of Cold War American power, is struck by forces he did not expect and does not understand, as was America on 9/11. Intriguingly, his heirs embrace very different visions of family strategy that approximate the three schools of thought -- liberal institutionalism, neoconservatism and realism -- vying for control of U.S. foreign policy today.

Freelance writer Lionel Beehner has another proposal for smoother diplomacy: pronouncing foreign dignitaries' names properly. Columnist Tim Rutten tells an L.A. version of "A Tale of Two Cities," and contributing editor Erin Aubry Kaplan explores why poet and long-time Watts resident Eric Priestley is fighting City Hall to keep his home.

The editorial board praises a California Supreme Court decision voiding the death sentence of Adam Miranda, presses for a shield law, and says now isn't the time to scold Myanmar's leaders:

It has been clear for more than a decade -- and especially since last year's suppression of the would-be Saffron Revolution -- that Myanmar's odious junta cannot be shamed into reform. It is too isolated and xenophobic to worry about its image, too paranoid to learn from outsiders and too blood-drenched to believe it can survive any loosening of control over its hapless people. The contradictory combination of U.S. sanctions and an engagement strategy adopted by its neighbors has failed to produce any improvement. Attempts to use the catastrophe of Tropical Cyclone Nargis as leverage to pry open the country will almost surely fail as well.

Journalist and food critic Alice Feiring explores why California wines aren't what they used to be:

Forget "Eureka," the new state motto can well be: "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing." Today's California wines are overblown, over-alcoholed, over-oaked, overpriced and over-manipulated.

When I first stopped drinking the Left Coast, it was because I was offended by the overuse of wood, boring flavors and lack of structure. The wines, many of which had plenty of edge and personality, seemed neutered to me. I soon learned that the other part of the story was that an arsenal of technology was deployed to make them that way: yeast, enzymes, tannin, oak and acid, as well as over-extracting techniques, micro-oxygenation, dialysis and reverse osmosis.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez calls out Barack Obama for flip-flopping on Rev. Jeremiah A Wright Jr. And Los Angeles City Employees Retirement System trustee Kelly Candaele says CalPERS should stick to being an "activist" investor.

The editorial board warns Angelenos that a racial separatist running for judge could win if they don't get out the vote. The board also checks in on trouble in the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia and thinks California should bring fairness to its school spending.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wonkette agrees, in an offbeat sort of way:

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

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

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

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

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

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

UCLA graduate student and Chow Digest senior editor C. Thi Nguyen bemoans L.A. County's requirement that taco trucks move after one hour, and New York attorney Scott Horton analyzes UC Berkeley professor John Yoo's role in the Bush administration's stance on torture. Former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan hopes LAUSD will repair its relationship with charter schools, and Gregory Rodriguez scratches his head at Americans' insistence that politicians act like the average Joe:

Sure, high-ranking politicians of humble origins can lay at least some claim to being "common." But that's really a ruse. Because the best politicians wouldn't get as far as they do if they hadn't already successfully convinced large numbers of people that they were distinct from -- read: better than -- the rest of us.

And therein lies our dilemma. We hold to the belief that we are all equal, yet we yearn for distinctiveness for ourselves and those we choose to represent us. In a nation whose form of government exalts the illusion of uniformity among its citizens, we are collectively engaged in a struggle to be recognized as unique by our peers.

The editorial board publishes its endorsements for 17 seats on the Los Angeles Superior Court, and puts its money behind a House bill to force 401(k) managers to clarify the fees they charge "Jack and Jill Cubicle":

Unfortunately, as this newspaper detailed in a series of articles in 2006, many employees aren't being told how much of their nest egg is being frittered away on fees paid to the companies managing their 401(k)s. Buried in the fine print of incomprehensible forms or not disclosed at all, those fees can consume thousands of dollars over time. To address that problem, several lawmakers have introduced bills that would require mutual funds, insurers and other providers of retirement plans to make complete disclosures of their fees to employers and workers. 

Readers react to the Supreme Court's decision finding legal injections humane. Writes Joy Buckley, "State-sanctioned killing is barbaric, cruel and should be highly unusual. We should join the civilized countries of the world in eliminating it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Photo courtesy Hulton Archive, Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

Your tax dollars hard at work. From the Washington Post:

Federal employees used government credit cards to pay for lingerie, gambling, iPods, Internet dating services, and a $13,000 steak-and-liquor dinner, according to a new audit from the Government Accountability Office, which found widespread abuses in a purchasing program meant to improve bureaucratic efficiency.

The study, released by Senate lawmakers yesterday, found that nearly half the "purchase card" transactions it examined were improper, either because they were not authorized correctly or because they did not meet requirements for the cards' use. The overall rate of problems "is unacceptably high," the audit found.

The GAO also found that agencies could not account for nearly $2 million worth of items identified in the audit ...

But wait, it gets better! The lingerie and other undergarments, totaling $360, went to jungle-training exercises in Ecuador. (Who wants to bet it was leopard-print?) And the iPods, all $800 bucks' worth, were purchased by a NASA supervisor who -- and I stress, this is true -- had his name engraved on each of them. Obviously there are more egregious cases in the GAO study, but these are the most fun ones.

Granted, this is but a drop in the budgetary bucket, and as Lurita Doan of the General Services administration (which issues the purchase cards) told the New York Times, the current card system saves about $1.8 billion in admin costs each year.

Still, this kind of makes me want to become a rabid libertarian. Or a government employee.

Richard Rothstein, last seen debating the achievement gap in a Dust-Up with Russlyn Ali, takes to the lackluster Cato Unbound with an interesting take on the 25th anniversary of the report A Nation At Risk, which examined the nation's puported crisis in education. According to Rothstein, the doomsaying of 1983, like most of the doomsaying from that period, turned out to be wrong. But unlike your harmless, garden-variety doomsaying, this one had some negative results:

Because of the report’s doomsday aura, policymakers have mostly failed since 1983 to investigate the causes of these improvements - the obvious, unasked, question is, what were we doing right from 1978 to 1990 (and since), so we can do more of it?

A belief in decline has led to irresponsibility in school reform. Policymakers who believed they could do no harm because American schools were already in a state of collapse have imposed radical reforms without careful consideration of possible unintended adverse consequences. Not thinking that President Reagan’s rule (’if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’) applied to what conservatives and liberals alike assumed was an already broken school system, this irresponsibility reached its zenith in the bipartisan No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law of 2002.

I do not suggest that American schools are adequate, that American students’ level of achievement in math and reading is where it should be, that American schools have been improving as rapidly as they should, or that the achievement gap is narrowing to the extent needed to give us any satisfaction. I only suggest that we should approach fixing a system differently if we believe its outcomes are slowly improving than if we believe it is collapsing. And we owe the latter, flawed assumption, to A Nation at Risk.

Full article.

Keep it in mind next time you're presented with the secular version of Pascal's Wager. (That is, the "Hey, if it turns out we're wrong about the decline and fall of X, all we did was take enlightened action Y" line of argument, which usually precedes the "It's time to stop talking about X and just do something!" argument, and frequently ends up with "Hey, problem X seems to have solved itself, but now what do we do about all these Zs we've created?")

Today's the deadline for the 30 Los Angeles Superior Court judge candidates on the June 3 ballot to file their latest fundraising reports, and it will be interesting to see who the big money-raisers are -- and who is funding their campaigns.

Fundraising is part of the perpetual quandary of California judicial races. Candidates don't like asking for money, but of course they want to win, and one of the best ways to won is to send out lots of carefully targeted mail, which in turn costs money.

Judicial candidates often consider themselves above politics and many bristle when one of their number actively raises cash from the same partisan business or labor interests that fund legislative races or ballot measures. But is it any cleaner for judicial campaign money to be donated by attorneys who will later plead their cases in front of the victors?

Warnings of pay-to-play justice have been increasing in volume in recent years, and the alarm was sounded again over the weekend in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by James Sample of New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. Sample cites egregious instances of jurists from Illinois and Wisconsin refusing to recuse themselves from cases involving companies that helped put them on the bench. Then there's the current case from West Virginia that sounds like something from a John Grisham novel.

in fact, Grisham was quoted as saying he didn't have to look any further than the Charleston Gazette for an idea from his latest novel. Now "The Appeal" is being cited as an outrageous not not outlandish illustration of the corrupting influence of campaign cash in the courtroom. In the book, a chemical company goes after a favorable ruling by funding a judicial candidate and planning to reap the reward.

Last month, West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Larry Starcher recused himself from a case involving coal company A.T. Massey, Inc. on conflict of interest grounds and called upon a colleague, who Starcher said received $4 million in campaign donations from Massey and associates, to do the same. See the court's press release here, but for the full impact click on the last word of the statement for a pdf of Starcher's full opinion. It's full of anger against his colleague, but here's the key part:

"I know hardly a soul who could believe that a justice who benefitted [sic] to this extent from a litigant could rule fairly on cases involving that litigant or his companies...."

It's different in California, but just how different? on the Supreme Court level, we don't have partisan challenges; appellate justices are appointed by the governor, conformed by a three-member panel, and retained or rejected by voters every 12 years. Still, the 1986 ousters of Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, and Chief Justice Rose Bord, continue to provoke court-watchers, who debate whether the removal campaign was really spurred by the three jurists' votes to overturn death sentences or whether, instead, it was a business-led drive to end a string of pro-consumer rulings.

Most trial court judges are appointed by the governor (there is no confirmation process). Appointees can be challenged at the end of every six-year term, but if no one files to run against them, they are deemed elected and don't even get on the ballot. This year only one judge has been challenged: Ralph W. Dau. Such challenges usually fail, but remember that in 2006, Judge Dzintra Janavs was defeated by bakery owner Lynne Olson.

Ten other Los Angeles Superior Court seats opened up and will go to voters because the governor did not appoint anyone to fill them. If history is a guide, many, though not all, of those candidates are raising money from lawyers who can be expected to appear before them if they win.

A panel of California lawyers, administrators and judges -- including some who were elected to their seats -- is grappling with the thorny issue of judicial independence and impartiality. Members have zeroed in on judicial elections and campaign  fundraising. A Judicial Campaign Finance Task Force next meets in Burbank on April 28. A companion task force studying terms of office and selection of judges meets the same day in San Francisco.

Someone -- it's not yet clear who -- launched a write-in challenge to six Los Angeles Superior Court judges, making the June 3 ballot just a little bit longer.

The nomination period closed earlier this month with 10 contested races without incumbents and only one sitting judge, Ralph W. Dau, drawing an election challenge. That left the other 144 sitting Los Angeles Superior Court judges (about a third of the bench) who are up for election or re-election this year breathing sighs of relief; since no one filed against them, they were automatically elected without their names even going on the ballot.

But not so fast. A rarely exercised procedural provision for write-in candidates allows challengers extra time to file, and the Metropolitan News-Enterprise reported Friday that a write-in challenge has been lodged against Judges Juan Carlos Dominguez, Hector M. Guzman, Daniel S. Lopez, Daniel P. Ramirez, Jose Sandoval, and Michael Villalobos. All six must now appear on the ballot, even though there will be no opponent listed.

That now leaves 138 judges who were deemed elected in March. Most of them are unknown to people outside the legal profession, unless they were judges who happened to preside over a high-profile case -- O.J. Simpson criminal trial judge Lance Ito, for example, was just deemed re-elected without a vote -- or perhaps related to someone in politics or government, such as May Lou Villar, sister of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, or Fred Fujioka, brother of Los Angeles County chief executive Bill Fujioka. They, too, were among the gross of judges deemed elected this month when no one filed to run against them.

Seventh months after a Los Angeles Times editorial urged Hillary Clinton to expedite the release of records from her time as first lady, the National Archives and the Bill Clinton Library have disgorged more than 11,000 pages of her official schedules.

Having sifted through such artifacts in a previous life, I sympathize with the reporters who are now excavating the files for newsworthy nuggets. It helps when they’re available, as the Clinton cache is, on the Web or a CD. I have unfond memories of being part of a posse of reporters who had to prowl through the paper records of John G. Roberts Jr.’s service in the Reagan administration.

Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, the pesky public-interest group that filed suit to obtain the first lady files, said a quick eyeballing of the document (or datebook) dump indicated that Hillary was indeed a “co-president.” Fitton presumably meant this as a criticism, but it bolsters Hillary’s claim that her experience in the White House is relevant to her campaign to return there under her own colors. But if the Clinton campaign wants to make that argument, it should explain why it didn’t move heaven, Earth and the National Archives to produce this material earlier.

In honor of the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, "expertologists" Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky study the surge in punditry while cartoonist Ed Stein watches President Bush navigate the labyrinthine occupation. Novelist Andrew Klavan applauds playwright "David Mamet's public coming-out as a political conservative," and Tim Rutten likens Barack Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech on Tuesday to Abraham Lincoln's historic "House Divided" address. Contributing editor Erin Aubry Kaplan also has a thing or two to say about Obama's speech on race:

Obama rebuked Wright, in part, because he knew their association was in mortal danger of morphing him into just another angry black man a la Nat Turner, Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan (whom Obama detractors have already attempted to conflate with Obama). Whatever salient points these men made have been entirely eclipsed by the fact that they were just too mad for comfort.

Strange, when you consider that we live in a culture that thrives on vituperation institutionalized by conservative talk radio -- guys such as Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus are paid to be mad. But, of course, white anger is seen as fundamentally reasoned and righteous, and Americans have an almost limitless capacity to forgive it when it isn't.

The editorial board condemns China's manipulation of media coverage as it cracks down on protesters in Tibet, and urges LAPD Chief William J. Bratton to release a private report examining SWAT. The board also finds great value in Obama's address:

It may have begun as an exercise in political damage control, but Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia on "A More Perfect Union" was that rarity in American political discourse: a serious discussion of racial division, distrust and demonization. Whether or not the speech defuses the controversy about some crackpot comments by Obama's longtime pastor, it redefines our national conversation about race and politics and lays down a challenge to the cynical use of the "race card."

Readers react to the McCain campaign's murky plans for Iraq. Harold Tuchel writes:

It is concerning to hear an advisor to John McCain say McCain will not be as robust in military matters as his current campaign speeches indicate.

Although I don't favor any of the presidential candidates because of their policies of amnesty for illegal immigrants, what really concerns me is that they say one thing while fully intending to do another.

We have had enough of this type of chicanery with George W. Bush. 

See the full text of his speech here, and a primitive (and late-starting) YouTube capture here. We'll update with more reactions, or better video, later today.

Top of the Ticket reacts here.

Leave your comments below.

Professors John G. Geer and Ken Goldstein give a stirring defense of negative campaigning, and documentary maker Manchan Magan chronicles his attempt to speak only Irish as he traveled through the Emerald Isle. Writer Barry Gottlieb wonders why the Vatican tacked pollution onto an already long list of sins, and in Geraldine Ferraro's race-tinged comments on Obama's success, Gregory Rodriguez discovers that white suspicion toward successful minorities is alive and kicking:

If Ferraro had clarified her remarks (and she had oh so many television minutes last week to do so) -- perhaps explaining that what she meant was that Obama's blackness has played a role in his appeal -- she might have saved her role in the Clinton campaign, but she still would have been only partly right.

Because what's impressive about Obama is not so much his African American identity as the way he wields it. He uses both the language of group pride and national unity. Unlike so many -- often media-created -- black leaders, Obama doesn't use a parochial message of victimhood or the zero-sum logic of "us versus them." Rather than spend a lot of time talking about racism, historical or otherwise, he preaches a form of collective can-doism. He sells himself as a symbol of reconciliation and knows that at this point in history, cries of racism are the quickest way to turn off white voters who are tired of being made to feel guilty for racial injustice.

The editorial board glances over its shoulder at encroaching electronic surveillance, and burns a hole in President Bush's overrulling of the EPA's ozone standards. The board also flunks L.A. Unified School District for its "textbook incompetence" involving a principal accused of molesting a 13-year-old student:

The alleged molestation of a 13-year-old girl who attends Markham Middle School is a gut-wrenching example of the weaknesses in management of the Los Angeles Unified School District. An egregious gaffe by top administrators on the 24th floor of the central office who are too distant from the kids on the ground to put their needs first. An initial attempt to downplay the significance of what happened, followed by an apology and an action plan to prevent such problems. The plan usually involves adding more layers to an already giant bureaucracy.

This story even has a familiar subplot, the "dance of the lemons," in which the district shuffles problem personnel around -- usually to a troubled school in a poor area -- to avoid the task of booting them out the door.

Readers react to Rosa Brooks' column on Hillary Clinton's stance on prostitution -- and support of Eliot Spitzer. Margaret Daugherty writes:

Clinton's inclusion of both Eliot Spitzer and his family in her expression of goodwill seems to me like empathy and good manners -- not evidence of some festering character defect. Wouldn't it have been better just to print a statement saying, "Rosa Brooks stills hates Hillary Clinton; check this space periodically for updates"?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The sex was good," Matos McGreevey wrote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where did they get this idea — from the Catholic Personnel Management Handbook?

A page-one story today by my Times colleagues describes how a high school assistant principal in the LAUSD had been investigated for allegedly having sex with a student and pulling a gun on her stepfather. His punishment? Being transferred to a Watts middle school — where he has now been arrested for molesting a 13-year-old girl.

Where have we heard this management technique before? Let me think … oh yes: from the Catholic Church. Priests accused of molesting young parishioners were often transferred from parish to parish, where all they did was … molest more parishioners.

This tactic has cost the Catholic Church hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts, and incalculable damage to the church’s reputation.

Yeah, the LAUSD can sure afford to take those kinds of hits.

And to dump Steve Thomas Rooney at Markham, a middle school that is just emerging from trouble and strife to start looking like a model for the district, with donations for computers, uniforms, its own Boys and Girls Club, more discipline, better security, a full-throttle community effort to turn Markham around — it bespeaks contempt for the school, the students, the teachers, the parents and the neighborhood. Sure, dump the guy at Markham — they won’t care.

Police investigated Rooney after he allegedly pulled a gun on the stepfather of the 17-year-old girl he was allegedly having a relationship with, but the charges went unproven; the girl refused to cooperate with investigators. During the investigation, Rooney was put in a non-school job, and when the investigation went nowhere, he went to Markham.

Do principals and assistant principals have a union? If this ultimate "dance of the lemons" transfer turns out to have happened because the district would rather invite trouble with the law, with students and with parents than trouble with a union — that will send a message about the district’s priorities. Exactly who is ‘’unified’’ around here, and for what?

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

It was the way she stood there, enduring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sounds like it's time for couples counseling.

Evolutionary biologist David P. Barash says Eliot Spitzer can blame biology for his urge to stray:

One of the most startling discoveries of the last 15 years has been the extent of sexual infidelity (scientists call it "extra-pair copulations" or EPCs) among animals long thought to be monogamous. It's clear that social monogamy -- physical association and child rearing between a male and a female -- and sexual monogamy are very different things. The former is common; the latter is rare....

Power-as-pheromone is pretty much the default among mammals. Elk, elephant seal, baboon or chimpanzee, in a wide array of species, females eagerly mate with dominant males while disdaining subordinates. And they do so, more or less, in harems.

Contributing editor Max Boot argues that Navy Adm. William "Fox" Fallon's departure as head of CENTCOM is good news. Columnist Tim Rutten tells the City Council to quit its turf war and work to stop gang violence. USC's Sara Catania wants a stop to the springtime rite of "tree topping."

The editorial board asks if there is a constitutional right to home school your kids, and points out that daylight saving time really doesn't save anything....

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

It's hard to put a price tag on a person's reputation, yet some fabulously wealthy people let theirs go for a surprisingly small amount of money. In the case of Wall Street star Peter Lynch, the public face of Fidelity Investments, the sum would be about $16,000 worth of tickets to rock shows, Ryder Cup tournaments and other events. In case you missed it, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced yesterday that Lynch, who once ran Fidelity's prosperous Magellan Fund, had agreed to pay the government $15,948 — the value of the tickets he'd gotten for free — plus $4,183 in interest. According to the SEC's order, Lynch (now 64) instructed two Fidelity stock traders to obtain free tickets for him from brokers doing or seeking to do business with Fidelity, in violation of federal law. The question is why wouldn't Lynch simply buy tickets, like ordinary people do? I mean, tickets are always available to those willing to spend the right amount of money, and Lynch has the right amount of money squared. If only he'd stuck with the advice of the old Gallo wine commercial, which said the path to riches was paved in cheap consumables....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You tell 'em, Mike.

Patient-doctor confidentiality is practically inviolate. Even the most avid of paparazzi had to rely on Britney's parents, not her physician, for the scoop on the pop star's current health. But Blue Cross, according to today's L.A. Times, apparently has no problem tipping over that sacred cow:

The state's largest for-profit health insurer is asking California physicians to look for conditions it can use to cancel their new patients' medical coverage.

Blue Cross of California is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose "material medical history," including "pre-existing pregnancies."

Doctors are supposed to treat people, not serve as insurance companies' watchdogs for the bottom line. So here's what I don't understand: How exactly did Blue Cross of California think that this letter — which basically asks doctors to snitch on new patients — would play in the media?

It certainly didn't play well with doctors:

"We're outraged that they are asking doctors to violate the sacred trust of patients to rat them out for medical information that patients would expect their doctors to handle with the utmost secrecy and confidentiality," said Dr. Richard Frankenstein, president of the California Medical Assn.

Patients "will stop telling their doctors anything they think might be a problem for their insurance and they don't think matters for their current health situation," he said.

Insurance industry representatives claim that sending these letters out isn't a new practice, although prominent doctors told The Times they'd never seen anything like it. And given the controversy surrounding the practice, I can see Blue Cross arguing that this is one way of keeping the decisionmaking process up-front.

Maybe so. But there's probably a more practical reason that this letter is coming into sharp focus now. Sicko, Michael Moore's 2007 documentary on the evils of the healthcare industry, explored one particular corporate sin in detail — the practice of rescission, or cancelling coverage after treatment has been approved. This would happen once healthcare costs had skyrocketed — a company would go back and find some minor discrepancy or forgotten illness buried in patients' medical records, and use that as a justification to abandon them.

And according to American Medical News, the courts recently declared certain types of rescission illegal:

The 4th District Court of Appeal unanimously said insurers have a responsibility to make sure patients' policy applications are complete and accurate before issuing coverage — not after expensive claims come in the door. Judges said plans cannot revoke patients' policies unless they fully investigate pre-enrollment forms up front or insurers show patients intentionally misled them.

When the courts say you can't pull the medical rug out from beneath patients, what's a down-and-out insurance company to do?

Ask the doctors for help, apparently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The editorial board says President Bush is right to scrutinize earmarks, but he might be using it as a way to extend executive power:

More scrutiny of earmarks is an undeniably good thing. Lawmakers' pet projects account for a slender slice of the federal budget -- about one-half of 1% -- yet they feed much of the cynicism that the public feels about Congress and its penchant for spending. Bush's stance, however, betrays more concern about executive branch power than about taxpayer dollars poured into questionable projects.

The board examines the crisis in Lebanon spurred by two bombings this month. The board also asks City Hall to be pragmatic with its plans to remake downtown's Broadway.

Columnist Tim Rutten takes a look at another would-be downtown makeover -- this one a developer's dystopian, "Blade Runner"-inspired vision. USC's Harry P. Pachon and Columbia University's Rodolfo O. de la Garza say Hillary Clinton can count on Latinos. Author Michael D'Antonio argues that Explorer may not have beaten Sputnik to space, but it did represent a greater scientific breakthrough. And state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas thinks the now-defeated ABX1 1 was California's best chance at healthcare reform.

Readers react to historian Sean Wilentz's argument that there's no comparing Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln or John Kennedy. See why Los Angeles' Donald Cosentino says, "A scholar ought not to disguise such partisan rants as historical analyses."

Only in California will the media critique carjack victims for poor fuel economy. Such was the Oakland Tribune's follow-up yesterday on Senate Pro Tem Don Perata's recent run-in with crime:

When armed carjackers last month relieved state Senate Pro Tem Don Perata of his state-owned vehicle, it raised two eyebrows — one for the brash daylight crime on North Oakland streets, the other for the flash of Perata's ride.

While more lawmakers are going hybrid-green, the Capitol's most