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?

Is North Carolina the fat lady that sang for Hillary Clinton? The editorial board suggested that it's finally over for her, and L.A. Times columnist Rosa Brooks called it way back in March. The Hill reports that backs are turning on her. What are the other papers saying?

The Washington Post editorial board focuses on Barack Obama even as it comes to the same conclusion on Clinton:

Hillary Clinton may, as she promised yesterday, fight on through the next few weeks of primaries, but after her disappointing showing Tuesday she has no plausible route to victory. So Mr. Obama was sounding themes for the coming battle against John McCain.... These are familiar phrases by now, appealing but also insubstantial.

Its columnists Harold Meyerson and George F. Will agree...

By holding a series of immigration hearings this week, Congress seems to be going beyond lapel pins and superdelegate-ship this election season. On Tuesday, the House Committee on Education and Labor considered whether U.S. businesses are hiring American workers before looking abroad for employees (something that they're concerned with across the pond as well). That same day, the House Way and Means Subcommittee on Social Security discussed the Employment Eligibility Verification Systems and agency backlog.

But in a year when comprehensive immigration reform is highly unlikely to happen -- and President Bush's recent mention of it is a case of too little, too late on a policy that might have been the rare jewel in his crown -- the hearings were primarily a chance for Democrats and Republicans to focus on small pieces of the immigration puzzle, and to unite disparate elements of their parties. As the Congressional Quarterly noted, the Democrats do have some internal divisions on this issue, even if they're not as problematic for the party as the split Republicans face.

But the hearings also highlighted another important November event -- that's when the voluntary E-Verify system is set to expire, meaning that the thousands of employers who use it to verify Social Security numbers will be out of luck. Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) testified (pdf) in favor of extending the bill through the SAVE Act, which he co-sponsored with Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) If the Tancredo name alone doesn't set off alarms, reading the fine print of that bill should: it doesn't simply extend the program -- it makes it mandatory, despite the problems that could pose for businesses, employees legal and illegal, and government agencies. The bill would also encourage local law enforcement to act as immigration agents, which is opposed by quite a few law enforcement and elected officials. An alternate proposal by Texas Republican Rep. Sam Johnson uses a different verification system, supported by some who criticize E-Verify, but others say it would lead to similar complications for workers, even if they're citizens.

More hearings should follow throughout the week -- we'll keep updating. And though they may not bring about much in the way of results, they're at least more useful than the summer 2006 hearings organized purely as publicity stunts. Need to refresh your memory on those? Here's what the editorial board said about them....

John McCain is using Cinco de Mayo, the most American of Mexican holidays, to launch a Spanish-language version of his website. He's also agreed to attend the National Council of La Raza annual conference this summer, which has the usual suspects up in arms.

McCain will have to pull off an interesting balancing act as the general election nears: wooing crucial, increasingly Democratic-leaning Latino voters while roping in Republicans who favor tighter immigration policies. He got a bit of practice doing just that during Republican debates -- goaded by single-issue long-shots Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo, not to mention the back-and-forth between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee over who dared show compassion to immigrants.

But since last summer, when comprehensive immigration reform lost another round in Congress, McCain has moved further away from his original position, as expressed in a bill he co-sponsored with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Now McCain emphasizes a security-first approach and he has said he wouldn't even vote for his original bill if it came up again in Congress (See The Times' McCain endorsement for the editorial board's take on that switch.)

And while it is pretty clear that a good number of Latino voters -- whether newly-registered or not -- don't like tough-on-immigration rhetoric, it's not clear whether having a Spanish-language website gets them all that excited. After all, most second-generation and almost all third-generation Latinos speak English. Symbolism does count for something, but it probably wouldn't compensate for an about-face on comprehensive immigration reform.

*Photo courtesy Bloomberg News.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Tomorrow Thursday is May Day, which, depending on your leanings, is a pagan pole-dancing holiday, a day of labor solidarity against The Man, a day off for immigrants and their supporters, or some combination of all three, a grab-bag of un-American activity. (To the latter group, Happy Law Day!)

The last two May Days have been major events in Los Angeles. May 1, 2006 was the Great American Boycott, when legal and illegal immigrants were encouraged to stay away from businesses and schools. The editorial board raised some eyebrows by leaving blank the space where a third editorial would usually run on the page, printing only the words "Pass comprehensive immigration reform now." One million people were said to have participated, and almost all marches were peaceful and law-abiding.

Fast-forward to 2007: no immigration reform, and quite a bit of violence from the Los Angeles Police Department against protesters at MacArthur Park, some of whom threw sticks and water bottles at officers. The boards praised most marchers for a May Day well spent...

Not Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Both came out in favor of a congressional bill that would make it easier for victims of pay disparity to charge discrimination in court. That's what Lilly Ledbetter tried to do, but the Supreme Court ruled against her, adhering closely to a law that says discrimination must be reported within 180 days of its occurrence. As the editorial board wrote earlier this week:

As a narrow reading of the law, that's all well and good. But as a prescription for redressing harm -- the intent, after all, of anti-discrimination law -- the court's approach is impossibly binding. Most cases of discrimination, including the one before the court in Ledbetter, are difficult to discern at once, for the simple reason that most discrimination is covert. In the case of Lilly Ledbetter, a jury found that her employers had unfairly paid her less than male colleagues over a period of years.

Here's Obama's statement, and a video of Clinton on the Senate floor. The two returned to the capital to make remarks, uniting briefly on the issue before going back to trading blows in Indiana. (CQPolitics' David Nather has the play-by-play of their close encounter.)

For the record, the bill didn't get enough votes to avoid a filibuster. And John McCain joined most of his fellow Republicans in opposing it.

And as an aside, doesn't "Lilly Ledbetter" have a great Rosie-the-Riveter-ish ring? To hear more from the woman herself, read The American Prospect interview.

While L.A. worries about the fate of taco trucks facing stricter county regulations, London's worried about the impact of immigration policy on curry joints. The Guardian reports:

Thousands of curry restaurant workers gathered in London yesterday to demand that the government relaxes new immigration rules to avert a financial catastrophe caused by crippling staff shortages....

Members of the Bangladeshi community, who were joined by groups from Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and Turkish catering businesses at the protest in Trafalgar Square, also complained that a spate of "heavy-handed" raids looking for illegal workers at restaurants was damaging business.

The culprit behind the curry problem is a new points-based immigration system (briefly considered in this country, and supported by the editorial board). Workers, including chefs, entering England from outside the EU have to speak English and meet certain academic qualifications.

As someone who has tried to make curry by following her immigrant mom's recipe and still failed, I'd like to side with protesters and say curry can't be cooked by the non-native, no matter whether she can speak English and has a college degree. But it's probably more likely that I just can't cook, and people who can -- immigrant or not -- manage just fine.

In any case, the restaurant raid is an interesting point of comparison: Would more Americans object to raids, or at least demand immigration reform to obviate such stop-gap measures, if they saw them firsthand and were left hungry in high-end restaurants?

*Photo of chicken tikka masala, the British favorite, by Bob Carey, Los Angeles Times

Remember that Red Sox jersey that a construction worker — who also happened to be a Sox fan — dropped into the wet concrete of the New York Yankees' fresh, new stadium? And how the Yankees spent a cool fifty grand to dig it right back out, fearing a Red Sox curse embedded in their home field — a decision the editorial board called "a reminder that for all of humanity's pretensions to modernity and reason, we are essentially just bald monkeys who wear shoes"?

Yeah, now it's on eBay. Just posted yesterday — and as further demonstration of humanity's supersitious nature and penchant for totems, it's already racked up 116 pre-approved bids and is sitting pretty at $37,600. But if you think it's going to go to cover the Yankees' deconstruction costs, you don't give the baseball industry enough credit: Proceeds go to the cancer-fighting nonprofit Jimmy Fund. Proof that while you couldn't make this stuff up, that doesn't mean there can't be a happy ending. Or at least, a face-saving one.

*Photo courtesy AP.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer gave one thumb up to Moody's Investors Service for allowing California and other municipal bond issuers to be rated -- if they ask -- on the same scale as corporate bonds. Lockyer has complained that munis wind up with lower ratings than the AAA he says most should get, ostensibly to let buyers distinguish among them, but with the actual effect of compelling states, cities, school districts -- and taxpayers -- to pay too much in insurance costs or interest.

On Wednesday, Lockyer gave Moody's a shout-out but said the move to assign optional global scale ratings -- in effect rating munis on the same scale as corporate bonds -- alongside traditional ratings does not go far enough.

As I've stated, the goal must be a rating system that provides clarity and consistency. An interim period in which GSRs are assigned alongside municipal scale ratings will create confusion, not clarity. Such confusion will be even greater if some bonds carry GSRs and others do not. Therefore, I urge Moody's to assign a GSR to all municipal bonds, and not simply at the request of the issuer.

Fitch Ratings also has agreed to re-examine the different rating scales for corporate bonds and munis.

The Times editorialized last month that Lockyer was on the right track with his call for rethinking the way state and local government bonds are rated. Not everyone agrees with us, or with Moody's and Fitch. See this week's Blowback by Steve Zimmermann of Standard & Poor's.

Considering that other than the occasional round of Wii Tennis, I haven't played a video game since I failed to beat "Legend of Zelda" in the late 1980s, I'm not the best person to comment on the medium.

But an educational immigration game arrived on the Internets not too long ago, so I gave it a try. (OK, actually, it was kind of long ago, it got some news last year, and an official release came out in February.)

The game is from Breakthrough.tv and it's called "I Can End Deportation," or ICED, for short (a play, of course, on the agency in charge of said deportation). You pick one of five characters -- from an undocumented Mexican immigrant to a Japanese student to a girl who thinks she's a citizen -- and try to avoid getting deported, while learning about what trials immigrants, legal or not, have to suffer.

It's a conversation-starter about an aspect of immigration policy avoided by many moderates, who need to be tough on enforcement or who may simply assume that the deportation process works well enough (unlike, say, actual worksite or border enforcement). They don't worry much about the process, unless it goes seriously awry.

And though the game may be criticized as such, it isn't a primer for anyone who's actually evading authorities. Of course, the name alone makes it clear that the game makers weren't exactly trying to avoid controversy. (See what the game's creator has to say about the reaction she has received here.)

The last time the Department of Homeland Security tried to crack down on employers by sending them "no match" letters, a court stopped the plan in its tracks, saying it would end up hurting legal workers. What's changed six months later? Pretty much nothing.

DHS promised last fall it would review its plan, which would send employers a warning if they had enough employees with social security numbers that didn't match their names. Last week the agency released its proposed revisions (pdf) for public comment, offering only the smallest technical tweaks. The Washington Post reported that lawyers familiar with the original case against the plan anticipated ongoing court battles over the rule.

The editorial board has weighed in against masochistic efforts like these, which put the hurt on the American economy to underscore the need for comprehensive immigration reform. DHS has put out numbers on what it'll cost employers to comply: $3,000 to $7,500 for small businesses, and $13,000 to $34,000 for larger ones. As the Post notes, that doesn't include the cost of replacing workers.

That's not the only hurt employers will be feeling if the Bush administration continues its piecemeal immigration reform — on Thursday, higher fees go into effect for employers who violate immigration laws. Controversial immigration raids continue, including a major one last month in Van Nuys. And Congress is getting in on the game, examining enforcement-only legislation once again.

*Photo courtesy AFP.

On the heels of the Iraq war's fifth anniversary comes another somewhat arbitrary but far more grim milestone: 4,000 American soldiers have now died in the conflict, though casualties have been low so far this year. The editorial board didn't remark on the death toll when it hit 2,000 (in October 2005) or 3,000 (at the end of 2006), even though those points coincided with some other big events -- the ratification of a draft constitution and Saddam Hussein's execution.

The board did write when the death toll hit 1,000, highlighting the randomness of marking a number of dead (sorry, no link):

Six U.S. soldiers were killed, two Italian aid workers were kidnapped and warplanes bombed a Sunni enclave in Fallouja, a city mostly off-limits to coalition troops. It was just another day in the war Tuesday, except for the numbers. By this morning, Iraq time, the Associated Press count of casualties stated that 1,000 U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq, aside from more than 100 other coalition soldiers and thousands of Iraqi noncombatants. And many thousands more have been wounded.

It is an obvious point at which to ask: To what end are U.S. personnel continuing to die? What is it that commanders should tell their troops as they head into lethal streets?

The board noted another, less round number in January...

It's not just the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. It's also the fifth anniversary of misleading or plain wrong statements about it and the war on terror. Here's a few.

"This long-term struggle [against terror] became urgent on the morning of September 11th, 2001. That day we saw clearly that dangers can gather far from our own shores and find us right there at home.... Understanding all the dangers of this new era, we have no intention of abandoning our friends, or allowing this country of 170,000 square miles to become a staging area for further attacks against Americans."
--Vice President Dick Cheney
(Making the 9/11 connection is a more delicate dance than it was five years ago, but Cheney keeps finding ways to make the leap.)

"I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you...in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."
--President George Bush
(Warfare as romantic? No one's bought this line in five years, or for that matter, five decades.)

"Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate."
--John McCain
(Iran certainly trains extremists and ships 'em to Iraq, but they're not affiliated with Al Qaeda.)

"The surge is working. And as a return on our success in Iraq, we've begun bringing some of our troops home. The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around -- it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror."
--George Bush
(Salon does it better than I could.)

For a few bloviator blasts from the past, see Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky's Op-Ed.

And of course, not everyone was off....

The governing board of CalPERS, the huge state employee retirement system, backed Treasurer Bill Lockyer's plan to get the three big bond-rating agencies to reform the way they rank municipal bonds. That's a big deal; CalPERS's investment portfolio has a value of $244.7 billion.

The Times editorialized last week that Lockyer was on the right track in demanding that the agencies hold municipal bonds to the same standard as corporate bonds. As it stands, municipal bonds generally are rated lower even when they are subject to less risk of default.

At a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee last week, one of the agencies -- Moody's Investors Service -- said it would begin rating municipal bonds on the same scale as corporate bonds if the issuer requests it.

Several immigration stories arising this week should remind candidates, congressional reps, and voters what's the bottom line when it comes to immigration policy.

Yesterday came news that a bailiff in Arkansas left one undocumented immigrant woman locked in a cell at a courthouse for four days without food or water, a bathroom, or any bedding. The bailiff, who has since been suspended, said he simply forgot her when he locked up for the weekend. Earlier, she had pleaded not guilty to selling pirated DVDs; the judge had required her to be held because she was an illegal immigrant. Though it was probably an honest, if awful, mistake, the woman's lawyer, for one, says its symptomatic of a wider problem: "They treat Hispanics like cattle, likes less than human," Roy Petty told the New York Times.

Today, The Times reported that 15 illegal immigrants were found adrift offshore near San Diego, after a failed smuggling attempt, languishing for a day and a half without food or water. Worse still is another account from today's Times, of immigration officials' alleged refusal of medical tests and treatment demanded by doctors for a detainee who later died of penile cancer. The officials allowed only antihistamines, ibuprofen, and extra boxers. A Los Angeles federal judge ruled [pdf] that Francisco Castaneda's family can seek damages, and had scathing things to say...

Like the city of L.A., Los Angeles County has a telephone tax that has been challenged in court. Like the city, which preserved its phone tax by taking it to voters on Feb. 5, the county might put its tax on the ballot. But not yet. This Tuesday is the Board of Supervisors' last chance to put something on the June 3 ballot, but county CEO Bill Fujioka said it's too early to decide how to proceed. That leaves a November vote or, perhaps, a court fight. Or the end of the tax.

If you want to look up the county's tax — and of course you do — click here, then click on Title 4, Revenue and Finance, then on Chapter 4.62, Utility User Tax, then — still with me? — on 4.62.060, Telephone user tax. It's a 5% tax on calls in unincorporated county areas. But the whole shebang, including the tax on electricity and other services, could be covered by the lawsuits.

The county is not doing well in court so far. In the Oronoz and Kaufman cases, a judge granted the plaintiffs' request that their suits be treated as class actions on behalf of anyone who was (they claim) improperly taxed. An appeals court affirmed that ruling on Jan. 24, so now the county is asking the state Supreme Court to reverse. There are likely still many months before the cases go to trial.

The city did better on the class action issue, convincing a judge to reject a class action. The plaintiffs against the city (in the Ardon and TracFone cases) are now appealing. Trial on the merits of the case is a long way off, but in theory the plaintiffs could win back any tax money they paid up to the time Proposition S was adopted.

Cities (and three other counties) up and down the state are in a similar fix, facing lawsuits challenging phone taxes. City councils and boards of supervisors could change the ways those taxes were calculated only until 1996, when California voters passed Proposition 218. Any tax changes made since then are suspect unless ratified by voters.

The Times editorial page endorsed Proposition S as in the best interests of the city and its residents, but not without reservations. We were put off by the campaign, which stressed the tax reduction from 10% to 9% — true enough — but glossed over the fact that the tax was broadened to include more types of calls. Those campaign tactics — trying to fool voters instead of being straightforward with them — made opposition to Proposition S perfectly understandable.

That's something the county may want to keep in mind if it eventually moves forward with a phone tax ballot measure.

By the way, another reason the county isn't putting its phone tax on the June ballot may be the fact that two supervisors — Mike Antonovich and Don Knabe — are up for re-election on the same day. Why remind voters that their supervisors take their money? Besides, neither Antonovich nor Knabe are fans of taxes.

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

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

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

The editorial board doesn't always get its way, but it, along with local activists, scored a victory yesterday when the City Council declared the former residence of writer Charles Bukowski a historic landmark. The board opined back in September, "To pick one place to officially associate with the man would seem to limit his legacy. But it's still a good way for his hometown to honor him." (No such luck for John Fante.)

Check out the report [pdf] from the city's Cultural Heritage Commission explaining why, of Bukowski's many residences, the De Longpre place merited saving. Also see columnist Al Martinez's take on Bukowski's alleged Nazism (and Opinion L.A.'s), and Book Review editor David L. Ulin's not-so-kind critique of the latest Bukowski poetry collection.

And there's at least one other unofficial Bukowski memorial in town (even if the bedrock of that square, Craby Joe's, is gone).

Oxford University professor Timothy Garton Ash sits back with a bowl of popcorn and enjoys the blockbuster campaign season, while Rosa Brooks rides the national mood swing toward idealism. Election law professor Richard L. Hasen weighs in on the ballot bubble trouble that decline-to-state voters faced, and cartoonist Lisa Benson looks over the one big fish Tsunami Tuesday left behind. If Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa leaves Los Angeles for Hillary Clinton, Patt Morrison nominates Rudy Giuliani for top dog:

What would Rudy bring to L.A.?

He's deliciously mean. Maybe Villaraigosa can deliver the political shiv with the best of them, but even when Giuliani smiles, he scares me. In L.A., where traffic flow is the yardstick of a leader's success, Giuliani will make us behave. If the sign says, "No parking 7 a.m. to 10 a.m.," the Scourge of Squeegee Men, the Avenging Angel of Times Square will tow your illegally parked car and ticket your butt. Not just here and there, not just now and then, but all over town, and every day.

The editorial board settles in for an extended, exciting campaign, and calls out Proposition S proponents on their methods. Finally, the board snarks at Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata for failing to pass term-limits reform:

Voters don't like to be played for fools.... If you hadn't been so blatantly self-serving and hadn't given voters such good reasons to be angry with you, term-limits reform would have passed. The next generation of California lawmakers would have had more clout to say "no" to lobbyists and a long enough view to hammer out fixes for our chronic budget, healthcare, water resources, education and other problems.

Instead, California is left with the same broken system it has had for 18 years. As for you, you're termed out. Bye, now. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Readers share their post election buzz. Mark Donnelly writes, "Looks as if The Times' starry-eyed push for Obama had exactly the effect on California's voters I thought it would: none."

Ouch.

Just in case our editorial on J.K. Rowling's suit against The Harry Potter Lexicon isn't fresh in your mind, our take was: Stupid idea, bad for the brand, bad for Rowling's longterm legacy and bad for the fans, but probably defensible from a legal and a property-rights standpoint:

The most compelling public-interest argument against the steady expansion of copyright duration and power has been that it discourages new work by outsiders without encouraging copyright owners to be more productive -- as was clearly the case when, for example, Margaret Mitchell's estate attempted to block "The Wind Done Gone," Alice Randall's parody of "Gone With the Wind." That is not the case here. Rowling is still alive, still creating material and still in a position to want, and merit, relatively full powers over her invented universe.

Tim Wu in Slate also seems to think the suit is a bad decision, but he says Rowling ought to lose for strictly legal reasons:

The closest relevant legal precedent is the 2002 Beanie Baby decision by Judge Richard Posner (who has a taste for cases involving stuffed animals). Ty, the producer of Beanie Babies, doesn't like unauthorized guides to the Beanie Baby universe and their unflattering tendency to criticize the company, so it sued. Ruling against the company, Judge Posner used the same analogy that I have, comparing the guides to book reviews: "Both," he said, "are critical and evaluative as well as purely informational; and ownership of a copyright does not confer a legal right to control public evaluation of the copyrighted work." That's logic that should control the Potter case as well.

Even if the Beanie Baby case isn't directly controlling, the economics suggest the same result. How, exactly, are we hurt by the existence of competing guides to the Potter universe, one written by fans, the other by Rowling? It would be strange to say that since Fodor has written a perfectly good guide to London, we don't need the Lonely Planet or, for that matter, Wikitravel. Giving Rowling what she wants would be like giving Egypt the power to control guides to the pyramids.

I don't see how the Beanie Baby case is controlling, or even how it's relevant. A book about three-dimensional plush toys isn't taking nearly as much material as a book about another book, is it? All the value adds of descriptions and criticisms of the objects (objects that don't contain any words) are original to the authors of the Beanie Baby guide. Very few are original to the authors of the Harry Potter book — if they were, the book wouldn't be a reliable guide.

Wu argues that there's a threat here to "our collective wisdom" and "what we know." This is more properly understood not as a matter of what belongs to us but of what belongs to J.K. Rowling. A wiki-type online guide to the Potter books is an acceptable fair use because the added value is clear: It provides a reorganization of Rowling's stuff into another medium in a way that is clearly distinct from any of her books. A book is something different: By its nature as a guide it can't depart substantially from Rowling's work; the ratio of copyrighted to new material is so great as to make a fair-use claim very difficult.

Which, again, is not an argument that Rowling should be pursuing an action we called "petty, churlish and, from a business standpoint, probably ill-advised." It's a rare sign of good sense that, for example, Paramount does not go after the proprietors of Memory-Alpha. (And just to be clear, for the very reasons detailed above, I think Paramount would lose if it did; while the ratio of copyrighted to new stuff is still large, the act of describing content from a visual medium is itself transformative in a way that rearranging material from a written medium is not.) But just because sweet reason leads some copyright owners to behave with liberality doesn't mean all copyright owners should be required to do the same. The Harry Potter franchise is Rowling's to screw up any way she wishes.

Today’s piece of our series on American values may surprise readers who, when they consider their own happiness, think in terms of personal satisfaction. When we discuss the “pursuit of happiness,” we do so not in the sense of a hedonistic quest but rather in the pursuit of economic well-being. As the editorial notes, that represents an older and, to us at least, a sounder basis for considering happiness and the government’s role in protecting our ability to secure it. For us, John Locke gets the nod over Timothy Leary.

The proper role of the government in the pursuit of happiness is not always philosophically pure so much as it is deeply practical. As such, it can disappoint those who search for absolutes. Those who would hold the government responsible for actually delivering happiness must inevitably be disappointed to discover that no government, no matter how big or insistent, may guarantee that its citizens are happy. Workers’ paradises tend not to be.

Conversely, those who see no role at all for the government in protecting a people’s right to pursue their well-being ignore the proper place for the state in shaping the economy and interceding where interests collide. The abolition of government has its downsides, too.

We happily find ourselves in the practical center between those poles. There, the government trains workers and protects the livelihoods of retired women and men; it sets rules and anticipates blips in the economy that could have devastating effects. But, when it functions well, it does so without coddling or infantilizing those it serves; it recognizes, for instance, the benefits of free trade, as we note, “rather than pandering to those who feel threatened by the global marketplace.” That has ramifications for the tax code, the deficit and the future of social security, among other areas. Some candidates are talking about those topics, and we commend them, even if we don’t always agree with where they come out. To those who are trying to duck these tough questions, we hope to keep up the pressure from our end, and hope readers will join us.

Today’s editorial brings us close to the halfway point of what we’re setting out to do over these weeks — to lay down a reasonably cogent and coherent set of values that reflect our history and that we hope to apply to the campaign. As we turn into the backstretch, we do hope you’ll join us, as scores of you already have, by sharing your thoughts on these pieces with us and with each other.

Just follow the links.

When we last week launched our series on American values and the 2008 presidential campaign, we asked for your thoughts on the pieces, and you responded. In the hundred or so posts to our discussion boards on the four editorials we've run so far, some of you complained, some asked questions, a few even praised our work.

In the spirit of the conversation we're eager to have, I thought I should respond, publicly, to some of the more provocative messages you've sent so far.

First, some of you are clearly angry with us, and much of that comes from those who don't like our views on immigration. For us, immigration is a source of vigor and replenishment in American society — and that includes legal immigration as well as immigrants who are in this country illegally. Not everyone agrees. Peter, responding to our first editorial suggests that we're pulling our punches when we welcome immigrants even as we acknowledge the tension between our belief in the rule of law and our compassion for those who are not in the country legally but are becoming part of its social and political fabric. "Who are you afraid of offending? The anxiety over our language and culture is real." Another reader, Bill, echoes that alarm and adds to it the charges of hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty — he calls us "a source that doesn't exhibit honesty in any way, shape or form." Well, yes, Peter and Bill, we hear the anxiety. We just don't share it. To us, the challenges to our culture are invigorating, not alarming. And no, as should be obvious, we're not afraid of offending — hey, we offended you!

Bill is not alone in charging us with hypocrisy — that's an accusation that crops up in letters as well as in our discussion boards. GBW, writing about our "Life" editorial, suggests that we like federalism when it works for us, and drop it when it doesn't. That's intriguing, and in some ways correct. Still, I'm going to argue that it's not hypocrisy but rather an endemic feature of living in a society where both states and the federal government have duties. States' rights once were the province of conservatives, who saw them as the bulwark against integrationist federal authority; lately, they've been more appealing to liberals, as states take a more aggressive position on global warming, for instance. As for the editorial board at The Times, we have our mishmash of views like anyone else, but we've never suggested that we live and die by federalism. We think the states should lead on certain issues and the federal government on others. And we're hardly alone in that.

For some readers, the very idea of The Times holding forth on these issues and values is offensive. It reeks of superiority. Ted is one who doesn’t think much of us, and he questions our belief in due process for those captured outside America. Another reader, Martin, highlights the fact that our editorials "are strictly the opinions of the LA Times staff member or members," whom he sees as liberals intent on inducing readers to "vote for candidates that are in line with the agenda the LA Times wishes to push." Here, on behalf of myself and my colleagues, I enter the plea of partly guilty. Yes, we're putting out an agenda, if by that you mean an attempt to draft a coherent set of ideas that should guide this campaign back to the roots of American history and society. That's what editorial boards do, for whatever it's worth. But just so you know: We're hardly lock-step liberals. The editorial board and our colleagues, which are responsible for these pieces and the other editorials on our pages, is comprised of liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats and a libertarian or two. We have varied views on the many issues we're discussing, and we don't all agree with every word of the pieces you're reading. And while we do intend to endorse candidates next year, we haven't settled on anyone yet, so these pieces are not plugging a contender. We do want to contribute to a conversation — to lead it where we can — but there's nothing hidden or nefarious about that. We're trying our best to put down some thoughts that we think are worth discussing. We're not the Trilateral Commission.

The editorial board thought this would happen.

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

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

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) has released a new ad, just as bloody as his last, and the similarities don't stop there. Both spots tie immigration policy to scary and indefensible scourges of American life — first terrorists, now gangs. And both ads conclude with vote-for-Tancredo-or-else-risk-brutal-violence ultimatums. The new spot says only Tancredo "dares say what must be done" (deport 'em all, that is).

The ad came out the same day Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that, in fact, it's actually doing what must be done. ICE fugitive operations teams arrested over 30,000 people in fiscal year 2007 — twice as many "criminal aliens and immigration fugitives" as it nabbed the year before. The Fugitive Operations Program, launched four years ago, targets illegal immigrants whom everyone from Tancredo to The Times agrees should get the boot, like child sex exploiters, convicted violent criminals, and suspected gang members.

Suspected is the key word there, unfortunately — reports have shown that many of those arrested turn out to have no gang involvement. (And The Times said in a 2005 story that deportation has actually helped one of the most dangerous gangs to flourish.)

ICE is, fortunately, softening its policy on raids. After a report showed the negative impact on children of detaining adult illegal immigrants — especially breast-fed babies — ICE drafted new guidelines with Sen. Edward Kennedy's (D-Mass.) help. It's good to see Kennedy, a co-sponsor of the mother of all comprehensive immigration reform bills, getting back in the game, since most every non-legislative effort to fix immigration policy has focused on security concerns, at the expense of humanitarian ones.

Richard Perle biographer Alan Weisman says Perle is back to puppet-mastering the Middle East, looking for the next Ahmed Chalabi:

Perle, of course, was the most prominent and aggressive advocate of Chalabi, dubbed the "Jay Gatsby of Iraq" for his social life and financial scandals, as the leader of a new Iraq. That effort collapsed when the Iraqi people, finally given a chance to vote in January 2005, did not award Chalabi's party a single seat in the new parliament.

Perle insists that his man, who has a new job with the Baghdad government, was the victim of a smear campaign led by the State Department and the CIA. The Chalabi experience has not muted Perle's unabashed affection for dissidents. "I think the best way to bring about regime change," he told me, "is to help decent people who are powerless without outside help."

State Assemblyman John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) explains how easy fixes got California into a budget mess. And Angelo Rivero Santos, deputy chief of mission of the Venezuelan Embassy, says that those who oppose upcoming reforms are opposing democratic change.

One of those opponents happens to be the editorial board, which says Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez wants a government like Cuba's, and may get it. The board is optimistic about the Annapolis Middle East summit, which seems to have surpassed (admittedly low) expectations. And the board isn't surprised that law enforcement agencies can't enforce Jessica's Law, a wishful-thinking ballot initiative passed last fall.

Readers discuss a Times analysis of Mitt Romney. Irvine's Jean Anne Turner writes, "The article characterizes Romney and his family as a throwback to another era without acknowledging how successfully they are managing to live family values in these turbulent times.... [H]e deserves better than Mitt-picking."

Charles Bukowski is the consummate, and possibly the only, poet of Los Angeles. He grew up in the city, suffered his adolescence in its public schools, labored in its institutions (including a short stint here at The Times), lived in many of its bungalows, occasionally risked being run over to sleep on its streets, and of course, recorded the lot of it in his poetry.

Selecting one spot to place a plaque for Bukowski may thus seem random, or even limiting, to the legacy of a man whose writing shaped the city's image. But many Angelenos and the editorial board have advocated saving one former Bukowski home — 5124 De Longpre Ave. — from the wrecking ball by deeming it a historical landmark. The Cultural Heritage Commission had been scheduled to rule on the property today, but that hearing has been delayed at the behest of the property owner's attorney, who says the owner didn't receive notice of the hearing by certified mail (thanks to LAist for the info).

But the owner had a few choice words about Bukowski, too...

I'm always looking for material in my one-man jihad to rehabilitate the reputation of the pre-Otis-Chandler Los Angeles Times, so I was excited to come across an interesting tidbit recently. A few weeks ago the editorial board reacted to the second fall of Karen Hughes by noting that centralized government information offices are never as good at promoting America's image as is the private sector. Sample:

The challenge has never been getting fair-minded people to agree that there are things to admire about Americans and our society. Hughes was fond of noting that the initials PD "remind us that public diplomacy is people-driven." But people do not make diplomacy. Governments do. New York and Los Angeles already do a creditable job of selling American culture to the world. Washington's job should be selling U.S. policy.

This is just a rehash of the brilliant thesis, laid out half a decade ago by Chuck Freund, that vulgar culture -- of exactly the sort that both leftwing and rightwing American politicians have always deplored -- is actually among the most powerful weapons in this country's "soft power" arsenal. It's not a new idea that Elvis did far more than the Congress for Cultural Freedom to win hearts and minds behind the Iron Curtain, but I did think this was the kind of notion that would get a more sympathetic hearing among post-Goldwater libertoid types than among the center-right, Nixon-boosting, foreigner-disdaining, reliable-men-in-charge-of-everything types I imagine running the mid-century Times.

But the following editorial from March 9, 1952, arguing that Voice of America is a waste of time, makes me rethink that stereotype. Between their skepticism about an anti-communist boondoggle and their lengthy citation of Henry Hazlitt's The Freeman, I'd have to say those editorial board alter kockers of yore knew a bit more about freedom (and not just True Industrial Freedom either) than history has given them credit for. As background you may need to know that the Coast Guard cutter Courier, which is pictured at right (buy the postcard at eBay!), was a vessel outfitted with powerful radio equipment that spent more than a decade cruising the Mediterranean and broadcasting the sounds of liberty into Eastern Europe. The editorial board, which was as anti-Red as any in the country, nonetheless argued that this was a straight-up waste of taxpayer money:

A Better Job for Less Money

As the President was launching the Coast Guard cutter Courier on her maiden voyage as a floating radio transmitter (with three times the power of any American station) the newsstands had an article by George Creel, who did a similar job much better and for very much less money during World War I. 

Voice of Experience

Creel's article, called "Study in Planned Futility," in The Freeman, is criticism of the Voice of America by a man who can justly be called an expert. His campaign as head of President Wilson's Committee on Public Information, during the full two years of World War I, cost just $4,912,553. In addition to running the propaganda office, which was highly successful, Creel also ran the censorship.

In World War II the Army and the Navy and the other so-called "information" offices — really propaganda agencies — spent at least $500,000,000 for the same purposes; with so little success that the administration felt it necessary, as Creel remarks, to "continue the courtship of other people on a larger and even more lavish scale."

In a nearly unanimous vote supprted by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors okayed granting municipal identification cards to any resident, regardless of legal status. The author of the measure, Supervisor Tom Ammiano, says it will encourage undocumented immigrants to report crimes and access banking services.

On the other side of the country, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer nixed his plan to allow illegal immigrants to apply for driver's licenses. The decision comes after Spitzer revised the plan into a tiered system, that, as The New York Times notes, "pleased almost no one." It didn't sit well with the Times editorial board either; maybe in this case, no plan is better than a bad one.

Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani has won the endorsement of televangelist and Moral Majority founder Pat Robertson. Robertson, who recently made the news for his suggestion that Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez needed assassinatin', becomes the most prominent social conservative to back a candidate so far (though Mitt Romney got an important backer yesterday).

It's a big deal for Giuliani, whose pro-choice stance remains anathema for many a values voter. Indeed, the editorial board recently asked if those voters would throw their weight behind a third party rather than back Giuliani. But as senior editorial writer Michael McGough noted, Giuliani's abortion position seems less and less pro-choice the more campaign speeches he gives.

Kindred spirit Stephanie Herrick commiserated over the trouble with finding recycling bins in LA:

I just read your October 22, 2007 article ...  I feel exactly the same way you do, and have been struggling with finding places to recycle (and people who care) for the past 5 years that I have lived in apartments in Los Angeles. I moved here from Seattle where throwing away paper or bottles in the trash is an abhorrent sin. Yet here in LA, I drive around at night looking for a blue bin to throw my bags of recycling in, afraid the whole time I'll get caught.

I have to admit, such dedication brings tears to my eyes. I mean, I just walk the nearest few blocks, clanking trash bag in tow, looking for all the world like another bum on the street. But Herrick goes the distance. She's like a recycling Robin Hood.

Fear not, there is a point to this post. She asks,

Can you please send me the information you have on the free program you mentioned for apartments?  I would volunteer my time to call apartment owners, asking them to sign up for the program. I think if they new about it and were coaxed a bit, many of them would go for it.  I know I will call my apartment owner right away with the information.

Absolutely. Here's an intro to the free recycling program, along with instructions for how to get your building/condo/mobile home enrolled. Check it out — it won't cost you anything but a phone call or an e-mail. 

If you like what you see, follow Herrick's lead and spread the word. It's a great program, but in a town as big as LA, it needs all the advertising help it can get.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today declared his love of 3rd party applications for the iPhone, just a few weeks after Apple issued a software update for the iPhone that killed off all the 3rd party apps (and, in more than a few cases, killed the phone, too). The company plans to issue a software development kit for the iPhone early next year, giving developers an authorized route onto the phone's OS X-based operating system. That's bound to be easier than "jailbreaking" the phone in order to load a custom app.

It would be nice to think that Jobs changed course after reading our editorial on this issue, but that would be wrong. The best guess, judging by the hints made by Apple executives, was that Apple has long planned to develop an SDK for the iPhone. I makes no sense to do otherwise, especially when there are far more 3rd party developers coming up with novel mobile software than there are Apple employees. The only question was when to bring an SDK to market. According to Jobs' blog post, the main reason for the delay is the work required to protect iPhone users against malware. Of course, Apple could have designed the iPhone OS from the beginning to be a secure platform for 3rd party apps, as rival Symbian has tried to do with its operating systems (although not with complete success). Given the determination of the malware community, a more open iPhone presents some risk for Apple and its customers. But I suspect most consumers will gladly take that risk in exchange for a bounty of useful new apps.

We've had plenty of cause for celebration lately that we are not bound by Article 301 of the Turkish penal code (which specifies a six-month-to-three year prison sentence for insulting "being a Turk, the Republic or Turkish Grand National Assembly") or even by Article 125 (three months for offending "honour, reputation, dignity or prestige"), but we're even gladder than usual after a tour through the editorial board's contemporaneous coverage of the Armenian genocide.

The blunt instrument of a penal code will never have much to say about writing style, and there's plenty of evidence that the Times' sympathy with the Armenians — a sensibility widely shared by Americans at the time — was genuine. But somehow the expressions of pity for the Christian peoples of a far-off land seem perfunctory; it's only in denunciations of the Turks, or as the board preferred at the time, "the Turk," that those nameless, faceless writers of yore rose to anything like poetry. Or actually, that's only half-true: The wartime eds are brimming with couplets and quatrains and someties whole stanzas from Lord Byron, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the Bible and occasionally the doggerelists of the ed board themselves, and I'm making it my mission to work more Byron into future editorials. Anyway, let's go to the tape:

Dec. 18, 1917: THE END OF TURKEY
There is as much cause for including Turkey and Bulgaria in our declaration of war as there is for including Austria Hungary. There are as good reasons for the extinction of the Ottoman empire as there are for the overthrow of the government of the Kaiser. For 500 years the Turks have been a curse to Christendom, engaged in war after war and massacre after massacre. During the early middle ages there was built in the Balkans large and prosperous cities on the ruins of the civilization of Rome. The Turks found there a fertile and cultivated country. The cities which they seized became ruined and deserted villages. "Wherever they have trodden," said Henry Cabot Lodge, "trade, industry, commerce and the arts and civilization have withered away..." [...]

At least half of the Armenian people have been slaughtered in cold blood and the remnant is only preserved now because a large part of Armenia has falled under Russian control and the other Armenians have taken refuge there.

Feb. 26, 1918:

MARTYRED PEOPLES
When a peace of victory is finally achieved Germany must answer for her inhumanities in Belgium; Austria for the depopulation of Serbia, and Turkey for the almost total annihilation of the Armenians. [...]

If the war continues for another year with Serbia in possession of its arch enemies, it will be impossible to repatriate the Serbian people, for it will have ceased to exist. The same is true to an equal extent with Armenia; but the slaughter has been greater there because the population was greater. In six years the native population of Armenia has sunk from 16,000,000 persons to less than 800,000. Those who have approved this policy of extermination must be made to settle. The German, Austrian and Turkish peoples have approved and taken part in this wholesale murder; they should be forced to pay a huge indemnity.

March 3, 1918:

THE STAND OF UNCLE SAM
When the President said the peoples should not be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty, he had in mind the combined force and intrigue by which Germany holds Alsace-Lorraine today, by which Austria continues to dominate and enslave Hungar