No news here, but this strikes me as one of the great unresolved disputes in pop culture history:

I watched the original Star Wars a few days ago, and noted that on the commentary track George Lucas provides a new version of the development of the Obi-Wan Kenobi character. According to Lucas, he decided at some point in the production that Kenobi had to die part of the way through the movie — over the objections of Alec Guinness, who wanted to keep on working. Nothing remarkable there, except that Guinness very famously gave a totally different version of the story: that Guinness himself talked Lucas into killing off the character because he was bored with reciting "those bloody awful, banal lines." As the late actor told the late Talk magazine in 1999, "I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo."

That's two incompatible versions of the same event. One witness is dead and the other is a fairly energetic reinventor of his own back stories. Which one do you believe? Against my usual habit of not trusting anything George Lucas says, I'm inclined to say he is telling the truer story.

Guinness built up a great reputation as a Star Wars basher over the years, but he didn't start out that way; there's very little in the contemporary record to suggest the kind of contempt for the movie he later showed. The argument-from-self-interest also works against Guinness' version. Actors want to keep acting, as Guinness himself went on to prove: Well into his career as a Star Wars refusenik, he accepted cameo roles in both sequels. Finally, Lucas earned a small believability credit with me by including the original, blissfully non-remastered version of the original movie in the DVD package, which suggests he has given up on his subtle but persistent campaign to convince everybody that the original Star Wars was always called Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope.

Whichever version is true, I'm well satisfied that the entire Star Wars project ran out of steam once Kenobi got killed off. They kept making the movies, but from that point I tuned out, only waking up from time to time out of respect for Lando Calrissian, inter-galactic cock-blocker.

... 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."

Both liberal and conservative Catholics are spinning Pope Benedict XVI’s  visit to America and he hasn’t even landed.

The website of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good offers a pre-visit briefing for journalists (listen for my question) featuring several liberal Catholic luminaries, including Father Thomas Reese, the deposed editor of the Jesuit magazine America. Commonweal magazine on its Website recycles a golden oldie, an analysis of Joseph Ratzinger's theological evolution.

On the right side of the nave, the conservative  Cardinal Newman Society — "dedicated to renewing and strengthening Catholic identity at America’s 224 Catholic colleges and universities" — offers a series of essays looking forward to the pope’s speech on Catholic education, which, depending on whom you believe, will either be an anathema against Catholic colleges that play host to pro-choice speakers and "The Vagina Monologues" or a gentle reminder that colleges should retain their Catholic identity.

A non-ideological but indispensable source for followers of the pope’s visit is Rocco Palmo’s Whispers in the Loggia. And  those who share my eccentric  interest in the pope as a fashion trend-setter can keep up with the pope’s wardrobe at the site of the New Liturgical Movement, which also offers (with disapproval) a snippet from a song you’re not likely to hear the U.S. Marine Corps Band play when the pope visits President Bush:

Long live the Pope His praises sound again and yet again
His rule is over space and time His throne the hearts of men
All hail the Shepherd King of Rome The theme of loving song
Let all the earth in glory sing And heav’n the strain prolong.

I think even the pope would prefer "Kumbaya."

This just in: The White House website has provided the textof the Vatican National Anthem.

Long before he was identified as a mouthpiece for Bill Cinton, James Carville was (in)famous in my home state of Pennsylvania for the “guru ad,” a 1986 campaign commercial for the original Bob Casey  that savaged Casey’s Republican opponent for governor, Bill Scranton III, as a  follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The ad, which showed the image of a younger, long-haired Scranton to the sinister accompaniment of sitar music, was aired only in the conservative midsection of Pennsylvania and not in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia.  Casey won.

I thought of the guru ad the other day when The Politico recycled, and desconstructed, a famous Carville exercise in political geograophy. I always thought Carville had described the Keystone State as “Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Mississippi in the middle.” But The Politico’s version was more parochial still: “Carville described the state as Paoli (a suburb of Philadelphia) and Penn Hills (a suburb of Pittsburgh) with Alabama in between.”

Alabama, Mississippi — what’s the difference? Either way, Carville was equating my native state’s Bible Belt — and receptive audience for guru-bashing ads — as Hicksville, a point that sticks in the craw of some Southerners.

I’ve been to both Penn Hills and Paoli, and they are as different from each other as either is from Pottsville, Pa. — or Punxatawney, of “Groundhog Day” fame. Pennsylvania is a big place, and a diverse one, which is why Carville’s caricature was onto something in its crude way.

Pennsylvania is enjoying its day in the political sun now that — for the first  time in my career as a journalist — its presidential primary is actually the object of national attention. If nothing else, this unaccustomed attention will mean some journalistic pilgrimages to the cheesesteak emporiums of Philadelphia, the shot-and-a-beer bars of Pittsburgh and the pecan farms — I mean pretzel factories — of Hanover.

A reader takes exception to my comment in an earlier post that California's constitution lacks the equivalent of a 2nd Amendment "right to keep and bear arms."

But even 2nd Amendment enthusiasts admit (and lament) that California is lacking a guarantee for either a collective or an individual right to keep and bear arms. Commenter Tom points to Article I Section 1 of the state constitution declaring: "All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty..." Tom concludes, "I  seem to have the inalienable right to defend my life."

But Pennsylvania's constitution, which does have a robust (or wacky, depending on your point of view)  right to keep and bear arms also includes boilerplate similar to California's: "All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing and protecting property and reputation, and of pursuing their own happiness." So, if Tom is right, Section 21 of Pennsylvania's Declaration of Rights — "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned" — is, as Chief Justice Marshall would say, mere surplusage.

Michael Meyers recent Blowback on Barack Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech continues to draw fire, both friendly and unfriendly. Our letters-to-the-editor mailbag is overflowing. Even Flaubert sent in some mots justes:

Hello,

Talk about missing the point, i think your comments are way off base and insulting to many folks who "herd" a different postive message.

Thank you
Ed Faubert

---

Meyers is right. Obama blew it. As a presidential candidate, his speech did miss the mark and by that measure proves he is a man whose depth is too shallow to be president. He is obviously captured in the socio/political black bigotry exemplied by Wright that seeks crutches and excuses while condeming America. As a "genetic Republican" I believe it will be a great crime if Obama and not Clinton is the Democrats standard barrier. That action places the country at risk considering the possibility that he could be elected.

Otis Page 
Arroyo Grande

---

 

Dear Editor:

Mr. Meyer's opinion that Obama Blew It with his speech on race is correct.  Mr Meyers should be a speech writer for Obama.  But, then Obama doesn't believe in his own message because he never walked the talk.  Our culture is so enamored by speeches and words, and sermons.  But after all the talk and great phrases, I ask, what has this person done to give credence to his/her words. St. Francis never gave sermons, he just gave living examples of what he believed.  He put flesh to the word.  This is my main gripe with Obama and his fine sounding words.  In scripture there's a phrase by Jesus, " Not all those who say Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom, but those who do the will of My Father".

In Obama's speech he attempts to give moral equivalence to his White Grandmother's fear of blacks and of her saying some inflammatory remarks about Blacks, He goes on to say, should I then renounce my Grandmother.

To try and make his Grandmother's remarks the moral equivalent with Pastor's Wright is false.  The Pastor was speaking in church publicly to many people. His Grandmother was speaking to him privately.  This is typical of a man with no experience to back up his fine words, and then resorts to weak arguments to make his point.

So, Mr Meyer, you wished he could have said the things you offered in your column. But Obama could never do that because he doesn't believe it.  Does it strike anyone that the two themes of Obama's message -- 1. Time for a Change, and 2. Coming together as One -- have been used time and time again as political rhetoric. Every new administration runs on Change. The coming together as One is nothing but a slogan. All that is needed is bipartisanship and/or a veto congress to get things done.

Obama's one claim of experience is as a Community Organizer. You have to hand it to him, he's taken this one experience and his oratory and will almost become President of the U.S.  One last thing Senator Kerry made a brilliant statement today.  He said, I'm paraphrasing now, Obama can unite the country because he is Black and will encourage the moderate muslims because he is black.  Talk about playing the Race Card and why Senator Kerry has endorsed Obama.  This alone should make the uncommitted Super Delegates think twice before endorsing Obama.

Yes, Mr Meyers,  Obama Blew it. 

John L Cerrato
Rockville Centre, NY

---

Not since Niall Ferguson's response to Harold Pinter's Nobel Acceptance Speech, that you published in December 2005 (you published the response, not the speech), have I read a more gross misrepresentation and misinterpretaion of a person's words. Meyers cherry-picks the speech Obama delivered, and seems to intentionally miscontrue Obama's words in an apparent attempt to mislead and misinform the newspaper-reading public.  As I did in 2005 in regard to the Ferguson article, I plead with your readers to go straight to the source - read or view the speech before judging it, do not rely on a misleading criticism.  And I request that the latimes editorial staff make some effort to hold their guest writers to at least a minimal degree of accountability.  Even op-ed pieces need to be held accountable or else they become mere propaganda.

joe stanford
venice

---

Letter to the editor;

Michael Meyers writes (“Obama blew it,” Los Angeles Times, March 20, 2008), “We and our leaders -- especially our candidates for the highest office in the land -- must repudiate all forms of racial idiocy and sexism, and be judged by whether we still belong to exclusionary or hateful groups.”  Barack Obama did, but apparently it was not forecuflle enough to suit Meyers---Obama neither being black enough, nor forceful enough, not Uncle Tom enough?

On NPR “Talk of the Nation” Meyers criticized Obama, suggesting that he nuanced the displays of bigotry made by his minister.  I did not think that Obama did---at least not as much as Myers has nuanced his brave new attacks of racial bigotry---Meyers ignores the blatantly bigoted comments on right-wing talk radio  and Fox, and finds fault with a guy the is struggling to make a difference. 

“In my considered judgment,” when all is said in done, Barack Obama will have made more of a difference in advancing better race relations by simply running for the presidency than Michael Meyers will do by shooting off his “considerate” mouth for the rest of his life.  Who the hell needs nuance when bigots have someone like Meyers giving them cover from which to spread their attacks on Obama or “racial idiocy?”

Although Meyers divulged that he is black and that he had heroically canceled his membership in 100 Black Men of America Inc., I have no reason to nuance my own position by divulging the color of my skin.  Does Meyers know when he will appear on Bill O'Reilly’s no spin zone?

Sam Osborne
West Branch

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Regarding your "Obama blew It" article.  I believe that Obama was saying what you profess, but he understands that unless we acknowledge the history first we cannot understand the present, and then move on to the future.  I have heard so many say he should have just disowned his pastor.  Had he always just run away, or if he had disassociated himself with everyone who carries the baggage his pastor does, he could never have been in the position of understanding he is now to be able to lead us forward.  His speech was just the first step...together we will get where you are.  It is a journey worth the pain...and as I have emailed to Bill Press, Peter King, Pat Buchanan, Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson, I would like you to read it too.  Thank you.

Regarding your call for Barack Obama to disown his pastor.  I refer you to Luke 6:37 "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not and ye shall not be condemned: forgive and ye shall be forgiven:"  Perhaps Obama is following those words from Jesus!  John 8:7 He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.  Perhaps you missed the sermons where these words were spoken? 

Jim and Ginny

Hey there, Pennsylvania Democrats: are you sure you're old enough to vote? Because some of you are acting like two-year-olds.

A Franklin & Marshall College poll has found that if Barack Obama loses wins* the nomination, 20% 19% of Hillary Clinton voters — at least in Pennsylvania — say they'll vote for John McCain on election day. Ditto Clinton supporters — an Obama nomination would send 20% of them to the R column, and to John McCain.

For these petulant Democratic voters, it appears it's about personality over policy after all.  They'll choose four more years of Republican appointments of judges, Republican policies in the Iraq war, in environmental matters, in abortion and family planning programs, and tax cuts for the already prosperous ... all this over a Democratic fiscal and social and war agenda.

Nice work, people. If you want to cast a protest vote, why not choose Ralph Nader? This isn't like Florida 2000, where voters were confused by the ballot.  If McCain wins as a consequence of this ''my way or the highway'' sulking, Democrats will know who they have to blame: one another.

* Thanks to commenter Lorie for the correction.

Speaking of impolitic political opinions arising where they should be beside the point -- remember when a venerable Philadelphia cheesesteak shop got into the immigration debate? Back in 2005, Geno's Steaks owner Joe Vento posted a sign that asked customers to speak English when they ordered, right around the time Wisconsin Republican Rep. James F. Sensenbrenner was readying the house bill that would turn Good Samaritans into criminals, and would mobilize a vast pro-immigration movement.

Many immigration bills have have died on the floor since then, but the matter of Vento's sign was only put to rest yesterday, when a city panel ruled that the sign wasn't discriminatory:

In a 2-1 vote, a Commission on Human Relations panel found that two signs at Geno's Steaks telling customers, "This is America: WHEN ORDERING 'PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH,'" do not violate the city's Fair Practices Ordinance.

Shop owner Joe Vento has said he posted the signs in October 2005 because of concerns over immigration reform and an increasing number of people in the area who could not order in English.

Vento has said he never refused service to anyone because they couldn't speak English. But critics argued that the signs discourage customers of certain backgrounds from eating at the shop.

Cheesesteak joints have a habit of entering high-profile national political debates: During the 2004 election, candidate John F. Kerry suffered flak for ordering his sub with Swiss cheese at Geno's rival Pat's, located across the street. (How elitist! How European!) Kerry only narrowly won the state. (It should be noted that President Bush claimed to eat his with classic Cheese Whiz, but one reporter found that Bush actually orders American cheese -- a good cheese for the heartland, perhaps, but not for Philadelphia.)

Why can't taco stands get this kind of action?

Note to Clinton and Obama: to win Pennsylvania, or at least Philadelphia, get the Cheese Whiz, and speak English.

*Photos courtesy Associated Press.

The grim half-decade of the war in Iraq is getting its share of punditry roundups and chest-beating self-criticism, so I guess I'll take a moment to probe my own conscience. I believed then and believe now that the true enemies are the liberal hawks, and in my perfect commentariat they would be banned. Nevertheless, I think my sense of the essential, elemental and incurable lack of seriousness with which the United States went to war has evolved somewhat. If I ever believed blame for the war could be quarantined to any group of thinkers or politicians, I no longer do. There is not a single American who can escape responsibility for this war; that includes Barack Obama, me, and anybody else who did not back up our opposition with any serious efforts to prevent this catastrophe, even at risk to our own safety or freedom. George Bush didn't invade Iraq. The United States of America did. As I said in August:

To put this as delicately as I can: Every non-idiot on the planet knew that invading Iraq was a bad idea. Having publicly argued otherwise should disqualify you from ever voicing any opinion on any topic ever again. Nevertheless, we as a nation went ahead with this war, and once you've made that decision, your only option is victory. Moral seriousness in this context means admitting the monstrous truth that we could continue to lose 1,000 soldiers a year for another 100 years, and that the logic of the original intervention demands we pay that price happily and continue to pay it until we get the results we want.

Just to reiterate, they call it war for a reason. What happened in Iraq is not a catastrophe caused by mismanagement: It's the best result anybody could have hoped for, and it was that long before the surge and the Petraeus miracle began. If you thought it was worth invading then, you have absolutely no right to complain about what's happened since.

For a less unhinged view, here is an editorial from a few years back, reassessing what turned out to be early test results:

So The Times' own Rosa Brooks appears on Tucker Carlson's MSNBC talk show last Friday to defend Barack Obama in light of the senator's affiliation with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Bill O'Reilly slams ... George Soros? I'm not digging in for Obama here, and Lord knows I don't agree with everything Brooks pens in our own pages, but hitting Soros for a few off-the-cuff remarks by Brooks seems like a desperate attempt by O'Reilly to pick a fight for the sake of, well, picking a fight. From O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo segment that aired March 17 on Fox News:

On the pinhead front, radical-left billionaire George Soros has a bunch of mouthpieces placed in the media, and one of them, Rosa Brooks, writes for the Los Angeles Times. Here's what our Ms. Brooks said about the Obama controversy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROSA BROOKS, LOS ANGELES TIMES: He was probably sitting at church and not listening. I hate to tell you people this, but I have heard of people who go to church and don't listen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

They weren't listening. Pinhead. Unbelievable.

Soros, of course, wants Obama elected.

To read about O'Reilly's tangled history with these Opinion L.A. interwebs — and how he helped launch Brooks' gig as a columnist — click here, here and here. Read about Times Senior Editorial Writer Michael McGough's adventure in O'Reilly pinhead-dom here.

Dr. Seuss must be turning in his grave. Pro-lifers are claiming there's an anti-abortion message in Horton Hears a Who, a movie based on his second book featuring the lovably loyal elephant. From NPR:

"I meant what I said and I said what I meant. And an elephant's faithful, 100 percent."

That's one of Horton the elephant's best-known mottoes. But with a movie version of Dr. Seuss' much-loved children's book opening Friday, another Horton saying has drawn attention from activists who see a message in the movie — a message that suits their purpose.

That message: "A person's a person, no matter how small."

"Exactly," say abortion foes.

Using Horton's innocent words to support the personhood-at-conception argument? It's a world gone mad. Frankly, I like it better when they protest popular lit (à la witchcraft in Harry Potter), because an angry social conservative is a lot less irritating than a self-satisfied one. Observe:

In Horton Hears a Who, Horton discovers that there's a whole town (Whoville) full of tiny people (the Whos) on a tiny speck of dust that's come floating his way. His neighbors think he's lost his mind. But Horton decides it's his calling to protect the life on the speck: "A person's a person no matter how small," he insists.

When Jim Carrey, the film's Horton, said those words during the Los Angeles premiere of the film last week, demonstrators who'd slipped into the theater started to yell. It was a surprise, to say the least, for the premiere audience.

"I thought maybe there was a nut loose in the theater or something," says Karl ZoBell.

Just the one? Just checking.

Audrey Geisel, Dr. Seuss' widow, has objected to the demonstrations because the Geisels didn't want to see Seuss characters used to advance any political purpose.

But that argument is a little misleading, because Dr. Seuss has always been about politics. Seuss, né Theodor Geisel, previously tapped his illustrative genius as a left-leaning editorial cartoonist with a razor-sharp pen. And many of his most enduring children's books slip in very liberal political messages. The Butter Battle Book gave grim commentary on mutual deterrence during the Cold War, and The Lorax was a rallying cry for tree-huggers everywhere. Yertle the Turtle, meanwhile, provided a rather proletarian critique of monarchy, or capitalism, or something.

Given the history, you could just as easily argue that Horton Hears a Who is about valuing people who are less economically well-off, who are of a different race, who live in a different part of the world — or who may just be vertically challenged. In short, pun intended, people who are easier to ignore, neglect or even persecute.

The problem isn't that pro-lifers are politicizing children's literature. That happens all the time. It's that they really need to do their homework. Out of ignorance, they're disregarding Seuss' rich liberal legacy  — and in the case of Horton, what could be a very different political message.

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.

On a reread, I think I may have made the case that Thomas P.M. Barnett is an insufferable windbag a bit too strongly a few years ago. Nevertheless, Thomas P.M. Barnett is an insufferable windbag, and it's disconcerting to see the global-strategy seer so centrally located in the downfall of Adm. William Fallon.

Barnett is not addressing the news at his site yet — though he is recounting his Fallon interview in a self-dramatizing play-by-play that features Chuck Norris-type factoids like the following:

I drove the 160 miles nonstop, changing my suit to travel clothes as I drove.

Barnett did address part of the controversy a few days ago, and in fairness, the idea that Barnett's Fallon profile in Esquire is what drove the Centcom commander to resign strains believability; there must be bigger disagreements at stake — which is the central point Barnett was making in his article. Here's how Barnett, in happier times, described Fallon in a breathless lead paragraph:

If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it'll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends call him "Fox," which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago. Forty years into a military career that has seen this admiral rule over America's two most important combatant commands, Pacific Command and now United States Central Command, it's impossible to make this guy--as he likes to say--"nervous in the service."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Fallon's departure does not portend a change in Iran policy. Kevin Drum notes that Fallon's mellower course on Iran was clear back in September. Lawrence J. Korb sends along the following:

Admiral Fallon's abrupt retirement as the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East is the latest sign that the Pentagon's top brass do not agree with the direction in which the administration is heading in regard to the war in Iraq and the global war on terror.

Hopefully Fallon's resignation will force the administration to listen to his position on Iran and prevent them from ignoring the advice of their respected military advisors as they did with General Colin Powell and General Erik Shinseki when it came to waging the war in Iraq.

Danger Room has more reactions.

Author Paul Slansky analyzes the art of the public apology in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal:

But how sorry would they be if they hadn't been caught? Remorse, one feels certain, would be the furthest thing from their minds. So the apology extorted by such circumstances is by definition meaningless, a perfunctory bleat of contrition designed to buy some time while the damage is assessed. It is never eloquent and never as memorable as the acts being repented. But for apology aficionados, it is that very combination of trite mea culpas for often lurid deeds that makes it all so satisfying.

University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone wants to do away with McCarthy-era loyalty oaths, and columnist Jonah Goldberg chides liberals for not being comfortable saying the p-word (that's patriot, by the way).

The editorial board has its take on Spitzer's sinnin' too:

We don't mean to imply support for prostitution, smoking or excessive drinking. There is, however, something encouraging in seeing even a self-destructive maverick spirit live on despite the best intentions of public scolds.

The board also says taxpayers end up paying more for California's popular high-interest, underrated bonds. And finally the board takes Bush to task for vetoing the torture ban.

On the letters page, readers react to Leslie Bennetts' Op-Ed on toxic anti-Clinton misogyny. See why Los Angeles' Cynthia Carle says, "I find the misogyny directed at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton loathsome. But I didn't vote for her."

Samantha Power's "monster" gaffe probably won't turn Barack Obama's primary setback into a full retreat, but it's still great fun. Read the full quotation, with the Pulitzer winner's attempt at an instant backpedal:

"We f***** up in Ohio," she admitted. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.

"She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything," Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.

Ms Power said of the Clinton campaign: "Here, it looks like desperation. I hope it looks like desperation there, too.

"You just look at her and think, 'Ergh'. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

You can practically hear the wrong-buzzer "EEEHHHH!" sound coming from the interviewer for The Scotsman (which by the way is my second-favorite name for a newspaper, after The Hindu), who not only declined to grant the request to keep the comment off the record but made it the lead and headline of the story. Well played!

Power has written for the Op-Ed page periodically. Here's her piece "How to stop genocide in Iraq," from a year ago. Another piece, "Democrats: Get Loud, Get Angry!" cowritten with Morton Abramowitz, has been disappeared from our site but you can still check it out at Common Dreams.

I take a more liberal view of what sorts of language are haram and halal than many of my colleagues, so it's probably not a surprise that I don't see what all the fuss is about. Why shouldn't you be allowed to call your opponent a monster in a no-holds-barred political campaign? It's a completely generic put-down, falling far short of the intricate jibes that some parliamentary systems consider standard. Besides, as Bugs Bunny understood, monsters are the most interesting people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last Thursday's primary debate in Texas between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was supposed to provide Clinton a chance to find a chink in Obama's armor. Unfortunately for Clinton, she never really succeeded. And maybe that's why her campaign seems to have grown more aggressive, tossing strategy out the door in favor of shooting blind and hoping something makes a dent. (So far, it's mostly resulted in friendly fire.)

The New York Times calls it a "five-point attack." Politico calls it "highly improvisational". A Clinton aide christened it the "kitchen sink" method. If you want to judge for yourself, here are some gems from the past few days:

The xerox zinger: In the debate, Clinton defended her accusation that Obama plagiarized Massachussetts Gov. Deval Patrick. "Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox," quipped the junior senator from the Empire State, who has never lifted a phrase in her life. That didn't go over so well with the audience, judging from all the boos.

Kiss and make up: Later in the same debate, Clinton practically sang an ode to Obama. "I am honored -- I am honored -- to be here with Barack Obama," she said, offering her hand to her opponent. Awww... But wait, there's more:

Whatever happens, we're going to be fine ... I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people. And that's what this election should be about.

A gesture of concession? Hardly. More likely it was a move to undo the damage wrought by the Xerox quote -- and to woo back key demographics, especially white women. That sugarcoated moment earned her a standing ovation.

Oh, oh, do the one of Barack, that's my favorite: The warm fuzzy feeling soon wore off, though -- instead of sticking to her "ready on day one" pitch at a Sunday rally in Rhode Island, Clinton did her best Obama impression (gesticulation included) for an appreciative crowd:

I could just stand up here and say ‘Let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified.’ The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.

Straight out of "Karl Rove's playbook": At a rally in Ohio, a supporter handed Clinton pamphlets the Obama campaign was distributing on her healthcare plans -- information she called misleading. "Shame on you, Barack Obama," she scolded afterward, brandishing the offending fliers at reporters. (Who wants to bet that supporter was prompted?)

My best constituents are black! In a more passive-aggressive show of strength, Clinton was the only candidate to appear at the annual State of the Black Union in Louisiana last weekend (Obama offered to send his wife Michelle instead). There's nothing better than courting a reluctant demographic and kicking your rival under the table at the same time.

What's in a turban? Obama staffers wigged out at a Drudge report that Clinton campaign members had been circulating photos of the Illinois senator donning local dress in Kenya. It's not like he's the first public figure to don the local garb -- check out Calvin Coolidge in a Native American headdress. The campaign took hours to deny any role in their distribution, but given the long leash Clinton has given to overenthusiastic staffers (up until she fires them) it's hard to take them at their word.

How many kitchen appliances do you think she's got left for tonight's showdown? Post your thoughts below.

USA-193, we hardly knew ye. Per Peter Spiegel's excellent L.A. Times piece this morning, the U.S. Navy's destruction of the rogue satellite last night was a ballistic hit, involving no explosives. With very high confidence that the hydrazine tank apparently at issue was successfully ruptured, we can say at least that this was an impressive technical feat, leaving little in the debris field larger than nectarine-sized Bush-bashing and mircometeoroids of conspiracy theory.

Which isn't to say the Future Imagery Architecture project isn't due for a swift kick. [See update below.] If you're not following Noah Shachtman's Danger Room blog at Wired, do yourself a favor. Shachtman's got what looks like launch-to-impact footage. Well, take a look for yourself:

Also of interest: A simulation from Analytic Graphics that seems to show the satellite was moving in a pole-to-pole orbit. I haven't followed this story that closely: Is that accurate? [No, it was not. See below.] And a history of the ambitious but costly intelligence project that produced the rogue.

Update: In an interview after posting, Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, corrected me on two points: USA-193 was not part of the FIA program. Also, the satellite was not in polar orbit but angled 58.5 degrees to the equator.

For all you collectors out there, a prized piece of Fidel Castro memorabilia is going on the auction block: a signed map of the failed battle plan to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1953. If you don't think there's a market for commie collectables, think again: A lock of Che Guevara's hair sold for more than $100,000 last October.

Granted, Che had a lot going for him in the cultural-icon market that Fidel lacks -- a romantic cause, a life tragically cut short, latin hottie Gael Garcia Bernal playing him in The Motorcycle Diaries. And a killer marketing campaign. Seriously, who doesn't own a Che t-shirt?

Still, nothing says bygone like an auction, and the autographed map is an indication that Americans are ready to assign Fidel Castro to his proper place in 20th-century political and cultural history. Judging by his announced retirement today, Fidel is getting there, too -- even if he is holding on to his opinion column in the state newspaper. And while the presidential hopefuls can't seem to get over their Cuba complex, they'll get the hint once the Antiques Roadshow hits post-Fidel Florida.

Writer Todd Balf wonders if race was a factor in the demonization of ex-Olympian Marion Jones, and cartoonist Nick Anderson takes a shot at Congress and its steroid-use hearings. Israeli novelist Amos Oz argues for a cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza, and Ronald Brownstein gives a play-by-play of Obama's eight-contest sweep. Joel Stein discovers the Christian Oscars aren't so different from the nondenominational ones — except when they are:

Though the Christian Oscars looked just like any other awards show, there were some differences. The Oscars don't start with a prayer. And they don't have a letter in their program from President Bush wishing them a successful event. I stared at it for a long time, wondering if all his correspondence begins, "I send greetings." I got the feeling that Bush expected that, during his presidency, he'd get to meet aliens.

The editorial board gets tangled up in the tussle between free speech and campaign finance law, and wonders why Germany, the erstwhile "sick man of Europe," is beating the U.S. in export rates. The board also cheers on the University of Southern California's 25-year lease deal with the Coliseum Commission:

USC gets to stay at home. And there can be little doubt that the Coliseum is home. The university's consistent presence over the life of the stadium has protected the asset's value. Olympics -- two of them -- came and went, as did two NFL teams, but the Trojans have been a constant and deserve the long-term commitment that the commission has finally provided.

Readers respond to the board's take on charter schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District. "It's important that the charter schools not measure student achievement exclusively in terms of success on a college track," Joyce Wolfe points out, and Dain Olsen shoots back:

The Times is advocating the wholesale abandonment of the LAUSD's secondary schools to the charter movement. If this is not tantamount to a radical dismissal of the foundations of democracy, of equality and access to a free, high-quality education for all, I don't know what is.

With the news that Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, the late alleged murderer of two police officers and three city officials in Kirkwood, Missori, was a well known city-council gadfly, we set the wayback machine to 2003, for a Los Angeles Times story by Hugo Martin, explaining some of the tensions involved in giving broad leeway to public blowhards. Here it is in full print-spec glory:

Los Angeles Times
Wednesday September 24, 2003

THE STATE
COLUMN ONE
Freedom's Test, or Just a Pest?
* Gadflies deemed out of order are arrested or ejected from some public meetings. The 1st Amendment and decorum are at odds.

Home Edition, Main News, Page A-1
Metro Desk
53 inches; 1834 words
Type of Material: Column

By Hugo Martin, Times Staff Writer

After greeting the San Bernardino County supervisors with a mock Nazi salute, Jeff Wright, a homeless Air Force veteran, stepped to the public microphone to complain about being arrested at a regional transportation meeting a few months earlier.

Board Chairman Dennis Hansberger told him to stay on the topic under discussion, which was the salaries of county attorneys. Wright then threatened to seal the supervisor's mouth with duct tape, which he had brought with him.

Hansberger responded by ordering sheriff's deputies to eject Wright, who was led out of the building in handcuffs, screaming about police brutality.

It was nothing new -- for Wright or for the board of supervisors.

The March incident was among the more than 100 arrests or ejections deputies have carried out at meetings of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors since 1989, according to an unofficial tally by one local activist.

Although law enforcement officials say they cannot confirm the exact number, they put the tally in the dozens.

In 2000, reports of those arrests earned the Board of Supervisors the "Black Hole" award, a dubious distinction given by the California First Amendment Coalition to public agencies and officials that the group says show disregard for open government and 1st Amendment rights.

In the past year, the pace of arrests and removals at San Bernardino County supervisors' meetings has increased to about one per month, with most speakers being removed for failing to stick to the agenda and then refusing to surrender the lectern.

Hail to thee, Paulites, Paulettes, Pauline Order, Ronettes, Ronnies, Ronalitos, whatever you choose to call yourselves. May the cosmos bless you for posting more than 150 comments on my last piece of chum, which is now updated.

I beg your forgiveness for having let practically all of these comments fester for 16 hours unmoderated, after having put all of you through an onerous verification process. Actually, I do not beg your forgiveness, for that is an insult to the Holy Spirit that cannot be forgiven forever, the sin that not even eternity can wipe out. Cast me without your ranks, Ronites, but do accept my eternal gratitude to you for bringing life to our empty tables.

And on behalf of the L.A. Times thank you for feasting at the more plentiful board of Top o' the Ticket.

Since Amina has nicely laid out the candidates' financial pole positions, and since the paultards have come out in force to upbraid me for an ancient Ron Paul-related post (this is the thanks the L.A. Times gets for providing him a forum to deliver the night's best line at the GOP's Golden State debate?), it's a good time to talk about the campaign cock-up of the fourth-place Republican contender. To wit: Is the Paul campaign guilty of gross fiscal mismanagement? And even if you believe the dollar is worthless without a gold standard, is it really that easy to turn so many millions into so little achievement?

At Reason, Dave Weigel does a little digging into Paul's delegate count, and finds some reason for hope. Paul's campaign makes even more impressive delegate claims, though the staff seems to count delegates on the same obscure sliding scale it uses to make dollars vanish. Paul's fundraising was in its way even more miraculous than Mike Huckabee's polling surge. And there was something heartening, as the Paul surge grew, in the candidate's refusal to frame his campaign as some kind of consciousness-raising effort. Even if you never believed he was really running for president, it was good to know that he believed it.

Did his campaign? The newsletter brouhaha certainly suggests Paul applies a laissez-faire philosophy to all sorts of management areas, but did his campaign really need this many screwups, ballot emergencies, voting snafus and of course conspiracy-minded excuses for its own incompetence?

I expect no quarter from the Paulites, but I say all this with sadness. It's been clear for at least six months that Dr. No's campaign was shaping up to be more than just a novelty. Ron Paul tapped in to a wide array of interests, and his appeal went well beyond the simple "opposition to the war" explanation arrogant journalists favored. But let's just say he could have tapped in a lot deeper and with more lasting results. It's not like we don't need the help right about now. The country is seeing the beginnings of a real leftwing backlash and the Republicans are about to nominate a "national greatness" conservative who is in every respect the anti-Goldwater. (Good luck getting any libertarian leverage from those Paul delegates at the convention.) Couldn't Ron Paul have just spent 12 months focusing on the task at hand?

Update: Welcome, Pauline Order of Ron!

Half the time I feel like you don't even know I exist, Ron Paul fans, so yes, welcome! Please stay and chat, and I'll get your comments through the pipelines as quickly as possible. Sorry for taking the night off, folks, and really, whatever you want to call yourselves -- they wouldn't be so crude at the L.A. Times but I do have friends who use the word "paultards," and only with love -- it's up to you to name yourselves. As long as I caught your eye.

Everybody else, please don't skimp on the comments. Plenty of brilliant stuff, interesting conversations forming, and rave reviews such as these:

"factually inaccurate and sophomorically naive"

"I think you wrote this just to get people to see your article."

"What exactly were you trying to say..."

"Hey Timmy your article was lame, like high school lame..."

"Another attempt by the MSM to discredit an honest and forthright individual..."

"I stopped reading the article after the first sentence, when you referred to..."

"I don't know what you expect Ron Paul to do, take the order, cook the meal, wash..."

"I'm not being sarcastic. I swear on my neighbor's cat I'm not."

"Wanting to stop the murder in Iraq is not incompetence, it is morally justified..."

My feelings on the fabled Sam Zell f-word exchange with a photographer for the Orlando Sentinel pretty much boil down to: Whatever you say, Mr. Zell! How else may I be of service? I'm not going out on  a limb by saying it's bad form for the chairman of a company to curse out an employee. (Based on our story's indication that Zell was seeking to smooth things over with the employee in question, it would appear he feels the same way.) But I'm with Patterico in finding the photographer's "what readers want are puppy dogs" comment to be far more alarming than the four-letter word. A cuss is just a cuss, but there is a lot of journalistic arrogance embedded in that dismissive comment about readers. People on the wrong end of the plummeting-circulation continuum should show some humility, and maybe even gratitude, toward the customers who are still showing up.

It's tough being Milton Friedman these days. On top of being dead, the Nobel prize-winning economist is getting a posthumous beat-down by popular anti-capitalist Naomi Klein. In her writing and talks on globalization and the free market, Klein often quotes three sentences of Friedman's writing to expose the economist as an evil genius who helped inspire so-called "disaster capitalism." As Klein recently wrote in the L.A. Times:

Do the free-market policies packaged as emergency cures actually fix the crises at hand? For the ideologues involved, that has mattered little. What matters is that, as a political tactic, disaster capitalism works. It was the late free-market economist Milton Friedman, writing in the preface to the 1982 reissue of his manifesto, "Capitalism and Freedom," who articulated the strategy most succinctly. "Only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."

A smoking gun? See the quote in context and decide for yourself after the jump.

If you enjoyed John Mueller's recent Rambo charticle, which tracked the pneumatic commando's varied career along a rising death-per-minute axis, you were not alone. The United Kingdom tabloid The Sun got enough of a kick out of the Ohio State professor's math that it decided the most sincere form of flattery would be to make up some fake quotes and attribute them to Mueller. According to The Sun's story on the Rambo chart:

Mr Mueller said the movie, out next month, showed “the most depraved level of man’s inhumanity to man”.

Mueller has a different story. In an email to us, he states, "I just want to say that I never made the statement quoted — to the Sun or to anybody else." In addition to being concerned that the invented quote might allow an inference that he was reviewing the film rather than subjecting it to rigorous scientific testing, Mueller says he's troubled because "the words put in my mouth are so prissy and sanctimonious they make my skin crawl."

In case there's any doubt, Mueller adds, "I  hope I am not overly naive about the journalistic standards of the British tabloids... I have sometimes been misquoted in other papers — but in those the reporter at least actually  talked to me and was clearly TRYING to get it right. Total fabrication is new to me..."

Original charticle here.

Christopher Hitchens remembers Fleet Street in all its squalor here.

Robert Burns laments man's inhumanity to man (a phrase I always thought was invented by Mad magazine) here.

Hillary, Hillary, the return of Stonehenge and more Hillary were your favorites this week. Sure, our old friends Max Boot, Jonathan Chait and Gregory Rodriguez, as well as another batch of Kennedys ('cause you can never get enough) did the actual writing, but it was Hillary's week in Opinion L.A. Without further ado:

1. Is the right right on the Clintons?, by Jonathan Chait
2. Kennedys for Clinton, by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kerry Kennedy
3. Stonehenges all around us, by Craig Childs
4. This primary is secondary, by Ethan Rarick
5. When Bill Clinton attacks, by the editorial board
6. Why Clinton can count on Latinos, by Harry P. Pachon and Rodolfo O. de la Garza
7. Iraq's No. 1 problem, by Bing West and Max Boot
8. Clinton's Latino spin, by Gregory Rodriguez
9. Dust-Up: It's the stupid economy, by Steven Landsburg and Jason Furman
10. A bitter pill for Big Pharma, by Melody Petersen

The issue of waterboarding drowned out almost all other concerns about Attorney General Michael Mukasey during his confirmation hearings last year, and it could wipe out today's confirmation hearings for Mark Filip, slated to become the next deputy attorney general. From Congressional Quarterly:

Senate Democrats plan to delay a floor vote on President Bush’s nominee for the No. 2 post at the Justice Department until the department responds to several Judiciary Committee oversight letters.

Mukasey had managed to stay afloat and pass muster by the smallest margin in 50 years. At the time, he hedged wildly on waterboarding, protesting that he didn't know enough to make a judgment.

Yesterday, judgment day came. And the verdict? That he can't issue one.

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick has a scathing critique of Mukasey's logic:

Mukasey won't speculate about future water-boarding, either, claiming he will not be drawn into "imagining facts and circumstances that are not present and thereby telling our enemies exactly what they can expect in those eventualities." He also refuses to tell "people in the field ... what they have to refrain from or not refrain from in a situation that is not performing."

Just to be clear then, to the extent that there is any purpose to the law, i.e., to punish past bad acts and to alert people as to what types of conduct will be punished in the future, the attorney general has just obliterated that purpose. Unless someone were to actually be water-boarded before Mukasey's eyes at the witness table in the Hart Senate Building, America's lawyer cannot hazard an opinion as to its legality.

But Mukasey calls out the senators as well -- and he has a point, says CBS News analyst Andrew Cohen:

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, especially Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), want Mukasey to do their heavy lifting. They want him to proclaim by legal memorandum what they have so far been unable to accomplish by political power. It would be nice if he were willing to do so. And you can bet that if a majority of Republicans and the President were calling upon Mukasey to say the magic words he’d be game. But they aren’t and he isn’t and it’s time Leahy and Company moved on.

Judging by their toying with today's confirmation hearings, it doesn't seem like they're ready to take Cohen's advice just yet.

Go ahead and write angry letters about how much you can't stand Jonah Goldberg or his book Liberal Fascism. From the New York Times bestseller list to the always hotly contested Opinion L.A. Top 10, America has spoken. Goldberg's tale of his Daily Show appearance is number one with a bullet, and the columnist makes it into the list a second time with his column on new nanny state outrages. Columnist Rosa Brooks places with her Billary takedown, and the editorial board finishes with an ominous view of the Tata Nano. Brian Doherty scores one for libertarianism and Jonah Lehrer apparently draws in both the artistic and the scientific factions of the brain debate. Michael Shermer does an encore after last week's impressive performance. Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman mark an important abortion anniversary, and all the rest is about some election that is rumored to be happening...

1. What The Daily Show cut out, by Jonah Goldberg
2. A Clinton twofer's high price, by Rosa Brooks
3. Super delegates may sink the Democrats, by Joshua Spivak
4. 'The better angels' side with Obama, by Joseph Ellis
5. Why people believe weird things about money, by Michael Shermer
6. Abortion's battle of messages, by Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman
7. Tiny Tata Nano, big threat, by the editorial board
8. Taking liberties, by Jonah Goldberg
9. Misreading the mind, Jonah Le