Top of the Ticket blogger Don Frederick notes that Hillary Clinton has spoken out on one of the most pressing issues of the day — the racy Miley Cyrus photos. She told Yahoo:

"From everything I've heard she's a great kid and obviously very talented, but I think we need to do more to preserve our kids' childhood," Clinton said.

The presidential hopeful said she feels it is the parents' responsibility to protect a child.

"They grow up so fast and [there are] so many influences coming from all directions these days," Clinton said. "I think it's important that all of us as parents draw some lines here."

Let's leave aside whether the pics are appropriately allusive to classicism and the realities of contemporary young adulthood or plain creepy (and really, isn't the one of her with daddy Billy Ray way creepier?). And let's also ignore that people over the age of 18 probably can't even understand the Miley Cyrus-was-Destiny-Hope-is-Miley-Stewart-is-Hannah-Montana identity uroboros despite Slate's helpful explanation.

Instead, I'd just like to point out that John McCain and Barack Obama have both appeared with Miley Cyrus and seem to be supporters of her confounding identity politics and her corruption of American youth. I'm waiting for McCain and Obama to prove they're also for The Children with full Miley denunciations/renunciations/throws-under-the-bus.

*Photo courtesy the Associated Press.

Big Sunday founder David T. Levinson reflects on the idiosyncrasies of pop volunteerism, and Ronald Brownstein picks apart John McCain's true views on the U.S. military's future in Iraq. Merrick J. Bob, executive director of the Police Assessment Resource Center, investigates better ways to track racial profiling by LAPD officers, and cartoonist Rob Rogers snarks at Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's problem relationships. Joel Stein finds out that a new citizen's vote is worth $6 and a cookie:

There's an emotional ceremony every month in which 3,500 newly naturalized citizens pledge their loyalty to the United States, and it really feels like they've joined a community of shared values, goals and purpose. Then, as soon as they pass through the gates of the L.A. County fairgrounds and enter the parking lot, they are charged from the right by Republicans and from the left by Democrats, begging them to register to vote. It is a bit like kissing the bride and being told your new father-in-law is a Capulet and your mother-in-law's a Montague and they've each registered you for a Glock.

The editorial board calls for the Supreme Court to let a murder victim's posthumous testimony stand, and wonders how to turn the beleaguered Santa Barbara Plaza project around. The board also whips out its pen to defend taco trucks against a new L.A. County ordinance:

Supervisors may have expected the new law to attract little controversy; after all, it was backed by Eastside restaurateurs and developers, a group with considerably more money and political power than the largely immigrant entrepreneurs who own taco trucks. But it has raised the ire of a far larger group: the thousands of Angelenos who have long gathered at taco trucks, in many cases since childhood, for quick carnitas burritos or mouthwatering cemitas, central Mexican sandwiches filled with avocado, cheese, fried meat and other gut-busting goodness. An Internet-driven movement started by a pair of Highland Park residents has already produced 2,200 signatures on a petition to repeal the law. Sign us up too.

Readers also react to the LAPD's dismissal of all complaints of racial profiling from last year. Leni Fleming writes:

"Los Angeles Police Department officials announced Tuesday that they investigated more than 300 complaints of racial profiling against officers last year and found that none had merit" is, bar none, the most hilarious sentence I have ever read in The Times.

And I'm white!

Previously I noted what the editorial board said of the past two May Days. Today I'm going further back, when May Day was an occasion not for marches, but for labor-bashing, springtime celebrating, and making up new holidays.

On April 30, 1906, the board attacks French anarchists for subverting what would otherwise be a fine celebration of labor:

Every right-thinking man is sincerely desirous of increasing the earnings of the working classes...diffusing comfort, happiness and the sunshine of life over the very widest area that is possible. So when the artisans of Paris march by in peaceful parade, there are only hearty huzzas to greet their passing.
But the trouble lies in the fact that the annual demonstration has been seized on by those members of society who have the least right to call themselves honest workingmen. May first is the chosen day for the anarchists to display their red flags, and for the Socialists to declaim their subversive doctrines.

The following year, the board was a lot crueler:

This is the day that "organized labor" — that is, labor organized not to labor but to put all possible obstacles in the way of peacefully doing the work of the world — has selected as its own. This is the day the totemites have parades as an adjunct of strikes and general disturbance in the labor world....
[A]ll got together on May Day, and vied each with the other in the attempt to show who could make most noise, and show most contempt for law, for order, for industry, for any man's rights.

And it didn't end early in the century. On May Day 1962, the board declared in its editorial headline: "May Day is Law Day U.S.A." That designation — and the creation of a separate American Labor Day — is sometimes considered a direct rebuke to the worldwide celebration Labor Day on May 1. Americans had previously declared it "Loyalty Day" and "Americanization Day," and many presidents past (and one current) have underscored the point.

Tim Rutten marvels at the questionable artistic value of "Grand Theft Auto IV," and writer Gary Ferguson laments the senseless violence that hunters are unleashing on the gray wolf, just released from the endangered species list. New York University professor Stephen F. Cohen says hold the baloney: It's the U.S., not Russia, that's responsible for the heightened tensions of late:

During the last eight years, Putin's foreign policies have been largely a reaction to Washington's winner-take-all approach to Moscow since the early 1990s, which resulted from a revised U.S. view of how the Cold War ended. In that new, triumphalist narrative, the U.S. won the 40-year conflict and post-Soviet Russia was a defeated nation analogous to post-World War II Germany and Japan -- a nation without full sovereignty at home or autonomous national interests abroad.

The editorial board also worries about the gray wolf, and calls on Mexico's politicians not to fuel the debate over the future of the nation's oil industry with hot air. The board also gives Obama a thumbs-up for not falling victim to easy political gimmicks as gas prices rise:

High gas prices can prompt political hysteria in the best of times, but when they soar during an election year, the fumes rising from candidate stump speeches can make a person sick. Of the three candidates and the president they're out to replace, only one is telling the truth about oil -- and he may suffer for his political courage.

Readers rip into an editorial commending McCain for not indulging in political pandering. Fred Sokolow asks:

In your editorial, you characterize McCain as boldly preaching an unpopular message, but it's the same old, tired, free-market deregulation dogma.

There's nothing contrarian about it -- it's the Bush line, which has put America in the terrible spot we're in today.

Won't you begin to assess this guy for what he really is? He's no maverick; he's a throwback, and more of the same poison that's been killing America (and Americans, and Iraqis) for seven years.

Kishore Mahbubani of the National University of Singapore explains why China sees Tibet quite differently than the West:

Chinese history records dominion over Tibet as far back as the 13th century. China's control has ebbed and flowed -- but this is equally true in many other parts of China. Central control by the capital has never been consistent, shifting with the strength of the central government. But this much is certain: China has been in control of most of its territories longer than some Western nations have existed.

More important, the Chinese recall that the latest efforts to separate Tibet from China came as recently as the 1940s and 1950s, when British and U.S. agents were seen to be encouraging Tibetan independence while the new People's Republic was still weak.... Virtually no Chinese believe that Western governments have a strictly moral interest in Tibet. They are convinced that their efforts are only the latest efforts to dismember or derail China.

Author Carolyn See navigates Santa Monica sans car, and columnist Joel Stein finds a place for thoughts that aren't even well-formed enough to be blogposts: the tumble and the twitter.

The editorial board encourages Congress to extend unemployment benefits, urges California to fight proposed federal fuel emissions rules, and says there are small signs of a thaw in Turkey-Armenia relations.

Readers discuss McCain's disability pension and whether it raises questions about his ability to serve as president. L.A.'s Anthony Filosa says, "I'd like to remind The Times that Franklin D. Roosevelt's significant disabilities did not affect his ability to successfully lead this country through some of our most tumultuous times and be remembered as one of our greatest presidents."

And Long Beach's Barbara Hubbs hopes that "McCain is donating that money to the disabled veterans who were not able to put their lives back together."

Given my obsession with the celebrity endorsement, I couldn't resist posting this one, courtesy E! Online:

Barack Obama just scored another Hollywood endorsement.

E! reality star Kim Kardashian is backing the Illinois senator in his bid for the White House. She revealed her support last night at the launch party for ex-jailbird Joe Francis’ Girls Gone Wild magazine at Area nightclub in L.A.

“I had dinner with him [Obama] once, and he just seemed very firm about the change, and that’s, like, his motto,” Kardashian said, referring to the slogan "Change We Can Believe In."

As E! is quick to note (and the Obama camp must be grateful), accidental celeb Kardashian did not dine with the senator alone -- the meeting took place at an event.

If celebrity endorsements are already fairly useless unless they're wackily self-aware enough for an image boost, what about the endorsement from the useless celebrity? Useful, or extra useless? Yes, I know the answer to that. Well, at least Kardashian can put some of her sex-tape cash toward Obama's campaign -- a quick search through the Center for Responsive Politics turns up no evidence of a donation.

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."

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Photo courtesy Hulton Archive, Getty Images

Psychologist Carol Tavris and oncologist Avrum Bluming put the latest breast cancer scare in perspective, and cartoonist J.D. Crowe comments on Hillary Clinton and John McCain's accusations of "elitism" against Barack Obama. Web editor Tim Cavanaugh wonders if the Vermont/Manchester project can survive the gentrification wars, and Patt Morrison searches between California's seat cushions for some spare change:

From Yreka to San Ysidro, official California is busted flat. We're so broke that Fabian Nuñez is probably drinking Two-Buck Chuck.

The temptations to make ends meet with corporate/civic deals are enormous. Budget Helper recipes can be a blessing for cities and states through the lean years, or they can become desperate sellouts that elected bodies can't scrape off their shoes once times turn good again.

The editorial board slams the state Legislature for neglecting the inmate medical system — and leaving California with a $7-billion bill — and sounds the alarm on world hunger as one of the greatest threats to international stability. The board also rolls its eyes at the New York Yankees' quest to dig a Red Sox jersey out of its new stadium:

... when somebody in the Yankees' front office ordered construction workers on Sunday to drill chunks out of the foundation — a five-hour job that cost a reported $50,000 — in order to remove the voodoo Fan Merchandise of Doom, it became clear that this incident was more than just a harmless sports prank. It was a reminder that for all of humanity's pretensions to modernity and reason, we are essentially just bald monkeys who wear shoes.

Readers provide some perspective on closing U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo. Maria Matan writes:

Having just watched the better part of the "John Adams" series on HBO, and having a basic knowledge of the Constitution, it seems to me unlikely that our founding fathers would have stood behind the Bush administration's assumption that offshore detentions at Guantanamo can be justified without sufficient evidence to bring charges.

Hey would-be Beijing protestors, watch out for Jackie Chan. The Hong Kong action hero isn't putting up with any lip, as Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bill Zwecker reports:

Chan told me he's also going to be part of the torch relay once it nears Beijing. Demonstrating one of his famous kung fu moves with his hands, he quipped, "Demonstrators better not get anywhere close to me" -- a clear challenge to those who might want to disrupt his and the torch's progress.

How would Chan hold up in a head-to-head with a certain celebrity Tibet champion? No, not Steven Spielberg, but Steven Seagal. The two martial artists are friends, or at least so says IMDB, but to settle this subject, they might have to take it outside. Who'd win?

The winner: Jackie. Now enjoy some of his best fights.

Men reading fashion magazines, oh what a world it seems we live in, where stories about straight men who wear skirts and a holy man who wears flowing gowns dominate our most popular stories of the week. Here are the Top 10:

1. The Scots show their true colors, by Sean Connery
2. The prophetic anger of MLK, by Michael Eric Dyson
3. Papal dress code, by Michael McGough
4. The day the beer flowed again, by Maureen Ogle
5. 'Allah' vs. 'God' by Rabih Alameddine
6. Resist the urge to leave Iraq, by Max Boot
7. The GOP, a casualty of war, by Rosa Brooks
8. Disney, we are not amused, by the editorial board
9. The genocide loophole, by Jonah Goldberg
10. Washington s $4-billion land grab, by Paul Thornton

As always, thanks for reading Opinion L.A.

Italian columnist Massimo Franco heralds the Vatican's first official visit to the U.S. by explaining what took them so long, and cartoonist Rob Rogers wonders if the people running American Airlines into the ground are flying the Iraq war, too. Former CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy calls on the U.S., North Korea and South Korea to repair their damaged relationships, and Gregory Rodriguez considers boycotting Absolut vodka for its ads that raised Americans' "reconquista" paranoia:

Last week I was in Las Vegas, and I found myself having a depressing chat with a Croatian maid at the Mandalay Bay hotel. "Your name is Rodriguez, are you Spanish?" she asked. "No," I told her, "I'm Mexican American." To which she responded glumly, "then pretty soon, this land will be yours. You are taking over."

The editorial board looks into public workers' immunity from traffic tickets and tolls, and finds a "disturbing recalibration of public accountability." The board also approves of President Bush's call for the government to guarantee loans for sub-prime borrowers, and expects Mayor Villaraigosa to prove in his State of the City address that he has a "firm grip" on the budget and gang violence:

The issues are intertwined. Villaraigosa has adopted as his own the priority his predecessors placed on increasing the number of Los Angeles Police Department officers ready to serve. The LAPD of today is larger -- and the city safer -- in part because the mayor insisted on increasing the fees that residents pay to get their trash picked up. Those higher fees aren't earmarked for more officers, and they still don't cover the cost of garbage collection, but the new revenue has given the mayor and the City Council the flexibility they needed to increase police hiring.

Readers size up Army Gen. David Petraeus' "ribbon creep" against other military icons. Eric Johnson points out:

Ike went on to lead this country ably, if quietly, warning us against the military-industrial complex gaining so much power, and Marsdhall earned the gratitude of an entire generation of Europeans, including those we defeated. Where are the generals of that caliber now?

That'll be $18.1 million, please. BBC reports:

The key to the Kaaba - the ancient cube-shaped shrine in Mecca - went to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby's.

The auction house said the price set a record for the sale of an Islamic work of art.

Made of iron and measuring 37cm in length, the key is engraved with the words "This was made for the Holy House of God".

The key was the centrepiece of Sotheby's Islamic art sale, which realised more than $40m (£21.5m) in total.

According to Bloomberg, the key went for 20 times its estimated value, quite possibly because it was the only one left in private hands. (The 58 other ceremonial keys are held by museums, and the original keys remain with the Bani Shaybat tribe in Saudi Arabia, charged with the shrine's upkeep.) Its rarity certainly buoyed the total take of more than $40 million, more than twice Sotheby's previous record.

Fellow high-end auction block Christie's also broke its record on Tuesday, raising more than $23 million in sales of Islamic art. Which raises the question: Is this an anomaly in an unpredictable market, or a growing trend?

It's certainly hard to say what's fueling the demand. Since the buyers were anonymous, their reasons remain their own. But keep in mind, the lucky bidder won what was once a privilege reserved for the caliph: symbolic access to the holiest shrine of Islam: literally a "black box." The symbolism of the purchase in these Islamo-fascinated times is pretty hard to miss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author Pico Iyer finds "globalism-lite" in the airport lounge:

All the cultures of the world are here, but they're all translated into placeless ciphers of a kind; we sit before screens, drift off, plug into our machines and feel as if we've entered the global space of a Haruki Murakami novel, a food court, a minimalist white-on-white Nowhere Hotel.

This globalism-lite is what we find around us often, especially in places like L.A.; it's cooler, sleeker, more diverse than the world we grew up in, but it's not clear that it sustains us deep down. We can access Beijing in a millisecond, fly to Bangalore tomorrow -- and yet we find, when we get to either place, that they don't look so different from Ventura Boulevard or Monterey Park.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez explains the border fence as a shrine to American insecurity. Authoer Maureen Ogle remembers the happy day 70 75* years ago when beer returned to the U.S.

The editorial board wants Ramon C. Cortines to return to LAUSD, this time in the No. 2 management position. The board also continutes its editorial series on water, and says it's time Californians let development follow water, not the other way around:

Even as our state continues to grow, sprawl can no longer be our birthright. Hydrologically remote regions cannot depend on new sources of imported water for human needs, much less for verdant lawns.

Readers respond to an article about the ties between Mormons and Muslims. Palm Desert's Sunny Kreis Collins writes, "it can only be a good thing that any two philosophies, however disparate, can come together peacefully and find commonality and mutual respect."

*Thanks to reader M. Bouffant for the correction.

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.)

This post was updated at 11:48 am Thursday. See below:

From that great city to the north comes news that some art is so shocking even San Francisco hipsters will censor it. An exhibition by the French artist Adel Abdessemed at the spectacularly located S.F. Art Institute has been shut down following an outcry and threats from pro-animal activists. Kenneth Baker's review in the Chronicle describes the show and notes that complaints also were lodged by folks who in other circumstances might be the ones looking to épater le bourgeois:

The animal rights protesters were inflamed by Abdessemed's six very brief video loops, played on separate monitors, each showing an animal - a horse, a pig, a goat, an ox, a deer and a sheep - being killed, apparently without bloodshed, by a quick hammer blow to the head. Abdessemed shot the videos himself in rural Mexico, merely documenting passages in the town's customary food production.

But text accompanying the videos' presentation at SFAI left Abdessemed's role ambiguous.* A viewer had to wonder whether his hand wielded the hammer rather than the camera, whether he shot the video or merely commissioned it, and whether he commissioned the animals' execution.

The shock of the protest lies not only in its vehemence but also in the fact that it involves the rare spectacle of artists, including many SFAI faculty members, advocating censorship.

You could argue that censorship isn't the proper word here, since the objection raised by Eagle Rock's own Diana Thater and apparently others was to the killing of the animals, not necessarily to the art itself. But Thater herself gives that game away by denouncing the show as a "sick exhibit" that "represents the very worst impulses of the human imagination," fails to "raise people's consciousness"  and "will encourage them to accept animal abuse." Those are objections to expression of ideas, not to the acts themselves. (Whether the strict argument against killing the animals holds up is also open to question, since by general agreement these were all feed animals that were going to be done in whether there was a hoity-toity conceptual artist present or not.) *

Anyway, this is just a roundabout way of teasing my long-ago piece "Artists for censorship." Sez me, artists are no more or less censorious than anybody else. Writers and musicians have always believed some ideas needed to be suppressed. The urge to censor is particularly strong when the objectionable ideas show up in a medium other than your own (surprise, surprise). And there may even be some value in the impulse to "take seriously the idea that there may actually be dangerous ideas, and dangerous artistic vehicles for communicating them."

* According to an SFAI representative, the ambiguity Baker refers to is at most a red herring: the artist merely documented an existing procedure. "These pictures were taken by him in an abattoir and not staged," she says, "and he did not participate in slaughtering the animals." If true, this would eliminate the argument over the welfare of the animals (though you might be able to craft a case that the individual animal has a death-with-dignity right that would protect it from non-consensual documentation of the killing), and leave us only with the argument over expression. It may be helpful at this time to reiterate that the show was closed due to threats of violence against the institute, not due to the objections we've been discussing.

Take this as the second installment of my open-ended Opinion L.A. series to instill pride in our hometown international airport by shaming facilities in other big cities. Today's dubious honor of making Los Angeles International Airport look cutting-edge belongs to London's Heathrow Airport, which should be celebrating the beauty and efficiency of its long-awaited Terminal 5 (popularly known as "T5"). Rather, the unmitigated disaster that has been the first few days of operation at the roughly $8 billion terminal, which is expected to eventually relieve some congestion at Europe's busiest airport, prompted one British member of Parliament to dub T5 a "national humiliation." Here's an excerpt from a synopsis of the chaos by the Times of London:

The Terminal 5 luggage farrago has left 28,000 bags in temporary storage and airport staff admit it could take a week to reunite the baggage with its owners.

The scale of the problem was revealed today as Jim Fitzpatrick, the aviation minister, conceded that the grand opening of the heralded Heathrow terminal had “fallen well short of expectations”.

Before his announcement it emerged that one of the passengers to lose their bag at Terminal 5 was the foreign minister for an EU country ...

A high-tech baggage system, which was supposed to revolutionise luggage handling, has failed to work properly since Terminal 5 was opened last week. BA has cancelled hundreds of flights as 400 additional staff battle to reduce the suitcase backlog.

Contrast the situation now with the kind of hype just last week ago that preceded T5's opening. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Indeed, the Heathrow hassle has put even the famed British stiff upper lip to the test. But that may be about to change - at least in part - thanks to a big, new $8.7 billion passenger terminal opening this week after 15 years of planning, protests and environmental lawsuits. It's the most expensive airport terminal ever built, and four times the size of the old Terminal 4 used by most San Francisco passengers.

Come Thursday, Heathrow will finally open its sparkling Terminal 5. The soaring, glass and steel structure will have just one airline tenant: British Airways ...

Like the new airports in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Denver, it's likely Heathrow's new terminal will experience birthing pains; expect some glitches over the next few weeks.

Even without the London debacle, our hometown airport has news of its own to celebrate -- carriers that threatened to flee LAX last year are instead adding more flights to international destinations:

Foreign airlines are turning to LAX again despite crowded, aging terminals -- frequent-flier surveys often rank it among the nation's worst -- that have made it the bane of airlines and passengers.

While U.S. carriers are cutting back amid a slowing economy and high fuel costs, international airlines are flocking to LAX as more overseas travelers look to take advantage of the weak dollar.

Fares are likely to remain high as long as oil prices stay at their current levels, but the upswing in overseas flights could provide relief to some of the more-popular destinations in Europe, South America and Asia. And with the number of nonstop flights growing, people on international flights can look forward to reaching their destinations faster.

Eat your heart out, London -- we Angelenos will take our "crowded, aging terminals," so long as they actually work.

Chelsea Clinton may not actually speak to the press, but she's finally getting some. She faced two fairly controversial questions from the non-press-pass-holding hoi polloi. The first was a college kid in Indiana who had to mention Monica. From Top of the Ticket:

...some guy asked Chelsea if her mother's credibility had been injured by the infamous sexual relationship her father had with the White House intern.

"Wow," said Chelsea, "you're the first person actually that's ever asked me that question in the, I don't know, maybe 70 college campuses I've now been to.''

Then, she fired: "And I do not think that is any of your business."

The reply drew loud applause.

And today, Fox News is reporting that when asked whether her mother would make a better president than her father, Chelsea sided with Hillary:

“Well again, I don’t take anything for granted, but hopefully with Pennsylvania’s help she will be our next president, and yes, I do think she’ll be a better president,” Clinton said at a stop in Allentown, Pa.

The last time Chelsea made such a splash might have been for something she said in private, responding to her mother's claim that young people have a bad work ethic (neglecting, apparently, the hard work her own daughter was doing). Hillary publicly apologized to Chelsea. The former first daughter was famously sensitive about the press as a teen at 1600 Pennsylvania and still is today, it seems. The Bush twins are regular, if unintentional, celebutantes by comparison.

In the increasingly unlikely event that she's first daughter again, how would Chelsea behave? Would she work behind the scenes, or help First Dude Bill with domestic tasks? Or would she stick to her private life outside DC? The young Obama daughters would probably be kept behind the scenes. Probably only Meghan McCain could follow up the Bush twins for media presence and fashion sense.

*Photos of Chelsea Clinton and Meghan McCain courtesy AP.

Author and UCLA lecturer Lawrence Grobel finds his past on sale at Amazon.com:

We printed 2,000 copies of each issue and sold them for 50 cents each. So, imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that Amazon.com had a listing under my name that said: "SATYR . Paperback. Used. $366."

$366! Was this a joke?

I went to the site offering the three issues for sale, and sure enough, it was for real. Only at Zubal.com they were listed at $348.20. It was also offering a first edition of my 812-page biography, "The Hustons," for $1.

Columnist Joel Stein discovers a shady journalistic cover-up: celeb mag editors-at-large aren't really editors, they just play them on TV. Human Rights Watch's Jennifer Daskal and Leslie Lefkow say that U.S. policy suffers when missile strikes on alleged terrorists go awry.

The editorial board criticizes John McCain's answer to the credit crisis, examines what lies ahead for new UC President Mark Yudof, and hails Starbucks and the upscaling of America:

[T]he Starbucks model -- a global-village blend of faux-Italianate lingo, American efficiency and post-modern abundance of selection, all built on the easy international flow of coffee beans -- is everywhere, readily reproduced by McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts and any old bodega.

It's the happy flip-side of living in a country where even the poor people are fat.

On the letters page, readers discuss Jonah Goldberg's column claiming we were having a race conversation long before Barack Obama's speech. Phil Boiarsky of Columbus, Ohio disagrees, saying, " I am 63 years old, and this is the first time I have heard the 'white' side of the issue."

Here's one for the "Who Knew?" files: the news media's attention to the sub-prime fiasco rises and falls in step with its fascination with Britney Spears. Coincidence? I think not! I would not have noticed this linkage had it not been for Trendrr, a fascinating site that recently went live. An offshoot of Wiredset, a New York agency that specializes in promoting media through the Web, social networks and mobile carriers, Trendrr lets users assemble and compare data from a dozen sources (more to come soon), including Google News, Bit Torrent, eBay and YouTube. It also invites users to request new sources or submit their own. For example, you might want to gauge interest in a particular band by seeing how often people were posting videos of that act on YouTube. Or, if you were a studio, you could graf how often the trailer for your summer blockbuster was being played on MySpace.com vs. YouTube vs. DailyMotion. My examples don't do Trendrr justice, so click here to check out the site's most popular trend-mapping exercises. Then try creating some of your own.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez says Barack Obama's speech on race may have been brilliant, but it was the wrong move:

Throughout the campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton's surrogates repeatedly tried to bait Obama into talking about race; they worked to pigeonhole him (and marginalize him) as the "black candidate." But in the end, it was Obama's own alliances that tripped him up and obliged him to directly address a subject (one that he now says we "cannot afford to ignore") that he had so deftly avoided -- or as the Obamaphiles had it, transcended. For all the kudos the Illinois senator has received for his candor, the very act of delivering Tuesday's address was a defeat. Obama was a much more powerful force for racial progress when he so effortlessly symbolized it, rather than when he called on us to address "old wounds."

Assemblyman Van Tran (R-Garden Grove) argues that SAT subject tests should stay, in part because they give recent immigrants a chance to show their strengths. Loyola Law Schools' Karl Manheim and Consumer Watchdog's Jamie Court say health insurance mandates of the Clinton and Obama kind may not pass constitutional muster. And writer Joe Queenan wonders why Garth Brooks gets a spot in his kid's academic calendar.

The editorial board notes new Census numbers showing that California sprawl is slowing down, and looks at why double amputee Oscar Pistorius was barred from the Olympics for being too fast. The board also explores why Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed fellow film icon Clint Eastwood and brother-in-law Bobby Shriver from a state commission.

Readers react to the violence in Tibet. Sherman Oaks' Elke Heitmyer says, "Tibet has been 'another Burma' for a long time already."

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.

On this anniversary of the Iraq war, columnist Rosa Brooks is getting a five-year itch:

But I don't want to dwell on the bad times, because we did have some good times, didn't we? Remember those peaceful days between "Mission Accomplished" -- I think that was May 1, 2003 -- and ... and ... well, July 2003 or so, when we could still stroll around Baghdad at dusk, interrupted only by occasional small-arms fire? Those were the days, before the car bombs and IEDs.

We were happy then, weren't we, War?... But you can't go back again, can you?

Reason's Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch notice that all those voters moving to the center and calling themselves independent have a lot in common with Libertarians. University of Missouri-St. Louis professor Richard Rosenfeld says that when it comes to the uptick in homicides, the buck actually doesn't stop with Police Chief Bratton. And columnist Patt Morrison thinks Councilman Tom LaBonge may be ready for mayorship... of the honorary kind, in Hollywood.

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.

It was a hard-fought battle, and one of the results just leads us to another question, but we have winners in the limerick and caption portions of our Opinion L.A. news quiz.

Limerick honors go to Seattle's Gus Hellthaler, who broke out his quill and composed an interesting sprung-rhythm take on the Anthony Pellicano case:

P.I. Pellicano was in the clutch
Of Stars, illegal taps, and such.
All was revealed in court, for sooth:
That you can always telesleuth,
You just can't tell them too much.

Competition was fierce in our caption contest, but L.J. Williamson of Granada Hills takes home the gold with the following:

Medical marijuana cured my glaucoma. God bless America.

Finally, our trivia survey draw a majority of wrong answers, leading to an exciting Family Feud-style final round.

The question: "If elected, John McCain would be the nation's second president to have been a prisoner of war. Who was the first?"

The answers:

George Washington
John Adams
Andrew Jackson

To find out not only which of these answers is correct but, more importantly, which one the survey says is correct, keep reading...

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

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

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

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

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

Becoming the second cute ad girl apostate in this campaign, the sleeping child from Hillary Clinton's much-maligned TV spot says she supports Barack Obama. It turns out that the Clinton camp bought old stock footage for the ad (probably a common enough practice) and that adorably endangered little girl is now of voting age:

[Casey] Knowles, a senior at Bonney Lake High School who turns 18 next month, has been campaigning for Obama.... If she plays her cards right, she could go to the national convention.

Not to mention that she could be in another ad. After her identity became known, Obama's campaign contacted her.

Until the Knowles turnaround, the phone call ad seemed like an almost fortunate distraction from Jack Nicholson's endorsement for Hillary, released at about the same time. Getting a plug from a definitively cool actor (even if he's starting to show his age) seems like pure gravy, unless, of course, the plug strings together clips of said actor's best-known roles, like The Joker, Jack Torrance (as in, all work and no play make...), and Col. Nathan R. Jessup.

Does Clinton really want Jack Torrance saying "things could be better," and suggesting she's the one to make them so? (By the way, that line's referring to a problem with his wife, whom he refers to later in that scene as "the ol' sperm bank".) And wh