Bet you thought that the business of your publicly elected California Legislature was, well, public, since your public dollars pay these public servants to make public decisions in the public's Capitol building. Is there a theme in that sentence? There ought to be, especially with the editorial board today bemoaning the Assembly's decision to expunge the record of the individual votes of its members on whether or not to allow drilling off the Santa Barbara coast. In other words, you can't find out how your own Assembly member voted.

Assembly members sometimes complain, privately, that their constituents just don't understand how difficult it is to make laws and balance a budget. But making the very public process of lawmaking into a secret ritual doesn't help matters. On the contrary, it makes Californians feel like they are part of the stuff being fed into the meat grinder.

The board also weighs in on the latest maneuvers to stop a worthy bill that would extend hate-crime laws to cover crimes against gays and lesbians. Since conservative lawmakers in Washington D.C. weren't getting anywhere with the specious argument that halting hate crimes against people because of their sexual orientation would somehow impinge on the perpetrators' freedom of speech and religion, they've come up with a new tactic: making certain hate crimes a capital offense, thus changing the congressional conversation from one about equal rights to one about the death penalty.

And though the people of Afghanistan have a million good reasons to mistrust the election process, the editorial board notes the importance of holding new presidential elections and giving voters hope that they can, at least eventually, have an impact on changing the government that has turned out a disappointment to many of them.

On the other side of the fold, Tim Rutten reprimands Police Chief William Bratton for the timing of his departure from Los Angeles and some of the dealings that took place beforehand:

...The manner and timing of Bratton's departure is almost breathtakingly irresponsible. It also raises troubling questions about his relationship with Michael Cherkasky, the court-appointed monitor who evaluated the LAPD's compliance with the federal consent decree, and about Cherkasky's role in convincing the federal judge to terminate oversight of the department.

And a professor in Mexico calls on President Obama to do more than praise Mexican President Felipe Calderon for his courage in the war on drugs; he must also remind Calderon that the human-rights abuses that his army is accused of in that war are unacceptable.

Photo: Philip Scott Andrews / AP

The opinion pages offer two reactions today to LAPD chief Willam J. Bratton's announcement that he will be leaving the department in October, three years ahead of the end of his term.

From the editorial board:

Bratton was the right person in the right place at the right time, and it wasn't because of some East Coast brand of toughness and bluster. It turned out, in fact, that in addition to being a talented leader and police administrator, Bratton had an unusual knack for understanding the histories and sensitivities, the needs and demands of Los Angeles communities.

Photo credit: David McNew / Getty Images

Is the Mexican army the solution to battling the violent drug cartels, or part of the problem? The Times editorial board considers the question in light of allegations of rape and other abuses leveled against troops deployed by Mexican President Felipe Calderon in the front lines of the drug war:

Calderon was taking a gamble when he sent combat forces to fight the drug war, which involves police and intelligence work among civilians -- a role the Mexican military isn't fully trained to play. Now, U.S. and Mexican human rights activists say they have documented the murder, rape and torture by soldiers of scores of Mexicans believed to be innocent civilians, and the country's National Human Rights Commission received 559 complaints against members of the army in the first six months of this year. Although Mexican law calls for the military to prosecute its own criminal abuses, advocacy groups note that there has not been a successful military prosecution of a human rights case in the last decade.

The board also notes that U.S. government actions on behalf of religions might be constitutionally banned if performed in this country, but might be a necessary part of foreign relations in nations with state religion--such as repairing mosques damaged in the Iraq War. Still, the board cautions, the government must not see this as an excuse to fund missionary work or in other ways promote religion abroad.

On the other side of the fold, two trade specialists chide resident President Obama for what they call his "de facto protectionism." And the author of a newly published biography of baseball legend Leroy "Satchel" Paige remembers back to when the Negro League player finally won recognition from the Hall of Fame -- and how racism in baseball did not completely die on that day.:

Six months after they announced his election to the Hall of Fame, Paige was in Cooperstown for the induction. The public had weighed in with outrage at the spectacle of a segregated museum, forcing baseball's rulers to agree to hang his plaque alongside the rest. He quieted his competing instincts by siding, as he always had, with moderation over militancy. "Thank you, commissioner, and my fans and baseball players from all around as far as Honolulu, Mexico, and I don't know where the rest of 'em come from. I know they're my friends, I know that," Paige said as he looked out at the mostly white audience.

His remarks were touching and funny. He talked about barnstorming across the country in cars so tightly packed that his knees were "sticking up in front of me. For five years, I didn't know where I was going. I couldn't see."

Photo of Leroy "Satchel" Paige from MLB Photos via Getty Images.

As confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor near, my inbox runneth over  with commentary on the nomination from special-interest groups. the latest is a release from the conservative group Committee for Justice (not to be confused with the Committee for Public Safety). Here's the leadoff:

"In a letter released today and attached below, more than two dozen leaders of the Second Amendment community from across the nation urged senators 'not to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the next associate justice of the United States Supreme Court,' citing their 'grave concern' over her Second Amendment record."

This irked me for a reason that has nothing do with the merits of Sotomayor's nomination. I'm not surprised that the gun lobby has "grave concern" about the judge (someday I'd love to receive a press release expressing "mild concern"). It's the use of the term "Second Amendment community," the latest in a long line of psuedo-communities.

I still find the term "intelligence community" bizarre, maybe because it conjures up the image of a suburban cul-de-sac where every father playing basketball with his kids is a spy. But there's also the "gay community," the "disability community" and, of special interest to Angelenos, the "entertainment community." 

This perversion of the word "community" has insinuated itself into dictionaries. Webster's online version offers eight definitions of "community." Fittingly, the first is: "A group of people living in a particular local area." But No. 4, with a bullet, is: "The body of people in a learned occupation." (I suppose firing a gun is a learned occupation if you're a sniper.)

"Community" bothers me not just because it's a cliche; the use of the term in political contexts is freighted with the dubious assumption that "communities" are monolithic. What is the "black community,"  invoked so facilely by activists and politicians? Or the "Latino community"? As the liberal-conservative schism over the policies of the current pope demonstrates, a cohesive "Catholic community" is also an illusion.

Our current president was a community organizer, but the ones the young Barack Obama organized were real communities, not constructs. Maybe Obama's experience will rehabilitate the original connotation of the term -- including in the journalistic community.

Photo: Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

In the same Nov. 4, 2008 election in which Barack Obama was elected president, Los Angeles voters defeated (but just barely) a $36-per-property parcel tax measure to fund youth and anti-gang programs. Measure A was spearheaded by Councilwoman Janice Hahn; as a local tax, it had to pull in two-thirds, or 66.67% of the vote to win. It got 66.27%. Times endorsements may not have the clout they once did, but I think it's safe to say that our opposition helped make a difference on this one.

Hahn wants to try again, and wants to know what it would take to win us over this time. Fair question.

The subject came up at Tuesday's City Council committee hearing, at which Deputy Mayor Jeff Carr reported on the last six months of the city's still-new Gang Reduction and Youth Development programs.

When the Times called for a "no" vote on Measure A, we said the city had not shown it was ready to use new tax money properly. We explained that Los Angeles had floundered with anti-gang efforts for years, throwing money at programs without knowing whether they were working or even defining what they were supposed to accomplish. Just months earlier, the city had scrapped L.A. Bridges and authorized the mayor to take charge of gang programs and to establish standards and evaluation methods. Carr was a newcomer. It was too early to tell whether the city had improved. Here's a snippet, in case you don't want to click on the link and wade through the while thing:

The universal chestnut about graduation days is that they're about endings and beginnings, joy and sadness.

But the sentiment was framed in a startlingly different way Wednesday at the Locke High School commencement, held on the expansive athletic field of the Watts school. Security was heavy; beefy guys wearing shirts that identified them as anti-gang detail looked out of place next to the beaming students in their pastel blue caps and gowns. Locke has been much safer during its first year as a Green Dot charter school, but a student was shot just outside the campus in April. Surrounded as Locke is by gang activity and violence, school officials were clearly aiming to keep any trouble at bay.

I was sitting in the bleachers next to proud dad Gregory McMiller, snappily dressed for his son Johnathan's big day, hanging on to a gigantic mylar balloon that he gallantly tried to keep from batting me in the head every time the breeze picked up.

"It's happy, but it's also sad," McMiller started. I waited for the predictable next words  -- happy because his child had grown up, sad because ... well, his child had grown up. Instead, he continued, "Because you know after today some of these kids are going to die. Some will go down a bad path and get taken out too young."

Not everything about commencement -- like the belief that the grads are headed to limitless futures -- is universal.

The United States is the only nation in the world in which a child can be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. California has more than 200 inmates who were sentenced to remain behind bars forever for crimes they committed before they became adults. Under a bill that passed today on the Senate floor, they would get a chance to petition the court to have their sentences converted to 25-years-to-life. That wouldn't guarantee parole or eventual release; it would simply give them a chance at a hearing.

The Times editorialized in favor of SB 399, which now moves to the Assembly. It's authored by Leland Yee, D-San Francisco. Read our editorial here, and a follow-up blogpost here. Here is a support blog and site.

This is a worthy bill and deserves to pass and be signed into law. Support is not based on naive or romantic notions about innocent children wrongly locked up for life. This is not a movie. The dozens of people the bill would affect were convicted of committing serious and often brutal felonies. Yes, many were following the lead of criminal adults, and many others were too scarred or traumatized by violent families or neighborhoods to fully grasp the horror of their actions. But punishment makes sense.

Life without parole, however, does not -- at least, not in every case. Under this bill, many, perhaps most, of the California inmates sentenced for crimes committed in their youth would remain in prison for life and will eventually die there. But for some who can demonstrate that as adults they have grown, repented and reformed, they may be able to look forward to the possibility of a portion of their adulthood outside prison bars. 

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

The Times published an editorial April 30 criticizing life sentences without parole for California juveniles as young as 14 and supporting a bill by state Sen. Leland Yee that would permit such inmates to eventually seek parole – after they've spent at least a quarter century in prison. The editorial cited the case of South Los Angeles resident Antonio DeJesus Nuñez, who may be the only person in the world sentenced to life without parole for a crime he committed as a minor in which no one died or was injured.

That's not an overstatement. The New York-based Human Rights Watch asserts that the United States is the only nation in which minors are sentenced to life in prison without parole; we have 2,571.

A 2007 report from the University of San Francisco did find some youth outside the U.S. sentenced to life without parole: a grand total of seven of them, all in Israel. [*UPDATED: See below.]

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child bans life without parole for youth, but the United States is one of only two U.N. member nations that have not signed it -- the other being Somalia.

Nuñez was 14 at the time of his arrest. He was convicted of a frightening and brutal crime – kidnapping a man for ransom. And, by the way, he shot at police officers when they gave chase. Prosecuting him made sense. Imprisoning him made sense. But life? With no chance of parole? For a crime he committed when he lacked the judgment and maturity, in society's view, to drive a car, vote, honor a contract, marry without parental consent, join the military or go to an R-rated movie? Should he never get a second look, once he grows up and we can see whether he studied in prison, behaved, repented? Do we believe that some youths are simply irredeemable, and that in our wisdom we can look them over at age 14 and know which ones can be salvaged as adults and which can't?

The same day the editorial ran, California's Fourth District Court of Appeal granted Nuñez's habeas corpus petition and threw out his life without parole (the legal jargon is LWOP) sentence, ruling that it violated constitutional strictures against cruel and unusual punishment and ordering the trial court to resentence the inmate, who is now 22. Read the court's opinion here.

For those who believe it's too costly, too cruel and just plain too bizarre to sentence a teenager to LWOP (more jargon – JLWOP, with the J standing for juvenile), the ruling was good news. But only sort of.

In Thursday's Letters to the editor, readers comment further on the departure of Los Angeles Schools Supt. David L. Brewer, who announced this week he would leave his job--with a severance package worth over half a million dollars.  Tom Iannucci, of Los Angeles, sums up the tone of much of the mail The Times received about Brewer:

Once again, the students of the Los Angeles Unified School District lose out. Just how many field trips, textbooks, computers and other much-needed educational supplies could more than $517,000 have provided for the underserved students of the district? How many teachers or classroom aids could be provided for the most at-risk students?

In this time of extreme financial crisis for the school system, throwing away half a million dollars to force out Los Angeles Schools Supt. David L. Brewer just doesn't add up.

But the superintendent does have his defenders.  David Gillespie of Bonita, responds to this Times editorial on Brewer's severance:

I wish I had known Brewer before he took the superintendent job. I would have advised him against seeking or taking it. The position is impossible. It is the perfect storm of parochial interests, petty politics, ethnic and racial animosities, white flight, poverty, immigration failures, outside interference, crushing bureaucracy, incompetent managers, overwhelming and unmanageable size and a school board of nebulous ability beholden to a maze of outsiders. It was a no-win for Brewer the day he started. Now people of lesser abilities have put him into a humiliating downward spiral.

Brewer has offered the honorable thing for all concerned -- including himself -- in leaving the position. But by contract he is entitled to the severance promised, and he should not back down. It is not dishonorable to demand the full severance. The school board should have thought out Brewer's dismissal and accomplished it quietly and without rancor, but it didn't. Brewer should stick to his guns.

Readers write in about Obama's economic plans, this week's Marine jet crash in San Diego.  Daniel J. Lubin, of Rancho Palos Verdes, offers a suggestion for Tribune CEO Sam Zell, too:

Everything we've waited to discover about Sam Zell is revealed in the last paragraph of his letter announcing the bankruptcy: " ... we've reduced costs, gained market share, and laid the groundwork for creating a new business model."

That he'd rank reducing costs first, above all else, says it all.

So, Mr. Zell, to reduce costs, how's about selling The Times to local ownership?

Photo of L.A. Schools Supt. David L. Brewer at the Monday press conference announcing his departure by Nick Ut/AP Photo.

It's an old moan, but a good one, and the Times editorial board makes it again today: There are too few races for the Legislature, in this heavily gerrymandered state, in which the outcome isn't a foregone conclusion. Still, the board finds one of these rarities in the Santa Barbara area and makes an endorsement in it.

The board also suggests that the question of how much racial profiling goes on in the LAPD is more complicated than a recent report conducted for the ACLU reflects, and advises Congress to get rid of the clause in the No Child Left Behind Act that requires schools to give students' personal information to military recruiters unless their parents specifically opt out.

If Congress wants the military to have access to students' home phone numbers, it should openly legislate it, rather than surreptitiously slipping such a provision into an unrelated law.

On the op-ed page, a veteran cop tells a chilling story of the false confession he obtained from a murder suspect. When police are looking for guilt, he discovered, they tend to find it, even when it isn't there. Videotaping interrogations can reveal where things go wrong.

Reviewing the tapes years later, I saw that we had fallen into a classic trap. We ignored evidence that our suspect might not have been guilty and during the interrogation we inadvertently fed her details of the crime that she repeated back to us in her confession.

Joel Stein finds that last-minute voter registrants aren't the slackers he'd expected. And for those of you with access to the dead-tree version of the LAT, Ronald Brownstein describes what happens when the formidable campaign resources of the Obama campaign blanket Florida--but meet up with "one of the nation's most effective Republican organizations."