Here's a look at the blogosphere's reactions to the work of the Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division this week:

The Real Clear World blog responds to Andrew Bacevich's op-ed on the White House's overlooking of strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq in favor of tactics:

Musings, a blog discussing culture, politics, and education, took offense at the Opinion L.A piece about Amnesty International's recent report that accused Israel of "wanton destruction" and Hamas of "war crimes" in the December conflict in the Gaza Strip. The writer disagreed with the post's assertion that both sides were blamed, saying that the report's full text put much more blame on Israel for the war.

The Oy Vay blog, featuring the voice of a self-proclaimed Jewish conservative on various issues, liked Patt Morrison's post on her disgust with the cash-strapped city of Los Angeles' commitment to using taxpayer money to pay for the security detail for Michael Jackson's funeral.

And the Opinion L.A. poll urging fans to boo Manny's return to Dodger Stadium on July 16 made it onto the Major League Baseball's Fanhouse blog:

Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugged blog praised John Bolton's op-ed piece that stated the only way to fix Iran is to institute regime change in the country:

The War Victims Monitor blog re-posted, sans comment, Ahmed Rashid's op-ed on Pakistan's more serious commitment to getting rid of the Taliban and its influences, and the need for strong international support to complete a successful campaign against the militants.

Ron Radosh of Pajamas Media was not a fan of the L.A. Times' coverage of I.F. Stone, both in the op-ed section and the book reviews, implying that the paper overlooked the unsavory parts of the journalist and radical's past.

The Guardian UK's Haroon Siddique included Michael Carey's op-ed on the beginning of Sarah Palin's end in a wrap-up of skeptical articles regarding the Alaska governor's motives for resigning abruptly.

Finally, a few blogs picked up on Jonah Goldberg's column about the Washington Post salon, which charged $25,000 a ticket for dinner at publisher Katharine Weymouth's home and promised networking with top Obama administration officials and the Post reporters who cover them.

The Open Secrets blog linked to Goldberg's piece in their rehashing of the Post's response that claimed they would amend any business practices that weren't clear.

And Chicago Boyz, a blog composed of many different voices, said the following about WaPo after linking to the column:

Here at the Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division, we like to check in on how our editorials and Op-Ed articles are doing -- and where they are going -- in the blogosphere. What follows is a sampling of blogs that have picked up our opinions and generated opinions of their own.

Jerry Roberts' and Phil Trounstine's Op-Ed listing six factors that are at the root of California's inability to be governed caught the attention of several blogs this week. The Housing Chronicles Blog linked to a post about its own theories on California's detrimental changes:

Bob Burnett of the Huffington Post linked to the piece in his take on California's growing troubles and who's to blame:

On FarmPolicy.com, a blog dedicated to news about the farming industry that took particular interest in the climate change bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, linked to The Times' editorial that supported the bill. It seems the farm industry, based on the blog's long and varied list of supporters and naysayers, is quite conflicted on this issue. The Harvesting Justice blog came out slightly more strongly against the editorial's favorable position on the bill, offering this comment (which I believe is meant to be sarcastic?):

Another example of the excesses of the "greedy growers," as former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson used to say.  We poison the environment and our farmworkers and agribusiness continues to lobby for the ability to continue to do so, while getting paid subsidies not to do so.

On June 26, The Times ran an Op-Ed by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton -- a controversial figure in the world of diplomacy -- that encouraged the United States to support regime change in Iran. Not surprisingly, several bloggers had a lot to say in response. The Citizens blog said Bolton's argument is a veiled call for war:

The UN Dispatch blog offered a similar reaction, and added that the target of Bolton's attack was clearly the Obama administration, and even worse, offered no real solution to his goal. It was written for a partisan purpose and little else, the blog said.

Gregory Tejeda, a Chicago-area freelance writer and former UPI reporter, took issue with Zev Chafets' Op-Ed, in which Chafets argued that Latino baseball players are being singled out by the Hall of Fame for their use of steroids. Tejada said he knows just as many non-Latino ball players who were disgraced by their drug use:

And finally, Noel Sheppard on the NewsBusters blog was quite taken aback by Karen Bass's statement during an interview with Patt Morrison that Republican radio talk-show hosts were "terrorizing" their fellow Republicans in the California legislature.

Photo: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses a joint session of the state legislature in Sacramento on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. Schwarzenegger urged state lawmakers to act quickly to close a $24 billion deficit that opened in the state budget because of the worst U.S. recession in half a century. Credit: Ken James/Bloomberg News

Comments continue to cascade in response to  Catherine Lyons' thoughtful post on the president of France's broadside against burqas. I thought I'd add my 2 cents' worth, even they're pennies I spent in 2004 when I was writing for another newspaper. In a column headlined "Scarves and Smugness," I suggested that Americans ought to refrain from judging the French too harshly for their ban on the wearing of headscarves -- and other religious garments and adornments -- in state schools.

That policy had drawn criticism from the Bush administration, criticism  echoed by President Obama in his June 4 speech in Cairo. Freedom in America, he said, " is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it."

In my column (full text here) I wrote:

"Official tolerance for religious diversity in this country is a relatively recent phenomenon. It wasn't until 1987, in response to an adverse Supreme Court decision, that Congress allowed Jewish military officers to wear yarmulkes with their uniforms. Only recently have Christmas pageants in public schools been repackaged as ecumenical 'holiday celebrations' that also make note of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. . . .

"It is tempting to recommend to the French that they copy the U.S. First Amendment, which the Bush administrations seems to think offers simple answers to the question of religious expression in state schools. But that amendment itself pulls in two directions: prohibiting governmental 'establishment of religion' but guaranteeing the 'free exercise' of religion. Into which category should we place an exception in a school dress code for religious apparel?
 
"The sort of 'multicultural' pluralism the Bush administration recommends to France took time to develop in this country and in England, where until the 19th century Roman Catholics and other 'Nonconformists' were second-class citizens. Earlier than that, in Elizabethan times, Catholics were presumed to be traitors because they answered to a pope who had excommunicated England's Protestant queen. The line between religion and politics in those days was a blurred and bloody one. So it is, some would argue, in contemporary France with its large Muslim minority."

"Some would argue" was a hedge on my part, and I'm still torn about whether France should bolster its wall of separation between church and state. I do think that the burqa controversy raises the question of whether Americans should equate the particulars of our democracy or civil society with universal imperatives like representative government, separation of church and state and fair trials. Take the question of an independent judiciary, which appears on the checklists of most definers of democracy. In this country, an independent judiciary includes the right of the Supreme Court to nullify unconstitutional statutes. Britain historically has not gone that far, not surprisingly given its lack of a written Constitution. But British justice, though sometimes flawed (as is American justice), has a deserved reputation for political independence. And while the British have an encouragingly expansive understanding of freedom of religion, they also have an Established Church.

Banning women from wearing the burqa anywhere strikes me as a violation of the basic principle of religious freedom. Banning headscarves and crucifixes from state schools, not so much.  France is more of a stickler for secularism than the is United States, because of its history and culture and not just out of concern about unassimilated Muslims. I'm not quite willing to say  "Vive la différence," but neither will I excommunicate France from the free world.

Here's a look at the blogosphere's reactions to the work of the Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division this week:

The Opine Editorials, a blog in defense of marriage, disagrees with this week's Times' editorial about the California Marriage Amendment, chiding its remarks as "marriage neutering."

In this post, the No More Tobacco Taxes blog puts forth a different take on the proposed tobacco tax, arguing that tobacco should not be targeted because it's "PC." This -- and the press release from the International Premium Cigar and Pipe Retailers also posted on the blog -- both mention the Times editorial, which favors the tax and the much-needed revenue it would generate for California.

Global Americana Institute President Juan Cole's blog, Informed Comment, linked to Babak Rahimi's op-ed in its broader discussion of the media coverage of the political turmoil and protests in Iran.

John Brown's Public Diplomacy and Press and Blog Review, Version 2.0 included Ben Ehrenreich's op-ed on torture as part of America's tradition in his roundup of blogs related to public diplomacy.

The Mahablog picked up on Douglas W. Kmie's op-ed that stated substituting the term "civil union" for "marriage" in the ongoing struggle for gay marriage legality would be a win-win situation. The Mahablog counters that the two terms are not the same, "marriage" implying that the status is backed by both the state and a religious entity while "civil union" only ensures the former's support.

American Chronicle cited the Times' June 17 editorial against the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to deny prisoners access to DNA testing, saying the editorial voiced the "dismay of millions within US and rest of the world on the subject."

Finally, KCET's blog used two of Tim Rutten's columns on traffic congestion and the implementation of toll roads in its discussion of the equity of congestion pricing in Los Angeles.

You couldn't say we didn't see this coming: Charlotte Allen's May 17 Op-Ed article on her dislike of outspoken atheists (think Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, pictured to the right in that order) has gone viral, sitting at No. 4 on list of most e-mailed latimes.com stories as of 2:45 p.m. today.

As expected, there has been plenty of atheist blowback in the blogosphere. The most pointed criticism comes from Hemant Mehta, proprietor of Friendly Atheist. He writes:

Here’s why I can’t stand Jews.

• They’re boring.

• They keep complaining about being oppressed.
• They keep talking about the same damn things all the time -- Holocaust this and Israel that.
• They always claim they’re victims.
• They only constitute a small percentage of Americans -- probably because they can’t win over any converts.
• They still complain about how state Constitutions bar them from holding office -- really, only six of them do -- even though the Supreme Court has said those provisions are unenforceable.
• They want affirmative action for their kind -- one representative from the “pity-poor-me” school of Jews even said they need “safe spaces” at colleges!
• They assume everyone who doesn’t agree with them is “beyond stupid.”
• They never want to take on the serious arguments that theologians have made in favor of the Christian god.
• Some Jews think Jesus never even existed. So what do they know?
• They’re not rational. They’re just angry. Angry because they think the world is unfair to them. Angry that someone forced them to go to church as a child. Some Jews are so angry, they sued the government to prevent a Christian prayer from being spoken at President Obama’s inauguration. The gall!

Now… if I actually believed that, I’d be called every name in the book. And rightfully so. Those are ignorant, bigoted, hateful remarks. They’re also wildly stereotypical and extremely inaccurate.

When Charlotte Allen says the exact same things about atheists, however, she gets published in the Los Angeles Times.

Biology professor PZ Myers, whose adroit defenses of science against attacks by creationist-types have made me a somewhat regular reader of his blog Pharyngula, bore a good share of Allen's anger. Allen wrote:

Then there's P.Z. Myers, biology professor at the University of Minnesota's Morris campus, whose blog, Pharyngula, is supposedly about Myers' field, evolutionary biology, but is actually about his fanatical propensity to label religious believers as "idiots," "morons," "loony" or "imbecilic" in nearly every post. The university deactivated its link to Myers' blog in July after he posted a photo of a consecrated host from a Mass that he had pierced with a rusty nail and thrown into the garbage ("I hope Jesus' tetanus shots are up to date") in an effort to prove that Catholicism is bunk -- or something.

Myers' response, which he filed under his blog category "Kooks":

Her opening is clear. She thinks we're "crashing bores". A hint for Ms. Allen: never start an essay by declaring your subject to be boring. Either your readers will stop at that point, or they'll read on and discover that despite your claim, you seem to be concerned enough to write on at excessive length about something that is supposedly boring. ...

Then there is an incoherent middle where she just flames on about how mean atheists are (I call them all horrible names, you see), never seeming to notice that all she is doing is spouting angry vitriol about atheists. Gripe, gripe, gripe. The only time she even tries to state what the position of theists might be is in her closing paragraph, and again, she's oblivious to the problem with her position. ...

There simply isn't anything to engage in Allen's howl of outrage. I'm a little surprised that something so shallow and empty could get published in the LA Times at all, especially with Charlotte Allen's track record. My only previous encounter with her was an astonishing rant in the Washington Post, in which she flatly claimed that women were dumber than men. Seriously. While claiming there was no difference in average intelligence.

Look for more response in the form of letters to the editor and possibly a Blowback in the coming days. We're also interested in what you have to say, so feel free to join the discussion by leaving a comment below.

Updated Tuesday at 5:22 am: The original misspelled Hemant Mehta's last name and incorrectly said Myers had filed his response to Allen under the category "Gooks," not "Kooks." Thanks to readers for pointing out these errors, and apologies to Mehta and Myers.

Sam Harris photo credit: Glenn Koenig / L.A. Times
Richard Dawkins photo credit: Dirk Waem / AFP/Getty Images

The Times' editorial board in the coming days will most likely address President Obama's decision to block the release of new photos showing alleged abuse of prisoners by U.S. personnel in overseas prisons. The administration's policy is a reversal of the Defense Department's previously stated position on the issue.

Here's the administration's position:

"The president was concerned about harm to the troops," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday afternoon. "The president, as you all know, met with his legal team last week because he did not feel comfortable with the release of the photos."

Gibbs added, "the president reflected on this case and believes that they have the potential to pose harm to the troops. ... Nothing is added by the release of the photos."

Click here to read reaction from other blogs, newspapers and the like.

Before we weigh in, we're interested in hearing what you have to say. Tell us what you think by taking our unscientific poll, leaving a comment or both. 

Credit: Win McNamee / Getty Images

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.

Here's this week's snapshot of the ripples that the Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division caused in the blogosphere:

Monumentality points out President Obama's apparent backpedaling on his pledge to eliminate wasteful spending and earmarks from the Federal budget once he signed the $410 billion omnibus spending bill.  The post includes a link to this Opinion L.A. blog item  that also chides the president for not vetoing the "bloated" bill.

An online column by Ryan T. Anderson at National Review Online proclaims that "the Prop. 8 debate is not a clash between civil liberties and religion." The column mentions a Times' editorial that offers "a way of of Prop. 8," endorsing the idea that California should simply license civil unions and let the couple choose a religious institution to sanctify their vows -- an idea floated by California Supreme Court Justice Ming W. Chin during oral arguments on the proposition before the court in early March.

In a post by Medical Cannabis' Kris Hermes on revisions to federal policy of medical marijuana, she notes the Times' recent editorial calling for the Obama administration to consider a more comprehensive policy, rather than one that would simply eliminate the raiding of medical marijuana dispensaries. (What that policy should be is still a matter of some debate by the Times board....)

Capital J's Ron Kampeas offers this post on the controversy surrounding Chas Freeman and his withdrawal from consideration as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, blaming the Israeli lobby. It cites this Times editorial, which calls for more voices to be heard in the shaping of U.S. policy. The Israel discussion continues over at Israel Policy Forum with a post by MJ Rosenberg that also highlights the editorial, saying it provides "more evidence that the get-Freeman effort was both misguided and, perhaps, even worse than that."

And what kind of roundup would this be if there wasn't mention of Nadya Suleman?! The mother of 14 continues to be a hot topic of discussion. A recent post at Dear Bloggery provides a list of reasons why Octomom is “undeserving of media fanfare.” Included is her resemblance to Angelina Jolie — funny, I would think that would be reason enough. Nonetheless, the post includes a link to this recent Opinion L.A. blog post that chronicled a surreal encounter between yours truly and Ms. Suleman at a Whittier nail salon.  But, if the author of the post truly believes Ms. Suleman is undeserving of media attention, why dedicate a blog post to her?

The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division continues its quest to generate a healthy dosage of opinions for those out in cyberspace to mull over. Here's a roundup of the latest sites that took notice of our outlooks on various issues, from an unnecessary charter amendment to a form of advertising that gives a whole new meaning to the Mile High Club.

Measure B--which would require the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to install 400 megawatts' worth of solar panels on land and rooftops within the city by 2014-- seems to be generating more buzz than Manny Ramirez' new deal with the Dodgers. Sort of. Greentech Media's Ucilia Wang mentions our editorial that urged Angelenos to vote no on the measure (though, her wordage states that we "urged voters not to say no to Measure B").  Uprisingradio.org's post on the measure also notes our opposition to the charter amendment. Our opposition even caught the attention of college students! The Occidental Weekly--the official newspaper of Occidental College--article on the measure, gives a shout out to our endorsement to vote no and includes excerpts from our editorial. From college students to cowboys?  It seems LA Cowboy's Brady Westwater was in agreement with our opposition. The fate of the measure is still unknown, with thousands of ballots still uncounted.

In other political news, the latest saga in the Prop. 8 battle has stirred debate.  Over at Straight Talk on Marriage, Heather Jensen linked to an Op-Ed by Nicholas Goldberg, deputy editor of Editorial Pages, which provided an overview of the arguments facing the California Supreme Court over the final fate of Prop. 8.  Rod 2.0 continues the Prop. 8 discussion and includes a snippet from The Times' editorial on the matter, which acknowledges the process to overturn Prop. 8 will be an arduous fight given the ease in which the California constitution is amended by popular vote.  Over at The Raw Story, there's an article by David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster on Kenneth Star's support for Prop. 8, and his argument that a simple majority vote is enough to remove any right from a minority group. The story links one of the many blog posts by editorial writer Karin Klein on Starr's disturbing argument.

If Starr's return to the spotlight hasn't sparked enough criticism, the media need only look to Rush Limbaugh for a reason to opine.  Open Left's "tremayne" wrote a post that noted editorial writer Michael McGough's coy suggestion that the radio personality run for Congress if he wants Obama to fail; only "tremayne" took it one step further, suggesting the Limbaugh instead make a bid for the oval office in 2012. Oh, the horror.

But that's the least of our worries. Over at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting,  Steve Rendall is under the impression that the Times' editorial board has a season pass to Disneyland.  No, wait ... that's Fantasyland! He took issue with our editorial that urged Obama to press for passage of the U.S.- Colombia Free Trade Agreement, claiming we head into "War is Peace" territory.

And, hey, we admit it; sometimes we're a little slow in forming our opinions.  And Standard Upright Position isn't afraid to point that out. "Anne" was a bit perplexed by Patt Morrison's apparent delayed reaction to Southwest Airlines decision to adorn one of its planes with an illustration of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.  But delays should be expected when the airline industry is involved, right? So give Patt a break!

Photo: Don Kelsen / LAT

Here's a look at the sites that have taken notice of our views and judgments here at the Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

Virtual Collector, a blog with “information about Georgia & the world as collected from various resources,” posted our editorial calling for bankruptcy courts, not the government, to decide the fate of GM and Chrysler.

It seems Joseph Mailander thinks we’re funny. No, wait -- he thinks we’re a joke. In his post “The LA Times: a poor joke on local democracy” on his blog Street-Hassle,  Mailander lambastes the Times for our “diverted” attention from local politics in favor of a “useless” mapping project and a column by Patt Morrison on the renaming of neighborhoods.   

But Mailander isn't the only one upset with our local election coverage. Armand Vaquer took to his blog, Arman’s Rancho del Cielo, to share his displeasure with our endorsement to re-elect Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. His discontent is joined by Lincoln High 90031-Quick Notes, which called our endorsement “self-delusional.”

John Brown’s Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, Version 2.0 links to an editorial on Hillary Clinton’s visit to Asia, which we say successfully presented a non-confrontational foreign policy. The editorial is also referenced in The Week’s assessment of Clinton’s visit.

In other political outlooks: Curbed LA said our editorial on Assemblyman’s Tom Ammiano bill to tax marijuana in California, in which we suggest the Obama administration reexamine the Controlled Substance Act, throws a “wet blanket on the idea.” Good to see we were clear on that point.

And Patt Morrison’s blog post on Los Alamitos mayor Dean Grose “stupefying” e-mail that shows a picture of the White house with rows of watermelons on the lawn and a caption that read “No Easter egg hunt this year” filtered through cyberspace. It was posted on a message board over at Mystic Wicks, an “online pagan community and spiritual sanctuary,” and it was linked over at White Noise Sanity.

Finally, outside the realm of politics, Louise Larsen wrote a follow-up post about her discontent with Joel Stein’s piece about peanut allergies on her blog Louise on the Left. As a mother to a daughter with sever peanut allergy, she was annoyed by Stein’s column which suggested it wasn’t a real concern, but a way to create “specialness” for kids. The post includes a Facebook message-exchange with the writer.