There’s little doubt that technology is shaping how we live our lives, but is it also changing who is eligible for U.S. citizenship? In fact, it may be. Consider the case of Ellie Lavi, an American citizen who turned to in vitro fertilization to become pregnant. She gave birth to twins while living outside the United States. When she sought to obtain citizenship for her daughters, she discovered it wasn’t so easy.

In general, children born to or adopted by an American while overseas automatically acquire citizenship, according to federal immigration officials.

But in Lava’s case, her decision to use in vitro complicated matters.  U.S. Embassy officials in Tel Aviv informed Lavi that in order for her daughters to receive citizenship, she needed to prove that the egg or the sperm used to create the embryos came from a U.S. citizen, according to USA Today.

That’s not always so easy to prove. Clinics may not keep records of donors' citizenship status, making it nearly impossible to establish a biological link to an American citizen.

But Lavi’s case also raises a thorny issue in immigration law: Are all children of Americans born abroad entitled to citizenship?  The answer is complex and has changed over time. For example, the gender of a parent plays a key role.  In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked whether it was OK to require an unwed father to meet a higher set of standards than an unwed mother in cases in which a single parent wanted to impart citizenship to a child born overseas. The case involved whether a child born in Vietnam to a U.S. father and a Vietnamese mother who were not married was a U.S. citizen.  The high court found it was not unconstitutional to require different standards.

It will be interesting to see if the rules are challenged in court. Stay tuned.

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--Sandra Hernandez

Photo: An egg is shown as it is prepared for fertilization. Credit: Béatrice de Géa / Los Angeles Times

It was about art, but it wasn’t an art case that E. Randol Schoenberg presented to the Supreme Court in 2004. It was about the legal matter of jurisdiction.

Schoenberg was representing an elderly Los Angeles woman, Maria Altmann, the Vienna-born heiress of a Jewish fortune that had vanished into the hands of the Third Reich. The trove included two striking portraits of Altmann’s aunt by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. My "Patt Morrison Asks" column visits with Schoenberg about the high-stakes case.

Schoenberg’s argument that the law regarding international jurisdiction and seized property as applied to those and other Klimt paintings should be restored to the family won the day in the 9th Circuit federal court. "The issues in the lawsuit -- jurisdiction, retroactivity, immunity -- had almost nothing to do with the [historical] facts." But then the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

"I went in with gallows humor and low expectations." To Schoenberg's surprise, the Supreme Court sided with him 6-3. "That was huge." His reasoning: not to make the case "a sob story about an old woman seeking vengeance or whatever, but a legal argument that was very technical and not pulling at the heartstrings."  And he directed it at Justice Antonin Scalia.

"My argument was pitched directly towards Justice Scalia because he had written a concurring opinion in a previous case which I thought was really good for us. I thought if I get Scalia I’ll get some others. If I don’t get [Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg and [Justice John Paul] Stevens I’m lost. My problem was the middle, and I thought if I can get Scalia, then the ones in the middle might come along, and that’s what happened. [I presented] it in a dry way, which I thought would appeal to him."

And, he bought Scalia’s book in the Supreme Court gift shop.

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Photos: Gustav Klimt's five paintings

When art and politics collided in L.A.

-- Patt Morrison

Photo: E. Randol Schoenberg. Credit: Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times.

It's a classic inside-the-Beltway issue that brings yawns from even some political junkies. I'm talking about the delay in Senate confirmation of President Obama's judicial nominees. It doesn't have the drama or political salience of, say, a deadlock over the debt ceiling, but the obstruction of judges is symbolic of the partisan gridlock that drove Sen. Olympia Snowe back to Maine.

This week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed a cloture motion to try to force debate on 17 nominations to federal district courts. That prompted his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, to sputter: "We're going to turn to something contentious instead of trying to do something that almost all of us agree on, that focuses on jobs" -- a reference to pending small-business legislation passed by the House.

Jobs bills are arguably more urgent than judicial nominations, but 11 of the nominees have been awaiting action for months. Most recently, they have been held hostage by Republican objections to some of Obama's recess appointments. But stalling judicial confirmations is an old story -- and Democrats played the game to delay or derail judicial nominations during the George W. Bush administration.

Compared to, say, someone laid off because of the recession, a judicial nominee waiting for confirmation isn't a particularly poignant figure. But delays in confirmation do more than inconvenience nominees (for example, by making it impossible for them to take on new legal business); they also slow the administration of justice. Reid was right to call the Republicans on their obstructionism.

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Make California's courts look like us

Mary Brown, 'Obamacare' foe -- and broke

-- Michael McGough

Photo: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday. Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP Photo

Not surprisingly, the Obama Justice Department is opposing a Texas law requiring voters to show photo ID, claiming that it disproportionately disenfranchises  Latino voters. It's the latest example of a familiar trope: Democrats oppose voter ID, calling it unnecessary and discriminatory; Republicans support it, arguing that impersonation at the polls is a real, if hard to quantify, problem.  Not so coincidentally, racial minorities tend to favor Democratic candidates.

Neither of the warring narratives is totally satisfactory. It's plausible that members of economically disadvantaged minority groups are less likely to have, say, a driver's license. But I felt my eyebrows elevating at the Justice Department's estimate that between 175,000 and 304,000 registered Latino Texas voters lack driver's licenses or other state-issued IDs. Really? On the other hand, Republicans' fears of fraud at polling places seem forced. They have a point, though, when they say that it's anomalous that you need a photo ID to board a plane but not to vote.

It's crazy that 175,000 (or 304,000?) Texans of whatever background don't have  government-issued photo IDs and might have difficulty buying a plane or train ticket.  They need to get IDs, and the government should help -- regardless of what happens on Election Day. Like it or not, in 21st century America your face is your fortune.

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Listen to Villaraigosa, Mr. President

Romney's Southern strategy: Admit he's a stranger

-- Michael McGough

Photo: U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder has been an outspoken critic of the Texas law. Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / AP Photo

Nelson Javier Avila Lopez was deported by the U.S. to Honduras in October despite a court order barring his removal. Now it turns out that  Lopez, 20, was among the estimated 360 trapped inmates killed in a massive Honduran prison fire last month.

His case has raised an important question: Are immigration officials notified immediately about court orders blocking deportations? 

Lopez's attorney told The Times that he faxed a copy of the stay order to federal immigration officials. But Viriginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, says the agency didn't receive any indication of the stay until after Lopez was out of the U.S.

Lopez was detained on an outstanding deportation order. His lawyer went to Immigration Court in September and obtained a temporary restraining order pending review of his appeal. But over the next two weeks, Lopez was transferred from a Los Angeles-area detention center to Arizona. Word of the court order never reached immigration officials, Kice said.

This isn’t the first time immigration agents have moved to deport immigrants with court ordered stays. Amadou Diouf, a Senegalese national, was nearly deported from Los Angeles several years ago despite a federal court order temporarily blocking his removal. At the time, Diouf said he repeatedly told guards and immigration officials that he had been granted a stay but was ignored.

Kice this week said the agency “takes great care to confirm that no legal actions are pending in a case before affecting an alien’s removal,” and would never deport someone if officials had knowledge of a court order.

So are these isolated incidents or a systemic problem? Clearly, it requires at least a review to ensure that those who are still fighting their cases and have a stay aren’t mistakenly deported.

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Make California's courts look like us

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Immigration, deportation -- and no right to return?

-- Sandra Hernandez

Photo: A coffin bearing a victim of last month's fire at the Comayagua prison in Honduras is carried into a morgue in Tegucigalpa. Credit: Fernando Antonio / Associated Press

Why, yes, he can. On Saturday night, a cast that was repeatedly called "star-studded" performed a dramatic reading of the play "8," which is more or less an excerpting of the transcripts of the federal trial on Proposition 8. Star-drenched would be more accurate.

My mother's theory was that the quality of any dramatic production tends to be inversely proportional to the number of big names in it, and more often than not, I think that holds. Fortunately, from where I sat, "8" was, for the most part, the exception. Not because the acting was necessarily special but because so many of the lines were. What makes that all the more exceptional is that most of the lines were taken straight from the transcript of the trial.

I certainly had read about the trial avidly while it was going on, but there is indeed something different about seeing it played out, even if that's an enactment. I sat there wondering, did that proponent of Proposition 8 really say something so easily picked apart? Or was the play, more likely, playing for cheap shots? After the play, I spent hours checking several out of the play's exchanges on the Internet. Yes, they were real. Perhaps they stood out more because the play only touched highlights -- although if there were any highlights that made Proposition 8's presentation look good, they were omitted.

Thankfully, the actors played it simply for the most part, letting the essential material shine through, and that includes Clooney, playing the celebrated litigator David Boies, who managed to turn the defense's single witness into more of a witness for the plaintiffs.

The least effective scenes didn't come from the trial transcripts. Those were little side dramas between the lesbian plaintiff mothers (played by Christine Lahti and Jamie Lee Curtis) and their two sons.  The scenes rang a little sappy and false to me.

But you can decide for yourself. The entire play is on YouTube for a few more days. (For some strange reason, it starts at 29:51).

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Mitt Romney, the pandering chicken hawk on Iran

Limbaugh drowns out his own message about the pill

--Karin Klein 

Photo: George Clooney, left, Martin Sheen and Brad Pitt are shown in a scene from the play "8," at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. Credit: Jason Merrit / Getty Images for the American Foundation for Equal Rights

Really, you have to wonder what these judges were smoking.

Here, read for yourself (quick version for those with short attention spans), courtesy of Times staff writer Maura Dolan:

California cities may not ban medical marijuana dispensaries, but the operations may sell only weed that is grown on site, an appeals court ruled in an Orange County case.

The unanimous decision by a three-judge Court of Appeal panel in Santa Ana was the first in the state to prohibit cities from enacting zoning restrictions that effectively ban all marijuana dispensaries. The court was also the first to rule that dispensaries must grow the marijuana they sell, a requirement that would force most of them out of business.

To which I say: Dudes, what?

You can't bar dispensaries but you can require them to grow their own, right at the store?

Will this also mean that pharmacies can only sell Viagra if they make it on site? That markets have to become wineries or breweries to sell Chardonnay and Bud Light? Is Trader Joe's going to have to slaughter the cows and pigs right there in the store? What about Starbucks?  It’s gonna be tough growing all that coffee in the little shops.

OK, not perfect analogies perhaps. But really, how does this ruling bring clarity to an issue that seriously needs some? As the story says:

The Lake Forest decision added to a stack of rulings that have befuddled local governments and was unlikely to add much clarity.

One appeals court upheld the right of cities to use zoning laws to prohibit dispensaries. Another said city regulations that allow any medical marijuana violate federal law. A federal judge this week threw out a lawsuit to prevent the federal government from shutting down dispensaries.

And it's not even about political ideology. Two of the three judges were Republican appointees, the other a Democratic appointee. 

The real problem here is -- to paraphrase Jack Nicholson's famous line in "A Few Good Men" -- "We can't handle the truth."

Both sides on this issue are trying to achieve something without actually admitting it. Many supporters of medical marijuana, for example, are really advocates for legalizing marijuana, period. And cities that enact ordinances such as Lake Forest's may say they're trying to regulate the industry, but in fact they're trying to shut down legal businesses that they don't want.

For example, from Dolan's story:

Jeffrey Dunn, a lawyer who represented Lake Forest, said the court's requirement that dispensaries sell pot grown only on site would shut down most storefront operations.

"I don't see how you can grow in a tiny, rented space enough pot for over 1,000 customers," Dunn said.

Exactly. You can't. 

Except, the sale of medical marijuana is legal. Californians voted for it. Californians want it. Laws restricting it won't change that.

[For the record: OK, yes, that is incorrect.  The sale of marijuana is not legal in California.  Rather, I should have said that Proposition 215, which Californians passed in 1996, allows people, with a doctor's permission, to grow, possess and use marijuana for medical purposes.]

The real solution, of course, is simple: Just legalize marijuana. 

But if we can't do that, we should at least stop with these silly ordinances, which only spawn equally silly court rulings.

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Will Santa Monica call off Christmas in the park?

Birth control: What do bosses get to decide about us?

-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Los Angeles Times

A federal judge has temporarily blocked yet another provision of Arizona's controversial SB 1070 immigration measure from being enforced. The 2010 law made it a crime for a person to block traffic when seeking or offering work on streets.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled Wednesday that groups who challenged the provision were likely to succeed in proving the measure violates the 1st Amendment. Immigrant and civil rights groups had argued that the law targeted day laborers' speech, not traffic problems.

Bolton rightly noted that state officials already have a slew of civil penalties on the books that can be used against individuals who violate traffic laws or create road hazards.

The ruling shouldn't come as a surprise. On Feb. 21, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reinstate Redondo Beach's anti-solicitation ordinance. The high court let stand a lower court ruling that found the city's attempt to stop day laborers from seeking work on street corners was so broad that it was nothing short of an unconstitutional attack on free speech. Redondo Beach had spent more than 20 years defending its anti-solicitation ordinance.

No one disputes that cities or states should be able to prosecute those who endanger public safety or create a nuisance. But communities should avail themselves of laws already in place that target jaywalking, trespassing or traffic violations instead of enacting new ones that result only in long and expensive legal battles.

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The war over day laborers

--Sandra Hernandez  

Photo: Recent court rulings have gone in favor of day laborers. Credit:  Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times

Olympia Snowe of Maine, one-half of that state's moderate Republican Senate delegation, is taking her ball and going home. Snowe announced Tuesday that she won't seek reelection because she's had it with hyper-partisanship.

"I do find it frustrating," Snowe said, "that an atmosphere of polarization and 'my way or the highway' ideologies has become pervasive in campaigns and in our governing institutions. With my Spartan ancestry, I am a fighter at heart, and I am well prepared for the electoral battle, so that is not the issue. However, what I have had to consider is how productive an additional term would be. Unfortunately, I do not realistically expect the partisanship of recent years in the Senate to change over the short term. So at this stage of my tenure in public service, I have concluded that I am not prepared to commit myself to an additional six years in the Senate, which is what a fourth term would entail."

The Senate -- and Congress as a whole -- are poorer when moderate Republicans (and conservative Democrats) pack it in. Snowe has demonstrated independence, a stance made more possible (and sometimes necessary) by her Northeastern constituency. But she hasn't always been a maverick.

There was no more partisan split in the Senate than over the confirmation of UC Berkeley professor Goodwin Liu for a seat on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Although the parties had agreed not to filibuster judicial nominees except in "extraordinary circumstances," Republicans blocked Liu -- and Snowe joined in, questioning Liu's objectivity and complaining, as did other Republicans, about his past criticism of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. As The Times reported, the Liu cloture vote was essentially a party-line affair, "with just one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, supporting him, and one Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who faces a difficult reelection fight, voting with the GOP."

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 -- Michael McGough

Photo: In this Jan. 8, 2010 photo, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) laughs during an interview with the Associated Press, in Portland, Maine. Snowe, who has served 33 years in Congress, released a statement Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012 saying that she will not run for re-election. Credit: Robert F. Bukaty / AP Photo

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck made headlines this week. His proposed change to the department's impound policy and his support for issuing provisional driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants have sparked an intense debate.

The Police Protective League opposes Beck's impound plan, arguing it would undermine public safety. Of course public safety should be the guiding force in the debate. But how does Beck's proposal impact public safety?

Some have suggested that the chief's plan would leave dangerous drivers on the road. To be clear, the measure would grant police greater discretion in deciding when to seize a car. Drivers without a license but with auto insurance and no prior violations could keep their cars if a licensed driver were nearby to take the wheel. In addition, those drivers could retrieve their car as soon as the next day instead of 30 days later, as is currently the policy.

The league opposes the change and often points to a report by the Washington-based AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety as evidence that any change is dangerous. The report,"Unlicensed to Kill," offers a snapshot of the types of drivers involved in fatal crashes from 2007 to 2009. The AAA study found that 12.8% of fatal crashes involved unlicensed drivers. That's alarming. But turns out that unlicensed drivers aren't just individuals who can't get a license. The AAA report found that more than half of those unlicensed drivers were actually individuals whose licenses had been either revoked, suspended or canceled or had expired. The number of unlicensed drivers who were ineligible for a license and were involved in fatal crashes was actually 5% during that same 2007 to 2009 period.

Moreover, the AAA reports seems to indicate the real problem is drunk drivers.  Nearly half of those driving without a license and involved in a fatality had alcohol in their systems.

Which brings me to the issue of impounds  and public safety. It seems much of the opposition is operating under the notion that Beck's policy would allow dangerous drivers to stay on the road. But the proposed changes would still require police to seize the cars of those unlicensed drivers who the AAA study suggest pose the real danger -- namely drivers who lost their licenses and those who had alcohol in their systems.

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New initiatives on online privacy

Dealing with undocumented drivers

GOP's reckless saber-rattling on Iran

 Photo: LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times