"If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon."

With those 10 simple words, President Obama said so much on Friday.

Obama was at the White House -- introducing his nominee to take over as World Bank president -- when he was asked by a reporter to address the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

He also offered this somewhat stock comment:

"I think all of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen. And that means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident."

Any president could have -- probably would have -- said that.

But it doesn't have the power of the "if I had a son" remark, or this:  

"Obviously this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids."

Never before has the killing of a young black man been quite so personal to one of our presidents. 

Oh, we've had presidents who did great things for civil rights -- Lyndon B. Johnson, for example.

But this is different. And it's one of the reasons that Obama's presidency is so historic, and so important to the United States.

Trayvon Martin is far from the first young black man to be killed in murky circumstances. The Times has reported on the troubling history of black residents and police in Sanford, Fla., where the shooting took place.  And The Times' editorial board weighed in on Florida's so-called stand your ground law, which may have played a role in this and a number of other shootings labeled self-defense in that state.

No, what makes this death notable is that this time our president -- and his children -- look like the victim. Heck, in other circumstances -- easily imagined circumstances, in fact -- one of them could have been the victim.

Obama did not judge anyone with his comments, did not label anyone. But when this president says, "I think all of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen" --– well, yes, any president could have said that, but there's a little something extra there.

The United States can be proud of the advances it has made in civil rights. Racism is nowhere near as overt and pervasive today.

But, of course, it's still there.

Only now, when our president speaks out about it, it's, well, personal.

And that's why it doesn't really matter if Obama is just a one-term president, or if he achieves little in terms of legislative triumphs.

Because of him, we as a nation will never be quite the same. In electing Obama, we have looked racism in the eye and said "no."  

And that's a great thing.  

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Americans Elect -- bring democracy into the digital world

--Paul Whitefield

Photo: President Obama was asked about the killing of Trayvon Martin on Friday during a White House ceremony. Credit:  Haraz N. Ghanbari / Associated Press

When it comes to domestic issues, Americans should trust the private sector.

That's a Republican Party mantra, and two stories in The Times this week have me convinced as well.

Now, I know you think one concerns gasoline prices. Really, though, who cares about that? Snore.

That's right: I'm talking about snoring.  As The Times' Lauren Beale reported:

A so-called snore room is the latest offering from Del Webb, which builds communities for people 55 and older.

Buyers whose marriages are plagued by a spouse who snorts, grunts and wheezes while he or she sleeps can opt for an adaptable bedroom plan marketed as the "owners retreat" at Sun City Shadow Hills in Indio. Designed for couples who start out in the same bed but end up apart because of ear-piercing snoring, insomnia or late-night TV viewing habits, this secondary bedroom is connected to the bathroom of the master bedroom.

See?  Big problem; private-sector solution. You leave that to government, and pretty soon you've got government-run snore insurance instead.

Still, even the private sector can stumble. For example, I'm a bit puzzled by Del Webb's logic:

"A nice enclave that shares the master bathroom provides a civilized alternative to the family room sofa," said Jacque Petroulakis, corporate communications spokeswoman for PulteGroup Inc., the parent company of Del Webb.

About a quarter of couples in the 55-and-older age group sleep apart to get a good night's rest, according to PulteGroup, which got the data from a third party but also conducted focus groups and interviews as it developed the bedroom plan.

Now first of all, the sofa isn't for snoring husbands; it's for misbehaving husbands, or came-home-late-drunk husbands -- which, come to think of it, is redundant. (It's never for wives, of course, who are too savvy to choose the sofa, regardless of their transgressions.)

Second, if you're 55 or older and still married to someone who snores, isn't it a bit late to be dealing with the problem? Seems to me the snore room should be marketed at 30-year-olds, who need all the help they can get keeping their marriages together.

But, staying true to the private sector's can-do spirit, in addition to the snore room, Del Webb is offering other conveniences:

Among other new life-easing features the builder is offering are pass-throughs from the closet to the laundry room. A door large enough to push a hamper through connects the two spaces.

Which brings me to my second domestic issue story of the week: widespread thievery of Tide detergent.

The Times Dalina Castellanos reported:

Thieves seem to be embarking on an anti-grime spree, some media outlets are reporting, saying thousands of dollars in Tide detergent is being swiped from shelves across the country.

One Minnesota man stole about $25,000 worth of the liquid laundry detergent from a West St. Paul Wal-Mart over 15 months, authorities there say.

And who's to blame for this crime wave?  Sadly, dear liberals, it appears that Rush and Sean and Glenn are right: It's the government -- or, in this case, at least one peson who apparently has fallen prey to the liberal-nanny-state mentality.  

Lt. Matt Swenke of the West St. Paul Police Department said in an interview with The Times that Patrick Costanzo, 53, was the suspect in the Minnesota thefts.

"He told [police] he didn't have a job and the state didn't help him in any way so he did what he had to do to get by," Swenke said.

Yes, it's true, liberals: You do a man's laundry, he's clean for a day. You teach him to do his own laundry, and he won't steal Tide.

Which doesn't make a lot of sense, I'll admit. But then again, my wife keeps me awake a night -- either snoring or doing the laundry.

Speaking of which:  Why do we have so much Tide?

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--Paul Whitefield

Photo: A so-called snore room is the latest offering from Del Webb, which builds communities for people 55 and older. Credit: Handout

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

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-- Michael McGough

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

These just in -- two dispatches from the front of the war on drugs:

"U.S. fails to catch two-thirds of drug boats, general says," and "Man charged with smuggling 40,000 erectile dysfunction pills."

One is about being stupid. The other is about being caught.

I'll let you decide which is which.

First, Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, told reporters Wednesday that military efforts to stem drug smuggling from Latin America are being hampered because planes and ships have been diverted to combat operations elsewhere.

It's certainly not a problem of funding, though. As The Times' story says:

The military has spent $6.1 billion since 2005 to help detect drug payloads heading to the U.S., as well as on surveillance and other intelligence operations, according to a report last year by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

At prices like that, it might be cheaper for the government to just buy the cocaine from the cartels.

And, of course, there's this little Catch-22:

"Any drug interdiction strategy is a Band-Aid, a temporary fix," said Bruce Bagley, who studies U.S. counter-narcotics efforts at the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Fla. "It may reduce the supply for a short time, but what does get in is worth more."

Well, yeah, there's that. Otherwise known as the 800-lb. gorilla of the whole war-on-drugs policy. Drugs are illegal, but people still want them.  So someone supplies them. So we spend a fortune to try to stop them. And whatever we catch just makes the stuff we don't catch more valuable, which makes the guys who supply it richer. 

Legalization, anyone?

Naw, then people might use more drugs, and that would mean more addicts, and that would mean we would have to spend money on treatment. Instead of, uh, spending a large fortune trying to fight cartels that corrupt governments and kill people and -- well, OK, it's a mess.

Honestly, I don't know if legalization would work. But I'm pretty sure that what we're doing now isn't working.

Still, I'll admit that the current system did manage to get its man, one Kil Jun Lee, 71, of Westlake, Calif. 

Lee allegedly tried to slip 29,827 counterfeit Viagra tablets, 8,993 counterfeit Cialis pills and 793 counterfeit Levitra tablets past authorities at LAX by hiding them in his golf bag and luggage. (Which, of course, was his first mistake, because as any wife who's been abandoned for five hours on a Sunday by her golf-addict husband can tell you, golf and sex never mix.)

And it's not as though the law enforcement guys didn't have a sense of humor:

According to the criminal complaint, Lee concealed the tablets in aluminum-foil-wrapped packets, and was questioned by authorities about whether the pills were all for personal use. He responded that he had a heart condition, and using all the pills would kill him.

Oh, ha ha -- "all for your personal use."

Also, Lee didn't come across as your typical hardened drug smuggler:

He also said he "did not believe the pills were genuine," adding that "he was sorry" for bringing the pills and "will not do it again."

Which, really, is good enough for me. A sincere apology and a promise not to be a repeat offender for what is, in a sense, a victimless crime. (Unless, of course, you paid good money for the counterfeit stuff -- but then again, caveat emptor!)

So the Navy and Coast Guard will continue their futile efforts to stop Latin America's cartels. 

And the good folks at LAX will continue to protect us from the evils of phony Viagra.

And we taxpayers will keep paying for it all.

And that's no joke.

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-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Colombian police at a cocaine production laboratory in the jungle. Credit: Mauricio Duenas / EPA

We may owe state Sen. Joe Simitian an apology.The Palo Alto Democrat, who sponsored the 2008 bill that banned driving with a handheld cellphone in California, introduced a bill two years ago that would more than double the fine for the infraction. We asserted in a 2010 editorial that it was a bad idea because it would have little or no impact on public safety and looked a lot like a backdoor way of raising state revenues. The bill was approved, but we were thrilled when Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it under the rationale that the fine is already high enough to discourage people from dialing while driving.

A study released Monday by UC Berkeley's Safe Transportation Research and Education Center suggests we may have been wrong, at least about the safety part. Contradicting nearly all of the other research on the issue, it found that traffic fatalities have dropped significantly since the 2008 ban went into effect.

In our defense, our beef with the phone ban was based on voluminous research that showed no difference in the number of accidents involving drivers using handheld cellphones as opposed to hands-free devices such as Bluetooth. There was, for example, a 2010 study by the Highway Loss Data Institute that found no reductions in crashes in states that passed laws like Simitian's. Other studies before that had concluded that although talking on a cellphone while driving is indeed dangerous -- the equivalent of driving while legally drunk-- it's the conversation that distracts drivers, not the fact that one is holding a phone to one's ear while having it. Theoretically, then, banning handheld phones should make no difference; the only way to reduce the danger would be to forbid all cellphone use by drivers.

But the Berkeley study points up a phenomenon we hadn't anticipated. It compared traffic deaths in the two years preceding the 2008 ban and the two years following it, and found that overall deaths dropped 22% and that deaths of drivers using handheld cellphones dropped 47%. Unrelated research might explain why this happened: A survey by the state Office of Traffic Safety in 2010 found that in states with handheld phone bans, 44% of drivers reported they didn't use a cellphone at all while driving -- handheld or hands-free -- compared to 30% in states without such laws. In other words, it's still quite possible that Bluetooth has no impact on safety but the handheld ban discouraged people from talking on their phones at all. Maybe that's because they're too cheap to buy a Bluetooth device, or maybe it's because the ban itself raised awareness that driving while dialing was dangerous. Either way, it seems that the ban has made a difference.

None of this is to say that Simitian's proposal to raise the fines -- and, undiscouraged by Brown's veto, he's back with another bill, SB 1310,to do just that -- is a good idea. With assorted state and local fees tacked on, a cellphone ticket costs drivers $159 for a first offense, and if that isn't enough to persuade them to put their phones down, I don't see why Simitian's plan to boost the total would make much difference. But it appears that cracking down on handheld phones wasn't as lousy an idea as we'd thought.

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Photo: Drivers enjoy the freedom to hold phones to their ears, just before California's ban on the practice was enacted in 2008. Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

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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-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Los Angeles Times

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

Wednesday was a bad day for liars at the Supreme Court. Even liberal justices seemed unsympathetic to a Pomona man who was prosecuted under a law known as the Stolen Valor Act for boasting at a public meeting that he had received the Medal of Honor. (That wasn't his only whopper. He also claimed to have played professional hockey and to have been injured while rescuing a U.S. diplomat during the Iran hostage crisis.)

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law. One judge drolly argued that if "false factual statements are unprotected, then the government can prosecute not only the man who tells tall tales of winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, but also the JDater who falsely claims he's Jewish or the dentist who assures you it won't hurt a bit. Phrases such as 'I'm working late tonight, hunny,' 'I got stuck in traffic'  and 'I didn't inhale' could all be made into crimes."

Members of the Supreme Court weren't about to salute that parade of horribles.  Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked the U.S. solicitor general if the government also could punish people who lied about attaining a high school diploma, but Roberts didn't seem to find the idea all that objectionable. Even more revealing of Roberts' attitude was a question he posed to the lawyer for Xavier Alvarez, the Medal of Honor wannabe: "What is the 1st Amendment value in a lie, pure lie?" 

The lawyer fumbled at first but later re-framed the issue in what I think is a persuasive way: "Our founders believed that Congress as a general principle doesn't get to tell us what we as individuals can and cannot say."  Obviously there are exceptions: If Alvarez had lied about his military record to obtain money, he would have been  guilty of the eminently prosecutable crime of fraud. But in itself a  pathetic claim to military glory -- a claim easily debunked by a visit to the Internet -- isn't the sort of statement a free society should criminalize.

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Which political force is more powerful: gas prices or optimism?

-- Michael McGough

Photo: Xavier Alvarez. Credit: Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

This post has been corrected. See note below.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich officially announced his candidacy for county district attorney  Thursday. That took a good deal of chutzpah because during his 2008 campaign, he signed a pledge to seek a second term as city attorney and to forgo running for any other office, including district attorney. If he violated his promise, Trutanich said four years ago, he would donate $100,000 to an after-school program and take out full-page newspaper ads declaring "I am a liar." As far as we can tell, The Times has yet to receive an ad request from his campaign -- and Trutanich hasn't addressed his seeming hypocrisy. Below, editorial writers Jon Healey and Dan Turner debate the issue. 

Healey: When running to succeed City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, Trutanich argued that Delgadillo's outsized political ambitions made him a distracted and ineffective leader of the city's law office. His target wasn't just Delgadillo; it was also then-City Councilman Jack Weiss, the front-runner in the race for city attorney who was also viewed as a political climber. Trutanich hammered home this point in late 2008 by publicly swearing to serve two full terms if he were elected and reelected. He also challenged the other candidates to join him in signing a pledge to "not seek any other elected position including Mayor, U.S. Congress, Attorney General or Los Angeles County District Attorney while serving as Los Angeles City Attorney."

By his own standards, Trutanich is a liar. And considering his willingness to lie to voters, I don't expect him to keep his pledge to the local print media or to the L.A.'s Best After School Program either.

Turner: There are certain words and phrases that, when emitted from politicians' mouths, have ceased to have much meaning. When I hear them being uttered, I tend to substitute them in my head with those muted horns used on the old "Charlie Brown" specials whenever an adult was talking. (In Charles Schulz's world, the words of adults were so superfluous that they could be reduced to background noise.) So, for example, when Mitt Romney pledges not to "go negative" against his fellow candidates, what I hear him saying is "Wah wohh, wah woh, wah wa wa wa." Another good phrase worthy of a mental horn section: "If elected, I will not use this position as a springboard to higher office."

Well, of course you will. Politicians routinely lie about this for the same reason most job seekers lie about the same thing: If I'm applying for a lousy job at a banana stand because I need to beef up my resume so I can apply for a commissioned job selling used cars, I'm not going to admit that to my prospective employer -- and woe to the banana-stand owner who’s naive enough to believe me when I claim that it is my greatest ambition in life to spend my career selling chocolate-covered bananas. In 2003, a former Assemblyman named Antonio Villaraigosa claimed he was solely interested in serving on the City Council and wouldn't interrupt his term to run for mayor; two years later, I doubt he stopped to think twice about whether to jump into the mayor's race. When Jerry Brown was running for California attorney general, he told The Times' editorial board that he had no interest in higher office -- he was too old and tired to consider running for governor, he said. We all know how that ended.

Obviously, just because it's common doesn't make it right. And Trutanich's promises were so emphatic that he now finds himself in an unwinnable position: If he honors his promise he has to admit to being a liar, while if he fails to honor his promise he is implicitly a liar. But another problem with this kind of about-face is that neither Trutanich -- nor Brown, Villaraigosa or any other politician guilty of such a flip-flop -- was necessarily lying at the time they made the promise. Many of them might genuinely have thought they were telling the truth. But circumstances change; an office that seemed unattainable might suddenly open up because an unbeatable incumbent chooses not to run, for example. There's nothing wrong with adapting to changing circumstances. You just have to explain your reasons to voters, which is a case we have yet to see Trutanich make.

Healey: I'll concede that the job of city attorney is a political one, so it's not necessarily bad for voters if the person holding that office sets his or her eyes on higher office. After all, term limits force those who win the job to think prematurely about where they'll go next.

The problem with Trutanich is that the centerpiece of his sales pitch to voters was that he wouldn't do that. The office had been so neglected by Delgadillo, he argued, that its main client -- the City Council -- refused to rely on its advice. The lawyers there needed a committed manager who could turn them into the city's best law firm. So, three years into the job, Trutanich finds out that the office doesn't really need a full-time, hands-on manager?

I don't think that's what Dan means by "circumstances change." Trutanich didn't have a revelation about the city attorney not really needing to focus on, you know, his job. He had a revelation that Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley wasn't going to run for a fourth term after all. Trutanich also evidently learned that he liked being an elected official and figured he'd enjoy it more in a more powerful seat.

Humble, deferential people do not win a lot of elections. Ambitious ones do. Yet there's a difference between pols facing term limits who cast about for the next place to land and those whose eyes have been on a different prize all along. Now that Trutanich has made it clear that the city attorney's job was just a stepping stone, he's put himself into the latter category. And that makes me wonder whether he's really interested in being district attorney, or is that just a rung on the ladder too?

Turner: Your point about Trutanich making his pledge a centerpiece of his campaign is a good one. Now, it's up to voters to decide whether they can forgive him for that. Trutanich surely knows that he's got some explaining to do, but I'm not sure that we should fault him for not yet coming to the plate -- he just announced his candidacy today, after all. He's got plenty of time to lay out his rationale for changing his mind.

Personally, I'm not sure why it matters whether or not Trutanich considers the district attorney job to be just another rung on the career ladder (Next stop: state attorney general?) If he is a successful DA, he might deserve to be elected attorney general; if he isn't, he won't win. Don't we want successful politicians to bring that success to higher offices? When managers succeed in the private sector, they get promoted, which is good for the company, and the same principle can and should apply to government. But I take your main point: The real question is whether Trutanich can be trusted. If he's lying about his future ambitions in order to get elected, what else is he lying about? I just think that in politics, there are forgivable lies and unforgivable ones. "I did not sleep with that woman" seems a forgivable lie because it's one that powerful married men conducting affairs can be expected to tell, and it doesn’t really impact a politician's job performance. "I am not a crook" -- when you've been caught eavesdropping on political opponents and performing an array of other dirty tricks -- seems like an unforgivable one.

On this scale, I tend to put "I promise not to seek higher office" on the forgivable side. But I'll be more or less convinced about that depending on Trutanich's skill in justifying his actions.

[For the record, 6:09 p.m. Feb. 9: Good grief! The original version of this post misspelled Charles Schulz's name. Rats.]

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Does the Miramonte case argue for cameras in the classroom?

Photo: L.A. City Atty. Carmen Trutanich. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

The allegations of sexual abuse at Miramonte Elementary School have brought with them some predictable online chatter about whether it might be smart to place video cameras in classrooms as a deterrent to molestation and for evidence if it occurs anyway.

The debate about cameras in the classroom comes up from time to time -- a number of schools in England have them -- not just because of concerns about crime but as a way to evaluate teachers' work. After all, some underperforming teachers will put on their best act when the principal comes in to watch. There are stories of teachers who spend more time regaling their students with personal stories than actually teaching, and knowing that any segment of their teaching time might be viewed could be an incentive to stay on task. Taping would allow school districts to send excerpts anywhere in the world for experts to analyze and share their thoughts.

Right now, of course, this is a nonstarter for financial reasons. The state needs the money to put more teachers in classrooms before it can remotely worry about installing cameras to watch them. But every argument for recording the classroom has a strong argument to counter it. True, we're at the point of placing cameras on street corners, but is there no place for privacy? Is every whispered interchange between students in the back of the classroom then fodder for examination, investigation and action?

PHOTOS: Sex abuse scandal at Miramonte Elementary

Molesters might be deterred from crimes in the classroom, but they'd just look for places without surveillance. And while awareness of cameras in the classroom might prod a certain amount of conscientious behavior among teachers, it could also detract from instruction by making them nervous, stiff and more conscious of the need to look good on tape than the need to connect with students.

Is it time for the camera debate to return?

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Photo: A newly posted teacher leads her students out for recess at Miramonte Elementary school. Credit: Los Angeles Times