The California State Supreme Court just overturned the ban on gay marriages.

I'm really happy for all my gay friends, but personal bottom line? This is going to cost me a fortune in wedding presents.

Columnist Tim Rutten puts bluntly his opinion of the Los Angeles Unified School District:

Every day, the Los Angeles Unified School District fails its tens of thousands of ambitious students, dedicated teachers and hardworking principals in so many ways that it's difficult to imagine how its elephantine bureaucracy could shamble into some new outrage.

Difficult, but not impossible, because the LAUSD runs this city's schools about like the generals run Myanmar.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has a proposal for reviving King-Harbor Hospital. Dickinson College's Crispin Sartwell discusses the demographic tricks behind political polling. And 27-year-old Erica Sackin says tax rebates won't help her in-the-red generation.

The editorial board encourages Bush to veto a bill that would stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and wonders why Congress is allowing the banning of all flavored cigarettes except the most popular kind, menthols. The board also says environmentalists have more work to do to prevent sprawl on Tejon Ranch.

On the letters page, readers question Nick Turse's Op-Ed linking the purchase of consumer products like Krispy Kreme and Pepsi to supporting Iraq war profits. Thomas J. Weiss of Ft. Hood, Texas, says, "Nick Turse's Op-Ed article has to be one of the most ridiculously alarmist articles I've ever read."

Sorry, Bill Johnson supporters, but your man really is the gift that keeps on giving.

Devoted Johnsonians will recall that the good judicial candidate first appeared on our radar screen thanks to his help with an effort to unseat a group of Latino jurists and get Filipino-Americans get onto the bench. That effort was led by a minister in Carson, who explained his ambition:

"When you're running against a Caucasian, it's kind of hard," the Rev. Ronald C. Tan of Carson said. "As Filipinos, our names are almost the same as Hispanics, so that puts us on co-equal ground."

In Johnson's book they're already on co-equal ground. Amendment to the Constitution, the 1985 book written by Johnson under the alias "James O. Pace," presents the text of the proposed "Pace Amendment" mandating expulsion of non-whites from the United States, along with an extensive, Federalist Papers-style unpacking of the proposed law's text. Here's what the book has to say on Filipinos in its explanation of how folks of various ethnicities will be sent packing:

Filipinos. The Filipinos are generally new arrivals, and many are still Philippine citizens. Accordingly, they can be repatriated without much difficulty. The Philippine government can be encouraged to assist.

This is more mildly worded than Pace's suggestions for assorted Latinos ("The Puerto Ricans should be returned to Puerto Rico," "Central Americans should be returned to Central America," "It should be noted that repatriation has become necessary primarily because of the abuses that the Hispanics have made of our system"). But while Pace allows that "Hispanic whites who are basically indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is the British Isles or Northwestern Europe, need not be repatriated," he is silent on the matter of Filipinos who can pass. (Are there any of those? Is there a whiteometer we can check?)

But I'd rather light a candle than curse anybody's darkness. A few days ago our news side had an interesting story about the proliferation of headline-driven legislation bearing names like "R.J.'s Law," "Adam's Law" and so on.

Would the Pace Amendment have fared better if it had a nice round name attached?

"Ziegfried's Law," maybe?

Mayoral candidate Walter Moore said Thursday he has begun a drive to put "Jamiel's Law" on the March 2009 Los Angeles city ballot — the same one in which he is trying to unseat Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

If adopted, the law would permit Los Angeles police officers to arrest gang members for breaking U.S. immigration law. It would supersede Special Order 40, a 29-year-old LAPD policy that bars officers from arresting or questioning people solely on suspicion of being in the country illegally. Moore told a crowd of about 200 people — gathered at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre to hear about his proposal — that he decided on an initiative after hearing no response from City Council members to his request for an ordinance.

Jamiel's Law is named for Jamiel Shaw II, 17, who was shot to death by suspected gang members on March 2 close to his Arlington Heights home. Police arrested Pedro Espinoza, 19, who reportedly entered the U.S. illegally at age 4. Police say Espinoza is a member of the 18th Street Gang. He was released from jail, where he was being held on a weapons charge, a day before the killing.

Espinoza had been arrested by Culver City police and jailed and released by the Sheriff's Department, so the LAPD and Special Order 40 did not come into play. But Moore has dismissed that point, saying, in effect, that if his law had been in place, LAPD officers at some point prior to his weapons arrest would have seen Espinoza, identified him as a gang member, and arrested him on immigration charges.

The killing of Jamiel Shaw II, and Moore's advocacy for the change in the law, has united some black and white illegal immigration opponents, threatened to widen a gulf between African Americans and Latino immigrants, and forced city officials to refocus on Special Order 40. At least some LAPD officers appear to believe, incorrectly, that the policy prevents them from cooperating or even communicating with immigration authorities. A senior lead officer who misquoted Special Order 40 in a March newsletter, adding in anti-cooperation language, acknowledged that he got the wording not from the LAPD manual but from the American Patrol anti-illegal-immigration web site.

LAPD Chief William J. Bratton said he would clarify the policy for his officers. He also told the Times editorial board that he would make no changes to the order.

Moore repeated his assertion that the Times caters to Latino illegal immigrants because its parent company, Tribune, also owns the Spanish-language paper Hoy.

"The mayor, the City Council, and L.A. Times/Hoy won't take action," Moore said. "It's up to you."

Also speaking at the event were KRLA radio personality Kevin James and the young victim's father, Jamiel Shaw Sr.

James called for audience members to support Moore's campaign financially. "It's really expensive to run for mayor of Los Angeles against a former gang member who is the incumbent," James said.

Villaraigosa was not a gang member, but the claim that he was has become popular among illegal immigration opponents.

Shaw criticized the deputy district attorney prosecuting Espinoza, saying he worried she would try to portray his son as a gang member because he was carrying a red Spiderman backpack. "I want everybody to know," he said, "the fix is in."

It just goes to show what can happen if you don't pay attention to judicial elections. Los Angeles voters could unwittingly end up electing white separatist Bill Johnson to the court. Vote-by-mail ballots are available Monday, so it's important for anyone planning to vote anytime soon to first read an April 29 Metropolitan News-Enterprise profile on Johnson. The story by editor Roger Grace exposes the candidate as the author of a proposed constitutional amendment to reserve U.S. citizenship exclusively to white people "of the European race."

Last month The Times endorsed James Bianco for the Los Angeles Superior Court seat, saying that  Bianco was "impressive as a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner and would make an excellent judge." We didn't mention Johnson, his opponent, who ran for Congress in Arizona in 2006 on an anti-immigration platform; we simply focused on the fact that Bianco is the better choice.

I did note in a blog entry the previous month that Johnson helped circulate petitions for Carson minister Ronald C. Tan, whose petition campaign forced six Latino judges to be put on the ballot to face possible write-in opponents (none apparently have stepped forward).

Grace writes that Johnson wrote a 1989 book, under the name James O. Pace, called "Amendment to the Constitution," backing what became known as the Pace Amendment. Here it is, in part:

No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race, in whom there is no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more than one-eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is the British Isles or Northwestern Europe. Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States.

This would likely come as news to Reverend Tan, the Filipino-American minister who got Johnson to circulate petitions to help him oust Latino judges — so Tan could try to get Filipinos elected. Tan earlier claimed not to know that Johnson was active in the Ron Paul for president campaign; here's something else for him to be surprised about.

The MetNews story also notes that Johnson ran for Congress in Wyoming 1989 under the name Daniel Johnson in a special election to replace Dick Cheney, who had been named secretary of defense in the administration of the first President Bush. Times stories from the 1980s connect attorney Daniel Johnson with the League of Pace Amendment Advocates and identify him as the author of the Pace amendment.

So here's a candidate for judge who espoused (and may still support) disenfranchisement and deportation of non-whites, and who ran for Congress from two different states, once under a different name, while maintaining his law practice in Los Angeles.

(Full disclosure: I worked for Grace at the Metropolitan News-Enterprise for 11 years. But I wish I'd gotten this story before he did.)

Could voters elect Johnson? Yes, they could, if they don't learn anything about the candidates. The MetNews story — and, I hope, our link to it — will help voters make wise choices.

And in case there was any doubt, we still support Bianco, now more vociferously than before.

Does Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo have too many non-lawyers on staff? The question is at the center of a verbal and email budget squabble between the city attorney and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office, which is backing the mayor's proposed 60-person reduction of Delgadillo's non-attorney staff of 497 (the office has 556 lawyers). That amounts to a budget reduction of close to 5%.

After releasing his proposed 2008-09 budget last week, Villaraigosa visited the Times Editorial Board and had this to say about Delgadillo's office:

By the way, just so you know, they're about a 1,000-member department; only 500 are lawyers. What we're proposing to cut is administrative staff. They have administrative staff ratios, you do the research on it to confirm it, but as I understand it, they have administrative staff ratios that are greater than Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, O'Melveny & Myers, and some of the biggest law firms, which are basically three lawyers for each administrative position.

Well — not quite. Not even close, actually. Law firms have become notoriously tight with what many call proprietary figures, but several of the largest firms confirmed that the numbers published in an annual survey by the Downtown News are just about right. If you take a look at the survey and do a little simple math, you'll see that the ratio generally is the other way around: most large firms have at least twice as many non-lawyer staff as attorneys.

Delgadillo's office jumped on the Downtown News figures and argued that in fact, he's quite thinly staffed in comparison with law firms in the private sector. On Monday, Delgadillo's budget chief, Jennifer Roth Krieger, sent an email to the mayor's budget chief, Sally Choi, asking for the "source data for the information your office has put out (which shows that our office has a higher percentage of support staff than law offices in the public or private sector)." Choi responded by email that the only information the mayor's office put out was the 1:1 ratio of attorneys to non-attorneys; both emails were attached to a letter to the City Council's budget committee from top Delgadillo deputy Richard H. Llewellyn Jr.

Time to pull over and figure out what "staff" means. Law firms have in fact moved to a ratio of about three lawyers for every secretary, in part because lawyers with computers on their desks now do much of the document drafting that they used to dictate, and that their secretaries used to type up back, say, in the 1980s. But the mayor wasn't talking about the city attorney's lawyer-secretary ratio, but rather lawyers to staff.

Private firms have bulked up on paralegals, tech support, billing, marketing, and even complementary professional services like accounting. They are all administrative or support staff, and most large L.A. firms have two or three such non-lawyers for every lawyer. Delgadillo may not need a lot of that work done in-house, but he does need people to back up misdemeanor prosecutions and other functions that private firms don't have to worry about.

The comparison of city attorney and private firm staffing figures actually tells us very little, except that Villaraigosa and Delgadillo are spoiling for a fight. The city attorney told the budget committee that his staff is needed to make the mayor's LAPD build-up work. "But, without prosecution and resulting jail time," Delgadillo said, "an arrest is meaningless."

To interpret: Moving money from the city attorney to the police doesn't accomplish much.

Villaraigosa spokesman Matt Szabo said the staffing ratio was a "tangential issue." "We actually have to make real cuts to save real dollars," Szabo said.

By the way, here's something else Villaraigosa told the Editorial Board about Delgadillo:

"One council member said that if he doesn't agree to a 5% cut, maybe we ought to make it 10."

UCLA graduate student and Chow Digest senior editor C. Thi Nguyen bemoans L.A. County's requirement that taco trucks move after one hour, and New York attorney Scott Horton analyzes UC Berkeley professor John Yoo's role in the Bush administration's stance on torture. Former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan hopes LAUSD will repair its relationship with charter schools, and Gregory Rodriguez scratches his head at Americans' insistence that politicians act like the average Joe:

Sure, high-ranking politicians of humble origins can lay at least some claim to being "common." But that's really a ruse. Because the best politicians wouldn't get as far as they do if they hadn't already successfully convinced large numbers of people that they were distinct from -- read: better than -- the rest of us.

And therein lies our dilemma. We hold to the belief that we are all equal, yet we yearn for distinctiveness for ourselves and those we choose to represent us. In a nation whose form of government exalts the illusion of uniformity among its citizens, we are collectively engaged in a struggle to be recognized as unique by our peers.

The editorial board publishes its endorsements for 17 seats on the Los Angeles Superior Court, and puts its money behind a House bill to force 401(k) managers to clarify the fees they charge "Jack and Jill Cubicle":

Unfortunately, as this newspaper detailed in a series of articles in 2006, many employees aren't being told how much of their nest egg is being frittered away on fees paid to the companies managing their 401(k)s. Buried in the fine print of incomprehensible forms or not disclosed at all, those fees can consume thousands of dollars over time. To address that problem, several lawmakers have introduced bills that would require mutual funds, insurers and other providers of retirement plans to make complete disclosures of their fees to employers and workers. 

Readers react to the Supreme Court's decision finding legal injections humane. Writes Joy Buckley, "State-sanctioned killing is barbaric, cruel and should be highly unusual. We should join the civilized countries of the world in eliminating it."

I wouldn't get into a theological argument with my fellow Pittsburgh native Archbishop Donald Wuerl, of Washington, D.C.  But the archbishop has an unorthodox view of what goes on in American law schools.

Wuerl is chancellor of the Catholic University of America, the site of an address tomorrow by Pope Benedict XVI. In an interview with Newsweek, the archbishop defended the idea that theology professors at Catholic schools should be monitored for orthodoxy by drawing a comparison with law schools:

"You couldn't have a good law class where the professor said, 'I'm going to teach you what I think the Supreme Court should have said, so forget all these rulings. I'll teach what the law should be.' I think after a while the university would say, 'We need to shape up this law school'."

Likewise, Wuerl said, if a theology professor rejects a papal encyclical, "the university has to look the same way they'd look at a law professor that rejects the Supreme Court."

Actually, law school professors love to tell their students what they think the Supreme Court should have said. Far from getting you excommunicated, "rejecting" the Supreme Court — or at least certain of its decisions — is the path to preferment for a law professor. And it isn't just professors who diss the Supremes. Law students do, too. That sort of disputation is part of a legal education.

Of course, unlike the church, the court makes no claims of inerrancy.  As the late Justice Robert Jackson put it: "We're not final because we're infallible; we're infallible because we're final."

What do you do when a guy high in the running for most hated man in the world teaches at your law school? If you're Christopher Edley Jr., dean of UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall law school, you half-heartedly defend the professor while highlighting your powerlessness to do anything -- as he did last week did for his embattled faculty member John C. Yoo.

Yoo, of course, is the Berkeley law professor best known as the former Bush administration lawyer who authored the infamous "torture memo" of 2003. Besides laying out a legal argument he thought could protect practitioners of almost certainly illegal "enhanced interrogation" methods from prosecution, Yoo exhibited in his writings a stunning disregard for international law and a creepy nonchalance about expanding the president's terrorism-fighting authority. That much Edley denounces, just as the administration did when the public got wind of the memo. Edley's criticism of Yoo's work in the Bush administration isn't surprising.

More intriguing is how Edley approaches the question he set out to answer: Why is Yoo a professor at such a prestigious university when his legal advice to the most powerful man in the world has come under such resounding criticism by his colleagues? This is where Edley's insight sheds some light on the machinations of the great academy; ready why after the jump.

Columnist Rosa Brooks reminds everyone that despite the attention on the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton mudslinging, it's the GOP that's losing ground:

Although Democratic Party infighting makes good copy, the intense media focus on the Obama-Clinton battle obscures the fact that it's the Republican Party that's in deep doo-doo. The very factors that make us wish we could forget about the war in Iraq are driving a seismic shift in the American political landscape: the likely reversal of years of GOP electoral dominance.

Speaking of the GOP's losing ground on war issues, former NATO commander Wesley K. Clark and Iraq vet Jon Soltz wonder why John McCain isn't stepping up to support a new GI bill. Columnist Patt Morrison remembers when ethnic campaigning was as simple as eating a knish and spinning pizza dough. And author Daniel Imhoff says the farm bill is too porky. 

The editorial board hopes for stronger rule of law in Pakistan, takes a look at shocking inmate conditions in Orange County jails, and says the Senate's housing relief plan is a mixed fix:

The tax breaks in the Senate bill would help home builders that profited handsomely during the boom. They would also prop up the price of foreclosed properties with $7,000 subsidies for the purchase of those homes. But the goal isn't to stop the boom-and-bust cycle from running its course or causing losses. It's to prevent the bust from being so sudden and severe that it chokes off credit, stifles consumer spending and wrecks the economy.

Readers react to Gen. David H. Petraeus' and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's testimony before Congress. Bob Constantine of Placentia has a suggesetion: "Next time Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are scheduled to report to Congress, skip the personal appearances and merely play the tape of the previous testimonies."

The state Supreme Court is in Los Angeles this afternoon to consider this question: How blatantly does a prosecutor have to exploit a case for big Hollywood or book bucks before the case is compromised?

The better known of the two cases focuses on the movie "Alpha Dog" and the real-life prosecution of Jesse James Hollywood in the kidnapping and killing of Nicholas Markowitz. Santa Barbara Deputy District Attorney Ronald J. Zonen, who was assigned to prosecute Hollywood, also served as an unpaid consultant to writer/director Nick Cassavetes in the making of the film. In October 2006, an appeals court ruled that Zonen had created a conflict of interest that should prevent him from proceeding with the case.

Then there is the "Intoxicating Agent" case, in which Santa Barbara Deputy District Attorney Joyce Dudley wrote a book describing the prosecution of a man for drugging and sexually assaulting his victim. She happened to be prosecuting, at the time, a man for drugging and sexually assaulting his victim. The supposedly fictional heroine is prosecutor Joyce, uh, no, sorry -- Jordan Danner. The appeals court ruled that Dudley, like Zonen, had compromised her ability to continue prosecuting the case.

You know what they say about Santa Barbara prosecutors. What they really want to be is waiters and waitresses in Los Angeles...so they can say that what they really want to be is screenwriters.

Haraguchi v. Superior Court -- that's Dudley's case -- and Hollywood v. Superior Court are both scheduled for oral arguments at 1:30 p.m. at the Reagan State Building at 300 S. Spring St. in downtown Los Angeles.

The man behind a write-in campaign for six Los Angeles Superior Court seats said Thursday that he targeted Latino judges because they would be easier to defeat, especially if he is successful at recruiting Filipino challengers.

"When you're running against a Caucasian, it's kind of hard," the Rev. Ronald C. Tan of Carson said. "As Filipinos, our names are almost the same as Hispanics, so that puts us on co-equal ground."

Tan said he is still hoping to get some Filipino lawyers to actually run write-in campaigns against the  six judges. "I'm in the process of convincing a couple of my dear friends to run," he said.

He said his primary reason for petitioning for a write-in campaign was his concern about appellate rulings in religious rights cases on subjects such as abortion, gay marriage, evolution "and all that."

"It's legislation from the bench," Tan said. "A lot of judges who get elected have very, very liberal views."

He said he was especially concerned about  rulings from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. "Most of them are judges that come from the ranks" of the Superior Court, he said.

A secondary goal was to get more Filipino-Americans on the bench, he said. "There hasn't ever been a judge who has been a Filipino-American," he said.

In fact, Mel Red Recana was presiding judge of the Los Angeles Municipal Court and is currently serving on the Los Angeles Superior Court. He was born in the Philippines and is of Filipino descent.

As for why Tan didn't get his friends to file for the regular campaign and get their names on the ballot, he said he just didn't get around to it. "It was a question of timing," he said.

Only one Los Angeles Superior Court judge -- Ralph Dau -- has been challenged by traditional means in the June 3 election, with an attorney, Sydnee R. Singer, coming forward to put her name on the ballot as Dau's opponent. That meant, almost, that the other 144 judges up for election this year were to be deemed elected without their names even appearing before voters. But judicial election laws include provisions for write-in campaigns if petitioners present enough signatures after the close of regular filing. Judges who are named in the petitions must have their names on the ballot after all, but no opponents are listed.

Tan filed petitions on Judges Juan Carlos Dominguez (in the Pomona North Courthouse); Hector M. Guzman (Torrance); Daniel S. Lopez (Pomona); Daniel P. Ramirez (Whittier); Jose Sandoval (the Foltz criminal courts building in downtown Los Angeles); and Michael Villalobos (West Covina). Their names will now appear on the June ballot.

The six still don't know whether they will actually have campaigns run against them -- or by whom. Questions about whether to raise campaign money, hire consultants or any of the other things that challenged judges must do still await resolution.

"It took us totally by surprise," Villalobos said. "We are taking this challenge seriously, but it's really difficult at this point because we don't know who the candidate will be."

Tan was assisted in his effort by William D. Johnson, a judicial candidate who filed in the traditional manner and is running for an open court seat against Superior Court Commissioner James Bianco. County records show that the William D. Johnson who circulated petitions for Tan on several of the challenged judges and the man running against Bianco are the same person. Johnson did not return a call for comment.

Johnson is an attorney with an international law practice in downtown Los Angeles. According to his web site, he has a 78-acre ranch in La Canada where he raises horses, cows and alpacas.

Tan said he met Johnson at the County Registrar-Recorder's Office in Norwalk. Tan said the two men spoke for about an hour and realized they shared many concerns. But Tan said he was not aware that Johnson was active in the Ron Paul for President campaign. "I'm not voting for Ron Paul," Tan said.

A petition was also circulated for Tan by USC student Jeffrey Hubbard, who also has been active in the Paul campaign.

Contributing editor Ian Buruma says Tibetan culture may not survive China's modernization, except among the diaspora:

The Chinese have exported their version of modern development to Tibet, not just in terms of architecture and infrastructure but people, wave after wave of them: businessmen from Sichuan, prostitutes from Hunan, technocrats from Beijing, party officials from Shanghai, shopkeepers from Yunnan. The majority of the people living today in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, are no longer Tibetan. Most people in rural areas are Tibetan, but their way of life is not likely to survive Chinese modernization any more than the ways of the Apaches did in the United States.

George Washington University's Jonathan Turley wonders why you can be competent to stand trial, but unfit to represent yourself. And Hope College's David G. Myers says primal urges are to blame for March madness.

The editorial board warns taxpayers that they'll face new risks as Fannie and Freddie buy more mortgages thanks to a rule change. The board also wants to know where scientific exhibits got their cadavers, and thinks the Supreme Court erred by not giving Jose Medellin, a Mexican national on death row in Texas, another day in court.

Readers discuss discussing race. Torrance's David Nelson says, "The article begins: 'How do we start a national dialogue on race?' A better question is: Why should we?"

A reader takes exception to my comment in an earlier post that California's constitution lacks the equivalent of a 2nd Amendment "right to keep and bear arms."

But even 2nd Amendment enthusiasts admit (and lament) that California is lacking a guarantee for either a collective or an individual right to keep and bear arms. Commenter Tom points to Article I Section 1 of the state constitution declaring: "All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty..." Tom concludes, "I  seem to have the inalienable right to defend my life."

But Pennsylvania's constitution, which does have a robust (or wacky, depending on your point of view)  right to keep and bear arms also includes boilerplate similar to California's: "All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing and protecting property and reputation, and of pursuing their own happiness." So, if Tom is right, Section 21 of Pennsylvania's Declaration of Rights — "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned" — is, as Chief Justice Marshall would say, mere surplusage.

Today's the deadline for the 30 Los Angeles Superior Court judge candidates on the June 3 ballot to file their latest fundraising reports, and it will be interesting to see who the big money-raisers are -- and who is funding their campaigns.

Fundraising is part of the perpetual quandary of California judicial races. Candidates don't like asking for money, but of course they want to win, and one of the best ways to won is to send out lots of carefully targeted mail, which in turn costs money.

Judicial candidates often consider themselves above politics and many bristle when one of their number actively raises cash from the same partisan business or labor interests that fund legislative races or ballot measures. But is it any cleaner for judicial campaign money to be donated by attorneys who will later plead their cases in front of the victors?

Warnings of pay-to-play justice have been increasing in volume in recent years, and the alarm was sounded again over the weekend in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by James Sample of New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. Sample cites egregious instances of jurists from Illinois and Wisconsin refusing to recuse themselves from cases involving companies that helped put them on the bench. Then there's the current case from West Virginia that sounds like something from a John Grisham novel.

in fact, Grisham was quoted as saying he didn't have to look any further than the Charleston Gazette for an idea from his latest novel. Now "The Appeal" is being cited as an outrageous not not outlandish illustration of the corrupting influence of campaign cash in the courtroom. In the book, a chemical company goes after a favorable ruling by funding a judicial candidate and planning to reap the reward.

Last month, West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Larry Starcher recused himself from a case involving coal company A.T. Massey, Inc. on conflict of interest grounds and called upon a colleague, who Starcher said received $4 million in campaign donations from Massey and associates, to do the same. See the court's press release here, but for the full impact click on the last word of the statement for a pdf of Starcher's full opinion. It's full of anger against his colleague, but here's the key part:

"I know hardly a soul who could believe that a justice who benefitted [sic] to this extent from a litigant could rule fairly on cases involving that litigant or his companies...."

It's different in California, but just how different? on the Supreme Court level, we don't have partisan challenges; appellate justices are appointed by the governor, conformed by a three-member panel, and retained or rejected by voters every 12 years. Still, the 1986 ousters of Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, and Chief Justice Rose Bord, continue to provoke court-watchers, who debate whether the removal campaign was really spurred by the three jurists' votes to overturn death sentences or whether, instead, it was a business-led drive to end a string of pro-consumer rulings.

Most trial court judges are appointed by the governor (there is no confirmation process). Appointees can be challenged at the end of every six-year term, but if no one files to run against them, they are deemed elected and don't even get on the ballot. This year only one judge has been challenged: Ralph W. Dau. Such challenges usually fail, but remember that in 2006, Judge Dzintra Janavs was defeated by bakery owner Lynne Olson.

Ten other Los Angeles Superior Court seats opened up and will go to voters because the governor did not appoint anyone to fill them. If history is a guide, many, though not all, of those candidates are raising money from lawyers who can be expected to appear before them if they win.

A panel of California lawyers, administrators and judges -- including some who were elected to their seats -- is grappling with the thorny issue of judicial independence and impartiality. Members have zeroed in on judicial elections and campaign  fundraising. A Judicial Campaign Finance Task Force next meets in Burbank on April 28. A companion task force studying terms of office and selection of judges meets the same day in San Francisco.

Someone -- it's not yet clear who -- launched a write-in challenge to six Los Angeles Superior Court judges, making the June 3 ballot just a little bit longer.

The nomination period closed earlier this month with 10 contested races without incumbents and only one sitting judge, Ralph W. Dau, drawing an election challenge. That left the other 144 sitting Los Angeles Superior Court judges (about a third of the bench) who are up for election or re-election this year breathing sighs of relief; since no one filed against them, they were automatically elected without their names even going on the ballot.

But not so fast. A rarely exercised procedural provision for write-in candidates allows challengers extra time to file, and the Metropolitan News-Enterprise reported Friday that a write-in challenge has been lodged against Judges Juan Carlos Dominguez, Hector M. Guzman, Daniel S. Lopez, Daniel P. Ramirez, Jose Sandoval, and Michael Villalobos. All six must now appear on the ballot, even though there will be no opponent listed.

That now leaves 138 judges who were deemed elected in March. Most of them are unknown to people outside the legal profession, unless they were judges who happened to preside over a high-profile case -- O.J. Simpson criminal trial judge Lance Ito, for example, was just deemed re-elected without a vote -- or perhaps related to someone in politics or government, such as May Lou Villar, sister of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, or Fred Fujioka, brother of Los Angeles County chief executive Bill Fujioka. They, too, were among the gross of judges deemed elected this month when no one filed to run against them.

Like the late Rodney Dangerfield, state constitutions "get no respect" in discussions of constitutional law. A rare exception came in this week's oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the District of Columbia's gun-control law. In trying to puzzle out the original meaning of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Justice John Paul Stevens asked Walter Dellinger, D.C.'s lawyer: "To what extent do you think the similar provisions in State constitutions that were adopted more or less at the same time are relevant to our inquiry?" Dellinger bobbed a bit, replying that various state constitutional provisions  on the right to keep and bear arms are written in "different terms."

Dellinger surely knew that at least one state, my native Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, has a venerable state constitutional provision dealing with guns that sounds as if it was written by the NRA: "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned" Hmm. maybe I was violating the state constitution when I was writing all those pro-gun-control editorials for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (I'm safe now; California's constitution lacks a little Second Amendment.)

Unlike the "real" Constitution, state constitutions are sometimes prolix documents. For example, their protections of religion and freedom of expression often read like the First Amendment on steroids. The First Amendment is content to say that Congress shall make no law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Here's the equivalent provision in the Pennsylvania Constitution's Declaration of Rights:

The printing press shall be free to every person who may undertake to examine the proceedings of the Legislature or any branch of government, and no law shall ever by made to restrain the right thereof. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and every citizen may freely speak, write and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty. No conviction shall be had in any prosecution for the publication of papers relating to the official conduct of officers or men in public capacity, or to any other matter proper for public investigation or information, where the fact that such publication was not maliciously or negligently made shall be established to the satisfaction of the jury; and in all indictments for libels the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.

Whew!

Ironically, in this case more (verbiage) is less: Pennsylvania's version of the First Amendment is less friendly to the press, particularly in libel cases, than the First Amednment as it has been interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hunting is big in Pennsylvania; so are libel suits by public officials, including judges. Too bad the framers of the constitution didn't write: "The right of freedom of the press shall not be questioned"

It was almost like old times as Max Boot brought in our most popular story of the week, but it was Hillary Clinton who had readers turning out again and again. Even the downfall of Eliot Spitzer barely registered as Opinion readers went for Hillary again and again:

1. Fallon didn't get it, by Max Boot
2. Why we still need Clinton, by Meghan Daum
3. Want a man, or a worm? by David P. Barash
4. Our three-decade recession, by Robert Costanza 
5. Where's your outrage, Hillary? by Rosa Brooks
6. It's your call, Hillary, by Rosa Brooks
7. Fond memories of the Dungeon, by Joel Stein
8. Go away? Why should she? by Leslie Bennetts   
9. Threat in the Andes, by William Ratliff
10. Forget that day in court, by Peggy Garrity

Whatever you've got to say about the murder of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw or the arrest of 19-year-old Pedro Espinoza for the crime, start your engines. Please keep it clean: no threats, bullying, bogarting or unamusing ad hominems will be accepted. I'll approve as fast as I can. Some scenes from Shaw's funeral may give the conversation a little focus.

The U.S. Supreme Court is continuing its modified limited hangout when it comes to allowing the public to hear (but not see) its oral arguments in newsworthy cases. This week the court announced that  it will provide same-day release of the audio tapes of the March 18 arguments over the constitutionality of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. This is the third argument this term to get the same-day treatment.

March is turning out to be the equivalent of sweeps weeks for judicial junkies: The California Supreme Court this week made available audio and video of arguments over the constitutionality of the state’s limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples.

I analyze court decisions so a living, so I can justify my interest in oral arguments without admitting to be the Supreme Court equivalent of those C-SPAN junkies who watch every congressional hearing, think-tank panel discussion and book signing at Politics and Prose.  For listeners with better things to do, Supreme Court arguments can be soporific. It wouldn’t surprise me if some people who tuned into the three hours (!) of argument over the McCain-Feingold law in 2003 are still asleep.

An argument over gun control is about as sexy as it gets in the court — which isn’t very sexy at all. And if past arguments are any guide, the justices and the lawyers will discuss the Second Amendment  in the same mystifying shorthand they use when arguments aren’t being recorded for release. Don’t expect even Antonin Scalia to offer up a sound bite on the lines of “If you want my gun, you’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hand.”

But concede that most oral arguments won’t garner a big Nielsen share (or the equivalents for MP3s). Why not make audio of all arguments available on the same day — or even in real time?

Even better, of course, would be video of the argument, an innovation that will be introduced over the dead body of Justice David H. Souter. With video, you can be sure who is asking the question.  Audio alone can lead to confusion unless it’s being aired on television over sketches of the justices. No one would mistake Souter’s New England accent for the Chicago twang of Justice John Paul Stevens, but (especially when they ask short questions) Chief Justice John Roberts could be confused with Justice Anthony Kennedy or Justice Samuel Alito.  And if another female justice is appointed to the court, her voice might be hard to distinguish from that of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — especially if the  new Madame Justice were a New Yorker.

No justice, male or female, will be confused with Justice Clarence Thomas, because he almost never opens his mouth. All the more reason for putting video cameras in the court. At least then we could watch Thomas’ facial expressions.

Gregory Rodriguez advises Barack Obama to start wearing his patriotism on his sleeve -- or on his lapel -- and American University law professor Nancy D. Polikoff calls for laws to recognize the whole spectrum of family structures, whether gay or straight, married or unmarried. Civil rights lawyer Peggy Garrity assesses the damage that tort reform has caused the justice system:

A second woman is likely to face the same fate in the same court, in a suit alleging that she was drugged and brutally gang-raped by co-workers in Iraq and then held incommunicado, without food or water, in a shipping container by the same employer.... Adding insult to injury, the rape kit used by a military doctor in examining the victim was reportedly handed over to Halliburton/KBR, and doctor's notes and photos of her bruises are missing.

There was no criminal prosecution of the alleged perpetrators because they worked for a defense contractor, which is exempt from criminal sanctions under an order enacted by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq during L. Paul Bremer III's tenure as its administrator.

That decision was outrageous enough. But now the Texas court ruling appears to say that because of the arbitration clause, these women have no standing in a U.S. civil court either.

In the next installment of its series "The Great Thirst," the editorial board predicts plans for a peripheral canal will be a win-win in the water wars between Northern and Southern California. The board also kicks off the one-year countdown to round one of Los Angeles' city elections, and calls out John McCain and Barack Obama for inching away from their commitment to public funds:

[W]ith his new front-runner status -- and facing the prospect of raising more private money than McCain in a general election -- Obama has begun to waver. Asked in the last Democratic debate if he was waffling on a promise to accept public financing, he dodged, saying that, if nominated, he wants to "sit down with John McCain and make sure that we have a system that is fair for both sides." That sounds like the "old politics" that Obama inveighs against.

Both candidates should get over their buyer's remorse. What they gain by abandoning public financing, they may lose in credibility.

Readers write requiems for Dutton's books, set to close at the end of April. "With the imminent passing of Dutton's books," mourns Burt Prelutsky, "I feel as if I am on the verge of losing a relative. That is, a relative I actually like."

Like the city of L.A., Los Angeles County has a telephone tax that has been challenged in court. Like the city, which preserved its phone tax by taking it to voters on Feb. 5, the county might put its tax on the ballot. But not yet. This Tuesday is the Board of Supervisors' last chance to put something on the June 3 ballot, but county CEO Bill Fujioka said it's too early to decide how to proceed. That leaves a November vote or, perhaps, a court fight. Or the end of the tax.

If you want to look up the county's tax — and of course you do — click here, then click on Title 4, Revenue and Finance, then on Chapter 4.62, Utility User Tax, then — still with me? — on 4.62.060, Telephone user tax. It's a 5% tax on calls in unincorporated county areas. But the whole shebang, including the tax on electricity and other services, could be covered by the lawsuits.

The county is not doing well in court so far. In the Oronoz and Kaufman cases, a judge granted the plaintiffs' request that their suits be treated as class actions on behalf of anyone who was (they claim) improperly taxed. An appeals court affirmed that ruling on Jan. 24, so now the county is asking the state Supreme Court to reverse. There are likely still many months before the cases go to trial.

The city did better on the class action issue, convincing a judge to reject a class action. The plaintiffs against the city (in the Ardon and TracFone cases) are now appealing. Trial on the merits of the case is a long way off, but in theory the plaintiffs could win back any tax money they paid up to the time Proposition S was adopted.

Cities (and three other counties) up and down the state are in a similar fix, facing lawsuits challenging phone taxes. City councils and boards of supervisors could change the ways those taxes were calculated only until 1996, when California voters passed Proposition 218. Any tax changes made since then are suspect unless ratified by voters.

The Times editorial page endorsed Proposition S as in the best interests of the city and its residents, but not without reservations. We were put off by the campaign, which stressed the tax reduction from 10% to 9% — true enough — but glossed over the fact that the tax was broadened to include more types of calls. Those campaign tactics — trying to fool voters instead of being straightforward with them — made opposition to Proposition S perfectly understandable.

That's something the county may want to keep in mind if it eventually moves forward with a phone tax ballot measure.

By the way, another reason the county isn't putting its phone tax on the June ballot may be the fact that two supervisors — Mike Antonovich and Don Knabe — are up for re-election on the same day. Why remind voters that their supervisors take their money? Besides, neither Antonovich nor Knabe are fans of taxes.

Patt Morrison shares some tragic stories of readers whose loved ones suffer from mental illness, and Rosa Brooks bashes the Bush administration on its waterboarding policy. Amy Klein describes the perfect valentine, and Ben Wizner, lawyer for Khaled El-Masri, attacks the White House's abuse of the state secrets privilege:

El-Masri, a German citizen, was forcibly abducted while on holiday in Macedonia, detained incommunicado, handed over to the CIA, then beaten, drugged and transported to a secret prison in Afghanistan for harsh interrogation. Five months after his abduction -- long after the CIA realized its mistake -- El-Masri was deposited at night on a hill in Albania.

... when we brought suit against former CIA Director George Tenet and others seeking compensation for the brutal treatment of El-Masri, the administration insisted the case be dismissed because any litigation of the claims would reveal state secrets. The government's argument prevailed, and the Supreme Court declined to intervene.

The editorial board hides a grin at the greenest legal dispute in California, and calls out both the U.S. and Pakistani administrations for settling for a sham election. The board also warns superdelegates not to let all the attention from Barack, Hillary and company to get to their heads:

College student Jason Rae has become a Wisconsin celebrity. News reports have him fielding a call from ex-President Clinton and breakfasting with Chelsea. He also has chatted with Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, an Obama backer. Not bad for a 21-year-old who has never voted in a presidential election.

Readers lambast healthcare insurers' letter asking doctors to reveal patients' medical information. "These are the people our politicians want to turn our healthcare over to?" asks Steve Huffsteter. Olivia Bain writes:

Insurers ought to be scorned for their behavior. No one ought to be surprised that they had the audacity to ask doctors to breach patient confidentiality, but all should be disgusted. Alternatively, physicians who received such letters and refused ought to be lauded for their adherence to the Hippocratic oath and their commitment to the well-being and privacy of their patients. It is this sort of behavior on the part of insurance providers that drives home the need for some sort of government intervention in healthcare.

The issue of waterboarding drowned out almost all other concerns about Attorney General Michael Mukasey during his confirmation hearings last year, and it could wipe out today's confirmation hearings for Mark Filip, slated to become the next deputy attorney general. From Congressional Quarterly:

Senate Democrats plan to delay a floor vote on President Bush’s nominee for the No. 2 post at the Justice Department until the department responds to several Judiciary Committee oversight letters.

Mukasey had managed to stay afloat and pass muster by the smallest margin in 50 years. At the time, he hedged wildly on waterboarding, protesting that he didn't know enough to make a judgment.

Yesterday, judgment day came. And the verdict? That he can't issue one.

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick has a scathing critique of Mukasey's logic:

Mukasey won't speculate about future water-boarding, either, claiming he will not be drawn into "imagining facts and circumstances that are not present and thereby telling our enemies exactly what they can expect in those eventualities." He also refuses to tell "people in the field ... what they have to refrain from or not refrain from in a situation that is not performing."

Just to be clear then, to the extent that there is any purpose to the law, i.e., to punish past bad acts and to alert people as to what types of conduct will be punished in the future, the attorney general has just obliterated that purpose. Unless someone were to actually be water-boarded before Mukasey's eyes at the witness table in the Hart Senate Building, America's lawyer cannot hazard an opinion as to its legality.

But Mukasey calls out the senators as well -- and he has a point, says CBS News analyst Andrew Cohen:

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, especially Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), want Mukasey to do their heavy lifting. They want him to proclaim by legal memorandum what they have so far been unable to accomplish by political power. It would be nice if he were willing to do so. And you can bet that if a majority of Republicans and the President were calling upon Mukasey to say the magic words he’d be game. But they aren’t and he isn’t and it’s time Leahy and Company moved on.

Judging by their toying with today's confirmation hearings, it doesn't seem like they're ready to take Cohen's advice just yet.

Just in case our editorial on J.K. Rowling's suit against The Harry Potter Lexicon isn't fresh in your mind, our take was: Stupid idea, bad for the brand, bad for Rowling's longterm legacy and bad for the fans, but probably defensible from a legal and a property-rights standpoint:

The most compelling public-interest argument against the steady expansion of copyright duration and power has been that it discourages new work by outsiders without encouraging copyright owners to be more productive -- as was clearly the case when, for example, Margaret Mitchell's estate attempted to block "The Wind Done Gone," Alice Randall's parody of "Gone With the Wind." That is not the case here. Rowling is still alive, still creating material and still in a position to want, and merit, relatively full powers over her invented universe.

Tim Wu in Slate also seems to think the suit is a bad decision, but he says Rowling ought to lose for strictly legal reasons:

The closest relevant legal precedent is the 2002 Beanie Baby decision by Judge Richard Posner (who has a taste for cases involving stuffed animals). Ty, the producer of Beanie Babies, doesn't like unauthorized guides to the Beanie Baby universe and their unflattering tendency to criticize the company, so it sued. Ruling against the company, Judge Posner used the same analogy that I have, comparing the guides to book reviews: "Both," he said, "are critical and evaluative as well as purely informational; and ownership of a copyright does not confer a legal right to control public evaluation of the copyrighted work." That's logic that should control the Potter case as well.

Even if the Beanie Baby case isn't directly controlling, the economics suggest the same result. How, exactly, are we hurt by the existence of competing guides to the Potter universe, one written by fans, the other by Rowling? It would be strange to say that since Fodor has written a perfectly good guide to London, we don't need the Lonely Planet or, for that matter, Wikitravel. Giving Rowling what she wants would be like giving Egypt the power to control guides to the pyramids.

I don't see how the Beanie Baby case is controlling, or even how it's relevant. A book about three-dimensional plush toys isn't taking nearly as much material as a book about another book, is it? All the value adds of descriptions and criticisms of the objects (objects that don't contain any words) are original to the authors of the Beanie Baby guide. Very few are original to the authors of the Harry Potter book — if they were, the book wouldn't be a reliable guide.

Wu argues that there's a threat here to "our collective wisdom" and "what we know." This is more properly understood not as a matter of what belongs to us but of what belongs to J.K. Rowling. A wiki-type online guide to the Potter books is an acceptable fair use because the added value is clear: It provides a reorganization of Rowling's stuff into another medium in a way that is clearly distinct from any of her books. A book is something different: By its nature as a guide it can't depart substantially from Rowling's work; the ratio of copyrighted to new material is so great as to make a fair-use claim very difficult.

Which, again, is not an argument that Rowling should be pursuing an action we called "petty, churlish and, from a business standpoint, probably ill-advised." It's a rare sign of good sense that, for example, Paramount does not go after the proprietors of Memory-Alpha. (And just to be clear, for the very reasons detailed above, I think Paramount would lose if it did; while the ratio of copyrighted to new stuff is still large, the act of describing content from a visual medium is itself transformative in a way that rearranging material from a written medium is not.) But just because sweet reason leads some copyright owners to behave with liberality doesn't mean all copyright owners should be required to do the same. The Harry Potter franchise is Rowling's to screw up any way she wishes.

The fight between the University of California and grad students enrolled in 2003 looks like a warped version of the typical underdog story — you know, the one where the little guy keeps getting beat down but bounces back to go for the win? Except, in this case, the little guy (students fighting to recover fees that UC improperly raised) won, but the university (which owes 35,000 graduate students about $40,000,000) just won't give up.

In 2003, UC graduate and professional school students saw their fees shoot through the roof, even though UC documents promised that they would not rise for continuing students. In July, some of the affected students filed suit, and the situation has been tied up in court ever since.

When the appeals court decision came down in November, I figured UC would throw in the towel and exit the ring as gracefully as possible. I was wrong. According to the San Jose Mercury News:

Every month that passes adds more than $300,000 in interest to the award, said an attorney for the plaintiffs. But a UC lawyer said the university believes it can still win the case.

"You have to make a judgment whether accumulation of interest outweighs the legal strengths of the case," said the UC attorney, Chris Patti. "We decided that it did not.

"It's going to be a big ticket, whether we have to pay now or in the future."

Translation: We're screwed either way, so why not spend a few million more, especially when we can take it out of student pockets?

It's kind of like writer's strike syndrome: There's no reason not to settle the whole thing and move on, so that I can get my weekly dose of NBC's Chuck — but the two parties are so embittered that they're going to see the other side buried.

The problem with that attitude? They each dig their own holes, and they both still get covered in crap.

The editorial board sees a post-Bhutto future as a chance for White House policy to "get on the right side of history," and writes an open letter to her son on his, and Pakistan's, future:

If you truly wish to struggle for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, you need to make your own way. Identify worthy candidates with the values, skills and experience you believe are needed to run Pakistan, and work for their election. Or start your own NGO. Or go to graduate school and decide for yourself which policies will help your country. Or run for parliament. In 2008, legitimacy cannot be inherited. It must be won with ballots.

Please learn to be the democratic and wise leader your country yearns for. Pakistan will need you — just not now, not in this role. We wish you luck.

The board also tells the city to mind its own business and stop meddling in private labor disputes.

On the Op-Ed page, historian Joseph J. Ellis waxes skeptical about presidential campaign promises, and Manhattan Institute fellow Tamar Jacoby warns that when it comes to anti-immigration sentiment, don't believe the hype. Author Eric Weiner kicks off the New Year by tossing out his self-help books:

Social scientists studying happiness (or subjective well-being, to use the academic term) have found that external factors — quality of government, social interactions and, to an extent, money — determine our happiness more than anything else. In other words, happiness does not reside inside of you. Happiness is out there.

Readers take sides on current state malpractice law. "To put it more bluntly," writes John Fortman, "we need the doctors more than we need the lawyers." Lisa Smock, who describes the fallout from her mother's botched surgery, points out, "to use a 1975 dollar amount for malpractice awards today is a disgrace to the ones who have put their trust in doctors but have been injured by them."

You perhaps recall Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs, who was defeated for re-election to the bench last year by a woman who had spent more of the previous decade running a bagel shop than practicing law. The defeat outraged many, including those of us at the Los Angeles Times editorial page and, apparently, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who promptly reappointed Janavs to the bench.

Janavs' tenure on the court was uninterrupted. But since, on paper, she was starting a new judgeship, she's up for re-election all over again this June. So if it's true that she was targeted because of her  foreign-sounding name, something that made her vulnerable at the ballot box, could she be defeated for the second year in a row? And would the governor again return her to the bench despite the voters' actions?

We'll never know. The Metropolitan News-Enterprise reported today that Janavs is retiring from the bench.

Janavs was the first Los Angeles Superior Court judge defeated for re-election in 18 years. She was trounced by Lynn D. Olson, an inactive attorney who ran Manhattan Bread & Bagel with her husband, Hermosa Beach Councilman Michael Keegan.

The Janavs-Olson race told establishment types everything they don't want to hear about judicial elections: slate mailers count more than newspaper editorials or Los Angeles County Bar Association ratings (the County Bar rated Janavs "exceptionally well-qualified," Olson "not qualified"); voters respond to partisan appeals (Janavs is a Republican, Olson a Democrat); voters like all-American-sounding names better than foreign-sounding ones; and voters are generally clueless when it comes to selecting judges.

In case you don't think that whole foreign-sounding-name thing really makes any difference, check out this review of recent judicial elections by Court of Appeal Justice Rebecca A. Wiseman.

In the end, Janavs was defeated not because she was a bad judge, but because she was beat-able. Schwarzenegger won wide praise (and considerable relief) from Janavs' colleagues when he reappointed her. The Times editorial page, which strongly backed Janavs, was queasy about the governor overriding the will of the voters, no matter how ignorantly they were acting (see the editorial below).

By the way, it's judicial election time again. Incumbent judges and challengers begin filing later this month for the June 3 primary.

Christmas season is closing in, and candidates are splurging on campaign stocking stuffers. Mitt Romney's recent attack ad accused fellow presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee of being 'soft on crime' — but in the passive-aggressive spirit of the season, Huckabee has turned the other cheek with an ad play that sprinkles season's greetings and sweeps the legs out from under Romney. The move was a pretty 'wily' one, says NPR:

On Tuesday, Huckabee shot back with a cheerful holiday ad with the song, Silent Night, playing in the background.

Now there's a trick: You get ahead in the polls, and then you declare Christmas!

Maybe too wily: Check out Michael McGough's post below on the subliminal cross.

But closer to home, a Dec. 11 special election for an L.A.-area Assembly seat brought tidings of discomfort and failure. From the Sacramento Bee:

Stop by the Mike Gipson for Assembly headquarters after voting and you could win a $250 gift card.

That was the none-too-subtle message delivered in a political mailer that has stirred charges of vote buying and has the state's top elections official saying the practice should be illegal.

It's not illegal (since the mailer, made to look like a Christmas Card, states, "you are eligible to win ... no matter who you vote for") and it probably shouldn't be — but it is in bad taste, particularly since some say it targets low-income African Americans.

Regardless, the election ended up with an abysmal 11.4% turnout, and Gipson lost. Which either means people won't vote for love or money, or that Gipson's tacky move lost him the election. I'm guessing it's the former.

*Photo from the Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert

The grim mood of the nation did not spare readers of the L.A. Times opinion pages this week. Tales of doom, gloom, war, corruption and the ruins of ancient societies dominated our traffic (which was light, so tell a friend about Opinion L.A. already). "A more perfect union," the opener for our American Values 2008 series, barely missed the top 10 and our second, "Life," made the top 20, so if you haven't started feasting on the whole series, do yourself a favor. ("Liberty" and "Justice" went live today and will be counted in next week's traffic.) Without further ado...

1. Symptoms of an economic depression By Steve Fraser
2. AWOL military justice By Morris D. Davis
3. Stonehenges all around us By Craig Childs
4. Is this really World War IV? By Peter Beinart
5. The Supreme Court's habeas hearing By the editorial board
6. A FISA fix By Michael B. Mukasey
7. F in science, A in self-esteem By the editorial board
8. Torture's blame game By Rosa Brooks
9. Two beautiful Dems stand before us ... By Jen Sullivan Brych and Matt Vespa
10. Big Oil buys Sacramento By Jamie Court and Judy Dugan

An Arizona county attorney has a new idea way of combating drunk driving, and it seems almost inspired by Megan's Law. From The New York Times:

A conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol is something many people try to conceal, even from their families. But now the bleary-eyed, disheveled and generally miserable visages of convicted drunken drivers here, captured in their mug shots, are available to the entire world via a Web site.

The hall of shame is even worse for drunken drivers convicted of a felony. A select few will find their faces plastered on billboards around Phoenix with the banner headline: Drive drunk, see your mug shot here. [...]

The purposes of the billboards and the Web site, Mr. Thomas has said, are to inform the public about drunken-driving laws, and to serve as a deterrent.

There's a key difference here, though. Megan's Law isn't (just) about deterrence by public shame. It's meant as a tool to protect children and others against sex offenders. But publishing a database of unflattering photos doesn't really help potential victims of drunk driving — unless you're a passenger in that driver's car. Then again, drunk drivers do tend to be repeat offenders, so perhaps these shame tactics will have some deterrent effect in the long run.

Embarrassment is one thing — but if this catches on outside Arizona, it could turn out to be a danger to those listed. That's what just happened with Megan's law, according to today's L.A. Times:

Convicted rapist Michael A. Dodele had been free just 35 days when sheriff's deputies found him dead last month in his aging, tan mobile home, his chest and left side punctured with stab wounds. [...]

Prosecutors said they have investigated the possibility that the slaying of Dodele, 67, stemmed from his having been listed on the state's Megan's Law database of sex offenders. If so, his death may be the first in the state to result from such a listing, experts said.

The editorial board begins a series on the values that will shape the 2008 elections, beginning with a discussion of what it means to aspire to "a more perfect union":

Every election is an exercise in perfecting our union. We seek leaders with talent, experience and wisdom who will guide the nation through demanding times while upholding its values. As we sift through presidential candidates and platforms in the 2008 campaign, we will examine the basic American principles and challenge ourselves — and the cand