The Times editorial board laments the departure of Guy Mehula, the man who oversaw the recent surge construction for the Los Angeles Unified School District. That program operated with an efficiency and competence rarely found at LAUSD, the board asserts, and those qualities are threatened by Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines' reported plans to supervise the unit more closely:

Elsewhere on the editorial page, the board defends Facebook's handling of a user-generated poll asking whether President Obama should be assassinated. And it urges lawmakers to grow spines and stop blocking the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to maximum security federal prisons in the U.S.

On the Op-Ed side of the fold, columnist Tim Rutten runs through the list of policy challenges facing President Obama -- the jobless recovery, rising health insurance premiums, the war in Afghanistan, the Iranian leadership's nuclear ambitions -- and finds no easy choices. Nina Hachigian, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, says the Chinese government is sending mixed signals about its willingness to play ball with international organizations to address global problems: And writer Kathryn Wilkens of Upland muses about the life and death of the mission fig tree that had anchored her garden for decades:

Insert your ironic comment about this article appearing in dead tree media here.

Illustration: Blair Thornley / For The Times

-- Jon Healey

Today's editorial page casts a wary eye on former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, whose candidacy for governor of California has been shaken by revelations that she didn't register to vote until she was 46 years old, and only became a Republican two years ago. Is someone so seemingly apathetic about politics the best choice to govern what may be the most ungovernable state in the union?

With all due respect to the French culture minister, who said U.S. efforts to prosecute filmmaker Roman Polanski revealed the face of a "scary America," we on the Times editorial board think it's time the 76-year-old fugitive was brought to justice. Polanski's defenders ignore the simple fact that he fled the country while facing charges of raping a 13-year-old girl. Even for successful movie directors, that's not OK.

The editorial page also weighs in on plans to upgrade the sagging waterfront in San Pedro, which the Harbor Commission will consider today. There's much to like in the proposal, but something not to like as well: Plans to build terminals for cruise ships adjacent to San Pedro's only public beach. We think commissioners should proceed with the overall plan, but table the outer harbor cruise berths.

On the Op-Ed side, columnist Jonah Goldberg questions whether President Obama is living up to his centrist campaign rhetoric on the war in Afghanistan. While running for office, Obama tried to out-hawk Republican Sen. John McCain when it came to the war, but as the conflict becomes less popular he seems to be reconsidering. "What seemed like principled centrism in 2008 might simply be exposed as left-wing expediency in 2009."

Professor Christopher Layne and journalist Benjamin Schwarz ponder the waning of the Pax Americana, the post-war bargain in which the United States spent overwhelmingly on its military in order to secure world peace -- a practice that given current fiscal conditions is no longer sustainable. The result will likely be de-globalization as countries move more aggressively to pursue their financial and security interests.

Finally, civil rights lawyer Constance L. Rice bemoans the resignation of the head of the L.A. Unified School District's construction division, who was apparently forced out by district politics. The independent construction division was created to avoid more disasters like the spectacularly expensive Belmont Learning Center, and the increasing political interference doesn't bode well for the future.

Cartoon: Ed Stein / Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

-- Dan Turner

Maybe you wouldn't think a photographer whose subject matter was mid-century modern California architecture could become a cultural icon of immense appeal.

You'd think wrong. If it surprises you, it certainly surprised him. At Julius Shulman's memorial Sunday at the Getty Center, Shulman fans from California Supreme Court chief justice Ron George to actress Lily Tomlin and DA-turned-photographer Gil Garcetti paid their respects to the man who died in July at age 98 after a career of re-introducing architectural California to itself through the dazzling clarity of his camera. His lapidary photographs of homes by renowned architects, in the Hollywood Hills and Palm Springs especially, prove that black and white photography is an exceptional genre with composition and esthetics of its own -- not just something that photographers did while they waited around for someone to invent color film.

In the way of these things, it was more celebration than mourning, especially at the Getty, where his archival work, according to Getty Research Institute director Andrew Perchuk, is so popular and so often requested that the Getty has had to reconfigure its policies about reprints and requests.

Julius was a character -- charming, focused, occasionally cantankerous -- ''a handful,'' said his daughter, Judy Shulman McKee. But he was always mindful of how his seminal images of California houses crafted a larger message and image to the world, and cemented LA as a place where the architectural gold standard is, unlike other cities, is most often found in private houses, not public buildings.

McKee talked about her father's relentless optimism and how it reminded her of her dog, who always sat looking at the doorknob, expecting that at any minute the door would open. For Shulman, it did. Architect William Krisel, assigned to work as Shulman's assistant photographing Richard Neutra houses in the 1930s, assured the hundreds in the auditorium that Shulman invariably made the houses look even better in photographs than they did in real life.

And one speaker recalled a recent event at the Arclight -- that's the Cinerama Dome to longtime Angelenos -- featuring that dealt with the work of the LA Conservancy. Shulman announced, ''This book is crap.'' A bit later, at the same event, LA Conservancy supporter Ben Stiller was asked to name his favorite photographer. ''Well,'' he said, ''it WAS Julius Shulman.''

I interviewed Shulman for print and broadcast several times, and last saw him at at the opening of a Gagosian Gallery showing of the work of the French photographer Francois Marie Banier. That was almost exactly two years before Shulman died, but from his wheelchair, he was, as always ,trenchant and peppery and cracking wise.

When a man gets to be as old as Shulman was, you tend to assume he'll just go on forever. And as Sunday's ceremony affirmed, in the most important of ways, he will.

-- Patt Morrison

The Opinion Manufacturing Division straddles the ideological divide today, offering red meat to both sides of the aisle. The Times editorial board blasts ACORN, the community organizers at the heart of conservative talk radio's favorite conspiracy theories, for failing to acknowledge and correct its serious internal problems in the wake of "devastating" hidden-camera exposes. And Op-Ed columnist Tim Rutten peers behind the newfound celebrity of Rep. Joe "You lie!" Wilson (R-S.C.) to find all sorts of fringe-group, umm, creativity. In particular, he examines the roots of the tea party movement and the intellectual underpinnings of the "10thers" -- anti-government conservatives who claim the 10th amendment gives state lawmakers authority to reject many acts of Congress and Supreme Court rulings.

Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, David A. Lehrer, president of Los Angeles-based Community Advocates Inc., argues that anti-Semitic attacks are declining -- contrary to dire warnings from the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Similarly, Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection, contends that tragedies such as those involving Dae'von Bailey and Lars Sanchez -- two children killed despite the supervision their families were given by county child-welfare officials -- are the exception, not the norm:

Back among the editorials, the board urges Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign AB 2, a bill by Assemblyman Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate) to limit the ability of health insurers to cancel policies retroactively. And while it praises the announcement that the Irvine Co. would transfer 20,000 acres to Orange County for parks, it calls on the county to reveal more about how it will manage the windfall:

Photo: Police in Nevada gather evidence from an ACORN office in 2008 as part of an investigation into voter fraud. Credit: AP Photo / Jae C. Hong

-- Jon Healey

Should California teachers be evaluated based on their students' performance on test scores? That's the subject of dueling pro vs. con commentaries on today's Op-Ed page. On the pro side is state Board of Education President Ted Mitchell, who says California must change a law forbidding such evaluations if it is to qualify for millions of dollars in federal funds, and that the system would help school districts reward exceptional teaching and weed out instructors who can't make the grade. On the con side is former LAUSD teacher Walt Gardner, who points out that teachers in low-performing schools are often dealing with kids from very poor families who are dealing with pressures that make learning a serious challenge, and expecting teachers to overcome such obstacles on their own is unrealistic.

Meanwhile, physicist Frank von Hippel aims to debunk claims from the nuclear-power industry that reprocessing nuclear waste is a solution to our problems with storing the highly radioactive materials. Not only is it extremely expensive, it fails to reduce the stream of long-lived nuclear waste and provides access to weapons material that could fall into dangerous hands.

Today's editorial page notes the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Bros. by pointing out that the $700-billion federal bailout that followed helped prop up the nation's financial system, and without it the economy would undoubtedly be in worse shape than it is. Nonetheless, now that the economy is on the rebound, "it's time for the administration and the Federal Reserve to lay out a strategy for pulling the government out of the financial industry."

The Times also weighs in on prospective furloughs or layoffs for city employees, who in tough financial times may be sacrificed in order to keep alive Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ambition to keep hiring more police officers. Though that seems unfair, it's the right thing to do for Los Angeles.

And we give a boost to a package of state bills aimed at fighting animal cruelty, including a ban on puppy mills, a crackdown on dogfighting (thanks Michael Vick!), and a measure mocked by the governor to forbid docking (cutting off) the tails of cattle.

Photo by Seth Perlman / AP

The Times doesn't buy arguments that Jaycee Lee Dugard's 18-year ordeal as a kidnapping and rape victim is a reason to oppose coming reforms to California's parole system. The Assembly passed a bill Monday that would reduce the case rolls of parole officers by mandating less supervision for low-risk, non-violent ex-convicts, while increasing supervision for more dangerous criminals. That doesn't mean Dugard's alleged abductor, Phillip Garrido, and his ilk would be off the hook -- in fact, it means they would get more attention in the future, the editorial page argues.

What's the upside to the Station fire, which has killed two firefighters, burned dozens of homes, fouled L.A.'s air and destroyed thousands of acres of scrubland? It's that fire is a natural part of Southern California's ecosystem that will clear wild areas for new growth and deposit fertilizer. The real problem, The Times points out, is that the frequency of such fires is rising, and continued sprawl into wilderness areas is increasing the costs and the environmental woes.

And Japan's dramatic changeover Sunday, when the party that has ruled the country almost continuously for half a century was booted from power, gets a thumbs up from The Times. Though the Liberal Democratic Party has helped turn Japan into an economic powerhouse, a one-party state seldom makes for good governance; "competition is as important in politics as it is in business," The Times asserts.

On the Op-Ed page, global warming skeptic Jonah Goldberg wonders whether the media are giving short shrift to sunspots. Evidence is mounting not only that we're living through a period of highly unusual sunspot activity, but that such events can have a dramatic impact on Earth's climate -- meaning the current warming we're experiencing might have more to do with solar activity than the greenhouse gases Congress aims to reduce. "I don't know what [this evidence] tells you, but it tells me that maybe we should study a bit more before we spend billions to 'solve' a problem we don't understand so well," Goldberg concludes.

Rivka Carmi, president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, sounds off against one of his faculty members -- Neve Gordon, who published an opinion piece in The Times last month arguing for an economic boycott of Israel. Carmi says he can't fire Gordon for his controversial views under Israeli law, but his explosive anti-Israel rhetoric could seriously harm both the nation and the university.

Finally, Leo Hindery Jr., Leo W. Gerard and Donald Riegle argue that the "buy American" provisions of Washington's economic stimulus package level the playing field with our trading partners and boost U.S. manufacturing jobs. They back legislation that would expand them to cover all national government procurement. "'Buy American' is neither un-American nor anti-globalization. It is simply good, necessary, balanced and reciprocal economic policy."

* Photo: The Station fire as seen from a hill overlooking Tujunga. Credit: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times

Anytime I'm in the car and there's a fire in these parts, I've gotten used to (metaphorically) twirling the radio dial, AM and FM, searching for news flashes.

So, flash this: KFWB, once the other all-news AM station in LA, is reinventing itself after four decades. It’s been carrying weekend infomercials and advice for some time now, and in about a week’s time, it will pretty much give its weekdays over to talk radio.

In its earlier news days, KFWB came off as the scrappy little news station. Unlike KNX, which was rooted in its network broadcasts of national and international news from CBS, the "Tiffany network’’ of Murrow and Cronkite, KFWB seemed to my ears to be entirely local in reporters and outlook. Sure, it was owned by Westinghouse, but “Westinghouse’’ made me think of appliances, not network journalism. Some of its reporters had the distinctive voices I associated more with character actors than news reporters, like Cecilia Pedroza, and Gary Franklin (sign-off: "Gary Franklin … Car 98 … out.").  

Westinghouse took over CBS radio nearly 15 years ago, yet the two local news stations still battled away at each other. Until now.

Even though I knew the change was coming, not hearing KFWB on the air reporting from the fire-lines was a bit of a shock to my Angeleno ears. Even the veteran KFWB newsman Pete Demetriou, without whom no brushfire or police chase feels complete, now signs off with "KNX."

As of September 8, it'll be a different KFWB, with some local news but a lot of conservative talk radio and KFBW’s new star, national radio fixture Laura Schlessinger, the popular advice and counseling host better known as "Dr. Laura." Angels baseball still rules at game time, at least through the season.

By which I mean the baseball season, not the fire season.

-- Patt Morrison

 In today's Los Angeles Times editorial pages, author Ethan Rarick finally gives Nevada the business, so to speak. In case you've missed the flap, Nevada is the latest in a long line of states to spend money making a play for California businesses, which claim to be mistreated and which others claim are deserting the state in droves. Not happening, Rarick says, picking up on stats that the Public Policy Institute of California put out a couple of years ago. 

The Times editorial board remembers Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Here's someone whose life actually measures up to the tributes.

The ed board also checks in on Tuesday's school board vote to, in essence, get the board out of the business of running more than 100 Los Angeles schools.

And columnist Meghan Daum nails the entire generation: we're still trying to figure out how to be grownups. The dead giveaways are the similarities, and differences, between "thirtysomething" and "Mad Men."

Photo: AP Photo / Charles Krupa

--Robert Greene

It is said that the bandit Juan Flores -- who had a brief but legendary career that included ambushing a sheriff and his posse and temporarily evading arrest by plunging down a granite cliff  face, such a daring feat that the peak was named for him -- was hanged in 1857 at what is now the Beaudry Avenue headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The event was watched by an angry crowd of 3,000 people, practically the entire population of the pueblo.

The crowd could approach that size today at Beaudry as the school board gets ready to vote on a resolution that would let outside operators such as charters and the mayor's education partnership submit proposals to run 50 schools opening up in the next few years. The new version of the proposal would do the same for the 200 or so existing schools that are considered failing under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Charter and community organizations that favor the proposal have been mobilizing parents to show up as early as an hour and a half before the board even brings up the resolution to let board members know that they will not be happy if the resolution is rejected.  United Teachers Los Angeles, the most high-profile opponent, has also called out its troops to "pack" the board meeting.

In the early days of the summer, the resolution's chances looked iffy at best, but parents groups are pushing hard to send trustees a message that if they don't vote for the resolution, they can expect a political hanging when they face re-election. Conversely, UTLA bankrolled a number of the campaigns that put the current board in power.

The Times' editorial board has enthusiastically endorsed the resolution as one of the most promising, child-centered initiatives to come along in the district over the last several years, as long as it is passed without several poison-pill amendments that also were placed on today's agenda.

The vote could be close. One thing is certain: The search for a parking space around Beaudry today will be tougher than the posse's job tracking down Juan Flores.

-- Karin Klein

They say all politics is (are?) local. So all are political editorials, at least in today's Los Angeles Times editorial pages. The ed board sees some promise in the proposal to get the county to join with the University of California to form a nonprofit, which would in turn run a new full-service medical center where Martin Luther King Jr. hospital used to be.

The step forward is not simply getting medical care for the county, but also getting a Board of Supervisors to face its limitations and surrender power for the good of county residents:

On the city side, the board calls on the City Council and pension board to either sign off on an early retirement deal or do something else, but quickly:

Over on Op-Ed, Israeli author and professor Neve Gordon calls for "massive international pressure" on Israel to end settlements in occupied Palestinian territories and to move forward with a two-state solution.

Author-journalist Donald Kirk marks the passing of former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung with a lament for Kim's "sunshine policy" of reconciliation.

And columnist Meghan Daum ponders the attraction of "bad-parent porn."

Photo: AP Photo / Damian Dovarganes

-- Robert Greene