Is North Carolina the fat lady that sang for Hillary Clinton? The editorial board suggested that it's finally over for her, and L.A. Times columnist Rosa Brooks called it way back in March. The Hill reports that backs are turning on her. What are the other papers saying?

The Washington Post editorial board focuses on Barack Obama even as it comes to the same conclusion on Clinton:

Hillary Clinton may, as she promised yesterday, fight on through the next few weeks of primaries, but after her disappointing showing Tuesday she has no plausible route to victory. So Mr. Obama was sounding themes for the coming battle against John McCain.... These are familiar phrases by now, appealing but also insubstantial.

Its columnists Harold Meyerson and George F. Will agree...

European policy experts John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell look to 'The Godfather' for diplomatic pointers:

[Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather"] is also a startlingly useful metaphor for the strategic problems and global power structure of our time. The don, emblematic of Cold War American power, is struck by forces he did not expect and does not understand, as was America on 9/11. Intriguingly, his heirs embrace very different visions of family strategy that approximate the three schools of thought -- liberal institutionalism, neoconservatism and realism -- vying for control of U.S. foreign policy today.

Freelance writer Lionel Beehner has another proposal for smoother diplomacy: pronouncing foreign dignitaries' names properly. Columnist Tim Rutten tells an L.A. version of "A Tale of Two Cities," and contributing editor Erin Aubry Kaplan explores why poet and long-time Watts resident Eric Priestley is fighting City Hall to keep his home.

The editorial board praises a California Supreme Court decision voiding the death sentence of Adam Miranda, presses for a shield law, and says now isn't the time to scold Myanmar's leaders:

It has been clear for more than a decade -- and especially since last year's suppression of the would-be Saffron Revolution -- that Myanmar's odious junta cannot be shamed into reform. It is too isolated and xenophobic to worry about its image, too paranoid to learn from outsiders and too blood-drenched to believe it can survive any loosening of control over its hapless people. The contradictory combination of U.S. sanctions and an engagement strategy adopted by its neighbors has failed to produce any improvement. Attempts to use the catastrophe of Tropical Cyclone Nargis as leverage to pry open the country will almost surely fail as well.

Though the old jape "I thought he'd died years ago" exactly described my reaction to the death this week of LSD inventor Albert Hofmann, the news was moving nonetheless. First, because the Swiss chemist's death at the age of 102 provides yet more proof — along with the durability of fellow drug icons Timothy Leary (died at age 75) and William S. Burroughs (83) — that winners do use drugs and lead long productive lives. Second, because, as this Times obituary demonstrates, Hofmann was a far groovier figure than I had always thought based on my vague knowledge of his accidental discovery and the famous "bicycle day."

Read through the description of Hofmann's first full-scale trip, during which he believed at first that he was dying but went on to enjoy a pleasant experience, and you'll get a sense of what I've always thought was a great falsehood about acid: that there is some bright-line difference between a "good" and "bad" trip. I've never understood why you'd even want an acid trip without moments of agonizing panic and bottomless despair; it would be like food without seasonings. I'm not suggesting you eat the brown acid; in fact I'm not suggesting you eat any acid at all. But the need to go into the thing with an open mind and some commitment to remain analytical always seemed to me what made LSD so cool: It cuts through such meaningless distinctions as Hoosier/Hawkeye or Catholic/Protestant to reveal the most important distinction of all: curious/incurious.

Hofmann was also more credulous about the drug's spiritual properties than I had thought, putting him (whether he would have agreed or not) more in line with the Leary school of consciousness-expansion than the Ken Kesey school of fun and games.

The third school of thought, of course, is Joe Friday's, in which all trips are bad, and no discussion of LSD would be complete without a viewing of Dragnet's "Blue Boy" episode, which was to LSD prohibition what Exodus was to support for Israel. I hover among all three points: I never saw the point of taking all the fun out of a recreational drug with gloopy pseudo-religiosity, and there comes a point where the value in both fun and spiritual discovery starts to diminish in relation to the real or imagined dain bramage you're inflicting on yourself. Hofmann, like virtually everybody who takes acid, eventually retired from tripping. But his invention made the world a more interesting place. Good luck and happy trips to Rick Doblin and others who continue the research.

Either that or nobody can afford to take a day off in this economy. The May Day march is a total bust. People are finally starting to arrive (police estimate 8,500), but for most of the day It looked like Omega Man outside the L.A. Times building this afternoon.

Well, maybe it looked like Omega Man would have looked if Matthias and his followers had a Latin band and sold hot dogs wrapped in bacon. In fact, if you're around downtown, you may want to try and bargain down the price on some unsold bacon dogs. No matter how much you pay, you'll be participating in a crime, as this fairly stunning Drew Carey video about the war on bacon dogs makes clear.

Previously I noted what the editorial board said of the past two May Days. Today I'm going further back, when May Day was an occasion not for marches, but for labor-bashing, springtime celebrating, and making up new holidays.

On April 30, 1906, the board attacks French anarchists for subverting what would otherwise be a fine celebration of labor:

Every right-thinking man is sincerely desirous of increasing the earnings of the working classes...diffusing comfort, happiness and the sunshine of life over the very widest area that is possible. So when the artisans of Paris march by in peaceful parade, there are only hearty huzzas to greet their passing.
But the trouble lies in the fact that the annual demonstration has been seized on by those members of society who have the least right to call themselves honest workingmen. May first is the chosen day for the anarchists to display their red flags, and for the Socialists to declaim their subversive doctrines.

The following year, the board was a lot crueler:

This is the day that "organized labor" — that is, labor organized not to labor but to put all possible obstacles in the way of peacefully doing the work of the world — has selected as its own. This is the day the totemites have parades as an adjunct of strikes and general disturbance in the labor world....
[A]ll got together on May Day, and vied each with the other in the attempt to show who could make most noise, and show most contempt for law, for order, for industry, for any man's rights.

And it didn't end early in the century. On May Day 1962, the board declared in its editorial headline: "May Day is Law Day U.S.A." That designation — and the creation of a separate American Labor Day — is sometimes considered a direct rebuke to the worldwide celebration Labor Day on May 1. Americans had previously declared it "Loyalty Day" and "Americanization Day," and many presidents past (and one current) have underscored the point.

...to the techorati tag below:

Technorati Profile

Follow the link if you want to be truly bored. This is just to get our technorati profile up and running...

Tomorrow Thursday is May Day, which, depending on your leanings, is a pagan pole-dancing holiday, a day of labor solidarity against The Man, a day off for immigrants and their supporters, or some combination of all three, a grab-bag of un-American activity. (To the latter group, Happy Law Day!)

The last two May Days have been major events in Los Angeles. May 1, 2006 was the Great American Boycott, when legal and illegal immigrants were encouraged to stay away from businesses and schools. The editorial board raised some eyebrows by leaving blank the space where a third editorial would usually run on the page, printing only the words "Pass comprehensive immigration reform now." One million people were said to have participated, and almost all marches were peaceful and law-abiding.

Fast-forward to 2007: no immigration reform, and quite a bit of violence from the Los Angeles Police Department against protesters at MacArthur Park, some of whom threw sticks and water bottles at officers. The boards praised most marchers for a May Day well spent...

Columnist Rosa Brooks plays Hillary Clinton:

Thank you, Pennsylvania! What an incredible margin of victory you gave me! Ten percentage points over Barack Obama. Count 'em! Ten!

All right, 9.2 points if you insist on actually counting. But they said I had to win by double digits to keep my campaign alive, and I think 9.2 points counts as double digits. And I am alive! And kicking! And punching and biting and kneeing my opponent in the groin!

Contributing editor Arianna Huffington says only a media filled with self-loathing could hire the likes of former Bush rep Tony Snow. USC emeritus professor Robert E. Tranquada argues for an independent authority to oversea L.A. county health services. And columnist Patt Morrison reveals what she and other Angelenos would do with the city budget if they had their way. (Coffee poured by the mayor at the Getty House Bed and Breakfast, anyone?)

The editorial board praises three African countries that stopped a Chinese arms shipment to Zimbabwe, looks to a 1983 report on education for present-day advice, and looks beyond the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania:

The Democratic race only seems interminable; there will be a winner, and he or she will reconcile with the loser and call for party unity. If Republicans can withstand the abrupt alliance of Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney, why shouldn't Democrats be united by an enthusiastic endorsement of Clinton by Obama, or vice versa? After all, for all the attacks, the two Democrats aren't far apart on policy.

On the letters page, readers take on the race, as well. Valley Village's Larry Margo has this to say to Clinton-bashers: "Quick! Stop her! Force her out before she wins again!"

Columnist Jonah Goldberg asks how neo the neocons are, economist Bruce Bartlett reveals the truth about GOP tax cuts, and attorney Zachary Bookman says that secrecy is back in style in the Mexican government. Finally, former Times staffer and rural Pennsylvania native Shawn Hubler profiles her home state's bitter bloc:

Had they heard much talk about Barack Obama describing rural Pennsylvanians as "bitter"? Not too much, but thinking about it made my mother laugh.

"Bitter?" she asked. "Well, yes, of course we're bitter. Who wouldn't be?" She giggled until she started to cough.

Here's what I've thought as I've watched my hometown -- and so many others like it -- materialize so improbably at the forefront of this election: As much as the truth may hurt, Obama was right. Maybe he overdid it a bit, but generally, people don't feel secure when you leave them behind.

The editorial board checks in on how Texas is deciding where to place kids removed from a polygamist compound earlier this month, and recaps the pope's trip to the U.S. The board also remembers Ruben Salazar, a one-time Times staffer and columnist killed during the East L.A. riots:

Journalism, by its nature, tends to focus on the immediate. Only a few of any generation leave a bold enough mark to be visible over generations. One such journalist was Ruben Salazar, whom we honor today as the United States Postal Service issues a stamp to commemorate his life and work.

On the letters page, readers react to Richard Dawkins' Op-Ed on intelligent design. Apple Valley's William S. LaSor says, "In the end, he, like everyone else, must confront one of two choices: Either the universe has always existed, or it was created by someone who has always existed. If the latter is improbable, as he claims, then why is not the former also?"

If you have read my Op-Ed on the Vermont/Manchester project (and of course, if you have not, what are you waiting for?), you may be interested in seeing just what the two-block battlefield looks like. The project area today is smaller by about 30% than what it was back in the 1996, when the Community Redevelopment Agency was given its mandate to develop the area. At the time, the project area included the 8300, 8400 and 8500 east-side blocks of Vermont Ave. Most of this area remains unbuilt since 1992, though there are a few strip-mall-type buildings in the area, and a much larger develoment on the 8300 block, about which more in a moment.

This is the view facing southeast from the corner of 84th and Vermont. The vacant lot and the strip mall to the right are now owned by Eli Sasson, who gained virtual control of the 8400 and 8500 blocks in 2005 and 2006.

If we turn slightly to the left, we see the L.A. County Department of Public Social Services building that now takes up the entire 8300 block. It was completed last fall. The L.A. Times' Roger Vincent had that story on September 28, though it has since disappeared from our site. (It's called "In South L.A., hope rises along with concrete, steel" if you want to look it up at your local public library.)

The DPSS building generated enormous controversy when it was being built: Local residents had long been agitating for a large retail development featuring a supermarket, a sit-down restaurant and chain stores. The news that one block of the site would be devoted to a welfare office (leaving two blocks that wouldn't support a very grand development) hit with a resounding thud. Community Coalition executive director Marqueece Harris-Dawson described the building to me as having been "shoved down the throats" of the community.

Nevertheless, L.A. leaders promised that giving this piece of the project over to the county building would be a catalyst for retail development, on the logic that it would bring free-spending county employees into the area during work hours. Vincent's story, for example, quotes Jack Kyser of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., calling the building "a magnet for potential customers" that should "provide a solid customer base." Councilman Bernard Parks has made similar suggestions, and the building has definitely increased foot traffic in the area.

Elie Sasson played a supporting role in the DPSS saga too, which didn't endear him to the retail advocates. He sold off four lots on the 8300 block to ICO Development, helping give ICO site control of that block while buying out a handful of other owners in the other two blocks and getting site control (less his brother Joseph's lot) on those.

Sasson says that he too heard a lot of catalyst talk and made his series of sales and purchases only on the promise of CRA assistance with his development. He did enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement with the agency in 2006, but that expired last year without success. At the time, the CRA's regional administrator Ricardo Nogera minimized the expiration of the ENA, telling me the agency was close to moving toward a Disposition and Development Agreement with Sasson. Nogera left the agency shortly afterward, and his replacement Carolyn Hull would not characterize her predecessor's talks other than to say that they failed to produce a development.

The area already boasts a public building, the Constituent Service Center on the other side of Vermont. This picture shows the service center from across Sasson's lot. I was standing along some parking lots the CRA owns when I took this. These lots have factored into the story as well, since higher parking density allows more ambitious retail development. Sasson negotiated to buy the lots from the CRA, and he claims that he had an agreed-to deal with Nogera that fell through due to a technical snafu -- amusingly enough claiming the CRA failed to take out an ad in the Los Angeles Times in fulfillment of some open-bidding rule. CRA officials refuse to comment. For what it's worth, Nogera did tell me last year that he intended to "contribute" both lots to the project.

This 1992 photo by Robert Rubin, used here with his permission, shows the 8500 block being burned down in the rioting. 

Here's a view of the same block today. The corner lot, closest to us still belongs to Joseph Sasson, the brother with whom Eli Sasson has been in a long-standing disagreement.

Armchair shrinks, movie fans, L.A. billboard zealots and personal detractors, what does the following say about me?

The summer movie season is coming, and the neighborhoods are full of ads. I see them everywhere, sometimes for stuff I should theoretically be interested in seeing: I enjoyed 2.5 of the Indiana Jones films, enough so that a rote, lackluster, unimaginative, uninteresting marketing campaign should not keep me from wanting to see the fourth installment in the trilogy. I also find the idea of Bob Downey as Iron Man vaguely intriguing.

And yet the only movie I have any desire to see is Baby Mama. Let me rephrase: The bus posters for this movie are the only film advertisements around right now that do not fill me with weltschmerz and contempt.

Actually, I just looked up Baby Mama, and I think I don't even want to see that. I initially took it to be some kind of surreal picture with Amy Poehler doing an adult/child performance like Martin Short in Clifford. It turns out it's actually got the dullest concept imaginable, though the following IMDB note still gives me some hope:

Movie Connections: Spoofs Silkwood (1983)

Anyway, am I speaking solely for myself or is anybody else out of sympathy with the lineup of coming attractions? I'm only referring to the marketing. It seems to me we're in a real movie-magic doldrums, but that could just be my own dolorous dullness...

Richard Rothstein, last seen debating the achievement gap in a Dust-Up with Russlyn Ali, takes to the lackluster Cato Unbound with an interesting take on the 25th anniversary of the report A Nation At Risk, which examined the nation's puported crisis in education. According to Rothstein, the doomsaying of 1983, like most of the doomsaying from that period, turned out to be wrong. But unlike your harmless, garden-variety doomsaying, this one had some negative results:

Because of the report’s doomsday aura, policymakers have mostly failed since 1983 to investigate the causes of these improvements - the obvious, unasked, question is, what were we doing right from 1978 to 1990 (and since), so we can do more of it?

A belief in decline has led to irresponsibility in school reform. Policymakers who believed they could do no harm because American schools were already in a state of collapse have imposed radical reforms without careful consideration of possible unintended adverse consequences. Not thinking that President Reagan’s rule (’if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’) applied to what conservatives and liberals alike assumed was an already broken school system, this irresponsibility reached its zenith in the bipartisan No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law of 2002.

I do not suggest that American schools are adequate, that American students’ level of achievement in math and reading is where it should be, that American schools have been improving as rapidly as they should, or that the achievement gap is narrowing to the extent needed to give us any satisfaction. I only suggest that we should approach fixing a system differently if we believe its outcomes are slowly improving than if we believe it is collapsing. And we owe the latter, flawed assumption, to A Nation at Risk.

Full article.

Keep it in mind next time you're presented with the secular version of Pascal's Wager. (That is, the "Hey, if it turns out we're wrong about the decline and fall of X, all we did was take enlightened action Y" line of argument, which usually precedes the "It's time to stop talking about X and just do something!" argument, and frequently ends up with "Hey, problem X seems to have solved itself, but now what do we do about all these Zs we've created?")

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) notes that sexual assaults are frequent -- and frequently ignored -- in the military:

Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq....

At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007, including 1,259 reports of rape, were referred to courts-martial, the equivalent of a criminal prosecution in the military. Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through "nonjudicial punishment," which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist.

Writer Andrew Gumbel knows why Hillary Clinton is fighting so hard to stay in the race -- because it works. Columnist Gregory Rodriguez says Americans have a habit of hero-worshipping candidates, and it tends to backfire. Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff argues that we need to hit bottom before we can recover from the housing crisis.

The editorial board wants better beef tracking, and more nuanced exploration of the links between race and gangs. The board praises the FCC for taking a broad view of media competition in approving the XM/Sirius merger.

Readers react to a shift in John McCain's rhetoric. L.A.'s Susan North says:

Listening to McCain's speech before the World Affairs Council made my brain hurt. In the speech, he admonished America to listen to our democratic ally nations. Would that be all those same nations that have been crying out, for months now, "Surge? Are you people nuts?"

On the heels of the Iraq war's fifth anniversary comes another somewhat arbitrary but far more grim milestone: 4,000 American soldiers have now died in the conflict, though casualties have been low so far this year. The editorial board didn't remark on the death toll when it hit 2,000 (in October 2005) or 3,000 (at the end of 2006), even though those points coincided with some other big events -- the ratification of a draft constitution and Saddam Hussein's execution.

The board did write when the death toll hit 1,000, highlighting the randomness of marking a number of dead (sorry, no link):

Six U.S. soldiers were killed, two Italian aid workers were kidnapped and warplanes bombed a Sunni enclave in Fallouja, a city mostly off-limits to coalition troops. It was just another day in the war Tuesday, except for the numbers. By this morning, Iraq time, the Associated Press count of casualties stated that 1,000 U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq, aside from more than 100 other coalition soldiers and thousands of Iraqi noncombatants. And many thousands more have been wounded.

It is an obvious point at which to ask: To what end are U.S. personnel continuing to die? What is it that commanders should tell their troops as they head into lethal streets?

The board noted another, less round number in January...

Columnist Rosa Brooks explains what the Spitzer scandal means for the Clinton candidacy:

This gets to why this scandal has the potential to be more than just distracting and uncomfortable for Clinton. Spitzergate -- and Hillary's ambivalent response so far -- reminds us that Bill wasn't the only member of the Clinton family who let women down when he was in the White House.

Remember 1992? Hillary got in hot water for telling "60 Minutes" that "I'm not ... some little woman, standing by my man like Tammy Wynette."

But later, as Bill's career became mired in scandal after scandal, it became all too clear that Hillary was willing to tolerate pretty much anything he did.

George Washington University's Patty Kelly thinks Spitzergate could have another effect -- convincing Americans it's time to decriminalize prostitution. Contributing editor Timothy Garton Ash says Britain needs to define what it means to be British. And columnist Patt Morrison argues for our right to gripe.

The editorial board explains the battle of the brass that may have felled Adm. William J. Fallon...

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.

Something that had been not-quite-missing from my daily routine these past few months was the very mixed blessing of being able to rubberneck movie and TV productions. The Soloist did film on our third floor during the strike, and the cast and crew, in sharp distinction to the tradition of movie-production jackholery, were notably polite and patient, with the Steve Lopez-portraying Robert Downey Jr. personable and sober as a judge at 8:30 in the morning. On the other hand, a Tom Arnold comedy which included a prop van topped with a giant-ant simulacrum ("See, you can tell it's a comedy," one P.A. told me, pointing at the van) was filming late at night in the no-man's-land around the corner from me a few weeks back, and while walking one of my kids to sleep I got a snippy attitude from somebody who was at least acting like a director. (I like to think it was The Skeptic helmer "Tennyson Bardwell," because if you're going to get rudeness you might as well get it from somebody with a cool-sounding name, but the plot synopsis doesn't sound like what I saw shooting.)

Now that the productions are back in earnest, I am again haunted by an economic question: How can an industry with such a dubious future still support such largesse? Shark was filming outside the L.A. Times building a few days back: Seven trailers, ten or so tents, two 18-wheelers, several more six-wheelers, assorted pickup trucks and other vehicles, the usual mountains of food... Now I like pretty much anything with James Woods, who came as close as any American to preventing the 9/11 attacks, but does a second-ten-rated series really generate that kind of economy anymore?

In his op-ed column last Saturday, Tim Rutten analyzed the importance of American Catholics in this election cycle. In fact, the candidate who carried Catholics nationally has won the popular vote in nine consecutive presidential elections. Hillary Clinton carried Catholic Democrats through Super Tuesday, then seemed to lose them — along with the campaign's momentum — to Barack Obama.

Tuesday, according to Rutten, the New York Senator renewed her claim on Catholic loyalties and their votes were critical to her victories.  According to exit polls conducted by CNN and MSNBC, Clinton won 63% of Ohio's Catholic vote and 64% in Texas. She carried 66% of the Catholics in Rhode Island, a state where more than half the population is Roman Catholic. In Vermont, the only state he won Tuesday, Obama carried 52% of the Catholic voters.

More interesting, Catholics across the country are turning out to vote at what appears to be a record pace. So far their percentage of all primary votes cast — both Democratic and Republican — doubles their percentage of the population generally.

Apparently, as Catholics go, so goes the nation . . .at least electorally.

Heather Mac Donald's lightning-rod piece on campus rape takes the top spot this week, with Dallas Weaver's Blowback on copyright a very close second. Readers didn't make this another mostly-Obama week, opting instead for conscience-stricken paparazzi and stubborn sadness. Here they are:

1. What campus rape crisis? by Heather Mac Donald
2. Copyright this, by Dallas Weaver
3. Surge doesn't equal success, by Michael Kinsley
4. The snapper snapped, by Nick Stern
5. Too good to win, by Joel Stein
6. White like us, by Gregory Rodriguez
7. What a little bird told us, by Jonathan Rosen
8. The miracle of melancholia, by Eric G. Wilson
9. Stonehenges all around us, by Craig Childs
10. Food or fuel? by the editorial board

Bored after the War On Christmas ceasefire, I tried in late 2007 to get another civil war going, this one over New Year. To wit: Who are you to wish me well on holidays drawn from your "rational" sun-worshipping eurocentric calendar? My lunar calendar, where holidays show up during high midsummer in some years and the dead of winter in others, where we never know which month is crop-planting month, is no worse than yours, merely different!

I got nowhere with that prank. One bored colleague replied, "Eh, our calendar's no better. They can't even do it without adding an extra day every four years."

Too true! To all people who still wonder why the cycles of the day, the lunar month and the year can't be better matched, and to everybody else, I highly recommend Thomas S. Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. "Being able to understand how it looks from the creator's point of view is just great," writes Amazon reviewer A Customer. "My lesson learned: work your tail off and when you win, it always looks easier than it was..."

But don't take Customer's word for it, take mine. Whether you're a history buff or just curious about why people still comprehend so much of the world through meaningless human-scale patterns, Kuhn's book is full of valuable insights and disambiguations.

The editorial board doesn't always get its way, but it, along with local activists, scored a victory yesterday when the City Council declared the former residence of writer Charles Bukowski a historic landmark. The board opined back in September, "To pick one place to officially associate with the man would seem to limit his legacy. But it's still a good way for his hometown to honor him." (No such luck for John Fante.)

Check out the report [pdf] from the city's Cultural Heritage Commission explaining why, of Bukowski's many residences, the De Longpre place merited saving. Also see columnist Al Martinez's take on Bukowski's alleged Nazism (and Opinion L.A.'s), and Book Review editor David L. Ulin's not-so-kind critique of the latest Bukowski poetry collection.

And there's at least one other unofficial Bukowski memorial in town (even if the bedrock of that square, Craby Joe's, is gone).

With the news that Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, the late alleged murderer of two police officers and three city officials in Kirkwood, Missori, was a well known city-council gadfly, we set the wayback machine to 2003, for a Los Angeles Times story by Hugo Martin, explaining some of the tensions involved in giving broad leeway to public blowhards. Here it is in full print-spec glory:

Los Angeles Times
Wednesday September 24, 2003

THE STATE
COLUMN ONE
Freedom's Test, or Just a Pest?
* Gadflies deemed out of order are arrested or ejected from some public meetings. The 1st Amendment and decorum are at odds.

Home Edition, Main News, Page A-1
Metro Desk
53 inches; 1834 words
Type of Material: Column

By Hugo Martin, Times Staff Writer

After greeting the San Bernardino County supervisors with a mock Nazi salute, Jeff Wright, a homeless Air Force veteran, stepped to the public microphone to complain about being arrested at a regional transportation meeting a few months earlier.

Board Chairman Dennis Hansberger told him to stay on the topic under discussion, which was the salaries of county attorneys. Wright then threatened to seal the supervisor's mouth with duct tape, which he had brought with him.

Hansberger responded by ordering sheriff's deputies to eject Wright, who was led out of the building in handcuffs, screaming about police brutality.

It was nothing new -- for Wright or for the board of supervisors.

The March incident was among the more than 100 arrests or ejections deputies have carried out at meetings of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors since 1989, according to an unofficial tally by one local activist.

Although law enforcement officials say they cannot confirm the exact number, they put the tally in the dozens.

In 2000, reports of those arrests earned the Board of Supervisors the "Black Hole" award, a dubious distinction given by the California First Amendment Coalition to public agencies and officials that the group says show disregard for open government and 1st Amendment rights.

In the past year, the pace of arrests and removals at San Bernardino County supervisors' meetings has increased to about one per month, with most speakers being removed for failing to stick to the agenda and then refusing to surrender the lectern.

Hail to thee, Paulites, Paulettes, Pauline Order, Ronettes, Ronnies, Ronalitos, whatever you choose to call yourselves. May the cosmos bless you for posting more than 150 comments on my last piece of chum, which is now updated.

I beg your forgiveness for having let practically all of these comments fester for 16 hours unmoderated, after having put all of you through an onerous verification process. Actually, I do not beg your forgiveness, for that is an insult to the Holy Spirit that cannot be forgiven forever, the sin that not even eternity can wipe out. Cast me without your ranks, Ronites, but do accept my eternal gratitude to you for bringing life to our empty tables.

And on behalf of the L.A. Times thank you for feasting at the more plentiful board of Top o' the Ticket.

My feelings on the fabled Sam Zell f-word exchange with a photographer for the Orlando Sentinel pretty much boil down to: Whatever you say, Mr. Zell! How else may I be of service? I'm not going out on  a limb by saying it's bad form for the chairman of a company to curse out an employee. (Based on our story's indication that Zell was seeking to smooth things over with the employee in question, it would appear he feels the same way.) But I'm with Patterico in finding the photographer's "what readers want are puppy dogs" comment to be far more alarming than the four-letter word. A cuss is just a cuss, but there is a lot of journalistic arrogance embedded in that dismissive comment about readers. People on the wrong end of the plummeting-circulation continuum should show some humility, and maybe even gratitude, toward the customers who are still showing up.

During our own Republican endorsement campaign, I lobbied first for Rudy Giuliani and then for Mitt Romney, not merely hoping to kill the market for Matt Welch's book, but because I believe opposing The New York Times in all things takes precedence over all other concerns. So I'm the one who should be forthright, gracious and magnanimous and admit that the other Times just beat the pants off us in endorsement power in our own state.

Final score: Times east, two for two; Times west, one for two.

For what it's worth, we removed the candidates' collective and individual probabilities of winning as a factor in determining 2008's semi-finalists, and I call that a wise decision. Nor did my dream race (Richardson-Paul to Obama-Paul to Obama-Giuliani to Obama-Romney, which I think is a song by The Who) differ substantially from that of the board. Why did your dream race change if electability was not a factor? you may ask. I can reply only that we do not live in dreams.

We also attempted to be as forthright, gracious and magnanimous in building our endorsement cases, to think through the meaning of our words and to try to get your input, as well as or better than any paper published on any of the terran planets. We look forward to continuing to serve you in the exciting election year we expect. Thanks for tuning in to Opinion L.A. and the L.A. Times, and we welcome your thoughts.

Seven pickets in a row: Survey finds 100% opposition to L.A. Times

Seven picketers on the line outside CBS this morning. I stopped to chat them up. To the following question...

Do you think the L.A. Times' coverage of the strike has been horrible?

...I got seven affirmative responses.

Optimism unbound

Nikki Finki, who has actually covered world issues as a foreign correspondent, hears optimism coming from the labor side of strike negotiations. And more optimism. Nothing but optimism for five days or so. Even the Oscars may go forward.

Who's the only loser in this? I am, the guy who wants the strike to continue for at least one full calendar year.

Not sure why the Lone Star State's own David Morgan is writing to us to voice his objections to William Kristol's hiring as a New York Times columnist, but David, now that you've canceled your subscription and are in the market for a first and main source of news, can I interest you in the Los Angeles Times? Our four-day weekend subscription is a fantastic bargain. Absolutely no William Kristol!

The problem is not that the Times has hired a strong Conservative in Wm Kristol, but that it has brought in a relentless Neoconservative who, with his cohorts in the American Enterprise Institute and the Pentagon's Department of Special Plans, may have deliberately lied us into an unnecessary and murderously brutal invasion of a country that could have done us no harm. Some people might see that as treason.

I've just cancelled my subscription to the Times, the periodical that has been my first and main source of news and other information for over 40 years.

David Morgan
Dallas TX

And here I thought I was the only old-bus fetishist in Los Angele County! Reader Ben Harrison responds to my adventure at the MTA bus auction with a call to investigate the proliferation of Transit TV. As it happens, I did weigh in on Transit TV more than a year ago, with a first-person piece (gone from the L.A. Times web site but still viewable here) that got at some of Ben's questions. My aim was more to consider Transit TV as a technical feat than to condemn it as a violation of my right to a TV-free public-vehicle commute (a right I'm not actually sure I have), but I did mention the volume problem, which in my experience doesn't seem as bad these days. For what it's worth, Transit TV's surveys at the time indicated pretty broad customer support for the devices — take that with as much salt as you like, though I recall the survey was done by some respectable third party. And without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Ben Harrison:

I ride Metro buses several times a week and the latest aggravation is jabbering TV monitors.  Most Metro buses now have two TV monitors, billed as entertainment and public service, but with a lot of advertising as well.  Some of the time the monitors are merely on visual mode, which is not too bad, but then come the protracted periods of loud, intrusive jabbering (advertising, news, cooking shows, etc.) in English and Spanish.  Most people I have talked to, including most bus drivers, find the noise irritating.  For the most part the volume controls don't work or the drivers don't know how to adjust them.

I would be interested in knowing -

1.  who paid to install these monitors and who will pay to maintain/replace them?

2.  how much revenue the advertising brings in and whom it benefits?

The media takes on itself after Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire. Who does it best?

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has the most comprehensive take, calling this a "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment before listing what all the major papers said before polls closed:

As the evening dragged on, the commentators had to consider the possibility that Hillary's "showing of vulnerability," as Tom Brokaw put it, might have helped her, and that Bill Clinton might have boosted her chances after all. In other words, that the coverage had missed the point.

This was delicious. The coverage had been so out of control there was speculation about when Hillary might have to drop out.

Brian Williams on MSNBC says pundits missed all the pro-Clinton clues, and that doesn't stop him from doing some more predicting: 

There will be numerous deconstructions over the days to come. Theories about how African-American candidates for office have confounded pollsters (see: Bradley, Wilder, Gant, Jackson) will receive a thorough airing, and deservedly so.  We in the media will beat ourselves (and deservedly so) for reaching conclusions before the voters have spoken. A further prediction?  Give us a few weeks — we will promptly forget the lessons of this debacle in polling, predictions and primary politics. We will all live to screw up another day, though our performance in New Hampshire will be hard to beat.

John Podhoretz had harsh words:

The next day, Obama compared himself to Martin Luther King — and nobody batted an eye. But when Hillary sought to use his analogy to her advantage by pointing out that it took an experienced politician named Lyndon Johnson to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act — thus making her case that there is a place for words and a place for actions — she was deemed desperate, even possibly racist.

A bizarre double standard had emerged in the media, under which Obama could say anything while Hillary could say nothing. Her efforts to get herself a victory in New Hampshire were interfering in the most blatant media effort I can remember to impose a coronation on the body politic.

Tommy Christopher on AOL turns the MSM's favorite phrase for Hillary's emotive episode against it by asking "Is this the media's Muskie moment?"

But who needs the media to question itself when Bill Clinton does it so well?

So I continue my godawful record on making predictions, especially about the future. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, subject of my long-ago Democratic-nominee fantasy (expanded and elaborated with even more bad calls here), has dropped out of the race.

I should blame myself, but it's easier just to blame Bill Richardson. Starting with an armload of positives, he lost no opportunity to make no impression, succeeded again and again in not catching fire and (it can now be told) declined even to generate any enthusiasm from the L.A. Times ed board when he stopped in to see us long ago.

For all that, I thought he would be nuts to drop out before superduper Tuesday, when he might have gotten a California bounce. But given my record of lousy prognostication, maybe I'm the one who's nuts.

I'm unbowed! Here's a new prediction: By the time I'm 50, a NASA astronaut will have been taken to the International Space Station in a private vehicle. (If that seems too wild, consider this: I once believed that by the time I was 50 people would be travelling to Jupiter on a semi-regular basis.)

Sayonara, Bill. I'd say you've let me down, but as the Cavanaughs page at HuffPost's campaign-donor database makes clear, I never actually gave you anything.

Update! Richardson camp denies he's pulling out! I take it all back! Stick with my original predictions. I mean my other predictions, the ones where I turn out to be right.

One career strategy I considered during my happy time at Reason magazine was to become just enough of a bright boy of the libertarian movement to allow me to stage a very public falling out, write a tell-all book with a title like Ex-Friends or Movement Man or Up From Libertarianism or Whose Freedom?, then build a career as a David Horowitz/Michael Lind-style intellectual turncoat, getting paid to warn the masses about the dangers posed by my erstwhile allies. The strategy was unworkable for many reasons: It was a little too dishonest even for me; libertarianism doesn't generate enough public interest to support a longterm market in defection; and as it happens, defectors from and within libertarianism are a dime a dozen.

But the tactic I was planning to use would have been very effective: Simply collect story after story of the moonlight-and-magnolias Confederate nostalgists, stop-the-war-on-men misogynists, traditionalist homophobes, scientific racists and similar fringe characters who seemed to gravitate toward libertarianism, in numbers that I and others found remarkable.

Actually, I probably wouldn't have been very good at this tactic either: I don't do well with policing unacceptable commentary, "kicking" people "to the curb," writing colleagues out of polite society, defining away extremists and all those other things movement types (in all movements) love to do.

Which is a longwinded way of saying I'm not well suited to commenting on the treasure trove of jarring commentary Jamie Kirchik is publicizing from Ron Paul's old newsletters. Virginia Postrel has a fairly succinct reaction that I agree with (though given the timing and Paul's own tepid response to the matter, I'd be inclined to dial back the ho-hum, been-there attitude), and I'm fascinated by Wendy McElroy's call for the true author of the commentaries (apparently a real person) to reveal him- or herself. And I could hardly improve on the coverage by my beloved former colleagues at Reason.

But I do think there's a discussion to be held among libertarians about why this political philosophy seems to draw so many (classically) illiberal figures; and the hubbub over Paul's newsletters, which are revelatory whether Paul wrote them or not, seems like an opportunity.

While you're busy digesting the George Mitchell steroid report, the "serial news conferences" accompanying it and the curious mix of apathy and hysteria with which the nation seems to be greeting this long-expected news, take a look back through the archives of Dust-Up, for our debate on steroid use back in March. Halos Heaven proprietor Mat Gleason took the tough-on-enhancers stance:

The hysteria around privacy issues and drug testing is overblown. For years we were told there was no smoke, proof there was no fire. Jose Canseco changed that. His former teammate Mark McGwire fell from the pinnacle of prestige to perennial pariah in record time. What were they hiding? Lots. Why were they hiding it? There is a culture that protects superstars -- and some of the guys racking up big numbers were juicing, no doubt about it.

New York Sun baseball writer Tim Marchman, on the other hand, said let a thousand mystery-skin-creams bloom:

We don't need to protect ballplayers from themselves and their juiced-up peers. They have a union and other legal mechanisms by which they can do so, to precisely the degree they feel appropriate. If you don't think that's good enough, don't spend any money on baseball. Don't have any illusions, though, that the game is now different from any other sport, any other high-stress profession, or different from the game we all watched when we were kids.

Meanwhile, our former colleague Matt Welch launches into a locker-room-trashing 'roid rage over at Reason:

In any case, we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you give a former Senate Majority Leader $2 million a month for more than a year and half, force clubhouse lackeys to testify under threat of $100,000 fine, and have federal prosecutors grant vastly reduced sentences to drug convicts in exchange for cooperating with Mitchell's private investigation, you can indeed produce circumstantial evidence that Nook Logan (career home runs: 2) and nearly four score others may have taken legal supplements without a prescription to help them recover more quickly after working out, many during a time when such supplements were perfectly acceptable according to Major League Baseball's own rules. And as a direct result, your teenage daughter might eventually face drug testing if she plays sports, once Congress goes through another thrilling round of reforming government.

For an editorial I'm working on I've been learning about the process by which the MTA auctions off its retired buses (don't ask, just be glad you're not me).  My journey of spiritual discovery brought me down to a facility in Long Beach where Ken Porter Auctions at 10:00 am tomorrow will get rid of 55 former Metro buses, plus some non-running, no-provenance relics like the one pictured to the right. The MTA auctions off old buses once or twice every year, and according to the auction company there's a pretty brisk business in such liquidations for various municipalities. I was really struck by this plug-ugly vehicle because its interior is in pretty good shape and it seems like a steal for anybody in the set design or construction business. Isn't there a constant demand for vintage stuff like this in period films? For the prices we're talking about (inside dope is that most or all of tomorrow's inventory will be bought by scrap dealers), it would even be worth it for some high school class to buy this baby, strip off one side and use it as the set to do a Rosa Parks school play.

For that matter, who wouldn't want to buy one of the MTA's own, more recent, orange-and-white diesel gems? (See more details at the Ken Porter site.) My pal at Ken Porter Auctions tells me 44 of these babies have full engines and transmissions and could, in theory, still run. Won't they need a dozen or so buses to trash whenever they get around to making the next Die Hard picture? You could pick up a bunch now and sell them to Fox for a tidy profit! Or just buy a running vehicle, get your bus license, do some smog work and put in a port-a-john, and you've got the ideal traveling home.

Anyway, if you're thinking big or just want to keep me company, show up at 10 tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at 970 W. Chester Pl. Long Beach Ca 90813.

The editorial board says Garden Grove's Felix Kha should get his weed back:

The California Court of Appeal has upheld a lower court decision ordering the police to give back the marijuana seized from a driver during a routine traffic stop. This is likely to generate a wave of "Only in California" jokes, but just because it's wacky doesn't mean it's wrong.

In 2005, Garden Grove police officers stopped Felix Kha for failing to yield at a red light. Kha consented to a search of his car, and police found one-third of an ounce of marijuana that Kha explained was for medicinal purposes. Orange County prosecutors dismissed drug charges against him after contacting his doctor, and Kha sought the return of his property. The police refused, saying that returning the drug would violate federal laws against marijuana distribution and possession....

Can a city invoke federal law to justify its recalcitrance in complying with state law? This is where things could have gotten sticky. But the court correctly found that in this case federal law did not take precedence over California law.

The board says Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is still a threat, even if voters said no to his reforms. And the board addresses the FCC's claim that easing the cross-ownership ban won't curtail diversity.

LAPD officer and author Will Beall writes an ode to late daredevil Evel Knievel, and columnist Jonah Goldberg notes Mitt Romney's JFK moment. Author Karen Dawn says seals and people can get along in La Jolla, and U.C. Santa  Barbara senior research fellow Nathaniel Frank argues that we no longer need "don't ask, don't tell."

Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and other luminaries tried last week, but it was Hugo Chavez who drew the lion's share of Opinion's modest traffic. Venezuela stories took two places in the top 10, including Number One. And two others — Michael Rowan and Douglas Schoen's "Will Chavez pull the trigger?" and the Bolivarian Republic's own argument that "Venezuela knows what it's doing" — barely missed making the list. With the can't-lose campaign slogan "Pax Americana, cyber-bullying and Earl Ofari Hutchinson too," we round out the list. And if you want to revive the old argument about the Times' alleged bias against women writers, this he-man woman-haters collection of bylines should give you a start:

1. "Venezuela's path to self-destruction" by William Ratliff

2. "Bush isn't the only decider" by Bruce Ackerman

3. "How to punish a cyber-bully" by Jonathan Turley

4. "My taco with Tancredo" by Joel Stein

5. "Bad for Huckabee, good for America" by Dan Gilgoff

6. "Unheralded military successes" by Robert D. Kaplan

7. "The black-Latino blame game" by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

8. "Ron Paul isn't that scary" by Jonah Goldberg

9. "Venezuela veers toward dictatorship" by the editorial board

10. "At peace with Pax Americana" by Jonah Goldberg

Two views of Swati Pandey's recent Opinion Daily "Tancredo moves the lethal center."

Citing that hypothetical but remarkably popular suicide bomber from Mexico, Richard Eide says one o' these days...

Regarding your article on Tancredo's politics about illegal immigration, everything you said, and everything anybody else has said all goes out the window the moment we have a suicide bombing in this country. If the bomber is found to have come across the southern border the argument is over. The wall will go up ASAP along with the military on the border. Congress will be down there digging the fence post holes themselves, anything to keep their jobs in the face of a furious voter revolt. One suicide bomber and the immigration battle is over.

The tersely named "Raj," on the other hand, feels Pandey is just helping Tancredo demonize poor undocumented workers:

"But if Tancredo's ad — and Barack Obama's speculation — are to be believed, immigration will be a major issue in 2008, along with terrorism. And recent numbers suggest that voters are leaning toward tough-on-illegal-immigrant positions."

Swati Pandey needs to do more research before printing this garbage. This is not what we heard from the voters in Virginia and Kentucky two states where the Dems won handily instead of being a mouthpiece for anti-immigratn folks. For a reality check read Anita Kumar's article in Washington Post...

Swati's is garbage in garbage out, a kind of reporter that Tancredo relies on to spread his lies.

Regards

Raj

Still reeling from the brilliance of Michael McGough's recent Opinion Daily on anti-discrimination discrimination? So are McGough's old fans back in the City of Bridges, who remember his work for the Post-Gazette with affection. One Pittsburgher writes:

Mr. McGough,

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's loss is the Times gain and we in Pittsburgh are the losers.  But, we are still fortunate that we can continue to read your work. I want to relay to you that your discrimination column was discussed at length yesterday during Lynn Cullen's WPTT talk show.   

Thanks, Pat Lhota, Pittsburgh

Columnist Jonah Goldberg says when in doubt, be pro-life:

I confess that I lack passion about debates over RU-486, Plan B and other measures that terminate a pregnancy in the first few hours or days after conception, because that's when I'm least sure that a life is at stake. But when it comes to, say, partial-birth abortion, I am adamantly pro-life. I don't know if a fertilized egg has rights. But I am convinced that a baby minutes, days or weeks before full term is, simply, a baby. And despite what you constantly hear, Roe vs. Wade doesn't recognize that fact.

Foster mom Mary Callahan reconsiders parenting for pay. Middlebury College scholar in residence Bill McKibben notes that if you want political power, all you need is a message, e-mail, and a widget. Retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan says it's time to either expand or scrap a Cold War era missile ban that's hurting U.S. and Russian security.

The editorial board praises local and state agencies for their quick response to the Newhall Pass crash. The board also says it's time drug makers acknowledged that cough medicines don't work on kids, and asks the House of Representatives to vote yes today on a bill that would protect journalists from having to reveal their sources. 

Readers mostly congratulate Al Gore for his Nobel Prize. Anaheim's Kee Kim says, "Congratulations, Nobel committee; you guys finally caught up with Gore's brilliance. He should have been honored years ago for inventing the Internet."