Incoming University of California President Mark Yudof hasn't even settled into his office yet, and already the university's 2006 pay scandal is coming back to haunt him. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote yesterday about costly repairs for the university's presidential residence, and Contra Costa Times columnist Daniel Boreinstein pointed out last month that the university lowballed Yudof's compensation (a mere $828,000). The real figure, he said, would catapault Yudof to the top of the best paid university leaders:

The more accurate numbers: During his first year at UC, Yudof will receive $924,642 in salary, contributions to his retirement plans and car allowance, compared with his $832,560 in compensation at Texas.

University officials knew that the price for Yudof would raise concerns, especially considering he will receive about 76 percent more than ... outgoing President Robert Dynes.

UC Board of Regents chair Richard Blum (and the Los Angeles Times editorial board) call it a bargain, however. The departing University of Texas head is open to bonding with Gov. Schwarzenegger over a smoke in the governor's cigar tent, according to an interview with the Austin American-Statesman. He also hits the major talking points in today's clearly charmed San Francisco Chronicle:

He chews on a fat cigar and makes jokes about his sparse hair. He sports the burnt orange ties of his employer, the University of Texas, during trips to UC's Oakland headquarters and sucks down Coca-Cola Zero like he's in the Texas heat.

But behind his down-home manner is a man brought in to change the 10-campus university system to its very core.

Cue dramatic music!

Granted, state officials and the media are probably just happy to kick Dynes out the door, but it'll be interesting to see whether Yudof takes advantage all the good karma they're lavishing on him. Let's hope he means what he says about improving state support for the university -- and doesn't mention tuition deregulation.

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...

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) points out that the John Yoo torture memo is but one example of President Bush's hidden laws. High school junior Tom Stanley-Becker explains why opting out of an Advanced Placement class was a smart move. Columnist Patt Morrison says L.A. muralists have to fight for their work on two fronts -- taggers on one side, and numbskulls with paint rollers on the other. And columnist Rosa Brooks acknowledges that Hillary Clinton may have a right to keep campaigning, but says it isn't the right thing to do:

Tell an American he shouldn't do something, and odds are he'll respond by insisting that it's his "right" to do it, regardless of how pointless, destructive, offensive or downright stupid it may be....

Tell your 10-year-old daughter she's not allowed to buy thong underwear emblazoned with sexy slogans, and she'll give you an angry lecture about her free-expression rights.

Don't fall for it.

The editorial board agrees that it's over for Clinton:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has run a long and admirable campaign for president of the United States. The prospect of her presidency has energized voters, particularly but not exclusively women, and offered working people a champion for their cause in this time of economic malaise. She has demonstrated resolve and character. And yet, she has lost.

The board also praises the Los Angeles Unified School District's new deputy superintendent for disciplining LAUSD officials in a school sex case, and explores whether a new Sprint Nextel broadband venture could expand service across the country.

On the letters page, some readers aren't as enamored with taco trucks as the editorial board. East L.A.'s Omar Loya says, "I now have to deal with grease stains on the street, trash on the sidewalks, generators running late into the night and extra traffic."

Since I'm the resident thought-tormented Ron Paul fan on staff, I've taken a special interest in the Paul supporters who are objecting to the attention we've paid to the white-supremacist past of Paul-connected judicial candidate Bill Johnson.

Thanks, everybody, for commenting. Some clarifications are in order:

Commenter "Tracey," declares that Johnson is not the author of the so-called Pace Amendment. This is incorrect. Johnson confirmed in a phone call with our own Robert Greene that he is indeed the author of the Pace amendment and of the "James O. Pace" book Amendment to the Constitution.

Commenter "blakmira" calls us "lower than scum" for the "smear" on Paul in our editorial about the Johnson campaign, which noted that Johnson had affiliated himself with the Paul-for-president campaign; apparently our mentioning that was clear evidence of counter-rEVOLutionary tendencies. In any event, Paul himself appears to be taking the matter seriously enough that he has renounced his end of the affiliation. Here is an email we just received from Paul's congressional chief of staff Tom Lizardo:

Over the past several weeks, I have also been involved in assisting Dr Paul with the consideration of candidates who are seeking his endorsement for their campaigns.  We have gone through the process of setting up a method by which candidates are to be considered for such endorsements.  During that period, we have also received and reviewed requests from dozens of candidates.

Although Bill Johnson's name ended up on the endorsement list, he did not go through this process.  In light of this fact, and in light of the revelations regarding his past statements and associations, Dr Paul has retracted the endorsement and hopes that, in the future, the process that has been put into place will mitigate the likelihood of similar errors.

Several commenters claim that they know Bill Johnson and he couldn't possibly be a racist. We make no judgments on what Johnson believes in his heart, only on what he has publicly advocated. But Paul, whose attentiveness to such matters has not always been impressive, deserves credit for taking quick action in this case. The claim by another commenter that Johnson is part Japanese is also incorrect, though Johnson does speak fluent Japanese as a by-product of his LDS mission in the land of the Rising Sun. We can confirm that "Turning Japanese" by the Vapours remains one of the finest works of rock orientalism ever recorded.

Finally, a commenter at dailypaul.com claims that our staffer is the same Robert Greene who writes self-help books on "How to crush your competitor," "How to secure the corner office," "How to take over your supervisor's position" and "The 48 Laws of Power." I can confirm that Greene is not that person and that if he ever wrote a self-help book it would be about how you can become a better person by scrupulously reading the fine print of voter information packets in obscure municipal elections. Nor is he the Robert Greene who denounced Shakespeare in his "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a million of Repentaunce." Moreover, Robert Greene confirms that he is a Stratfordian in good standing, though if pressed he would put Pericles, Prince of Tyre in the "disputed authorship" category.

Hope that clears things up.

So we've had all this back-and-forth about the effect of immigrants (legal and otherwise) on the economy, dwindling natural resources and societal well-being, as if it were a one-way street. But what about the economy's effect on immigrants? From NPR:

Fewer immigrants living in the United States are sending money back to their home countries. A survey by the Inter-American Development Bank shows remittances by Hispanic immigrants are flat. But the percentage of immigrants sending money home to Latin America is down dramatically in just two years. The report cites the U.S. economic slowdown and a tougher line on illegal immigrants.

Anti-immigration advocates need not gloat: This isn't doing the home front's economy any good. One undocumented construction worker told NPR he's only saving out of fear that he'll be rounded up: "We're not spending money. What we earn, we save, because we may need it."

So, no silver lining for the U.S. — though there is a catch-22: Restriction of immigration may be fueling the drop in remittances, but if that money doesn't keep supporting families abroad, more people may try to cross into the U.S. to find work. Let's hope Tom Tancredo needs some remodeling done.

Top of the Ticket blogger Don Frederick notes that Hillary Clinton has spoken out on one of the most pressing issues of the day — the racy Miley Cyrus photos. She told Yahoo:

"From everything I've heard she's a great kid and obviously very talented, but I think we need to do more to preserve our kids' childhood," Clinton said.

The presidential hopeful said she feels it is the parents' responsibility to protect a child.

"They grow up so fast and [there are] so many influences coming from all directions these days," Clinton said. "I think it's important that all of us as parents draw some lines here."

Let's leave aside whether the pics are appropriately allusive to classicism and the realities of contemporary young adulthood or plain creepy (and really, isn't the one of her with daddy Billy Ray way creepier?). And let's also ignore that people over the age of 18 probably can't even understand the Miley Cyrus-was-Destiny-Hope-is-Miley-Stewart-is-Hannah-Montana identity uroboros despite Slate's helpful explanation.

Instead, I'd just like to point out that John McCain and Barack Obama have both appeared with Miley Cyrus and seem to be supporters of her confounding identity politics and her corruption of American youth. I'm waiting for McCain and Obama to prove they're also for The Children with full Miley denunciations/renunciations/throws-under-the-bus.

*Photo courtesy the Associated Press.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg says issues that may seem irrelevant actually give us clues about the candidates:

Whatever the true import of Obama's relationship with Wright may be, or whatever the proper weight voters should give to his view that poor whites "cling" to guns and religion because they've suffered under bad economic policies, or, for that matter, what Clinton's "sniper fire" story says about her, it strikes me as absurd to argue that these data are meaningless but their stance on a gas-tax holiday is of enduring importance.

Pacific Council on International Policy adjunct fellow Joshua Kurlantzick profiles China's educated, wealthy next-generation nationalists who aren't afraid to be aggressive toward the West. And USC's Sara Catania has an idea for the Silver Lake Reservoir: a new kind of urban park.

The editorial board thinks a tax on services might work for California if done right and explains why Yahoo and Google's teaming up on advertising would be bad for consumers. The board also responds to the death of racehorse Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby last weekend:

As we explore the limits of physical performance, sports trend toward the more extreme, even if it harms rather than enhances the athlete's health. Steroids in baseball, eating disorders in prepubescent gymnasts, whatever it takes to win, until there's a public pushback that threatens the sport. Without industry reform in the near future, it's easy to imagine such a pushback against the biggest athlete of all -- the racehorse.

On the letters page, readers discuss May Day. Chino's Raul Perez asks, "How is it that I have to have a passport to enter the country in which I was born, raised and served in the armed forces while others come and go as they please?"

John McCain is using Cinco de Mayo, the most American of Mexican holidays, to launch a Spanish-language version of his website. He's also agreed to attend the National Council of La Raza annual conference this summer, which has the usual suspects up in arms.

McCain will have to pull off an interesting balancing act as the general election nears: wooing crucial, increasingly Democratic-leaning Latino voters while roping in Republicans who favor tighter immigration policies. He got a bit of practice doing just that during Republican debates -- goaded by single-issue long-shots Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo, not to mention the back-and-forth between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee over who dared show compassion to immigrants.

But since last summer, when comprehensive immigration reform lost another round in Congress, McCain has moved further away from his original position, as expressed in a bill he co-sponsored with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Now McCain emphasizes a security-first approach and he has said he wouldn't even vote for his original bill if it came up again in Congress (See The Times' McCain endorsement for the editorial board's take on that switch.)

And while it is pretty clear that a good number of Latino voters -- whether newly-registered or not -- don't like tough-on-immigration rhetoric, it's not clear whether having a Spanish-language website gets them all that excited. After all, most second-generation and almost all third-generation Latinos speak English. Symbolism does count for something, but it probably wouldn't compensate for an about-face on comprehensive immigration reform.

*Photo courtesy Bloomberg News.

Journalist and food critic Alice Feiring explores why California wines aren't what they used to be:

Forget "Eureka," the new state motto can well be: "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing." Today's California wines are overblown, over-alcoholed, over-oaked, overpriced and over-manipulated.

When I first stopped drinking the Left Coast, it was because I was offended by the overuse of wood, boring flavors and lack of structure. The wines, many of which had plenty of edge and personality, seemed neutered to me. I soon learned that the other part of the story was that an arsenal of technology was deployed to make them that way: yeast, enzymes, tannin, oak and acid, as well as over-extracting techniques, micro-oxygenation, dialysis and reverse osmosis.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez calls out Barack Obama for flip-flopping on Rev. Jeremiah A Wright Jr. And Los Angeles City Employees Retirement System trustee Kelly Candaele says CalPERS should stick to being an "activist" investor.

The editorial board warns Angelenos that a racial separatist running for judge could win if they don't get out the vote. The board also checks in on trouble in the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia and thinks California should bring fairness to its school spending.

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."

Big Sunday founder David T. Levinson reflects on the idiosyncrasies of pop volunteerism, and Ronald Brownstein picks apart John McCain's true views on the U.S. military's future in Iraq. Merrick J. Bob, executive director of the Police Assessment Resource Center, investigates better ways to track racial profiling by LAPD officers, and cartoonist Rob Rogers snarks at Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's problem relationships. Joel Stein finds out that a new citizen's vote is worth $6 and a cookie:

There's an emotional ceremony every month in which 3,500 newly naturalized citizens pledge their loyalty to the United States, and it really feels like they've joined a community of shared values, goals and purpose. Then, as soon as they pass through the gates of the L.A. County fairgrounds and enter the parking lot, they are charged from the right by Republicans and from the left by Democrats, begging them to register to vote. It is a bit like kissing the bride and being told your new father-in-law is a Capulet and your mother-in-law's a Montague and they've each registered you for a Glock.

The editorial board calls for the Supreme Court to let a murder victim's posthumous testimony stand, and wonders how to turn the beleaguered Santa Barbara Plaza project around. The board also whips out its pen to defend taco trucks against a new L.A. County ordinance:

Supervisors may have expected the new law to attract little controversy; after all, it was backed by Eastside restaurateurs and developers, a group with considerably more money and political power than the largely immigrant entrepreneurs who own taco trucks. But it has raised the ire of a far larger group: the thousands of Angelenos who have long gathered at taco trucks, in many cases since childhood, for quick carnitas burritos or mouthwatering cemitas, central Mexican sandwiches filled with avocado, cheese, fried meat and other gut-busting goodness. An Internet-driven movement started by a pair of Highland Park residents has already produced 2,200 signatures on a petition to repeal the law. Sign us up too.

Readers also react to the LAPD's dismissal of all complaints of racial profiling from last year. Leni Fleming writes:

"Los Angeles Police Department officials announced Tuesday that they investigated more than 300 complaints of racial profiling against officers last year and found that none had merit" is, bar none, the most hilarious sentence I have ever read in The Times.

And I'm white!

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.

Today marks a few other holidays that I missed. President Bush marked the National Day of Prayer by recounting how past presidents prayed, and sort of taking a few shots at himself:

[W]hen you think about our faith you can find it in the Pledge of Allegiance, you can find an expression of American faith in the Declaration of Independence, and you can find it in the coins in our pockets. I used to carry coins -- (laughter) -- in about 10 months I'll be carrying them again. (Laughter and applause.)

The fidelity to faith has been present in our nation's leaders from its very start.... On John Adams's first day in the White House, he wrote a prayer that is now etched in marble on the fireplace in the State Dining Room, and he prayed, "May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof." Now we'll leave it to the historians to judge whether or not that happened throughout our history. (Laughter.)

Bush also made a speech appreciating the start of Asian Pacific American History Month, and of course, made his Law Day proclamation.

And you wouldn't know it from Bush's speeches, but today marks the fifth anniversary of the unfurling of the "Mission Accomplished" banner. Hillary Clinton and even John McCain took the opportunity to lash out on war policy. Barack Obama said Clinton and McCain's gas tax plans were gimmicks, like the sign.

Even if Bush was silent, press rep Dana Perino did comment on the banner yesterday. As USA Today reported:

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."

Perino has my number.

The American Enterprise Institute's Norman Ornstein pities the uncommitted superdelegate, while columnist Patt Morrison laments the possible loss of local Channel 36. And columnist Rosa Brooks takes a more generous stance than most on Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s latest shenanigans:

Something about our collective willingness to throw Wright under the nearest subway train strikes me as a bit too easy.

Sure, Wright's a self-centered jerk, but he's unfortunately not the only man in the United States who believes the conspiracy theories he's been spouting....

We can dismiss Wright as bitter and twisted -- but are we prepared to also write off somewhere between a quarter and half of all African Americans? If not, we'd better ask why do so many ordinary people give credence to such wrongheaded theories?

The editorial board offers its take on Wright, too:

Obama countered Wright's angry oratory with graceful rhetoric once, but it didn't keep his erstwhile pastor quiet. So rather than giving another thoughtful critique of Americans' attitudes about race, Obama was right to denounce, clearly and specifically, Wright's most objectionable statements. It may have been a capitulation to his fiercest critics, but it was the repudiation that circumstances -- and Wright's latest pronouncements -- demanded.

The board looks ahead to "a new May Day," without the violence that marred last year's protests, and explores the dangers of overusing antibiotics in livestock.

Readers discuss Wright on the letters page. Saugus' Art Saginian says: "Wright is a radical. So what? Americans are as well-known for their brutal savagery as they are for their compassionate philanthropy."

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."

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is a politician after LAPD Chief William Bratton's heart. The  governor vetoed a bill Monday that would have required police departments to, as the NY Times put it, "join the federal immigration posse." The governor's merciless pen has received mixed reviews, but it's no surprise. The two-term governor holds her state's record for most vetoes issued.

As noted here a few weeks ago, the bill had an interesting parallel to Los Angeles' current drama over Special Order 40, the LAPD directive that bars officers from stopping people "for the sole purpose of asking about immigration status." The order came under fire when high school football star Jamiel Shaw was gunned down, allegedly by an illegal immigrant, but Bratton has defended the policy to the hilt — and rightly so, according to The Times:

The order was adopted in the late 1970s by then-Chief Daryl F. Gates, hardly a soft-on-crime liberal, who knew that the LAPD would be more effective if undocumented witnesses and victims felt free to speak with officers without fearing deportation.... It was good policy then and remains so today.

The governor didn't actually pull the "crimefighting" card herself when she vetoed it:

Napolitano, a Democrat, had been urged to reject House Bill 2807 by Latino activists who feared the measure would lead to racial profiling and further alienate the Latino community. But Napolitano cited neither of those issues in vetoing the measure. Instead, she relied on fiscal concerns, noting a provision that would have required the state to pay for the training of local officers in immigration enforcement if federal funds were unavailable.

In fact, Napolitano has been very clear that this ain't no sanctuary state. In an Op-Ed for the Washington Post urging Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform last year, she wrote:

Don't label me soft on illegal immigration. As a U.S. attorney (predating the Gonzales Justice Department), I supervised the prosecution of more than 6,000 immigration felonies. I govern a state where, in 2005, there were 550,000 apprehensions of illegal immigrants. I declared a state of emergency at our border that year, and I was the first governor in the nation to call for assistance from the National Guard.

Okay then. In any case, go Janet!

Time to turn the page on April, which means no more gazing at the standout photo in this year's Tom LaBonge calendar.

You know LaBonge, of course, the Los Angeles city councilman for portions of Hollywood, North Hollywood, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Hancock Park and Toluca Lake. And Griffith Park, of course, where the councilman took this photo of the Observatory, with downtown's two tallest buildings poking through the low cloud layer. LaBonge is a veritable Mr. Los Angeles, so he would probably bristle at this notion, but you could almost mistake this photo for something in San Francisco.

Now get ready to flip your Tom LaBonge calendars to May, where you will be greeted with a very different photo of Griffith Park — one with flames from last year's fire climbing the ridge and consuming Dante's View.

The June 3 stealth primary actually starts Monday. That's when voters can pick up (and mark and send in) vote-by-mail ballots. They're often are still called "absentee" ballots, but unlike the old days, you can take care of business early without having to pretend that you won't be around on election day. True "absentee" ballots, for people who can't vote in the regular mail voting because of military or other commitments, began April 4. So hurry up.

Click here to apply for a mail-in ballot if you live in Los Angeles County. Of course, there are other ways to go; you could apply at the registrar-recorder's office in Norwalk, or you could send in one of those applications that you may get in the mail this weekend, courtesy of one of the campaigns with skin in the game.

Campaigns are counting on mailbox voters and will try to reach them with glossy slate cards and brochures starting -- well, it's every campaign's closely-guarded secret, but probably Saturday, with big spurts planned for every weekend in May. Very few people are expected to actually go to the polls next month, so the mailbox is where the action is -- and now is the time the action starts.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. This election was going to be the presidential primary, when a record number of Californians would go to the voting booth to very likely have the final say in whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee. But last year the Legislature decided to strip out the presidential portion of this election and put it on the earlier February 5 ballot -- so our vote would have more impact. Ironic, huh?

The rest of the June ballot goes forward: Proposition 98 to curb eminent domain and phase out rent control, Proposition 99 just on eminent domain, party primaries for state Assembly and Senate, and in Los Angeles county, elections for Superior Court judge, district attorney and county supervisor.

Click here to see the Times endorsements for Superior Court, and here to see our endorsements for district attorney and two of the three supervisorial contests. Endorsements in the other races are coming soon, and of course you shouldn't even dream of voting early until you get the benefit of our guidance. But suit yourself.

And click here for the latest on the June 3 election, the November 4 election, and every election in between.

Tim Rutten marvels at the questionable artistic value of "Grand Theft Auto IV," and writer Gary Ferguson laments the senseless violence that hunters are unleashing on the gray wolf, just released from the endangered species list. New York University professor Stephen F. Cohen says hold the baloney: It's the U.S., not Russia, that's responsible for the heightened tensions of late:

During the last eight years, Putin's foreign policies have been largely a reaction to Washington's winner-take-all approach to Moscow since the early 1990s, which resulted from a revised U.S. view of how the Cold War ended. In that new, triumphalist narrative, the U.S. won the 40-year conflict and post-Soviet Russia was a defeated nation analogous to post-World War II Germany and Japan -- a nation without full sovereignty at home or autonomous national interests abroad.

The editorial board also worries about the gray wolf, and calls on Mexico's politicians not to fuel the debate over the future of the nation's oil industry with hot air. The board also gives Obama a thumbs-up for not falling victim to easy political gimmicks as gas prices rise:

High gas prices can prompt political hysteria in the best of times, but when they soar during an election year, the fumes rising from candidate stump speeches can make a person sick. Of the three candidates and the president they're out to replace, only one is telling the truth about oil -- and he may suffer for his political courage.

Readers rip into an editorial commending McCain for not indulging in political pandering. Fred Sokolow asks:

In your editorial, you characterize McCain as boldly preaching an unpopular message, but it's the same old, tired, free-market deregulation dogma.

There's nothing contrarian about it -- it's the Bush line, which has put America in the terrible spot we're in today.

Won't you begin to assess this guy for what he really is? He's no maverick; he's a throwback, and more of the same poison that's been killing America (and Americans, and Iraqis) for seven years.

... and soars on hot air from the blogosphere.

After more than a month of studied silence, the reverend has stepped into the public spotlight to defend his controversial remarks on race in America -- and make veiled criticisms of Sen. Barack Obama in the process. On Obama's repudiation of his incendiary statements, the minister had this to say: "He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician."

Obama reacted angrily to his former pastor's comments, calling them "a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth." Jonah Goldberg gleefully celebrated Wright's coming-out as "every bit as radical as his detractors claimed."

They're not the only ones with choice words about Wright's recent performances:

The Times' own Top of the Ticket blog asks, "Was Jeremiah Wright's speech set up by a Clinton supporter?"

... we should have been paying a little less attention to Wright's speech and the histrionics of his ensuing news conference and taken a peek at ... who was sitting next to him at the head table for the National Press Club event.

It was the Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds ... an ardent longtime booster of Obama's sole remaining competitor for the Democratic nomination, none other than Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. It won't take very much at all for Obama supporters to see in Wright's carefully arranged Washington event that was so damaging to Obama the strategic, nefarious manipulation of the Clintons.

Jeffrey Weiss over at the Dallas Morning News' religion blog wonders why pundits can't take Obama out of the equation:

After the NAACP speech, the all-news networks talking heads were mostly falling all over themselves to do political analysis about whether or not the speech would help or hurt Barack Obama, rather than attempt even a moment of thought about the meaning of what Wright actually said.

The Caucus over at the NY Times does a roundup of its own, observing:

Voices around the blogosphere say they’re tired of the media kerfuffle surrounding Barack Obama and his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., but they certainly keep writing about it.

They also say they’re sick of the expression “thrown under the bus,” but they keep using it.

For some Wright-Obama commentary with both local and international flavor, Ha'aretz's Shmuel Rosner invokes the "Bradley Effect," but also snarks at the minister's comments about Israel:

At moments he came off as mocking and somewhat vain, but made an effort to soften the hardliner perception his speech had left behind. He was also asked about his views on Israel. "Apartheid?" he asked, adding that Jimmy Carter used this term, not him.

Israel, Wright said, "has a right to exist". His only desire was that the Israelis and Palestinians live in peace. He made no reference to the sermon in which he connected the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the September 11th attacks, but he did make sure to emphasize his "Jewish friends". As it turns out, Jeremiah Wright also has a couple of those.

Daniel Nichanian at the Huffington Post compares Wright's position to one of the 2000 presidential election's most beleaguered political players:

Wright has no obligation to put Obama's interest above his own; dragged through the mud for news, the pastor has an opening to make people listen to him and hear the full context of his theology. Those who today profess themselves appalled that Wright would throw Obama under the bus miss the point that Wright does not think of himself as having any allegiance to Obama or to his election, just as Ralph Nader had no any allegiance to the Democratic Party making it hard to understand why 2004 was "a betrayal."

Wonkette agrees, in an offbeat sort of way:

He's blowing open the racial politics that Obama wants to close and claiming that Obama is insincere when he rejects Wright's "extreme sermons"; he's trying to balance a deserved self-defense with the collateral damage that that brings on Obama. He has an ego. Most importantly, he's just some old preacher and not Obama's surrogate father. He can say whatever he wants and Barry will just have to deal with it. Individual people have a right to defend themselves, and politicians have a right to disown them. That's all, goodnight.

While Sen. McCain had the plug pulled on the North Carolina Republican Party's ad highlighting the Obama-Wright connection, it seems the state party leaders will be getting the airtime they wanted for free.

UC Santa Barbara professor Brian Fagan warns that our future survival in a drier world depends on our ability to adapt to our environment, and writer Francis Fukuyama blames the Chinese government's weakness, not strength, for domestic human rights violations. Economist Korinna Horta and attorney Delphine Djiraibe argue that Darfur cannot be saved without fixing Chad first, and Jonah Goldberg thanks the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for revealing how radical he really is:

Asked whether he stood by his assertion that the U.S. government created HIV as part of a genocidal program to wipe out the black race, Wright mostly dodged but ultimately offered this nondenial denial: "I believe our government is capable of doing anything." He also offered a zesty defense of Louis Farrakhan -- "one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century" -- and dismissed criticism of Farrakhan as an anti-Semite.

To cap it off, Wright threw Obama under the bus. First, the pastor explained, Obama himself had taken Wright out of context. Moreover, Obama neither denounced nor distanced himself from Wright. And, besides, anything that Obama says on such matters is just stuff "politicians say." They "do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls." So much for Obama's new politics.

The editorial board warns parents that avoiding vaccinations for fear of autism could result in a future epidemic, and gives a reluctant green light to MTA's decision to turn some carpool lanes into toll lanes. The board also condemns the Supreme Court for upholding Indiana's voter ID law:

Indiana has a right to safeguard the integrity of its elections, but its identification requirement imposes sufficiently burdensome rules that it raises the question of whether the state is actually trying to discourage certain types of people -- the poor, the elderly, the infirm -- from exercising their right to vote. It's one thing to deter fraud; it's another to deter voting, particularly by certain classes of voters.

Readers react to the Dodger Stadium makeover. Ken Chane writes:

The Dodgers' new stadium plan sounds and looks wonderful. But before it attracts larger crowds, the current chaotic parking situation should be corrected. Management keeps touting the "wonderful fan experience." No matter how great it may be, it dissipates quickly when it's time to go home.

Immigration reform may be down and out, but it doesn't mean Congress can't agree on important immigration issues — such as ensuring that supermodels, singers and athletes have an easier time getting into the United States. From Sunday's L.A. Times:

Even in polarized Washington, Democrats and Republicans can appreciate immigrants who throw a fast pitch, have a beautiful face or sing a catchy song. Bills to make it easier for athletes, fashion models and performers, such as British singer Amy Winehouse, to work in the United States have enthusiastic support, even from some of the most hard-nosed immigration critics.

Yep, this is what immigration legislation has been reduced to in the name of progress. Not that I'm complaining — a little reform is better than none at all, right?

The legislation does deal with a more pressing problem: Many models have to apply for an H-1B skilled worker visa. This further limits the number of those priceless documents available to tech companies, which face a desperate annual scramble for international talent. But there is a solution in the making:

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) proposed a solution that could address Silicon Valley's hunger for skilled foreigners and benefit his city's fashion industry. His bill would create a new category for those models, probably limited to about 1,000 five-year visas, and would free up H-1B visas for more engineers. 

Ranking subcommittee member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) had something to say about that:

He said he could picture Weiner (who is single, handsome and 43) "in a posh downtown New York City hotel celebrating the passage of this bill surrounded by hundreds of energized, wildly ecstatic fashion models. And you know for a fact he's going to have an annual celebration. It's almost too much to bear."

Smith paused. "But not too much to oppose the bill."

Author Stefan Merrill Block remembers his home-school days:

When I tell people that I was home schooled, I frequently encounter an amalgam of awe, pity and curiosity. I can see the false images materializing behind their eyes -- a childhood spent idling in front of the TV in my pajamas, or spent subject to the fanciful whims of a flighty New Age mom, or spent imprisoned by my parents' ignorance and severity.

These myths have alternately amused and annoyed me, but now it seems they threaten the very survival of home schooling in California.

Hampshire College's Michael T. Klare says China and the U.S. would be wise to cooperate rather than compete for oil as the market heats up. And Bryan A. Liang of the San Diego Center for Patient Safety notes that drugs have to stay safe particularly as they grow more complex.

The Times endorses for district attorney and the Board of Supervisors, and asks the presidential candidates 10 serious questions.

Readers discuss proposals for converting carpool lanes into congestion-priced toll lanes. L.A.'s Samuel Gould says, "Charging anyone using special lanes at rush hour regardless of occupancy will merely give advantages to those who can pay and exclude those who cannot, selling convenience to the affluent."

President Bush has done it again -- commemorate the genocide of around 1.5 million Armenians nearly a century ago without offending the Turkish government by avoiding the word "genocide." Click here to read Bush's complete statement; here's an excerpt:

On this day of remembrance, we honor the memory of the victims of one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, the mass killings and forced exile of as many as 1.5 million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire. I join the Armenian community in America and around the world in commemorating this tragedy and mourning the loss of so many innocent lives.

Bush later implores Turkey and Armenia to normalize relations and praises those who "support joint efforts for an open examination of the past in search of a shared understanding of these tragic events." But an overwhelming consensus of historians already has a clear understanding of what went on between 1915 and 1917: that the mass deportations, forced marches with no food or water and senseless massacres were nothing more than a genocide of Armenians by the Young Turk government of the moribund Ottoman Empire. Bush's call for an "open examination" is nothing more than a nod to Turkey's rigid (and incorrect) position that whether the events of 1915 - 1917 constitute a genocide is an open question. It isn't.

Matt Welch, a former editor at The Times' opinion pages, wrote about Bush's mealy-mouthed genocide statements last year; click here to read his Op-Ed.

Not Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Both came out in favor of a congressional bill that would make it easier for victims of pay disparity to charge discrimination in court. That's what Lilly Ledbetter tried to do, but the Supreme Court ruled against her, adhering closely to a law that says discrimination must be reported within 180 days of its occurrence. As the editorial board wrote earlier this week:

As a narrow reading of the law, that's all well and good. But as a prescription for redressing harm -- the intent, after all, of anti-discrimination law -- the court's approach is impossibly binding. Most cases of discrimination, including the one before the court in Ledbetter, are difficult to discern at once, for the simple reason that most discrimination is covert. In the case of Lilly Ledbetter, a jury found that her employers had unfairly paid her less than male colleagues over a period of years.

Here's Obama's statement, and a video of Clinton on the Senate floor. The two returned to the capital to make remarks, uniting briefly on the issue before going back to trading blows in Indiana. (CQPolitics' David Nather has the play-by-play of their close encounter.)

For the record, the bill didn't get enough votes to avoid a filibuster. And John McCain joined most of his fellow Republicans in opposing it.

And as an aside, doesn't "Lilly Ledbetter" have a great Rosie-the-Riveter-ish ring? To hear more from the woman herself, read The American Prospect interview.

Right-wing Dutch politicos-turned-producers watch out — free speech cuts both ways. From NPR:

A video portraying aggressive behavior by Christians matched with verses from the Bible is gaining traction on the Internet.

Raed al-Saeed, a young businessman from Saudi Arabia, is the creator of Schism, a six-minute video response to Fitna — a short film released last month that portrays Islam as a violent, fascist-like ideology. "Fitna" provoked anger in many parts of the Muslim world.

In case you don't remember, Fitna (a word meaning "ordeal" in Arabic) overlaid verses from the Quran over acts of violence — suicide bombings, beheadings, planes crashing into the World Trade Center. It was produced by Geert Wilder, a Dutch politician who happens to be unabashedly anti-Islam. Some found the film to be an act of bravery — Jonah Goldberg compared it to the Darwin fish — while Dutch Muslims greeted it with disgusted silence.

Nonetheless, it's interesting to see a response to Wilder's celluloid screed — the point being that you can find nasty bits in many different religious texts, including Christianity. Unfortunately, Saeed didn't find footage of many nasty people saying those verses out loud — and his substitution of the political for the religious (such as images of the bombing of Baghdad and the beating of prisoners) detracts from his point.

But, to my utter surprise, Saeed did strike darkly comic gold with some unassuming Christians whose rhetoric runs pretty close to that of radical Islamists. One woman — who looks like she could have run my preschool daycare — explains , "I wanna see [young people] as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are in over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, because we have — excuse me, but we have the truth!"

And later, at the center of a roomful of kids, upper arms jiggling with righteousness: "Take these prophecies ... and make war with them .... This means war! This means war!"

But Saeed is quick to point out that this video isn't an attack on Christianity or any other religion. The final text of the video reads,

It is easy to take parts of any Holy book that are out of content and make it sound like the most inhuman book ever written. This is what Geert Wilders did to gather more supporters to his hateful ideology. To create schism.

A fair observation, spelling errors aside — and yet, according to NPR,

A day after Saeed posted his video on YouTube, it was taken down for having "inappropriate content." He immediately reposted it with a message arguing that if his video was inappropriate, then Wilders' Fitna also should be removed. For now, both videos are available on the site.

And it still is. Go check it out — there are a few versions up, but the most-watched one has racked up more than 350,000 views so far, and more than 4,000 comments. Looking through what people had to say about Islam and Christianity made me wonder: How many viewers who made generalizations about Islam based on 'Fitna' were fully prepared to give Bible-lady's comments a pass?

And while the film means to make a point about not judging a religion by radicalism, I have to say, those angelic-looking children dancing around with what looks like warpaint on their faces is a little too Lord-of-the-Flies for me to handle.

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!"

Given my obsession with the celebrity endorsement, I couldn't resist posting this one, courtesy E! Online:

Barack Obama just scored another Hollywood endorsement.

E! reality star Kim Kardashian is backing the Illinois senator in his bid for the White House. She revealed her support last night at the launch party for ex-jailbird Joe Francis’ Girls Gone Wild magazine at Area nightclub in L.A.

“I had dinner with him [Obama] once, and he just seemed very firm about the change, and that’s, like, his motto,” Kardashian said, referring to the slogan "Change We Can Believe In."

As E! is quick to note (and the Obama camp must be grateful), accidental celeb Kardashian did not dine with the senator alone -- the meeting took place at an event.

If celebrity endorsements are already fairly useless unless they're wackily self-aware enough for an image boost, what about the endorsement from the useless celebrity? Useful, or extra useless? Yes, I know the answer to that. Well, at least Kardashian can put some of her sex-tape cash toward Obama's campaign -- a quick search through the Center for Responsive Politics turns up no evidence of a donation.

New Republic executive editor J. Peter Scoblic says if you like George W. Bush's foreign policy, you'll love John McCain's:

Weaned by a military family on the lessons of that most classically Manichaean of modern conflicts, World War II, and psychologically defined by his own maverick streak, McCain's worldview may be more instinctual than intellectual. But it doesn't matter. Like Cold War conservatives, McCain has taken a moral observation that the United States is a force for good battling the forces of evil and turned it into a strategic guide.

Thus, he rejects negotiation with our enemies in favor of "rogue state rollback," repeatedly deriding as "appeasement" the 1994 deal that froze North Korea's plutonium program and mocking calls for unconditional talks with Iran....

Columnist Tim Rutten argues that immigrant bashers weren't right to rough up the pope. And author John M. Barry thinks paying for New Orleans should be the federal government's responsibility.

The editorial board urges Congress to pass a bill that would make it easier to assert pay discrimination in the work place, and analyzes Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's new budget. Finally, the board tells the Writers Guild of America to stop chastising the few members who broke ranks.

On the letters page readers discuss Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas. San Francisco's Joanne Minsky says, "I proudly voted for him twice, but his failure of memory and judgment calls into question the value of his forays into international politics. It is time to retire, Mr. President."

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?"

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 re