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!

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.

The Center for Immigration Studies' Norman Matloff comes up with a new measure that, he says, indicates H-1B visa recipients are not in fact the best and the brightest that proponents sometimes suggest they are.

I don't know how persuasive you'll find Matloff's "talent measure," or TM value. I think it fails to prove Matloff's main conclusions: that H-1B holders overall are not noticeably more skilled than native workers and that within the universe of H-1B holders, Western Europeans are more skilled than Asians. But the TM value has one attraction: It uses a marketplace value for making its assessment.

The value is calculated by comparing the ratio of the worker's salary to the prevailing wage figure stated by the employer. So if you've got a TM value of 1.0 you're making essentially the average salary for the job you're doing. Since employers can't (officially at least) pay visa holders less than the stated prevailing wage, nobody should show a TM value of less than 1.0. On the other hand, if you're a gifted worker you should have a higher TM value because you can command a higher salary.

The shocking conclusion? One multiplied by one equals one:

• The median TM value over all foreign workers studied was just a hair over 1.0.
• The median TM value was also essentially 1.0 in each of the tech professions studied.
• Median TM was near 1.0 for almost all prominent tech firms that were analyzed.
• Contrary to the constant hyperbole in the press that “Johnnie can’t do math” in comparison with kids in Asia, TM values for workers from Western European countries tend to be much higher than those of their Asian counterparts.

Shouldn't this last point address hyperbole about how "Johann" or "Jean-Luc" can't do math? I mean, the media self-flagellation about poor math scores concerns American students, not Western European students, right? Is Matloff saying Americans and Western Europeans are interchangeable?

The breakouts by company and nation of origin are interesting, but I'm not sure they prove anything other than that Microsoft appears to be a generous employer and that immigrant tech workers from Canada and Germany command higher salaries than those from India. That seems easily explicable: a Canadian worker would presumably be a native English speaker and thus a little more comfortable at negotiating a good price, while a German brings language skills that, given Germany's continued industrial and technological strength, would be worth paying a premium for. 

Or maybe language skills have nothing to do with it, and there are some other variables at work. (For example, suppose most or all of the people in the U.S. doing a particular job are Indian H-1B holders: Then a TM value of 1.0 could just mean that they're all above average, Lake Woebegone-style.) In any event, I don't see how these numbers refute the claims of the hypothetical industrialist or lily-livered immigration supporter who thinks the best person to judge what skills he or she needs is the person doing the hiring.

Prove that I just don't get it or am being intentionally obtuse by reading the whole article right here.

Update: Matloff responds. Good stuff in the comments too...

Don't be mad. I told you last week that you Democrats could go to Denver and be delegates to the convention August 25-29, if only you get yourselves elected at caucuses this Sunday afternoon. But Hillary and Barack had other ideas. Both of them scoured -- and slashed -- their lists of people who signed up by the April 2 deadline to be considered in Sunday's voting. The Sacramento Bee has the story. No, wait!! Obama relented!! An update from the Bee.

Obama apparently cut more names than Clinton. If you signed up to be with one of them, and your candidate didn't break your heart by cutting you from the list, you still have a shot; get your friends and family to go one of the two polling places in your congressional district (one for Obama, one for Clinton), and vote for you. The Democratic Powers That Be assure me you can just vote and leave; you don't have to stick around for the speeches. But heck, that's half the fun.

Good luck. And remember, you have to pay for your own flight to Denver.

For California Republicans, the work is done until September. Names were submitted in advance of the Feb. 5 primary and distributed based on the vote. The Mitt Romney delegates were released after their candidate dropped out, and now all California Republican delegates are pledged to John McCain at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis Sept. 1-4. If you were selected, you already know to check in periodically here. You can be an armchair delegate by signing up here.

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?")

California Democrats who aren't already some kind of super-duper delegate have until Wednesday at 5 p.m. to apply to become one of 241 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver on August 25-28. Despite claims from both the Clinton and Obama camps that their side has the whole thing wrapped up, it is looking increasingly likely that any old off-the-street Democrat who scores a spot at the convention just may have some real power.

The district-level delegates are distributed among California's 53 congressional districts, with 134 going to Hillary Clinton (because she won 42 congressional districts on Feb. 5) and 107 going to Barack Obama (11 congressional districts). Delegates are divided by gender, as well; check here for the numbers.

So with all those Democrats who are sure to apply, who decides who gets to go to Denver? Democrats do -- any registered California Democrat can vote on Sunday, April 13 in caucuses held in each district. Separate caucuses for Hillary people and Barack people, of course.

Keep up to date with elections big and small at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/elections/.

If the June 3 election is the Stealth Primary, what do you call the election coming up on April 8?

Next Tuesday, voters in 14 Los Angeles County cities will go to the polls to elect city council and school board members. Or they were supposed to, anyway. Our good friends in Vernon (population 90, or thereabouts) canceled their election because they just couldn't get anyone to challenge the two councilmen who are running for re-election. Of course they couldn't. The last time someone challenged an incumbent, the city cut off their power and declared their home unfit for habitation.

There are elections in some democratically run cities as well, such as Avalon, which was featured in the Times on Saturday and in the March Los Angeles Magazine. In addition to city council candidates, the ballot in the small city on Catalina includes a measure to raise a tax on admissions to city attractions from 4% to 6%.

Three cities — Culver City, Malibu and Sierra Madre — are asking voters to sustain, increase or otherwise update their utility users tax, more commonly called the phone tax. This is the same move that the cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena and Huntington Park took on Feb. 5, for the same reasons: lawsuits and changes in federal law have called into question the application of these taxes to cell phones and other more modern communications devices, so in order to keep the taxes the cities must get the voters to ratify or change the laws.

Culver City's Measure W (pdf) would keep the rate at 11%, relatively high in the world of municipal phone taxes. It follows the lead of Pasadena, which called on voters to keep the tax at the existing rate. In Malibu, Measure D follows the Los Angeles model, lowering the tax — in this case, from 5% to 4.5% — while broadening it to new technologies. The Sierra Madre ballot has two measures: Measure U (pdf) would allow the current 6% tax to increase to up to 12%, while Measure UA would require all such revenues raised to go to police and other public safety functions. Very clever — U could be safely passed by a majority vote as a general tax, while UA, as a special tax, must get 2/3 to pass but carries the appeal of public safety.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors recently passed on the chance to update the county's phone tax, and may revisit the issue in November.

To keep up to date on the region's head-spinning array of elections — April 8, June 3, November 4 and next March — check in frequently at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/elections/.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you shoot spitballs in home school? If so, Walter P. Coombs and Ralph E. Shaffer had better watch out, because home schoolers are fuming about their recent Blowback "Regulating home schoolers."  Commenters are all over the story — you can add your own two cents in the message board — and several readers were motivated to break out the old stone table and send an old-fashioned letter to the editor. Some samples:

Homeschooling Works Well Without State Oversight

As a homeschooling mom I am so encouraged by the many who choose to show their support for homeschooling and  those of us who choose to do so. However, I am surprised by how many of those who think that a proven method of teaching would be "improved" by state oversight.

If one does not wish to to consider the successful people both in history as well as those who are walking among us in workplaces and colleges that were homeschooled, perhaps you might want to consider your pocketbook. 

Regulating Homeschools would cost you big money in taxes that this state cannot afford right now. Do we really need a new section in the department of education to fund?

Wouldn't it make more sense to use all available money on the children currently in public schools?

In January, Education Week's comprehensive report card gave California a grade of "D+" when it comes to funding our schools, a "C-" on the teaching profession, and a "D" on K-12 achievement. Taken along with the California high school drop-out rate I find it odd that so many are calling for homeschoolers to be regulated now.

Do your research! Homeschooling works best without heavy regulation!

Angie Weaver
Garberville

---

Editors,

What a shame authors Walter P. Coombs and Ralph E. Shaffer hadn't yet shared their self-professed insights into the motives and intentions of home schoolers some 20 years ago when I began homeschooling for a number of years.  Maybe if they had my homeschooled kid would have been able to know some academic success in her life instead of graduating from UCLA.

Dana Strunk
U.H.S.P. (Uncredentialed Home Schooling Parent) Redlands

---

Dear Editor,

In reference to “Regulating Homeschoolers,” Op-Ed page, 3/13/08: To borrow a phrase, “there has always been something decidedly…anti-democratic in” traditional schooling. What could possibly be less democratic than top-down curriculum aimed almost wholly at raising test scores to keep the funds coming in? Ask any public school teacher who has a principal or district curriculum heavy breathing down her neck to make sure that she is on the right page in the language arts text book or is reading from the script in her teacher’s manual. In terms of the students, public school classrooms are at best benevolent dictatorships. With state standards and benchmarks to keep time with how could you possibly let students choose their own course of study? I imagine that the authors would also say that the bullying and teasing that goes on in traditional schools is character building and homeschooled children are missing out on that important part of growing up in a democracy. The fact is, state regulations have put a stranglehold on the public schools. The result is a disaffected populace. I think that Coombs and Shaffer would do well to check with their colleagues, college professors who look forward to having homeschooled students in their classes because those students have not had their passion bulldozed out of them, still can think for themselves, and are self-directed learners. Those, in my opinion, are the kinds of citizens we want in a democracy.

-Susie Stonefield Miller
Sebastopol,

---

It seems to me that Coombs and Shaffer protest too much. Although our older child was public schooled, we chose to educate our younger child at home. We have been able to teach him at the rate and level that fits him. He is ahead of his peers in all subjects, but one, where he we are taking extra time with him.

When my older child with similar abilities was in second grade the teacher told us that she was sorry he was bored; we should provide advanced work for him ourselves at home. We provide a secular education, sans TV, and are both scientists. There are many like us. Just as credentialed public school teachers regularly make the news for various abuses, there are abuses that occur and make the news among all groups of people. This cannot be defended, but neither can it be regulated away.

Our tax dollars pay do not support the schooling of our younger child - they go to the public schools. These same California public schools provide a popular program, abbreviated CAVA, which provides school at home. The children learn from a computer program and their parents.

Please do not promote misunderstanding through stereotypes, professors. There are many, many secular home schoolers who provide top-notch educations to their children. Studies conclude that home schooled children are better educated than their public schooled peers. Public schools admit they are having trouble teaching the children they already have. What would they do with over 166,000 more?

Lisa Whelan
Goleta

---

As a secular homeschooler I strongly resent Professors Coombs & Shafffer's attempt to pigeonhole all homeschoolers as some kind of religious nut cases who leave the education of their children to television. My six year-old daughter is studying American history, geography, grammar, spelling, vocabulary, cursive handwriting, literature, mathematics, and science. In addition she takes ballet and art lessons and has more friends than I am able to keep track of. A child's education, like a child's upbringing ought to be a parent's responsibility and prerogative. In the absence of specific evidence of abuse or neglect the state has no right to interfere.

Gideon Reich
Aliso Viejo

You were always called on last in history class because the teacher went in alphabetical order and your last name is Zyx. Not fair. You didn't even think of running for class president because the ballot, too, went in alphabetical order.

Well, no fear: In California, candidates' names are ordered by random alphabet drawing. They take this stuff seriously; see for yourself in Elections Code Sec. 13112. There are slips of paper, and capsules, and witnesses from the public and the media.

Yesterday Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office conducted the drawing for the June 3 election and, if you accept the theory that you've got a better shot if you're listed higher on the ballot, there's good news for any candidate whose name starts with H: You're on top. See for yourself. That works out nicely for Laurette Healey, who is running in the Democratic primary to succeed Lloyd Levine as Assembly member in the 40th district, in the West San Fernando Valley. Dan McCrory gets listed before Bob Blumenfeld. And pity Stuart Waldman, who got stuck near the end of the alphabet his whole life and now gets pushed even further back, with all the other Ws.

As for you, Mr. or Ms. Zyx, you're still at the end: Z was drawn last. Sorry. I'd give you the full ballot order, but that would be taking all the fun for myself.

Keep up to date on the June 3 stealth election -- and the November election besides -- at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/elections/.

Because the news out of South L.A. often is of crime and poverty, it's easy for those who don't live there to forget that these are neighborhoods, and often beloved neighborhoods. Nothing brings that home faster or more painfully than seeing residents pleading not to have a new school built at a certain location because, through eminent domain, it would displace so many of them. That was the scene at part of Tuesday's school board meeting for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The message, delivered by a parade of older African American residents with strong ties to the neighborhood, was unwavering: We love schools, we support schools, but many of these people are elderly, we are all friends, we are connected, please don't disrupt our lives. The story of one 72-year-old woman, especially, made listeners wince with sympathy. She had been a longtime teacher in LAUSD and had lived in her home for 30 years. Her community was there. Her friends were there. Everyone she interacted with on a day-to-day basis was there.

The change confronting this community was made all the more obvious by the sole speaker in favor of the school — a young Latino woman, holding a preschooler and speaking through an interpreter. The school was necessary, she said. Nearby elementaries couldn't follow normal two-semester schedules because of overcrowding.

There wasn't much the board could do for the first group. It already had delayed its decision to see if there were options. There were no options; no one had been able to locate another suitable piece of land in the neighborhood. If overcrowding weren't reason enough, the district is under a consent decree to restore normal academic calendars to all its schools. The school would be built.

Neighborhoods of older, settled people give way to the future. But then there's that 72-year-old woman. She was probably certain that at this point in her life, after having given years of service to young people in the city, she was settled down to quiet golden years in her neighborhood, with everyone familiar.  Chances are it won't be that way, and it's not easy to chase away imagined images of her in a disorienting new setting, searching for familiar faces.

OK, now it' s getting silly. We were willing to consider that, despite a couple of years of study, the Interior Department might need a few more weeks to decide whether the polar bear should be listed as threatened. It's not a simple case. As the first such decision made on the basis of global warming, it's fraught with all the "how bad will it get?" uncertainty the subject brings up. But the timing — rushing through oil-lease sales in polar-bear habitat before the species decision could be made — sure was convenient.

The "few weeks" has turned into two months with no sign of an impending decision. Some environmental groups predictably have sued — in fact, should the nation get a more environmentally oriented president next time, a few environmental lawyers who have been very busy the past seven years might find themselves job-hunting — and now the department's own inspector general is doing a "preliminary investigation."

Listing the bear would require this country to do something about global warming, and the thought of all those sacrifices we'll have to make (beyond reusing our plastic water bottles a couple of times) can get a little scary. Listing the bear is really just a ruse, to force us to save ourselves.

Last Thursday's primary debate in Texas between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was supposed to provide Clinton a chance to find a chink in Obama's armor. Unfortunately for Clinton, she never really succeeded. And maybe that's why her campaign seems to have grown more aggressive, tossing strategy out the door in favor of shooting blind and hoping something makes a dent. (So far, it's mostly resulted in friendly fire.)

The New York Times calls it a "five-point attack." Politico calls it "highly improvisational". A Clinton aide christened it the "kitchen sink" method. If you want to judge for yourself, here are some gems from the past few days:

The xerox zinger: In the debate, Clinton defended her accusation that Obama plagiarized Massachussetts Gov. Deval Patrick. "Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox," quipped the junior senator from the Empire State, who has never lifted a phrase in her life. That didn't go over so well with the audience, judging from all the boos.

Kiss and make up: Later in the same debate, Clinton practically sang an ode to Obama. "I am honored -- I am honored -- to be here with Barack Obama," she said, offering her hand to her opponent. Awww... But wait, there's more:

Whatever happens, we're going to be fine ... I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people. And that's what this election should be about.

A gesture of concession? Hardly. More likely it was a move to undo the damage wrought by the Xerox quote -- and to woo back key demographics, especially white women. That sugarcoated moment earned her a standing ovation.

Oh, oh, do the one of Barack, that's my favorite: The warm fuzzy feeling soon wore off, though -- instead of sticking to her "ready on day one" pitch at a Sunday rally in Rhode Island, Clinton did her best Obama impression (gesticulation included) for an appreciative crowd:

I could just stand up here and say ‘Let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified.’ The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.

Straight out of "Karl Rove's playbook": At a rally in Ohio, a supporter handed Clinton pamphlets the Obama campaign was distributing on her healthcare plans -- information she called misleading. "Shame on you, Barack Obama," she scolded afterward, brandishing the offending fliers at reporters. (Who wants to bet that supporter was prompted?)

My best constituents are black! In a more passive-aggressive show of strength, Clinton was the only candidate to appear at the annual State of the Black Union in Louisiana last weekend (Obama offered to send his wife Michelle instead). There's nothing better than courting a reluctant demographic and kicking your rival under the table at the same time.

What's in a turban? Obama staffers wigged out at a Drudge report that Clinton campaign members had been circulating photos of the Illinois senator donning local dress in Kenya. It's not like he's the first public figure to don the local garb -- check out Calvin Coolidge in a Native American headdress. The campaign took hours to deny any role in their distribution, but given the long leash Clinton has given to overenthusiastic staffers (up until she fires them) it's hard to take them at their word.

How many kitchen appliances do you think she's got left for tonight's showdown? Post your thoughts below.

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.

After having heard from scores of Democratic and decline-to-state Democratic voters about their soul-searching quandaries over which bubble to Inka-Vote come Tuesday, I've ginned up a shorthand assessment of their primary dilemma:

They'll hold their noses and vote for Hillary Clinton.

Or they'll cross their fingers and vote for Barack Obama.

Go ahead and write angry letters about how much you can't stand Jonah Goldberg or his book Liberal Fascism. From the New York Times bestseller list to the always hotly contested Opinion L.A. Top 10, America has spoken. Goldberg's tale of his Daily Show appearance is number one with a bullet, and the columnist makes it into the list a second time with his column on new nanny state outrages. Columnist Rosa Brooks places with her Billary takedown, and the editorial board finishes with an ominous view of the Tata Nano. Brian Doherty scores one for libertarianism and Jonah Lehrer apparently draws in both the artistic and the scientific factions of the brain debate. Michael Shermer does an encore after last week's impressive performance. Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman mark an important abortion anniversary, and all the rest is about some election that is rumored to be happening...

1. What The Daily Show cut out, by Jonah Goldberg
2. A Clinton twofer's high price, by Rosa Brooks
3. Super delegates may sink the Democrats, by Joshua Spivak
4. 'The better angels' side with Obama, by Joseph Ellis
5. Why people believe weird things about money, by Michael Shermer
6. Abortion's battle of messages, by Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman
7. Tiny Tata Nano, big threat, by the editorial board
8. Taking liberties, by Jonah Goldberg
9. Misreading the mind, Jonah Lehrer   
10. Real libertarianism, by Brian Doherty 

You read in doubt this week: Michael Shermer earned the week's top spot not only at Opinion but for all of latimes.com with his piece on the class jealousies of the economically ignorant. Speaking of which, Hillary Clinton also proved a strong draw. Southern Californians were willing to give the old hip hip to the folks at JPL, while the governor cleaned up. Hanging in for encore Top 10 performances were Robert J. Spitzer and the man guild writers love to hate, John Ridley. Thanks for reading Opinion L.A.:

1. Why people believe weird things about money, by Michael Shermer
2. Hillary's gotta have it, by Meghan Daum
3. The correct Hillary Clinton stereotype, by Susan Faludi
4. The 'pocket veto' peril, by Robert J. Spitzer
5. Inquisition at JPL, by Tim Rutten
6. Change: the empty word, by Timothy Noah
7. A black president? Seen a few, by Joel Stein
8. Conservatism's buzz-kill, by Jonah Goldberg
9. John Ridley goes fi-core, by John Ridley
10. Reform term limits, by Arnold Schwarzenegger

John Ridley took home our top score for the week with his fiery fi-core fussilade. Strike stuff dominated the top 10, in fact, while Patt Morrison's modest proposal and Elizabeth Larsen's adoption article prove that everybody loves a mom in trouble. (Look for former WGA head Frank Pierson to give Ridley whatfor in Blowback, and keep reading for the previous week's top 10, by the way.) Here are the details:

1. John Ridley goes fi-core, by John Ridley
2. Leno writes a wrong, by Meghan Daum
3. Democracy: inevitable no more, by Madeleine K. Albright
4. Britney's law? Not so crazy, by Patt Morrison
5. Writers strike is war, by the editorial board
6. Israel's false friends, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
7. The 'pocket veto' peril, by Robert J. Spitzer
8. How to remember 1968, by Todd Gitlin
9. A sequel with the same ending, by Thom Taylor
10. The adoption quandary, by Elizabeth Larsen

Much more fiber in our previous-week results, with foreign policy, the real estate bust, immigration and even a 2007 know-it-all test dominating. As always, thanks for reading Opinion L.A. and we hope to keep on pleasin'...

1. The great fall of China, by Walter Russell Mead
2. Aunt Benazir’s false promises, by Fatima Bhutto
3. George Allen’s curse, by Dan Schnur
4. A dynasty isn’t a democracy, by Rosa Brooks
5. How to survive the bust, by various writers
6. Beyond Benazir, by the editorial board
7. A year of living dangerously, by Paul Slansky
8. Is anyone listening? by Tamar Jacoby
9. The Benazir I knew, by Amy Wilentz
10. And you don’t want to know what’s going to happen to Britney, by Joel Stein

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going into an extended holiday week, Opinion L.A. draws its best numbers from politicians, labor strife, teen moms and tales of bad meds and economic woe. Sixth place goes to Craig Mazin and Matt Edelman for the previous week's Dust-up on the writers strike, but if we counted all five of the Mazin/Edelman Dust-up entries that would move their debate way up the list, as these continue to draw a lot of interest lower down in our Top 50 lists. So once again, it's clear that everybody's enjoying the WGA strike, even if nobody will admit it. And speaking of bridesmaids, four out of the 11th-15th-place spots were taken by our American Values editorials. Show your American spirit and read the whole series already.

1. Clintonian triangulation comes full circle by Jonah Goldberg
2. Stop scaring us by Henry Miller
3. Generic drugs' hidden downside by Naomi Wax
4. The polarizing express by Ezra Klein
5. So a fruit fly goes into a bar... by Marlene Zuk
6. Who strikes? by Craig Mazin and Matt Edelman
7. Honey, I shrunk the president by Jonathan Haidt
8. More writers' strike drama by the editorial board
9. Dollar signs by Howard M. Wachtel
10. Knocked up but not out by Meghan Daum

Have the reforms of the 1990s improved California politics? Depends on your point of view — or, according to a Times column, whether you're retired. Former Gov. Pete Wilson, state Senate leader John Burton and former Assembly speaker Willie Brown raised eyebrows on that topic in a policy forum this month:

"The Legislature was far less partisan than today," Wilson recalled of the 1960s. "... when John and Willie and I were all freshmen assemblymen, there was a great deal more drinking in the Legislature. These guys, the teetotalers, need to lighten up a bit."

All half-humorous comments aside, notes George Skelton, "The group also agreed that term limits are too short and that the current Legislature suffers from inexperience."

Now, those term limit rules are being revisited through Proposition 93. The initiative has some high-profile enemies and allies, and for this week's Dust-Up, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Controller Steve Westly spar over the proposition's pros and cons. 

Today, in the defender's corner, Westly argues that 93 "would make the state Legislature more efficient and effective":

Currently, 12 of 34 legislative committees are chaired by first-year lawmakers. These committees determine the laws that affect our schools, housing, jobs, public safety, transportation and the environment. Under Proposition 93, legislators could gain experience before chairing a committee. This would benefit the process and, ultimately, the voters.

Proposition 93's reforms would also slow the constant campaign cycle that exists now. Termed-out legislators start campaigning early to win a seat in the other house or another office. Instead, legislators would continue to work for — and campaign to — constituents in their home district.

But, contends Poizner,

The question asked by The Times today is, why shouldn't the public be allowed to vote for whomever it wants for as long as it wants?

The answer is that the ability of voters to choose in elections is restricted in California — not by term limits, but by the politicians' self-interested gerrymandering of legislative seats. Incumbents simply don't lose, and seats don't switch from one party to another, thanks to these safely drawn districts. [...]

Today, the only way politicians ever leave office in California is because of our existing term-limits law.

Read the whole exchange and discuss the debate here.

Here's a brief exchange I had today with a friend of mine who has a startup company doing event services for the studios (among others). She was doing a little friendly bellyaching about how busy she's been with the Oscars, Golden Globes and other big self-love-fests coming up. I had figured everybody must be looking to pinch their pennies, what with the tough economy, the strike and so on. Apparently not...

Me: Is that stuff even going to happen this year? I mean, don't the awards shows need writers to make up all the stupid jokes and whatnot?

Event planner: They're all proceeding like they're going to happen. And I'm only dealing with the people in the events departments, and they have a budget that they have to spend, or...

In the other Times, Bill Carter takes a look at gabshow hosts who are keeping their writers[non-writing staffers] off the public dole. But he leaves what looks to me like a major variable out of his equation:

David Letterman of CBS’s “Late Show” (who has to support two CBS shows because his company, Worldwide Pants, also owns “Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson”), Conan O’Brien of NBC’s “Late Night,” Jay Leno of NBC’s “Tonight,” and most recently Jimmy Kimmel of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report,” have all committed to pay their staffs out of their own funds.

Estimates of what it is costing the hosts range from about $150,000 a week to as high as $250,000 a week, depending on the size of the staffs. The question the hosts are struggling with is how long they can continue to stay off the air and subsidize their staffs, and what happens when they decide they cannot do it any longer.

It's not the main focus of the story, but since we're getting the weekly price range for this largess, shouldn't we also get some indication of the size of the staff in question (and if this is writers only or all staff)?

I have no idea what the size of the Late Show or Tonight Show writing staff is, but wWe can make some interesting extrapolations from these numbers.

Assuming the actual weekly payroll throughout the year is somewhere in Carter's range, it appears you could maintain a staff of 250 writers making an average of $52,000 a year, a staff of one writer making $13,000,000 a year, or something between these two.

If you maintain a staff of 20 writers, and you are at the cheapest end of this scale ($150,000 per week), that means your average writer[staffer] is making $390,000 per year. If you're at the generous end ($250,000 per week) with the same-sized staff your average writer's[staffer's] making $650,000 per year. That's the average, not the top-performers. (If Carter's figure is counting all staff, including support, clerical, stagehands, etc., that's another story of course.)

Can these figures possibly be right? Is the world wrong or is Bill Carter?

Update: NO, I can be wrong! Thanks to reader Sam for reading the paragraph I skipped, which explains that the chat shows are in fact paying their nonwriting staffs some figure between $7.8 million and $13 million per year.

What a second, their non-writing staffs? These numbers are getting screwier by the minute. So let's say it takes, not counting the gag writers, the labors of 50 people to fob Craig Ferguson or Jimmy Kimmel off on the insomniacs every night. To get to that roster I think you'd have to include all the artistics, technical staff, clerical, janitorial, security, food prep, etc. and I still think you'd come up short. But let's figure they need that large a non-writing staff. This would put the average salary somewhere between $156,000 a year and $260,000 a year. Something still doesn't make sense here, though it seems more likely to be explained by personnel bloat than by Bill Carter's numbers. Jay, talk to your accountant; you're getting hosed by your own employees.   

If you're one of those minorities whose ancestors hailed from the eastern hemisphere, figuring out what box to check in the "race/ethnicity" section of any form is a stressful experience requiring a quick soul-searching session. Now, though, the University of California hopes to ease that existential burden for UC applicants, raising the number of Asian/Pacific Islander categories from eight to 23. From The Daily Californian:

...the University of California will increase threefold the number of subgroups under the Asian and Pacific Islander categories on its admission application, officials announced Friday. [...]

Asian American categories will include Chinese, Taiwanese, Asian Indian, Japanese, Pakistani, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Malaysian and “other Asian.”

The Pacific Islander category, previously under one heading, will now include Native Hawaiian, Guamanian/Chamorro, Samoan, Tongan, Fijian and “other Pacific Islander.”

And no, this is not about being PC. Or at least, not just about that. In between the Asian supernerd stereotype and the fact that Asians now outnumber whites across the UC system, many Asian minorities fall through the cracks.

It's kind of the reverse of the way whites assimilated: Asians are now being officially subcategorized in finer detail, while whites have blended from very distinctive communities — German, Italian, Polish and others — into this monochromatic mash. Part of that has to do with intermarriage: Many people know where their parents and grandparents came from, it's just that none of them came from the same place. That's generally still not the case for Asian Americans. 

Not that this ethnic differentiation is a new phenomenon. Go to any number of California colleges and you'll see the unsanctioned version: Pakistani students sit at one club table and the Pilipino students man their own. (Some Korean-Christian groups, however, do have a tendency to proselytize to unsuspecting freshmen.) Self-contained social networks spring out of those isolated groups, and it's debatable whether that's a good thing -- even if the alternative is the monstrously huge Asian American Association.

Oddly enough, Asian Americans aren't the only ones experiencing diversity/fragmentation issues. A recent Pew poll found that 37% of African Americans surveyed no longer saw blacks as a unified race. The question is, how exactly would they break blacks down by ethnicity? Is it region, or dialect, or country of origin?

Congress passes a bill and the president signs it, but reserves the right not to enforce parts of it that he considers unconstitutional.

Obviously a reference to the imperious George W. Bush, who is notorious for hedging his approval of legislation with “signing statements” like the one he attached to the 2005 McCain Amendment outlawing torture of suspected terrorists.

Actually, the president in this case was Bill Clinton. 

After the death of former Rep. Henry Hyde, Declan McCullagh noted on his  CNET blog that, in addition to pushing for removal from office and leading the charge against taxpayer-subsidized abortions, Hyde was the author of an amendment to the 1996 telecommunications law that made it a felony  to distribute information over the Internet relating to obtaining an abortion. In a signing statement, Clinton said "I...object to the provision in the Act concerning the transmittal of abortion-related speech and information." He noted further that  the Justice Department had advised him "that this and related abortion provisions in current law are unconstitutional and will not be enforced because they violate the First Amendment."

McCullagh notes that the Justice Department under Bush also has declined to enforce the Hyde amendment, a posture unlikely to bring criticism from those who think Bush put himself “above the law” with his signing statements.

California voters, that is. That's according to the Sacramento Bee:

Since passage of a state law in 2002 allowing voters to sign up to cast their ballots by mail in every election, the number of permanent absentee voters has more than tripled.

According to a new Field Poll released Thursday, more than 4.2 million of the state's 15 million registered voters – 27.2 percent – have signed up to cast their ballots by mail. In the June 2006 state primary election, a record 47 percent of the ballots cast came from absentee voters.

Some in other states are even thinking about turning to a system like Oregon's, which is solely vote-by-mail. But that's not likely to happen in California until SoCal shapes up:

Twenty-nine percent of voters in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area and 20 percent of voters in the Central Valley have signed up as permanent absentee voters. But only 10 percent of voters in Los Angeles County and 11 percent in Orange County have chosen to vote permanently by mail.

Just one more reason the Bay Area rocks.

Most permanent absentee voters seem to be rich, white homeowners. The original drive to make "absentee voting" easier was led by Democrats trying to counteract higher turnout by Republicans. In the 1982 race for governor, the GOP turned the absentee vote around, however, and Republicans still hold a 1% edge over Democrats among the mail-in crowd. The San Francisco Chronicle takes this opportunity to hate on both Republicans and Los Angeles:

The mail ballot numbers are skewed, however, by Los Angeles County. Although the county has 25 percent of the state's registered voters, it includes only 10 percent of the state's permanent mail voters. Election officials in that county, concerned that a flood of mailed-in ballots could overwhelm the system, have been reluctant to encourage people to sign up for permanent mail status.

Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1 in Los Angeles County, which means the low number of permanent mail voters there gives the GOP a statewide boost. While Democrats outnumber Republicans 42 percent to 34 percent among all California voters, the GOP holds a 41 percent to 40 percent edge with permanent mail voters.

It's too bad LA hasn't really rolled out the mail-in vote. California's been trying (in vain) to increase its influence among the state presidential primaries, and this could be one way to up the ante. After all, with a month-long voting period, people could be voting as early as January.

The California Progress Report also tries to think positive:

The extended voting period also should reduce the effectiveness of last minute "hit pieces." Expect to be bombarded once those ballots arrive.... Field reports that some county registrar of voters are encouraging VBM "as a way of reducing election costs." It should take some of the pressure off of having to assemble a large army of Election Day workers at polling places. The downside, however, is fewer polling places at greater distances for voters.

Hey, don't knock the silver lining. What with our dashed dreams of primary influence, we'll take what we can get.

Remember California's short-lived experiment with open primary elections? After Proposition 198 passed in 1996, Californians were allowed to vote for any presidential candidate in a primary election regardless of party registration. Understandably, partisans found this a headach. State Democratic, Republican and other parties sued, and the U.S. Supreme Court nixed the California open primary in 2000, ruling that Prop. 198 violated a party's freedom of association.

Virginia has its own version of an open primary, and it too is a thorn in the side of the party establishment. So how does the state GOP respond? Vote Republican in the primary, and promise to vote Republican in the general election:

If you're planning to vote in Virginia's February Republican presidential primary, be prepared to sign an oath swearing your Republican loyalty.

The State Board of Elections on Monday approved a state Republican Party request to require all who apply for a GOP primary ballot first vow in writing that they'll vote for the party's presidential nominee next fall. There's no practical way to enforce the oath.

Virginia doesn't require voters to register by party, and for years the state's Republicans have fretted that Democrats might meddle in their open primaries.

Tit for tat — very creative. Perhaps California could've come up with a similar solution to save its open primary: You get to violate parties' freedom of association in February, and parties get to violate yours in November. Everyone's rights are violated. Or upheld. It's a wash either way.

Hat tip to the New York Times' Opinionator.

Granted, it's no Super Tuesday — elections are taking place in more than a dozen cities in Los Angeles County, and the most interesting story at the polls is really how dull San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's election day is, given his recent personal scandals. But it marks a countdown to the real deal — November 4, 2008 — when local, state and federal elections all collide and voters have to sort them out on a highly inconvenient weekday.

Speaking of which, why DO we have elections on Tuesday?

That's the question NPR's Alex Cohen seeks to answer. It turns out, ironically, that the day was chosen for practical purposes. Elections couldn't be held on weekends because good Christian folk couldn't work or travel on the Sabbath, and since it could take more than a day to get to the nearest town with a poll, Monday was cutting it too close.

The U.S. government adds,

Lawmakers wanted to prevent Election Day from falling on the first of November for two reasons. First, November 1 is All Saints Day, a day on which Roman Catholics are obligated to attend Mass.

See? Who says this WASPy nation wasn't tolerant of other faiths? Never mind that it was apparently moved to Nov. 2 to be lumped with All Soul's Day.

"Also," — minor detail — "merchants typically balanced the accounts from the preceding month on the first of each month." That makes Nov. 1 one of the few times when politics and money didn't mix.

Of course, with the invention of cars, the weekend restriction has become almost irrelevant. In fact, it's become a hurdle for millions of overworked Americans — which may help to explain at least part of our abysmally low turnout compared to other nations.

Some are trying to take a page out of other countries' playbooks, be it expanding the voting period or holding elections on holidays. Either way, we need a change, since early voting can only do so much, and some question the effectiveness of Vote by Mail. It's likely too late for next year's election day — but perhaps the three main Democratic presidential contenders, all claiming to bring reform to the White House, will do more than just tack it onto their to-do lists.

Remember last year when a flock of hipster towns were promising to provide free citywide wireless networks? Apparently financial issues have forced that idea out of fashion. From Sacramento and San Francisco to Houston and Chicago, Wi-Fi plans have been hitting snags or falling apart altogether.

That's a shame, since total coverage in our high-tech age would be a pretty valuable service. Is there a way for cities to provide wireless coverage?

But, as Tim Wu of Slate.com points out,

The basic idea of offering Internet access as a public service is sound. The problem is that cities haven't thought of the Internet as a form of public infrastructure that—like subway lines, sewers, or roads—must be paid for. Instead, cities have labored under the illusion that, somehow, everything could be built easily and for free by private parties. That illusion has run straight into the ancient economics of infrastructure and natural monopoly. The bottom line: City dwellers won't be able to get high-quality wireless Internet access for free. If they want it, collectively, they'll have to pay for it.

Establishing a citywide wireless hotspot is a matter of scale. Wu goes on to point out that Wi-Fi has succeeded not in high-tech metropolises, but in smaller municipal venues:

St. Cloud, Fla., a town of 28,000, has an entirely free wireless network. The network has its problems, such as dead spots, but also claims a 77 percent use rate among its citizens.

Business models and laws of scale aside, the San Francisco Chronicle says that clear purpose and tangible benefits also help:

The most popular uses that are motivating municipalities are public safety, remote worker access, meter reading and surveillance cameras. The city of Ripon (San Joaquin County) recently installed 71 Wi-Fi-enabled video cameras that allow police to monitor intersections and trouble spots remotely. Police officers using the city Wi-Fi network can pull up pictures from their cars and also broadcast live from cameras in their vehicles, allowing other officers to get a sense of what's happening at a specific location.

"What you'll find is cities are now selling the networks on things that are quantifiable, like public safety or public works," said Craig Settles, a Wi-Fi consultant. "You've got to establish that before you can pursue other social goals."

And apparently, in Minneapolis, the city's public safety wireless network took pressure off cellular networks and made rescue efforts easier following the August bridge collapse.

So perhaps, in the near future, those cities will be able to build public-access service from existing networks like these. Before giving up on the muni-Wi-Fi dream, cities should consider models like these. According to the Chron, leaders in the Wi-Fi industry

are backing off some of the talk of broad public access and bridging the digital divide. The more immediate goals are concrete applications and services that can be sold to cities looking to go Wi-Fi.

Despite the slowdown in the municipal Wi-Fi space, leaders say there is still a bright future ahead, especially with the introduction of new Wi-Fi-enabled devices such as the Apple iPhone. Metro-Fi CEO Chuck Haas said 6 percent of Metro-Fi users last month accessed the network through an iPhone. [...]

Here's a thought: If you have an iPhone, you're already on the right side of the digital divide, and you don't need a city government to provide you with free wireless. Muni Wi-Fi was meant to be a public service; under this model, it becomes another way for private enterprise to benefit the privileged. Let's hope that as plan Bs for municipal Wi-Fi evolve, cities remember why they took to this idea in the first place.

Craig Mazin, who in his Artful Writer blog and elsewhere has been a vociferous pro-strike voice among Writers Guild members, recounts a funny/creepy story about how the Guild managed to sap even his enthusiasm. Mazin, consciously or not, did the cost/benefit analysis and came to the only logical conclusion: that there is no period of time in your life that wouldn't be better spent doing something other than voting. In other words, he didn't bother to vote, but he was intending to do so before today's deadline. Then he got an email from the WGA:

It was from a member who I shall not name. She’s my “strike captain.” And she told me that the Guild had informed her that I had not yet voted, and she urged me to vote.

What…

…the…

……hell????

For as long as I’ve been a member of this union (12 years and counting now), every single vote we’ve ever taken has been a secret ballot. No one knows who votes or who doesn’t vote, and no one shares that information with other members. Furthermore, there was absolutely no indication in the voting materials that this ballot would be handled in any different way than any ballots before it.

Secret ballotting is, in my opinion, a fundamental requirement for a properly functioning democratic election.

As it happens, I disagree with this last point. Or at least, I reject anonymity where my own vote is concerned, have never been persuaded that a secret ballot is necessary for a legitimate vote and think the benefits of doing all votes openly are vastly greater than the costs. (I also believe that major media companies should require journalists, as a condition of employment, to make their own ballots public, which is, philosophically, pretty much the opposite of the way they do things now.)

However, the Writers Guild has a duty to its members to conduct its voting in a way that is clear to those members and consistent. Mazin posits a not-hard-to-imagine nightmare scenario in which enemies lists are drawn up of people who either didn't vote or voted against authorization; I say if you have to fear retribution from your union because of something like that, you've got bigger problems than just the secrecy of your ballot, but then I'm not a big fan of unions. The point is that the members have a right to know how their votes are being treated, and legitimate reason to be concerned when their voiced or unvoiced opinions are being manipulated by the leadership in some kind of same-regiment-circling-the-block parade of fake support. That holds even truer for members like Mazin who actually share the goals of the leadership:

In principle, I support a high turnout, and I was absolutely intending to vote. And of all the members in the union, I’m probably one of a dozen who have taken a widely public stance in support of a “yes.”

But now I’m not voting.

I will not be coerced by my union to vote. Nor will I support any union election that violates the privilege of a secret ballot. If the staff is tallying who voted, then what’s stopping them from seeing who voted how?

So that's one Yea vote lost. With so much apparent popular support for authorization, this kind of strongarm tactic by the WGA can only be seen as evidence for every producer's secret suspicion that writers are dumb. Somehow I still think the final balloting will produce that big ol' authorization. Take your pick: 90% or unaminous. Or better yet, let the WGA take your pick for you.

Will he do it? He wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t dare.

But he did. This morning, President Bush shot down a bill that would pay for the insurance of millions of children whose families don't qualify for Medicaid but can't afford health insurance.

It shouldn’t be a surprise. In spite of the bill's wide popular support and bipartisan approval, Bush had vowed to veto the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which he and other Republicans have attempted to depict as a step toward socialized medicine — a claim the Times editorial board dismissed as absurd.

All the same, the president's follow-through came as a shock. With such a successful, popular and worthy program on the line, wouldn’t the president, at the last moment, his pen poised over the paper, honor the finest traditions of theatrical politics and see the light?

Like his arguments against SCHIP, Bush's stubbornness defies logic. He’s certainly got few backers—states support the program, key Republicans have backed the legislation, and insurance companies have spoken up for it enthusiastically. Democrats certainly mastered their spin on the conflict, bringing in children on SCHIP to speak for the program.

If Congress had passed SCHIP with a veto-proof majority, Bush’s threat wouldn’t have carried much weight. But while the Senate version of the bill garnered two-thirds approval, the House vote remained some two dozen votes short.

So now what? Some say the Dems will give it another go. Others think they might raise the stakes and roll a bunch of healthcare issues, from SCHIP to Medicare, into an omnibus bill. Democrats are certainly gearing up for a fight, launching a savvy ad campaign in key states, and working to secure the more votes from Democrats and Republicans.

Either way, it looks like this whole episode is escalating from a simple round of chicken to a more dangerous double-dare. And with less than four weeks left on a temporary extension of the program (which lapsed on Sept. 30), it’s anyone’s guess whether SCHIP will survive this political drudge match.

Bush is a man of his word. He said he wouldn’t sign the bill as it was, and lamentably, he made good on that promise. If he doesn't make any bold statements before Congress sends a "new" bill to his desk, perhaps this time he’ll be able to see reason.