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

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

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

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

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

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

Newsweek correspondent and author Michael Hastings knows too well that war is more than statistics:

While I was in Iraq covering the war for Newsweek for two years starting in 2005, the woman I planned to marry was murdered in Baghdad by insurgents on Jan. 17, 2007. Her name was Andi Parhamovich; she'd come to Iraq to work for the National Democratic Institute, an NGO....

We -- Andi, me, Jeff, Greg, Scott, Ferris -- all chose to go to Iraq, volunteers for our respective causes. We were under no illusions about the risks, though that's a glib way of putting it. I don't think anyone can fully grasp the risks until whoosh, wham, through the looking glass you crash on the way to the rehab center at Walter Reed or a funeral parlor in Ohio.

Iraq often gets treated by pundits, writers and politicians -- all those thoughtful cheerleaders turned war critics -- as an intellectual exercise. It's not.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez reports that people will often ignore their self interest if they can get a fair deal. And New Republic assistant editor James Kirchick says South African President Thabo Mbeki shouldn't stand by as Robert Mugabe ruins Zimbabwe.

The editorial board says no on Prop. 98, yes on Prop. 99, and asks why phone customers should have to pay to keep their numbers unlisted.

On the letters page, Long Beach's Iris Ingram says to those who would ask Hillary Clinton to quit the race: "The primary season ends in June. So suck it up and stick it out."

Here's one encouraging development I came across while looking into the Vermont/Manchester project: There is in fact some fine dining coming to the area, albeit not at the corner in question and not as part of any government-guided project. On the site of the legendary Kite Restaurant on the 9100 block of South Vermont Ave., a Waffle Factory restaurant is set to open within the next two weeks. 

Waffle Factory is the brainchild of Cassie Lowe, seen here on a Saturday evening spent getting the place into final order. I followed this development at a distance as Lowe and his partner Robert Whitfield came close to abandoning the deal for lack of funding. They ended up closing the financing gap and, based on the work going on in the interior, it looks like the heavy lifting is already done.

The Waffle Factory, a prime example of the kind of retail that is at the center of South L.A. foment, is located on unincorporated county land and thus is not the kind of project that would involve an organization like the Community Redevelopment Agency. In fact, if you're looking to make a case against public subsidies for development, this is a pretty good one: The founders sought money from various sources but ended up paying for it out of pocket. That may cast some uncertainty on the business: Lowe expects to pay off all his loans on the place within 10 days of opening, while Whitfield jokes that his car's about to be repossessed.

The bottom line is that this project is actually being completed, in contrast to visionary projects that involve buy-in from multiple parties, public funding or tax breaks, alphabet-soup agencies, and so on. If even 25% of the people who have told me the Vermont corridor lacks decent sit-down dining are willing to back that claim up with their disposable dollars, the Waffle Factory could make a fortune.

There's a paradox in South L.A. retail campaigning: On the one hand, proponents of better businesses say the neighborhood has more disposable income than squeamish retail chains and shy lending institutions believe, but on the other, the default belief seems to be that anybody who builds in the area needs all manner of breaks, subsidies and guarantees because they're building in a distressed area. Whitfield and Lowe are betting on the former claim. The menu includes both quick takes ($5.99 for an everything burger) to more luxurious eat-in stuff (a red-meat dinner for less than $20). Following are some pictures of the place:   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Men reading fashion magazines, oh what a world it seems we live in, where stories about straight men who wear skirts and a holy man who wears flowing gowns dominate our most popular stories of the week. Here are the Top 10:

1. The Scots show their true colors, by Sean Connery
2. The prophetic anger of MLK, by Michael Eric Dyson
3. Papal dress code, by Michael McGough
4. The day the beer flowed again, by Maureen Ogle
5. 'Allah' vs. 'God' by Rabih Alameddine
6. Resist the urge to leave Iraq, by Max Boot
7. The GOP, a casualty of war, by Rosa Brooks
8. Disney, we are not amused, by the editorial board
9. The genocide loophole, by Jonah Goldberg
10. Washington s $4-billion land grab, by Paul Thornton

As always, thanks for reading Opinion L.A.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some recent web stuff:

Paul Thornton wants to score some of that $4 billion Uncle Sam is spending to keep real estate prices up.

Standard & Poor's says don't blame us for the tough times in municipal budgeting.

And three Turkey-related bits have commenters hot and bothered:

Assembly of Turkish American Associations says there was no  genocide and there is no Kurdistan.

Robert Ellis says the AKP is corrupting Turkey's secular character.

And Cüneyt M. Serdar says the United States is watching a democracy disintegrate.

Thanks for reading!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author and UCLA lecturer Lawrence Grobel finds his past on sale at Amazon.com:

We printed 2,000 copies of each issue and sold them for 50 cents each. So, imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that Amazon.com had a listing under my name that said: "SATYR . Paperback. Used. $366."

$366! Was this a joke?

I went to the site offering the three issues for sale, and sure enough, it was for real. Only at Zubal.com they were listed at $348.20. It was also offering a first edition of my 812-page biography, "The Hustons," for $1.

Columnist Joel Stein discovers a shady journalistic cover-up: celeb mag editors-at-large aren't really editors, they just play them on TV. Human Rights Watch's Jennifer Daskal and Leslie Lefkow say that U.S. policy suffers when missile strikes on alleged terrorists go awry.

The editorial board criticizes John McCain's answer to the credit crisis, examines what lies ahead for new UC President Mark Yudof, and hails Starbucks and the upscaling of America:

[T]he Starbucks model -- a global-village blend of faux-Italianate lingo, American efficiency and post-modern abundance of selection, all built on the easy international flow of coffee beans -- is everywhere, readily reproduced by McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts and any old bodega.

It's the happy flip-side of living in a country where even the poor people are fat.

On the letters page, readers discuss Jonah Goldberg's column claiming we were having a race conversation long before Barack Obama's speech. Phil Boiarsky of Columbus, Ohio disagrees, saying, " I am 63 years old, and this is the first time I have heard the 'white' side of the issue."

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

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

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

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

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

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez says Barack Obama's speech on race may have been brilliant, but it was the wrong move:

Throughout the campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton's surrogates repeatedly tried to bait Obama into talking about race; they worked to pigeonhole him (and marginalize him) as the "black candidate." But in the end, it was Obama's own alliances that tripped him up and obliged him to directly address a subject (one that he now says we "cannot afford to ignore") that he had so deftly avoided -- or as the Obamaphiles had it, transcended. For all the kudos the Illinois senator has received for his candor, the very act of delivering Tuesday's address was a defeat. Obama was a much more powerful force for racial progress when he so effortlessly symbolized it, rather than when he called on us to address "old wounds."

Assemblyman Van Tran (R-Garden Grove) argues that SAT subject tests should stay, in part because they give recent immigrants a chance to show their strengths. Loyola Law Schools' Karl Manheim and Consumer Watchdog's Jamie Court say health insurance mandates of the Clinton and Obama kind may not pass constitutional muster. And writer Joe Queenan wonders why Garth Brooks gets a spot in his kid's academic calendar.

The editorial board notes new Census numbers showing that California sprawl is slowing down, and looks at why double amputee Oscar Pistorius was barred from the Olympics for being too fast. The board also explores why Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed fellow film icon Clint Eastwood and brother-in-law Bobby Shriver from a state commission.

Readers react to the violence in Tibet. Sherman Oaks' Elke Heitmyer says, "Tibet has been 'another Burma' for a long time already."

Columnist Joel Stein asks the question on everyone's mind -- what exactly do you get for $1,000 an hour?

I called a high-end escort in Las Vegas who charges $500 an hour -- but gives, according to her website, a discount to educators and political activists. The escort , it turns out, is a huge fan of Spitzer, particularly his prosecution of Wall Street crimes when he was New York's attorney general. "I liked him. And I don't like many politicians. I have nothing but respect for him," she said. "It's a shame politicians can't have sex like everyone else."

The roughly $1,000 an hour that Spitzer paid for time with "Kristen," she told me, was not, as I assumed, to guarantee secrecy.... And the exorbitant rate wasn't a premium for weird or talented sex.

Former soldier and military historian Ed Ruggero notes near the 40th anniversary of the My Lai massacre that war is never simple. And the Center for American Progress' Lawrence J. Korb and Sean E. Duggan argue that if Gen. David H. Petraeus testifies alone, we'll never get the full picture of Iraq.

The editorial board examines new mortgage regulations proposed by the Bush administration, and says that after 136 years, it's really about time for a new mining law. Finally, the board urges the state to do away with another historical relic -- loyalty oaths.

On the letters page, readers react to Max Boot's take on Adm. William Fallon. Escondido's Blaise Jackson cracks, "So armchair-admiral Boot crawls out from under his ideologue rock to toss dirt at the departing Fallon; what a surprise."

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.

To those of us not threatened by the foreclosure mess (i.e. renters), plans to "save families from losing their homes" sound more like collusion to keep prices permanently unaffordable, thereby dimming any prospect of owning. Economist and Dust-Up alumnus Steven E. Landsburg feels our pain, writing in Slate yesterday that one unlucky owner's eviction is another renter's long-awaited shot at the American Dream:

None of these foreclosed houses is going to disappear. After a foreclosure, one family moves out, and another moves in. We see the sad faces of the people moving out, but we don't as often see the happy faces of the new homeowners moving in. Nevertheless, those happy faces are out there, and we should not discount them.

That's important, and it's important in a larger context. Often when it comes to economic policy, some effects -- in this case, the genuinely moving stories of good people who can't afford to live where they've been living -- are highly visible, while others -- the genuinely moving stories of good people who can now achieve their dreams of home ownership -- are less well-publicized. That doesn't make them any less real.

I'd add another point of frustration to all this talk of "saving" homes and keeping roofs over families' heads: This is a crisis in which owners (if you can even call them that) are becoming renters, not one where a bunch of poor children and parents are ruthlessly forced onto the streets by greedy banks. If families were indeed having to sleep on sidewalks because they couldn't afford to own their homes -- and if renting weren't a choice -- then we'd have a real humanitarian crisis on our hands. But the choice isn't between owning and homelessness, but rather, between owning and renting. If that constitutes a crisis, then as a renter, I expect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to speak up any day now about federal assistance to move me out of my apartment.

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

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

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

Who among the Democratic candidates is wearing the rose-colored glasses? Is it the battle-tested "I'm ready on Day One" Hillary Clinton, or the junior Illinois Sen. Barack "Obambi" Obama? The Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman picks apart Clinton's proposed "freeze" on home foreclosures and finds an answer. I'll excerpt his column here before going into my own rant on Clinton's economic populism:

In her campaign, [Clinton] presents herself as an experienced hand with a penchant for practical solutions, suggesting that her opponent, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, dispenses nothing but vaporous oratory detached from the real world. When it comes to the mortgage meltdown, though, her policy rests on the assumption that upon arriving in the Oval Office, she'll open the closet and find a magic wand. Obama, by contrast, acknowledges the bitter truth that when government regulators clamber into a carriage, it can easily turn into a pumpkin.

Their approaches to the problem are not an aberration but a symptom of a larger difference. Obama is not a staunch free marketeer, but he grasps the value of markets and shows some deference to economic laws. Clinton, however, tends to treat both as piddly obstacles to her grand ambitions.

Regarding the effects of the foreclosure freeze, Chapman continues:

After all, it's easy to pass a law prohibiting lenders from foreclosing. But the first result of that would be a lot more borrowers deciding that paying the mortgage is no longer the highest priority. Those who have practiced strenuous frugality in order to meet their monthly obligations would get nothing, and those who behaved recklessly would prosper.

The second result would be to choke off the flow of credit. When a bank makes a loan, it needs some assurance of being repaid. When it isn't, foreclosure offers a way to minimize its loss. If Clinton blocks that option for a time, banks will be markedly less eager to offer loans -- particularly for anyone with a less than perfect credit history.

The rest of Chapman's column is a pretty good primer on what would happen under any long-term interest-rate freeze or other major interruption of the current housing market correction. At Slate, Daniel Gross offers a slightly more technical explanation of post-bubble price corrections and interest-rate freezes.

After looking at Clinton's "Economic Blueprint for the 21st Century," it's tough not to agree with Chapman's candidate-of-experience skepticism — and not just on foreclosures. Much of Clinton's blueprint, released today, is a just-in-time attempt for tomorrow's Wisconsin primary to cozy up to the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party in Obama's camp. Given that, it's easy to dismiss this as a typically cycnical campaign exercise. But you shouldn't — read why after the jump.

Columnist Joel Stein hangs out with the Oscar accountants:

PriceWaterhouse seems to have more safety systems in place than the Air Force department in charge of transporting nuclear missiles. The counting location is kept secret. Counters work in groups but don't know one another's totals. "Winners" envelopes are prepared for every nominee; the losers' are shredded after the ceremony. Rosas and Oltmanns also memorize the winners and take separate cars to the show. So I was shocked to find out that no one checks to make sure [Rick] Rosas and [Brad] Oltmanns didn't just make winners up -- either for fun or under the threat of violence from a Weinstein brother.

Writer Woody Woodburn recalls his Super Bowl highlight -- miraculously surviving a car accident just after the game in 2003. Author Philip Jenkins notes that the religious right has splintered, but tough times could bring it back. 

The editorial board says the U.S. can't afford to lose Canada and NATO's support in Afghanistan. The board also tells California lawmakers not to micromanage lenders, and praises a wage deal for private security guards.

Readers react to the new animosity between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. San Clemente's Denise Gee says, "Right now, there is not one candidate in any party I could visualize taking charge of our country, bringing back dignity and honor to the office, providing real change and restoring America's place in the world."

National Interest editor Jacob Heilbrunn reports on the war between the New Republic and the National Review:

Is it mere coincidence that both the New Republic and National Review Online are embroiled in controversy concerning outside contributors who wrote bogus reports from the Middle East? Not a chance. As someone who worked at the New Republic when the young fabulist Stephen Glass was making up stories there in the late 1990s, it was deja vu all over again....

[T]he New Republic's announcement this week that it could no longer stand by the reporting of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, an Army private in Iraq who had contributed several lurid articles about U.S. soldiers running amok, and the accusations against National Review's W. Thomas Smith Jr., who stands accused, among other things, of inventing a "scoop" about hundreds of Hezbollah gunmen moving into the Christian areas of Beirut, fit into a familiar pattern. As every confidence man knows, you can't sell someone something they don't want to buy.

Columnist Joel Stein finds out that the writer's strike is one big networking opportunity. And former Times reporter Miriam Pawel says the farmworkers' union hasn't delivered for its members.

The editorial board applauds change in Crenshaw, reviews President Bush's sub-prime plan, and offers fixes for LAX's runway problems.

Readers react to Bush's mortgage plan. Cardiff's Steve Harrington says, "If we are going to switch to socialism, fine, but let's make it fair for everyone."

Back in July, I wrote about the housing bubb, er, soon-to-be bust:

Thankfully, talk of timeouts and bailouts has cooled in Washington — for now, anyway. But with California — ground zero of the nation's housing bubble — coming so early in the 2008 presidential primaries, and with the rate of foreclosures unlikely to crest any time soon, imperiled, debt-ridden homeowners will doubtless press the populist field of Democratic candidates to promise them a break. If conservatives can use a silly issue such as same-sex marriage in 2004, what's to keep Democrats away from rising foreclosures in 2008? If [Hillary] Clinton resurrects her "foreclosure timeout," or if by some political miracle, bailout proponent [Sen. Chris] Dodd still has a shot in February, the presidential election could end up presenting the biggest roadblock to my hopes of eventually owning a home that isn't in a suburb of Phoenix.

Democrats didn't have to wait until the California primary — President Bush beat them to the punch. Still, Bush's plan, in which lenders would voluntary freeze for five years lower introductory interest rates on subprime loans for some borrowers, isn't exactly what Democrats (especially the ones running for president) had in mind when they called on the president to aid troubled borrowers. Indeed, both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have already said that Bush's plan isn't enough. So far among the (viable) Democratic candidates, Edwards goes the furthest on the mortgage crisis, saying that, in addition to a mandatory seven-year interest rate freeze, he would use taxpayer money to create a federal "Home Rescue Fund." Clinton's proposal falls somewhere in between, calling on lenders to freeze interest rates for five years and suspend foreclosures for at least 90 days. If lenders don't freeze rates on their own, Clinton would push for legislation that wouldn't give them a choice.

It'll be interesting to see how the foreclosure mess plays out among the candidates in the run up to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus. For now, I'd say Edwards has the political advantage, being the only viable candidate to say Washington should provide financial assistance to homeowners. (For the record, I totally disagree with any plan that would use taxpayer funds to bail out borrowers who took a chance on a risky housing market.)

Most importantly, among Democrats, Edwards' taxpayer-funded plan is the most different from Bush's voluntary approach, a point he can use to separate himself from Clinton and other candidates. The thing is, those same candidates are just as eager to draw distinctions between themselves and the New York senator, especially with the Iowa caucus less than a month away. Edwards has established a populist ceiling that, though economically troublesome, doubtless appeals to anxious voters.

Don't be surprised to see other candidates move closer to mortgage plans that look more like Edwards' and less like Clinton's. After all, any plan that Clinton establishes is just something for other desperate candidates to move away from.

It was supposed to be the moment those of us who passed up on buying overvalued houses were waiting for — when the low introductory rates on hundreds of thousands of sub-prime mortgages would jump higher, resulting in mass foreclosures and downward pressure on already falling home prices. In other words, more affordable homes. Thanks to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a few lenders who fear foreclosure costs and having to write off thousands of unpaid loans, that day may never come:

Four major sub-prime lenders promised to give a break to California homeowners who cannot afford escalating mortgage payments, under a plan announced Tuesday by the lenders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Countrywide, GMAC, Litton and HomeEq — which collectively service more than one quarter of sub-prime loans to people with poor credit — agreed to maintain the initial, lower interest rate for some sub-prime borrowers whose rates are scheduled to jump significantly higher. To qualify, borrowers must occupy their homes, have made their payments on time and prove they cannot afford payments with the higher interest rate.

The voluntary program is designed to stem a huge wave of foreclosures. Half a million homeowners in the state have sub-prime mortgages that are scheduled to jump higher within the next two years after their introductory period elapses. Such loan resets, in combination with a slumping real estate market, already have led to a record number of foreclosures across California and the nation.

More on the deferred judgment day — and why it may be more of a problem than an actual judgment day — after the jump.

One of the more nauseating parts of the housing bust is the New York Times editorials that the "crisis" has spawned. The Times' typical justification for government action goes something like the following opening paragraph in Monday's editorial, "Keeping Americans in Their Homes":

The nation's housing market is in a deep recession, and further declines in new construction, sales and prices are imminent. By the end of next year, falling home values, combined with rising payments on adjustable mortgages, tighter lending conditions and, in all probability, a faltering job market, will have unleashed mass foreclosures — estimated at several hundred thousand to two million — unless something is done to help keep Americans in their homes.

To me, "further declines in new construction, sales and prices," "falling home values, combined with rising payments on adjustable mortgages, tighter lending conditions," and "mass foreclosures" sound like a market correcting itself after an unsustainable bubble. But this is the same editorial board that in September decried the "absolutist notion that self-policed markets self-correct."

Let's get one point out of the way: High foreclosure rates should not be held up as Exhibit A if your argument is that free markets cannot correct themselves and that more federal regulation is needed. Crude as it sounds, people losing their homes is market correction, and after-the-fact federal intervention would help prevent real estate values from their march downward. This market correction just happens to involve people losing their homes, a sad and understandably touchy subject that engenders free-market distrust.

Columnist Rosa Brooks has figured out why the Bush administration seems eager to start a new war:

Forget impeachment.

Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.

Because they've clearly gone mad. Exhibit A: We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation, do their best to tamp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But crazy people? They look around and decide it's a great time to start another war.

Contributing editor Timothy Garton Ash praises European multi-party democracy. Blogger Garin K. Hovannisian says the timing may actually be right for the Armenian genocide resolution. Columnist Patt Morrison is sure people don't go to fast food joints to eat healthy, so companies shouldn't mind posting nutritional charts.

The editorial board thinks the Senate's cap and trade plan to address global warming is second rate. It's also not wild about Countrywide's attempt to ease sub-prime loan pains. And finally the board explores why the Michael Mukasey confirmation process is growing more rancorous.

Readers react to the specter of another war on the horizon. L.A.'s Anthony Shay says, "If I were an Iranian official, I can think of no greater spur to developing nuclear weapons as quickly as possible than having the world's greatest war-mongering power threaten me...."

Loyola Marymount's Rubén Martínez discovers that in its haste to build a border barrier, Washington has forgotten how much cowboys hate fences:

It's a new political convergence in the borderlands: environmentalists, social justice advocates and a cohort of new border activists who are apparently driven less by ideology than a simple Western love of open vistas -- and plain common sense.

This loose coalition bridges a long-standing political gap.

Historically, some who called themselves environmentalists were more likely to complain about litter on the migrant trail than migrant deaths, or say that population control was preferable to immigration reform. In the borderlands, the sheer dimensions of the human tragedy make such thinking morally reprehensible.

David Schenker, a senior fellow in Arab politics at the Washington Institute, explores a targeted assassination campaign that's killing pro-Western politicians in Lebanon. Howard A. Rodman, a board member of the Writers Guild of America, West and a USC professor, argues that media companies making billions from writers' work should share the wealth.

The editorial board says there are two questions the Senate Judiciary Committee should be sure to ask attorney general nominee Michael B. Mukasey. The board says the California legislature's failure to put together a water bond could actually be a good thing, and offers solutions for poor lending practices that continued in early 2007 despite the downturn in the housing market.

Readers consider the Armenian genocide resolution. Alberto Marrero of Salas says, "Why should one American soldier be put in harm's way for an Armenian who died in 1915?"

If you haven't taken a gander at our Primary Source from Gov. Schwarzenegger's visit, hop on over and check it out. And if that doesn't fill you up, here's some additional schwarzenschmoozing, in which the governor provides his views on budget discipline, real estate and my weight problem...

Tim Cavanaugh: You just mentioned a lot of Democratic names, and I'm wondering, how far do you think you can continue to push your own party with comments like "Dying at the box office" and things like that. I mean, is there a little bit of buck-stops-here-ism, given that it was your own party that was holding up the budget?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: If it is, if I am the leader of the party, then I take credit for it or I take the blame for it. But that's not the way it works in California. That's the way it works in Great Britain, that's the way it works in Germany and Austria, that's the way it works in other states. You know, if you talk to, you know, Crist, he would say you know, I did this, through the party, then I came in, changed things around, put my guy in, and now they are the party that is in a sense, me, and in a sense my philosophy. Well that's not the way it works in California. Maybe that's the way we should do it, but I mean that's not the way it works.

So what I do is, I do that, if I see you, um, you know, gaining weight, and gaining weight and gaining weight and gaining weight, I will eventually say — if I care at all about you — I would say, You know something? If you continue this way, you may get into serious trouble, and you'll maybe get a heart attack, or maybe, you know, have problems with diabetes and stuff like that and you can't move around as quickly and you will get tired, and, blah blah all those things. But, here's what I'd do if I were you: I would go and exercise every day, stop eating at night, eat only two meals, be disciplined, and blah blah and all those kinds of things, I would give you a plan. I'd say either you can follow that plan or not. So it's not really that I'm criticizing you, it's just that, look, I care about you, and I want you to live and feel good, as good as I do. And do as well as I do.

So that's what I basically did with the Republican Party, is to go to them and say, Look: Here's the, the swing voters, here's the independents, here's the majority of Republican voters, that actually love the health care proposal, that a majority of them voted for, and any of the polls show that they like what we're doing, they like the idea of taking care of the environment and fighting global warming. They like that I signed AB 32. I say, there's an endless amount of situations where the voters, the Republican voters, are with me. But not the politicians and not the party guys. So what I'm saying is, You should start looking at that. So if you want to become the majority party, look at those things, and look at those independents, and you will see: If you will be inclusive, and if you start changing some of the policies, and direct, you know, do things more for California than just for this one group, I think that we could be again the majority party, and that's where the action is.

Keep reading for more from the ed board, and the governor's real estate tips for smart shoppers...

Pepperdine law professor Douglas W. Kmiec talks about UC Irvine's hiring and controversial un-hiring of legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky:

Erwin Chemerinsky is one of the finest constitutional scholars in the country. He is a gentleman and a friend. He is a gifted teacher. As someone who participates regularly in legal conferences and symposiums, I have never seen him be anything other than completely civil to those who disagree with him.

So the news that UC Irvine had selected him to be the first dean of its new law school was welcome indeed. And the subsequent news -- that it withdrew the offer Tuesday, apparently because of Erwin's political beliefs and work -- is a betrayal of everything a great institution like the University of California represents. It is a forfeiture of academic freedom.

Contributing editor Timothy Garton Ash says Europe is in the thick of the war on terror, even if Europeans don't know it. Former CIA counter-terrorism official John Kiriakou and Kissinger McLarty Associates' Richard Klein talk about that other war we're losing--in Afghanistan. Columnist Patt Morrison wants to ban the Star Spangled Banner from being sung at ball games so it won't be butchered by tuneless fans.

The editorial board advocates for stronger water conservation to prepare for a dry 2008, and thinks congressional sub-prime bailout plans fail to help the true victims. The board also weighs in on UCI's Erwin Chemerinsky controversy.

Readers react to a Column One on Elyn Saks' struggle with schizophrenia. Los Angeles' Frank C. Baron says, "Those of us struggling with mental illness just want to be treated like anyone else...."

Times editor-at-large Thomas Curwen wonders what's really behind kids' poor performance at schools, and why no one pays attention:

[P]overty is only part of the problem, which is really more about the complicated existences that all children lead. So why do politicians and school boards spend so much time discussing budgets and testing and oversight and accountability?

No doubt they are easier to talk about than the emotional lives of children who are often left to struggle by themselves (or, if they are lucky, with a teacher) through matters of grief, abuse, divorce and special needs. It's no wonder then that so many teachers feel that what they are up against on a daily basis is often ignored.

The OC Weekly's Nick Schou asks if protests by Vietnamese exiles in Orange County are the last gasp of the anti-communist generation. The New America Foundation's Rajan Menon explains why the U.S.'s new problems in Pakistan are a lot like its old problems supporting strongmen throughout history. And screenwriter Mike Armstrong will take a cheap birthday bottle of wine over a donation in his name any day.

The editorial board explores Congress' options for fixing the mortgage mess, and urges the state legislature to pass a bill that would resolve questions about LNG terminals. The board also says Alberto R. Gonzales isn't off the hook yet.

Readers respond to California's various healthcare plans. Elizabeth Sholes of the California Council of Churches says, "Healthcare is not and never will be an individual commodity to burden the individual; it is a social responsibility essential to the common good."

Most e-mails I've gotten on a column:

1) I don't support the troops
2) I hate dogs
3) I want a home urinal

I'm starting to see why John Gray made all that money.

Writer Jennifer Tang tells us how Barbie's butt can teach kids about economics:

In the 1960s, long before outsourcing became rampant in other industries, Mattel and other toy manufacturers opened factories in Asia, employing thousands of poor, single women. My mother was one of them.

She didn't think her employer was exploitative, though low wages were the main reason she wanted to emigrate to the United States....

As it turned out, Barbie didn't stay in Hong Kong either. In the 1980s, Barbie's provenance changed -- most were "Made in the Philippines," with some in made in Malaysia or Thailand.

What happened? Progress.

Writer Garret Keizer offers a developer's guidebook for getting projects past local resistance. Richard Nemec notes that a recent Air Resources Board appointee holds stock in several companies she'll have to deal with in her new post. Columnist Ronald Brownstein gives his post-Labor Day election round-up for the early campaign season.

The editorial board recommends seven bills become law before the state legislature retires for recess. It explains why Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is both wrong and right in his refusal to support a state clean ports plan. And finally it welcomes Iran's release of two Iranian-American prisoners but wonders what message the country is trying to send.

Readers react to the decline of blood banks and the attempts to reach out to Latino donors. Oakland's Chris Morgan writes, "...let's get moving on revising [donation] criteria so that we don't have to rely on Midwesterners during the next earthquake."

The editorial board praises state legislators on their approach to healthcare, pollution, and the rights of celebrities:

Dying isn't so good for one's work ethic, but it doesn't stop the work from continuing to earn money. Copyrights last for 70 years after the death of the author, composer or artist. Patent royalties can be collected for up to 20 years, with or without the inventor's presence on Earth. And in California, individuals control the rights to their names, likenesses and voices for 70 years beyond their interment.

Courts originally recognized the latter, known as the right of publicity, as an extension of the right to privacy. The name and image of a celebrity had value, and that person deserved the chance to capitalize on it exclusively. That approach made sense, as long as the rights didn't trump free speech.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg notices that despite all the second anniversary Katrina remembrances in the media, no one mentioned all the media mess-ups during the disaster. CultureGrrl blogger Lee Rosenbaum explains why public art collections are dwindling. And Times blogger Peter Viles demonstrates how real estate bloggers and the anti-bailout opinions they express are ignored by politicians.

Readers react to the Los Angeles school board's decision to siphon kids' lunch funds to pay for healthcare for part-time cafeteria workers. School Board member Tamar Galatzan isn't a fan of the idea: "While it's a national tragedy that millions of Americans do not have health insurance, this is no way to address the problem."

For example, the slammed-together $42-billion bond package passed by voters last year. It included a hodgepodge of specific earmarks and vague categories that emerged out of Sacramento deal-making. Why not require cities and counties to work together on regional water, transportation and flood control plans and projects, instead of giving the governor and Legislature control over billions of dollars in pork? What if there was also a clear scoring system to ensure that regions that successfully focus on results would get bonus funding?

Requiring localities to cooperate with their neighbors to be eligible for statewide funding would be a great way to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. Today cities typically compete for sales tax revenue by subsidizing new retail development. That comes not only at the expense of their neighbors (and local taxpayers), it produces longer shopping trips and more congestion. If sales tax dollars were instead apportioned regionally and cities were given incentives for reducing vehicle-miles traveled, wouldn't they be more likely to promote shopping and workplaces closer to home?

We have over 35 million people in California. More people are being born. Life expectancy is increasing. More are immigrating here. Millions more. Tens of millions more. What do you do with all the people?

Marin County won't take more people. They don't fit its collective value system. There is a limit to how many "transit villages" can be built and sustained.

And this brings me to an issue no one raises in this "state versus local communities" debate. That is individual rights. It is just not the state that is micromanaging local agencies, it is government limiting the opportunities for families and individuals in their pursuit of happiness.

Today's Los Angeles Times cover photo and accompanying story about the return of the cupola to the top of former St. Vibiana's Cathedral on Main Street dredges up the sorry (and funny) story of the city's rush 11 years ago to tear the place down.

As reporter Bob Pool notes, the cathedral sustained damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles wanted to demolish it and build a grand new cathedral on the site, restoring lost luster to Main Street. City officials began to envision the street as a civic thoroughfare connecting the old Plaza north of the Hollywood Freeway with City Hall and, south to Second Street, a great public ceremonial plaza fronting the new cathedral.

So church officials started knocking St. Vibiana's down, beginning with the cupola. Quietly. On a Saturday morning, when the courts were closed. But the demolition was illegal, since the cathedral was listed on the city's register of historic-cultural monuments. Listing meant no demolition permit could be issued for six months, to allow preservationists to find a solution that would keep the building intact.

Under pressure from the archdiocese, every member of the City Council except for arts and cultural champion Joel Wachs voted to remove the cathedral from the list. The explanations were uproariously funny. See, the cathedral (built in the centennial year of 1876) was historic when the council first listed it back in the 1960s. But time had gone by, and it had gotten old — so it was no longer historic.

The Los Angeles Conservancy successfully challenged the delisting in court, arguing that the move required an environmental impact report. The archdiocese, meanwhile, argued that city preservation law didn't apply to churches under the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion (the current flap over a synagogue in Hancock Park raises similar land-use-versus-First-Amendment issues). In oral argument at the Second District Court of Appeal hearing — although not in court papers — archdiocese lawyers invoked the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (which the Supreme Court later partially invalidated). Archdiocese lawyers and spokesmen also insisted that the church was beyond reproach on questions of art and preservation — and should be able to decide for itself whether the 19th-century building was a part of the city's heritage — since it was protecting so many priceless works in the Vatican and elsewhere around the world.

The Times editorial page warned that if Cardinal Roger Mahony wasn't allowed to demolish the old cathedral and replace it with a new one on the same site, "there will be little new development left to energize a downtown revitalization."

Yeah, too bad that downtown revitalization never happened.

The preservationists won, the archdiocese built Our Lady of the Angels on Temple Street, and the St. Vibiana's cupola lay on its side in the cathedral courtyard for more than a decade. Until yesterday, as reported by Pool.

The Wall Street Journal's Brody Mullins, camera in hand, treks out to the badlands of San Mateo County to find the seemingly modest house of the Paw family, who in conjunction with their associate, New York-based wheeler-dealer Norman Hsu, have made generous contributions to the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-New York). The numbers:

Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.

That total ranks the house with residences in Greenwich, Conn., and Manhattan's Upper East Side among the top addresses to donate to the Democratic presidential front-runner over the past two years, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of donations listed with the Federal Election Commission.

The article takes hypothetical pains not to say that the Paws are being given money by wealthier people to invest in Clinton's political future, but just to note that if, in some alt.reality, they were doing that, it would violate campaign finance laws. The story is far from probative: The Paws have a large family with some seemingly successful children (one manages a mutual fund). Their son Winkle acknowledges the family's association with Hsu (excuse me, Mr. Hsu), and least persuasive of all is the campaign-finance-investigation-by-architecture-review portion of the story:

The Paw's Daly City home is a one-story house in a working-class suburb of San Francisco. On a recent day, a coiled garden hose rested next to a dilapidated garden with a half-dozen dried out plants. The din of traffic from a nearby freeway was occasionally drowned out by jumbo jets departing San Francisco International Airport.

Don't let that "working-class" business fool you, comrade. Daly City, a little slice of Purgatory just below the Heaven of San Francisco, is as outrageously priced as only a town on the Peninsula can be. I know an Orthodox priest who spent nearly $800,000 on a D.C. dump not much different from the one in Mullins' photo — and that was in the late nineties, long before the market peak. I find it not at all surprising that an extended family that can get its paws on this lime-green palace would be able to spend $200,000 becoming "Hillraisers." Still, this is an interesting piece of enterprise journalism, even if you, like me, are one of those crazy people who believe how you spend money in exercising your First Amendment right to express your political views is your own damn business. And with the warning that life ain't easy for a boy named Hsu, I commend you to the full story.