Threats and intimidation enliven the Op-Ed page, courtesy of two former Los Angeles Times scribes who've gone on to pen books.

Miriam Pawel details how the United Farm Workers switched from backing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to increase Central Valley water supplies to opposing it. Backed by the Change to Win union coalition, Pawel writes, the UFW established a $1 million fund to campaign against Schwarzenegger's water bonds in a "clumsy attempt at political blackmail." And Michael Krikorian recounts how five LAPD officers came to train four handguns and a shotgun at him and his girlfriend's son on a recent night in Hancock Park.

The Opinion Manufacturing Division also offers two takes on President Obama's speech Tuesday to students. Columnist Tim Rutten gushes about the speech and the president's Q&A session with a group of Virginia high-schoolers, then urges Obama to take the same approach and tone -- speaking plainly and personally but without condescension -- tonight in his speech to Congress about healthcare. The editorial board, meanwhile, frames the controversy that led up to the speech in the context of "what historian Richard Hofstadter called the 'paranoid style in American politics,' an ancient, exasperating form of discourse."

The board also urges the state Fair Political Practices Commission to adopt a proposed set of rules limiting how public agencies may use taxpayer funds in support of ballot measures, bond issues and other Election Day causes. And it urges the Los Angeles City Council to settle the dispute over the city controller's power to audit functions within the city attorney's office:

City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Atty. Carmen Trutanich have accomplished something remarkable. They have given new life to a dispute between their predecessors that should have expired when the new term started July 1. Each made a campaign issue of cooperating to resolve the case of City of Los Angeles vs. Laura Chick, but each now claims the other is not cooperating. It's as if the contentious ghosts of termed-out politicians refused to leave and now possess the bodies of the new officeholders.

Credit: William Brown, TMS

-- Jon Healey

How about that Marxist/socialist/fascist/radical/mind-control speech President Obama delivered to those defenseless schoolkids, huh?

The most that the off-their-rockers right-wingers can salvage from the president’s remarkable speech is their claim now that it was their hue and cry that made him jettison his original speech and substitute a simple, inspiring one.

Sure, sure. Now, you go have a nice lie-down and rest a bit.

Let’s compare what the president had to say with, say, what Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told the new graduates of USC back in the spring:

Obama:

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.  And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Schwarzenegger: 

Work your butt off. You never want to fail because you didn't work hard enough. I never wanted to lose a competition or lose an election because I didn't work hard enough. I always believed leaving no stone unturned.  Muhammad Ali, one of my great heroes, had a great line in the '70s when he was asked, 'How many sit-ups do you do?' He said, 'I don't count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. When I feel pain, that's when I start counting, because that's when it really counts.'  That's what makes you a champion. And that's the way it is with everything. No pain, no gain. So many of those lessons that I apply in life I have learned from sports, let me tell you, and especially that one. And let me tell you, it is important to have fun in life, of course. But when you're out there partying, horsing around, someone out there at the same time is working hard. Someone is getting smarter and someone is winning. Just remember that. Now, if you want to coast through life, don't pay attention to any of those rules.  But if you want to win, there is absolutely no way around hard, hard work.

Obama:

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.  But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.  That’s OK.  Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, 'I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.' These people succeed because they understand that you can't let your failures define you -- you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying. No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work.

Schwarzenegger:  

So, like I said, I decided to run, I didn't pay attention to the rules. And I made it and the rest is history. Which, of course, brings me to rule number three: Don't be afraid to fail. Anything I've ever attempted, I was always willing to fail. In the movie business, I remember, that you pick scripts. Many times you think this is a wining script, but then, of course, you find out later on, when you do the movie, that it didn't work and the movie goes in the toilet.  Now, we have seen my movies; I mean, 'Red Sonja,' 'Hercules in New York,' 'Last Action Hero.' Those movies went in the toilet. But that's OK, because at the same time I made movies like 'Terminator' and 'Conan' and 'True Lies' and 'Predator' and 'Twins' that went through the roof. So you can't always win, but don't afraid of making decisions.  You can't be paralyzed by fear of failure or you will never push yourself. You keep pushing because you believe in yourself and in your vision and you know that it is the right thing to do, and success will come. So don't be afraid to fail. Which brings me to rule number four, which is: Don’t listen to the naysayers. How many times have you heard that you can't do this and you can't do that and it's never been done before? Just imagine if Bill Gates had quit when people said it can't be done.

Obama: 

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.  Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. And even when you're struggling, and you feel like other people have given up on you -- don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country. The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

Schwarzenegger: 

I recognized very quickly that inside my head and heart were a burning desire to leave my small village in Austria -- not that there was anything wrong with Austria, it's a beautiful country. But I wanted to leave that little place and I wanted to be part of something big, the United States of America, a powerful nation, the place where dreams can come true. I knew when I came over here I could realize my dreams. And I decided that the best way for me to come to America was to become a bodybuilding champion. ... And I went home and I said to my family, 'I want to be a bodybuilding champion.'  Now, you can imagine how that went over in my home in Austria, they couldn't believe it. They would have been just happy if I would have become a police officer like my father, or married someone like Heidi, had a bunch of kids and run around like the von Trapp family in '[The] Sound of Music.' That's what my family had in mind for me, but something else burned inside me. Something burned inside me. I wanted to be different; I was determined to be unique. I was driven to think big and to dream big. Everyone else thought that I was crazy. … But I didn't care. I wanted to be a bodybuilding champion and use that to come to America, and use that to go into the movies and make millions of dollars. … I wanted to become a champion; I was on a mission. So rule number one is, of course, trust yourself, no matter how and what anyone else thinks.

You get the idea. Now, perhaps the rockers will too. This is a speech a Republican president could have given. Laura Bush, who was married to one, thought it was a good idea. Newt Gingrich, who’d like to be one, gave it his endorsement.

Right, move along now, nothing to see.

-- Patt Morrison

At the risk of being accused of complicity in a bogus trend story, I pass along two confirmations of the notion of "helicopter parents" who hover over their college-student children.

Waiting in line at the bookstore at the university where I teach part-time, I marveled at the number of people my age waiting to have their purchases rung up. Maybe the parents didn't trust their kids with credit cards, but I'm afraid the actual explanation is that they couldn't pull away from their children when they dropped them off. If my mother had lingered on campus when I was in college in the 1970s, I would have been resentful. If she had accompanied me to the bookstore, I would have been as mortified as the girl in the Verizon commercial whose mother posts "I Love You" on her Facebook wall.

A couple days later I heard from one of my sisters, recently returned home to Denver after driving her son to college in Iowa. One of the orientation activities was a jokey quiz called "Are You a Helicopter Parent?" If so, the college provides the propellers.

On its website is a checklist of "Six Ways Parents Can Help Students Have a Successful First-Year Experience."  No. 1 is not (as it would have been when I was a student): "Go home." Instead, it's: "Encourage them to establish guidelines with roommates early, and to talk regularly with each other about how they are getting along." My favorite is No. 3: "Stress the importance of effective time management, and discuss the dangers of spending too much time online."

The anthem of my generation, accurate or not,  was that college students were adults. I remember protests against sign-in books in opposite-sex dorms and the practice of sending report cards to parents (even though parents paid the bill). In general, if grudgingly, parents acquiesced in this liberation. Not anymore -- not on Facebook, and not in the flesh. That whirring sound you hear is the loss of the independence we Baby Boom students fought so hard for.

Photo credit: Emilio Flores / For The Times

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

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

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

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

Photo: AP Photo / Charles Krupa

--Robert Greene

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Karin Klein

Columnist Tim Rutten returns from vacation to find the "birthers" still discussing citizen grand juries and opponents of healthcare reform bringing guns to President Obama's town hall meetings. There's more than the usual dollop of crazy talk in our politics, Rutten warns:

Read the column, then leave your comments -- rational or otherwise -- below. Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, criminal law scholar J. Kelly Strader warns that courts around the country are essentially ignoring the Supreme Court's admonition in Lawrence v. Texas that states couldn't outlaw private behavior that clashes with the majority's view of morality. And Vanda Felbab-Brown, a foreign-policy fellow at the Brookings Institute, offers insights on the four front-runners in Thursday's presidential election in Afghanistan.

In the editorial stack, the Times board blasts the California legislature for its failure to mandate more use of renewable energy by state utilities, despite the support of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, utility regulators and most voters. It pooh-poohs GM's eBay initiative, questioning whether the carmaker can do anything truly innovative on sales without hurting its dealer network. And it looks past newly released scores on standardized tests to find something encouraging at Locke High School:

Photo credit: AP Photo / John Bazemore

-- Jon Healey

The editorial board takes up the case of "Hillary: The Movie," a slash-and-burn documentary about then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that the Federal Election Commission declared to be a violation of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The board urges the Supreme Court to overrule the FEC and allow communications that don't expressly endorse or oppose a candidate:

The board also supports the efforts of State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) and his bill that would make California universities' fundraising auxiliaries, or foundations, subject to the same disclosure requirements as the universities. The foundations provide 20% of the Cal State system's operating budget, and trouble has surrounded such fundraising entities and their vague legal status. The solution can be found in Yee's bill and the board urges the California legislature to pass it.

Over on the Op-Ed page, Jamie Fellner, senior counsel for the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch, writes in about California's prison crisis and the horrible conditions that resulted in a court mandate that California reduce its prison population and address deficient medical and mental healthcare:

Marc B. Haefele, a commentator on KPCC, thinks the UCs could be in trouble. With the passage of Prop 209 banning race-based affirmative action in California, the University of California system is faced with the challenge of making the university system reflective of the state it serves in terms of makeup, while also cutting back on how many students can be offered even a chance at admission. The UCs take only the top high school students in the state, but they are predominantly Caucasian and Asian-American. So what's the answer?

Finally, columnist Jonah Goldberg puts his two cents into the ever-growing money pot as to why the "Obama-care" plan just won't work. He says advocates should blame its less-than-stellar showing on ... wait for it ... President Obama. Surprise, surprise.

-- Catherine Lyons

The editorial board still likes a plan that will go before the L.A. school board this month, allowing outside operators to submit proposals for running 50 new schools that will open over the next few years. What it doesn't like are signs that the district isn't acting transparently about the issue, as indicated by a town-hall meeting where opponents were locked out, and the L.A. Unified's decision to give a new school to the mayor's education partnership even though parents and teachers were not consulted:

The board has this much to say about Adolf Hitler's manifesto "Mein Kampf": It's repetitious, long-winded and evil. But it also argues that Germany should stop banning the book and go ahead with a new, annotated publication of it:

On the other side of the fold, the op-ed page ponders how President Obama's healthcare plan can prevail over doomsayers who claim the government will be taking over Americans' lives. Author Nancy J. Altman offers a possible solution: Take a cue from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's strategy for the passage of Social Security. And folklorist Patricia A. Turner tells the story behind a Ku Klux Klan quilt, and what the quilt's changed ownership says about America.

Photo: Ku Klux Klan quilt. Credit: Cheng Saechow / UC Davis

-- Karin Klein

I was a reluctant convert to Facebook, and even apostatized for a while after being overwhelmed with bulletins about the quotidian doings of some of my FB friends. But I'm back. Partly it's because FB is a way to reconnect with friends and relatives (I sniffed out three cousins), but my not-so-ulterior motive is professional.

Having initially been appalled by the use of FB by journalists as a self-promotion device, I'm doing it myself now. The second job-related advantage of FB is as a research resource. I have joined or become a fan of a mind-numbing number of organizations in which I take a journalistic interest. This gives me access to a bevy of bulletin boards about what's happening at, say, the Heritage Foundation or the liberal American Constitution -- chewy grist for my editorial-writing mill.

On some subjects FB is a more efficient search engine than Google or Bing. Still, the popular presumption that FB is a networking site for the like-minded could induce a casual browser to think that I suffer from MPPD (Multiple Political Personality Disorder).

I belong to both the Darwin-doubting Discovery Institute and the evolutionarily orthodox American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Rifle Association and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. If I'm ever nominated for a Cabinet position, I'll have a lot of 'splainin' to do (as Judge Sonia Sotomayor did, according to Sen. Tom Coburn channeling Ricky Ricardo).

Adding to the confusion would be the fact that some of my memberships are sincere, even if they also serve a professional purpose. I'm working on an article (you heard it here first) about the new trend of high school and college debates conducted on the Internet. But as a former debater myself and sometime debate judge, I still might  have joined Toastmasters and the Harvard Parliamentary Debate Class of 2013.

I have yet to discover a dual purpose in some of the other groups I joined, such as  "Fans of Michael Franks," "The British Detective Fiction Book Club," and "Firstborn Kids = Overachievers!" Hmm, maybe a mystery novel set in Oxford about the murder of every first-born child by a killer obsessed with the song "Popsicle Toes."

Today's pages are packed with heavy-headed examinations of perennial hot-button items that won't be solved any time soon (think race, education, healthcare and so on), so I'll ease you into the week with Monday's most cuddly topic: wild horses.

The editorial board analyzes a bill that would ban the culling of wild horses despite the fact that there are too many mustangs on the range and it's getting too expensive to keep the 31,000 horses that are corralled (in an attempt to control the growing herd) fed and happy. The editorial board's solution? Birth control:

The board also notes that the July 22 deadline for laying out a plan for Guantanamo Bay came and went with no recommendations by the White House-appointed task forces. The editorial board asks President Obama to keep his word and set a date for closing Gitmo.

On the Op-Ed page, columnist Gregory Rodriguez writes that it's silly for allies of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to use his arrest as proof that Americans haven't made much progress on race:

Also on the Op-Ed page, John Stobo and Tom Rosenthal weigh in on the healthcare debate, writing that a plan to cut Medicare costs by extrapolating research data from one region of the country to arrive at conclusions regarding another could leave the urban poor and those who live near pockets of urban poverty without adequate care. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa endorses L.A. Board of Education member Yoli Flores Aguilar's proposal to allow a variety of school operators to bid on running new L.A. schools. The mayor says the plan encourages new ideas and puts students first.

Finally, pilot Peter Garrison looks back at millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett's plane crash. Garrison writes that although we'll never know what happened on the day Fossett died in 2007, we do know this:

Photo credit: David Grubs / AP photo/The Billings Gazette