Not for use with small animals. (EPA/Peter Foley)

Alito's hypo seems a bit less far-fetched when one considers the popularity of WWE, televised hockey games and even The History Channel (which one of my peacenik relatives calls The War Channel). Violence sells, But censors, with support from the courts, usually have  focused on sex instead. What puts obscenity outside the protection of the First Amendment is that it appeals to "prurient interest" -- that is, it's sexually arousing.

Patricia Millett, the lawyer for video vendor Stevens, ratified the "violence OK, sex bad" rationale. She conceded that the law might have survived a First Amendment challenge if it  had been narrowly drawn to punish only the phenomenon that provoked the legislation -- so-called "crush videos" catering to fetishists who are turned on by seeing a woman crush dogs with her high heels. A non-erotic, aesthetic appreciation of dog-fighting, however, is protected.

The sex/violence dichotomy has inspired the familiar joke about the differences between conservatives and liberals when it comes to censorship: Conservatives want to ban depictions of sex, liberals want to ban descriptions of violence. But it's rooted in the traditional justification for laws against obscenity: society's interest in preventing debauchery. As a 19th century British judge put it: "I think the test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall." In other words, keep reading this and you'll go blind.

That rationale arguably applies to "crush videos," but it's hard to see how it justifies prosecution of the sale of dogfighting videos, which means that Stevens likely will go free. Watching violence against animals is constitutionally protected as long as you don't enjoy it too much. If a Cable TV producer greenlights Alito's idea of a Human Sacrifice Channel, he should be careful to market it to anthropologists, not sadists.

-- Michael McGough

The Opinion pages mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by looking at two very different aspects. Author Rebecca Solnit writes about the failure of the terrorists to terrorize in New York on that day, as ordinary people reacted with calm, generosity and bravery under the most fearful of circumstances:

A young man from Pakistan, Usman Farman, told of how he fell down and a Hasidic Jewish man stopped and saw the Arabic inscription on Farman's pendant. Then, "with a deep Brooklyn accent, he said, 'Brother, if you don't mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us. Grab my hand, let's get the hell out of here.' He was the last person I would ever have thought to help me. If it weren't for him, I probably would have been engulfed in shattered glass and debris."

The editorial board looks at another effort that isn't going all that well: the war in Afghanistan.

But today, the situation in Afghanistan is grim. Taliban insurgents have been regaining ground while U.S. military and Afghan civilian casualties are on the rise and the support of the American public is eroding. Far from vanquished, Al Qaeda is largely residing in the borderlands of Pakistan.

Afghans are increasingly fed up with the corruption and incompetence of President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government. Now Karzai's reelection is in dispute. Government election officials say he won a first-round victory with 54% of the vote in last month's balloting, but the independent Electoral Complaints Commission says it has "clear and convincing" evidence of fraud, and it has ordered a partial recount. Karzai must win fairly or face a runoff. Simply stated, there can be no good argument for risking American lives in support of a government that is considered illegitimate by its own people.

Altogether, the board concludes, the burden of proof is on President Obama to show why we should have a continued military presence in the country.

The board also considers the case of former Assemblyman Michael Duvall, who resigned after his, um, unofficial speech to a colleague about his sexual exploits. It's bad enough that a state legislator was voting in line with the interests of a power company while sleeping with its lobbyist, but why wasn't the assemblyman to whom Duvall was boasting disturbed by the ethical lapses and doing something about it?

Finally, on the Op-Ed page, an environment writer bemoans the loss of Van Jones from the president's environment team. Far from a radical, Jones has evolved into a pragmatic environmentalist, Judith Lewis writes.

Photo: A 2002 memorial for World Trade Center victims shines two columns of light skyward from where the towers stood. Credit: Peter Morgan / Reuters

--Karin Klein
 

With state officials discussing the early release of 27,000 inmates, the editorial board takes a closer look at California's broken prison system in the wake of the abduction and slaying of Lily Burk. The board traces much of the mess in the current prison system to Jessica's Law, Megan's Law and other emotion-driven pieces of legislature that trap criminals so they can't ever escape the vicious cycle or recidivism.

The board also weighs in again on the Employee Free Choice Act, this time on the elimination of the contentious card check provision. The card check would have tipped the balance of power in favor of unions and away from employers, who hold the advantage today. Neither should have the upper hand, the board says. Instead, workers should be able to decide whether to unionize with as little pressure from either side as possible:

Meanwhile, the op-ed page discusses healthcare from a Canadian perspective, sex bans in nursing homes, and beer in the White House.

First, physician and health policy analyst Michael M. Rachlis gives his Canadian perspective on the U.S. healthcare reform debate, arguing that his country's system hasn't been studied enough by U.S. policymakers. His comparisons are not pretty: All Canadians have health insurance, 46 million Americans do not. Canadians pay no co-pays, health problems bankrupt more than 1 million Americans each year.

Next, psychologist and author Ira Rosofsky ponders whether sex should be banned in nursing homes (is that even legal?). He concludes that one's sex life should never be restricted, but frequently are in nursing homes because of a lack of privacy. He calls for that policy to change.

Finally, columnist Gregory Rodriguez analyzes last Thursday's "beer summit" at the White House and thinks the idea of resolving intra-national conflict -- even something as big as race -- over a few beers just might be the way to go. We'll drink to that.

Photo: Vice President Joe Biden, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley and President Barack Obama share a brewski (or in Biden's case, a pseudo-brewski) at the White House on July 30. Credit: Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images

The editorial board bemoans the U.S. Supreme Court decision that inmates have no right to DNA testing that could exonerate them. Attempts by an accused person to find exculpatory evidence should be considered a basic part of due process. The board agrees with Colombian leaders that they, not the United States, should be the ones to try a man accused of holding 15 hostages including three who worked for military contractors. The board also takes a look at the Alameda Unified School District's new curriculum for teaching elementary school children about tolerance toward gays and lesbians, and concludes that the lessons take too heavy-handed an approach for such young children:

It's high time that schools took anti-bullying measures more seriously. We just never thought that would include requiring fifth-graders to recite the meaning of each letter in LGBT.

In attempting to discourage taunting of gay students, the Alameda Unified School District turned what should be a basic lesson on treating others kindly into a primer on sexual identity. Its new anti-bullying curriculum for kindergartners through fifth-graders will begin in the fall and focus solely on gay and lesbian issues -- as if harassment based on race, religion or failure to wear cool clothes were nonexistent. Parents who might object cannot opt their children out of it.

On the other side of the fold, writer Richard Farrell describes the haunting heights and low points of life with his domineering, sometimes abusive, sometimes intensely loving father. And a UCLA English professor parses the language of Middle East coverage and finds that it favors Israel over the concerns of Palestinians.

Illustration by Polly Becker for The Times

In today's Los Angeles Times opinion pages, the editorial board says it's time to sell the picturesque state-owned castle, pictured at right, perhaps for condos. The castle, by the way, is the prison at San Quentin.

Selling San Quentin and building homes or businesses in its place would boost the state's economy, lower prison operating costs and possibly provide a one-time cash infusion to the general fund, all without costing taxpayers a dime. Lawmakers should get it done, even if it won't solve the budget crisis.

The board also ponders the diminution of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel after a recent Supreme Court opinion, penned by Justice Antonin Scalia, in the case of Jesse Jay Montejo. The ruling overturns a 1986 precedent and blurs what ought to be a bright line: that once a suspect has a lawyer, questioning should stop unless the lawyer is present.

And then there's sexting, the practice of young teens, usually girls, of sending naked and other personal photos of themselves to boys -- who, too often, forward them to the rest of the school, the neighborhood, and all of cyberspace. So are we dealing with sex crimes? Child abuse? The Times calls on everyone to pause and take a breath:

By sexting, to quote one expert, teens are giving themselves "cyber tattoos" for life. So although it may be necessary to bring charges in the most egregious cases, that shouldn't be the rule. Education and attentive parenting will go further toward addressing this worrisome trend than new laws and tough prosecutions.

On the Op-Ed side, historic preservation comes to the moon. No, really. Louisiana State University School of Art graduate student Jill Thomas and professor Justin St. P. Walsh say we should worry about space tourists messing with the Apollo landing sites.

The sites of early lunar landings are of unparalleled significance in the history of humanity, and extraordinary caution should be taken to protect them. Armstrong's iconic footprint and the American flag placed by the astronauts may yet be intact -- there is no wind or rain on the moon to damage or destroy them.

Election law maven, blogger, and Loyola Law School professor Richard Hasen calls for Al Franken to be seated in the U.S. Senate. Democrat Franken led incumbent Republican Norm Coleman by 312 votes after a lengthy recount in Minnesota, but Coleman has appealed to the state Supreme Court and may not stop there.

If, as expected, the court rejects Coleman's challenge and confirms Al Franken as the winner, the U.S. Senate should be ready to seat Franken provisionally, even if Coleman vows further legal action and even if the state's governor refuses to sign Franken's election certificate.

And columnist Gregory Rodriguez takes up the Latino-ness of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent.

Because the media and the political elites make no distinctions among Latino groups, Mexican Americans may find themselves waiting a very long time for one of their own to be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

A couple of decades ago, the trend in Western medicine was to discourage parents from having their newborn sons' penises circumcised, a dramatic turnaround from the trend of a couple of millennia ago. But trend cycles have a way of speeding up, and we're already back to doctors saying biblical Abraham might have had the right idea after all, though he undertook the procedure at a more advanced age.

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that circumcision is associated with dramatically reduced rates of the virus that causes genital warts, the virus that causes cervical cancer in women, and syphilis. This comes on top of findings a couple of years ago that circumcision appeared to have a protective effect against HIV infection. reducing infection rates in males by up to 60%.

As a result, some doctors are calling for circumcision as a public health measure. Knowing doctors, though, and the rate at which medical advice changes (Did wine end up being good or bad for us in the latest round?), males with uncertain sentiments on the subject will likely want to hold off before making radical anatomical modifications. It's a lot easier to eat more garlic -- or give up garlic -- than to undo genital surgery.

Photo: A mohel, who performs Jewish ritual circumcisions, with a client. Credit: Handout from Rabbi Jacob Shechet

Ew. No, really. This is just ... distasteful.

Southwest Airlines has adorned one of its 737s with a huuuge illustration of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model named Bar Refaeli reclining along the fuselage, cleavage at about Row Two, white-bikinied crotch over the wing, feet nearing the very back row.

This turns out to be an even worse idea than airlines trying to charge passengers for water. The Fort Worth newspaper says some passengers complained about having to board a plane "plastered with soft porn."

With its low fares and jokey crew banter, Southwest is the spiritual airline heir to the departed PSA, Pacific Southwest Airlines, which was practically California's unofficial in-state airline for almost 40 years, until 1988, when it finally gave up the ghost in a merger with USAir. Its fares were very cheap, and standby fares were affordable even for students; I remember flying up to San Francisco late one afternoon at the last minute for some concert, flying back that same night, and getting change out of seventy bucks.

Unfortunately, PSA sometimes made too much of its motto, "The World's Friendliest Airline." There was more to it than the comic cabin patter. A Times reporter wrote in 1971 that you could just as easily call PSA the "Airborne Playboy Club," and he meant it flatteringly. Stewardesses -- for that's what they were called --  often wore miniskirts and, later, "banana-skin tight" hot pants. They were instructed to make nice with the chiefly male passengers -- so much so that you'd have thought they were working for tips instead of $330 a month (the starting salary in 1971).

In that 1971 article, the president of the airline described the ideal "PSA girl" as having "beauty head to toe. Good face. Good build. Flashing eyes. She's the sort of girl who can swing and yet keep herself under control when the passenger goes too far." Not a word about the first responsibility of flight attendants: passenger safety.

I remember boarding a flight one February 14, and after the plane took off, the "PSA girl" went up and down the aisle, handing out drawing materials to the men on board and sing-songing, "Make me a Valentine! Make me a Valentine!"

It wasn't cute, it was ridiculous. I think it demeaned the flight attendants as much as it demeaned passengers, especially women passengers.

When it comes to what should happen to this new fleshly adornment on the Southwest plane, I'll invoke a double entendre that might have suited the old PSA: "Take it off."

They never met
Not even briefly
I know what you thought
You thought that they might . . .

I was reminded of those lyrics from the hilarious Martin Mull song when I read the latest twist in my favorite prehistoric tale: the "Did they?/Didn't they?" story of modern humans and Neanderthals.

The story has toggled back to "they didn't"  -- interbreed, that is. The release of findings from the mapping of Neanderthal DNA indicates, in USA Today's decorous langauge, that "our extinct cousins made 'very little, if any' contribution to human genes." They may have met, but they probably never did the nasty.

As I have noted before, speculation about whether Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalis ever mated long has aroused the prurient interest of amateur anthropologists. It also has provided science writers with an evergreen topic, because scientists keep changing their mind.

The conventional wisdom used to be that the two lines crossed during their relatively brief cohabitation in Europe and Asia, as was supposedly obvious from the fact that some modern people have Neanderthal-like weak chins and protruding brow ridges. Someone even suggested that if you dressed a Neanderthal and gave him a shave and haircut he would be indistinguishable from anyone else in a subway car. (I doubt it, but maybe in a WWE crowd.)

Not long ago, there was even the suggestion that modern humans in Europe and Asia borrowed their brain power from Neanderthals, in the form of a gene called microcephalin-1. Alas, the latest study from the Max Planck Institute  seems to render that theory extinct. Neanderthals apparently carried an earlier version of the microcephalin gene.

The study does suggest that Neanderthals and moderns might have shared a different trait.  The Neanderthal DNA included a gene known as FOXP2, which is involved in speech and language. So it's possible that a Neanderthal swain might have asked a human woman to share his cave -- and she said no.

Even though justice should be pursued for the victims of molestation by Catholic priests, the editorial board worries that the legal grounds used for an investigation into Cardinal Roger M. Mahony stretch prosecutorial creativity too far. The board also looks at the curious case of a billboard magnate who claims to be an artist, and comes out in firm support of the Los Angeles Unified School District's exams during the academic year, despite a call by the teachers' union to boycott the tests, as a useful way of keeping students' learning on track:

If a test showed that most of a fourth-grade class couldn't convert fractions to decimals, even though the teacher had covered that material, wouldn't the teacher want to know as soon as possible? .... Teachers who fail to carry out such a basic duty as a required exam should be written up. Student progress is simply not negotiable.

On the other side of the fold, columnist Joel Stein isn't happy that he's being asked to vote again, just a few months after he completed a fatiguing ballot. P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution outlines the way modern war is increasingly fought by machines, and writer Henry Alford tells the story of a 114-year-old woman who can teach us something about not just the quantity but the quality of longevity.

I would argue that man has accorded himself long life because elders serve an important role in society. As an old African saying runs, "the death of an old person is like the burning of a library." These living libraries are among our greatest sources of wisdom.

* Illustration by Joel Pett / Lexington Herald-Leader

The Opinion Manufacturing Division offers two very different views on the birth of octuplets in Bellflower. Author William H. Woodwell Jr., citing the troubles his family experienced with twin daughters born 16 weeks early, throws a glass of cold water on the celebratory coverage of the Bellflower babies. Extremely premature births impose tremendous costs, Woodwell argues, and often lead to less than fully functional children. That's why he calls for a crackdown on fertility treatments and -- here's the ugly part -- culling some of the multiple fetuses they sometimes create:

Fertility doctors must be held more accountable for their actions. The medically assisted birth of triplets or higher should be viewed as the equivalent of malpractice.

In addition, when fertility treatments yield triplets or more, we need to promote responsible decision-making on the part of parents -- chiefly, by encouraging or even somehow requiring them to engage in multifetal reduction.

Sorry, but that sounds too much like China's brutal one-child policy to me. (Remember, irate letter writers, that Op-Ed writers do not express the Views of This Newspaper.) On the other side of the spread, the editorial board takes a much more equanimious approach to the event. It notes the great challenges that the births pose to the family, yet it doesn't assume the worst:

People might cluck, but then people are always ready to cluck at the parenting decisions of others. We're more inclined, as a society, to define and foresee problems in eccentricity than to think that perhaps it will turn out to be simply extraordinary.

Elsewhere in the editorial stack, the board blasts Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) for trying to make President Obama's choice for attorney general, Eric Holder, promise not to prosecute a set of potential defendants (U.S. intelligence officers who used "enhanced interrogation techniques") before he's confirmed. And it praises President Obama for starting his efforts in the Middle East on the right note, giving his first official television interview as president to the Saudi-owned satellite news channel Al Arabiya. Hmm. I wonder if Obama's appearance drew more viewers than Al Jazeera did when it aired its last Osama bin Laden tape.

Back in Op-Ed land, freelance writer Lee Gapay offers a rare bit of unadulterated good news: He's finally found space in a subsidized housing project for seniors after 6 1/2 years spent living in his pickup truck. (You may remember Gapay from his last piece about being homeless, which ran on Thanksgiving Day.) And columnist Tim Rutten writes that the decision by Pope Benedict XVI to rescind the excommunications of four anti-Semitic bishops in a traditionalist Catholic sect wasn't merely an inside-the-Vatican issue, but also a blow to religious liberty and tolerance.

Photo: Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center/Getty Images