July 2007 Archives

So after the Korean missionaries were taken hostage by Taliban in Afghanistan, Koreans hit the streets in protest -- against us, of course, demanding that forces withdraw from Afghanistan and holding signs at candlelit vigils that read "End the US-ROK alliance in Afghanistan" and "US Troops Out Now!"

But now that time has dragged on, deadlines have passed, and Koreans have learned that the Afghan government can't kowtow to Taliban demands and -- surprise! -- that the Taliban isn't interested in their kaffeklatsch diplomacy or cash for hostages, they suddenly want OUR HELP!

"'We appeal for support from the people of the United States and around the world for resolving this crisis as early as possible,' Kim Jung-ja, the mother of one of the remaining captives, said.

'Especially, the families want the United States to disregard political interests and give more active support to save the 21 innocent lives,' she said, reading a statement before other relatives at the Saemmul Community church in Bundang, just outside Seoul, on Tuesday."

One sign at an anti-war protest read "Bush negotiate with the Taliban."

So let's get this straight -- when we go into a country to help people, we're branded imperialists and become the subject of derision around the world. But when their people are in deep doo-doo, recklessly taking an evangelization trip to a Muslim country, suddenly it's our responsibility to get them out of it? They want U.S. troops out, but if we were out, then we wouldn't be around to clean up their mess, would we?

A Terrible Liar

Some people are blessed, or perhaps cursed, with the ability to lie, evade, and dissemble seamlessly. Alberto Gonzales in not one of them.

Once upon a time we had great liars—people who could dodge, parse and misdirect like verbal Houdinis. Harry Truman said of Richard Nixon that Nixon was a great liar because he practiced a lot and would rather tell a lie even when the truth would serve him better. Bill Clinton could parse a sentence or even the meaning of a gerundial phrase. “I am not having sex with her,” means precisely what it says. “Right now, as I speak to you, I am not having sex.” Man, he was good at being bad. There is a kind of perverse virtue in this.

Most of the time when we call someone a terrible liar, we actually mean that they are good at lying. Alberto Gonzales, however, is a terrible liar in every sense of the word. He lies a lot and is not very good at it. He doesn’t seem either credible or authoritative. He is unable to use verbal slight of hand to change the subject or answer the question he wants and not the one being asked. He just sits there, with that pathetic deer in the headlights look, and repeats painfully implausible set piece responses.

Some pundits have cruelly compared him to a piñata—as someone who just keeps getting hammered on. Some criticize the metaphor as being racist—comparing an Hispanic to a piñata because he is Hispanic. I don’t think the metaphor is racist, but it is inaccurate. It is an insult not to Hispanics but to piñatas.

He is no piñata—a piñata moves when it is hit. The stick drives it in different directions. It swings at varying speeds. It eludes those who are trying to beat it and break it.

Gonzales is no piñata; he’s a heavy bag—tied to one place, just absorbing the punches and never moving an inch. He is not evasive; nor is he cute and clever. He’s not feisty and doesn’t fight back. He can’t float like a butterfly or sting like a bee. He just looks straight ahead and puts his effort into trying not to look as if he were going to cry.

For pity’s sake, there should be a mercy rule. In Little League if a team is up by 11 runs they call the game—not wanting to humiliate the losers. In boxing they stop the fight if the other boxer can’t protect himself. This is a TKO. He is totally defenseless.

The Democrats aren’t hitting him as hard as the Republicans who are clearly embarrassed by his performance. Democrats want him up in front of some committee every week to make the Whitehouse look bad. Republicans would like him to go away and to begin repairing the Justice Department from this debacle.

It is fair to ask if this is more politicized than other Justice Departments. But there can be no serious question as to the total ineptitude of General Gonzales who is a general disaster. He makes one long for those halcyon days of John Mitchell or John Ashcroft—a time when Attorney Generals could move and dance, think on their feet and frustrate the opposition with brilliance and not appall them with stories that no self-respecting ten year-old would try. I’m expecting the “Dog ate my meeting notes” excuse next week. The cruelty here is not the Congress or Senate panels but the Whitehouse that leaves him in the ring to be pounded, pummeled and punished. Shame.

The Drudge Report has attracted international attention to a story out of New Zealand about "Vegansexuals" -- animal lovers so committed to the veggie cause that they won't have sex with meat-eaters:

Many female respondents described being attracted to people who ate meat, but said they did not want to have sex with meat-eaters because their bodies were made up of animal carcasses.

One vegan respondent from Christchurch said: "I believe we are what we consume, so I really struggle with bodily fluids, especially sexually."

But wait! If we truly are what we eat, then sex with carnivores is nothing more than bestiality, which, according to some animal-rights champions -- most notably Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer and PETA president Ingrid Newkirk -- can be, under the right circumstances, just swell.

So to get this matter of vegan ethics straight once and for all: Hamburgers are immoral, but buggering ham is not. And as for sex with carnivores, well, the jury's still out on that one.

The Bush Administration has long argued that all was going swimmingly in Iraq, even when the evidence overwhelmingly suggested otherwise, thereby squandering whatever credibility it had on the matter. But when someone outside the administration -- in this case, two scholars from the liberal Brookings Institution who have just returned from Iraq -- say that the situation has taken a turn for the better, it gives some cause for hope:

Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal....

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Let's hope and pray they're right.

Yes, David Beckham might be a pin-up fave among the female set. Yes, he and his wife attract more hoopla and paparazzi than Paris and Lindsay on an all-night bender. And yes, even though soccer games seldom register a score above 1-0, the sport has a burgeoning fan base in the U.S. All that said, the Beckham-Galaxy-MLS venture is doomed for one simple reason:

No one will ever take seriously a team whose members -- and high-priced superstar -- sport HERBALIFE jerseys.

Sorry, just not gonna happen.

For those not in the know, Herbalife is the Amway of the weight-loss world. Some call it a pyramid scheme. It's a "health" company whose founder died from a four-day drinking binge.

To capitalize on Beckhamania, the Galaxy are going to need better corporate sponsorship. Is Enron available?

I’m really looking forward to being miserable this Thursday night. I will be terribly disappointed if I don’t suffer. Have I become a masochist? No. I’m just human and in touch with the complex layers of emotions engendered by the Dodgers, the Giants and the prospect of Barry Bonds breaking the hallowed homerun record of Hank Aaron.

I am going to the Dodger/Giant game Thursday night and I want to be a witness to Bonds breaking the record. I’m hoping to be able to boo and curse and get into a righteous frenzy over Mr. Churl breaking the record of Mr. Nice. And the fact that he is a Giant (by dint of team affiliation and possible steroidal inflation) only adds to the exquisite agony of it all.

Looking deeper into my soul than is warranted over issues involving baseball, I’m in touch with my ambivalence. He is going to break the record. He is a consistently unpleasant fellow. He is a Giant. But all of this is trumped by the possibility of witnessing history.

I was at the fabled Roy Campenella game in the coliseum. I was at the first Dodger game in the Coliseum and at Dodger Stadium. These are iconic moments beyond winning and losing. It would be a pleasure (like wiggling a loose tooth) to be a part of Barry Bonds bashing the ball for the record. I want to howl in indignation. Will my rage be real of feigned? Good question. I actually don’t know. But I hope to let you know.

... or at least so says a new study from the RAND Institute for Civil Justice :

“While driving ability declines with age for most people, those seniors who continue to drive appear to be safer drivers than the general public might think,” said David Loughran, a RAND senior economist and professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School who is the lead author of the study. “By far, it is the youngest drivers who pose the greatest risk to traffic safety.”

Maybe, but saying that older drivers are safer than teenagers is like saying they're safer than drunk drivers. Of course they are. Who isn't?

The press release says, "Drivers 65 and older are ... not much more likely than drivers 26 to 64 to cause accidents," but elsewhere the report notes that "older drivers are slightly (16 percent) likelier than drivers aged 25 to 64 to cause an accident."

Whether a 16 percent greater likelihood of a crash constitutes "slightly" increasing the risk by "not much" is, I suppose, a matter of interpretation. Still, this spin can't help but make the conspiracy theorist in me wonder if the RICJ isn't in cahoots with the AARP ...

On Saturday, FF's Jonathan Dobrer called out L.A. County Supervisor Yvonne Burke for living in Brentwood even though she nominally represents South L.A. -- an apparent violation of the law. In a slightly abbreviated form, that post made it into today's paper. And on this same day, FF's own Earl Ofari Hutchinson has written in defense of Burke over at the Times.

Here's Jonathan:

However, laws do mean something to politicians (and even civilians) or at least they should. Swearing falsely is perjury and politicians—office holders and office seekers have been charged with and convicted of perjury for claiming residence falsely.

And here's Earl:

If The Times' charge were true and Burke didn't live in her district but only in a wealthier one, does that mean she's so out of touch with the needs of her constituents that's she's unfit to hold office? The answer is yes only if one believes that there's a direct correlation between where a politician rests her head every night and her effectiveness. There is none.

So who wins this exchange? Tell us what you think ...

Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his home today that caused him to take a tumble, the Supreme Court says. Before anybody starts making wagers on the next chief justice, Roberts' neurological evaluation is reportedly checking out OK and, says the SCOTUS, he had a similar incident in 1993.

And yes, he's the last person on the Supreme Court I'd expect to have a seizure, being the spring chicken and all...

So the namby-pambys who insist on telling other people how to live, or not live, their lives have taken away all the smoking areas in California and left us die-hards (and we will die hard) smokers with nowhere to smoke except our cars.

Then in some sort of expansion of non-smokers' rights, the car manufacturers decided to take away the ashtrays and lighters from their cars. It's like something Voldemort would do to us muggles. Now we have to smoke in our cars with our arms out the windows with our cigarettes and no place to put them after we've smoked them. Consequently, our freeway are covered with cigarette butts, Just read Sue Doyle's article on how bad it's become.

... as of July 29.

U.S. Deaths Confirmed By The Department of Defense -- 3646
Reported U.S. Deaths Pending DoD Confirmation -- 6
Total -- 3652

Our beloved Daily News learned something about the newspaper business through the comic controversy. Newspapers are about more than news. They are about relationships.

Our readers participate in relationships with the characters in the comics. In the rest of the paper, the readers also relate to the writers and columnists. The comics and columnists (intentional pairing) become part of our lives and are ingrained in our rituals. When the rituals are taken away, trust is severed, and the readers may feel free to see other papers or media.

The ritual aspects of newspaper reading are important. Buying a paper is part of the daily routine of many in Europe. Reading on the train makes London commuting bearable. Starting the day by going to the driveway or foyer to get the paper and read it (or them) over that first cup of coffee is a rite to be practiced and re-enforced. Changing our routines could be fatal to our relationship with our papers. Change the Mass in the Catholic Church. Change the melody of the Shema in a Jewish service. Mess with the order of service in a Protestant church. People will be unhappy and even disaffected.

TV newscasters understand these “virtual relationships.” They often sign off with “See you tomorrow” or “We look forward to seeing you tomorrow.” Aside from the scary implications that they can see us through the same cameras with which we see them, we understand with our brains that the words are not to be taken literally. However, unconsciously the words lead us to believe we have a kind of relationship and so we make dates with our talk show hosts or newscasters.

There are people who buy the SF Chronicle, now that Herb Cain is gone, only for Jon Carrol and Scott Osler. There are people who cancelled the L.A. Times and re-subscribed just for Al Martinez.

If it takes Mallard or Mariel, Chris or Hagar, Bridget or Beetle Bailey to start the day, well I certainly understand. Readers can get news from many sources. For them to select the Daily News will be influenced by routine and relationships with comics and columnists.

The Daily News readers's triumph is surpassed only by their gratitude. Editor Ron Kaye decided swiftly that the bean counters had erred and set in motion the return of the much appreciated comics. The good guys win -- for now.

Newspaper that listens

I wrote last week to complain about the missing comic strips and now I need to write to thank you for listening to all of us who love the funnies. I took a lot of ribbing about writing a letter to the editor for something so simple as the comics and was so happy to read all the other letters on this subject.
I now know that I am not the only adult who reads the comics. Thank you for being a newspaper that listens to your readers.

Admitting a mistake

I want to send Ron Kaye this little “thank you” note. It is very nice to see that there are still folks out there, in position of authority, who are willing to admit to a mistake. I am very happy to see we are getting our cartoons back. I read all of your paper, but I also like the “old” cartoons.

With gratitude

I just wanted to tell The Daily News how grateful I am that you paid attention to the pleas of your readers and brought back our beloved comics. This is an example of why you are my paper of choice, you actually value the opinion of the general public.
Our federal, state and local governments could learn a thing or two from you. Thank you for empowering us.

Readers triumph

It is proof of “we, the people” that the readership was able to influence the Daily News in regards to their dismay over the change in the comic strips. Obviously, it was the power of many that made the difference.
Just think of what a wake up call it would be for our elected officials if we would contact our councilmen, congressmen, and senators about really important issues. Just think of the difference we could make. We have no one but ourselves to blame when our government does not truly reflect our wishes.

Thank you ...

... Thank you, thank you. My day can now start off as it should. With a smile. The return of the comics is much appreciated.

Now I am happy ...

... at least in the morning. Thank you so much for returning our comics to us. They were our favorites. It is good to know that all of our letters and e-mails really made a difference. Thanks again.

Front page funnies

I can certainly understand the feelings of people who were upset about your removing their favorite comics from the paper. Like many of them, I read my favorite funnies first — on the front page first.
With the president, congress, supreme court, governor, state legislature, county supervisors, city council and mayor on the front page, I get my early morning belly laugh. Everyone says that is good for my health. Please don't remove the front page with my comics from your paper.

Arnold's coming to Woodland Hills permanently. Kinda. A charter school is going to name its WH campus after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, accoridng to the press release factor over at the gov's press office.

In honor of Governor Schwarzenegger's commitment to the education of all California children, today the CHIME Charter Elementary School will be renamed in honor of the Governor, to the CHIME Institute's Arnold Schwarzenegger Elementary School. Located in Woodland Hills, the newly renamed elementary school is part of the CHIME Institute.

"I am honored to have a high-quality institution like CHIME Charter Elementary named in my honor. The CHIME Institute shares my commitment to educating all children," said Governor Schwarzenegger.

CHIME Institute implements a co-teaching model where general and special education teachers provide curriculum and learning experiences that meet the needs of all students.

A Carnegie Mellon University study looked at why women are systematically paid less. As I suspected, it wasn't so much because of institutionalized sexism, but because of society's unease with uppity women in general. You know, if we stick up for ourselves, we become "bitches" or "'hos."

Their study, which was coauthored by Carnegie Mellon researcher Lei Lai, found that men and women get very different responses when they initiate negotiations. Although it may well be true that women often hurt themselves by not trying to negotiate, this study found that women's reluctance was based on an entirely reasonable and accurate view of how they were likely to be treated if they did. Both men and women were more likely to subtly penalize women who asked for more -- the perception was that women who asked for more were "less nice".

"What we found across all the studies is men were always less willing to work with a woman who had attempted to negotiate than with a woman who did not," Bowles said. "They always preferred to work with a woman who stayed mum. But it made no difference to the men whether a guy had chosen to negotiate or not."

In this study, Bowles and her colleagues divided 119 volunteers at random into different groups and provided them with descriptions of male or female candidates who tried to negotiate a higher starting salary for a hypothetical job, along with descriptions of applicants who accepted the offered salary. The volunteers were asked to decide whether they would hire the candidates -- who were all described as exceptionally talented and qualified. While both men and women were penalized for negotiating, Bowles found that the negative effect for women was more than twice as large as that for men.

Just got back from a much-needed, much-appreciated vacation to Cape Cod, during I which I was mostly in a blissful state of media blackout. I did, however, occasion to spot this article on the front page of the Boston Globe.

Massachusetts voters sick of holding their noses on Election Day could get another option: none of the above....

The measure, pending before the Legislature, would add the line "None of the Above; For a New Election" to every state and local race on the ballot. If that option won the most votes, another election would be held in 60 to 80 days, and other candidates would be allowed to run.

Now this is an idea we could use in California! How great would it be in all our bogus, gerrymandered Legislative races to have the power to deny the incumbent a return to office!

Hat tip to VH-1's "Best Week Ever" for pointing out this rehearsal at a correctional facility in the Philippines! But Al-Jazeera has the behind-the-scenes story and corresponding video. Apparently, the inmates also perform a number from "Sister Act." (And yes, that's a guy in drag in the video.)

From Reuters:

"A Qatar sheikh held up a British Airways flight at Milan's Linate airport for nearly three hours after discovering three of his female relatives had been seated next to men they did not know.

When none of the other business class passengers agreed to swap seats, the sheikh, a member of Qatar's ruling family, went to the pilot, who had already started the engine, to complain, an airport official said.

But the pilot ordered him and his traveling companions, the three women, two men, a cook and a servant, off the plane."

I swear, I thought the next line was going to be, "So the sheikh offered to check them as baggage..."

Iraq's national soccer team beat favorite Saudi Arabia 1-0 today to win the Asian Cup. No word on whether this win will make the Iraqi team attractive to David Beckham, taking Posh from the Woodland Hills TGI Friday's to a falafel stand in Baghdad...

However, one quote after the victory from Younis Mahmoud, who scored Iraq's goal:

"I want America to go out. Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but out. I wish the American people didn't invade Iraq and, hopefully, it will be over soon."

How quickly he forgets how Uday Hussein tortured soccer players after losses or draws.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who tried to go over the Cahuenga Pass this afternoon, getting caught in the horrible traffic that resulted from the tragic crash near Highland that claimed the life of an off-duty LAPD officer. But I wasn't on the southbound/eastbound side of the freeway, where all lanes were closed and traffic was diverted onto surface streets. I was on the northbound/westbound side, which was backed up nearly to the Harbor Freeway. Why? There wasn't a lane closed on my side, nary a shred of glass from the wreck on the opposite side of the highway. It was simply the tiresome L.A. tradition of looky-loo-itis, where, even though motorists have seen wrecks many, many times, there is some compelling need to slow down and look at the fresh wreck. Tourists feel the need to join in this local tradition, contributing more rubbernecking than the locals.

We may build car-pool lanes or reversible lanes to try to ease traffic congestion, but will our freeway woes ever be solved until we resolve to be part of the looky-loo solution instead of the problem? Drive, don't gawk!

Hope that you all caught Editor Ron Kaye's note this weekend about the return -- by popular demand -- of eight comic strips on Monday.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Burke may need some supervision. She’s been accused of sleeping where she shouldn’t be. With most politicians this would betoken some kind of sexual impropriety, but Burke is clean in terms of her nighttime company. This is a question of whether she lives where she sleeps or if simply by changing cars and picking up the mail she makes another house her home.

Yvonne Burke is the county supervisor from…from…uh, well that’s the problem. She represents South Los Angeles, an area that includes her “legal residence” in Mar Vista. However, she is in some political and possibly legal trouble for spending too much time in her Brentwood home and not enough (or any) in her official and legal residence in the district she represents and where, by law, she must reside.

She claims that the Mar Vista property was uninhabitable because she was remodeling, and it has taken more time than anticipated. This, of course, sounds credible to anyone who has survived a remodel. However, it doesn’t pass the reasonable person test. Her Brentwood house with swimming pool and tennis court is somewhat more, let’s say,” comfortable” than her Mar Vista condo—a condo whose vistas are marred by a lack of lush mountains and the verdant vegetation of Brentwood’s Mandeville Canyon.

The fact that she is engaged in some stealth makes one think that if she is hiding it may be because she has something to hide. She sleeps in Brentwood and drives to Mar Vista to get picked up to go to work. She is dropped off in Mar Vista and drives to her Brentwood home, where she sleeps—and swims and presumably plays tennis. No one would begrudge her this lifestyle. In fact, these days it is pretty comforting when any politician is sleeping at home—even if it is the wrong home.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

With hate Michael Vick mob hysteria raging in the sports world and among the general public it seems Tasha Levin is about the only person that got it right about the embattled Atlanta Falcons quarterback. The Northeastern University student stood outside the federal courtroom in Richmond, Virginia where Vick was arraigned on dogfighting charges and reminded the world that Vick hasn’t been convicted of anything, and that they ‘re trying to sabotage his career. The “they” is the legion of animal rights groups, sportswriters, and irate fans who have screamed for Vick’s head. Levin seems to be one of the few that haven’t forgotten there’s still a few little Constitutional things called presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty, the right to an unbiased, fair trial, reasonable doubt, and that criminal charges are just that charges, not convictions, and that a defendant’s guilt or innocence is decided in a courtroom not by a gaggle of talking head sports commentators, animal rights picketers, and football crazies.

The capper though came from one blogger who claimed that Vick has now replaced O.J. Simpson as the most hated man in America. He’s right. Vick for the moment anyway is America’s pariah. He and Simpson have three things in common. They are and were football celebs. They lived an opulent and princely lifestyle. They were and are victims of a rush to judgment.

A stoic Vick issued a statement through his attorney that he intended to clear his good name. Even if Vick somehow beats the fed charges in his trial which is scheduled for November, that’s a doomed hope. In fact, as was the case with Simpson, that will ignite even greater public fury. They will wag fingers at Vick and say that he was able to use his fame and name, and his A team, high priced attorneys to massage the legal system to skip away scot free, even though he’s guilty as sin. Vick will pay an even steeper price for that presumption.

He will lose any chance at endorsements. Sportswriters will rail against him. Animal rights groups will hound Vick in every city he sets foot in waving “Convick” signs in his face. Fans will rain boos and catcalls down on him when he sets foot on the field.

Fortunately, there are still a few like student Levin that haven’t completely lost their heads in the face of the hate Vick chorus.

From the Taliban spokesman of the week, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, on the condition of their remaining 22 South Korean hostages:

"I don't know if the weather is not good for them or our food. The women hostages are crying. The men and women are worried about their future."

Yeah, it's the weather and the Taliban chow -- that's the problem. I'm sure tears and illness have nothing to do with the fact that you're threatening to saw off their heads every 15 minutes.

Already the above photo from Phoenix gives me heart, because a man who shops at Costco could have some good ideas on how to run this country economically (starting with the box of 75 frozen hamburger patties). But the story here is that Giuliani is striking out at the Democratic contenders:

"Edwards offered a proposal on taxes Thursday that calls for increasing the rates for the wealthy and providing breaks for the middle class. The plan would raise the top tax rate on long-term capital gains.

'This is a Democratic program to drive businesses and jobs out of the United States of America,' Giuliani said at a restaurant. 'Capital gains are realized by a lot of middle-class people who have investments in mutual funds. This is a tax on everybody.'

On Monday, Obama suggested that as president he would be willing to meet with leaders of nations such as Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea without preconditions — a notion that has drawn scorn for his Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Giuliani called it a 'terrible mistake,' adding: 'Fidel Castro is a dictator and he is a murderer. He should not be visiting with U.S. presidents.'

On Thursday, during a stop in Houston, Giuliani called Democrats 'the party of losers' for demanding a scheduled pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq.

'Democrats have already declared we've lost,' the former New York mayor said. 'It's really strange. The Democrats want to give our enemies a timetable.'

That drew a quick retort from Democratic candidate Sen. Joe Biden.

'It is absurd for Rudy Giuliani to call Democrats 'losers' after five years of failed Republican policies in Iraq,' the Delaware senator said in a statement issued Friday."

Hey, Joe, how many times have you run for the White House and lost?

I'm liking this Rudy feistiness, though. Particularly on the Cuba part.

John Edwards lashed out at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama today for their argument on the best way to approach rogue nations (campfire singalong vs. cautious diplomacy):

"'If you're looking for what's wrong in Washington, why the system is broken, why the system doesn't work, one perfect example is what's been happening just over the course of the last four days,' said Edwards, who spoke before Clinton and Obama.

'We've had two good people — Democratic candidates for president — who spent their time attacking each other instead of attacking the problems that this country is facing,' Edwards said to a mixture of groans and applause.

'I got your attention with that one,' he added."

Whoa there, pretty boy: Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba... these aren't "problems that this country is facing"? Boy, would you make a great prez. Get your policymaking out of the sticks, Edwards!

Last night was the night I'd been waiting for -- seeing Bob Dylan, my absolute favorite, live and in person, at the Orange County Fair in Costa Mesa. After grubbing on some fair food and beating out a bunch of little kiddies to win a stuffed lion (which wound up on my lap during the concert), as well as dropping lots of cash at the Dylan souvenir stand, the legend himself took stage.

Now, Dylan fans such as myself would still be pleased if he got up on stage and gargled (which, let's be serious, his singing sounds like sometimes anyway). But there were a few quirks:

Dylan only played guitar for the first two songs, and keyboard for the rest.

Dylan faced his band while playing keyboard, so only one wing of the house could see his face. I, on the other hand, got the other side: an excellent view of Dylan shaking his junk in the trunk and doing little occasional dance shuffles while boogalooing on the keyboard.

The set started well -- "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" -- which got the audience really excited, and then he went into "Lay, Lady, Lay" (then he ditched his guitar and showed us his backside). After that he did mostly new material, with "Tangled Up In Blue" thrown in. For the encore, he did "Thunder on the Mountain" from his latest album "Modern Times," followed by a jazzy, funkadelic -- OK, weird -- remix of "Blowin' in the Wind."

It was amazing to watch Dylan live, no doubt. But I couldn't believe he didn't play the song christened the greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine -- and my favorite song -- "Like a Rolling Stone." Shouldn't that be a concert staple? Another concertgoer was lamenting that he didn't play "Mr. Tambourine Man." I also wanted "All Along the Watchtower" and "Just Like A Woman." Luckily I had the "Greatest Hits Vol. I" CD in my car changer to get my fix after I left the concert.

Basically, I think that classic artists are still evolving and have every right to showcase their new music -- Dylan seemed to be going with an upbeat, jazzy, bluesy theme for the night -- but should also balance that with the classic tunes that fans are dying to hear. After all, we're shelling out big bucks for tickets nowadays. That being said, my affection for Mr. Dylan is undiminished and he remains the sexiest 66-year-old in a geeky sparkly cowboy suit with stripes down the pants legs out there.

These are my cats: Frankie, the one-eyed Maine Coon, is 9, and Ronnie the tuxedo cat is 7 (younger in this pic). I encountered Frankie while working on a murder story as a reporter in Watsonville, Calif.; the family wanted donations made to the animal shelter as the victim was a cat lover. Frankie was six months old, brought in at 4 months old after being attacked and losing an eye. They were going to put him to sleep because nobody wanted him, but all you had to do was pick him up once to discover how full of life and love he was. Since I wasn't allowed to have pets in my teeny apartment, I snuck Frankie in my purse up the stairs, and lugged litter up the stairs at 3 a.m. I also learned that Maine Coons are quite dog-like -- they like water, wait for you at the door, follow you around (and get huge -- he's 17 pounds now).

Anyway, I believe there is a sixth sense in animals, like in the case of Oscar the hospice cat, that no one who's been a longtime pet owner can deny. Not only do they know what time the alarm is supposed to go off and are unsurpassed at screening dates, but they know when you're ill and in the case of Frankie -- who loves to jump on stomachs -- he didn't pounce on my abdomen for months after I had a spate of kidney stones years ago. How can you help but not love -- and be impressed by -- these furballs?

Who's to say that "Oscar" if that's even his real name, isn't helping along these deaths that he's supposedly predicting? I can just imagine him stalking the halls, looking for his next victims, curling up on their chests, o so innocently purring. Then, when all the nurses and doctors are away, the tiny furry paws creep silently up to the nose and mouth, suffocating them slowly, painfully....

Either that or he justs thinks that once they die he can eat them. He's a cat, after all.

I'm not sure why the city of Hawthorne suddenly started sending me e-mailed press releases today. But I'm not not griping when the content is this juicy. It's a statement from Hawthorne's City Manager Jag Pathirana about how the Grand Jury indictment of Councilmember Louis Velez makes for such a "horrible" day for this city. (FYI, Hawthorne is one of those southern LACo cities that no one notices until someonse's indicted for public corruption or extortion or gun running.) (FYI #2, the bold is my emphasis).

"We understand that the indictment stems from an alleged conflict of interest issue. ...
Councilmember Velez rented his family residence from a local developer who later had projects come before the City Council. His rental terms were and are consistent with the current rental market value. Councilmember Velez has fully cooperated with the District Attorney's office and has provided them with evidence that he paid his rent in full monthly.
Before voting on the developer's projects or otherwise participating in the city's review of the developer's proposal, Councilmember Velez explained his rental relationship to legal counsel and to the Fair Political Practices Commission. Councilmember Velez was told that there were no legal obstacles to his participation in city deliberations concerning the developer's proposals.

Welll, that's not how DA's office tells it. According to our sister paper, the fine Daily Breeze down there in south county, it's just the first charge to come from a wider investigation. Here's the full story:

The charge is the first indictment to come out of the current investigation by the District Attorney's Office into allegations of corruption on the Hawthorne City Council. The district attorney's Public Integrity Division began to investigate Velez's dealings with a local housing developer about a year ago.

It may be time to declare the war over and surrender. There is just no hope of people coming to their senses and acting reasonably and morally. In the face of such determined self-destructive badness, I say let’s talk about ending the war on drugs now!

Barry Bonds is chasing Hank Aaron’s homerun record and is suspected of having inflated his body and his numbers with steroids. He actually admits to steroid use, but claims it was unintentional. (And Lindsey Lohan was carry cocaine for a friend.) It is also the case that steroids were not against the rules for much of his career. So why the fuss?

The war on drugs in bicycling has turned the Tour de France into the Tour de Farce. This is a shame. I actually care about the Tour, and having lived in France and biked over many of those roads (aided only by the irrational denial of my age), I have watched each year with real interest. Now I watch with nausea.

Thursday's Daily News editorials:

Former LA CAO Bill Fujioka is the current LACo CEO. Don't let the alphabet soup stop your from reading our editorial encouraging Fujioka to be the truth teller he's heralded as. And City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo calls the recall attempt against him a lot of bad things, but still won't come clean on allegations of abusing city property. We call him on it .

Can it be true? Yes, this is a requiem for the Weekly World News, which will no longer be on newsstands in all its black-and-white glory. The Weekly World News will still be online, with stories like today's latest news: "WHY MOSES WANDERED IN THE DESERT FOR FORTY YEARS: He Lost the Map!"

"'This explains so much,' Rabbi Schmotkin-Fisher said, 'especially why God didn’t let Moses enter the Promised Land.

'You know how angry your wife gets when you won’t pull over and ask for directions?' the rabbi asked. 'Imagine how irate the Almighty gets when you pull the same thing on Him!'"

Not surprisingly, the Taliban made good on their promise to start killing the South Korean Christian missionary hostages -- the bullet-riddled body of a pastor was found at the site pictured above. The church that sent the young volunteers said it would stop "some" of its work in Afghanistan; the Korean government is having to resort to fines against those who try to travel to Afghanistan, because months of telling citizens how dangerous such a trip would be obviously didn't sink in.

Because this is what gets to me about this case: Not only did these Koreans put their own lives in danger, put their country in a tough spot, and endanger Afghan or even U.S. forces who may have to intervene at some point, but do they understand that any converts or even associates they gain would be subject to execution under Afghan law that bans apostasy? (A friend put it so in an e-mail earlier today: "Here's the Bible, you'll love it. Oh, by the way, you will probably be executed for having one. L8r!") These aggressive evangelists need to take into account how their actions could hurt the people around them as well as being realistic about their own safety.

Normally, I ignore the endless self-congratulatory e-mails from Gov. Schwarzenegger's publicity, er, press office sends out each day. But sometimes it's worth poking through the photos to find gems like this.

Interesting body language from iNevada Gov. and alleged sexal assaullter Jim Gibbons, who appears to be trying to protect the family jewels from California's notoriously touchy-feely governor. Or maybe it's just the camera angle. Either way, it's amusing image to help remind us that there's at least one state out there that makes California look sane. You'll remember that those crazy Nevadans eelcted Gibbons as Gov. last year even as he was under investigation for assaulting Crissy Mazzeo in a parking lot in Las Vegas (He claims he was helping her to her car. The 9-1-1 tapes incidate differently. ) and for allegedly accepting bribes from a government vendor while he was in congress and for speaking ill of the illegal aliens even while he employed one as a nanny.

Just so long as he wasn't one of those sissy, tax-loving liberals who might do something silly like be nice to the gays or question the overbuilding of the desert or protect a squirrel or something.

We are dying in Iraq in order to give the Iraqis time to forge reconciliation—to integrate the Sunni and Shiah and create an oil policy that will distribute the revenues in a fair and equitable manner. So, while we are buying them time with the blood of our children, the Iraqi parliament is going on vacation.

That we are upset, left and right, pro-war and anti-war, is more than understandable. It is completely appropriate. Press Secretary Tony Snow’s excuse that the Iraqis need a break because summers in Sumer are hot, leaves most Americans cold. Our kids are carrying packs, armor, ammo and dressed in fatigues in the full heat of Baghdad. They are fighting and dying while the Iraqi parliamentarians aestivate back home or voyage to gentler climes. This is completely outrageous and not calculated to win the hearts and minds of the American people. Isn’t it time some other grateful nation tried to win our hearts and minds instead of complaining, dithering and fiddling while we burn in the sun and flames of Iraq?

The government of Iraq complains that we are pressuring them to make decisions and create policies that take more time—much more time. Talk about unmitigated chutzpah!

It is true that we are asking them to make difficult decisions, decisions that are about more than money or even power, decisions that are literally a matter of life and death. Their leisurely pace is explicable but not defensible. Given all the time in the world, they will take all the time in world. Their important decisions will not be any easier tomorrow than today.

The major issue is whether they will ever be a nation. There is at the moment no social contract, no commitment to democracy. In fact, the major violent elements of Iraqi society are not interested in democracy and don’t believe in it.

We have difficulty in accepting that all peoples do not automatically affirm democracy to be the best form of government. Many, in fact, believe in religious governance that does not accept that laws are made by men (sexism intentional in this case) or subject to votes. How, they wonder, do you vote on God’s truth, and how could you accept a decision that you believe violates holy revelation?

A few years ago, I went to a Hollywood Congress of Republicans meeting at the Old Spaghetti Factory on Sunset, where conversation is as much showbiz industry networking as political discussions. The first member I met described himself as more libertarian than Republican, adding that he felt perfectly at home in this group. The next member I met also dropped the word "libertarian" as a descriptor. Soon after, I came to realize the libertarian leanings in my personal conservatism -- less government is better government, censorship is bad, the FCC wastes way too much time on F-bombs and wardrobe malfunctions. And, of course, I love "South Park."

As I detail in my column today, I've met such a variety of people in L.A. who vote Republican. They're spread through the valleys and inner city, attend synagogues, churches or nothing at all, make films and make enough to pay the rent. At mixers, you just don't see the spats over hot-button issues that many in the media expect. As the national GOP faces questions about its future direction, will that direction come from La-La Land?

"Call it the moderation of America, a trend that shows Americans have grown sick of the Pat Robertsons and the Cindy Sheehans. Americans haven't traded their values or long-held beliefs to support candidates with whom they disagree on some issues. They're just (a) recognizing that they personally cross the ever-muddled party lines on some issues themselves, and (b) are prioritizing their demands of a candidate in a new fashion.

The candidate who's testing these theories, of course, is Rudy Giuliani. Earlier this month, a Gallup poll studied the makeup of the Giuliani voters, after assessing past surveys to conclude that 68 percent of Republican voters total identified themselves as 'conservative' or 'very conservative.' Sixty-six percent of Republicans identified themselves as conservative on economic issues and 63 percent did so on social issues.

In the Gallup poll, 59 percent of Giuliani Republicans said they are very conservative or conservative. ..."

Read the whole thing, and leave your feedback!

(Footnote on local GOP voters: In the last presidential election, Kerry got 1.9 million votes to Bush's 1.1 million votes in L.A. County. All surrounding counties went for Bush.)

Airport security folks have been warned to watch out for potential "dry runs" -- terrorists testing what items they can get through security and then, like "MacGyver" with a stick of chewing gum and bobby pins, turn the seemingly random items into an improvised explosive device on the other side. Here's the seizures that sparked the alert, from AP:

• San Diego, July 7. A U.S. person — either a citizen or a foreigner legally here — checked baggage containing two ice packs covered in duct tape. The ice packs had clay inside them rather than the normal blue gel.

• Milwaukee, June 4. A U.S. person's carryon baggage contained wire coil wrapped around a possible initiator, an electrical switch, batteries, three tubes and two blocks of cheese. The bulletin said block cheese has a consistency similar to some explosives.

• Houston, Nov. 8, 2006. A U.S. person's checked baggage contained a plastic bag with a 9-volt battery, wires, a block of brown clay-like minerals and pipes.

• Baltimore, Sept. 16, 2006. A couple's checked baggage contained a plastic bag with a block of processed cheese taped to another plastic bag holding a cellular phone charger.

OK, those combos do sound weird. But cheese... we knew terrorists wanted to make our lives miserable, but make fondue in the process?

... this story was just too funny (and sad) to pass up: According to the UK's Sun, which is usually stunningly accurate for a tabloid, Lindsay Lohan bet her socialite pals that she could bed David Beckham by December. Likely the only way that could happen is with a jailhouse conjugal visit, considering how Lohan's going. Has Lindsay heard, though, that the mayor is single?

Another great part of the story: Upon hearing that Paris Hilton wanted to become her new best friend, Victoria Beckham reportedly said, "Over my dead body."

We now return to regular news...

Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton would be jealous:

"A Middle Eastern businessman spent over $210,000 in a five-hour, champagne- and vodka-fuelled spending spree in a London nightclub at the weekend.

The unnamed big spender entered Crystal at midnight on Saturday with friends -- nine women and eight men -- and ordered a $50 bottle of white wine, a spokesman for the club said.

But before long he was ordering magnums of Dom Perignon at $1,400 each and then called for a Methuselah -- eight bottles in one -- of Cristal Champagne at $60,000 and the party spread.

...It included the cost of six Coca-Colas."

What is going on with the recent revelations about rings of organized groups of animal cruelty? Is this just a media-generated awareness of long-standing behaviors, or is this a growing phenomenon?

Blood sports have always been a part of human, well, mostly male, interests. From the bull dancing in ancient Crete to the bullfights in Spain, men have danced with death to prove their manhood and entertain the masses.

The use of surrogates, of animals, to represent the masculine was a way to remove some personal peril from the sport. Then to add gambling was to put up something of value, besides one’s life. All sports are, in some ways, projection of ego—whether as a participant or a fan(atic).

Pit bulls, like guns, have become a fashion accessory, a symbol as testosterone driven as a gun, an automatic or a little red sports car—depending on the owner’s age and socio-economic demographic.

Can there be much doubt that fashion is transmitted through what passes for popular culture and that the violent videogames, movies and music videos—featuring pain, injury, threat and destruction—move the masses? How can we pass hours playing and viewing graphic violence without being influenced? To believe that these constant depictions of violence do not change us and both excite and desensitize us, is to throw away the basic premise of our economy which is built on advertising and the well-tested belief that what people see influences their choices in matters of life-style, consumption and desire. What we are seeing has a terrible effect on our children, our pets and our society.

A study commissioned by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights the finds oil companies are profiteers! Holy price gouging!

Oil refineries’ deliberate failure to boost gasoline inventories, in combination with unusual maintenance and accident shutdowns, drove this spring’s record pump price spike, concludes a study conducted for OilWatchdog.org and The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. The nonprofit, nonpartisan FTCR called for investigation and oversight of refinery operations, costs and profits to prevent continuation of a two-year pattern of price spikes.

Screwed-up celebs are apparently haunting the streets of the Westside -- and that couldn't be better news for naughty politicos not eager to be in the headlines anymore! Two weeks out of rehab, Lindsay Lohan was arrested overnight on suspicion of drunk driving, driving on a suspended license and cocaine possession; she was stopped at Pico and Main in Santa Monica after the occupants of a black Escalade called police to say they were being chased by a white Denali SUV (Lohan).

It's hardly worth writing about because Harvey Levin is already ahead of the pack as his staff has cranked out eighty or so posts on TMZ, wringing every last jailhouse source for all it's worth. But I sure hope Sheriff Baca jumps on this new problem: It used to be that drunk celebs just were their own worst enemy, running into bushes on Sunset or landing in the tabloids without undergarments or a clue. But now they're chasing other Angelenos? This could become a bigger road hazard than city attorneys' wives!

(No props to Lindsay on the mugshot -- she needs to go back to the red hair. Paris outdid her on that one.)

Today continues my series into the future of al-Qaida, this time turning attention to the Gaza Strip:

"'Thanks to the support of Hamas, al-Qaida is entering Gaza.'

The statement earlier this month from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — who has recently seen the light about the true nature of Hamas and been reborn as something resembling a real leader — came as little surprise. Not only has an al-Qaida presence in the lawless Strip been reported for some time, but the conditions are riper than ever for 'The Base' to find a cozy spot in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

...A revelation that Gaza is a terrorist breeding pit blows away Hamas' last comical gasp to convince its few remaining allies that it can be a force for regional leadership. The group quickly tried to distance itself from Ayman al-Zawahri's June 25 call for Muslims around the world to 'provide them (Hamas) with money, do your best to get it there, break the siege imposed on them by crusaders and Arab leader traitors. Facilitate weapons smuggling from neighboring countries.'

'We can support them by targeting the crusader and Zionist interest wherever we can,' added al-Zawahri, who had previously condemned Hamas for taking part in elections and thus supposedly kowtowing to Israelis. '...We must today support the mujahideen of Palestine, including the mujahideen of Hamas, despite all the mistakes of their government.'

Is this the kiss-and-make-up gesture that will launch a whole new front in the War on Terror? ..."

Read the whole thing!

PART I: Extremism in Pakistan flourishes under Musharraf's containment policy

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

So Mayor Villaraigosa publicly thanks L.A. city officials for not taking shots at him for his love tryst with M. Salinas. They deserve thanks for that. After all, no one want to sucker punch someone when they’re down, and especially over love (dubious as it might be), a failed marriage, and infidelity.

But those same L.A. city officials, and presumably that’s the L.A. city council, the Supervisors, the city attorney, and the D.A., that zipped their lips on Tony’s love tryst, should have unzipped them to ask if Tony’s relationship with Salinas got his favorable and skewed reportage from her on the agenda he pushes in the city council, the terribly flawed, and failed school takeover fiasco, his trips to New York and Sacramento in which Salinas went along supposedly to report on, her failure to mention in her report on his separation that she was the other woman, and Tony’s knowing silence that Salinas was in a position to influence and sway public opinion on his pet public policy issues.

The silence of city officials on these issues, forget the affair, smacks not of respect, tact, and courtesy but a circle-the-wagon, cover-up. No real surprise to that.

Villaraigosa got his way with Salinas, so why not with city officials too.

From Agence France Presse:

"A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner wanted for the 2004 kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan blew himself up with a grenade during a clash with security forces on Tuesday, officials said.

One-legged Taliban militant Abdullah Mehsud killed himself to avoid capture after troops raided his hideout, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP."

My first thought was, aw, great, nice that he was freed from Guantanamo in the first place to wreak mayhem -- Mehsud was held there for 25 months and released in March 2004; in October 2004 he led the kidnapping of the Chinese engineers, and one died.

But then I was like, wait a minute: In May, one-legged Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah was killed. Taliban leader Mullah Omar has one eye. This latest guy had one leg. Are there any Taliban with all their parts?!?

In counting up the public comments on our FriendlyFire blog, I note that TV newsreader Mirthala Salinas and the Daily News’ disappearing comics are by far our hottest topics. I suspect there may be a pattern here.

As topics they attract the eye and allow us to have personal opinions that we do not need to back up with anything other than our feelings. In other words, they are entertaining.

Yes, there is a political subtext to some of the comics. Mallard Fillmore, the conservative duck, is a witty spokesduck for a significant number of our readers. Even as a card-carrying liberal I speak for his continuing presence. He’s both pithier and funnier than Pat Buchanan.

As for Mirthala Salinas and her salacious history, there is an under-examined part of her story. She presents a philosophical problem. Could she have breached journalistic ethics if she is not a journalist?

I would say no. She is a TV newsreader. She is in entertainment. The ethos of TV news is entertainment not journalism. Look at the newsreaders on cable. Clearly women picked for their looks: smile, hair, pouty lips and come-hither charm. They audition like actresses. Why in the world would we think they are journalists? The insult to journalism is not Mirthala’s transgressions against decency, which are self-evident. The real pain is that the world considers her to be a journalist. I think the word and the profession mean more. Personally, I hold the duck to a higher standard. If I were to find him in bed with a liberal…

The Taliban spokesman to the AP on why they'd be "forced" to kill 23 Korean evangelicals tonight if their demands -- which keep increasing -- aren't met:

"If the government won't accept these conditions, then it's difficult for the Taliban to provide security for these hostages, to provide health facilities and food. The Taliban won't have any option but to kill the hostages."

What are they, an animal shelter? Holy cow. "We can't afford the hostage chow and all of your shots, so we'll have to euthanize you." If only we could enforce mandatory neutering of the Taliban.

So when I first tried to get tickets to see Bob Dylan this Thursday at the Orange County Fair, Ticketmaster was sold out -- with a footnote that they might release more tickets in the days leading up to the concert. I kept checking two, three times a day to see if that would happen, and if I would be there at the right time. Last night after finishing my column I took a stab at it -- and nearly fainted to find a ticket available! Even better, after the first screen for "best available" -- showing the last row in a back section -- expired and I searched again for the best available, a seat in the orchestra section at the Pacific Amphitheatre magically appeared! I snapped it up before you could say "Subterranean Homesick Blues."

To say the man's a legend would be an understatement. And I love the fact that he obviously doesn't need the money but tours anyway. According to Wikipedia, he rarely plays the same set twice on his "Never Ending Tour" (hoping for "Just Like A Woman" and "All Along the Watchtower"), but with Bob Dylan and funnel cake in one night, how can you go wrong? (Must click over to the OC Register to see pics of the "funnel dog" and "Twinkie relleno" offered at the fair.)

The reason that Telemundo might can Mirthala Salinas is not based on whether she's a homewrecker, or whom she dates in her spare time, but whether she violated journalistic ethics by reporting, as a fill-in anchor June 8, on the break-up of Antonio Villaraigosa's marriage without full disclosure to the viewing public that she was integral to the story -- the other woman, as it was. Telemundo viewers were under the impression that they were getting an unbiased, third-person account of the mayoral separation story, and now the station is going to need to take steps to rebuild that broken trust.

Salinas, who has previously dated politicos Fabian Nunez and Alex Padilla, knew exactly what she was doing when she got involved with Villaraigosa. I understand the temptation to date sources -- as a busy journalist, they're often the people you interact with most in a day -- but it should really be avoided in the name of professional integrity. But when an anchorwoman latches on to every politico on the way up, that just makes women journalists look bad. (Except for Andrea Mitchell, of course, who reeled in hottie Alan Greenspan.)

Wow! I love the new comics section. The Daily News didn’t cut the comics, they just helped them migrate to the front page of View Point.

All of you electronic readers, run out and buy the Sunday print edition and see Patrick O’Connor’s brilliant cartoons. They both inform and amuse in ways pointed and artful. Go Patrick!

Don't miss Daily News Editor Ron Kaye's note to readers today regarding the comics...

I believe that President Bush loves this country. I believe too that Cardinal Mahony loves his church. Love, however, is sometimes just not enough.

The President and the Cardinal share a kind of moral astigmatism. They are dedicated to the institutions that they lead, but have lost sight of what these institutions are supposed to stand for.

I am confident that the Cardinal does not personally approve of child molesters but his focus is on protecting his Church. This he sees as more important than the individuals who make up his flock. I am equally certain that President Bush has no desire to be remembered as a scofflaw who undermined our precious Constitution. I believe both men have lost sight of the values which truly define our nation and the Roman Catholic Church. They have been obsessed with the institutions and not their virtues and principals.

Mahony has protected child molesters in order to accomplish what he must consider as the greater good, the Church itself. Bush has gone after terrorists without much regard for our legal traditions, believing that the danger is so clear and so present, he just has to do it.

While I may be on shaky ground in drawing conclusions about Cardinal Mahony and the Catholic Church, since I am neither Catholic nor Christian, I feel pretty secure as an American citizen who loves my country, in holding that our great institutions are only worth fighting for if they embody great values and we use, not abandon, those values in defending our institutions.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Telemundo officials say that they will make a decision within the next few days whether to fire Mirthala Salinas or not. They shouldn’t. True Salinas made an airhead decision to get romantically involved with Tony. And yes, that love lapse could have blasted apart the line between romance and journalistic integrity.

But Salinas is as much a victim of Tony’s rapacious political and media egoism as she is a victim of her heart. Politics is a dirty business and the dirt and the business doesn’t stop at the bedroom door. If a politician can lie, cheat and manipulate to scurry up the political career ladder, that same politician can lie, cheat and manipulate love.

It’s not the first time that’s happened. In this case the one manipulated was Salinas. Firing her sends the terrible message that the victim pays the private for ill-gotten acts, while the perpetrator skips away scot free.

I don’t see or hear of any move afoot to fire Tony.

You may have read that last year about 1,200 South Korean evangelist missionaries and children descended upon Afghanistan, and were promptly kicked out. This wasn't exactly a case of the Afghan government being meanies, but as we now see a move for the aggressive evangelists' own good. That missionary group claimed they'd return, and now at least 18 (15 of them women) are held by the Taliban:

"In the largest abduction of foreigners since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, several dozen fighters kidnapped the South Koreans at gunpoint from a bus in Ghazni province on Thursday, said Ali Shah Ahmadzai, the provincial police chief.

'They have got until tomorrow (Saturday) at noon to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan, or otherwise we will kill the 18 Koreans,' Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, told The Associated Press on a satellite telephone from an undisclosed location. 'Right now they are safe and sound.'"

You know this is a country where apostasy is punishable by death, yet blithely insist on a proselytizing summer vacation. The Afghan government said the group apparently snuck in, not registering their trip or requesting security. This is not fun and games, people. This is an enemy that will slice of your head -- and your child's; heaven knows what responsible parent brought the kids on the first trip -- without a second's hesitation. Playing purposely into the hands of homicidal bastards seems to go against the common sense and care that God expects us to take with our lives and our bodies.

That's clearly "W" formation there from the anti-American BFFs. Either that, or they're cheering for Winkerbean, a la Funky.

Saturday the George W Bush presidency will come to an end. As he is officially anesthetized and rendered insensitive to information and immune from good advice (or as cynics might will and do say, “Nothing new.”) Dick Cheney will become officially, what so many believe he has been unofficially, the acting President of the United States.

While George W has a colonoscopy (insert your own joke here, along with the light and camera), the VP will have all the duties and obligations of the president. Am I frightened by this? Of course not. What could he do in two hours? He could go to war. But he’s already done that. He could suspend Habeas Corpus. Whoops, too late. He could alienate all our former allies. Who’s left as an ally to alienate? He could steer lucrative contracts to his former employer. Mission accomplished. He could get his former assistant’s prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice commuted, but this too he’s already done. He could I suppose, absolutely worst case, decide to invade Iran, but with whose army? Our’s is already occupied occupying Iraq.

No wonder Vice President Cheney doesn’t want to run for president. There’s nothing left on the agenda. Like the young Alexander who surveyed the world and wept because there was nothing left to do, Cheney may be feeling strangely empty during his two hours of official power. He could always go hunting.

Yesterday Barack Obama said that, yeah, genocide could likely happen if we leave Iraq, but that's life.

"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven't done," Obama also told the AP.

I'd argue that an American life is worth just as much as a Congolese or Iraqi or Vietnamese life, and wonder if we'd learned lessons from Rwanda -- where 800,000 were murdered in about 100 days in 1994. When the U.N. wouldn't intervene, Rwandan representatives who escaped the slaughter came to the White House to beg the most powerful country in the world for help -- and were rebuffed, told that the U.S. didn't have enough interests in Africa.

When you can end or prevent genocide and do nothing -- or leave -- how far does that put us away from the lessons of World War II, and how much does our inaction equal complicity in the crimes against not one people, but against humanity?

"The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference." -- Elie Wiesel

U.S. Deaths Confirmed By The DoD: 3622
U.S. DeReportedaths Pending DoD Confirmation: 8
Total 3630

So much for his overhyped debut Saturday. But the real question is whether all those folks who scrambled to buy tickets for what was supposed to be David Beckham's debute game with the Galaxy Saturday.

if he's not going to play, then perhaps he can at least mingle with the crowd to give them their moneyh's worth, maybe a little karaoke duet with his singer wife?

I'll say this about the comics readers, they are tenacious:
_________________________________

I read the comics last because I like to save the best for last. The comics are no longer the best. It’s about time Zippy went away, but why the others? Please tell me they are hiding elsewhere in the paper and I just haven’t found them yet.
_ John McCartney
Saugus
___________________________________

What next? Over the years you have taken away so much (food section,
Motorways, editorials on Saturday, antique column, and now the comics and
horoscope - not to mention that the garden column does not appear every
week). It is no longer worth it for me to crawl under the bush every
morning to retrieve the Daily News.

_ Linda LaValle
Calabasas
________________________________________

Well, now you have really done it! What on earth are you people doing? Don't you ever think of SENIORS? We are still alive too and want to read some sensible stuff _ as little as there is now-a days.PLEASE!!!! GET BACK TO THE U!!! WE NEED IT !!! And a sincere apology is due !!!! Otherwise-- I will never renew the Daily News (aka GREEN SHEET ) again !! That's a promise !
_ Inge Kask
Northridge
___________________________________________

Pop quiz: Find the Very Important Celebrities in this picture. (Hint: There are three of them)

I'ts the dark glasses at night time, natch.

Funny how celebrities always claim they want privacy and then don the No. 1 accessory of celebrities pretending to not want to be noticed.

Answers after jump

A terrifying look at an ALL TOO POSSIBLE future thanks to the wise people at the Onion. Be strong.

Daily News sister paper, the Long Beach Press Telegram, this week asked readers to respond to this question: Should Cardinal Mahony resign?

Cardinal Roger Mahony was appointed by the Vatican, and can only be removed by the Vatican. Since there doesn't seem to be any urgency on the part of Vatican to remove Mahony, do you think the cardinal should resign? Should he be charged with obstruction of justice? Is the $660 million settlement to 508 victims enough? Should Mahony have turned his pedophile priests over to the police for prosecution, thus possibly violating the principle of confidentiality?

I'd like to ask FF's readers the same. What do you think? Let us know either by writing a response or sending a letter to the editor to dnforum@dailynews.com.

Now he really has something to feel depressed about...

A man who shot and killed his estranged girlfriend in what appeared to be a botched murder-suicide was found guilty Wednesday in her 2005 slaying.

After deliberating for just a couple of hours, a San Fernando Superior Court jury found William Van Batenburg guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances of lying in wait.

Van Batenburg, 58, faces life in prison without parole. Sentencing is set for Aug. 7.

Another scary pitt bull story out of Pasadena Wednesday for the pitt bull lobby to brush off: Four pitt bulls got loose and terrorized a neighborhood, chasing and biting people.

From the Daily News' sister paper, the Pasadena Star-News:

Police received several 9-1-1 calls about a pack of four dogs chasing and attacking people in the 1100 block of Mountain Street and the 700 block of Michigan Avenue, Uribe said. Getting out of his vehicle, the officer "shoots and kills one dog, and when the other turns on him, he shoots and wounds him, too," Uribe said.

When it was all over, one dog was dead and another was wounded; one person received medical treatment for dog bites; three dogs were impounded at a local shelter; and the dogs' owner was arrested for violating the city's leash laws.

Read the full story here.

What are the newspapers thinking? Sometimes their gloomy view of their approaching doom seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some seem to believe that by cutting costs they can increase profitability. Great in theory as long as you don’t depend on people actually buying your product.

Papers, across the country, are like restaurants that open with high expectations, great service and the best products. If they don’t do as well as expected, they begin to cut costs. This always means a loss of quality in food, service or both. The public stays away in growing numbers as the death spiral reaches its ultimate conclusion on the hard ground of reality.

Most newspapers have made the calculation that there is no long-term future in staining dead trees with ink. Electrons on the Net is the agreed upon future. Fast, cheap to produce and can travel around the world millions of times before a log can be turned into newsprint. A survey out this week indicates that young people are not getting into the newspaper habit. So, it’s off to the Net.

(Credit: Associated Press. Sen. Tom Harkin breaks it down into simple language for his senator colleagues)

Besides the two California senators braiding each other hair and Sen. John McCain telling people scary stories about being a POW, the all-night senate deabte about an Iraq pullout didn't produce much. It seems forcing people to listen to blowhard after blowhard in a "marathon debate" through the wee hours of the morning isn't the right way to produce innovative, war-ending legislation. Who knew?

In the end, a proposal to start removing car bomb fodder, er, troops from Iraq in 120 days failed even though it got 52 (out of 100) votes. The rules (who's rules?) says it needed 60 votes. Apparently it's much easier to get into a war than out of one.

After the vote, things it got weird among the slap-happy senatorial bunch... Sen,. Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, proposed that everyone just stick Iraq up its fat a**, took his Baby Alive doll and stormed out. Then Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, responded by barfing up the chocolate cake he ate at midnight. No one had the stomach for war debate after that and the party was called off.

The wave of discontent continues to build:

Used to be that doctors "bled" sick patients to get rid of the bad blood that was making them ill. This may be news to you but that practice was discredited; it made the patients sicker. If circulation is down and making sweeping change is your remedy to prevent further loss of readers, well, you can stop. The patient is
dead. "LA.COM isn't the summer's "hottest premiere..." It's a crime scene.

____________________________________________

I don't know what is going on at your paper, but I definitely don't like it. You discontinued the diagramless crossword puzzle on Sundays, trashed your comics section, and eliminated the food section. I don't know what you are trying to accomplish, but if it is losing readership, you have met that goal as far as this former reader is concerned.

Your comics are not comical anymore. Where's 'Adam @
Home,' 'For Better or Worse,' 'Beetle Bailey' and
'Flight Deck'? The whole third page of comics are not
worth turning the page for. If you are trying to cater
to teenagers, they are not the ones that usually buy a
newspaper and they definitely don't subscribe.

Another letter writer breaks into song:

MARLBORO MAN
(looks can kill!)

I was young and naive, not wise to his scam
When I fell in love with the Marlboro Man

He told me that I had nothing to fear
As he whispered sweet nothings into my ear

He said we had many love songs to be sung
So don't worry about loosing my heart (or a lung!)

Then he swept me away, without any remorse
Onto the back of his rearing horse

When I matured, I was filled with rage
To know that he profited from my innocence and age

That cowboy's still here with his evil ways
Seducing the young to their early graves.

By Geraldine Forer Spagnoli

I was a guest on the Tell Me More show, which no one locally can hear because the @*$&@& NPR affliates here don't carry it. But you can still hear it through the web site . It's a half-hour of exciting discussion about Mayor Villaraigosa's future after the affair, military recruiting and whether Bill Richardson is a real presidential candidate with other panelists including Gregory Rodriguez from the LA Times and Marisa Trevino, a blogger from Texas.

It was bad enough that the runway in Sao Paulo where the plane crashed last night was dangerously short, but then they go and stick a gas station next to it. Remeber that plane that overshot its landing at Burbank Airport in 2005 and came terrifyingly close to taking out a Chevron station on Hollywood Way?

I'm no airport expert but it seems to me that considering the risk of skidding off a runway, it's a bad idea to put a gas station within skidding distance. Probably all those people would have died when the jet fuel exploded, but maybe not.

BTW, if you're as obsessed with plane crashes as I am, you will love this site: Planecrashinfo.com. But we warned: You may learn more than ever wanted to know about plane crashes.

according to the Department of Defense and the wire services:

U.S. Deaths Confirmed By The DoD: 3617
Reported U.S. Deaths Pending DoD Confirmation: 5
Total 3622

In the wake of the National Intelligence Estimate, today we begin a special three-part series of columns by your truly on "The Real Future of al-Qaida." Today we go to Pakistan, noted as a key area of concern in the intelligence report:

Pervez Musharraf is like that classic Pearl Jam song: We lie and say we're in love with him, because we can't find a better man.

We know the Pakistani leader advocates a liberalized state, but has generally walked on eggshells around the Islamist element. We don't like guys who stage coups to seize power, but the alternatives to the West-friendly leader aren't pretty.

And we want Musharraf to crack the whip on al-Qaida, the Taliban and militants of all allegiances who have found such a cozy home in Pakistan, but we realize that he could be one slip-up away from igniting the Islamic Revolution Part Deux.

Al-Qaida has been prevented from taking over all of Pakistan by Musharraf. And yet al-Qaida is as strong as ever because of the policies of Musharraf. He's lived by a policy of containment as opposed to one of elimination.

And it's coming back to bite him - and us.

Read the whole thing here! In one part I talk about the Islamist coalition Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal -- the MMA is renowned for scripting anti-Musharraf, anti-American demonstrations with perfect English signs (that they know foreign photographers will snap). Sure enough, on Tuesday supposedly-everyday Pakistani protesters hit the street in opposition to the Pakistani government's ending of the Red Mosque standoff -- the signs branded with MMA:

In next week's installment: What could be the most dangerous new lair for al-Qaida -- and what colossal slip-up let them take root there.

Today's Senate hearing on the case of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean seemed to fall on the side of the two Border Patrol agents, who received lengthy prison terms for shooting a drug smuggler in the rump. "This really is a case of prosecutorial ... overreaction in charging," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman at the hearing. "The public sees two Border Patrol agents serving long prison sentences while an admitted drug smuggler goes free," Texas Sen. John Cornyn said, adding that he has "serious concerns about the judgment calls made during the prosecution of this case." From the Chronicle story:

The senators bored in on some of the case's most nagging questions: Why the drug smuggler, who had been driving a van with a million-dollar payload of marijuana, was given immunity to testify against Ramos and Compean; why the trafficker was given unfettered permission to cross into the United States after the agents were charged; and whether he used that border-crossing privilege to bring in another million-dollar marijuana haul just months after the February 2005 incident near El Paso.

Taking issue with the Houston Chronicle story, which in the lede calls Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila "a fleeing, unarmed Mexican drug smuggler": Nobody knows if the guy was, indeed, unarmed! He fled! That sort of hampers any attempt to search the guy for weapons, eh? And what drug smuggler with half a brain would transport a million dollars worth of marijuana across the dangerous border lands without a weapon to protect himself and the stash?

Ayman al-Zawahri reveals nefarious al-Qaida plans to plunder every last comic strip from U.S. newspapers! (Apparently, trying to understand some of the jokes has given him a headache...)

... just remember that at least you don't live in Oaxaca!

High drama at the Senate as Dems force war debate into an all-night publicity stunt! As tantalizing as the prospect of a cozy evening with Harry Reid sounds (that was a joke, for the love of God), the Senatorial slumber party will, as most actions on Capitol Hill, accomplish nothing. Dems hoping to push a war vote will probably end up noshing microwave popcorn and reading "Choose Your Own Adventure" books in fluffy slippers. No word on if Deborah Jean Palfrey will be arranging goodnight kisses for the sleepy Senators...

Forget reading a book at the beach: Take your laptop, and run the phone number of every politico you know through "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jean Palfrey's database, now available in a handy online search format. I've already run a couple of ex-boyfriends through to no avail... but then again, the database is only 90 percent complete...

Well, folks, I'm heading out for a while, to the place where this lighthouse resides. (Extra credit for anyone who can tell where it is.) Don't bother robbing my house, though -- it's under hawk-like surveillance from our ever-trusty neighbors, and besides, there's nothing in there worth the effort!

Don't know how much, if any, Net access I'll have where I'm going. But if I get a chance, I'll blog every once in a while. Meanwhile, I have full confidence the rest of the FF crew will pick up the slack in my absence.

God bless and take care. As someone once said, "I'll be back!"

Bad news for the GOP presidential hopefuls: A quarter of registered republican voters don't like you!

This from an AP story just moving:

The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that nearly a quarter of Republicans are unwilling to back top-tier hopefuls Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mitt Romney, and no one candidate has emerged as the clear front-runner among Christian evangelicals. Such dissatisfaction underscores the volatility of the 2008 GOP nomination fight.

The poll also note another piece of bad news for the GOP in the upcoming presidential elections:

The uneven enthusiasm about the fields also is reflected in fundraising in which Democrats outraised Republicans $80 million to $50 million from April through June, continuing a trend from the year's first three months.

Gosh, now. If only Arnold could run...

Well, give Valley activist hero David Hernandez credit. He heroically waged the fight against Measure R -- the dishonest 2006 L.A. city ballot measure that allows City Council members to stay in office for an extra term. He did it on a shoe-string budget, fighting the full force of the city establishment. But today his effort failed. A judge has ruled that the measure did not violate the state constitution's requirement that an an initiative be limited to just one subject because ... Measure R wasn't an initiative.

Yes, the people voted on it, and yes, it had the force of law. But no, according to the judge, it wasn't an initiative. Go figure.

Another win for L.A.'s self-serving ruling class.

The bean counters were unprepared for the amount of outrage they brought upon themselves by round-filing about 10 Daily News comic strips. A taste of the response:

What have you done with my beloved Mallard Fillmore? And Garfield, Beattle Bailey. And no Dick Tracy anymore. He's been around forever. What is Humble Stumble, Diesel Sweeties and a few others. Please bring them old magazine back.

The new layout and missing favorite comics (Beetle Bailey, Dinette Set and others) makes it looks like somebody had to justify their job by changing for the sake of change.

I've been a subscriber for almost 40 years and I am growing ever increasingly disappointed in your newspaper. One of my daily favorite things was reading the comic section and as of this morning ALL of my favorites are no longer there. What happened to the Dinette Set, Mallard, For Better or Worse, One Big Happy, and Funky Winkerbean to name a few????? Several of the new ones will never catch on with me!

This morning I looked for my favorite comic strip "Mallard Fillmore". Does its absence have anything to do with its policitcs?

The Daily News letters e-mail received this note. It's connection to Africa, the text in all caps... sure seems like a scam. The question is, how?

MYNAME IS MRS. JESSICA HERBERT, MY HUSBAND AND I ARE ON A CHRISTAIN MISSION TO AFRICA AND I CAME ALONG WITH MY PUPPY (YORKIE). AFTER A WHILE

I NOTICED THAT THE AFRICAN WEATHER IS NOT GOOD FOR THE PUPPY AND I
HAVE
NOT BEEN ABLE TO TAKE GOOD CARE OF HER THE WAY I ALWAYS DO BECAUSE OF
MY
JOB.

I NEED SOMEONE TO ADOPT HER AND TAKE CARE OF HER THE WAY I ALWAYS DO.

IF YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF HER DO SEND A REPLY AND I WILL EMAIL YOU HER
PICTURES. I HOPE TO READ FROM YOU.
WARM REGARDS,
MRS. JESSICA HERBERT.

Anyone seen/heard about anything similar?

So far this summer, Los Angeles has hopped from one scandal to the next. First it was Paris, then Baca, then Rocky. Next Paris stole back the spotlight, but only briefly, before Antonio claimed it. And now the latest scandal magnet is Cardinal Mahony.

Which raises the obvious question: Who's next?

This one's received a little media attention, but not much:

Nestor Lopez, who at the time was a receptionist for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, falsely reported he was stabbed June 3 at about 3:30 a.m. by attempted robbers, investigators said.

When confronted by investigators later, Lopez said he had gone to the area for a sexual rendezvous with another man and mistakenly reached under a blanket and touched a sleeping homeless woman, who awakened and stabbed him.

Lopez was charged Thursday with two misdemeanor counts of filing a false police report, said Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the city attorney's office....

Lopez left his City Hall job two days after the incident.

The mayor's office declined to comment, calling the incident a personnel matter.

Not that the mayor bears any responsibility for this one, but the story is just too bizarre to ignore. You know, the classic case of mistaken identity -- sleeping homeless woman gets mixed up with sleazy gay-sex partner. No one knew who was who until the knife had been plunged.

Happens all the time!

Tod Tamberg of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has called, upset that I posted my interview with the cardinal from earlier today. He says the interview was meant to be purely for background in writing the Daily News' editorial.

Suffice it to say, my memory of our conversation is different. I asked Tamberg if the interview would be "on the record," and he said yes. Everyone in the biz -- and Tamberg is an experienced PR guy -- knows that means the comments are fair game. And if can quote from the interview, I see no reason why I can't just quote the whole darn thing.

Still, I regret the misunderstanding, and my apologies to His Eminence if he was misinformed. Pax Christi.

Villaraigosa should thank God it's only booing he's getting. His counterpart in, Freeman, some dinky town in New York State had a little more physical critque of his mayorness. According to the Daily Freeman, Kingston Mayor James Sottile got punched three different times by Mari Ann Sennett, wife of Ulster County district attorney candidate Jonathan Sennett, when he touched her face during a heated argument. The video of it is below, but nothing happens for the first 3/4. The action is blurry, and happens in the top right had portion of the screen.

That's the verdict from our readers responding to the Daily News cutting 10 comic strips from the daily paper: Here's a sampling of their outrage --

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What have you done with Funky Winkerbean? We are following the tragic story of cancer and now, the cartoon is not in its regular space. Please return it so we can follow the story. Thanks,
Brenda
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Dinette Set, For Better or Worse, Funky Winkerbean, Garfield, One Big Happy, Hagar The Horrible, Beetle Bailey and Willy 'n Ethel...the removal of my favorite 8 (count 'em, eight) comics from your pages begs the question, "Why?".
Anyone with a synapse cracking must assume it is a question of money. The replacements must be less expensive. By the way, if a poll were done prior to this then I missed it. I'm amazed someone didn't come up with the "Paris 'n Posh" section to replace the comics completely.
I have two suggestions. 1) Fire the "Comics Editor". 2) Bring back the comics named above.
If these daily comics aren't back in the "new LA.COM" within the month, please cancel my daily paper.
Barbara Kussman
Encino
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The LA.COM is not worth the paper. Where is "this day in history" and the comics. The new ones are not funny and what happened to the 10 that you left out. Please think this over and bring back the U as it was.
Barbara Pendleton
Camarillo

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Just got off the phone with Cardinal Roger Mahony. Below are my notes from the conversation:

On what he means when he says he's taking responsibility:

I found in visiting with victims that unless you accepted responsibility in the name of the Church for what happened to them, you cannot authentically offer them an apology. And as I met with many victims, most of whose cases, practically all, took place long before I came here .... (I saw the) need to take responsibility in the name the Church so that I can personally take responsibility.

I pressed him further: What is he taking responsibility for? What specifically did he do wrong?

That's not the issue ... for victims, they just need the official voice of the archbishop to say whatever happened to you shouldn't have happened. It's sinful, it's wrong, and I apologize.... I'm sorry what happened to you in the life of the church, and I apologize....

I tried to stress the difference between "I'm sorry about what's happened to you" versus "I'm sorry for what I have done." Isn't there an important difference between the two?

That's true, but that's not what (victims are) looking for. They would love to meet the offender and hear him say that. They're looking for an apology from the Church.

What about the victims who say his apology is inadequate?

I'm sorry, I really am. We'll continue to work closely with the victims. I've arranged that this morning again. Victims are all in a tad different place on their journey. Some are doing really very well, some have had good counseling and are very independent.... Some less so. Some are still having trouble. I don't expect everybody to say this is great....

What about the charge that the problem is a lack of discipline and orthodoxy in the seminaries?

Well, first of all that's one of the things that we still are studying. As you know, the bishops are conducting a study of causes.... In our case, many of the priests came out of the "good old days" -- Latin-only, cassocks-only.... Most of our cases did not come out of post-Vatican II, they came out of pre-Vatican II.

Of course today, our screening process, our evaluation process, the fact that we take in older men, we don't take in guys out of high school or even grammar school -- it's a whole different frame of reference for the process of choosing seminarians. There's psychological evaluation, constant monitoring. We do everything we can to make sure that the people being ordained don't have a problem.

On why he didn't call the police when he learned of abuses:

Unfortunately, in those times we just didn't do that as readily, we didn't understand the depth of the problem.... The McMartin trial was first time in the state of California that this whole issue came into the spotlight, into the light of day...

In those days we didn't think of it in those terms. We would send (offenders) to a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist, or therapist we knew and we told the police that if they discovered there really was an abuse that they would notify law enforcement....

On the perception that he "dragged his feet" about entering into a settlement:

This was an extremely complex case, in terms of offenders, plaintiffs, those that were being abused. Up until even a week ago we had list of John Doe 1 through 1,000 with no names. We ended up with a lot of wrong identifications. For example, "Fr. John," "Br. Steve," or "Br. Mike," that kind of thing. It took an enormous amount of time. A lot of people were on lists who had never been in that school or in that parish. ... And then there were the insurers. We have a lot of insurers, some of whom are out of business, some have been sold to someone else.... We had to hire a specialist to find out who the insurance company was....

On whether he had been trying to keep personnel files a secret:

(The files) have been in the hands of judges for years now. That wasn't the issue. The issue was which questions on those personnel files were privileged under California law, and which ones are not. ... (Now, if someone wants to see a file, he) petitions to review a file to (retired) Judge Pinelli (sp?), and he decides what is privileged under California law, and what is not. He is empowered to give (the files) over. We think that is a fair process. The plaintiffs think that's a fair process.

No personnel file belongs to me.... Rights to files belong to the employees, and therefore employees, or priests, if they want, they can raise objections.

About the perception that he was afraid to testify in trial:

Actually, in the trial that would have started today, (the priest) was very seriously ill when I came here in the end of '85, and ended up in a rest home somewhere in '86. He died in '87. I don't know anything about his conduct in those case, nothing. In fact, in almost all the cases set for trial, especially those involving religious orders, I don't even know who those people are. There's nothing about testifying that's frightening me. All I can say is, I wasn't here and I didn't know.

All in all, the Cardinal's comments seem to boil down to: I'm sorry people were hurt, but I didn't do anything wrong.

I can see why victims would find that unsatisfactory.

If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.
Hamlet, Act V Scene 2

Hamlet was speaking of death when he spoke these lines. They apply today to another terror attack in America. It is not a question of if they will strike us but when. Al Qaeda has warned us, promised and sworn to strike at our heartland. Osama has issued calls to martyrdom. Ayman al Zawahri recently gave the legalistic Qur’anically mandated three-fold warning of attack. All these, along with Homeland Security’s Michael Chertoff’s gut rumblings, augur events that call for preparation—both physical and, as importantly, emotional. While we cannot truly prepare for how we will feel, we do need to react with the maturity of a great nation.

We do know that no defense system is perfect. Even our Secret Service admits that they cannot guarantee the life of the president from an assassin who is willing to trade his, or her, life for the president’s. All Qaeda is filled with terrorists eager to trade their lives for our deaths.

We do not know when or where the attack(s) will be. We do not know how destructive and deadly it (or they) will be. These are certainly important questions, but they are not, I think, the most important questions.

Bad things happen to good people and to good nations. We do not and cannot live in a cocoon. The great question is one of character and how we, as a nation, will react when we are struck again.

On 9-11 we were gut-punched. We had not been meaningfully assaulted on our mainland since the War of 1812. We were like a boxer who tastes his own blood for the first time. We reacted in shock and with understandable rage. We also reacted domestically with remarkable restraint. While some of us behaved badly, that number was incredibly small. Good people of all backgrounds worked actively to protect Muslims and people who seemed to be of Middle Eastern origins. I hope we will be able to be as disciplined the next time, but I have my doubts.

The next time we should not be surprised. We know there are people bent on our destruction, and they will literally stop at nothing to hurt us. They will use planes, boats, trucks, and trains. They have shown their willingness to use Red Cross marked ambulances, tie bombs to their own children and co-opt doctors as agents of death instead of life. We may be hurt, but we mustn’t be surprised or shocked.

It's understandable that the man used to the city's unconditional love might be unnerved by the booing and heckling that went on at Friday's David Beckham butt-kiss-o-rama, but surely he could have come up with a better excuse than it happened because he is a Chivas USA fan. Really? But can that explain why someone from the crowd asked the mayor if he brought his girlfriend?

The mayor's probably not going to lose the love of his peeps for good, but his public might need its pound of Mayor flesh before it forgives. Mayor V might want to consider whether pretending that there's nothing wrong is the best way to be forgiven.

A thought about the L.A. Archdiocese's $660 million settlement. Divided up between 500+ plaintiffs, that comes to about $1.2 million to $1.3 million per plaintiff -- minus lawyers fees, of course.

Now compare that to the $2.7 million the Los Angeles City Council was prepared to pay to firefighter Tennie Pierce. Are we really to believe that the harm from eating a little Gravy Train is twice as bad as being sexually assaulted -- as a child, no less?

If $1.2 million is the going rate for sexual abuse, then Pierce deserves the compensation of one untainted plate of spaghetti -- and nothing more.

It seems only fitting that on this past weekend, when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced its $660 million settlement with more than 500 abuse victims, Sunday's Gospel reading was the parable of the Good Samaritan. The following verses seem especially poignant:

“A man fell victim to robbers
as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.
A priest happened to be going down that road,
but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. "

Interesting, isn't it, that Jesus specifically chose a priest as an example of one of the people who was not acting as a neighbor -- ie, as one not to emulate? It's a clear example that neither a call nor an ordination is a guarantee of holiness. Priests, like all men, are fallen; they can sin terribly. This is made all the more clear when Judas, one of Jesus' own handpicked apostles, would betray Him.

And yet God's mercy always remains. Peter was also one of Christ's handpicked, the rock upon whom His Church would be built. Peter would deny Christ three times. Yet despite the evil that men -- even priests and bishops -- can do, "the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it." As Peter shows, there is always God's mercy, always His healing.

To quote the parable of the Good Samaritan again:

Which of these three, in your opinion,
was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?”
He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.”
Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

May God bring peace to the victims of this wretched scandal. May His mercy fall upon the priests, the bishops, and everyone else responsible.

As for the rests of us, with so many bad priests garnering so much attention at the moment, I'd like to say a special thanks to the many, many, good priests who selflessly give of themselves to serve others. The ones who spent their weekends bringing Holy Communion to the sick and dying in hospitals, or sitting in hot confessionals ministering to their flocks; the ones who bring credit to the Church and to God.

I had the honor of spending the weekend with one such priest, Fr. Vincent Serpa of Catholic Answers, who was leading a retreat in my town. A Dominican who loves with all his heart and lives to serve. The Church and the world could use more like him.

Let's not forget these good priests, not just for the work they do, but also for the critical role they must play in the healing.

Farfour, the Mickey Mouse knockoff on Al-Aqsa TV, may have been martyred, but fear not -- Palestinian children now have a new warm and fuzzy friend to encourage them to strap nail-laden bombs across their torsos and stroll into Israeli pizza restaurants! On Friday, viewers of Hamas' kids show were introduced to Nahoul the Bee, who claims to be Farfour's cousin (a mouse and a bee? way to go to teach kids about zoology!) and curiously enough has the same voice as Farfour, indicating a certain Palestinian actor did not go to his martyrdom along with his big stuffed mouse head. Nahoul, who looks cheaper than any toy you'd win at Circus Circus and is suspended by hands that you sometimes see in the clip, says:

"I want to be in every episode with you on the Pioneers of Tomorrow show, just like Farfour. I want to continue in the path of Farfour – the path of Islam, of heroism, of martyrdom, and of the mujahideen. Me and my friends will follow in the footsteps of Farfour. We will take revenge upon the enemies of Allah, the killer of the prophets and of the innocent children, until we liberate Al-Aqsa from their impurity. We place our trust in Allah."

How will Nahoul be martyred? By a wicked Israeli Orkin man? In the meantime, I'm so glad Farfour has been replaced by a fluffy thingamajigger to teach Palestnian kids that murder is fun.

Watch the clip, and the host of the show, Saraa. This is the coldest, scariest girl ever. She looks like she could send a thousand Jews to a slow death without blinking an eye. She was also seen at the end of Farfour's martyrdom clip with that slow nod, complacent smile and icy gaze.

Is it just me, or did the guy cut a smiley into his mask?

The pictured Islamists, by the way, are destroying cassettes seized from a music store Friday in their attempt to banish "vice." It's important that they destroy Western influence, as the mujahedin on the left enjoys his frosty, ice-cold 7-Up...

In a gloating memo issued by Hillary campaign honchos on May 30, Clinton gushed and swooned over the endorsement of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. She didn’t stop with the syrupy praise. She inferred that since he was the most popular, most influential, and most beloved Latino politician in America, the endorsement guaranteed her a lock on the Latino vote in California and the nation.

In the month since Hillary's rhapsodic, and way over the top ballyhoo of Villaraigosa, Tony’s political stock has sunk faster than the Titanic. It could sink even lower if there’s any truth to rumors about other affairs, his involvement or that of his campaign contributors in Salinas’s purchase of her Studio City condo, and that Salinas played any role in airbrushing his image on Spanish language TV and Spanish language media.

Hillary called him one of America’s great mayors. Evidently she wasn’t at the Carson Velodrome to hear the boos and catcalls the crowd greeted him with when he tried to speak at the debut of L.A. Galaxy hot shot Beckham.

It's way past time for another Hillary memo about Tony.

Osama released a new tape. Is this part of the chatter? Perhaps a warning or a signal to his sleepers and martyrs? All of this is hard to say.

What is clear is that his sermon was on martyrdom and its glories. He was saluting past martyrs and encouraging new ones. He even managed to construe a Haddith, a story about Mohammad, as having Mohammad wishing for personal martyrdom.

In my view his sermon, as with so many sermons in all traditions, was a stretch. There is a vast difference between a willingness to die in a cause—as, if you will, a secondary effect—and martyrdom being the primary object of action.

This sermon really sounded like an exhortation and it was preached in very standard Arabic. His primary audience would not have been Pakistani or Afghani. Those within ear shot had to be mostly Arabs. And the Al Qaeda's inhouse media,As Sahab, is Arab oriented.

As a side note: It is interesting that ABC News got the tape before Al Jazeera. Maybe As Sahab and Al Jazeera are not getting along. That would be a shame.

For nearly five years President Bush has promised that when the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down. Our withdrawal has been predicated on training and equipping enough Iraqis so that they will be able to stabilize the country. Here, I try to resist (and fail) the sick pun that we have stable-ized Iraq by bombing its cities into rubble fit only to stable animals.

The good news was that six months ago we certified 10 battalions of Iraqi soldiers as ready to fight and carry out operations independent of us. Now, however, there is bad news. We are saying that only six remain able to operate. We have lost 40% of our Iraqi fighting friends and allies. How can we stand down as they are (and I love this military word) attrited faster than we can train them?

This week we got into a running battle with some bad Iraqis. They were tactically smart, apparently well trained and equipped. We had to call in an air strike to take them out. The good news is that we succeeded. The bad news is that these Iraqis were guys whom we had trained and equipped. They finally stood up but they were standing not with us but against us.

Whisper about how to exclude them from debates as they furtively sneak up behind you!

John "Two Americas" Edwards wants to break the field of Democratic presidential hopefuls into two groups now, before voters have cast a single primary vote, clearly indicating his fondness for class struggle not only in society but on the presidential debate stage. Here's how that pictured whisperfest broke down at a forum in Detroit on Thursday, caught on open microphones:

'TWO AMERICAS' EDWARDS: "We should try to have a more serious and a smaller group."

HILLARY CLINTON OR RODHAM CLINTON, WHICHEVER SHE GOES BY THIS WEEK: "We've got to cut the number ... They're not serious."

Now, telling Dennis Kucinich he's not serious about running for president is like telling him he doesn't like six-foot redheads -- he's gonna raise a stink about it. In fact, he offered to participate in an intimate debate with just the two whisperers, according to the Washington Post. For Clinton and Edwards' part, they blamed each other for the incident. Naturally.

I gotta go with Denny the Demmy on this one -- until voters narrow down the field of candidates at primary time, candidates have the right to be heard and voters have the right to hear what they have to say. Conversely, Kucinich could announce he's running to be president of John Edwards' America No. 2 -- a second-tier candidate for second-tier citizens?

Bounty hunters, rejoice! The Senate has voted to double the price on Osama bin Laden's head to $50 million. May I suggest to some penny-pinching herdsman in Waziristan that you could be partying with Paris Hilton tomorrow and tipping like a Saudi sheikh if you just point authorities toward Osama's fair hamlet. Yeah, you'll be seen as a traitor to Islam and relegated to fatwaland, but Salman Rushdie could use a roommate right now since his wife just left him.

Of course, when it comes to foiling future terror attacks, I'd much rather have Ayman al-Zawahri in custody. In fact, I'm starting to feel like a dunderhead for calling him al-Qaida's "No. 2" -- the widely recognized hierarchy level of the Egyptian doctor -- in columns because it's pretty damn clear he's running the show (as well as starring in the As-Sahab shows). He's got a $25 million bounty on his head for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

But if you're in the cash-for-terrorists business and want to shoot a little lower, Orange County al-Qaida convert Adam Gadahn is currently fetching a price of $1 million, wanted for -- accordingly -- treason. If not for the money, consider it a community service to get his whiny jihad voice off As-Sahab.

Wear a video camera like the helmet cams now donned by British bobbies!

On second thought, er, I don't want to see that...

But it would be interesting, if the LAPD had such cameras, to have seen what riot helmet cams would have captured from the police point of view at MacArthur Park last May Day...

Had this at Jerry's Famous Deli the other day: Lox pizza. Stop grimacing -- there's no sauce or mozarella. They take pizza crust, layer cream cheese, lox, tomato and red onion, and it's totally delish, particularly when it's hot and you don't especially feel like having a hot dinner. I had mine with a mimosa, which makes for perfect summer yums.

Next week, health care is sure to be the hot topic in Sacramento. Gov. Schwarzenegger spent this week working his health care reform bill, which features a 4 percent payroll fee (don't call it a tax!) for businesses that don't offer health insurance to employees and requires all Californian's buy health insurance -- or else. Not sure how this bill will compel people to buy health insurance when it can't seem to do that for auto insurance. Meanwhile, Dems have their own health care bill, most notably AB 8, which has a 7.5 percent payroll fee.

Then there's the single-payer movement headed by State Sen. Sheila Kuehl hat probably doesn't have a shot in hell considering the reaction to "Sicko" last week. But it does have a blog called Baby Boomers REVOLT! The health care underground. If you can understand why there's a photo of a highway tunnel as the masthead, please help a girl out and explain.

In reaction to Chris' post on the 19-month-old "Bye-bye plane... bye-bye plane... bye-bye plane... bye-bye plane... bye-bye plane" tot who got grounded -- by Continental, that is -- for not shutting up, I admit that I'm one of those people who, if stuck next to a chatty toddler during a flight, would be looking for a parachute. And I'd like to believe that all parents also have concern for those around them who might not want to hear their kids or be the target of a tot's toy-throwing. I'd like to believe that all parents pick only kid-appropriate restaurants and don't let their kids run amok in stores. But when you look at Mass on Sunday, how many parents are actually using the cry room in the back of the church?

Too bad there aren't cry rooms on planes!

It's official: the honeymoon is over. Antonio Villaraigosa is NOT feeling the love of L.A. anymore. During the welcome media event for soccer star David Beckham today, the crowded booed audibly. Check out this video to watch the cringeable moment for yourself.

Ouch.

OK, this may mean nothing, but in the sewer that is L.A. city politics, ethical conduct can never be taken for granted. That's why Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Mirthala Salinas should release all information relevant to the purchase of Salinas' Studio City condo. The reason? ERSNews reports:

ERSNews has learned that the Studio City condo owned by Mirthala Salinas and her sister Isabel Salinas was sold to her by a political supporter of the mayor and campaign contributor. In addition, the seller, Robert Steve Bullock, is the Chief Financial Officer of Cerrell Associates one of the largest lobbying and public relations firms in Los Angeles. The company has a long track record of doing business with the city of Los Angeles.

The firm has over 22 registered lobbyists according to the city ethics commission and has provided extensive consulting and PR services to city agencies and political consulting to many of LA's leading politicians according to records obtained by ERSNews.

The condo was purchased by Salinas on March 16, 2006.

It's important to know whether this story is true, and if so, whether Salinas paid market rate for the condo. Or was she given a break by a lobbyist trying to do the mayor (or the prominent journalist) a favor?

Again, this may all be innocuous, or even bogus, but the question needs to be addressed.

H/T Luke Ford

From time to time, our letter writers put their thoughts into poems, this is one:

A little bird told me:
We can all live in harmony, but...
the balance of nature and man is tipped by Greed.
The birds are declining,
the frogs are dying mysteriously,
the Butterflies aren't prosperous,
the rats are multiplying alarmingly,
the human population is exploding exponentially.
We read all about it in the news.
The ship is sinking.
The canary in the mine shaft tells the Truth.
What are we going to do?
Light a candle or curse the dark?

- Lynda Fenneman
Valley Glen

California's two most likely Democratic candidates for governor in 2010, Antonio Villaraigosa and Gavin Newsom, pose with 2006 candidate Phil Angelides.

"Whose affair was worse," asks our colleague, Kerry Cavanaugh, over at The Sausage Factory. Her question is prompted by a Newsweek web-only story comparing the adultery of L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to that of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. (Is this a great state or what?) Newsweek, for its part. leaves that question unanswered, but seems to come to the happy conclusion that in this Glorious Age of Faithless Banality, no one will really care. Still, since the two pols may well compete against each other in 2010 -- and we might be forced to choose one or the other -- the question deserves examination.

So whose affair was worse? Consider some qualifiers:

Timing: Newsom and his wife were at least separated when his adultery began; Antonio, meanwhile, was telling his wife that he was no longer wearing a wedding ring because his finger had shrunk. Advantage, Antonio.

Choice of Partner: Antonio's mistress was single. Not so for Gavin's, who was not only married, but to Gavin's best fried, no less. Advantage, Gavin.

Children: Newsom's affair devastated the life of just one child, that of his mistress and her husband. Antonio's leaves behind his two children with his wife, Corina. Advantage: Antonio.

So, at least on these factors, Antonio's infidelity seems to have been "worse" -- although this is a little bit like asking what's worse, death by asphyxiation or death by fire? Both are pretty darn awful.

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss Phil Angelides. Heck, I even miss Gray Davis.

At this very moment Soccer superstar, dreamy David Beckham is hanging with Alacalde Amor at the Galaxy HQ in Carson being welcomed to LA (which is kinda ironic considering Carson isn't in L.A., but whatever). This poses a very important question: Will Beks and Posh outshine L.A.'s tarnished mayor?

Surely everyone saw the headlines over the last two days: Al-Qaida back to pre-9/11 strength. Alarming news, no? Despite all our bombings, arrests, beefed-up intelligence efforts and tightened security, the world's premier terrorist organization is as poised to attack us as it was on that awful day nearly six years ago. We might as well have done nothing!

Here's how the sober analysts over at NPR described it:

Al-Qaida has rebuilt its operating capability and poses the greatest threat to the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to a new assessment from U.S. counterterrorism analysts.

All this anguish over AP reporters Katherine Shrader and Matthew Lee's account of what the forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate would supposedly say. (In fairness, the AP only claimed that AQ was back to 9-11 strength; it was NPR, drawing on nothing but its own speculation, that concluded the organization "poses the greatest threat to the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.")

But then something funny happened, the AP issued a follow-up report, also by Katherine Shrader. Get past the first two sensationalistic grafs, and you get this little gem:

However, the government's top analysts concluded that U.S. soil has become a harder target for the extremist network, thanks to worldwide counterterror efforts since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

So Al-Qaida is actually less able to strike us now then it was then. That is, our efforts have done some good. Oh, um, never mind!

Bottom line: The threat is still very real. As for the media coverage, well, that's another story.

Los Angeles Animals Services General Manager and blogger Ed Boks came into the Daily News offices this morning for an editorial board meeting. And something he said about pitt bulls stuck with me. Boks repeated the statement usually heard from the pit bull apologizers that it's a myth that pit bulls cause so much violence and mayhem.

Considering that searches through our newspaper archives find that the majority of attacks serious enough to make it into the news pages involve pit bulls (wchich is a generalized term for a number of similar-looking terrier breeds), I couldn't believe this was right. And just a cusory search of turned up support from the Centers for Disease Control. A 2000 report noted that pit bulls are involved in one-third of all fatal dog-on-human attacks. Rots were the second more dangerous dogs. Here's a link to the full report.

At least 25 breeds of dogs have been involved in 238 human DBRF during the past 20 years. Pit bull-type dogs and Rottweilers were involved in more than half of these deaths.

Boks' response was that most urban dogs are pit bulls. I'm not sure that's true either. Pit bulls do seem to be overrepresented in the city animal shelters. But does that represent the true demographics of the city's dog population or speak to the unsuitability of the breed to living with humans?

Anyhow, I'd be interested in seeing any updated information about this on either side.

I've only witnessed one dog attack in my life, (thank God) and it was a pit bull v. a chow chow. The pit won.

Our two diametrically opposing camps on the war in Iraq each base their respective rationales for leaving or remaining on seemingly contradictory premises—both of which paradoxically are correct. The argument for staying is that if we were to withdraw the chaos would get worse, the killing yet more brutal and we would have to shoulder some of the moral responsibility for breaking it and not fixing it. This is true.

The argument for leaving is that it is already a brutal mess and has only gotten worse at each and every 90-day increment at which we have promised to check in on ourselves. Therefore many conclude that our staying can only make matters worse. Whatever our failings in the beginning, we do not now have the ability to mediate or remediate the mess we started. This too is true.

Which is the greater truth? Is there any model that offers us guidance? Well, while there are no perfect metaphors or historical analogies, let’s try a thought problem using Northern Ireland in the bad old days and imagine an attempt by the Saudis to bring about peace. But first some background.

Most of us cannot understand the animus of the sectarian violence that has broken out between the Sunni and Shiah. We do not understand how these branches of Islam can live together for decades and then go at each other with such murderous brutality. We do not understand how they can also cooperate in the midst of this most uncivil war and how Iranian Shiah can arm Iraqi Sunni.

The short answer to the question of their cooperation is the old adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Thus, for the limited purpose of killing Americans, Shiah and Sunni can call a time out. As they walk away from our dead and dying soldiers, they then resume their own internecine fight.

After 9-11 many Americans asked, “Why do they hate us?” In some ways this was a good but premature question. The numbers that comprised the “they” back then were relatively small. Today the numbers have grown in Hydra-headed exponentials. With every Muslim we kill, whether labeled or mislabeled as enemy or simply as collateral damage, we give birth to a dozen new fighters and chains of enmity that will run into a nearly endless future. They have very long memories. We cannot kill our way into their hearts.

But why? This seems so unfair. After all, they kill each other with savagery literally undreamed of in our culture: with drills to skulls, swords to necks, bound hand and foot and thrown from roofs or into rivers. Why do they get to kill each other in such great numbers and we are forever cursed for trying to bring peace to their land?

As the parent of three children under the age of five who will soon be flying across the country for a family vacation, this story is spurring some mild anxiety: A mom and her 19-month-old son get kicked off a plane, apparently because the boy said "bye-bye plane" a bunch of times during the stewardess's safety speech.

Egads, it's going to be a long flight -- and that's if we're lucky! This mom and her boy never even got airborne before the Continental crew returned the plane to the gate and gave them the boot.

Worst of all, this was after an 11-hour delay. For crying out loud, after making a toddler hang out that long in an airport, they should be grateful he wasn't screaming bloody murder.

Come on folks, let's have a little compassion here.

Yes, we all have our horror stories about sitting next to the kid who screamed all the way on the redeye from LAX to JFK. But trust me, as the dad of kids who usually behave beautifully on planes -- but who are still kids -- the pain you suffer is nothing compared to what the parents are going through. No one wants their kid disturbing a flight, and the agony that's experienced while waiting for the tantrum/upset/bout of chattiness to pass is excruciating enough without some authoritarian stewardess telling you to drug your child, let alone giving you the hook.

Of course, this is small potatoes, as the airline merely ejected a mother and a child. Had it ejected six imams who were seemingly doing all they could to arouse suspicion, well -- that would be a civil-rights incident.

The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, the private nonprofit business association that shills LA to non-Angelenos, was clearly assuming that most people are good spellers when it adopted the "See My L.A." as its marketing slogan. What happens you turn that slogan into a Web address is www.seemyla.com -- or, a commonly misspelled version of the word no one wants associated with their town.

For other unintentionally funny Web site addresses check out this web site.

... or so says former Arkansas Gov. and GOP long-shot presidential contender Mike Huackabee:

"Frankly, Michael Moore is an example of why the health care system costs so much in this country. He clearly is one of the reasons that we have a very expensive system. I know that from my own personal experience," said Huckabee, who lost more than 110 pounds and became an avid runner after he was diagnosed with diabetes.

"I know how much more my health care cost when I didn't take care of myself than when I do take care of myself, not only in terms of doctor visits but regular diseases, illnesses, chronic things that come up, monthly prescription bills," Huckabee said. "All of those things have gone dramatically down since I've taken care of myself and worked to live a healthier lifestyle." ...

But Meghan O'Hara, producer of Moore's "Sicko," had some sharp words in response:

"Looks like Mike Huckabee is auditioning for some insurance company dough, since he's raised just about no money and sparked zero interest since jumping into the race," O'Hara said in a response provided by Moore's production office.

Translation:

"You're fat!"
"Yeah well, you're poor!"

County Kremlin
New CEO must guard against the culture of secrecy
Article Last Updated: 07/11/2007 08:20:16 PM PDT

IT is the natural inclination of government to hide its actions from prying eyes and limit access whenever it can get away with it. And it is the natural inclination for the public to want to see what government is doing on its behalf. With good reason: Secrecy breeds corruption.

In the case of Los Angeles County government, the inclination toward secrecy seems to currently have the advantage. A Daily News report Wednesday found that increasingly the public is losing access to county documents and meetings.

Most recently, the county counsel decided to keep secret from the public details of key legal settlements, even though the public ultimately pays the costs.

Imagine, for example, if the city of Los Angeles had the same policy. The details of the outrageous, proposed "dog food" case settlement to Tennie Pierce might never have come out.

Credit Supervisor Gloria Molina for calling out her colleagues Tuesday for their complicity in shutting down the long-standing practice of disclosing settlement details. But it will take more than one supervisor to keep the county from become a Kremlin-like organization.

The naming of a new county chief executive officer this week - a wise choice with retired Los Angeles city chief administrative officer Bill Fujioka - presents the county with a crossroads of sorts.

On the one hand, Fujioka's background as a straight-shooting city CAO who balanced political pressures with good financial sense bodes well for the future of accountability at the top. On the other hand, the newly restructured system that created his job is ripe for abuse of disclosure.

While the new system was created as an answer to the lack of accountability in the county administration, its very structure threatens accountability. The new county CEO and the deputies he oversees are not answerable to the public in the way that the five elected supervisors are.

It will be on the shoulders of Fujioka himself to make transparency and disclosure a priority.

What a dis! Or perhaps, a d'oh!

Producers of the forthcoming Simpsons movie chose Springfield, Vermont -- and not one of some 13 other cities of the same name in different states -- for the film's premier. But adding insult to injury, this E! News story about the decision lists the following as competing Springfields: "Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon and Tennessee."

See what's missing? Springfield, California!

OK, I didn't know there was a Springfield, CA, either, but Yahoo! Maps says there is. Apparently it's somewhere northeast of nowhere.

East Coast bias strikes again!

Mariel, you note that "a growing number of gainfully employed Americans can't afford or are losing their health care benefits," but is this really what the study you cite demonstrates? How many of California's newly uninsured are actually American? Or are the state's numbers inflated by the continual inflow of poor, illegal immigrants who work in under-the-table jobs that almost never offer benefits? Considering that more Americans moved out of California than into it over the last decade, but our population continued to grow, immigrants and their families are clearly making up an increasing proportion of our population.

I raise the question because the answer would tell us a lot about what these numbers mean: Is the problem rooted in our health-care system or in our immigration system? (Or if, as is likely the case, the answer is "both," then to what degree does each factor play a role?)

The ultimate effect -- fewer people getting insurance at work -- may be the same either way, but determining the root of the problem necessarily plays a big role in figuring out how to solve it. (I haven't read the study yet, only the press release, so I don't know if this question is addressed -- perhaps it is, and my question is moot.)

As for the need for a reasoned health-care reform process without an "ideologically powered debate over Britain's socialized health care system" -- sounds good to me! But in fairness to people like Bridget, whom you gently rebuked yesterday, it's not Michael Moore's critics who brought foreign health systems into the debate, Moore did, and his critics are naturally going to answer him on his own terms.

Like you, I also haven't seen "Sicko," but the reviews I've read all say it paints France, England, even Cuba's (!) health-care system as superior to our own. And if that's an argument Moore is making, it only seems fair for others to rebut it. If he merely wanted to spur a debate about America's broken health-care system, he could have quite easily portrayed our many flaws without making foreign comparisons that beg for a response.

Maybe these issues are "red herrings," but it's Moore who dragged them out. And if they're irrelevant to the larger debate, then it is he, and not his critics, who is responsible.

I haven't seen Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko, but I don't need to to know that there's a real health care crisis brewing and that's not going to be solved through ideologically powered debate over Britain's socialized health care system. And that is a growing number of gainfully employed Americans can't afford or are losing their health care benefits. A report reelased today by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research noted that as of 2005 employer-paid health insurance had dropped despite the strong economy. (Or maybe beacuse of? Wall Street loves reduced benefits.) One can only imagine that two years later, things are even worse.

"The continued erosion of California's job-based health insurance - which the vast majority of insured residents rely upon to pay for medical services - is a clear indication of the need to reform the state's health care system, according to a new report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

The report notes that 6.5 million non-elderly Californians, 20 percent of the state's population, were uninsured for all or part of 2005. While this rate is lower than the 21.9 percent uninsurance rate in 2001, job-based health insurance - the foundation of coverage for the non-elderly population - continued to decline, falling from 56.4 percent in 2001 to 54.3 percent in 2005. "

The Governator used the report today to push his Mitt Romneyesque health care proposal, which had a soft launch in Mass. last week. The jury on that law will be out for at least a year.

See KCET's story on Beth Barrett's scoop here.

And the submissions are (in no particular order):
1. Has anybody seen my wife? (Kris Noffke)
2. HEY.............gotta fill all the holes I can while I'm still young enough to do it!!!!!! (Gary E. Taylor)
3. "Damn, we're in a tight spot!" (Mike Tetreault)
4. An L.A. Nacho with melting cheese. (Ashey Chase)
5. Just trying to dig my way out of this hole I've gotten myself into ...(Chris Weinkopf)

Just shy of a month ago, a few of us -- most pointedly, Mariel -- kicked around a classic journalist-ethics question: Is it OK for reporters to give money to political causes?

Well, now the antics of Mirthala Salinas -- who has, um, brought her own unique twist to journalist ethics -- raise an interesting variation on that old question. Namely: Is it OK for reporters to give money to political candidates who are running against said reporter's future adulterous partners?

That's because according to KTLA, back in 2001, Mistress Mirthala gave $250 to one of Antonio Villaraigosa's opponents in his first bid for mayor, Xavier Becerra.

Clearly the makers of textbooks on ethical journalism are going to have to write a whole new chapter about the Villasalinas saga. Or better yet, Salinas could write a new textbook herself.

... or him. Whoever it is that's writing your comments for you. I know you're trying to get the public to think about something -- anything -- other than your affair. But that's all the more reason to avoid statements like:

"I think people are going to evaluate me on the work I do, on keeping commitments."

Um, Mr. Mayor, keeping commitments doesn't exactly seem to be your strong suit these days ...

I, (name), take you, (name), to be my (husband/wife). I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.

Stick to comments like, "I think people are going to evaluate me on the work I do, on filling potholes." That might work a (little) better.

I have no idea where this picture originated from, but found it on this link.

A judge has postponed the trial for alleged terrorist John Noster until Monday. If that name sounds familiar, it's because back in 2003 Noster, a West Hills accountant, made the front page of the Daily News for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack somewhere in L.A. Back then, feds thought he might have been motivated by a Timothy McVeigh-like brand of anti-government radicalism.

At the time I wrote a column about it, because just a few years earlier, Noster and I had been pals. We met playing beach volleyball, and watched a lot of football and went on a lot of hikes with other young adults. Suffice it to say, I had no idea about Noster's violent inclinations. Nor did I even know about his purported political views -- our conversations were mostly limited to sports, small talk, and the outdoors.

But that didn't stop a now-defunct, radical-left Southland blogger from writing a savage post about my relationship with Noster. Based on nothing but nasty guilt-by-association and a few misapplied quotes ripped out of context, this guy -- whose name I can no longer remember -- accused me of being Noster's terrorist inspiration because, you know, I'm conservative, and all conservatives are like Timothy McVeigh. (Never mind that if you troll their web lair, you'll find that the militia types hate me because I'm an "internationalist," a New World Order-type, and an immigrant-lover, plus they assume I'm Jewish -- which is the worst thing possible in their book.)

Although typically this obscure, wingnut blog wouldn't have generated much interest, Kevin Roderick at the widely read LA Observed linked up to the post, so for a brief period, I was besieged with shocked inquiries about my supposed love of domestic terrorism. I had great fun explaining this to old friends and family members who stumbled upon the post.

Well, now it turns out -- according to the CBS 2 report -- that politics actually was not the driving force behind Noster's schemes, crass profiteering was:

Noster "intended to use the bombs he possessed to destroy buildings or property and to make money in the wake of that destruction" by shorting stock of companies affected, or through trades on the commodities market, Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian said in court papers filed in advance of the sentencing.

He "intended to capitalize on public fear over another 9/11-style attack," Missakian wrote.

So not only did Noster and I not discuss politics, and not only did his purported political views in no way reflect mine, but politics wasn't even his motive.

Oh well, it was a good smear while it lasted.

As for John Noster, God bless him, and may he get whatever punishment he deserves.

(You can read my original 2003 column beyond the jump.)

The disclosures by Surgeon General Carmona in the NY Times that the Bush Administration's attempted to supress reports on such public health shows an administration more interested in its politic base than in the American people.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

Even Special Olympics took a political hit:

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

When asked after the hearing if that “prominent family” was the Kennedys, Dr. Carmona responded, “You said it. I didn’t.”

Not that its any secret that top government jobs are subject to politica coercion, they are political appointees after all, but this is just shameful.

The L.A. county did something right when it hired Bill Fuijoka, the retired chief administrative officer for Los Angeles, for it's newly created CEO spot. The LA Business Journal breaks the story today.

During his eight years as Los Angeles city administrative officer, Fujioka reported to both the mayor and the City Council. He oversaw the implementation of charter reform and helped lead the city through the budget crunch that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the cutbacks in state funding. He earned a reputation for being candid about budget issues and other challenges the city faced.

Apparently the presence of America's canine sweetheart, Lassie, in Sacramento was enough to scare the wits out of Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, who has pulled the plug on his mandatory spay-neuter bill. Well, that and the fact that he couldn't get his colleagues to vote for it. The Merc reports:

Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, realized that the Senate Local Government Committee would probably have killed the bill for the year after a hearing today, so he is opting to withdraw it in the hopes of reviving it later, said Levine spokesman Alex Traverso.

Testimony scheduled for this morning will still take place, but Levine will withdraw the measure before the committee votes, he said.

That's classic Sacramento: We're going to conduct a hearing, but with no vote -- in other words, pomp, circumstance, and a big waste of taxpayer money, without even the pretense of getting something done.

Oh my, what a tangled web we sleaze:

A former brothel madam in New Orleans says Sen. David Vitter, who yesterday admitted to being a client of the D.C. madam, was a valued customer there. The New Orleans madam felt the need to point out that Vitter was a nice guy and not using taxpayer money for hookers. Allegations also resurfaced -- originally dug up by a GOP rival -- that Vitter had a regular prostitute whom he visited in the French Quarter in the 1990s.

Larry Flynt, currently on a million dollar witch hunt to nab randy Republican politicos, claims his Hustler investigation forced Vitter to confess to his D.C. madam patronage. Flynt plans a news conference in Beverly Hills today to discuss the case and remind us why he will never have an E! show like Hugh Hefner.

Vitter's wife Wendy told a news service seven years ago that she wouldn't be like Hillary Clinton with a philandering hubby but instead was "a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt." Cue the senator locking up the Ginsu knives...

Tony still doesn’t get it. He dons a yellow protective vest, grabs a rake and then dumps a little asphalt into a pothole all to convince reporters and the public that that he’s a hard working mayor and not moping from the Salinas love tryst. Who’s this showy, gimmicky, media staged PR stunt supposed to fool? He still thinks that the media ( L.A. Times excepted) still laps up everything he says as if it's from Moses on the Mount.

Mercifully, that's changing. He’s dealing with a press that’s been weaned on a decade of paparazzi type sniffing for sex scandals. And Tony’s tryst with Salinas is tailor made to arouse that scent. There’s something else he still doesn’t get. The mark of a good mayor, or for that matter any public official, is not hitting the street and pretending to do the job that city maintenance workers are paid to do, but doing the job that voters put you in office to do. And in L.A. that means coming up with a plan to deal with L.A.’s nightmarish transportation woes, and then working hard to implement it. That takes dedicated, behind the scenes thought and planning, coordinating with regional planning and transportation agencies, and arm twisting Sacramento and the feds to cough up the money for the array of transit, freeway car pool and express lanes, express buses needed to solve L.A.’s gridlock, and, yes, the street repairs needed to put L.A.’s pockmarked streets in shape.

That won’t happen by pushing a rake in the street, dripping a little sweat with TV cameras in tow, Tony. Even PT Barnum could figure that out.

Just heard from a source that the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up the case of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, the two Border Patrol agents serving 11-12 year sentences in the shooting of drug smuggler Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila after a chase along the Texas-Mexico border. Sen. Dianne Feinstein will be presiding over the "Hearing to Examine the Prosecution of Igancio Ramos and Jose Compean," which will be July 17 at 10 a.m. in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. I know there's been a lot of Southland interest in this case, as well as street protests, but if you need to catch up on the facts of the case our sister paper the Daily Bulletin has done a fantastic job of coverage.

This one involving Sen. David Vitter, R-LA, whose name has appeared on the infamous D.C. Madame list. Mayor Villaraigosa could learn something from the senator about how to pick oneself up after having fallen down:

"This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible," Vitter said Monday in a printed statement. "Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there—with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way."

Meanwhile, we can all be glad for the sake of Vitter and Villaraigoa that we don't live in Iran.

... by doing things like this:

Spanish feministas want a "bull run" of their own -- separate from the traditional Running of the Bulls, which, while open to women, is usually attended mostly by men, who are congenitally more inclined to such acts of reckless stupidity. But these trailblazers want to do things a little differently. They want their bull run to feature -- you guessed it -- cows. As Reuters reports:

A student website, www.estudiln.net, set the ball rolling with its campaign "Cows want to run" which asks for a separate encierro, as the bull-runs are known, where only women are allowed to take part....

"Cows, as well as bulls, have four legs and a natural instinct to run," says their manifesto. "An encierro for cows, would put Pamplona at the vanguard of traditional fiestas with equality for men and women."

Of course, an added benefit is if all that running makes you thirsty, you can grab one of the cows and squeeze yourself a refreshing glass of milk!

No word yet on what the animal-rights community thinks of this idea ...

Let's make sense of the mayor's comments, courtesy of Rick Orlov's story in today's Daily News:

"I am not perfect ... and want to get back to the work the people of Los Angeles elected me to."

No one expects you to be perfect, and yes, by all means, get back to the "work" the people of Los Angeles elected you -- and that's not reporter-diddling.

"I made a mistake. I've always said that when you do something that undermines your support in some way or causes people to lose faith in you in some way, you've got to get back and accept your responsibility and do your job."

Amen to that! But if it was a "mistake," why are you still doing it? Taking responsibility means changing course.

"I've obviously caused a great deal of pain to my family, to many people here. Some people feel let down and I understand that. What we have to focus on is the job and in making sure we address the critical needs of children."

Good. Now start with the critical needs of your own.

Look at how he's groveling to be loved by us again!

Let's make this a new Caption This contest. Any good captions out there for this one?

Bridget has some good points (and, eek about the lump experience) but she's missing the larger point, which is that our health care sytem sucks. Scary stories about socialized medicine in the former world empires like London and a communist country like Cuba are red herrings.

I wish I had time to argue point by point, but I've got editorial to write and then my own foray into the country's health care system this afternoon. So I offer up this review from The American Prospect to counter all the conservative hysteria over "Sicko."

"Socialism kills!" roared the guy dressed up like Fidel Castro. The six nurses in miniskirts and high heels who flanked his wheelchair winked coquettishly and passed out literature meant to prove the point. An older woman behind me in line for the premiere of Michael Moore's Sicko softly clucked at them. "Ain't no nurse who could wear heels like that and be on her feet for 12 hours," she said. But whether government-run medicine really kills, or in fact just turns our nurses into a cadre of propagandists in stilettos, is actually a bit beside the point. Contrary to its billing, Sicko is not a movie about health care policy. It does not spend time examining inefficiencies, or incentive structures, or public-private hybrids. It does not offer a methodologically rigorous cross-national comparison of health care systems. (Its portrayal of Cuba is, indeed, absurdly rosy.) That's not its point...

...Its point, of course, is to arouse passion, to force debate, and on that, it succeeds. A few hours before, I'd been on Larry Kudlow's TV show, ostensibly to discuss health care and Moore's new movie. "I hate it," barked Kudlow. "Michael Moore's movie Sicko calls for socialized medicine." He hadn't seen it, of course, but felt perfectly comfortable assuming, and judging, its arguments.

It gives me the heebie-jeebies to pitch my column on the same post as a picture of Michael Moore with a latex glove, but it is a piece I had to write after hearing some colleagues emerge from "Sicko" singing the praises of socialized medicine (the squeaky-clean Moore version, that is). Frankly, it ain't all that -- as I write about today:

"Last fall, I discovered a lump in my breast. With the requisite dread, I went to my primary care physician, had a diagnostic mammogram, had an ultrasound after that, then was referred to a surgeon who removed the lump and sent it for biopsy.

It was a pretty hellish and painful weeks-long wait to get the final verdict of 'benign,' but as the saying goes, you lament your lack of shoes until you meet the person who has no feet. Because I then read about Theresa Debono, a British woman who was told she'd have a 17-week wait for a mammogram to help diagnose a breast lump. In half the time period that the National Health Service told Debono to wait for her first test, I was already recovering from my surgery."

Read the whole thing!

*NOTE: Major hats off to Kurt Loder at MTV for his ballsy review of “Sicko” and dead-on questions about Michael Moore’s filmmaking. I grew up watching Loder on MTV news and always thought he was cool, but never realized he was this cool and smart…

Lassie loves everyone -- except the Democratic assemblyman from Van Nuys.

I got an amusing press release from opponents of Lloyd Levine's AB 1634 -- the bill that would mandate spaying/neutering for all California dogs and cats. It turns out that America's most beloved collie, Lassie, is leading the opposition against Levine's -- pardon the expression -- pet piece of legislation. She's even making the trek up to Sacramento, presumably to try to talk some sense into Lloyd himself.

It's a daunting challenge, but if anyone can handle it, Lassie can!

(Follow the jump to see the press release.)

The group of Angelenos outraged enough about Rocky Delgadillo to intiate a recall delivered the notice to his office today. Now they need 120 days to collect about 225,000 signatures to trigger a recall election.

From a CNS story:

A recall notice was delivered today to the office of City Attorney Rocky
Delgadillo, who has come under fire for using city resources for personal reasons.
Delgadillo will now have 14 days to respond to the notice, which was delivered by former county employee
Andrew Ahlering -- the same person who wants to have Sheriff Lee Baca recalled from office.
“I believe Mr. Delgadillo violated the public trust, I believe he has hurt and violated the California penal
code ... by misappropriating city funds,” Ahlering said after a receptionist accepted the notice on behalf of
Delgadillo.

When will papers be filed on Baca and MAV?

A reader, who sent in the above image of a 2003 campaign flyer, writes:

Zoom back to the 2003 race for the 14th Council District.

Between then-Councilman Nick Pacheco and Antonio Villaraigosa.

An attorney named Ricardo Torres II paid for a flyer to tell what many people on the Eastside knew:

--That Villaraigosa had left a trail of heartbreak amongst the women in his life, and that he treated the women in his life -- like his campaigns for office. More "conquest" than relationship.

The message of the mailer was threefold:

(1) Villaraigosa campaigns as a family man, and lays claim to the cliche of "breaking the cycle." These are both lies.

(2) Villaraigosa has cheated on his spouse, and continues to cheat, causing much pain.

(3) Villaraigosa's career, much like his female conquests, shows a pattern of raw ambition, always on the move, using people and offices as mere steppingstones.

Many journalists and many newspapers (ahem!) lambasted Torres for these mailers.

Turns out he was oddly prescient. He said nothing more in those mailers than what appears in print, in blogs, or out of the mouths of mothers-in-law today.

Say it with me please, "Ricardo was right."

Click here to see another particularly nasty flyer from that ugly campaign ...

Paris Hilton is partying again, Bridget reported. I’m shocked. Shocked. Paris said she finally “got it” and matured in jail. Jailhouse epiphanies, however, tend to last as long as ceasefires in Gaza.

Our mayor Antonio Villar didn’t go to jail for his sins of emission, but he did take a one week time out and ruthlessly sentenced himself to no public appearances. This proved his willpower and strength of character. Giving up being in the public view is probably more difficult for him than giving up sex. In any case, he indicates that he too has got it. This actually seems to be the problem. He got it and often. Now the question is if he will be able to focus his, uh, passions.

I referred to his Honor (Hmmmm?) as Antonio Villar because it is not clear if he will retain custody of his compound name—a fusion of his birth name Villar and his soon to be ex-wife’s name, Raigosa. These naming issues are, well, virgin territory for all of us.

The name change might not be a bad way of re-branding himself as a new man. The ex’s suffix could probably be dropped pretty easily and this might create less baggage were he to run for state office—maybe governor. Although, I’m sure the thought never entered his mind.

I’m rooting for the mayor, and hope that his epiphany lasts longer than Paris’. This is indeed a low bar. And Paris would never hang out in a low bar. Only the best.

I can't help get a chuckle out of Sprint's decision to drop 1,000 paying (but whiny) customers because they called customer-service too much. Now, we in the newspaper biz know a thing or two about regular, irate callers -- but management would have our heads if we deliberately cut off a paying customer. (Granted, Sprint has a lot more of those than we do!) Still, you would think rather than kill the messengers, Sprint might want to wonder what it is about its service than generates this kind of service.

As for the ex-customers, don't let this rejection get you down. When a door closes, a window opens! Besides, maybe now you can get yourselves a wireless company that actually wants your business.

Aww, plucking orphans out of Calcutta gutters can wait another day: Paris Hilton, probably out of her neo-Victorian garb by now, hit the club scene in Hollywood this past weekend. According to the UK's Sun tabloid:

"The heiress danced sexily on a coach, sang along to every song including her own hit Stars Are Blind, and partied with sister Nicky and friend Erin Foster this weekend.

After leaving prison where she spent 23 days for a driving offence, Paris was full of contrite words about how the experience had changed her.

She said at the time: 'There is so much more to life than that whole club scene.'"

The Sun also said she started acting lessons last week -- perhaps to entertain all those people she'll be serving in line at the soup kitchen? I read her People magazine interview last week where -- in those prim little outfits giving angelic looks to the camera again -- she gushed about how inspirational a nun at the jail who prayed with her every day was. Sheesh, one would half expect her to enter a convent after that interview. But it seems her true calling will always be the Church of Disco.

The latest batty comment from the high prince of battiness, Moammar Gadhafi:

"Have you heard of Pepsi Cola? I am sure you have. Have you heard of Coca Cola? Whenever I ask about Pepsi Cola or Coca Cola, people immediately say it's an American and European drink. This is not true. The cola is African. They have taken the cheap raw material from us... They produced it, they made it into a drink, and they sell it to us for a high price. Why are Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola expensive? Because they have taken our cola, produced it, and sold it back to us. We should produce it ourselves and sell it to them."

A colleague chastised me for my Cindy Sheehan post below, saying I was "beating up" on the grieving mother, which is mean. That's not what I intended to do, but upon re-reading, I can see how the post could be read that way. And, seeing that I've never publicly commented on Sheehan before, I suppose I should add some clarification, lest others interpret my post the same way.

In saying that Sheehan's brief departure from the public scene was "happy news," I meant only that I was glad that the spectacle she created/attracted seemed to be coming to an end. It's not that I despise Sheehan, or even that I bear any animus toward her. Yes, she has a tendency for outrageous, offensive comments, but if I'd been through what she's been through, I might, too.

Still, her love-fests with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, her claims that Israel drives U.S. foreign policy, and her endorsement of 9-11 conspiracy theories were too incendiary not to rebuke. And whenever they were rebuked, her defenders would blast her critics for beating up on a suffering mother. It made for an awkward tension in the public debate, with someone firing off condemnable comments that decent people were loath to condemn.

Sheehan was lionized by many Democrats, who were all too happy to use her against President Bush, while ignoring the more bizarre parts of her platform. But when she started criticizing Democrats, too, she was quickly dumped by a segment of the left that cares more about the party than principles. (Yes, the right has many such people, too.)

All in all, it was an unseemly mess, which Sheehan herself seemed to realize when she briefly decided to retire. But now she's back, and her target is the top elected official for the very party that used, then dumped, her. I'd just as soon she spared herself from this ugly, exploitative sport altogether, but as long as she's in, it's worth pointing out the irony.

Top wire story on Yahoo News right now: Will Turkey invade northern Iraq? Along with internal secular-Islamist strife, Turkey is amassing troops along the border to ostensibly kick around Kurdish rebels. The AP analyzes it all. Just like I did in April.

Your L.A. Daily News is ahead of the Turkish curve!

As of July 9, 2007:

U.S. Deaths Confirmed By The DoD -- 3595
Reported U.S. Deaths Pending DoD Confirmation -- 11
Total 3606

US Casualties By Calendar Year
Year US Deaths US Wounded
2003 486 2408
2004 849 8002
2005 846 5947
2006 822 6392
2007 603 3081
Total 3606 25830

I'm starting to see why the Los Angeles Animals Service critics are so incensed all the time. Saturday I adopted a dog from the North Central shelter. But rules said I couldn't take her home until she was spayed -- on Monday. Ok, I didn't like waiting, but it seemed reasonable.

I paid my $91 fee, and then waited, as I was told, to call the animal hospital at the appropriate time today. When I did, they told me my dog wasn't there. Then I tried to call the shelter, but spent a 1/2 hour trying to get through to a human after dialing the main 877 number. In frustration, I called 3-1-1 operater who connected me to an actual person at the shelter.

Unfortunately, that person had no idea where my dog was. After putting me on hold a number of times, she said the dog "may" still be at the shelter, and promised to call me back. It's an hour after my first call to the animal hospital and I still don't know where my dog is.

* Update at 3:45 p.m. I couldn't wait, and called back the animal shelter. After 15 minutes of voice tree waits and holds, I got an answer. Luckily I did call back instead of wait, because turned out she was at a different animal hospital, one that closes earlier. Arg!

Remember the happy news, back in May, that Cindy Sheehan was leaving public life? Well, turns out that one was too good to be true. But her return to politics could be fun: The anti-war activist says she will challenge Nancy Pelosi for her House seat if Pelosi fails to file articles of impeachment against President Bush by July 23.

Now, in most districts, a Sheehan challenge is not exactly something to set an incumbent quaking in her boots. But in Pelosi's San Francisco district, well, that's another story. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Angry Left claimed a political scalp ... and it was Nancy Pelosi's?

Hoping some of you caught the fabulous interview that Encino's own Judea Pearl, father of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, gave at the top of "Your World with Neil Cavuto" on Fox today (the show re-runs later if you missed it). The topic was opposition to the White House apparently nudging towared Iraq withdrawal, and Dr. Pearl gave a stirring, poignant, and eye-opening assessment of the situation, condemning the moral relativists who compare U.S. military actions in Iraq to heinous terrorist activities.

Dr. Pearl has a piece in the New Republic that echoes the themes on Cavuto:

"Indeed, following an advance screening of A Mighty Heart, a panelist representing the Council on American-Islamic Relations reportedly said, 'We need to end the culture of bombs, torture, occupation, and violence. This is the message to take from the film.' The message that angry youngsters are hearing is unfortunate: All forms of violence are equally evil; therefore, as long as one persists, others should not be ruled out. This is precisely the logic used by Mohammed Siddiqui Khan, one of the London suicide bombers, in his videotape on Al Jazeera. 'Your democratically elected government,' he told his British countrymen, 'continues to perpetrate atrocities against my people ... . [W]e will not stop.'

Danny's tragedy demands an end to this logic. There can be no comparison between those who take pride in the killing of an unarmed journalist and those who vow to end such acts—no ifs, ands, or buts. Moral relativism died with Daniel Pearl, in Karachi, on January 31, 2002."

Dr. Pearl kindly contacted me after I wrote the column on the "Mighty Heart" screening with the loopy panel discussion afterward, where I reported on the troubling "buts" heard there. In addition to his New Republic piece, I'd like to bring everyone's attention to another much-needed piece recently written by Dr. Pearl: "Anti-Zionism is Racism," from New York Jewish Week.

I feel so hurt and betrayed. I believed him. He gazed into my eyes, held my right hand in his strong two-handed embrace and in that moment, I was the only person in his view, nay, in his world. It was clear to me that I meant everything to him. “We” and our magical moment lasted only a nanosecond. I should have known Antonio would find another—or rather others, lots of others. I feel so foolish, so used, so betrayed.

I go away on vacation and look at what happens, we find out the Paris Hilton has become mayor (or the mayor has become Paris Hilton) and the scandal du jours has moved on to politics. Fair enough I guess, politics is, after all, known as show biz for ugly people.

My moment with the mayor and his magical charisma took place a few weeks ago at the Los Angeles Press Club awards banquet. It was really something to watch the mayor work the room. What a pro, I thought, until I caught sight of Arianna Huffinton working the other side of the room. Talk about two powerhouses of energy, charisma and compressed charm. This is a talent, a gift to be able to make someone feel that they alone are important and to have that feeling endure for a time after the actual encounter has passed—usually in the blink of an eye. They however, never blink. This is part of their talent.

Now much was made by our fabulous op-ed team of the various sins involved in the mayor’s moral mess. Me, I’m confused by the fuss. This seems to me to be a win-win situation.

The most recent trend in covering wars—and war is politics by other means—is embedded reporters. Well, clearly Miss Mirthala has achieved the ultimate embed. If reporters can sleep in the trenches with Army and Marines in combat situations, why not political situations?

Further, if embed is a journalistic goal, sticking it to journalists is the aim of every politician I’ve ever known. Antonio just got to do it to a reporter a lot better looking than most of us. I can’t blame him for dropping me and going for her.

..is definitely not my life. But NYT columnists seem to have quite the continental lifestyles. Consider Maureen Dowd's extended jaunt to Paris to observe the lifestyles of the new president, complete with causual mentions of Catherine Denueve. And now Tom Freidman is making me feel bad with his most recent column, which begins:

Over dinner with friends in London the other night, the conversation drifted to global warming and whether anything was really being done to reverse it.

Here's my (true) version:

Over dinner with cousins in Stoughton, Mass., the other night, the conversation drifted to stupid things people ask in the textile department of Ikea, where one cousin works, and whether there was any hope for a humanity obsessed with cheap Swedish furniture.

10. "Let me get this straight."
9. "I know you won't publish this."
8. "I dare you to publish this."
7. "There you go again."
6. "I know this is not politically correct."
5. "Let me help you with this concept."
4. "Why don't we hold hands and sing Kumbayah."
3. "Why don't they all go back to Mexico."
2. "When my (father, grandfather, mother, etc.) immigrated to this country, (he, she) learned English in three minutes."
1. "I know you folks print only letters favoring the right."
"I know you guys publlish only letters favoring the left."

Thanks to Dave Pierre at Newbusters, who has ably defended me against L.A. Times' media critic Tim Rutten's accusation that my initial post on the mayor's love triangle was a "hysterical screed." As Pierre points out, this is classic Times' hypocrisy:

"Hysterical screed"? Oh, really? Rutten may want to look back at his own paper to Robert Scheer's nasty column from August 17, 1999. In the column, Scheer brutally attacked former Speaker Newt Gingrich for his two divorces. Spewed Scheer, "Now it's his turn to be judged bad fruit." Scheer then concluded his column by tagging Gingrich as a "serial home-wrecker."

Look, Tim! Scheer used the same word as Weinkopf! But, wait. Gingrich is a Republican. Villaraigosa is a Democrat. Did you publicly report anything "hysterical" with Scheer's column back then? I didn't think so.

Yet another double standard at the LA Times.

I adopted a 2-year-old collie/shepard mix from the shelter yesterday. But she didn't come with a name. I'm terrible with the names. Help!

Here's a picture of a dog that is similar looking.

Any and all suggestions appreciated

As promised, we had our three different takes on L'Affaire Antonio in Sunday's Viewpoint. First, Mariel observed that it's not easy being one of the women in the mayor's life:

It's really not fair considering all that political spouses such as Corina give up. They often trade in promising careers (think Maria Shriver) for lives in which they rarely see their elected other halves - except for the occasions on which they are trotted out for photo-ops to project an image of stability and family values. Meanwhile, they are hidden away as much as possible so as not to engage in any potentially embarrassing behavior. You might not hear from them again until they are tossed aside for some doe-eyed political groupie.

In this case, however, even the doe-eyed political groupie is getting a raw deal.

Then Earl asked some hard questions about the ethics of Mistress Mirthala's journalism:

Now there are questions: Did Salinas and the station make a comprehensive assessment of the pros and cons of the mayor's (LAUSD) takeover ploy?

This was a stormy public policy issue that impacted one of the most crucial aspects of L.A. life, namely the present and future shape of public education. This, as other vital policy issues, demands the most rigorous, unbiased scrutiny by the media. If that isn't done, then reporters simply become shills for politicians.

And, finally, I took note of how the mayor's troubled home life seems to stem from a troubled childhood -- and extends to his leadership of the city:

The statistics speak for themselves. Children of divorce are themselves more likely to divorce. Boys and girls who grow up without dads at home are considerably more likely to have teen pregnancies. ...

Fatherless children are twice as likely as the rest of the population to drop out of school. Yet in his crusade to reform public education - in large part because the Los Angeles Unified School District's dropout rate is so high - Villaraigosa has uttered nary a peep about familial breakdown.

On the other issue that dominates his political agenda - street gangs - he has also been largely silent about what's likely the single greatest causal factor.

Read 'em all, and post your comments ...

according to this writer from Monday's letters

Re "Infidelity no kiss of death" (July 5):
Tony Castro's front-page attempt at damage control comes too late for Antonio. His attack on
mostly Republican politicos tries to obfuscate the issue. I think Castro forgot to mention the two adult children fathered out of wedlock with two different women before his marriage to his present wife.
His recent affair insults Catholics and morally responsible persons of all religions. Antonio has lost his privilege of being a role model for our youth. Read your own Daily News poll in the same issue, and you will see that 87 percent of 341 responses agree that Romeo Antonio's political career has been hurt irreparably.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s personal relationship with suspended Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas crossed the line and poses a possible conflict with public policy decisions, or worse, impedes or influences those decisions and the reporting of those decisions. The perfect example of this is Villaraigosa’s arm twist of the state legislature and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to back his terribly flawed and ultimately failed plan to run the LAUSD schools. Salinas reported extensively on the school battle in Sacramento, even appearing at the Capitol in interview shots with him.

Now here are the questions. Did Salinas talk to the teachers, parents, and school officials that opposed the mayor’s plan? Did she talk to the state legislators that voted against the plan? Did the station make a comprehensive assessment of the pros and cons of the mayor’s takeover plan? This, as other vital policy issues, demands the most rigorous, unbiased, scrutiny by the media. If that isn’t done then reporters simply become shills for politicians.

Villaraigosa and Salinas must come clean about their relationship and the role it played in slanting news of city affairs.

Think it was any coincidence that Comedy Central re-ran the "Manbearpig" episode this week, the one in which Al Gore runs around "South Park" warning people about the greatest threat to mankind -- a beast that's "half man, half bear, half pig"? Hip-to-be-square Gore took the stage with hipster Prius owner Leo DiCaprio today for the Live Earth concerts, which sounded a warning on global warming while leaving a sasquatch-sized carbon footprint.

In case it was lost on anyone who saw the episode, Manbearpig represented global warming. Al Gore chasing around a fictional monster... well, you get what the SP guys were trying to say. But remember what Gore said to the schoolkids in the episode:

"Some people say that ManBearPig isn't real. Well, I'm here to tell you now, ManBearPig is very real, and he most certainly exists--I'm cereal. ManBearPig doesn't care what you've done. ManBearPig just wants to get you. I'm super cereal. But have no fear, because I am here to save you. And someday, when the world is rid of ManBearPig, everyone will say, 'Thank you Al Gore--you're super awesome!' The end."

The Daily Mirror is reporting on the last phone calls of Kafeel Ahmed, who got all crispy driving a flaming Jeep into the checkout-area doors at Glasgow Airport last weekend.

"The day after police defused the West End car bombs, he phoned them and said: 'I had told you earlier that sometime in future I will be inaccessible for a week. The time has come now.

'I will go to that place, finish that work and go to London and will return to Bangalore from there. All this may take a month's time.'

He added: 'My earlier presentation failed...please pray for me.' By then, counter terrorism officers were closing in and detectives believe he launched his last-ditch attack on Glasgow Airport.

Police in India were yesterday questioning his father Maqboo, mother Zakia, both doctors, and student sister Sadia about the phone calls. In the first message on May 5, according to the Times of India newspaper, Ahmed said: 'I am involved in a large-scale confidential project. It is about global warming. I cannot reveal the details.'"

Aren't car bombs just contributing to global warming?

The Mayor Sam blog is reporting that they received a tip alleging that Mirthala Salinas leaked the news of the affair because Villaraigosa had already moved on to the next affair, with an unnamed Korean developer. It's also alleged that this relationship, not Mirthala, was the final straw for Corina. This latest twist has racked up 258 comments thus far on Mayor Sam, and been picked up by my friend Gateway Pundit, who may be in St. Louis but loves "Playa-Gate" as much as the next red-blooded Angeleno!

Would anybody be surprised if this was true? Anybody?

Stay tuned for Sunday's Daily News, when three of Friendly Fire's finest -- Mariel Garza, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, and yours truly -- will take a look at L'Affaire Vivalaromeo. If I think of it, I'll post links to the columns here, but otherwise, you can find them at on the DN website's opinions page.

You can't get Antonio coverage like this anywhere else ... well, except maybe for Telemundo.

L.A. firefighter Brenda Lee just stuck Los Angeles taxpayers with a bill for nearly $ 7 million after a jury said she was harassed, harangued, racially demeaned and then had her complaints ignored by Los Angeles Fire Department bosses. But Lee and the poster boy for LAFD discrimination, Tennie Pierce, aren’t the only ones the city will cough up millions to. There are 15 more discrimination lawsuits pending, and after Lee’s cakewalk victory there may be more coming down the pike. None of this had to happen. The city crafted a fair and equitable settlement with Pierce.

Now enter Villaraigosa. He vetoed it. That sent the terrible signal that the city will fight no matter what the cost on God knows what principle to avoid paying even when a settlement is warranted. With this dumb, go to the barricades mindset that Villaraigosa encouraged the city faces a financial train wreck, and it’s the taxpayers blood that will be spilt all over the tracks. To get the train back on its tracks, Villaraigosa and the L.A. City Council should urge the city attorney to declare a moratorium on court litigation in fire department discrimination lawsuits and immediately review all pending fire department discrimination cases to determine ways to end costly litigation, or else. The or else is a fast emptying city treasury, and higher taxes and fees squeezed out of the taxpayers to pay for these silly court battles.

"I got my values from my mother."

--Andrew Giuliani, age 21, at precisely the moment his father, Rudy, was seeking the presidency

While Mayor Villaraigosa has clearly taken his sexual cues from Bill Clinton, he could stand to learn a few things from the former president about about how to recover from a high-profile marital implosion. Recall some of these quotes from the Lewinskygate heyday back in 1998:

“I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong.”

“I made a big mistake. It is indefensible and I am sorry.”

“I let my family down and I let this country down. But I’m trying to make it right. And I’m determined never to let anything like that happen again.”

Admittedly, it took Clinton some time to work up his contrition, but so far we have seen none from Villaraigosa, who acts as though he has done nothing wrong. Not only that, but Clinton took swift measures to clean up his life: He ended his adulterous relationship and, somehow, was able to make amends with his wife. Villaraigosa and Mistress Mirthala, on the other hand, prattle on about how we should respect their privacy and honor their "romantic relationship."

It says something that Villaraigosa is able to make Clinton look like a paragon of responsibility and self-control. Do yourself a favor, Mr. Mayor, and take a page from the Man from Hope.

You need to read Brent Hopkins' story in today's Daily News about Sgt. Giann Carlo Joya-Mendoza -- a true patriot and a hero who was killed last month in Iraq:

He really loved the Army," said his stepfather, Orlando Useda. "He didn't need to go back to the Army the second time. He had a good-paying job, but he took a pay cut and he went back."...

"In this country, we are free, we can do what we want," he once told his mother. "In other countries, they force you to go into the Army."

The story also tells us that Joya-Mendoza was born in Honduras, came to the U.S. as a teenager, and hoped to become an American citizen, but was unable to achieve that before dying for this country. His family hopes to complete the naturalization process for him posthumously.

Now, often at the Daily News, when we run a story about a foreign national with a Spanish surname who does something awful -- say commits a terrible crime -- we are besieged with phone calls angrily demanding to know: Was he an illegal?!? Somehow, I suspect we won't be getting such calls about Joya-Mendoza.

I have no idea what Joya-Mendoza 's immigration status was, but it doesn't really matter, does it? Even if he did break our immigration laws at some point, he was a far greater patriot than millions of us who haven't.

Something to ponder for those who think that immigration status is the tell-tale measure of one's character.

John Edwards, the impoverished trial lawyer and "Two Americas" class-struggle aficionado who lives in the richest house in his county with trailer park neighbors, had a $1,250 haircut during the 2004 presidential race, the Washington Post reported. Now we already know that Edwards places high priority on his 'fro, but the side part and swept bangs isn't exactly the most intricate men's haircut in the world. And should a man's haircut ever exceed the price of a woman's cut? I once paid $125 for a cut/blowout at Jose Eber ($100 cut, rest tips); a friend paid about the same when I went with her to Prive Salon (as Jenny McCarthy whined about her roots in the next chair and Jared Leto held up the line for the bathroom). However, I get a better cut from my current stylist who charges $50 and gets a $10 tip.

So is Edwards a hypocrite? Yeah, but the debate on that won't last too long because he won't make it through the primaries, anyway. Edwards might be shocked to learn that the America other than his America (in the Two Americas scenario) appreciates getting low prices on their shampoo -- and his fave product, hairspray -- at that Retail Satan, Wal-Mart...

A few commenters have complained that, in my criticism of the Scooter Libby commutation, I neglected to mention Bill Clinton's sundry pardons and commutations for friends and political allies. Over at Opinion Journal, James Taranto has compiled a list of some of the highlights (here's the link; scroll down to "All in the Family"):

Roger Clinton, who was convicted of drug-related charges in the 1980s. He was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in 1985 to conspiring to distribute cocaine. He cooperated with authorities and testified against other drug defendants.

Susan McDougal, a former real estate business partner of the Clintons. She was sentenced in 1996 and released from prison in 1998. She was convicted of four felonies related to a fraudulent $300,000 federally backed loan that she and her husband, James McDougal, never repaid. One tenth of the loan amount was placed briefly in the name of Whitewater Development, the Arkansas real estate venture of the Clintons and the McDougals. . . .

Henry Cisneros, who served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development during Clinton's first term in office. He was convicted of making false statements to FBI agents conducting a background investigation of him when he was nominated to the Cabinet post in 1993. They included misleading investigators about cash payments he made to a former mistress.

Former CIA Director John Deutch. The one-time spy chief and top Pentagon official was facing criminal charges in connection with his mishandling of national secrets on a home computer.

Yes, but so what? Is the best defense Bush backers can come up with: Clinton did it, too? Boy, talk about defining deviancy down!

Democrats' denunciation of the Libby decision -- coupled with their silence over Clinton's pardons -- exposes the basest form of partisan hypocrisy. But so does Republicans' outrage over Clinton's pardons and tacit approval of Scooter Libby's special treatment.

I don't like the Constitutional pardon provisions much, and I resent their abuse by presidents of any party. But just because Bill Clinton fancied himself and his cronies as above the law doesn't mean Bush should, too.

Well, I can't same I'm surprised by the study that shows $1 billion in healthy-eating propaganda has failed to get kids to eat healthily. When will the puritanical food moralists ever learn? Kids are going to eat junk food. That's what they do. You're not going to stop them with this "abstinence only" stuff. It's time we stopped wasting the money and the breath.

No, instead it's time to recognize reality -- since kids are going to eat junk food, we need to make sure they do it safely. We need to make sure they have protection.

Let's start with our schools: We should distribute donuts to anyone who wants them at the nurse's office. Kids are going to eat donuts anyway, so at least we can offer them safe donuts -- say, ones without sprinkles or trans fats -- and try to minimize the damage. In the cafeteria, we should serve McDonald's cheeseburgers -- after all, if we don't, students are only going to go to McDonald's and buy double-cheeseburgers. And we should offer eating-ed classes, where we teach children how to make a malted, share recipes for nachos, and instruct youngsters on the fine points of downing a pint of Ben & Jerry's in five minutes. But we'll tell them to do it safely, by being sure they use proven girth-control methods like washing it down with Diet Coke, or bulimia.

Kids have been eating junk food since the beginning of time. It's time we made peace with that reality. Puritanical methods like banning junk food from schools and lecturing kids on unrealistic concepts like self-control have failed. Kids are culinary beings, just like the rest of us; we need to let them embrace these natural appetites.

Reality, people, come to grips with it.

<< /sarcasm off >>

Here's a man who knows what it means to "put his family first." From Steve Dilbeck's column:

And though there has never been reason since to doubt (former Laker guard Derek) Fisher as a person of character, it was never more evident than this week.

Monday he did something almost unprecedented. He walked away from a guaranteed $20.6million.

He wants to spend more time in one of the handful of NBA cities that offer the appropriate medical care for his 1-year-old daughter, who has a rare form of eye cancer.

So he asked the Utah Jazz to release him from the final three years of his contract, and to owner Larry Miller's great credit, he did.

"Life for me has always outweighed the game of basketball," Fisher said.

That's character.

Whenever discussing the possibility of socialized health care in the U.S., I always point out that substandard treatment and conditions exposed at Walter Reed hospital or our local atrocities at King-Drew Medical Center are previews of what our health care would be like under a government system.

But after hearing a colleague who'd seen "Sicko" talk about how Michael Moore extolled the virtues of the National Health Service in Britain (which has been plagued by long waiting lists for treatment, superbugs in medial centers, illegal organ harvesting and limited availability of treatments that cause sick people to go to other countries to get treated) and begin to extol those virtues herself, all I could say was, "Yeah, the NHS looks really great right now!" After all, several doctors working in the NHS were just arrested in the car bomb attempts in London and the airport attack in Glasgow. And today the Daily Telegraph reports that 45 U.K. Muslim doctors were discussing attacking the U.S. with car bombs and RPGs, specifically Mayport Naval Base in Jacksonville, Fla., home of the USS John F Kennedy and, according to their chats, "clubs for naked women."

Something tells me Moore's going to have extra problems convincing the world that the NHS is utopia.

The buzz among some advocates of national health care is that Michael Moore's film "Sicko" will prove to be the great catalyst that makes their political dream a reality. It could happen, I suppose, but let's recall some of Moore's other documentaries and their effect:

Roger and Me (1989): An early broadside against globalization and outsourcing -- both of which have only continued to flourish at an ever more rapid pace ever since.

Bowling for Columbine (2002): A passionate plea for gun control -- an issue the Democratic Party, which can read poll numbers as well as anyone, has gone on to all but drop.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004): Moore's polemic against George W. Bush, set to run in advance of the 2004 election -- the one in which Bush took more votes than any other presidential candidate ever, and bested John Kerry by 3 million votes

Michael Moore may be a swell filmmaker, but anyone who's pinning their political hopes on his work will likely be disappointed.

In his nothing-wrong-with-a-little-adultery press conference, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa insisted that voters wouldn't fret over his private indiscretions. "I believe that the vast majority of people base their sense of trust on what you do in your public life," said the mayor, "whether or not you keep your promises."

It's a funny line coming from a politician with reputation for, well, not always keeping his promises.

As for the matter of the public's trust, should we continue to believe Villaraigosa and his staffers now that they've been caught in a ridiculous public lie -- the one about his getting his ring re-sized? And were the flaks who passed on that lie themselves lied to by their boss, or were they deliberately lying on his behalf?

I know, "Politician, Flaks Lie" isn't exactly breaking news, but if they won't own up to their dishonesty, at least we should call them on it.

Villaraigosa, Fabian Nunez, Alex Padilla. Telemundo's Mirthala Salinas was clearly moving up in the chain of political power.

I must say that I'm much less concerned about the indiscretion of the mayor than I am about Salinas. Everyone knows that politicians are screwing people in private and in public. It's why we absolutely need a free press to keep them in check. Otherwise, hello dictatorship.

That's what makes Salinas' role much more troublesome. When reporters transgress that main tenet of journalistic standards (don't get personally involved with those you cover) then we are all lost.

But, then, we can hardly count TV anchors as journalists these days, can we?

Make what you will about the story of Al Gore's son getting busted for driving 100 mph in his Prius on the I-5 in Orange County, as well as allegedly being in possession of marijuana and some prescription drugs. I mention the item only because it raises some interesting questions:

1. Why is it when someone famous gets busted for driving recklessly and/or under the influence, it always happens to be in California -- even when that person isn't from California?

2. Good news for the Prius owners in our group -- who knew that sporty hybrid could clock 100 mph?

3. At that speed, what kind of MPG do you think AG3 was getting?

Yep, I’ve been in the blogosphere long enough now to have a traditional Fourth of July post. When most people think of the American Revolution, political figureheads such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson spring to mind, or romantic figures such as Paul Revere and Molly Pitcher. When I think of American independence, I can’t not think of the Marquis de Lafayette.

The first script I ever wrote was a biopic on the Frenchman, and through my research he became so real to me — his convictions, his faults, his loves, his very complicated nature. I had to learn why a young nobleman with everything would drop all to come fight for a country he should by all logic have no interest in. I had to find the reason for the adjectives consistently used to describe him: “ardent,” “passionate,” “loyal,” “unwavering.” How is it that nearly 50 cities and counties across the country are named after this man — not to mention countless parks, schools, hills, squares — and yet we should know so little about him?And perhaps most importantly, what can we learn from Lafayette today?

After Sept. 11, 2001, we saw a rash of flag-waving, banners flying from car windows that a few months later lay unceremoniously in gutters. Patriotism was the latest fad for many, and waned when the time came to really start spilling blood to battle militant Islam. Not unlike the American Revolution, where the formidable task, daunting obstacles and harsh battle losses tested the morale of even the most stalwart. But perseverance gave birth to a new country, and to an ideal simply dubbed the American spirit.

It was this declaration of independence that intrigued the gangly redhead known as Lafayette. Many other Europeans were heading across the pond to fight in the American Revolution for fortune and glory, some even hoping to run the new country. Lafayette was simply unhappy in Paris — he was deemed too awkward and untalented for the salon glitterati, thus his voyage was much about proving that he could be something better than everyone thought him to be. He arrived in the U.S. to find Congress weary of foreign mercenaries wanting to hijack the army, but got their attention when he proclaimed himself a volunteer. At age 19, a major-general was born.

As the world changed for many Americans on 9-11, so did it forever turn for Lafayette on Sept. 11, 1777. He fought in his first battle at Brandywine, N.J. When the soldiers under his command were petrified in the face of a staggering British assault, Lafayette jumped off his horse, ran to the front of the line, and started pushing the troops to advance. He was shot in the leg, but jumped back on his horse in an effort to stop the frantic American retreat. He spilled blood for this country, and from that point on was never the same.

Lafayette began to understand just how important these battles were, how it wasn’t just a scuffle over some farmland but a principle greater than his own need to prove his worth. He couldn’t relate to indentured servitude or repression from the crown, much like most of us today can’t relate to the repression suffered in Iraq under Saddam or in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Lafayette developed the deep, abiding love for liberty that drove him the rest of his life. When it was all over in America he would go back to France, back to his wife and kids, trying to put what he’d learned into action there. But it would never work the way he planned, because as he had become at heart a true American his country was mired in the philosophies of Old Europe.

The life of Lafayette is even better than fiction. He and his wife Adrienne had a passionate, lifelong love affair. George Washington became a father to the orphaned marquis; Lafayette would later name his son after the general, and a daughter after his home state. When American troops were unclothed and unfed and no monies were coming from the broke government, Lafayette spent his own money to supply the troops (about $200,000 — some historians say that for this reason alone we owe him credit for the American victory). One night, Lafayette happened upon a shivering sentry at Valley Forge. He ordered the soldier to go to his quarters and fetch the blanket off his bed. When the sentry returned, Lafayette sliced the blanket in half with his sword, giving one half to the sentry. Decades later, when an aging Lafayette made a whirlwind tour of the U.S., that sentry showed up at one of the stops, wearing his old Revolutionary uniform with the tattered piece of blanket draped over his shoulders.

Lafayette’s era had its terrorists, like Robespierre; its enemies of the state, like Benedict Arnold. And as the French Revolution tore apart his home country, his thoughts eerily ring true today: “My only consolation will be that the sacred cause of liberty and equality, profaned by the crimes of a faction, will not for long be enslaved.” In his view, freedom was such an inalienable right that it was worth fighting for anywhere, anytime. One can look at his writings and pass off such reiterated sentiments as rosy-eyed idealism, but it’s the flip side — apathy — that’s a danger to humanity, not lust for liberty’s cause.

It took until the year 2002 for Congress to make Lafayette an American citizen. His life after returning from the Revolution showed aching in his heart for the land he loved so much. His kids spoke English around the house. He tried to help the U.S. in negotiations with France — until Ben Franklin pointedly told him that in matters of state he couldn’t represent both countries. He displayed a copy of the Declaration of Independence on his wall. By the time of his 1824 grand tour, there were 24 states in the union he fought for. On that trip, he took back barrels of soil from Bunker Hill, soil in which he was later buried. Above his grave an American flag flies to this day — it remained undisturbed even when Nazis took Paris in World War II.

So what can we learn from Lafayette? We can learn what it means to be an American. For all his faults or misjudgments, Lafayette applied an unwavering belief in the rights of man to all of his words and actions. He picked up the sword when necessary and fought for what was right, even if it wasn’t his own countrymen he was fighting for.

If he were alive today, how would he react to the War on Terror? Methinks he would see the front line wavering, and would quickly rush to rally the troops — us. He would remind us that we’re not just fighting to overthrow a dictator far, far away, not just fighting to stop the next terrorist attack, but fighting for the soul of the very ideals we hold dear. He would remind us of the blood spilled throughout history to keep the free out of the clutches of the tyrants. When we ask why we should persevere, he would remind us of the words on his family’s seal: “Why not?” There are things worth fighting for.

Lafayette once said, “Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.” May those words ring across more and more countries. May our love of liberty burn as deeply as it did in the heart of the most cherished adopted American in history. And may we silently thank the marquis as we watch red, white and blue fireworks burst in the skies tonight.

I actually got up early this morning to watch the Nathan's hot dog eating contest on ESPN, went to the mall afterward, saw a hot dog stand, and nearly got sick. Takeru Kobayashi, the six-time champion who just got a wisdom tooth out, broke his own record with 63 hot dogs in 12 minutes. But Californian Joey Chestnut broke his own world record with 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes. The worst is watching Kobayashi dip the dogs and buns in water to make them go down quicker. OK, the worst is actually contemplating eating that many hot dogs.

I think we should have an eating contest here in L.A. ... Antonio Villaraigosa, Lee Baca and Rocky Delgadillo competing to see who can eat the most crow in a month.

One of our readers e-mails in this stinging comment:

You know what really gets the steam coming out of my ears? It's when couples announce that their marriage is over...and that their first priority is their children! Sure. And black is white, and up is down. I've got news for our mayor: a man who puts his children first doesn't cheat on their mother.

L.A. Weekly reports that the Telemundo anchor involved with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa used to date former council President Alex Padilla and L.A. Observed is reporting rumors that Salinas was involved with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez in 2003-04. No word on if we're going to start a running scorecard here on Friendly Fire.

Sorry, Bridget, couldn't resist.

Al-Aqsa TV's Mickey Mouse knockoff Farfour was martryed recently, and now the video's available. Part comical, part revolting, all Hamas! Farfour, by the way, is supposed to be killed by an Israeli (after Farfour's interrogration), but a colleague and I just agreed the guy looks more like Diddy.

Shouldn't Disney be, like, ANGRIER?

On my way into the newsroom I was thinking about some empowerment breakup songs that could help Corina Raigosa feel a bit better at this moment. Recent good ones have been "What Goes Around... Comes Around" by Justin Timberlake, "Makes Me Wonder" by Maroon 5 and Beyonce's "Irreplaceable." Then there's the overused but still poignant "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor. But when considering the Antonio mess, I can't think of a better song for Corina to pop in the CD player than one-hit wonder Nancy Sinatra's glorious "These Boots Were Made for Walking":

You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin'
and you keep losin' when you oughta not bet.
You keep samin' when you oughta be changin'.
Now what's right is right, but you ain't been right yet.

These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

Of course, the verse that brings to mind Antonio the most is:

You keep playin' where you shouldn't be playin
and you keep thinkin' that you´ll never get burned.

For a brief time this afternoon there was a new line added to the bio of Antonio Villaraigosa on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that can magically predict someone's death and can be edited by anyone:

"June, 2007 Mayor Villaraigosa announced that he and his wife of 20 years were separating because he was boning Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas.[8]"

Just a few minutes ago, it was edited to read this:

"June, 2007 Mayor Villaraigosa announced that he and his wife of 20 years were separating because he had an extramarital affair. It is later revealed that Villaraigosa was having an affair with Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas.[8]"

I think the revision is rather verbose and the first draft was more succinct.

Kevin Roderick, editor of LAObserved, says my initial comment about Villaraigosa's adultery "plays a very weak straw man." Here's the whole quote:

Weinkopf's post also plays a very weak straw man card and pretends that some unnamed PC forces want to shut him up — all so he can boast that "I am not afraid" to call Antonio a cheater and Mirthala a homewrecker.

Who said anything about anyone wanting to shut me up? No one has made any such threat, and I certainly never meant to suggest that they had. My point was only that PC sensibilities preclude most of polite society from speaking about such matters plainly (Roderick's shocked post is a case in point), and I wasn't going to give in to those sensibilities.

Talk about straw men!

Since my last post was rather critical of the mayor's adultery, I thought I ought to preemptively answer the charges of being judgmental. ""Do not judge, and you will not be judged," Scripture tells us. "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone." And "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?"

A little Scriptural context is in order here: When Jesus tells us not to judge, He is telling us not to judge another's heart or soul. And, indeed, I make no such judgment here: I know nothing of the state of Villaraigosa's or Salinas' intentions, their formation, or anything else. In the mind of God, who knows all hearts, my own sins may well be far worse than theirs. This is why it is God's place alone to judge men, and why we all must pray for mercy.

But it is our place to judge actions. Indeed, how can we possibly aspire to live a moral life without judging actions? If I choose to pay for an iPhone, rather than steal one, it's precisely because I have judged theft to be wrong. Trying to live a moral life demands that we make moral judgments all the time.

Not-judging does not mean pretending that there is no such thing as sin, or to use a more secular word, vice. Indeed, note Jesus' words to the woman at the well. They weren't "Go and do whatever you please," but "Go and sin no more."

I made my comments on Villaraigosa and Salinas not to condemn them, but to counter a PC sensibility that says we should all act like this is OK -- as though this is just one more high-profile "romantic relationship." No, it is not. It is a betrayal, a cruel, damaging betrayal. Theirs is not a courtship, it is an affair. This doesn't mean we need to berate them, or treat them unkindly, or call for their heads. But it also doesn't mean we need to shut down our own consciences.

Judging actions, but not hearts, is something most of us understand already -- except when the matter comes to sex. No one cries "Don't judge!" when Mel Gibson unleashes an anti-Semitic rant, or Scooter Libby lies under oath, or Paris Hilton drives while loaded. No, we see fit to criticize these actions, without condemning the person. It's just when the matter pertains to sex, in a society that has lost all sense of sex's proper place, that we suddenly become incapable of drawing moral conclusions.

We can reserve judgment on all these people -- as well we should -- while still holding out hope that they, and we, will ultimately do the right thing.

I'd add to Chris' post that, should Antonio come crawling back and want to be "repair" his marriage (which would probably happen when he shoots for higher office), Corina Raigosa shouldn't even give the bum the time of day. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me! With all this talk about Antonio, let's not forget our city's first lady, who deserves to be happy and find a loving relationship. Let's not forget that she learned of the mayor's first known affair while battling thyroid cancer. She doesn't need to waste another second on Antonio. She doesn't need to be a Hillary Clinton who hangs around for appearance's sake.

I applaud Corina for filing for divorce so promptly, and for intending to revert back to her maiden name. Getting a church annulment shouldn't be too hard, as you just have to prove the marriage was flawed from the first place (and she can also show a lack of due discretion on the part of one spouse, with a lack of understanding of the sacrament of marriage). I don't believe it's healthy for kids to see this as their example of marriage, or the passe image of the long-suffering wife; Corina being strong and standing up for herself will serve as a positive example for her children, and increase the chance that they'll enter healthier relationships later on in life.

As a wise old Catholic priest told me before my divorce and annulment, "Leave, and don't look back! He'll try to come back. He'll say he's changed. Don't believe him!" The priest was right. I've never regretted following that advice!

Pardon me for employing such very un-PC language. I know the rules of modern sexual discourse are supposed to preclude me from using any words that could possibly be deemed "judgmental." Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa isn't a cheat, he's just a married man who is "dating" a woman other than his wife. And Mirthala Salinas isn't a homewrecker, she's just involved in a "relationship" with a married man that has, well, wrecked home life for Corina, Natalie Fe, and Antonio Villaraigosa, Jr.

Please. Look, I make no judgment on their souls -- Lord knows, we all have our sins, and we all need mercy -- but I'm not afraid to cast judgment on these "lovers'" actions. They are a despicable travesty that are causing great pain to Villaraigosa's family, a pain that will endure for decades. I refuse to play the game of pretending that this "romance" is cute or healthy, or that it is a "private matter."

Marriage is, by definition, a public matter. That's why we hold weddings in public, and get the government to sanction them. Indeed, marriage is the foundational institution of our society. The violation of one's wedding vows is much more than a private betrayal; its repercussions extend far beyond the couple. No, it's not our business to monitor what goes on in the Villaraigosas' home, but it is our duty not to condone adultery, and to support the aggrieved.

As for privacy, Antonio himself has used his image as a family man to further his career. To this day, a picture of him standing with his (abandoned) wife and (abandoned) son appears on his website. (In the mother of all ironies, the image dissolves into various other photos, including one of Villaraigosa with fellow noted philanderer Bill Clinton.) And, as one colleague observed to me this morning, this man who lives for the camera can't exactly now go telling the world to honor his privacy.

Mr. Mayor, I would like nothing more than to honor your privacy. I firmly believe that what you and your wife do inside your home is your own business. But that does not mean I will pretend that a public, adulterous, home-wrecking affair is no different from a single man's "dating relationship." It does not mean that I will pretend this is all harmless, when it is deeply and profoundly destructive. And as a fellow Catholic, I will remind you of the vows you made before our God and our Church (presuming yours was a church wedding), as well as the obligations they entail.

The noble course of action here is plain: End the adultery, try to make amends with your wife, and repent. If that's too hard to do while living in a media fish bowl and playing mayor to the world, then quit. The city will survive without you; your family, probably not.

Well, the word on George W. Bush is that he is doggedly loyal -- a virtue, sometimes, but sometimes, also, a fault. It was a fault when Bush put unqualified friends in positions of power (Michael Brown, Harriet Miers), or hung on too long to under-performing subordinates (George Tenet, Don Rumsfeld). And now Bush's loyalty has caused him to hammer the final nail into his legacy.

I refer to the president's decision to commute Scooter Libby's sentence.

Now, as I have said before, I think the whole Valerie Plame investigation was bogus. All evidence suggests that Plame was not a covert agent at the time of her "outing." And her "outing" didn't come at the hands of some White House operative, but a State Department old hand whom no one accuses of being part of the "neocon conspiracy." But an over-zealous prosecutor got his hands on this case, and he wasn't going to let go until he claimed at least one scalp.

And that scalp came from Scooter Libby.

For the record, I am not one who thinks the lack of an underlying crime in any way excuses Libby's perjury. Perjury is perjury, whether it happens in a bogus investigation or a worthy one, or even if it's "only about sex." A jury found Libby guilty of a serious crime, and that's reason enough for him to endure any punishment the legal system metes out.

That said, I agree with Bush that the penalty given to Libby -- 30 months in prison -- was excessive. Especially since the last high-profile White House official to engage in perjury only had to give up his law license.

Still, even if Bush is right on the matter of the sentence, he is wrong to commute it. The conflict of interest is too great. Yes, the Constitution permits this, but common sense does not. The Libby case is a matter from which Bush should have recused himself, even if that meant a loyal aide would go to prison. Justice ought to matter more than loyalty -- and justice cannot be served when it's dispensed by one's own friends.

For years, critics have charged this administration with thinking itself above the law and shirking accountability. Today Bush has proved those critics right.

Many American conservatives got giddy after the election of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, thinking that perhaps bright-blue France had gone GOP red. Think again. As the Daily News' own Greg Hernandez reports:

The great Barbara Streisand already has rooms filled with awards including two Oscars, the AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards and just rows of Emmys, Grammys and Golden Globe awards. But here's an honor that will probably stand out a bit more: over the weekend, French President President Nicolas Sarkozy president the singer/actress/director/producer with the medal of the Legion of Honor. The medal is technically reserved for French citizens but is often bestowed on deserving foreigners...like Streisand.

That's right, Babs. Worse yet, though, is Sarkozy's remarks to the Big B after giving her the coveted reward:

"You are the America that we love."

Zut alors!

This sordid tale of Sacramento family values comes by way of the San Francisco Chronicle. It involves the state's Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, one of the many bogus commissions that exist mostly to give six-figure salaries to the well-connected but unproductive:

As (secretary Claire ) Connelly tells it, (board chairwoman Ann) Richardson called her into her office in September and explained that she wanted to have a child, but was already in her 50s. So she asked whether Connelly, a 31-year-old single mom, would be interested in being paid $10,000 to become a surrogate mother -- although it would have to wait until Richardson was done with her board term so it wouldn't conflict with her job as Connelly's boss.

"Obviously, I was stunned," Connelly said in an interview. "I told her I needed time to think about it."

Connelly thought it over for a few days, then declined, she says. Richardson promptly turned sour toward her and began berating her regularly over the job she was doing in the office, Connelly says.

Connelly even claims that Richardson treated her in more or less the same way L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo treats his staffers:

Once, she said, Richardson brought her dog to the office and told Connelly to walk it and clean up after it....

That ain't all:

In March, Connelly was transferred -- she says at her request -- to the agency's information technology unit and away from the board.

Despite the move, Connelly says, the harassment continued. In April, she says, she attended the unemployment claims board's monthly meeting, only to be told by her bosses afterward that Richardson didn't want her there.

"That was the final straw," Connelly said.

Richardson is an established Sacramento insider with bipartisan street cred:

Richardson was legislative secretary to then-Gov. Gray Davis when he tapped her for the unemployment appeals board in 2003. Then, last July, Schwarzenegger renominated her and elevated her to chairwoman.

Sacramento sources describe her as being tight with Susan Kennedy, the governor's Democratic chief of staff, who also served in the Davis administration.

According to the Chronicle, this story had "everybody from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to state Senate leader Don Perata scrambling for cover this past week."

The state Senate, by the way, recently confirmed Richardson to a second four-year term.

Fresh off the happy news that the guy suing his dry-cleaners for $56 million lost his case, we now get this suit in Michigan: A woman is suing Mars, Inc., makers of Starburst candies, because the half-inch chewy squares were ... too chewy.

Victoria McArthur wants more than $25,000 from the candy maker, Mars Inc., for the alleged “pain, humiliation, mental anguish, and embarrassment” she continues to endure since chewing the candy in April 2005.

“If it’s a soft and chewy candy, it’s not supposed to move your jaw out of alignment,” her attorney, Brian Muawad said. “If candy does that, you have problems.”

Yes, you do.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been quiet about his marital problems, as is his right. But even to outsiders, it seems obvious that, at the very least, his manic schedule had to have exacerbated whatever marital troubles already existed. We've seen countless stories over the years about how Antonio is a tireless mayor, working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, flitting from event to event, in town and out. That sort of absence would take a toll on even the strongest of families.

So it's telling when, in a Sunday Daily News story, the mayor remarks: "All I will say, (is my divorce) has not been a distraction in my job as mayor."

OK, but has your job as mayor been a distraction to your marriage? And which is more important?

"My concern is my family," Villaraigosa adds, "and my kids have been great about this."

Meaning ... what ... that they haven't complained much? They've kept their devastation to themselves? They haven't bemoaned that the few hours a day you spend at home are now in a home other than their own?

Often divorced parents think their children are fine because they suffer silently, but the evidence suggests that the effects of divorce on children can be devastating.

In the same Sunday article, Democratic political consultant Joe Cerrell says, "Look at the people running for president. A lot of them are divorced. There is no lasting impact."

By this I assume Cerrell means divorce has no lasting impact on a candidate's political career, which seems to be true. This is the essence of what Antonio is saying, too -- "Look, I can get divorced and still be a great mayor!" I don't dispute these claims, I just think they're off-focus. For the children of divorce, and I am one, the impact is certainly "lasting."

The pols and the pundits alike seem to be more focused on the future of Villaraigosa's political career than on the future of his family -- and that's precisely the problem.

That was the subject of this week's Sunday Viewpoint, with two pieces by young'uns who should know. The funny thing is, the authors' take on their own peers couldn't have been more different.

First, there's Penelope Trunk:

Despite the declarations ... about unreachable dreams, our dream is not about accumulating money to do what we love at the end. We are hellbent on doing what we love the whole way. That's our dream, and we're doing it better than the baby boomers ever did.

Then there's Bryan Till:

In junior high, we came home from school and peered inside celebs' mansions and Mercedes on shows like "MTV Cribs." We've seen what it's like to be in a real entourage on MTV's "Diary," on E! and on celebrity blogs.

According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, 81 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds said that getting rich was one of our generation's most important goals. Half said that being famous was important to them.

So, depending on whom you listen to, Gen Y is either less materialistic, and more focused on the things that matter, or utterly materialistic, aspiring only to wealth and fame.

Or you could just say ... it's confused.

PS-- For a, um, more mature perspective on what the kids are up to these days, see Carol Bidwell's column.

... is that our government has to build it. You know, the same government that can't manage to make new coins properly or crank out our passports. Now, it turns out, 1.7 miles of the fence were accidentally built on the wrong side of the border. Mexico, unsurprisingly, would like us to remove this portion from its land, and we pledge to do so ... eventually. Of course, this being the government, all of this is mucho expensive, and only gets more so with each day:

(E)mbarrassed border officials say the mistake could cost the federal government more than $3 million to fix....

When the barrier was built in 2000, the project was believed to cost about $500,000 a mile. Estimates to uproot and replace it range from $2.5 million to $3.5 million.

Given who's charged with building and administering the wall, one has to wonder what good it would serve if ever completed. Does anyone have confidence it would be properly monitored or maintained?

Of course, the incompetence of government cuts both ways: The same bureaucrats that can't manage to build a simple wall probably couldn't administer Z visas and a guest-worker program, either ...

From Sunday's letters to the editor

Re "Pension initiative planned" (June 26):

From his closeness to Arnold, it is all too evident that Keith Richman is the governor's puppet, carrying on a failed campaign to punish teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters, Caltrans workers, etc. There is nothing wrong with the Public Employees Retirement System. In fact it is 93 percent funded, and earned $29.4 billion last year (or about 15.4 percent return on investments). We only wish Social Security had such "problems."
The problem is the politicos who use Chicken Little claims: "The sky is falling" in professing "new taxes are needed to fund public retirement systems." If they would just leave them alone and pay into PERS regularly as they have agreed, the funds will do fine. Remember the millions wasted on the special election, and Keith and Arnold's four failed measures?

Yes, after all of Oliver Stone's bread-breaking with Fidel, he's still just a "part of the Great Satan." The director approached the Nazi-ish Iranian leader about making a documentary, ostensibly about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vivid life as a civil engineer and Khomeini puppet, and was reportedly told to go pound sand:

"...Mr Ahmadinejad, who has often criticised Hollywood as a bastion of pro-Zionist interests, was unimpressed by Stone's radical credentials after viewing the films.

'While it is true that Oliver Stone is considered to be among the opposition in the US, the opposition is still part of the Great Satan,' the president's media adviser, Mahdi Kalhor, told the semi-official Fars news agency.

'We believe that the American cinema system is devoid of all culture and art and is only used as a device. In the last two years, the global arrogance [Iranian shorthand for the US and Britain] has made a lot of effort to portray their own image of Ahmadinejad, not the one which exists in reality. Hollywood and other Zionist media react to phenomena they don't like through different processes.'"

It's bad enough that schools and offices were given a holiday Friday in Kashmir to protest the knighthood of Sir Salman Rushdie (serious!), but now his model wife is leaving him. And what convenient timing: After divorcing him, Padma Lakshmi will be able to use the title Lady Rushdie until she remarries or legally reverts back to her maiden name. According to the Daily Mail, Sir Salman still loves her, but she wants no part of him. Are resurrected fatwas a turnoff or something?

That, and everyone's blaming the attacks in London and Glasgow on Rushdie's knighthood -- which is in part undoubtedly true, let's be serious. But when your wife dumps you and Muslims are torching wretched-looking effigies that are supposed to be you, being pegged as a reason to bomb must suck extra.

Though at this point, I'm so annoyed that people think they can coerce or punish Britain over a flippin' novelist that I'd support naming Sir Salman prime minister.