August 2007 Archives

I got my first robocall of the season today, and I’m mad as hell. The Do Not Call List does not apply to political calls, but it damn well should. I’m not even sure that today’s call was political within the intent of the waiver.

I got quite fed up with calls from our mayor and governor, my assemblyperson and every other candidate who could afford to send me “an important pre-recorded message.” I am disinclined to vote for the people who disturb my work, my reading and my meals. They are both uninvited and unwanted.

There is also a new trend to use the robocalls to drive support away from your opponent. The professional politicians know how annoying these calls are, and so some have let loose their robocallers at 2 AM pitching the virtues of the candidate they oppose. They are secure in the belief that most angry and sleepy voters will not think the issue through and conclude that the candidate in whose name the call is falsely being made is in fact the culprit.

My robocall today was on the dishonest borderline of legality. An earnest voice urged me to pressure Tenet Hospitals in Tarzana and Encino to do something about the working conditions of the nurses and threatened that patient care would suffer and people would not want to go into nursing if I didn’t read Tenet the riot act. The good pro-labor liberal that I am, I would normally be inclined to lobby for nurses. But now, I’m just too annoyed at their methods.

The call had a dummy number ID that could not be returned. The website they urged me to check out had no return address and no direct email for feedback. No address for the organization was given, nor any official identified.

This is a slimy, evasive and, I believe, counter-productive technique that should be discouraged if it is not already against the law. It is time to rage against the machines and overthrow the robots! Power to People!

Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper first reported that money changed hands to spring the 19 remaining South Korean evangelicals held by the Taliban. (Pictured, an unknown South Korean government representative meeting with Taliban.) Now this follow-up:

"Taliban and Afghan officials have also denied that a ransom was involved.

But Alan Fisher, reporting for Al Jazeera from Kabul in Afghanistan, said that the 'Taliban left the table substantially richer' and that the ransom could have been as high as $20m.

'We've gone back to several sources and again they have told us that as far as they are aware there was certainly a ransom paid and a figure that is being bandied around in Kabul is about $20m ... All our sources tell us that money did change hands.'

He also reported that kidnappings by the Taliban were likely to continue.

'In a vow to continue with the kidnappings they [the Taliban] said that "we will do the same thing with other allies in Afghanistan because we found this way to be successful",' he said.

Seoul had earlier restated its decision to withdraw its small military presence in Afghanistan - about 200 people comprised mainly of medical workers and engineers - by the end of the year.

It also agreed with the Taliban that it would ban missionary groups from going to Afghanistan, prompting criticism from the Korea World Missions Association."

I wonder if South Korea is going to feel the slightest twinge of guilt as that $20 million is used on attacks against Afghan civilians, bombings against allied operations, more assassination attempts against the democratic government of Hamid Karzai, etc. Their $20 million ransom is going to turn into that many more kidnappings, deaths and suffering. Good going, Seoul.

Back from Old San Juan (pictured, the courtyard tapas bar at Hotel El Convento), reading the story "Puerto Rico warns of dengue fever outbreak," and icing the handful of mosquito bites I received on the same day the story was published. *Sigh*

I got stopped at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport after the TSA screeners went ape over the images of my carry-on bag and laptop bag, likely because the adapters and chargers for my laptop, MP3 player, videocamera and cell phone presented as a big mess of cords and black boxes. (The screeners at LAX didn't seem to care, though.) The good news is that no U.S. senators propositioned me in an airport restroom. Probably because I was in the ladies' room, heh heh...

White House mouthpiece Tony Snow resigned earlier this morning, saying he was having financial problems due to his treatment for cancer.

Snow is paid $168,000, much less than he made in his previous job as a television commentator. Married with three children, he said he took out a loan to work at the White House and the money has run out.

Something is seriously wrong with our health care system if a six-figure salary and a federal job isn't enough to afford cancer care. What chance do the rest of us have?

This is great -- three Ohio teens pull a prank for the ages: Getting fans for their high-school rival's football team to hold up 800 placards that collectively read, "WE SUCK." Better still, they captured the scene on video, and posted it to YouTube.

But wouldn't you know, the adults had to spoil all the fun. The kids got suspended, plus barred from all extracurricular activities for the semester.

Now I understand the need for good sportsmanship, and not wanting to encourage crude language, but come on -- don't these teens get some credit for creativity, diligence, planning? They spent 20 hours putting this prank together, designing the grid, making and distributing the placards. And it was all in the spirit of fun, no? Wouldn't, oh, an afternoon's worth of community service have been punishment aplenty?

Turns out the kids chose the wrong target. It wasn't the opposing fans who should have been tarred with the "WE SUCK" label, but their own school's administrators.

Minneapolis airport police Sgt. Dave Karsnia has taken some heat for maybe being a little too zealous in putting the collar on so many guys that get their sexual kicks off with other men in public restrooms at the Minneapolis airport. But most say he is a diligent, upstanding, young cop that does his duty as he sees it. So it’s curious that Karsnia lectured Idaho Senator Larry Craig about lying and added that that’s what he’d expect from the guy we get out of the ‘hood.’ Now Karsnia is confronting a respected, GOP Senator on his lewd act, and his lame defense of it, but why did the comparison of Craig to the guy from the ‘hood’ so easily roll out of his mouth. It didn’t seem to fit. Or did it?

From what’s on the tape, Craig didn’t dispute the characterization. And in the tortuous public gyrations he’s gone through to try and explain what he did or didn’t do in the men’s bathroom, he made no reference to the reprimand. But way should he? There’s absolutely no way that Craig would ever compare himself to a guy from the hood. But could he be? The answer is yes and no. Legions of white men, and that includes wealthy, prominent, high positioned white men, have been indicted and jailed for lying to judges, grand juries, congressional committees, FBI and Justice Department investigators. Over the years, the white men that run government agencies from the White House to the FBI have been repeatedly caught in lie after lie to cover-up their misdeeds or blatant criminal wrongdoing. So it’s no stretch to compare men such as Craig to the guy from the ‘hood.’

The problem with that and here’s the no part, the comparison insults the mythical guy from the ‘hood. But he is very real to Karsnia because he fits in snugly public beliefs, or to be more precise, stereotypes about the ‘hood.’ The stereotype fits even more snugly when it’s jammed next to negative public perceptions and fears of black crime.

Karsnia was righteously offended that a senator could so abuse his name and reputation by stooping to commit a petty criminal act in a men’s restroom. That immediately disqualified him as any kind of fit model for decency. In that instant whether Karsnia knew it or not, and could admit it or not, Craig was the fictional guy from the ‘hood.’

First Larry Craig goes looking for lust in the wrong places, and now this: A California congressman is getting busted for pushing around a (female) baggage employee:

Rep. Bob Filner said Wednesday he regrets a recent incident at Dulles Airport in which he allegedly pushed a United Airlines baggage employee, resulting in assault and battery charges.

Filner, D-Calif., offered few details of the Aug. 19 incident in a three-sentence statement issued after he returned from a week in Iraq.

Of course, like Craig, Filner assures us this is all a big misunderstanding:

"I was tired after a delayed flight and frustrated by the subsequent further delay of the entire flight's baggage. But I did not want things to turn out as they did, with offense obviously taken and much misunderstanding," the statement said.

That's not how the folks at the airport saw it:

Filner allegedly attempted to enter an employees-only area, pushed aside an employee's arm and wouldn't leave when asked, according to Courtney Prebich, assistant media relations manager for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

Filner had disputed accounts of the incident as "factually incorrect" and said the charges were "ridiculous," but he didn't elaborate on that in his statement Wednesday.

Repeat after me: "I am NOT an airport-employee abuser. I do NOT abuse airport employees!"

And now wait to see thousands of pundits and politicians denounce Filner as a hypocrite because he's voted to increase airport security and curb violence against women.

Forget Elvira Arellano, who, as I've already written (see this, this and this), does more harm than good to the immigration-reform cause. If you want to focus on someone whose story points to much of what's wrong with current immigration laws, someone who should remain in the U.S., and someone who is sympathetic, take a look at Jacqueline Coats:

(Jacqueline's) husband, Marlin, a 29-year-old native of San Francisco and former lifeguard, died saving a boy from drowning last year and has been posthumously awarded the Carnegie Hero Award and the U.S. Coast Guard Lifesaving Medal of Honor.

Coats, a cell phone salesman, was on a family Mother's Day outing last year at Ocean Beach when two boys, ages 11 and 14, began calling for help. They had been pulled away from shore by a strong current.

Coats reached the older boy and helped him toward shore. But when he turned back for the other boy, he went under. Two other lifeguards brought the other boy to shore, but Coats drowned.

Jacqueline Coats, who has been in the country for six years, faces deportation because immigration proceedings were incomplete at the time of her husband's death.

Here we have a hero's widow, facing deportation because her husband gave his life saving two teenage boys. Had he been less heroic -- that is, had he simply sat on the shore and watched those two boys drown -- Jacqueline, a Kenyan national, would be on her way to citizenship, by virtue of having married an American.

That's insanity. Jacqueline Coats' only crime is overstaying a student visa -- a debt her husband more than repaid with his life, no?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein authored a bill last year to make Coats a U.S. citizen, but the measure failed. She's re-introduced it, though, and state Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi, D-Hayward, has put an e-petition on her Web site to support that measure.

By all means, make Jacqueline Coats a citizen. But while we're at it, let's adopt some sensible immigration laws for everyone else.

I've been meaning to post all week about the fascinating Time Magazine story about Mother Teresa's five-decades long Dark Night of the Soul. But I couldn't think of a way to do it succinctly, and without getting excessively theological, so I held off. Then, lo and behold, I came across this New York Daily News editorial, Soul of a Saint, which does a fine job of explaining the depths Bl. Teresa's amazing faith and love, in easily accessible, secular terms:

Mother Teresa, a doubter? Mother Teresa, beatified and likely on her way to canonization, lost in the dark night of the soul? What lessons does that impart to those who looked upon her as a saint upon Earth? Lessons of faith and of charity.

For a half-century Mother Teresa struggled with spiritual agony, not finding the comfort of God. Rather, she wrote, "When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul ....I have no Faith."...

Mother Teresa's decades of spiritual suffering are nothing less than a testament to the faith she did not think she had. You do not struggle to find something in which you do not believe. You do not mourn the loss of something you do not think exists.

"There is such a terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead," she wrote. And yet, and yet, she never wavered in labors very few would have strength to continue. Whence came that strength?

Some sour-souled nonbelievers may revel in the revelations. Pity them for their poverty of spirit. Mother Teresa, no matter her doubts, because of her doubts, was poor in everything but spirit.

Beautifully put. For other good takes, also see here and here.

Well, David Beckham is injured, again, and thus unavailable to the L.A. Galaxy -- who put up $250 million to bring him here. That is far too much. Note to the Galaxy: I'll take the job for half the money. I can not play soccer as well anyone!

Jonah Goldberg over at The Corner has put up a couple of posts that connect to my conversation with Jonathan, yesterday, about Sen. Larry Craig. I had asked Jonathan what was the evidence of Craig's "hypocrisy" -- where had he, oh, called gays evil, or denounced them in such a way that warranted all the hue and cry over the supposed contradiction between what he says and what he does? Was it merely, I asked, opposition to gay marriage? To which Jonathan replied by posting Craig's voting record on a few pieces of gay-related legislation -- hardly smoking-gun proof that someone hates gays.

As Goldberg puts it:

The hypocrisy charge seems to depend entirely on the assertion that opposition to gay marriage is “anti-gay,” and therefore Craig is a hypocrite because he’s (allegedly) gay himself. But, that’s not very persuasive to me on both counts. One, I’m basically opposed to gay marriage – for the time being – but I don’t think that makes me anti-gay. Indeed, I’ve known lots of gay people who don’t care a whit about gay marriage. And, until recently, gay marriage itself was defined as “anti-gay” by the gay left. More broadly, one can simply believe as a matter of principle or faith that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and that’s that while at the same time having much love or sympathy in your heart for gay people.

That being anti-gay marriage and anti-gay are synonymous is a entirely a political argument that people are confusing for a philosophical truth. It remains “not proven” as Arlen Specter might say.

Exactly. It would be one thing if someone has unearthed quotes from Craig saying awful things about gays, but none has.

What's more, if hypocrisy really is the unforgivable sin that the Craig-bashers are making it out to be, then surely there are many other, at least equally deserving, targets out there. In a separate post, Goldberg quotes these delightful e-mails from some of his fans:

(A)re you a hypocrite to support women's rights (Violence Against Women's Act) if you are a serial sexual harasser? How about pushing for tax increases if you pay only the amount the law requires and do not voluntarily pay more? What about pushing for gun control when you have a license to carry a concealed weapon or use armed body guards? No school vouchers when your own kids are in private schools? Propose wind power but not in view of your own home? Stop driving SUV's while living in 20k square foot home? This is fun!

And:

I suppose all these people would say that you're a hypocrite if: 1) you are having an extramartial affair; and 2) you don't support polygamy.

Larry Craig is a weak, fallen human who falls short of his own ideals. Who among us doesn't, at least on occasion, meet that same description? His problem isn't his "hypocrisy," or even his moral failure -- it's his refusal to own up to it and turn his life around.

... in her creepy attraction to Vladimir Putin!

Yes, good column Debra and cogent commentary Chris. Yes, Craig should resign. But I still want to know why there was a cop sitting on the John, waiting for a John in an airport toilet? It is one thing to bust people for soliciting or having sex in public and quite another to be baiting the hook. Master baiters though they certainly must be, is this a job that makes a cop proud at the end of the day?

As I posited in my piece of yesterday, the cop doesn’t just sit and wait. There are signs and signals, bids and offers—indications of what one is looking for on the menu. My theory that show tunes and code songs are frequently employed, turns out to be pretty good.

In doing research for this response, I discovered that there is actually a web site that lists public areas and preferred restrooms across this great land of ours. It also lists in individual signs and counter signs by location. Though certain behaviors are universal—long held eye contact and “showing the merchandise” and having the other person look—some are regional. Complicated life. Sad and lonely way to live.

I find myself amazed, but not surprised, by City Hall's decision to stop impounding the cars of unlicensed drivers. This is a de facto legalization of unlicensed driving -- a policy shift that puts the lives of everyone at risk, contributes to gridlock, and drives up insurance rates for every one of us idiots who still plays by the rules.

Now, I am sympathetic to the argument that illegal immigrants should be allowed to get driver's licenses: It would take unsafe drivers off the road, get more vehicles insured, and get millions of anonymous Californians properly identified. But like it or not, this is a legal effort that has failed, repeatedly. Public support for giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses is exceedingly low. So licenses-for-legals-only remains the law of the state, a law the city of L.A. should honor.

But the Ninth Circuit seems to think protecting motorists from unlicensed, uninsured drivers is unconstitutional. And city leaders are all too happy to indulge this absurd reasoning. So, as with Special Order 40, L.A. has taken it upon itself to make up its own law, or disregard state/federal law as it prefers.

And in this case, the city is penalizing -- and endangering -- its own law-abiding residents in the process.

Former Daily News-ite Debra Saunders has a good column in the San Francisco Chronicle calling on Sen. Larry Craig to call it quits:

When the story came out Monday, life had granted Craig one chance to redeem himself by resigning. That one act would have shown that, despite his personal demons, Craig knew when to put the Senate, his family, his state and the GOP before his own selfish desires. That one act would have shown that Craig is not without decency.

Instead, Craig dragged his poor wife Suzanne before the cameras to issue a statement that no thinking person can believe.

It is possible Craig isn't gay. Maybe he's bisexual. Who cares? He is guilty of harassing a stranger in a public restroom used by men and boys.

The senator's behavior screams "guilty."

Start with the guilty plea, in which Craig - a U.S. senator - asserted, "I now make no claim that I am innocent" of the charge.

Yeah, there's that. I'm amazed by Craig's pathetic claim that he didn't really mean to plead guilty. It was a mistake. He should have called a lawyer. That's the sort of mistake some 18-year-old punk might make, but not a U.S. senator. No, Craig didn't call a lawyer because he thought he could make this disappear quietly, and for three months, it worked. But now there's no getting out of what he's already said, under oath, that he did.

Craig appears to be Bill Clinton in reverse: Clinton had illicit sex, but under oath, denied it. Craig, if you believe him (and no one does), didn't seek illicit sex, but under oath, said he did. Sure.

This show is very sad and utterly needless. Craig should do himself, his family, and his state a favor by quitting the Senate and doing whatever else he needs to get his life in order.

Closing arguments in the Phil Spector murder trial are set for Sept. 6-7, with the jury expected to begin considering his case the following day. I've already considered Spector's case. He's guilty.

Oh, surely he killed Lana Clarkson. I'm not talking about that. He's guilty of subverting and sliming Rock 'n' Roll in it's very early days.

I've been considering his offenses since the late '50s. I was about 12 years old when Rock 'n'Roll reared itself up from Rhythm & Blues and Honky Tonk country music. White and Black people singing fast blues. The radio record players told us it was our music. So we believed them. This was the '50s, we believed everything authority was telling us.

And the music was good. Rock Around the Clock, Mystery Train, Long Tall Sally, Bebob a Lula, Great Balls of Fire, Whole lot of Shakin' Going On. But all the while we were innocent about the real nature of radio and the record business. The wee people, the small souls, who didn't get the Rock and didn't feel the Roll, they thought about money, they thought about fame, they thought about business.

So Spector squeezed out his first warm and wet hit in 1958, a sluggish, saccharine piece of drivel called "To know Him is to Love Him." You cannot imagine my horror when first I heard it. The lyrics wen something like this: "To know, know, know him, is to love, love, love him. And I do, and I do, and I do."

I've never understood the phenomenon of Popping The Question on the Jumbotron at a sports event. For starters, do you really want to share this deeply personal, intimate moment with 20,000 strangers? And even if you're OK with that, will she be? And what if she says no? Do you really want to suffer that humiliation before all of Raider Nation?

I raise the issue because my friend Ben Kepple has blogged about the sad story of one romantic fool who decided to propose to his girlfriend at a Houston Astros game:

To recap: The Kiss Cam, which encourages couples to smooch on camera, zoomed in on the gentleman with highest hopes for the evening.

As happens often — usually once a series when the 'Stros are at home — the schmaltzy music started to play and the man scrambled to his knees and reached for the engagement ring.

Usually the guy slides the ring on his intended's finger, they kiss enthusiastically, then everybody settles back into their seats to watch more baseball.

This night, however, the woman looked surprised, then mad at the sight of the ring, either spilled her popcorn or dumped it on the gentleman's head and left amid a chorus of boos....

The woman didn't return to her seat. The man left amid sympathetic cheers after the top of the sixth.

Back when my wife and I were dating, I once casually asked her what she, as a woman, thought of Jumbotron proposals. The exact words now elude me, but the gist of her response was something to the effect of most unromantic idea ever.

So, suffice it to say, when it came time to pop the question, it wasn't at Dodger Stadium, which was probably for the best, seeing that I got a "yes" and not a headful of popcorn.

I did a double, triple, and quadruple take when I read this line from Mariel "Well, Rosa was not a citizen either" Mariel, Mariel, Mariel. I don't mean to sound snooty and condescending but I got to say this. There's a little thing called the 13th Amendment in the Constitution (1865) that abolished slavery.

There's another tiny provision in that same Constitution called the 14th Amendment which mandated citizenship and equal protection under the law for all U.S. citizens. Then there was yet another small notation in the Constitution labeled the 15th Amendment which granted all former slaves the right to vote. Now that all happened nearly a century and a half ago. And in that time Rosa Parks can stretch her parentage back at least three generations. Translated Parks and generations of her family members were full legal citizens of the US. Unless I'm badly missing something, Elvira can't trace her or a family member's citizenship tenure in the US back one minute.

I know Mariel you're trying to be politically or gender or immigrant or some kind of correct to show sympathy for Elvira, But I'm sorry, you're going to have to come up with another name to compare her and her plight to and that name is not and cannot be Rosa Parks. Elvira and Rosa in the same breath, again, pleeeeseee!!!

President Bush and the three top Democrats that want to replace him couldn’t get to New Orleans fast enough this week. The occasion of course was the second anniversary of the Katrina debacle. Predictably, Bush as he’s done in his twelve previous treks to the Gulf since Katrina publicly boasted that he’s done everything humanly possible to get the region back on its feet. He also insisted that much more still must be done and his administration will do it. Just as predictably, his would be replacements Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards just as publicly lambasted Bush’s efforts as hopelessly failed and flawed. And they insisted that there’s no reason to believe that he’ll improve on the anemic effort.

They both missed the real story and tragedy of Katrina, and that’s that the naked face of poverty that shocked the world two years ago remains just as naked and shameful two years later. And Bush and the Democrats are to blame for it.

The talk about a fresh assault on poverty was dead in the water from the start. While Katrina momentarily increased empathy for the poor, it didn't fundamentally change public attitudes toward the poor. Poverty is regarded as a perplexing, intractable and insoluble problem that government programs can't or even shouldn't cure. In other words, the best cure for poverty is for the poor to get jobs and fend for themselves.

There's not much chance that this will change. Bush will exit the Gulf area quickly after his speech and head back to his Crawford, Texas ranch to continue clearing brush, biking and relaxing. In the weeks and months after that he’ll spend countless, and fruitless more hours trying to sell the Iraq war to Congress and the public. The Democratic contenders will just as quickly exit the area to get back on the campaign trail and spend countless hours hammering Bush and the Republicans for the wasteful war.

The Gulf's poor, meanwhile, will be just as numerous, scattered, dispirited, and forgotten. The talk about waging war on poverty will be tossed back on the political shelf until the third anniversary of Katrina.

More when I get back -- including an exciting video! -- but a few things I've learned thus far on my trip to Puerto Rico:

Stopping over in Newark, N.J., I thought it was simply a myth that New Jersey folks were stuck in the '80s. Then I saw a Swatch watch store in the airport and listened to Poison tracks in the nicest airport restaurant, and my fears were confirmed.

It is so hot and humid here that even the TSA agents strip. Literally: I saw one peel off his shirt right at the checkpoint.

People from the Dominican Republic are apparently one of the last ethnic groups on Earth that can be bashed with impunity. After hearing "It's those Dominicans!" so many times, it brought back memories of May, when my big black car driver in N.Y. was bashing Dominicans.

If Puerto Ricans liked Mexican food or drink, they wouldn't admit it. Though you gotta love any culture that eats a bunch of appetizers to fill up. Last night, served by a waiter who claimed ignorance of all Mexican cuisine and beverages, I had Medalla, the Puerto Rican beer, along with fried cheese with guava/chocolate essence sauce, and chorizo sauteed in white wine and onions served with crusty bread and chunky garlic butter. Here, the chorizo is served whole link, not the regurgitated (but tasty) style scrambled with eggs or potatoes.

And then, of course, there was Marcos the cab driver. Besides being hotter than the guy on the El Pollo Loco commercials, Marcos told me that he had fled Venezuela and made a new home in Puerto Rico. "Hugo Chavez is ... a ... dumb!" he emphatically stated as my heart soared. Is there anything hotter than an anti-Chavista?

There is so much about the Larry Craig situation that it is hard to know where to start. Yes, it is partially the hypocrisy, the family values fanatic caught in a men’s room or a motel with, well, let’s say an “inappropriate partner.” We love to see the self-righteous fall and be hoisted by their own petard. It is cruel in our nature but all quite natural.

It is also in our nature to preach and rant against the devils in our nature. Those obsessed with faith often lack it. Those who rant endlessly about some form of evil are often tempted by their obsessions. Yeah, it’s all Psych 101 stuff, but none-the-less true.

It is Craig’s rather extreme record that creates the schadenfreude now. He was not just pro family but always took the most extreme position in terms of gays. That is part of the price of the closet—it makes the laddy protest too much. It is virtually a tell, a signal of insecurity.

And that is the other thing that bothers me about this story. What about those signals that must have been sent to the Senator in the men’s room? All this stuff about Senator Craig’s signals—putting his briefcase in door to hide his feet and tapping his feet in a wide stance is certainly news to me. I’ve been going to men’s rooms for 60 odd years now and have never encountered any tap dancing. And I’m a native. I mean I’ve utilized men’s rooms from Venice to West Hollywood. I even lived in Northern California and never, not once, did I see or hear any tap dancing.

I have to believe that the agent, the police officer, had to be doing something too. I don’t know what the signals are, but he was there with a purpose, and that was to find and bust some guy looking for sex. How did he advertise his availability? Was he tapping? Maybe he was singing Broadway show tunes or humming the Judy Garland Songbook.

I’m not sure about the protocol but I’m guessing that the cop was doing a breathy version of Mad About the Boy or You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me, and that set Senator Craig’s little feet a tapping. There had to be some sign and countersign.

So, this naturally raises the question of why we are using cops to sing love songs to gay men in, of all places, our airports? Surely at these high value target locations our limited security and police have better things to do than sit in men’s rooms waiting for someone to randomly pick the stall next to theirs and start tapping.

I have no objection to busting people for soliciting for paid sex. Prostitution does degrade neighborhoods. I have no problems arresting people for having public sex—gay or straight. Hell, even marital sex. After three back surgeries doing it in the back seat with my very own wife is physically out of the question; but were I limber enough and she willing, if caught I would expect to be arrested and charged.

I do think there is world of difference between signaling and soliciting. Is winking in bar a sign, a signal, or a solicitation? Admittedly winking in a men's room would seem to be another matter, but I’m not sure it should legally be different. Unless money was discussed or touching took place, this is a thought crime and a conspiracy to have sex. I am very uncomfortable with sexual thought police. When looking and thinking are crimes, I know I’ll be doing time. I will be very certain neither ti sing nor dance in any public places. For this the world can be grateful.

OK, I can understand why someone would find the Mohammed-as-a-terrorist cartoons offensive, but was this week's "Opus" strip really so outrageous as to merit being censored by two dozen newspapers? Or have ethnic pressure groups and terrorist fatwas made much of the press go wobbly in the knees? (The L.A. Times, to its credit, did not yank the toon.)

The budget standoff in Sacramento cost California taxpayers nearly $36,000. That's because many state senators -- who, had they met the constitutional deadline to approve a budget on time, would have been on recess -- instead stayed in Sacramento to bicker. And all the while, they collected their per diems.

The Sacramento Bee explains:

In addition to their annual salary ($113,000 for the rank-and-file; $130,000 for leaders) lawmakers are eligible for per diem when they are in session or declare that they are in Sacramento to work on state business....

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata logged 25 work days during the recess that began July 21 and picked up a $4,050 per diem check. His counterpart, Senate Republican leader Dick Ackerman, put in for 17 work days during the period at $162 a day for a $2,754 check.

Four of the 15 members of the GOP caucus - which withheld votes needed to pass the budget bill - accepted per diem checks for days other than the three on which floor sessions were held. Thirteen of the 25 Democrats put in for per diem on selected non-session days.

In short: They didn't get their work done on time, so we paid for it. It's enough to make you think that maybe they like being gridlocked. After all, as the Bee notes, "The upper house approved (the budget) Aug. 21, a day after the legislative session was set to resume after the recess" -- that is, the senators approved the budget once there was no more money to be made delaying it.

My former colleague Brad Greenberg has posted on his God Blog about the gay-sex scandal involving Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. What prompted his post, Brad writes, is an e-mail condemning Craig's bathroom-cruising as "GOP hypocrisy." And, indeed, Brad quotes from an MSNBC story implicitly making the same point:

WASHINGTON - Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, who has voted against gay marriage and opposes extending special protections to gay and lesbian crime victims, finds his political future in doubt after pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges stemming from complaints of lewd conduct in a men's room.

But do Craig's private indiscretions, coupled with his political positions, really constitute hypocrisy? Who says that everyone who is homosexually inclined has to support gay marriage or certain hate-crime legislation? Just because someone has a certain set of attractions doesn't mean he or she must have a fixed set of political positions. The question of whether gay marriage is good or bad social policy seems, to me anyway, largely separate from one's own orientation. (After all, there are plenty of straight people on both sides of the debate.)

Here L.A. talk-radio host Al Rantel of KABC comes to mind. Rantel is an out-of-the-closet, openly gay man. He has also written against gay marriage:

As distressing as the state of the American family is today with the high rate of divorce and adultery, the situation is far less stable among gays. This is not a slur against gays as individuals, but rather the reality of what occurs when you have what I call the all gas and no brake environment of male/male sexuality. I should know. I am a gay male.

To say that unfortunately the gay world is in a general state of hyper-sexuality that is not conducive to relationships which marriage was intended to foster is to put it mildly. Further, almost all of the issues the gay left claims it is justifiably concerned about like property, health, and financial partnership issues have already been dealt with by many states and can be dealt with through further legislation as needed. Such legal changes would encounter far less political opposition.

Agree or disagree with Rantel's assessment of the "gay world" or his position on marriage, but is there anything hypocritical about this? Just because one is gay doesn't mean that one must support gay marriage. And just because one opposes gay marriage doesn't mean one hates gays.

* PS -- Mike just accused me of "defending Craig," which really wasn't my intention. So, though I thought it went without saying, let me say for the record that: a) Cruising for sex in bathrooms is not a good thing; and b) This is especially so for married men and, to a lesser extent, U.S. senators.

Yesterday, I posted the painfully humorous clip of Miss Teen South Carolina trying to explain why more Americans can't find the USA on a map. Since then, the young beauty queen has gone on to redeem herself on the "Today" show. The WaPo reports:

After being stumped by a Miss Teen USA pageant question on live television Friday night, Lauren Caitlin Upton's confused, mangled response has been drawing a lot of attention.

The 18-year-old got a chance to redeem herself Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show when she was again asked why one-fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a map.

"I would love to re-answer that question," Upton said. "Well personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on our map. I don't know anyone else who doesn't. And if the statistics are correct, I believe there should be more emphasis on geography."

Here, here! Now, can someone tell me why we're asking policy questions at a beauty contest in the first place?

Now is the time to stop Iran. Yes, I know that the administration is itching for another fight and wants to blunt Iranian interests. There is talk from Washington to Paris about air strikes if the Iranians won’t listen to reason and halt their nuclear program and reign in their hegemonic ambitions. The administration is right in its goals (as I believe they were in wanting a better government for Iraq) but wrong in their strategies (as I believe they were in invading Iraq).

The place to fight Iran and stop Iran is with Maliki. Our surge was to buy him time to make peace. We are turning against him because we see him as weak and unable to make peace among the Iraqi factions. This is exactly wrong. He is not weak and unable to make peace and reconcile the Sunni and Shiites. He is clever and has, with his passive aggressive tactic of seeming to dither, bought himself time to win the war against the Sunni.

Intelligence estimates report that the Sunni population of Iraq has fallen by nearly 50%. This is not counting the Kurds, most of whom are Sunni but have been persecuted by the Arab Sunni for their ethnicity. This means that through ethnic cleansing and emigration, mainly to Syria and Jordan, the countable Sunnis now make up only 10% of the Iraqi population and not 20%!

The civil war, whose existence we debated only a year ago, is over and the Shiites have won. The Sunni now have three choices. Get out. Join Al Qaeda or accept permanent minority and second-class status. It is too late even for Joe Biden’s idea of a federation to become a plausible reality.

From our good friend Ahmed Chalabi who steered us into this war with promises of our guns being met by roses and happy Iraqis paying us for their liberation with oil, to al Maliki, we have served Iranian interests. We can stop helping Iran by stopping our help to Maliki.

Nouri al Maliki does not deserve our support and is not our friend and ally. Having spent many of the years of Saddam’s brutal reign in Iran, he is, in addition to being a Shiite partisan, an agent of Iranian ambition and policy.

The time to stop Iran is indeed now but the place is not Tehran. We don’t need to bomb them or try regime change. We have a truly awful bi-partisan record of replacing one autocrat with a worse monster. Goodbye Mossadegh hello Shah; goodbye Shah and hello Khomeini. We didn’t do any better in Asia from Big Mihn to Diem to Nguyen Cao Ky. We have enough trouble picking our own leaders that we should get out of the business of picking the leaders of other nations.

I put no great hope in trying to be puppet masters and replacing al Maliki with Ayad Allawi. But it is time to stop al Maliki who is Iran’s chief ally and friend of Maqtada al Sadr. It is Sadr’s Mahdi Army that is the chief beneficiary of Iran’s military supplies and tactical support.

They are the spear of Iran’s ambition to become the throne of world wide Islam. The spear is pointed through Iraq, Syria and a large chunk of Lebanon into the heart of Arabia. There is a war for control of Islam and though we have no clear allies, we have devoted enemies, chief of which is Iran. It may not be the time to attack Iran but it surely is time to stop helping them.

No, not really, but I just wanted to point out the fallacy of Mariel's claim that Elvira Arellano really is like Rosa Parks because "many people see Elvira as a hero" and "many other people ... see her as nothing more than a criminal." (Although given how few people have shown up to the rallies on her behalf, I question how "many" really view Arellano as a hero at all.)

By this logic, Paris Hilton must also be the Rosa Parks of the 21st Century, as she is a hero for many a teeny-bopper, and just a celebrity criminal (kind of like Arellano) in the eyes of most others. Really, under this loose terminology, there's no shortage of people who could claim to be the Rosa Parks of the 21st Century, which is pretty remarkable, seeing that there was only one Rosa Parks in all of the 20th!

Forgive me if I'm descending into the realm of "fancy language and technical differences," but it seems to me that when you say that Person A of one era is the embodiment of some other person from another, you are saying they are alike in the most important aspect -- ie, in their most prominent quality. Thus, it would be outrageously inappropriate to say, for example, "Mayor Villaraigosa is the Adolf Hitler of the 21st Century." That both are charismatic leaders is beside the point. When people hear the name Hitler, they think "genocidal tyrant," which Villaraigosa obviously is not.

Likewise, when people hear the name Rosa Parks, they think: "heroic crusader for civil rights." And that is the real crux of this debate: Is Elvira a heroic crusader for civil rights? Bridget makes a good case, I think, for why she's not -- even if she and Parks share a few superficial qualities (ie, they're women, they're controversial, etc.).

So, like Bridget, I've got to agree: I'm with Earl on this one.

The comparison of Elvira Arellano to Rosa Parks is insulting to the women and men who gave so much for the fundamental principle of racial equality. To quote the great Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail:

"You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may ask: 'How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?' The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. ... One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all'."

So to give Arellano a pass on this, you'd have to show that laws against identity theft are unjust. THAT was how she got busted. She consciously acquired a false Social Security card to get a job at an airport, which compromises security. Even if immigration activists believe it's immoral to have immigration laws and give Arellano a pass on sneaking across the border twice, you can't excuse the identity theft.

Would our heroes of the civil-rights movement have consciously broken laws such as these, then become activists only when they were caught and had to face responsibility for their actions?

Don't put Rosa Parks in that league.

... as told by an expert:

All these news stories about dog killing (Michael Vick's problems) and cat killing (those poor baby kitties beaten to death in Canoga Park) made me wonder what other countries do to torture animals. I wasn't really prepared for the culinary solution from Australia.

One of the entries in this year's Alice Springs bush food competition is a cat stew that is flavoured with native fruits.

The Territory's Director of Environmental Health, Xavier Schobben, says while people are free to eat cat, there are legal obstacles to selling it.

The New York Times already has an editorial online about Alberto Gonzales' resignation. And its starts off with a great zinger.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has finally done something important to advance the cause of justice. He has resigned.

Smack!

Oh brother, George W. Bush delivered another one of those Bible-thumping speeches, blurring the lines between church and state, and pushing our secular republic ever closer to a Taliban-style theocracy. Just get a load of this:

Speaking to Sunday church congregants in New Orleans, President George W. Bush invoked Jesus' Sermon on the Mount days before the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

"Getting ready to talk to you today, I recall what Jesus said at the end of the Sermon on the Mount," Bush said at New Orleans' First Emmanuel Baptist Church. "He said, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on a rock."

"The rains descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house. But it did not fall, because it was founded on the rock," he continued.

That rock, he said, was a principal of brotherhood exemplified by the church during Hurricane Katrina— but not the federal government.

"Something was wrong in America. Our foundation wasn't built on the rock," he said.

Quick, somebody call the ACLU, Americans for the Separation of Church and State, or People for the American Way!

Oh, wait, it wasn't Bush citing Christ's words as the rock upon which the nation must be built -- it was Illinois' Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

Oops. Never mind!

The New York Times had a sad piece this weekend about the toll that presidential campaigning takes on the candidates' children. It began with a painful account of 7-year-old Jack Edwards' being reprimanded by his father John for not making nice with the press:

(Edwards' two kids) treated an interviewer the way politicians surely wish they could at times, refusing at first to remove their iPod earphones for a discussion of life on the trail.

“I don’t want to do this,” Jack protested to his father, John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator.

“I don’t care whether you want to do this,” Mr. Edwards replied.

A moment later, Jack hid his face in his hands.

“Mr. Jack, do we need to go in the back and have a conversation?” asked Mr. Edwards, lifting his son’s head.

The boy sat for a few more minutes, fidgety but obedient, before being freed and happily bounding with his sister to the fort they were building in the back of the bus.

Then there's the account of life on the trail:

This fall, the (Edwards) children will not be (at home) much; instead of their routine of school, sports and friends, they will travel with their parents, spending days on buses and nights at Comfort Inns....

Traveling together, though, does not always mean being together. On a recent Iowa trip, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards were busy with voters, interviews and phone calls, and the children spent good chunks of the day in the care of their baby sitter.

And that's for the children whose parents take them along. Others, like the Dodd, Brownback and Obama kids, who stay back at home, lose a lot of time with their campaigning moms, and rarely see their candidate dads at all:

“There’s nothing like your 5-year-old saying please don’t go” on another campaign trip, said Mr. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut. “She sees you put that tie on and that coat, and those are all the signals I won’t be around.”

Mr. Brownback, Republican of Kansas, said he was feeling guilty recently about missing the first day of the school year for his two 9-year-olds, Mark and Jenna. “You just end up missing a lot,” he said. “You do a lot of parenting over the phone.”...

Malia and Sasha (Obama) see their father one day a week most of the time, twice if they are lucky. They recently resorted to catching glimpses of each other by Web cam. Nobody in the family is thrilled with the arrangement.

Having zero political, let alone presidential, ambitions, I can't relate. Maybe these men really feel the country needs them, that they alone can provide crucial leadership, that they have been called to save the nation and the world.

But if this is the price of the presidency -- missing out on your children's childhood, and your children's missing out on their parents' time and love -- could it possibly be worth it? Why not just put the political ambitions on hold for another decade or two?

Admitted pedophile Jack McClellan says he's leaving California:

"I have to leave the state, really, I can't live here under this Orwellian protocol," Jack McClellan told KABC. "It's nightmarish."

You know, if he were complaining about the old restraining order against him, he would have a point. It's not easy to stay 30 feet away from all children at all times -- doing so would preclude some of life's crucial activities, like buying food.

But what McClellan's complaining about here is a new restraining order that's much less severe. It just bars him from hanging out in places where kids congregate, like schools and playgrounds. That he finds this restriction "nightmarish," sadly, tells us a lot about his condition.

We'll see if he really does depart, but if so, I can't say I'll be sad to see him go. Still, I wish we could do more to help the man than simply chase him from state to state.

The cynics will scoff: Michael Vick is only apologizing because he has to, because he was caught. He's just trying to save his career. How convenient that he's "found Jesus" at the moment when he most needs public sympathy ...

But watching the video of Vick's apology, and reading the transcript, I must say, I'm impressed. No, I have no idea whether he means it, or whether this isn't all just a scripted ploy. But I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It's rare that we come to grips with our failures when we're riding high. It's when we're weak, when we've been humbled, when we've seen our own self-deceptions shattered that we come to reckon with what we've done wrong.

It may seem convenient that Vick has chosen this moment to be contrite, but it also seems logical. He's got no more doting groupies telling him how great he is, no more media pumping up his ego. As a football prodigy coddled since his youth, this is probably the first time he's been able to clearly hear his own conscience, to see himself in the mirror as he is. If ever there were a moment for serious self-examination and change, this would be it.

And yes, these are also the moments of spiritual conversion. It's often when we realize how badly we've bungled our own affairs that we come to realize how unfit we are to manage them on our own. It's the story of the Prodigal Son, the good thief on the cross, and many a saint ever since.

Often, we need to hit "rock bottom" before we can begin to recover. Time will give us a clearer sense of just how sincere Vick is today, but so far, what he says rings very true:

I offer my deepest apologies to everybody out in there in the world who was affected by this whole situation. And if I'm more disappointed with myself than anything it's because of all the young people, young kids that I've let down, who look at Michael Vick as a role model. And to have to go through this and put myself in this situation, you know, I hope that every young kid out there in the world watching this interview right now who's been following the case will use me as an example to using better judgment and making better decisions.

Once again, I offer my deepest apologies to everyone. And I will redeem myself. I have to.

So I got a lot of down time, a lot of time to think about my actions and what I've done and how to make Michael Vick a better person.

In an earlier post, Earl reacts negatively to the comparisons that have been popping up of Elvira Arellano, the illegal immigrant who was arrested in L.A. earlier this month while speaking out against the lack of immigration sanity, with Rosa Parks, the black woman was so famous for not giving up her seat on a bus in Alabama in 1955.

Earl's argument seems to be that since Arellano isn't a U.S. citizen and broke the law coming here that her struggle can't be taken seriously. Well, Rosa was not a U.S. citizen either. Not really. She certainly didn't have all the rights of a U.S. citizen, and indeed was breaking a law (a municipal ordinance) when she refused to move to the back of the bus on that famous December day.

So, unlike Earl, I see a lot of reason for comparison of Elvira to Rosa. Both women broke what they thought were unjust laws to bring attention to them. Both women were arrested for it. Both women risked their families, their safety and freedom to do so. Both women were excoriated by pundits like Earl who thought they had no right to speak out because of their inherent inferiority -- Rosa's blackness and Elvira's illegalness.

Only time will tell if Elvira becomes the mother of the immigrant rights movement the way that Rosa became the mother of the civil rights movement.

For all their talk about American values, Republicans these days seem intent on destroying this country.

In his latest press release dispatch, Rudy says he wants to cut taxes by $3 trillion and give it back to Americans, by which he means the wealthy people who might give money to his presidential campaign. He wants to do this at the very time when our country's infrastructure is literally crumbling and causing more mayhem than a terrorist strike. Osama will have won without lifting a finger if we allow our first-world status to erode by not making the necessary investments. Is that really worth getting a few bucks more in taxes to blow at Best Buy, which is what it will be for most of us?

Mayor Rudy Giuliani will discuss his commitment to cut taxes and reform the tax code with New Hampshire taxpayers and small business owners today in Manchester at his “Your Money. Your Choice.” forum. ... Rudy will commit to preventing an unprecedented tax increase of at least $3 trillion on American taxpayers by making permanent the current tax provisions, including lower marginal tax rates, giving the death tax the death penalty, and making permanent marriage penalty relief and child tax credit.

C'mon Rudy, stop the hating.

Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be on vacation, but once I check my e-mail leisure goes out the window: Just learned that Libya was elected today to head a U.N. panel that will put together a follow-up event to the stunningly racist and anti-Semitic Durban conference of 2001. Also on the 20-member board for the 2009 world conference supposedly intended to combat racism? Iran! Yeah, that regime that wants to annihilate all those Israeli Jews.

From Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, in Geneva:

"Choosing Libya and Iran to fight racism is like choosing Jack the Ripper to fight sexual harassment. Their election is a painful defeat for all who believe in the anti-discrimination agenda, and a setback for the international human rights movement as a whole. It sends the wrong message and should ring alarm bells. Moammar Khadafy's Libya is the same regime that gave its highest award in 2002 to convicted French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, that routinely brutalizes black African migrants, and that tortures Bulgarian and Palestinian medics for the crime of being foreigners. It defies common sense and morality to put countries with dreadful records on racism in charge of a world committee to combat racism. Libya’s long record of racism, intolerance and xenophobia clearly does not merit such a reward."

Once again, proof that the U.N. is about as useful to world peace as kangaroo dung.

Being on vacation gives me time to catch up on the important things in life, like People magazine. And I just had to share this tidbit I came across in the Aug. 27 issue:

"(Angelina) Jolie has apparently done her best to brush off the more frivolous claims that she angrily threw wine at Pitt while on vacation in France ('ridiculous,' says a Jolie-Pitt source) and that she and Pitt bicker about whom they'll vote for in the next presidential election. 'That's false,' says the pair's political adviser Trevor Neilson. 'Neither Brad nor Angelina has picked a candidate.'"

Angelina is a goodwill ambassador (the hottest celebrity endeavor since designing a line of handbags) for a do-nothing agency (aka the U.N.), and Brad babysits her international brood. Um, WHY do they have a political adviser? And why do we give a rat's posterior who they throw their support behind after careful consultation with their political adviser?

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the question, “Do you want to buy a bridge?” was the platonic form a con, a sucker pitch. Sophisticated people knew that no one could sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. You had to be a hick even to consider such a proposition. Ah, how times have changed.

Today the people who run bridge are indeed trying to sell the iconic Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Really. I’m not making this up. Those people from “The City” have always believed that they were smarter, more cultured and politically astute than we hicks from the the stix of Los Angeles. Yeah, but you don’t see us trying to sell our public symbols, do you?

Oh sure, there is Disney Hall, The Amundson Center and Griffith Park. But these were all named after the people who donated them or made major contributions to their creation. So far there is no 7-11 Memorial Colosseum nor do we get stuck in traffic at McDonald’s International Airport. So far. But given San Francisco’s lead, we might be selling naming rights to our public edifices too.

Seriously, the solons from The City are exploring selling sponsorships and corporate participation in support of the bridge. At the moment, they claim not to be sliding down the slippery slope of affixing banners to the bridge or painting the logo of Apple or GAP on the bridge itself.

History however indicates that these things always start small with promises of restraint, good taste and the good of the commonweal. Then incrementally, the print gets bigger. If you want the perfect model of how this will come out, look to Public Radio and TV. Not so long ago their programs were “underwritten.” There could be no real advertising or pitches—only the identity of the underwriter. Then the corporate logo was added. Now their list of underwriters has morphed into sponsors, and the breaks between shows are filled with advertising copy and product claims.

After an outlay of $89,000 to study the possibilities through a corporate sponsorship broker, Bartram Sponsorship Strategies, I wonder what they’ll recommend for their money? I’m sure selling the people’s birthright for this mess of potage will be done with great taste and the subtlety that is the mark of corporate sponsorships everywhere.

Proving their good faith, the politicians and consulting group withheld the preliminary report from board members until the last minute. Adding to the credibility of the enterprise, for enterprise it is, is the name of the project.

In the political tradition of 1984 and Newspeak, as refined by the incumbent administration in Washington, names mean exactly the opposite of their claim. Thus, we have the “Clean Air Act” that rescinded environmental standards and allowed for dirtier air. We had the “Healthy Forests Initiative,” which sought to prevent forest fires by eliminating the trees. (Well, it would work). The working title for this project, without shame or irony, is: The Partnership to Preserve the Golden Gate Bridge.

I'd like to get a whiff of whatever the spinmaster that had the gall to try to compare Elvira Arellano to civil rights icon Rosa Parks smoked. Arrellano was an illegal immigrant that victimized the system by being here illegally and whipping up public opinion to back her illegal act.

Parks was an American citizen (with roots that stretched down through generations) that the system victimized by Jim Crow segregating her, and thereby denying her what every American citizen took as their birthright- the right to dignity and equality. Fortunately, the dismal turnout for Saturday's lame excuse for a demostration backing Arellano was fitting and showed that few others bought the insulting comparison.

Well, I was as shocked as anyone to read that gas prices have dropped 40 cents since last year. After all, when prices were at their peak, the conspiratorialists told us that Big Oil can set prices at whatever level it wants, and that it sets them deliberately high to satisfy its rapacious greed.

So what's happened since then? Did Big Oil lose its amazing market-controlling ability, or just its rapacious greed?

What's more, I seem to recall that when prices dipped last fall -- although not as much as they've dipped recently -- we were told that this was a deliberate part of a Rove-ian plan to sway the elections. Team Bush got its buddies in Big Oil to momentarily lower prices so the GOP could hang on to Congress (heckuva job, Turdblossom) -- an evil plot borne out by the fact that prices went up again shortly after election day.

But the next election won't be for nearly 15 months! Isn't this precisely the time that Big Oil should be gouging us the most?

No, not if we understand their next wicked scheme. Clearly a new conspiracy is under way: Big Oil is slashing prices in an effort to drive up gas consumption, which, in turn, will fuel global warming. The plan is to melt all the polar ice caps by summer's end, so that by Fall 2008, America's coastal regions -- the blue states -- will be wiped out. Then, the GOP will hold on to the White House and retake Congress -- and the price of regular unleaded will shoot up to $67.99 a gallon.

Oh, is there any limit to the depths of Karl Rove's treachery?

To follow up on this week's earlier post about the two pit bulls who broke into a Washington woman's house and tried to maul her, we now have this story from closer to home:

A report that two pit bulls were menacing a 16-year-old girl and her 6- year-old brother in the 2900 block of 141st Placeat El Segundo Boulevard and Prairie Avenue was received by Hawthorne police about 8 a.m., said Hawthorne police Lt. Michael Ishii.

Now these pit bulls didn't actually attack anyone, but that didn't stop them from causing a heap of trouble:

No one was bitten, but a woman who ran from the dogs fell and broke her leg, and she was taken to a hospital ...

Meantime, an officer driving to the scene crashed into another vehicle at El Segundo Boulevard and Prairie Avenue....

Wow, those are powerful dogs!

The Washington Times has a funny story about some of the less-than-desirable endorsements to come out of Hollywood. Most of them, according to the story, anyway, have gone Hillary Clinton's way so far. Among the names: Madam to the Stars Heidi Fleiss and porn queen Jenna Jameson.

Fortunately for Republicans, they don't have to worry about anyone in Hollywood -- good, bad, or otherwise -- backing them. Although I'm sure the various GOP candidates have already put in phone calls begging Ted Nugent to endorse someone else after this performance.

But the best line of the Washington Times pieces comes not from a Hillary backer, but an Obama booster -- Oprah Winfrey. Oprah is hosting a star-studded fund-raiser for the Illinois senator here in September, but she knows it's not her (considerable) money that will affect this campaign. It's her influence:

"My money isn't going to make any difference. My value to him, my support of him is probably worth more than any other check that I could write," Miss Winfrey said.

Scary, but true. Millions of people will buy a book, vote for a candidate, and pretty much do anything else Oprah asks of them. Now that's an endorsement worth having.

Ahh, wookit da widdle monekykins.

This is a picture of the vervet monkeys that are apparently terrorizing a Kenyan town, as Mike's post informed us.

After City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's forced springing of Jack McClellan on a technicality, the admitted pedophile has now been socked with a new, narrower restraining order. (Although had the new restraining order been in effect back when McClellan was spotted hanging out around a UCLA child-care center, he would have been in violation of it, too.)

The question is what becomes of McClellan next. Will he get busted again? Will he leave California for a less hostile environs? Will he continue to stalk children, or worse?

Or will he get the help he so clearly needs?

Let's hope and pray it's the latter.

This L.A. story comes, amusingly, by way of the New York Times. Apparently American immigration officials, who will let anyone walk across the border illegally -- be it laborers, strange Euros who crash Ferraris, or terrorists -- is using all its bureaucratic might to stop the real danger to national security: Austrian teens who want to intern at Holocaust remembrance organizations:

Officials with the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust said the visa application for a prospective Austrian intern had been rejected twice since May and was on a final appeal. The museum was informed by the immigration authorities that the program was not considered a legitimate cultural exchange....

“We really feel like David versus Goliath here,” said Mark Rothman, executive director of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. “We are trying to bring someone into the country who wants to do good and he is screened out.”...

At the Museum of Tolerance, also in Los Angeles, a recent intern’s visa process took six months, making it impossible for him to complete the yearlong program. The museum’s director, Liebe Geft, said it would continue seeking the Austrian interns.

This is the flip-side of America's failed immigration policy, the side that gets much less attention than the vast number of immigrants who enter illegally each year. It is the maddeningly difficult system we have in place for letting honest, decent, hard-working people enter the country legally. Many just give up and stay out. Many more, desperate to feed their families, enter illegally. The result is a broken system that can't meaningfully monitor entries at all, as well as an underground economy and network that give safe harbor to criminals and terrorists. We punish the innocent, encourage criminality, and make things easier for those who would do us harm.

Bottom line: We''ll never be able to rein in illegal immigration until we're willing to expand legal immigration.

The future reveals itself in the country of Kenya. A troop of rogue monkeys is starving out a village and sexually harassing the women. How soon 'till they have made us their servants? They mock us. And rightfully so -- we are silly

A troop of vervet monkeys is giving Kenyan villagers long days and sleepless nights, destroying crops and causing a food crisis.

Earlier this month, local MP Paul Muite urged the Kenyan Wildlife Service to help contain their aggressive behaviour.

But Mr Muite caused laughter when he told parliament that the monkeys had taken to harassing and mocking women in a village.

But this is exactly what the women in the village of Nachu, just south-west of Kikuyu, are complaining about.

On Wednesday, in a valiant effort to keep up with new scary movies, I went to see "The Invasion," a remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig (whose shirtless pics appear more on my good friend Greg Hernandez's "Out in Hollywood" blog than shirtless Putin pics appear here). The plot consists of the space shuttle breaking into a bizzillion pieces upon re-entry, scattering alien amoeba infected pieces everywhere including Washington, D.C., where Kidman's ex-husband at the CDC starts acting even more funky than an ex usually acts. Hence starts the infections and chaos.

Now, this could have just been a plain ol' scary movie. But the film tries to make a bunch of psuedo-philosophical points by interspersing news briefs detailing the everyday chaos of war, terrorists, Kim Jong-Il, etc. Because, apparently, we need to seriously ask ourselves if the world would be more peaceful if we let body snatchers vomit green goo in our mouths and turn us into robotic zombies after an oozy overnight metamorphosis.

Not to mention, one news broadcast in the background of a scene states that Iraqis -- Sunni, Shiite and Kurd -- were jubilantly celebrating after the last withdrawal of U.S. troops, then quotes "President al-Sadr." Um, who wrote this movie? If Muqtada al-Sadr ever made it to the role of Iraqi president, there would be no Sunnis and Kurds rallying at his side to cheer the expulsion of the Americans. Rather, most of the Sunnis and Kurds would be dead at the hands of genocidal Shiite militias at that point.

*Sigh*... I guess I thought horror movies were safe from being a vehicle to push "messages." Though I can't see Rob Zombie trying to do that with his upcoming take on "Halloween," and don't expect Michael Myers to represent a great Karl Rove conspiracy or be the product of charter schools gone awry. I think we'll be safe on the plot here -- Myers will be a screwed-up guy doing screwed-up things and the good people will have to fight him. Now there's a metaphor for current events!

That's the title of an Al-Jazeera program, which apparently deals with places like Borneo and Indonesia. I was half-expecting to click on the link and see a headline like, "Tonight, on 101 East, Al-Jazeera takes viewers over the storied and magical Cahuenga Pass..."

Who’s hot? Who’s not? Vladimir Putin doing his best Field & Stream cover sans shirt, setting the hearts of Russian women and gay men aflutter? Or Nicolas Sarkozy, who’s one gold medallion away from trading the khaki shorts for a Riviera thong and, er, had the muffintop love handles photoshopped from his rowboat-studmuffin pics? And why wasn’t this practice of stripping down to show presidential might happening when Boris Yeltsin was president??

Please, Hugo Chavez, please, for the love of Simon Bolivar, keep that Crayola red shirt ON…

* Chris, the title of this post is intended to meet my "South Park" reference quota...

The plea deal that Lindsay Lohan cooked up with the Los Angeles County District Attorney is an insult and an outrage to justice. After her arrests she has been released each time within hours on low bond, wore a SCRAM monitoring bracelet, and alcohol monitor on her ankle, got tested regularly, and got top notch treatment at a posh Malibu, California rehab center. Next, potentially serious felony charges are reduced to misdemeanors. And now as a result of her no contest plea to those charges she’ll likely get probation and/or minimal jail time.

If Lohan were a poor black or Latina woman from South Los Angeles she would not waltz away with a sweetheart plea deal and a handslap sentence. The notion that celebrities such as Lohan thumb their noses at the law stokes public anger over the celebrity double standard. And rightly so. The Los Angeles County D.A should scrap the plea deal and demand real jail time for Lohan—just like any other serious and multiple offender would get.

OK, folks, I think this picture is screaming for a "Caption This" contest. I'll get the ball rolling:

1. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, showing off the new state budget he plans to sign later this week.

3. OINK!!! OINK!!!! Make this man stop groping me!

First it was Uggs. Then it was chihuahuas. Then came the designer-clad baby. But now there's only one thing that all the Very Most Important Celebrities must have: jail time.

Lindsay Lohan's parent's must be so proud that their daughter is off to jail, just like Paris and Nicole Ritchie. Lohan was busted for drunk driving and cocaine possession in Santa Monica . Ok, it's just, like, one day and then a bunch of community service, and 36 months probation, but it's the jail cred that counts. Wow, maybe she'll get a tattoo so people believe she spent some hard time.

Enjoy, Bridget! (Courtesy of Cam Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen)

California voters have good reason to be confused by Sacramento's decision to yank $1.3 billion from California's public transit funding paid for by our gas taxes. After all, just last November, when we passed a slew of infrastructure bonds, we also approved Proposition 1A, which promised:

YES ON 1A STOPS OUR EXISTING GAS TAXES FROM BEING USED FOR OTHER PROJECTS.

(Yes, that's a direct quote from the ballot language, all-caps and all.)

What do you know? They lied. Go figure.

"The United States is the one who broke the law first. By letting people cross over without documents. By letting people taxes. For me it has been very hard. But I know I am not alone." -- Elvira Arellano

Oh, Elvira, where to begin? The U.S. didn't break the law, you did. The government, to be sure, failed to enforce the law, but that doesn't absolve you of violating it, repeatedly. And as someone calling for liberalized immigration policies, it's illogical, to say the least, for you to denounce the U.S. for not doing more to keep you out of the country in the first place.

But as long as you're speaking before the Mexican Congress, perhaps you ought to denounce the corruption and backward economic policies that make Mexico unlivable for millions of its residents who must flee north to find a decent life. That, much more than the failures of America's undeniably flawed immigration system, is the real root cause of the plight of Mexican illegal immigrants.

Finally, as I tell my kids every day, "He did it first!" -- even if it's true -- is no excuse.

If you're one of 445,000 Cal PERS members who recently received an informational brochure from the state's pension fund, you might wonder why that string of numbers on the envelope looks familiar:

Because it's your Social Security Number, which countless bureaucrats, postal workers, and anyone who might have handled your mail for you got to see -- along with your name and address. The AP reports:

The California Public Employees' Retirement System described last week's incident as a computer data error. All or a portion of Social Security numbers were inadvertently included on the address labels in a computer file given to staffers for the mailing, CalPERS spokeswoman Pat Macht said.

Oops, sorry all you pensioners. But hey, it's a great day for identity thieves!

Then there's this line:

CalPERS officials declined to say whether any disciplinary action was taken.

Natch. In government, none ever is. The best line, though, is:

"While it is unlikely that someone would recognize the series of numbers as being a Social Security number except you, we consider this a serious incident," the letter stated.

Sure, because no one knows what an SSN looks like. And besides, ID thieves don't read the news, right?

Only in Malaysia with it's sweet mixture of Islam, Hindu, Buddhism and Christianity, would a newspaper publish a cartoon on Jesus smoking a cigarette and pounding down a beer on it's front page.

A Malaysian newspaper is facing calls to shut down after it published an image of Jesus holding a cigarette and what appeared to be a can of beer.

Malaysia's Muslim-led government closed two publications last year for carrying controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Now some members of Malaysia's minority religions say they want the same treatment over this latest incident.

Not only do they rob an honest business man, they steal medicine from the sick. I'm shocked.

Robbers roll medical marijuana joint
Daily News

TARZANA - Armed robbers made off with an unspecified amount of marijuana tonight after hitting a medical marijuana dispensary, police said.

Four or five black men, all apparently armed, entered the business near Ventura Boulevard and Tampa Avenue about 7:15 p.m. and demanded marijuana, said Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Kim, who did not give his first name.

"Nobody (was) injured. Nobody got tied up," Kim said.

The robbers then reportedly took off in a black BMW SUV, Kim said, possibly heading toward the Hollywood (170) Freeway.

Early reports are that the robbers didn't demand cash, just marijuana, Kim said.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Countless numbers of pro football players have committed rape, physical assaults, and armed robberies They have been inveterate spouse and girl friend abusers, and have even been accused of a double murder (no not O.J., more on him later). Yet none of them have ever had an airplane fly over their training camp with a banner that read abuser, killer, robber, assailant, or thug. None have ever been taunted, jeered, and harangued by packs of sign waving demonstrators screaming for their blood when they showed up at the courthouse. None of them have ever brought the wrath of the entire sports world--sportswriters, fans, league officials, advertisers, sports talk jocks, and bloggers down on their heads. None have ever had senators, congresspersons, and packs of advocacy groups publicly demand that they be drummed out of their profession.

Even America’s favorite former football celeb turned pariah, O.J. Simpson for a time had legions of fans, advocacy groups, some writers and commentators, and the majority of blacks, passionately defend him, or at least the presumption of his innocence. Even after Simpson brought the wrath of the nation down on his head following his acquittal some still cut him some slack. That included rabid O.J. haters who said that the jury had spoken.

With disgraced Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick none of this applies. The moment the public got wind that the feds had their eyes on him and the issue was dog fighting, Vick was dog meat. With the sole exception of the Atlanta branch of the NAACP, which held a brief, perfunctory press conference, and lightly urged the public not to rush to judgment, Vick quickly snatched the pariah mantle from O.J.

The supreme irony in the Vick saga is that he had everything going for him; fame, riches, fan and sportswriter adulation, and fawning sponsors. In the end those assets turned out to be a vicious double edged sword that hacked him apart. They stoked public anger, hostility and vengeance. Vick is as much a victim of the ugly passions of the times as for his crimes. Vick and hysteria for now are horrible synonyms for those passions.

Remember the good old days when we were debating whether or not Iraq was in a civil war? Most observers, other than the president, seemed to think that the slaughter of Shiites by Sunni and Sunni by Shiites qualified. Today almost everyone agrees that this is a civil war. As is often the case, almost everyone is wrong.

There is not a civil war in Iraq. There are a number of civil wars—and there is no one to root for who will serve our national interests. The one that we debated only a year ago is effectively over. The killing goes on, but the outcome is no longer in doubt. The Shiites won and the Sunni are now too weak to surrender because they know they will be slaughtered and clearly too weak to win.

Once upon a time the Sunni ruled Iraq. The mostly secular Baathists terrorized the Shiite majority. Representing only about 20% of the population, the Sunni Arabs had their way. That is over, and it isn’t simply the overthrow of Saddam. Classified intelligence reports indicate that the Sunni population of Iraq has shrunk to 10%. Yes, that is a 50% loss of population.

Some have been killed. Some have been “cleansed” out of their neighborhood and are un-findable. Perhaps, the relative percentage is also affected by the number of Shiites coming into Iraq from Syria and Iran and the larger Shiite birthrate. This is not a good time for Sunnis to be bringing children into the mad world of Iraq.

Commenter Michele posted earlier about scientific studies confirming the obvious. Well, add one more to the list: Researchers in the UK have discovered that girls really do tend to like the color pink more than boys do. Holy Toledo! They could have discovered that by walking in to any preschool class in America!

Fortunately, now we now have hard, scientific evidence to confirm what we already knew:

"Everyone in today's western culture, from parents to toy manufacturers, seems to assume that little girls like pink," said Prof Anya Hurlbert, who wanted to find out whether the reason was cultural or to do with biology and publishes her findings today in the journal Current Biology.

A love of salmon, fuschia and coral does seem to be hard-wired into females, rather than picked up from their mothers and peers....

In her experiments, 208 young adult men and women were asked to select, as rapidly as possible, their preferred colour from pairs of coloured rectangles.

While the universal favourite colour appeared to be blue, when shown a spectrum of hues from red through blue and green to yellow women preferred red.

"This shifts their colour preference slightly away from blue towards red, which tends to make pinks and lilacs the most preferred colours," said Prof Hurlbert.

How the fact that young adults preferred one color to another demonstrates a biological, rather than a cultural, cause is beyond me. (Although anyone who's spent time with very small children can attest that girls, for the most part, do seem to be more predisposed to pinks and purples.) But funnier still is the explanations for why this is so:

Evolution may have honed women's preference for pink, perhaps because it helped them to find ripe fruit and healthy men, while both men and women have an innate yearning for blue skies of the open savannah and clear blue water, according to neuro-scientists at Newcastle University....

She said she could only speculate about the preference for blue: "Here again, I would favour evolutionary arguments. Going back to our 'savannah' days, we would have a natural preference for a clear blue sky, because it signalled good weather. Clear blue also signals a good water source."

How Prof. Hurlbert draws these conclusions from a bunch of young folks playing with color swatches is quite a mystery -- and how they qualify as "science" remains an even bigger one.

In Sunday's Daily News, L.A. animal-rights activist Phyllis Daugherty had a sensible op-ed criticizing the city's plans to create a "Pit Bull Academy" in which ex-cons should rehab aggressive dogs. The problem, Daugherty remarked, is that these beast have been bred to be vicious; their aggressiveness is genetic, and can't be fixed through a few happy sessions of doggie day care. But pit bull apologists like to claim that this isn't so, and that, really, with a good owner, these dogs can be just swell.

Then a story like this comes along:

GIG HARBOR, Wash. (AP) - Two pit bull terriers broke into a house through a pet door Tuesday and attacked a woman in her bed, mauling her badly, a Pierce County sheriff's spokesman said.

The woman was able to grab a gun and try to shoot the dogs, then break away from the attack and lock herself in her car, where she called 911, sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said.

The woman, who was not immediately identified, was taken to a hospital in Tacoma, where she was listed in serious condition....

The pit bulls also killed a neighbor's Jack Russell terrier, which entered the house during the attack, Troyer said....

Officers "had to pepper spray and fight the dogs until they were detained. We almost had to shoot them on site," Troyer said.

Yeah, yeah, you can say "blame the owner, not the breed," but when was the last time you heard of a golden shepherd, a dachshund, or a chocolate lab breaking into someone's house and nearly mauling a person to death?

"She and her sympathizers expect America to absolve her of her misconduct because she had a kid. Fine, take your kid back with you. That's what mothers do."
--Peter Nunez, a former federal prosecutor who teaches immigration policy at the University of San Diego

I was struck by the above quote, which appears in today's Daily News story about illegal-immigration activist Elvira Arellano, and her new efforts to influence U.S. immigration policy from Tijuana. Nunez's remark points to one of the central ironies of this whole saga: all the hand-wringing talk of "tearing families apart" from people who, through their own actions, have shown little interest in keeping families together.

This is true not only of Antonio Villaraigosa, but also of Arellano herself. For all her prattling about family unification, she's the one who, through her own brazen, public defiance of U.S. law, chose certain deportation. She's the one who has opted to leave her son here, away from his family, so that he can be trotted out at her supporters' press conferences. (We know nothing about the boy's father, and whether he and his family have any say in the boy's whereabouts, or whether he is even alive.)

Arellano has chosen to be an advocate rather than a mother, and for her son to be a prop rather than a kid. And that makes all the rhetoric about family unity a little hard to swallow. Yes, it is a tragedy that our immigration laws can divide families, but it's not immigration law that's to blame for what's happened to hers.

Immigration-reform supporters (and I count myself among them) need a new cause celebre. Because Arellano isn't helping them one bit.

The scourge of mansionization is not new. As the Preacher states: "There is nothing new under the sun." Those with more money have always tried to lord it over their more modest neighbors. Thus it was in 9th Century A.D. in the Byzantine Empire.

The Emperor Theophilus would appear on horseback every week before a given church, rendering justice so fair and equitable that they passed into legend. This is taken from "Byzantine Portraits," by C. Diehl

One day when the Emperor appeared, a poor woman threw herself at his feet in tears, complaining that all light and air had been shut off from her house by a huge and sumptuous new palace which a high official of the police was building next door.

Chances are it could be James Brown. The Godfather of Soul and the hardest working man in reproduction named six children in his will, but since Brown died three people have confirmed through DNA tests that he's their daddy. Three so far, that is, because the 6-year-old kid of Brown fourth wife/maybe-not wife was excluded from the will and still hasn't been tested.

Mayor Villaraigosa Took The lazy Way Out in Scrapping Hunt for Fire Department Chief

Douglas L. Barry is a pleasant, well-meaning person but he is the wrong fit as permanent chief. He is an insider who has been part of the very system that desperately screams for a top to bottom shake-up. His appointment won’t settle the mountainous lawsuits, the loads of complaints of harassment and racial and gender bias in the department that the city and taxpayers are saddled with.

The crying need is for a permanent chief who can and will say that harassment and bias won't be tolerated, and mean what he or she says. That chief can only come from the outside.

Villaraigosa should have done what former Mayor James Hahn did when he replaced LAPD Chief Bernard Parks, a consummate insider. He went outside the department and brought in William Bratton. He didn't have any good old boy insider baggage and could look at the department with fresh eyes. Bratton's been a good fit for the LAPD.

But it's really no surprise that Villaraigosa took the easy way out with Barry. It would take a real, hands on, personal involvement by him in the selection process. That means more than dumping the selection job on staff . It meant him scouring the country talking to officials in other cities, identifying potential candidates, and personally interviewing them, meticulously scrutinizing their performance record, and sounding out those that they managed to get a feel for their management style and whether they're really pardon the pun the man or woman who can put out the fires in the department. That required behind the scenes sweat, and toil--not showy press conferences. And we all know that that's not Tony's style.

The challenge for Villaraigosa is still the same and that's to make the creation of a functional workplace not a goal but a fact within the Los Angeles Fire Department. The appointment of Barry will not accomplish that.

At least that's the upshot of the latest AP-Ipsos poll, which finds that, as a whole, Americans don't read much, and that conservatives read even less than liberals do:

The AP-Ipsos poll found 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book within the past year, compared with 34 percent of conservatives.

Among those who had read at least one book, liberals typically read nine books in the year, with half reading more than that and half less. Conservatives typically read eight, moderates five.

By slightly wider margins, Democrats tended to read more books than Republicans and independents. There were no differences by political party in the percentage of those who said they had not read at least one book.

This study reminds me of another, from back in June, which found that liberals also watch a lot more TV than conservatives do:

For instance, heavy TV viewers proved far more likely to agree with the statement “the government needs to get bigger” than were light viewers (26% to 12%). They were also more likely to endorse the idea that “government should be responsible for providing retirement benefits for everyone” (64% to 43%), much more likely to declare themselves “pro choice” on abortion (57% to 43%), more likely to back “a government run health system” (63% to 43%), and much less likely to attend church “at least weekly” (28% to 47%).

The way, I see it, we can draw one of two conclusions from these studies:

1. Liberals are more intellectually curious than conservatives, and like to seek out lots of information in various forms.

or:

2. Liberals have lots of free time on their hands.

All I could think of was that "Apocalypse Now" quote upon reading this story:

"An 86-year-old Jewish surfing guru from Hawaii is bringing good vibrations to the impoverished Gaza Strip.

Dorian Paskowitz, a retired doctor who has been surfing for 75 years, donated 12 surfboards to Gaza's small surfing community on Tuesday in a novel gesture to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians."

It's a sweet gesture, but I shudder to see the latest Hamas innovation: Suicide surfboards!

If you're a dwarf, beware the dangerous combination of a vacuum cleaner, super glue, and male genetalia. Really.

I am a long time protester and advocate of civil disobedience. My disobedience has always been predicated on accepting the consequences of principled protest. When we protested against race prejudice in housing and sat in on private property, we were trying to put the law on trail and not evade the consequences of our actions. Right now Arellano is having to deal with the consequences of her stand and her trespass.

I will probably never get put into some president’s cabinet (unless it is post mortem in a jar), and my chances at the Supreme Court are slight. My sin is that I have employed illegal aliens. I have supported the sanctuary movement in the 60s, 70s and 80s. I have given sanctuary to illegal aliens and contributed food and money for their support.

I offered to shelter one woman and her family in my home if “Migra” came after her. It turned out not to be necessary. She moved to Canada, where ironically the winter was more merciless than Migra and she died that first season.

The reason for my law breaking and my discomfort with Elvira Arellano is the theory and practice of sanctuary. When I broke the law, it was to protect people whom I considered to be political refugees. Soft hearted liberal that I am, I too recognize a distinction between economic refugees and political escapes, who would be arrested, tried and even killed if they were returned to their homeland.

I was not willing to leave the fate of people whom I knew to the capricious and arbitrary policies of our government. If we all agree that our immigration policy is an incoherent mess—and I think we do—it is a paradigm of reasonableness when compared with our political refugee policies. Not even the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, stoned on magic mushrooms could come up with our Cuba policy. To wit: If you get to dry land, you can stay. If you are caught in water, you go back to Cuba. This is absolute. Caught standing ankle deep in a tide pool by Key West, you’re wet and therefore sent to Cuba, where we have every reason, even beyond our propaganda, to believe that life will be worse for them than before they left. This is cruel, stupid and irrational.

In the 70s, there were many political refugees from El Salvador and Nicaragua. While the hard left was no joy, the rightist regimes and rebels our government supported persecuted and disappeared suspected leftists. Grounds for suspicion included being educated and belonging to a union.

People in Poland and France broke the law in hiding members of my family during the Holocaust. They risked their lives and the lives of their children to do what they thought was right. I believed I could do no less. No, we were not and are not Nazis; our government was not going to kill them. Sending them back, as FDR sent back the St. Louis, a passenger ship laden with Jews trying to escape, seemed however morally unacceptable.

City Attorney Rocky Deladillo's Office has dismissed the motion against admitted pedophile Jack McClellan for violating a court order and getting too close to minors. According to Delgadillo's office, the order didn't adhere to state statutes, and as such is unenforceable and void.

Bottom line: Jack McClellan was freed this morning from the county jail.

Parents be warned.

Guess there is something to that old saw "starve a cold, feed a fever."

Yeah, scientists say there is evidence that the cold virus can cause fatness. (Or is it that with our sinus blocked we lose our sense of taste and try to compensate by shoving more and more in? Could be worth a study)

I can't help but be skeptical of this. I've no doubt the researchers chonicled their evidence correctly, I'm just not sure they came to the true conclusion yet. Science isn't always an exact science.

Anyhow, it doesn't really matter because there already is a cure. And it's super cheap:

''The cause for obesity in everyone is the same,'' said Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. ''You eat more calories than you burn up; You can't get away from that basic law of physics.''

... in the lede of my column today. Yes, he sits upright on his butt like that, like a person. A co-worker once commented that he needed a pair of tighty whities, bag of Funyuns and can of Coors to complete the look.

"When families are torn apart, our communities are torn apart," Villaraigosa said about the deportation of Elvira Arellano from Los Angeles.

Does that mean L.A. is torn apart?

Mayor Villaraigosa's people really should be vetting his public comments for hypocrisies such as this -- at least until people forget that he once had a wife and some cute kids before he ran off with the anchorwoman.

L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa points to the Elvira Arellano deportation as one more reason for comprehensive immigration reform. "Until we resolve the status of the estimated 12 million undocumented people living and working in the United States by giving them some meaningful pathway to citizenship," Villaraigosa said in a statement, "families will continue to be torn apart."

He's right on that front. As the Daily News observes in an editorial today:

It is outrageous that we maintain an immigration system that encourages an underground existence for millions, that can divide families, and is incapable of keeping tabs on who enters the country and why. It is horrific that illegal immigrants, with a little fraud, easily can get jobs at airports that could compromise security -- and even then not be deported.

Above all, it is bizarre that we have laws that are only enforced -- that, indeed, only can be enforced -- when those breaking them do so on national television.

But, as we note in the editorial, it's hard to feel to sorry for Arellano. She created her own mess:

Arellano, who showed contempt for American law and a cavalier disregard for her own son's well-being, may not be a very sympathetic critic of the U.S. immigration system. Her sense of entitlement -- the suggestion that America ought to change its laws so that she would no longer need to break them -- has likely done more harm to her cause than good.

There's a fine balance here. Many immigration reformers, like Villaraigosa, want to seize on the tragedy of Arellano's situation to call for reform, while ignoring her culpability in manufacturing that tragedy. Immigration restrictionists, on the other hand, like to point to the excesses of this one woman as somehow an argument against reform per se. The truth, it seems, lies somewhere in the middle: Arellano is no victim, but her story nonetheless points to the mess that is the current U.S. immigration system, and the dire need for its reform.

Soon to be former Atlanta Falcons star quarterback Michael Vick never had a chance. The instant word publicly leaked out that he'd be slapped with an indictment by the feds, he could kiss his football cleats good-bye. The indictment was just a formality. Those good government high school civics courses feed us the myth of the little Constitutional admonition innocent until proven guilty. But Vick was tried, convicted and sentenced in the only court that counts in the big money world of sports and celebrity hood, and that's the court of public opinion.

As celebrity athletes go, even the deal that federal prosecutors offered Vick is anything but generous. He won't wear an ankle bracelet, be allowed to tool around his estate under house watch, and he won't get a walk around the street probation stint. He'll do time, and, it may not be in a cushy country club fed prison. Prosecutors tipped that when they said they'd make an object lesson of him that animal abuse won't be tolerated and will be severely punished. That of course, is bluster, the breeding, training and even killing of dog gladiators won't grind to a halt, the dozens of magazines that prep the "sport" will continue to do brisk sales, and thousands will continue to toss hefty cash into the ring at the dog matches. Vick will just be a bare footnote to all of that.

However, he is an object lesson but for a far different reason than what the prosecutors had in mind. More often than not, celebs and sports superstars, even black ones, get cut a lot of slack for their boorish, stupid, arrogant acts and misdeeds, and in some cases even criminal behavior. They are after all the repository of the fantasies and delusions of a public and advertisers, sportswriters, and TV executives that are in desperate need of vicarious escape, titillation, excitement and profits. The sports hero fulfills all of that. He or she seduces, strokes, and comforts those fantasies. They are expected to operate above the fray of human problems, and at the same time raise society's expectation of what's good and pure. He or she is rewarded handsomely for what he or she does as a fantasy filler, not for who the often terribly flawed person they actually are. That's a false, phony, and horrible burden to dump on anyone.

Should we feel pity for Michael Vick? Yes and No. No. He did the crime and as the old cliché goes he should do the time. He'll still have what the average Joe and Jane that yelled their lungs off for him on the field won't have and that's memories of the adulation he received from a fawning public, sports writers, and his mega buck contract and lucrative endorsement deals.

Yes. Vick is yet another reminder that sports icons are the fragile creations of an indulgent sports crazed, hero worshipping, and celebrity idolatrous public. When they take a tumble from their lofty perch, those same fans, sportswriters, and league officials that cheered and back-patted their idols turn vicious and unforgiving. They can never cobble the broken pieces of their name and reputation back together again. Vick in the end waved the ugly issues of wealth, race, celebrity hype, fan idolatry, and animal cruelty in the public's face. Poor Vick, Poor Us.

Javaid Iqbal is just about as cute as it gets. He’s seven years old and lives in England. His family is educated and cultured; his father is a medical doctor. So the headline in the English newspaper, The Guardian, about stopping a seven year old who is trying to get to Disney World, seems at first blush to bespeak the absurdity of our American paranoia.

Javaid is having a rough incarnation because he shares a name with someone on the no-fly list and he has dark skin and a plausibly Muslim sounding name. It does not help that his folks came to England from Saudi Arabia. Still being stopped at every airport and detained for further security does seem crazy. He is, after all, only a kid.

But this issue is not as self-evidently absurd as we would wish. Children have been used—misused and sacrificed for the cause, the cause of Hamas, of Fatah and, of course, Al Qaeda. It is not safe to assume the non-combatant status of women, children, infants and the elderly.

Yes, our no-fly list is inefficient and out of date. Yes, checking kids for “flying while brown,” seems intuitively to be both wrong and crazy. Consider however how crazy our world is that it has come to this. Consider the crazy passions, and not just among Muslims, that cause some to believe that our goals are so pure and holy that we can, we should, hell, We Must! win by any means necessary.

The madness is not so much in our methods as in our world. Abortion doctors are murdered in the name of life. A contract is put out on a medical researcher who experiments with animals. An Imam pronounces a death penalty fatwa on an author. A local Christian preacher urges his congregation to pray for the death of ACLU members and the IRS agents. People fanatically dedicated to the ecology set terrorist fires! There are so many people so sure in their cause and so completely free of reason, compassion or irony.

Too many visible leaders in Islam call for the destruction of the west and the conversion or destruction of Christians and Jews. All wars sacrifice children, but usually not below a certain age. These are different times, different enemies and different rules of engagement.

Young Javaid was certainly traumatized by his experience in the USA. He may not want to come back, or he might want to come back as a martyr—after this kind of unkind treatment. But what are we to do? This is neither an excuse nor an indictment. It is a real and serious question—a matter and death. This is a damned if you do and dead if you don’t kind of conundrum.

Two weeks ago, Bridget wrote a post and a column likening the situation with the Korean missionaries trapped in Afghanistan to the upcoming Rambo film. To quote our intrepid blogstress herself:

“In the upcoming fourth installment of the ‘Rambo’ franchise, Sylvester Stallone is shacked up in Bangkok when a group of Christian missionaries comes through, wanting to use his boat to get to Burma. ‘Burma’s a war zone,’ John Rambo lectures them in his signature warble. He initially refuses, the missionaries chide him for being insensitive, and he later relents under pressure, taking the lot up the river.

As expected, the missionaries fall victim to the bad guys (evidently Burmese villains are still acceptable onscreen), and endure torture and whatnot. And who’s expected to save them? Why, the guy who warned them it was so dangerous in the first place.

And now, Bridget reports that next week she will be traveling into the heart of the hurricane territory for a cheap, off-peak vacation. This gives me visions of the next next Rambo installment, "When Rambo Met Bridget." I can see it now (with apologies to Ms. Johnson):

“In the upcoming fourth installment of the ‘Rambo’ franchise, Sylvester Stallone is shacked up in Miami when a group of underpaid journalists comes through, wanting to use his boat to get to Puerto Rico. ‘Puerto Rico’s a hurricane zone,’ John Rambo lectures them in his signature warble. He initially refuses, the journalists chide him for being insensitive, and he later relents under pressure, taking the lot to the land of white beaches and colorful daiquiris.

As expected, the journalists fall victim to Mother Nature (evidently the effects of global warming are still acceptable onscreen), and endure torrential rains and whatnot. And who’s expected to save them? Why, the guy who warned them it was so dangerous in the first place.

Rambo goes in, battles the elements, and saves the would-be partying journalists from 100 mph winds and general mayhem! Hey, I'd pay $10 to see that film -- who wouldn't?

Our sources in Sacramento report that there is a very good chance we'll have a budget approved by day's end. Keep your eyes on dailynews.com for breaking news.

U.S. Deaths Confirmed By The DoD: 3703

Reported U.S. Deaths Pending DoD Confirmation: 4

Total: 3707

We often hear that America needs its steady stream of immigrants because they "do the jobs Americans won't do." According to Naush Boghossian in today's Daily News, one of those jobs is ... teaching in the LAUSD:

Magno is one of 115 teachers recruited by the LAUSD from abroad for hard-to-fill positions of math, science and special education - comprising about one-seventh of the new hires for the 2007-08 school year.

While LAUSD has recruited from other countries for well over 20 years, this year's is the largest group ever from abroad ...

From the Associated Press:

"The Web video of a scantily clad actress pledging her affection for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been a hit online, but not in his own home. Obama says his 6-year-old daughter Sasha has noticed news coverage of the video.

'Sasha asked Mommy about it,' Obama said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press. 'She said, "Daddy already has a wife" or something like that.'

...Sen. Obama, D-Ill., said he knows the video was meant to be lighthearted, but he wasn't smiling when asked about it in the interview.

'I guess it's too much to ask, but you do wish people would think about what impact their actions have on kids and families,' Obama said during the interview, held in the den of a supporter who just had hosted a campaign stop on her front lawn attended by about 120 people.

'This is part of the process of politics that can be difficult, (that) is making sure that your kids and your wife and your family are insulated from both things like this and what I suspect will be at some point some negative campaigning,' Obama said."

Oh please. You know he loves it. He'd have to pay millions for that kind of airwave publicity. And unless his family is afraid that Obama is really going to run off with Obama Girl, why is the YouTube vid something that his wife needs to be "insulated" from?

Don't mean to be vulgar, but that is, reportedly, the verbatim insult hurled by Italian soccer player Marco Materazzi to French star Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 World Cup -- prompting the infamous head-butt incident:

Soccer, in case you've forgotten, is the sophisticated, cosmopolitan sport that Americans are too dumb to appreciate. (Although, in fairness, it should be noted that Zidane isn't electrocuting dogs in his backyard.)

CNN is reporting that NFL star / alleged dog-torturer Michael Vick has agreed to a plea that will include jail time.

"After consulting with his family over the weekend," Michael Vick asks that I announce today that he has reached an agreement with federal prosecutors regarding the charges pending against him," lead defense attorney Billy Martin said in a statement.

"Mr. Vick has agreed to enter a plea of guilty to those charges and to accept full responsibility for his action and the mistakes he has made. Michael wishes to apologize again to everyone who has been hurt by this matter," Martin's statement said.

At 27, Vick should still have some playing time left in him after he's free -- assuming he can rehab his public image by then. Expect the following to come after he officially accepts his plea:

1. A strongly worded apology.

2. "Educational" meetings with various humane groups.

3. Multiple large checks cut out to PETA, the ASPCA, etc.

Perhaps if he learns from his past, something good come out of this yet.

Answer: The Democrats. And the Republicans.

At last that's my reading of the exchange between Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-L.A.) and State Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster) that appeared in Sunday's Daily News.

Nunez begins by bemoaning all the good programs that are going unfunded because of the stalemate in Sacramento (while working in a snarky, pro-abortion quip):

Last week, I visited the Birthing Project in Sacramento, a health clinic a few blocks away from the state Capitol. The Birthing Project staff works very hard on behalf of its clients to increase healthy pregnancies and successful births - something you'd think typically anti-choice Republican politicians would rhapsodize about.

Instead, the Birthing Project and health clinics like it throughout California - which treat newborns and seniors and everyone in between - are in danger of closing their doors or eliminating services because a handful of Republican state senators are refusing to provide one additional vote to pass the state budget.

With Senate Republicans holding out on the budget, state payments to keep clinics like the Birthing Project open stopped weeks ago.

But Nunez fails to mention that it's the Democrats who are keeping these programs from getting their money. As Runner explains:

Because there are some vital services that depend on passage of the budget, the Senate Republicans asked Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, while in session on Aug. 1, to take immediate action to provide contingency funding to ensure uninterrupted delivery of essential services, including child care and Medi-Cal payments. AB 207 would have authorized $10 billion to pay for government services from July 1 to Aug. 20. Unfortunately, the request to hear Assembly Bill 207 (Villines) was denied. The bill would have guaranteed that the state's bills for these vital services were paid while budget negotiations continue - but it never got a chance.

Which is to say, the Democrats are using these programs (and the people they serve) as human shields in the budget fight. Plus, as Runner notes, the budget that the Dems and Gov. Schwarzenegger want passed is not truly blanced:

The current budget proposal carries a $700 million deficit with a projected $5 billion deficit next June.....

Senate Republicans truly believe taxpayers support a balanced budget - assuming they're presented with the facts. We think taxpayers understand that legislators have a fiduciary responsibility to balance the budget, which means we only spend what we have in the bank. We believe that most Californians understand that borrowing money now will only create insurmountable problems for the future.

Of course, Nunez rightly points out that the Republicans' concern for a balanced budget seems to be new-found. The GOP was happy to pass an unbalanced budget last year -- on the eve of election season:

Some of the Senate Republican holdouts did vote for last year's budget, which is interesting, given that the reserve last year was only $2.1 billion, compared to the $3.4 billion reserve in this budget. Last year's budget had a "structural deficit" (the amount expenditures for a year exceed revenues collected in that year) of $6.9 billion compared to $699 million in this budget. Last year's budget increased spending 9.2 percent, while revenues were projected to grow only 1.7 percent. This budget does the opposite, limiting expenditure growth to 1.3 percent while revenues are projected to grow 6 percent.

Nunez has a good point here: Republican fiscal prudence seems to be more about Republican self-interest. But as much as he and Runner both like to point the finger at the other party, their own parties share no small part of the blame.

A pox on both their houses, I say. How about you?

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner visited Iraq on Sunday, and said, and I quote:

"We are ready to be useful"

Yesterday I wrote, "One can guess that they were also hoping for a dramatic, camera-captured confrontation with immigration officials, which wasn't going to happen." I didn't think ICE would play into the publicity circus on this one, but they arrested Elvira Arellano today while she gave a press conference outside a church on Olvera Street.

In response to Dante's question, her son is 8 years old; she had him after crossing illegally into the U.S. the second time.

UPDATE: And she's been deported. That was quick.

Elvira Arellano, the poster child for the sanctuary movement that vows to shield illegal immigrants from possible deportation proceedings, left the Chicago church where she's captured media attention for a year and came to Los Angeles today, bolding stating that she wasn't afraid of being arrested and was going to campaign for immigration reform. One can guess that they were also hoping for a dramatic, camera-captured confrontation with immigration officials, which wasn't going to happen.

Now, this is a case where emotion runs high -- Arellano claims that she'd be separated from her son, who was born in the U.S. and therefore has citizenship here, if deported. The U.S. is cast as the big, bad government determined to rip children out of their parents' arms in its enforcement of immigration laws that are no secret to anyone. But to appropriately analyze this case -- sans emotion -- one has to step back and look at the facts:

Elvira Arellano first came to the U.S. illegally in 1997, was deported, and came back days later. Break a law, turn right around and do it again. So it was clear to her that there were consequences in not seeking legal residency.

In 2000, she used a false Social Security number to get a job cleaning planes at O'Hare airport in Chicago. It doesn't matter what country they come from -- do we want anybody with a fraudulent Social Security card working at an airport? That's just basic, no-brainer national security. And another lawbreaking strike.

Arellano would not have to be separated from her son. The two could move back to Mexico, and the son's citizenship could be a strong factor in her application for legal residency in the U.S. She could set the example for her son that, even though she'd taken lawless actions in the past, she would now take responsibility for those actions, respect the laws of the country of his birth, and come back to the U.S. the right way.

That's the problem with the sanctuary movement -- it makes for good, emotional sound bites, but usually the backstory isn't so black and white.

In March, the Afghan government traded Taliban prisoners for an Italian journalist. Met with condemnation around the globe, Afghanistan was warned that this would only embolden the terrorists to snatch more foreigners. Last month the South Korean evangelical group was taken hostage as they were taking a charter bus from Kabul to Kandahar, basically sitting ducks on the highway. South Korea has tried to get the Afghan government to release more Taliban to get their people back, but the Afghan government has duly refused. Now an amazingly bold attack -- four gunman seizing a German aid worker in a Kabul fast-food joint (how do you say Big Mac in Pashtu?) in the middle of the day, strategically positioning themselves inside and outside the restaurant, the one inside even ordering a pizza (we're assuming not ham and sausage).

Now even though the Taliban currently hold a German man, the German government has not demanded the Afghan government bend over for terrorists and meet their demands. So the Bar BQ Tonight terrorists probably picked the wrong nationality to kidnap this time around. And there's a chance that the aid worker was snatched by criminals who just want money. But as the Taliban have also declared that negotiations regarding the 19 remaining South Korean hostages are over, my guess is that they will kill a few more to try to stir the international-furor pot, and try to freak out the German citizenry enough that they heighten pressure on the government to give in to terrorist demands as well.

So after reading today's story in the Daily News about how congressmen are lagging behind other politicos in jumping on the social-networking bandwagon, I finally broke down and created my own MySpace profile. Granted, this is the lair of every perv in town and a whole host of freaks including many of the presidential candidates. But soon after I signed up last night, I found my best friend from high school. MySpace rocks, pervs and all!

And if dangling cats by the tail on a kids' show isn't bad enough, Al-Aqsa TV character Nahoul then teases lions with his big bumblebee butt. How does Michael Vick feel about jihad? Seems like he'd find a good home in Gaza.

The Chatter level is very high, and something big seems to be in the works. There is every indication that we are being prepared for an attack on Iran. Using the Bush Doctrine of allowing no nation to train or harbor terrorists and the prohibition on giving material support to terrorists, the administration is in a seemingly strong position to go to war—based on its own criteria.

There are however some problems. The main challenge is that there is little likelihood that bombing Iranian training camps or nuclear facilities would actually advance our interests; though it is certainly in our interests for the Iranians not to develop a militarily useful nuclear capacity.

Hawks within the administration hold that Iran is training fighters who are killing Americans. This is certainly true. They also allege that Iran is supplying weapons, particularly the so-called improvised explosive devices. These bombs are no longer improvised, but are clearly manufactured, and they have Iran’s fingerprints all over them.

I am not at all interested in defending Iran. Its regime is as dangerous, fanatical and hostile as any in the world. Its leader is in a dead-heat for rotten maniacal despot with Kim Jong Il, Mugabe and Hugo Chavez. However, Iran is not the only country helping, equipping and allowing terrorists to be trained. While Iran supports Iraqi Shiites who are fighting us and infiltrates native Iranian fighters, so too do some of our “friends.”

Our good friends the Saudis are letting terrorists exit their nation and enter Iraq as insurgents and suicide bombers. Saudis are allowing financial transactions to help maintain the terrorist efforts. Saudis are the primary source of Al Qaeda members in Iraq. *
(* It is important to try to differentiate between the group Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is mostly made up of Sunni Arabs from Iraq and, if you will, “Classic Al Qaeda,” the direct descendents of those who committed 9-11, who are mostly Saudi, with some Egyptians and Libyans.) Our political leaders conflate the two, whether by ignorance or design I can’t say.

Saudi Arabia has an interest in Iraq not devolving into the Shiite state it is on the road to becoming. They are involved in giving aid and comfort to the insurgents who are actually responsible for more American deaths than the agents of Iran.

We are in the middle of a civil war not only in Iraq between the Sunni and Shiite but also in the region. As in the old Cold War when America and the Soviet Union fought each other using surrogates throughout the world, Saudi Arabia and Iran are in a death struggle over leadership in the Muslim World and control of the Middle East.

Before opening another front in this war that is already going so badly, we might want to consider if our immediate goals with Iran are achievable by military means. We should consider how this would catalyze the two major Shiite groups in Iraq to open their own open front(s) against us and if this would invite the open participation of Saudi Arabia. This may be a better time to try to achieve our completely reasonable goals by diplomacy and coalition building.

One of our Daily News staffers recently left on a vacation to Hawaii, just before Tropical Storm Flossie visited the islands. And in a little over a week I will be visiting Puerto Rico, soon after hurricane season got off to a rip-roaring start in the Caribbean with Hurricane Dean. Rain or more rain, I'll be shooting video that you'll be able to see here at the Daily News site. With any luck, I'll be able to hang onto a pole and fly at 90 degrees while screaming like Geraldo Rivera. At the Daily News, we care about being there for tropical weather calamities -- as well as getting cheaper travel rates for booking our trips during storm season!

The AP reports about how some Indian tribes are selling "membership" to illegal immigrants here in the U.S., with the implicit promise that tribal affiiliation will make them legal:

For prices starting at $50, two nonfederally recognized Indian tribes are offering membership to thousands of illegal immigrants, claiming they can achieve legal status by joining the groups.

But immigration authorities insist becoming a tribe member gives no protection against being deported. And immigration advocates condemn the practice, saying it defrauds immigrants of money and gives them false hope.

"You can't just decide to become a member of a tribe and all of a sudden legalize your status," said Marilu Cabrera, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

OK, so maybe buying your way into a tribe can't get you a green card. But can it get you a casino?

More West Nile cases, including an older Valley guy who died earlier this month.

Three more human cases of West Nile virus were confirmed today by Los Angeles County health officials, including a San Fernando Valley man who died from a variety of ailments. The man, who was in his 80s, had multiple chronic health problems and county officials said they could not determine the extent to which West Nile contributed to his death. The man died earlier this month following a brief hospitalization. “It is not possible to determine whether the virus was the cause of the man’s death or whether there were multiple causes,” said John Schunhoff, chief deputy director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Dear Jonathan,

I've heard it said that heroes are ordinary people who do extraordinary things -- a definition I think we both can agree on. And I can only strive for the optimism of Anne Frank, who, surrounded by evil, could maintain her sense in the goodness of man. What a soul!

I don't disagree: Our hearts are made for love, and we are ordered toward the good. But we are also fallen, and this is what can make basic human decency -- let alone extreme acts of heroism -- a challenge. Still, recognizing our human weaknesses need not be a cause for cynicism or despair, but a reason for faith for hope. As St. Paul put it, "for when I am weak, then I am strong."

Best,
Chris

A little too late for her of course. CNS just moved a story that four people were arrested for the killing of that Pico Rivera woman earlier this week when she treid to chase away a tagger.

Four people were charged with murder and other felonies today in connection with the shooting death of a woman who interrupted a tagger in Pico Rivera. Angel Chris Rojas, 16, was charged as an adult and is alleged to be the person who shot 58-year-old Maria Hicks at 10 p.m. Aug. 10.

We all need to stand up in our neighborhoods and show the punks they can't push around. It's scary, I know. But its the only way that this kind of thing will stop.

Dear Chris
Well, we slouch onto theological ground as soon as you bring up the Fall and the sinful nature of man (and some women too). While we agree that disobedience is certainly deep in our nature, the Jewish and Christian traditions are different here.

When Adam and Eve eat the fruit (it doesn’t specify apple), they immediately become ashamed and try to hide from G-d, who calls out, “Where are you?” The Jewish position has pretty much been (No Jewish position is ever agreed upon 100%) that this question could not have come from G-d not knowing. I mean, what kind of all knowing G-d can’t find two naked people hiding in the bushes? The question was meant to call for a response from Adam and Eve. In other words, we should ask ourselves where we are, what we’re doing and if this is really the best we can do.

The normative Christian position is different. The Fall is a theological event and a mark of alienation between G-d and sinner. In the words of that great old song from Paint Your Wagon, “Now I’m lost, so guldurn lost, not even G-d can find me.”

Continuing my journey through Latin American media today, I found a story in a Peruvian paper about how quickly footage of the 8-magnitude earthquake made it to YouTube. The one below seems to have been shot by a regular person, and just to give you a sense of the scale of this earthquake, the shaking in this video was shot in the Lima suburb of Miraflores -- more than 100 miles north of the epicenter. Can you just imagine what it felt like at Ground Zero. I hope we in SoCal never do.

On a more X-Files note, everyone's now talking abou those strange lights that appeared over Peru in the middle of the shaking. War of the Worlds, anyone?

In my discourse with Jonathan about heroes, I remarked that they are not "a dime a dozen" I stand by that comment, but apparently there are a lot of them. So many, in fact, that our government can't keep up with them all. From the Houston Chronicle:

Korean War veteran Nyles Reed, 75, opened an envelope last week to learn a Purple Heart had been approved for injuries he sustained as a Marine on June 22, 1952.

But there was no medal. Just a certificate and a form stating that the medal was "out of stock."...

The form letter from the Navy Personnel Command told Reed he could wait 90 days and resubmit an application, or buy his own medal.

After waiting 55 years, however, Reed decided to pay $42 for his own Purple Heart and accompanying ribbon — plus state sales taxes — at a military surplus store.

The heroism of our vets is matched only by the bureaucratic indifference of the federal government: Please send in $42, plus six proofs-of-purchase to get your Purple Heart. (Spilled blood, apparently, only covers half the cost.)

A policy center which sends me email is circulating a story supposedly from the Guardian in England (though it's no longer online if it ever existed) that Rigoberta Menchu, Nobel Peace prize winner currently running for president in Guatemala, was mistaken for an indigenous beggar woman by the staff of a 5-star hotel in Cancun. She was there for a conference on potable water earlier this week.

Here's the emailed story in part.

Staff at Cancun's five-star Hotel Coral Beach appear to have assumed this was another street vendor or beggar, so without asking questions they ordered her to leave. Except the woman was Rigoberta Menchu, the Nobel peace prizewinner, Unesco goodwill ambassador, Guatemalan presidential candidate and figurehead for indigenous rights.

The attempted eviction, an example of discrimination against indigenous people common in central and south America, backfired when other guests recognised Ms Menchu, and interceded on her behalf.

But is it true? Menchu is quoted in a Yucatan paper saying it is not.

“Yo no me enteré de nada. Si en algún lugar me aman es en México, por lo que voy a pedir a este medio (la radio que dio la noticia) que pida una disculpa pública. Es una noticia falsa que me está causando daño”, dijo la laureada dirigente indígena guatemalteca.

She goes on to say that if they had harrassed her she would have raised bloody hell and that she doesn' t need a "Rambo" to protect her.

So which version is true? My money's on the Mexican version. It's actually a piece of journalism rather than the second-hand rumour style of the purported Guardian piece.

Dear Jonathan,

Thank you for your confidence in my "good character" -- may it prove to be well-founded!

While I agree with you that the instinct for courage is present in every one of us (call it Natural Law), I wouldn't be so sure of the character (call it The Fall). I remember in college attending a rape-awareness/prevention meeting, where women were advised that, should they get raped, they should shout "fire!" The reason: People show up to watch fires; they're less inclined to put themselves between a rapist and his victim.

How often do we hear stories about crimes or accident scenes where victims screamed for help, but none of the passers-by stopped to lend a hand? How often are injustices perpetrated simply because no one will speak out against them? How many Germans were silent in the midst of the Holocaust, not because they were Nazis, but because they were (rightly) terrified of what would happen to them if they came to their own countrymen's defense?

There's a reason why we celebrate heroes, and it's not because they're a dime a dozen. It's because, when under the greatest pressure, they do what we all hope we would do, but which too often we do not. Please God, if I were in such a situation I would rise to the occasion, but I won't be so bold as to presume how I would react in circumstances unlike any I've ever experienced. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

And while we're all blessed with "better angels," it takes a tremendous act of faith, generosity and charity, to heed them.

Best,
Chris

PS: Feel free to prove me wrong. I can't imagine a debate I would rather lose than this one!

There seems to be a political resurrection taking place in Virginia, where George Allen is reportedly mulling another run for office ...

Dear Chris,

Finally a real feud, and it's over love!

You wrote that, “We are all more virtuous in our minds than we are in our hearts.” I don’t agree. I think our virtue is from a deeper place. Our minds tell us to be cautious and weigh the risks. Our minds wonder at what we would do when faced danger. But our hearts call on us to act—regardless of risk.

My argument is that this is not simply training or self-selection but instinct and character. How many times we see news stories of people throwing themselves into the sea to rescue children? What doubt do you really have that you would instantly put yourself between a mad dog, a runaway car or a machete wielding monster and your own precious children? I will wager that you have no real doubt.

It is this instinct deep in the hardwiring of human decency that makes courage the default action and cowardice the exception. Hamlet said that, “the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.” Our minds may make us hesitate to act bravely and generously, but our instincts, or if you will “our better angels,” move us to generosity of spirit and flesh.

With every confidence in your good character,
Jonathan

Kudos to Jonathan for his beautiful post on the nature of human love and self-sacrifice. It's a good companion to my post earlier this week about St. Maximilian Kolbe, who gave his life for a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz. And like my post, Jonathan's also makes reference to John 15:13: "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends."

I've always liked to think that, if presented with that life-or-death moment, I would surrender myself to that "no greater love." I like to think that, if called, I would risk my life as those miners did in Utah, or I would be as selfless toward my mellow man as was Fr. Kolbe. But would I really?

We are all more virtuous in our minds than we are in our hearts. And while I've never been presented with one of those moments where someone else's life depended on my bravery, how many times have I failed to make much smaller sacrifices on others' behalf? How many times have I been "too busy" to talk to someone who needed companionship, "too stretched" to donate to a worthy cause, too distracted to even see very real human needs in my midst?

Just this morning I got an e-mail from my friend Mariella, a Peruvian national living here in L.A. Naturally, she was quite concerned for family and loved ones back in Peru, which has been devastated by a magnitude-8 earthquake. She provided links to contribute to Direct Relief International's efforts in Peru. Would I skip the e-mail and go on to another, or would I follow those links and lend some support?

Most of us, fortunately, are never called upon to make the BIG sacrifice. But the opportunities for small sacrifices are all around us all the time. These are chances to love, if only we take of them.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
(John 15:13)

At least three miners perished last night trying to rescue the six miners still missing in Utah. People are asking why? Why send men into dangerous places to find others who might not be, odds are probably aren’t, alive? Does this, they wonder, make any kind of sense? Yes it does.

Throughout history we humans, for all our wars and barbarism, have also acted with commendable courage and admirable selflessness. Often at the cost of our own lives. I know that it may not make logical sense for a soldier to risk losing his, and now her, life to pull the body of a dead comrade off the battlefield. But we must. Abandoning them goes against our innate generosity and sense of connection with the men and women with whom we work and risk and struggle. We do not, cannot, accept that even though they may be dead, our obligation to them is over. Our Marines take pride, and it is part of their code, to leave no fallen comrade on the battlefield.

Soldiers have been known to lose their lives in order to pick up our flag. Are they dying for a piece of cloth—or is there something greater, something truly grand here? They are not throwing their lives away for cloth. The flag is a symbol of more than even our nation, though it surely is that. More deeply it is a contract we make with one another to honor the values that make this country what it is. We risk our lives not for glory but for honor—and that is quite different. We risk our lives not because life is cheap or expendable but because it is precious. That is the value in the gift of our commitment to one another.

Yes, it may sound like a paradox, but it is life’s preciousness that binds us in times of crisis to each other. Courage is not the absence of fear. The absence of fear, when danger looms, is denial. Courage is when we act despite our fear. It is when our love for each other is greater than our fear of death.

First responders are not crazy risk-takers. Police, firefighters, EMTs go into dangerous places knowing that they may not get out alive. They don’t go because of orders. They don’t go because they love the rush. They go because that is who they are. It is a matter of character far more than of training.

For all our myriad imperfections, our weaknesses of both flesh and spirit, we got here by learning to cooperate, to overcome animals that were bigger, faster and stronger. We hunted together and knew that some might not come back. We went to war for people, for family, for ideas and understood the possibility of self-sacrifice. Our willingness to go after trapped miners, wounded soldiers and people in burning buildings reveals the best in our nature. This is probably why we have come to this place in the order of things we have. This is why I expect humanity, as Faulkner said not merely to endure but to prevail.

Reporters Without Borders is selling this great T-shirt that, well, says it all. Sort of like this picture says it all:

I enjoyed visiting the journalism students this afternoon and discussing the finer points of writing commentary, how to build a network of sources and (shocking!) the secret life of newsrooms. Thanks for inviting me, and enjoy the rest of those innocent years before you turn into twisted (delightfully so, of course) journalists!

In case you missed it, the Daily News rightly editorialized today against the state's efforts to rake in some more cash by hiking taxes on "alcopops" -- the fruity-licious malt beverages, like Zima and Smirnoff Ice, popular among those with bad taste in drink. The state's excuse for the tax hike is that upping the price of these bevs by a few cents will stem youth drinking (because, you know, teens didn't even drink at all 15 years ago, before such drinks began to proliferate).

This is the lamest excuse for a tax hike to come down the pike in a long time. The news story about the decision is a veritable minefield of political absurdity:

Tax board member Bill Leonard said he opposed the decision because the flavored drinks have roughly the same alcohol content as beer, and there is no chemical difference between alcohol in distilled and malt beverages.

Here, here, Bill Leonard! There is no real difference between these drinks and beer and wine -- they have about the same alcohol level. So what's the justification for taxing a Mike's Hard Lemonade like it's Bacardi 151? The news story explains:

Tax board Chair Betty Yee said she accepted the appeals from youth groups and The Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog group, which argued that the so-called "alcopops" are flavored, packaged and marketed to appeal to young people.

"I think the overarching policy concern here was this is one element in dealing with underage drinking," Yee said in a telephone interview after the vote. The packaging and marketing are designed to "make it look like you're drinking something hip."

What, and beer doesn't try to market itself to look hip? Is there a reason anyone in the world drinks Coors Lite except to try to look hip?

Then there's the moment of truth:

The higher tax rate would bring the state an estimated extra $30 million to $40 million a year if consumption remains the same, said tax board spokeswoman Anita Gore.

Wait! I thought the purpose of the tax hike was to decrease consumption, but now the board is making projections based on static sales. So are we really trying to curb teen drinking ... or to profit off of it?

But of course, there's an even more important reason to oppose this tax hike, namely, the disparate impact it will have on the sexes. After all, no self-respecting man would ever buy a Zima.

I don't know about you, but I always thought that considering how much of my monthly mortgage payment was interest paid to Calabasas-based Countrywide and that it was equal to all the other homeowning borrowers, that the company would be not just flush, but seriously rolling in it. But news reports show the troubled company borrowed the money it lent to us. Even my mom coud have told them that was a house of cards waiting to fold:

Countrywide Financial Corp., the biggest U.S. mortgage lender, borrowed the entire $11.5 billion available in bank credit lines as the global financial crisis curbed access to short-term financing.

And guess who lent that money. We did, of course, with the money we collectively give them in various forms! Isn't the world of finance interesting?

Countrywide turned to the emergency loan, which it said was provided by a group of 40 banks, a day after Merrill Lynch & Co. raised the prospect of bankruptcy for the Calabasas, California- based lender. Australia's Rams Home Loans Group Ltd. and Canada's Coventree Inc. also sought emergency funding today.

There’s an arms race for my face. People, strangers, are coming after me with sharp blades—more and more all the time. No, this isn’t some paranoid delusion; it’s literally true. It’s also a metaphor for our society’s obsession with newer, bigger and, of course, more expensive.

When I was young, my first razor was a Gillette blue blade. This was a “safety razor,” as against the old straight-edged “cutthroats.” It featured one blade with two sides. A blade was good for usually one shave.

Then they came out with stainless steel blades. These lasted 7 to 10 shaves (at least on my heavy beard). The trade off was clear: I paid more but got more shaves—and as a bonus I didn’t have to change blades every day and risk slicing a finger.

Then some marketing genius came up with the one-sided double blade. Two sharp pieces of stainless steel scraped across my face at the same time. The original selling point was that somehow the first blade lifted the whiskers and the second blade cut them off at the root. This seemed highly illogical, since two sharp blades should each do the cutting. It seemed more likely to be redundancy than actual lifting. Still, it was clearly a piece of marketing genius and variations of the one-sided twin blade was king for two decades.

Our colleagues over at The Sausage Factory have linked to this amusing post by California Democratic Party operative Steve Maviglio. The upshot: Golden State Dems are fighting a state GOP plan to change the way California allocates electoral votes in presidential campaigns -- rather than having winner take all, each candidate would get a proportional take based on how many congressional districts he or she wins.

There's no faulting the Dems for wanting to fight this. The change would undoubtedly benefit the GOP, giving the Republican presidential candidate some portion of California's 55 electoral votes, possibly enough to make the difference in a tight race.

What amuses me, though, is that both sides act as though their position is rooted in principle, when really, they're all just looking out for their own partisan interests.

After all, it's not like the Republicans came up with this plan during the decades when the state consistently went Republican in presidential races. Nope, the old way suited them just fine during the Reagan years.

And it's not like the Dems have a passion for the winner-take-all Electoral College. They fumed and complained about it after 2000, and many have lined up in support of the "National Popular Vote" scheme, which would send all the state's electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote nationally. (Hey, if you want to make the presidential-election system more representative of popular will, wouldn't the GOP's district-by-district plan be an improvement?) Many party bigs also oppose Congressional redistricting, which would allow Californians to actually choose their members of Congress is competitive elections, but could jeopardize Nancy Pelosi's rule in the House.

Alas, don't look for consistency here from any of the political parties. And know that if the situation were reversed, and California were a GOP-majority state, the two sides would swap positions -- and self-righteous rhetoric -- in a heartbeat.

Just wanted to call attention to a letter in today's paper from one Patricia Lamoree of Granada Hills:

Exceptional bravery Re "6-year-old boy killed in cleaver attack" (Aug. 14):

What a courageous act by the 53-year-old woman who intervened in the savage attack on a mother and son by a demented man. It took exceptional bravery to risk her own life to help. She deserves public recognition for her outstanding act of heroism.

- Patricia Lamoree

Amen to that. There are several heroes in this story:

As the cleaver-wielding killer chased Sandra Ruiz into her quiet apartment complex, she screamed for her 6-year-old son to run.

Sev'n Molina never made it.

Apparently enraged over the boy playing video games, the man bellowed "Die! Die!" as he hacked at the child's head. When Ruiz stepped between them to save her dying son, the man turned the blade on her, forcing her to the ground and falling on top of her prone body.

Ruiz struggled to reach for Sev'n as her attacker chopped down, nearly severing her arm and hand, witnesses said.

A 53-year-old woman who lives nearby rushed out and fought with the man, sustaining a cut to the face before knocking the butcher's tool from his hands. Another man pounced on him and knocked him to the ground. The pair struggled with him for several minutes until Ventura County Sheriff's Department deputies arrived and shot the alleged killer with Tasers.

Sandra Ruiz is a brave, loving mom, and the two neighbors who risked their lives to help her are amazing. God bless them all -- especially in their agony over little Sev'n's death.

Hugo Chavez, as expected, has presented the "constitutional reforms" that could make him president for life as well as tighten government control to complete his Bolivarian wet dream:

"The self-styled revolutionary also called for ending the autonomy of Venezuela's Central Bank, which would give him access to billions of dollars of foreign reserves. He also proposed increasing the government's power to expropriate private property before getting a court's approval."

I nominate Hugo to inherit the name Turdblossom. Or just Turd.

We in the Southland can deeply sympathize with Peru this morning -- hit by a 2-minute, 7.9 magnitude quake that was epicentered 95 miles south-southeast of Lima. The USGS notes that the quake was at the convergence of two slippery tectonic plates. The death toll's at 337 and is expected to climb.

Dear Jonathan,

Well gee, you sure know how to ruin an antagonist's day -- with a thoughtful, unassailable response in which he finds nothing to disagree. Shucks!

As for your feud with John Carroll, all I can say is that my mother-in-law might have her own 2 cents to add to that controversy!

Best,
Chris

Here’s what L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina said at Monday’s Supervisor’s meeting on King Hospital, “Employees should be carefully screened before they are given jobs at other facilities.
We can't allow what has happened and the kind of poison that we've had at Martin Luther King Hospital to poison the rest of our health care system.''

If Molina had stopped at the bit about carefully screening King employees before transferring them she’d be on firm ground. After all, employers want the best and brightest, most competent, best trained and qualified employees they can find in their employ. But the good Supervisor couldn’t help herself and had to slander the King employees—all of them with the dig about them poisoning the system. Molina to my knowledge is not a trained nurse, physician, or medical practitioner, yet calling them poison—strong words—was tantamount to a blanket indictment of all the King employees.

Now keep in mind even King’s worst detractors among medical professionals have long commended the hospital and its component training facility Charles Drew Medical School for turning out some of the finest, professional interns, surgeons, GPs, and medical technicians around.

The CMS which ultimately flunked King never intimated in its voluminous critical surveys that all, most, or even many of King’s staff were shoddy and incompetent. As in all institutions and companies with huge staffs, the problems were created by a few employees. But “Dr./RN” Molina ignored that and wagged the finger at the entire King medical crew.

But then this is the same Molina that has chomped at the bit from the start of the King drama to close it. And never lifted a finger to do anything to improve it or help correct the cited deficiencies at the hospital. So there’s no surprise that she’d use CMS’s F report on King to get a last dig in at it, in this case, them, them being the generally hard working King staff.

“Dr.” Molina should publicly apologize and apologize now for her slander and slur. If one isn’t forthcoming, King supporters say they’ll publicly call her out on it at a King hospital roundtable on Saturday, August 18. Go to it!

Chris,
Nothing better than a good public feud; even better when it's internecine. I've been trying to get Jon Carroll of San Francisco Chronicle to feud with me for years over which of us has "the world's most perfect granddaughter." For the record, I do. In fact I have two of them: Roxie & Iris.

I buy your core argument. He is no more despicable than James the Craven Cajun Carville ( a low bar indeed) who smeared the women who told on Clinton. I dissed him at the time. But he is long gone from power and Rove still holds office. So, like the doves he'll hunt, he's in the free-fire zone as well as our FriendlyFire.

But you are right on a deeper level. There is something in Rove, as with James C, that I find personally offensive. I know that nations, and I guess leaders, are amoral. But I don't have to like it.

This is my soft-hearted (headed?) liberalism (I'll use Liberal, even if Hillary won't). Too many political advisors take no prisoners and their causes become more important than the people. They lose sight of our value and our values in winning at all costs. I believe we the people pay the price.

Cheers From the Liberal Side (but no fratricide this time)
Jonathan

Dear Jonathan,

I know that progressives who fail to make ritualistic denunciations of Karl Rove risk having their Good Liberal Seal of Approval revoked, but is it really necessary to follow PETA's lead and condemn the man for hunting doves?

For the record, I hold no great love for Karl Rove. He is, as far as I'm concerned, just one more political strategist -- a rather amoral bunch, as a class, no matter which party or pols happen to be paying their paychecks. It's hard to love a hired gun. But by the same token, I've never understood why the left so despises this hired gun so much. Is he really worse than any of the others?

I know, you fire off a litany of reasons, but they all seem rather flimsy: "His permanent Republican majority lasted 6 years"; (you yourself have noted that politics is a short-term game). "His legacy is a quagmire of broken conservative hearts"; (no, his legacy is batting .750 in national elections -- an impressive record by any measure). "His technique of ruling by dividing has divided our nation against itself" (what political operative doesn't "divide" -- Clinton's sainted team of James Carville and Paul Begala?). "He dodged prosecution in Plamegate" (an aggressive special prosecutor had nothing on him because no crime was committed), "but is still vulnerable on lost emails" (dream on) "and the political firing of Federal Prosecutors" (which is not against the law).

But of all the reasons to denounce the man, is there any weaker than the fact that he plans to hunt doves on Labor Day Weekend? We expect as much from PETA, but from an admitted hunter like yourself?

As far as I can tell, Rove's only crime is that he did his job very well, winning several big elections, often against great odds. Bill Clinton had the same talent, and similarly drove Republicans into fits of rage. But as Democrats said back then, perhaps it's time to "move on." The guy's out of the White House, already.

And let's not pretend Rove was any more calculating, amoral, or divisive than any other high-powered politico. He was just more effective.

Best,
Chris

PS -- To give credit where it is due: "This is not Bush’s Brain triangulating. This is the Turdblossom strangulating" was a great line!

Drudge Headlined: Rove Under Fire For Post White House Dove Hunting Plans
Carl Rove isn’t in enough trouble? His permanent Republican majority lasted 6 years. His legacy is a quagmire of broken conservative hearts. His technique of ruling by dividing has divided our nation against itself. He dodged prosecution in Plamegate but is still vulnerable on lost emails and the political firing of Federal Prosecutors.

Now he is either going to hunt down peace activists or inflame PETA. This is not Bush’s Brain triangulating. This is the Turdblossom* strangulating.

* Bush’s pet name for him, not me being vulgar.

Reggie laughs at their cozy habitats.

This is no ordinary gator that the L.A. Zoo is dealing with. Reggie wasn't taken from the wild and deposited into the zoo. No, this guy grew up on the tough side of L.A., a place where mere walls aren't enough to slow mobility. Hah. This is a guy who eluded professional animal trappers for two years.

The only surpise about the alligator's attempted escape today from his enclosure is that he didn't do it sooner.

If the zoo wants to keep him from escaping into the nearby L.A. river (mmm., ducks) they might want to start thinking less like zookeepers and more like correctional officers.

* Update: They found him by following his slime trail, reports Donna Littlejohn, the reigning Reggie reporter at the DN's sister paper, the Daily Breeze.

But we took down a section of fence to give him more land area and that gave him access to a retaining wall that also had a 90-degree (chain-link) fence at the corner. He used it like a ladder and climbed about 5 feet over the wall.

“I think he was just curious and he found a spot he could negotiate.”

Alligators have been known to climb. And because they leave a slime trail, zookeepers were able to figure out exactly how he escaped.

Matt Drudge has linked up to this story about uber-celebrity Madonna:

The singer, who turns 49 on Thursday, is said to have surprised passengers on a recent flight from New York to London by injecting herself with a vitamin shot in her arm.

Why this is information anyone needs to know is beyond me. But I will admit, I found this report shocking on two counts:

1. Madonna flies commercial?!?

2. We're allowed to bring syringes on airplanes? I thought TSA had banned every sharp object from mechanical pencils toothpicks!

You learn something new every day ...

NBA Ref Tim Donaghy pled guilty today to wagering on basketball games and conveying insider information to gamblers. So far, he has neither been charged with nor pled to fixing games either by influencing the win/loss or the point spread. But it is very hard to believe that his wagering on games that he officiated didn’t have some slight influence on his impartiality.

Commissioner David Stern promises to protect the integrity of the game. He was shocked at this betrayal by Donaghy and swears it is the action of only one solitary rogue. Without going to mysterious referees on some grassy knoll, in the absence of more information, this does seem to be wishful thinking. Pre-mature assurances aren’t worth much.

Stern claims to have nearly obsessive security procedures. Refs are monitored, each game taped and every foul reviewed after play. Okay, that’s pretty good in terms of what the CIA would call technical intelligence. How about human intelligence, and by that I mean people, percipient witnesses? Not so good.

If players or coaches even raise the possibility that a ref is not objective, this is seen as an attack on the integrity of the game, and big fines are issued. Got that? Reporting the suspicion of malfeasance is the crime. Only in-house appointed NBA officials can raise questions. Participants who have the most and closest experience must remain silent in their suspicions.

This is like trying to understand the Middle East by Satellite photos, without even accepting reports from the people on the ground. With American soldiers working with Iraqi military, don’t you think we would like their evaluation of who is with us and whom they suspect is not fully on our side? You bet we would. But not the NBA. Their policy of player/coach silence calls into question the integrity of the game and the commitment of the commissioner.

So "If I Did It," O.J. Simpson's pseudo tell-all about the killings of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, will see the light of day after all ... thanks to Goldman's family, of all people.

Back when the book was originally set to be released, the Goldmans successfully launched a campaign against the publisher and Fox, which was going to promote the book. But then after the publisher pulled the plug, Ron's father, Fred Goldman, fought to obtain the rights. At the time, it was reported that he would release the book under the title "Confessions of a Double-Murderer," which struck me as a good idea -- a way to make some money off a text that's sure to go public, somehow, eventually (even if only leaked on the Net), while exposing O.J. to shame.

But from the latest reports, it looks like the book will go out with O.J.'s original dishonest title, "If I Did It." And the text will apparently remain unchanged, which is unfortunate, given that Simpson surely wrote it in such a way as to make himself out as a hero or martyr, without truly accepting responsibility for the killings.

All in all, it's understandable why Brown's family would be outraged about this. And yet, that outrage is tempered by the fact that its attorneys have also maneuvered to try to get a cut of the revenues.

It's hard to root for anyone in this fight. Best bet: Just don't buy the book at all.

"CALIFORNIA STEAMIN'" screamed the Daily News page-one, Jan. 5, headline, "Forecasters predict hellacious summer." According to all the experts, global warming was going to bake us good this season:

The hottest prediction for '07: the hottest world temperature on record. The hellish forecast for Los Angeles: a summer hotter than last year's record smoker.

Stubborn greenhouse gases and the return of El Nino will likely turn 2007 into the world's hottest year on record, climate researchers predicted Thursday.

That's bad news for California, singed last year during its hottest-ever summer.

"We are going to suffer,'' predicted Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "Last summer was a preview of coming attractions.

"There's definitely a disturbance in the force on global temperatures. Between hot days and heat waves on the rise, we're looking at hotter temperatures this summer in Los Angeles."

And that brings us to today's story, Current heat wave generates few gripes after milder months, which begins, "It has been a super-cool summer for picnics, convertibles and windows thrown open to the breeze."

Oops, looks like the forecasters got it wrong. Patzert even admits as much:

"When the large lady yodels and does her songs at the end of August, it'll probably be a cooler-than-normal summer, despite the next couple of days. ... For those of us who can't afford to live at the beach, ... Mother Nature has cut us a break."

Now, lest anyone accuse me of being a climate-change "denier," let me make it abundantly clear that I'm not saying the seemingly false predictions about this summer's weather in L.A. "disprove" claims about global warming or mankind's role in it. I realize that weather patterns are complex, and that the effects of global warming itself can lead to unpredictable, counter-intuitive results. Predicting the weather has always been a dicey proposition, and short-term events tell us nothing about long-term trends.

But those who are very concerned about the dangers of global warming rightly criticize skeptics for using anecdotes to make their point, ie, "Hey, if global warming's so dangerous, why was it so darn cold last night?!?" And that argument cuts both ways: If a cool summer doesn't disprove global warming, then a hot one doesn't prove it, either.

The firs step in turning down the heat in the world is turning down the sensationalism on this subject.

You may be among the 5.5 million people (and climbing) who've viewed "Chocolate Rain" on YouTube by this point -- it's estimated that a sixth of those hits came from the Daily News newsroom. Then you may realize how perfectly suited Tay Zonday (real name Adam Bahner, Minnesota grad student in American history) -- may be for the 2008 race for the White House.

He can say absolute jibberish, and yet commands attention. He has the deep James Earl Jones voice that could rattle America's foes. And he could slay other candidates in a YouTube debate. He's a total novice, but has already inspired covers from John Mayer and Tre Cool of Green Day. He chose the name Tay Zonday because it produced no Google hits, and now the name draws 978,000. Has one man ever made so much out of nothing?

Benjamin Netanyahu swept Likud party leadership elections today, leaving the former Israeli prime minister in a good position to become prime minister again. What can I say but... that's hot!

Yesterday's testimony sealed the deal: Lana Clarkson did not commit suicide. Her mother testified that Lana bought seven new pairs of shoes just 12 hours before she died, and had the receipts to prove it. No woman kills herself after buying seven pairs of shoes -- unless all of those shoes were Christian Louboutin and she had fatal buyer's remorse afterward. But the receipts that her mom held up looked from the back to be Ross receipts, or somewhere similar. And nobody kills herself after finding seven great pairs of shoes at Ross, particularly if you're at the Ross at National and Sepulveda, where I've picked up BCBG heels for $20 and Michael Kors sunglasses for $15. Lana would have been high on life (or at least high on shopping). Spector, you're goin' down...

Two updates about the doings of the FF Faithful:

EARL ON CNN
Friendly Fire's own Earl Ofari Hutchinson will be on with CNN's Glenn Beck at 4 this afternoon discussing the Don Imus-CBS settlement, and whether this means the I-Man will be returning to the airwaves. Check it out.

CHINA BASHERS CLUB
Jonathan's post on the latest insanity out of Beijing makes for good company with my post about the 2008 Olympics from last week. And both should be read in light of Bridget's column in today's Daily News, Freedom a loser at Beijing Olympics.

As someone who misspent a huge portion of his youth "listening" (more like melting my ear drums) to the music of Van Halen (an L.A. original), I feel a certain sense of nostalgia over the band's reunion with original frontman David Lee Roth. Although I always appreciated the second iteration of the band -- Van Hagar, as it's known -- that Van Halen was different: softer, poppier, a party band. The original VH with Roth, on the other hand, was one of the great hard-rock acts of all time. "Diamond Dave" is the ultimate showman, and Eddie Van Halen is a revolutionary guitarist. They made for a killer combo.

But Van Halen is also one the great soap operas of all time. This band has had more splits and ill-fated reunions than Elizabeth Taylor. Indeed, part of the fun of following the band is staying atop the relentless saga -- Dave hates Eddie, Eddie hates Sammy, etc. -- that divided fans into competing camps for years. News of the band's reunion seems destined to be followed by news of its re-dissolution. The only question is when, and whether they'll actually complete their scheduled tour first.

But my excitement for the reunion is tempered by the betrayal of Michael Anthony, the band's bassist since the very beginning, who was dumped in favor of Eddie's 16-year-old son, Wolfgang. I realize that nepotism is part of the game in the entertainment biz, but what the Van Halen brothers have done to Mike just ain't right.

Then again, it's about par for the course. We couldn't have all four members of the band getting along, could we?

* 5150 is the section of California's Welfare and Institutions Code dealing with people who must be held, against their wills, for psychiatric reasons. It's also the name of Van Halen's first Hagar-era record, Eddie Van Halen's recording studio, and a line of amps he's endorsed.

I have had it with China! I know they say that you can imprison a body but not a soul, but the Chinese do not accept this proposition. Having started with bodies, births, and thoughts, they are now asserting their sole control of body and soul.

I tried to be tolerant and accepting when they shot artillery into Quemoy and Matsu in 1960. I felt their pain when we pretended not to recognize them and would only do business with the Chinese of Formosa/Taiwan. Truly, they must have felt dissed for us not to take official notice of a billion or so Chinese there on the mainland. I can accept that with their size they have to be kind of strict. Anarchy on the scale of the Chinese population would be ugly.

When they forced women to have abortions, I think they went way over the line. When they ran over protestors in Tiananmen Square, they broke trust with the West. When they continue to cruelly evict people from their homes to build offices and malls, it is just wrong. When they poison the air and water, they are killing their own people in the name of progress.

Now they have, either through greed or design, set about poisoning the rest of us. They started with our precious pets with toxically adulterated proteins, and then moved up to us humans with the exportation of filthy farm-raised seafood. Not content with us and our pets, they have escalated to our children—which some, though not all, Americans hold in esteem even higher than our pets.

Their restrictions on religion are famous—actually infamous. Christians are not allowed to worship freely. They have tried to co-opt Roman Catholicism by attempting one of their famous copyright infringement techniques and counterfeited a phony church under their own control. We all know of their invasion of Tibet and persecution of Tibetan Buddhists and the exile of the Dali Lama.

It is one thing to restrict people’s religious lives. It is one thing to restrict people’s travel. It is one thing to restrict births. But it is quite another, and totally unacceptable, to restrict the People’s Right to reincarnate.

China passed a law to restrict the right of Buddhists to be reincarnated in China, or Chinese held territory, without the prior consent of the Chinese government. This is designed so that they will do with the Tibetan Buddhists what they’ve been trying to do with Roman Catholics. They want to name their own Dalai Lama when this one leaves his body. By making it against the law for him to reincarnate without their permission, they are asserting their right not to recognize the next Dalai Lama and will try to name their own—as they have tried to name their own Bishops.

My fury is not so much at their ridiculous laws and declarations, nor with their silly and futile attempts at control of the divine or spiritual. They will certainly not succeed any more than any communist regimes have in outlawing God and religion. What pushed me over the line and ready to chuck the Peking Olympics is that this kind of proclamation, trying to control by law the placement of the soul, is not simply the platonic form of governmental over-reaching, it is a naked attack on writers of satire everywhere. How can you exaggerate and lampoon this kind of chutzpah?!

Couldn't let the day pass by without giving a shout-out to St. Maximilian Kolbe, for whom my eldest son is named, and who celebrates his feast day today. No matter what one's religious preference, the life and death of St. Max -- a Polish priest who died at Auschwitz, and a patron saint of journalists -- should be an inspiration for all. To quote from his Wikipedia entry:

During the Second World War, in the friary, Kolbe provided shelter to refugees from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in his friary in Niepokalanów. He was also active as a radio amateur, with Polish call letters SP3RN, vilifying Nazi activities through his reports.

On February 17, 1941, he was arrested by the German Gestapo and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison, and, on May 25, was transferred to Auschwitz I as prisoner #16670.

In July 1941, a man from Kolbe's barracks had vanished, prompting SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the Lagerführer (i.e., the camp commander), to pick 10 men from the same barracks to be starved to death in Block 11 (notorious for torture), in order to deter further escape attempts.... One of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, lamenting his family, and Kolbe volunteered to take his place.

"Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (Jn. 15:13). There is no greater love than that shown by St. Maximilian Kolbe.

Mariel is right. Someone did kill the electric car. It was the Stone Cutters:

But, didn't someone kill the electric car? Apparently the Chinese never got the memo, cause they've been working up the electric magic and have developed cheaper and better electric vehicles than came from Japan in the 1990s. Some dude named Miles Rubin created Miles Automotive Group and is working on bringing an all-electric sedan called the Miles XS 500 to America. It will cost about $30k, look kinda like a Mercedes (see picture of it above) and you can plug it into a regular wall outlet.

Read the full story here.

This story of course leads to the obvious question: Is China the Japan of the 21st century?

Karl Rove got one thing right. He predicted that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic presidential standard bearer in 2008. The badly tainted and tarnished former Bush White House political guru touts Clinton for a reason. He thinks that she is ripe for the pickings for whichever Republican emerges from the presidential pack. Rove banks that though some conservative Republicans jumped Bush’s ship in the 2006 midterm elections and voted for Democrats, many would almost certainly jump back to the Republicans in 2008 with Hillary as candidate. That would make it virtually impossible for the Democrats to pry the crucial one, let alone, two states away from the Southern Republican bloc.

The potential Democratic loss of that big a swath of electoral votes going in the presidential election door can be dumped squarely on the deep and resonant hate Bill residue that still tarnishes her. That hatred was driven by the GOP’s distaste for a Democrat in the White House savvy enough to pilfer some of their core issues and give better voice to them than they did. When Hillary hit back and branded the hate Clinton’s campaign a vast right wing conspiracy, the Hillary bashers jerked into paroxysms of rage. Though the impeachment drive against Bill eventually crashed and burned, her political activism marked her as someone capable of stepping out of Bill’s shadow and carving out her own political path. This made her even more of an inviting target.

That hasn’t changed in the years since she left the White House. In a well-publicized warning and taunt at a conservative confab in September 2006 just weeks before the 2006 mid-term elections, evangelical idol Jerry Falwell tarred Clinton with the devil image and refused to take it back when he got flack for it. A month after she announced her candidacy in 2007 polarization was still the watchword with Hillary. A Post-ABC poll found that those who liked her dead heated with those who didn’t (49 to 48 percent). If the black and Latino respondents were taken out of the poll the dislike of her among whites would have been crushing.
Hillary has been nonplussed by the smear attacks. In March 2007 she again leveled the right wing conspiracy charge against the GOP. She accused them of jamming phones and of voter harassment and intimidation against the Democrats in the New Hampshire election in 2002.

There are also mixed signals if whether being a woman will help more than hurt her even with women in a wide segment of America. In a Newsweek poll in July 2007, fewer voters said that they would vote for a woman candidate for president than a black candidate. Hillary did just as dismal when asked whether the country was ready for a female president. More said no to this question than said no for a black president.

Rove, though, licks his chops too soon at the prospect of a Hillary candidacy and subsequent Republican wipe out of her. While a new CNN poll shows that she has major likeability issues, the same poll also shows that voters like her for her strength and experience. Despite a ton of negatives, these are the qualities that ultimately powered Rove’s boss back into the White House. These are also the same qualities that ultimately will prove fatal to Obama’s candidacy. Though he scores high on the likeability scale, he’s simply too new, too untested, and too inexperienced to win a head to head contest with Giuliani. But that’s a moot point anyway; the Clinton machine renders him no chance to get the Democrat presidential nod.

Rove is right. Hillary is tough, tenacious and flawed but that flaw may not be enough to guarantee a GOP victory. Though Rove counts her out, the only one that can be counted out is Rove.

I am amazed that my brother-in-law is not in jail. No, it’s not that he is a bad guy or some kind of crook. He is a normal human being—at least by the standards of my extended family. Still, I expected Homeland Security to cart him off. Again, not that he is a terrorist or bomb-carrying anarchist. No bombs, I would have expected him to explode all on his own.

My brother-in-law was trapped like a sardine on an international flight at LAX on Saturday night. After the hell of Heathrow, where nothing works, and an eleven-hour flight, he got parked on the tarmac at LAX for over five hours. I would have gone nuts—literally claustrophobically crazy. I would have been carried off the plane either in handcuff or a straight jacket (and under some circumstances, I am slightly more patient than he).

He was saved and the judicial system was saved because the aircrew handled this radically unacceptable situation with grace. They kept the plane air-conditioned, the water flowing and the entertainment on. They even attempted to keep the passengers informed, telling them it would be an hour. Then after two hours promising only another two hours. Still, they tried.

Many other passengers of many other flights were not so lucky. They got hot planes, no air, no water and no real news about their situation. This is just wrong on every level.

Yes, we need to vet international passengers. We have to control our borders and one place is at our very vulnerable airports. But it is neither right nor humane to keep people locked up on hot planes and give them no reliable information about what is going on. We need a Passenger’s Bill of Rights that assures minimally decent treatment of people who are only trying to fly. Continued abuse of passengers on international and domestic flights will hurt our economy by keeping visitors away and us on the road and off the planes. We do not accept the excuse that “the computer broke.” Mayor Antonio demands answers and an investigation. Not good enough. I don’t want reports and panels. I want passengers to be guaranteed the right to deplane and to be able to wait in tolerable conditions.

I know that I make some travel choices based on the current hellish state of air travel. And I only can hope that if I’m trapped on the tarmac for many hours and go ballistic, that an American jury would be understanding and let me off for time served.