Simon, Rutten Articles On Tragic School Shootings

Written from Redwood City, California--

Stephanie Simon is without question one of the great treasures at the L.A. Times, a profoundly humanistic reporter who regularly touches our heartstrings. But seldom has Simon written more poignantly than she did yesterday -- about the terrible string of school shootings that have, with increasing frequency, been plaguing the nation.

Simon has covered many of them, from St. Louis and Denver, traveling widely, interviewing countless people, including some of the shooters themselves. Yesterday's article asked whether there was an answer, something that could stop the murders.

No, there doesn't seem to be, she found.

Simon, like all parents and grandparents, has a personal stake in this -- three children of her own who go to school.

At the end of yesterday's article, which started on Page 1, Simon told of the advice she gave Hannah, her 10-year-old daughter, and her two younger siblings, after the latest shooting, at Northern Illinois University, killed five innocents and wounded 20 more.

"On Friday morning, my husband and I sat down with Hannah and her younger brother and sister for a talk before school," she wrote. "We told them what do if they ever spotted anyone with a gun in school: Forget calling 911. Don't worry about finding a teacher. Hit the floor. Crawl away and hide.

"I hated to scare them," Simon wrote. "But my search for answers had led to only one truth: It will happen again."

If Simon found no answer, however, columnist Tim Rutten argued in his column that one partial answer does exist: gun control. It couldn't stop every violent act, but it would reduce them.

In his column, Rutten talked not only about school shootings, but about other shootings as well, including the heroic Los Angeles police officer, Randall Simmons, shot and killed last week when his SWAT team responded to a call about a disturbed young man who had shot and killed three relatives. Ten thousand people, including police officers from all over the country, attended his funeral.

Rutten also wrote about the 14-year-old boy in Oxnard, who shot and killed another student because he didn't like his being gay, and the crank who showed up at a Missoui city council meeting and killed several people before killing himself.

And he got into the presidential campaign -- where no candidate has been much willing to even discuss the shootings, much less advocate controls on guns.

"How many times can we really stomach another politician telling us -- as Obama did Friday and President Bush did after Virginia Tech -- that their "prayers" are with the victims of that day's gun-inflicted atrocity," Rutten asked. "Prayers won't bring the dead back or make the living safer. Our children don't need prayers they need leaders with a modicum of moral courage."

As is so often the case with Rutten's columns, this was a public service. We can only hope that it won't go ignored.

Last night, I was talking with a teacher whose fellow teachers and junior high students worry about something terrible some day happening at their school.

One small change, she suggested, would help, and that would be the ability of teachers to lock classrooms from the inside in case of an emergency, a killer in the halls.

But funds have not been made available for such inside locking. Perhaps, she suggested, newspaper editorials should encourage state officials to provide them.

LAT Editorial On Licenses for Illegals Unrealistic

The big newspapers can be realistic. On Pakistan, this morning, both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times take much-needed hard looks at the situation there. The LAT article by Laura King finds that the Pakistani dictator, Pervez Musharraf, is a wilier character than many imagine and says he may be hard to oust from power. It is appropriately the lead story in the newspaper. Meanwhile, also on Page 1, the New York Times reporter Jane Perlez finds there is a lot of distrust for the changeable Benazir Bhutto, the former premier home from exile, but seemingly unable to make up her mind whether to oppose Musharraf or to join him in a coalition.

The L.A. Times, however, isn't doing as well, from a standpoint of realism, when it comes to cover the issue of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, which has emerged as important in the developing 2008 Presidential campaign.

When this surfaced in a Democratic candidates' debate a couple of weeks ago, it took the L.A. Times political reporters, Mark Barabak and Peter Nicholas, two days to realize it had been the most significant moment in the debate, marking the beginning of at least a temporarily decline in the fortunes of Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Then, after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer began to shy away from his original proposal to grant the licenses in that state, the L.A. Times editorialized that it was a good idea. This is like reopening the barn door after the tiger has gotten inside and eaten one of the horses.

The reason that Spitzer has retreated, and that Clinton hemmed and hawed and finally declined to endorse his original proposal is that it is anathema to many American voters, and they have belatedly found that out.

The political ground has shifted against illegal immigrants. Immigration reforms foundered this year in the Congress. Not only in this country, but in such European countries as Switzerland, Denmark, France, Germany and Britain, the electorate has turned against immigration, and its foes have been faring well in elections. In Europe, it's because Muslims have proved resistant to assimilation. In this country, it's because there have been so many Latino immigrants, many of them illegal, that they are making themselves unpopular in many places, such as Iowa, where the political caucuses Jan. 3 will mark the formal beginning of the 2008 election.

Even as far back as the California Recall election in 2003, political expert Michael Berman cited Gov. Grey Davis' support of a bill to issue drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants as a prime cause of public antipathy to him. Davis could not possibly prevail on such a platform, Berman said, and the election returns proved him right.

By most standards, 2008 should be a Democratic year. The Iraq war, continued fighting in Afghanistan, the crisis in Pakistan, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the declining dollar, even the unsteady leadership of the Federal Reserve Board, all lead to a conclusion the Democrats may win big.

The only way they will not win is probably if they throw away their advantage, either by nominating a way out McGovernite anti-war candidate (not at all likely), or if they assume ridiculous positions out of accord with public sentiment on such issues as the illegals.

The editorial writers of the L.A. Times would push them into that position, if they could. In their editorial Saturday, "A wrong turn in N.Y.," the newspaper castigates Spitzer for "a timid, tiered approach that will serve mainly to embolden those who would rather punish illegal immigrants than improve public safety."

What the Times does not apparently understand is that a very substantial number of voters believe that refusing to accept illegals would improve public safety.

The Times editorial concludes, "The nativists who shouted down Spitzer's original policy, and who object every time this issue is raised in California, want to make driver's licenses a validation of citizenship rather than evidence of having passed a driving test. In doing so, they place their cruelty above their common sense..."

Too bad, but that's where it is these days, and the L.A. Times is spitting into the wind when it argues otherwise. The paper only partially redeemed itself with a serviceable article on the issue by Peter Wallsten on Page 1 this morning. That was welcome, but late. The Times' Washington Bureau needs to get more on the edge of what's happening on the political scene in general.

Spitzer, no fool, is quoted in a New York Times story by Danny Hakim that ran on Saturday, the same day as the LAT editorial, as accepting the political lay of the land.

"Sometimes you put out an idea and there isn't so much support, and you try to persuade people and you see where you go," Spitzer says. "This is the way the world works.

"I don't think there's ever been an executive, a president, a governor, who hasn't put out ideas, that at the end of the day there isn't support, and so things don't work out..."

There's nothing against the L.A. Times being idealistic. But when its idealism leads it to fly into the face of reality, there's no good sense in it.

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The so-called political "blog" on the 2008 campaign in the L.A. Times by Don Frederick and Andrew Malcolm has improved a little. It is no longer very dull, but it's still mildly dull. These reporters ought to take a good stiff drink of something before beginning to write.

Vital Human Rights At Stake in Jena, La., Rangoon

The L.A. Times has an admirable editorial this morning on the troubles in the small town of Jena, La., where thousands of demonstrators marched yesterday to protest unequal justice for blacks compared to whites, and where there was a further incident this morning with nooses being found in a pickup truck driven by whites.

The L.A. Times was also correct this morning when it published the news story out of Jena on Page 1, while the national edition of the New York Times stuck it improperly way back in its Section one.

The fact is, the march of thousands of people from throughout the country in a civil rights protest in a Southern town, and the march, also yesterday, of 1,300 Buddhist monks through Rangoon, Burma, against one of the world's most horrific dictatorships, is news that is vital to humanity. Both marches deserve the most intensive coverage.

The LAT editorial tells us why. Describing in detail events of the last year which began when black high school students sat under a tree that had long been a gathering place for whites only. The next day, nooses, a symbol of the lynchings that once outrageously marked Southern life, were found hanging from the same tree, and three white teens were found to be responsible. The school principal wanted to expel them, but the school board decided to only briefly suspend them. This was the start of a series of incidents, including fights, between blacks and whites in the town of 3,000, with the authorities prosecuting black instigators, especially six young black men (the "Jena six") far more seriously than white instigators. When a white youth was beaten, initially there were charges of attempted murder against the blacks, although these were later reduced. Particularly egregious, however, was the 17-year-old black youth wrongfully charged as an adult, imprisoned for a long term, and kept there, despite a Louisiana appellate court ruling he should be freed. The incidents, thanks to bloggers and other new techniques of spreading the news, have become a cause celebre, leading to yesterday's protests by civil rights supporters from far and wide.

The Times editorial concludes, "Jena residents who think all is well in their town are fooling only themselves. Thursday's rally should mark the start of some long overdue soul-searching and political housecleaning."

The Times editorial points out properly that Jena, La., is no Selma, Ala., of the 1960s, when civil rights advocates marching for the right to vote were assaulted by police. But nonetheless it is, to some extent, a "time warp," which reminds us of past injustices and racial disparities that still lurk in our national life, a plague that still stirs to life.

In a sidebar to the main article this morning, the L.A. Times' Peter Wallsten examines the tepid response of two frontrunning Democratic candidates for President, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, to the Jena situation. Both have been very careful, perhaps too careful, and one can only remember that just before he announced his presidential candidacy in 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy journied to Delano to support Cesar Chavez's farm workers union in their demonstrations. By contrast, neither Clinton nor Obama showed up in Jena yesterday. It is not only the terrorists in the Middle East these candidates are leery about standing up to, now it is bigotry at home.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who joined The Rev. Jesse Jackson and others who marched in Jena, was quoted in an article by Times Southern correspondent Jenny Jarvie that appeared Thursday before the march, as saying, "We come to the South to raise new hope, not to condemn," and it is certainly true that demonstrations often do occur at a time of rising hope that old injustices can be overcome.

That is certainly true in Burma. I purposely do not use the new name of Myanmar, which is favored by a junta of military officers who have dominated Burmese lives for much too long, in defiance of a fair election in 1990 in which the Burmese people overwhelmingly elected the gallant Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, later winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, to power.

As in South Vietnam in the 1960s, the Buddhist monks marching through Rangoon have come forward at a time when many people dare not to defy the illegal junta. That they can prevail, and San Suu Kyi can assume her lawful place as leader of a new Burma, is to be devoutly wished throughout the Earth whereever human rights are supported.

Jena, La., and Rangoon, Burma, are not the only places where the L.A. Times has upheld human rights this week. The pictures by the outstanding Times photographer Carolyn Cole accompanying a Darfur story in Thursday morning's paper were a poignant reminder of the terrible conflict that racks that section of the Sudan, and adjacent Chad and the Central African Republic. Her pictures, especially of Jan Eliasson, the United Nations special envoy in the Sudan, taking part in a prayer for his peace efforts at a marketplace in Nyala, Darfur, are a poignant reminder of the high stakes for freedom there too.

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Tribune Co. overall revenue and advertising revenue continued to slip in August, according to a Reuters story this morning, overall revenue down by 5.2% and advertising revenue by 7.2%.

I'm afraid this trend will not be reversed until the inept Dennis FitzSimons, CEO of the company, which owns the L.A. Times, is forced to relinguish his position, and new, more able, executives take over.

Weinstein Report Mandates Abolishing Death Penalty

As everyone knows, I don't easily change my opinion, but, in this case, the article this week by Henry Weinstein on the operation of the death penalty in California has convinced me that capital punishment ought to be abolished in the state. It just doesn't work.

Weinstein's article led the L.A. Times on Thursday. It begins with the striking statistic that the death penalty system is so backed up that California would have to execute five prisoners a month for the next 10 years just to clear the prisoners already on death row. The average wait for execution is 17.2 years, and many more death row inmates have died of natural causes than the 13 who have been executed since the death penalty was restored in 1976.

My own view has been for a number of years that the death penalty should be reserved for particularly heinous crimes, such as assassination or murder of children by predators. But in a state as large as this, even restricting it would leave a large number of people with death sentences.

If there is going to be a death sentence, and a modicum of fairness, there must be some means found to expedite the appeal process, so that inmates are not left rotting on death row for years waiting for the courts to decide their fate, and final justice administered. More attorneys must become available to represent the defendants, and they must be far more adequately compensated than now. Weinstein's article is largely devoted to an article by U.S. 9th Circuit Court Judge Arthur L. Alarcon on reforms that might be undertaken.

However, it would require the electorate to act, and the justice system to be substantially revised, and it doesn't seem that that is likely to happen.

What it all boils to is that if something doesn't work, if present procedures create an intolerable situation (not to mention the families of murder victims being left to anguish in limbo for many years as to the final disposition of these cases), then the whole thing ought to go.

I was particularly impressed by Weinstein's quote of a UC Berkeley law professor, Franklin Zimring, who said, "We have found a way of honoring our ambivalence about the death penalty. We hand out a lot of death sentences and then, in many ways, are relieved when the system slows down."

But this installs hypocrisy in the system. If we cannot have a procedure that works, then it has to be changed, and the only plausible change that really presents itself is abolition.

One state that does have a "working" death penalty system is Texas, which has executed 402 inmates since 1976. But it appears that this has not been positive for that state, not resolving crime, and certainly harming the state's reputation worldwide. It frequently generates bitter controversy. Just this week, the governor, Rick Perry, commuted the death sentence of one inmate who was not actually the murderer, but only a possibly unwitting accomplice. Miguel Bustillo wrote ably about that case for the Times.

Weinstein has been writing death penalty stories for years, and it's taken me a woefully long time to thoroughly absorb them. But as Abraham Lincoln once said. "I will adopt new views just as soon as they are shown to be true views." In my case, on this issue, I wish I had not waited so long.

Weinstein is, by the way, one of the Los Angeles Times' most distinguished and hardest-working reporters. But his usefulness to the newspaper goes far beyond what he writes for it. He has often been a humanizing influence, consistently upholding ethics at the Times and, when appropriate, as in the case of the failed leadership of Times-Mirror CEO Mark Willes, not hesitating to speak out in the clearest possible way about what he thinks is wrong.

Having known him for a long time, my admiration for him is considerable. He hasn't always been as admiring of me, but that is probably justified.

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Why is that they are doing so much more for public transportation in Orange County than they are here in Los Angeles County?

That question is posed this morning by an article in the L.A. Times' California section by David Reyes on plans to sharply expand Metrolink service in Orange County. By 2009, there will be Metrolink trains every half an hour between 5 a.m. and midnight between Fullerton and Laguna Niquel. Seven new locomotives and 59 more passenger cars have been ordered and a new Metrolink station will open this Tuesday in Buena Park.

Meanwhile, here in Los Angeles County, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky continue to preside over a do-as-little-as-possible policy. Unless they change, these officials should be sacked at the next election.

Gonzales Resignation Marks Bush As Lame Duck

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this morning, the resignation announced today of Alberto Gonzales as U.S. Attorney General was "long overdue." Even President Bush, in his statement, referred to a "harmful disruption" he said had been caused at the Justice Department by the long controversy over Gonzales' conduct.

Although the President charged that "mud" had been thrown at Gonzales, the truth of the matter is that the only mud had been thrown by Gonzales himself. He was caught in lies about the partisan firing of eight U.S. attorneys earlier this year, and then became implicated in an improper pressuring of the former attorney general, John Ashcroft, to approve a new surveillance system while Ashcroft lay in a Washington hospital severely ill.

(I had not realized how often Gonzales either could not or would not tell the truth until I read the list in Tuesday morning's New York Times. The most charitable construction to be put on some of Gonzales' answers was that he had attended meetings but paid no attention to what was said there, or that, somehow, he had an impaired intellect).

Unfortunately, Gonzales was never of the stature needed in this sensitive post. He was merely a crony the President brought with him from Texas. It is unfortunate indeed that the first Hispanic attorney general of the U.S. was so poorly qualified to hold the job.

With the recent departure of White House political adviser Karl Rove and the earlier resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush Administration, as we have known it, has been coming apart. Although he has 17 months left in the White House, Mr. Bush now might properly be considered a lame duck, and about the only thing he may be able to accomplish is to hold on in the Iraq war. Even that is not certain.

Another important aspect of today's resignation is that the President will have to appoint a successor who is acceptable to the Democratic majority in Congress. Otherwise, it is unlikely he or she will be confirmed.

There was speculation in a New York Times story that one possible successor is Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, but, due to the mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina response and recovery, even this nominally nonpartisan figure could be a controversial nominee. Others mentioned in the Times story were Christopher Cox, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general now with Pepsi Cola. Cox, at least, has been highly partisan and may not be acceptable either. Later in the day, the name of Sen. Orren Hatch of Utah came up. It is an old strategem with a difficult environment for confirmation that the President names a sitting senator from his own political party in hopes that his colleagues will let him slip by. But Hatch is really not a good choice for the post.

It would be better if Mr. Bush were to name someone new, a nonpartisan and broadly acceptable to both parties in the Congress.

This development also makes clearer, if it needed to be, that the President will not be able to follow his Supreme Court choices of the reactionary John Roberts and Samuel Alito, with new appointments of the same ilk, even if they were to arise before the end of his Presidency. It would take a far more centrist personality to win confirmation from this Congress. This is all to the good, because the Supreme Court has been allowed to drift too far to the right, and some of its recent 5-4 decisions, with Roberts and Alito joining, have been highly questionable, really contrary to the public interest.

The Gonzales resignation also represents a triumph for those Democrats in Congress, Pelosi, Senate Mahority Leader Harry Reid, and New York Sen. Charles Schumer who have insisted upon it, as well as such independent Republicans as Sen. Arlen Specter, who also called for it.

The attorney general of the United States is a public official who should be above reproach. Gonzales clearly was not.

This, by the way, was by far the most important story of the day, but the CNN network, ever more inclined to focus on sleazy "human interest" pieces, kept playing the Michael Vick dog fighting plea as more important. This is laughable. A degenerate professional football player who kills dogs is not as worthy a story as the resignation of the attorney general of the United States.

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The long article in the New York Times yesterday by Gretchen Morgenson into the squalid and dishonest lending practices of Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest mortgage lender, performed an important public service. The story detailed how this firm has defrauded many thousands of borrowers who deserved better terms with lower interest, while its brokers grabbed extraordinary commissions, becoming rich from their work. These brokers had the gall to assure customers that they were getting them the best possible loans, when they weren't. Then prepayment penalties kept the hapless victims who might otherwise have been able to secure something at a lower price locked in.

L.A. Times coverage of Countrywide has, by comparison, been unduly bland and, on the whole, unrevealing. It is particularly noteworthy that the newspaper's new consumer columnist, David Lazarus, has been confining himself to writing about safe subjects, like identity theft and health care, when he should have been writing about this grossly offensive California-based corporation or airline travesties. It is also discouraging that the Bank of America would come to Countrywide's aid with a $2 billion infusion of funds without insisting on a total cleanup first.

The L.A. Times, however, today finally came around to producing a fairly decent story (by Peter Pae) about the overcrowding and delays in U.S. air travel this summer from the customer's point of view. That, like the Gonzales resignation, was "long overdue."

Shocking Statistics in LAT Sunday From Jill Leovy

The crime statistics conveyed by Jill Leovy, the L.A. Times' admirable reporter on the Los Angeles police and crime in the minority communities, in Sunday's newspaper were indeed shocking.

In terms of homicides this year, the toll in the black and brown communities is dramatically greater than it is in the white ones. There is three times more danger of getting killed in the Hispanic areas as the white, and nine times greater chance in the black ones compared to the white ones.

The Leovy articles were accompanied by a map showing where the homicides have been taking place. Even though the overall number throughout the city has been going down, from 2,113 in 1992 to 1,085 in 2006, still the varying rates among racial groups are depressing. According to the statistics gathered by the Times for 2007 thus far, 34 of every 100,000 blacks have been the victims of homicides this year, compared to 11 for Latinos, just 3.2 for whites and 2.7 for Asians.

Most of the killings are happening to young people. As Leovy remarks, the chances of getting to 18 without being killed are so great in the minority communities that residents are using expressions like "caught slippin" or having "passed," to describe those killed or escaping being killed.

Also, as sidebars, Leovy told three specific, heartbreaking stories about young people who have died recently in the homicidal mayhem.

This is not the first time Leovy has told such stories. But they seldom make Page 1 of the L.A. Times, where they certainly belong, and they did not Sunday, although they were prominently displayed in the California section.

One wonders how many readers are paying attention. It often seems like minority crime stories are like water off a duck's back. They occur without the duck noticing.

You'd think, after all this time, that Los Angelenos would be trying harder to stem the carnage -- with more gun control laws if nothing else.

Yet the bloodletting goes on and the losses remain, as always, tragic.

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The L.A. Times has a long and well-reasoned editorial this morning raising questions about the ethanol craze, and specifically about its down side. There are other means, the editorial says, to fight global warming.

But one of the best ways is nuclear power development, and the Times recently opposed that, in an editorial.

The Times editors, no more than society, cannot have it both ways. If we want to effectively stem global warming, we are going to have to accept nuclear power, taking the necessary steps, of course, to keep it as safe as possible.

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Both the New York Times and L.A. Times have stories today raising questions whether Sam Zell's purchase of Tribune Co. will go through. I'll have more on this tomorrow. But since Wall Street analysts are saying it may not, and they've been wrong about everything else this summer, maybe that's a sign it will.

Domestic Violence Arrests Actually May Feed Abuse

I've written before about the "law of unforeseen consequences," when a well-meaning law or policy actually works out to the detriment of those involved.

We see that again in a provocative New York Times Op Ed Page article that ran yesterday by Radha Iyengar, a fellow in health policy research at Harvard. The writer points out that mandatory arrest laws adopted by 22 states and the District of Columbia in calls to police about domestic violence actually seem to have increased the dangers to battered spouses.

The reason, according to a study Iyengar conducted, is that, knowing their mates will certainly be arrested, the afflicted spouses often hold back on making such calls. This may in the end expose them to greater danger.

Her finding is that homicides within intimate relationships have actually increased in the states that have adopted the mandatory laws since they first came into vogue in 1984.

"I recently conducted my own study of mandatory arrest laws by comparing the rates of murders by intimate partners before and after the laws went into affect," Iyengar writes. "Intimate partner homicides have generally decreased in the past 20 years, perhaps because greater awareness of the problem of domestic violence has led to the creation of more resources for victims. But in states with mandatory arrest laws the homicides are about 50% higher today than they are in the states without the laws."

It is not only fear that their spouses will be arrested that may hold back abuse reporting, Iyengar finds. "In some cases, victims may favor an arrest, but fear that their abusers will be quicly released. And many victims may avoid calling the police for fear that they too will be arrested for physically defending themselves. The possibility of such 'dual arrests' is most worrisome for victims who have children at home."

Significantly, the researcher found that mandatory arrests laws in cases of abuse reported outside intimate relationships, such as teachers reporting indications of abuse they have noted when the children come to school, do not have the adverse consequences of the laws governing intimate partnerships. The teachers don't have incentives such as trying to avoid arrests.

Iyengar says her study shows police do not like the mandatory arrest laws in some instances, because they believe they should have the discretion to decide whether or not to make an arrest.

The Iyengar findings seem to indicate that these laws are worth reviewing. Legislatures may act with all good intentions, as I'm sure they also have with mandatory sentencing laws that lose sight of the forests for the trees.

It pays to be more careful. I believe this article has done a public service.

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The death of longtime KTLA anchor Hal Fishman yesterday brought forth a great many heartfelt tributes from watchers and professional journalists alike. Nearly 4,000 watchers submitted comments on his passing, and the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, in a statement recorded by LA Observed called Fishman "an icon in Los Angeles news. His depth of knowledge and presence was unparalleled...An important, irrepressable voice."

My blog of Jan. 28, 2005 complimenting Fishman's broadcasts, which showed up 11th on a list of Google stories about Fishman yesterday, drew 300 hits on this blog yesterday alone, another indication of the esteem in which Fishman was held.

It is particularly noteworthy that the 75-year-old newsman, dying of colon cancer, managed to broadcast through the week before he died. It reminds me of Paul Weeks, writing a last column when he was on his death bed. Such wonderful journalists do not give up easily, and it shows that journalism is not the disreputable profession that some ideologues say it is.

May Fishman rest in peace. He gave so many of us not only an incisive newscast. His professionalism was an inspiration.

President Bush Right In Commuting Libby Sentence

Written from San Carlos, California--

Many of the comments on President Bush's decision to commute the 30-month sentence of I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, are predictable. Democrats are most often against it, Republicans for. Some Republicans wish the President had gone further and pardoned Libby.

It will probably come as no surprise to readers of this blog that I'm with the President, as I usually am when it comes to the fundamental issues of war and peace. I think, in contrast to a majority of Americans, that Mr. Bush has been straightforward with the American people, within his understanding of the situation, as to what the issues of the war are. I think he has made some mistakes, but that by and large he has done a good job at defending the interests of the country. For the most part, I've agreed with his decision to go into Iraq and stay there, although I don't share his views on every twist and turn of strategy.

In the matter of leaks to reporters on war questions, or any serious questions, I think it is best simply to accept that they have occurred and go on from there. A huge investigation by a special prosecutor, dragging officials and reporters in to testify, is not in order.

Specifically, I believe the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, was wrong to force reporters to testify in the Libby case, and to jail one of them , Judith Miller, when she initially refused to testify. I don't think he should have charged Libby, particularly after it became evident that not Libby, but Richard Armitage of the State Department, was the one who leaked the news that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative. (Armitage was not charged). I don't think Libby should have been prosecuted for not being candid on all matters with Fitzgerald, and I viewed the finding that Libby was guilty of lying to be out of context with the whole case and really a miscarriage of justice. So naturally I thought the 30-month jail sentence for Libby by U.S, District Court Judge Reggie Walton was grossly unfair.

Like Ken Starr, when he viciously persecuted President Clinton, I believe Fitzgerald vastly exceeded the boundaries of good taste and decorum in going after Libby, and the judge was disproportionate in the way he sentenced him.

Libby, at the most, is guilty of following orders. It is fairly certain that those orders came from Cheney, although it is possible President Bush was involved as well. Libby was by many accounts a conscientious aide who tried as best he could to implement the policies set down by superiors. And I believe -- again in contrast to many -- that those policies were honestly developed, that they were not some kind of plot to take America to war unnecessarily.

Wth all these views, it is natural that I believe the Presidewnt did the right thing yesterday. He is respecting the justice system, in all its faults, but at the same time he is standing by a trusted subordinate who should not have had to spend 30 months in jail for doing his duty as he understood it.

This won't make me many liberal friends, but so be it. Under the Constitution, the President has the power to commute sentences, and he has used it in this case.

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It is most interesting that the British have discovered that several doctors and other medical personnel -- Muslims from the Middle East living in Britain but not citizens there -- were apparently involved in the weekend's attempted terror attacks in the United Kingdom. This is not the first time that the terrorists amongst us have turned out to be well-educated people with fanatic beliefs.

The investigation must be carried on no matter where it leads. Our safety may well depend on it, because our enemies are prepared to use the most brutal tactics against us and our allies, not to mention their co-religionists, and they must be countered with all the diligence we can muster.

Disparities In Punishing People For Wrongdoing

Life, as John F. Kennedy once said, is unfair.

The Page 1 story yesterday, Saturday, June 16, by Charles Ornstein and Susannah Rosenblatt, in the L.A. Times, detailed one of the all too common miscarriages of justice.

Six staff members of the Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in South Los Angeles were given only letters telling them how they should behave in the future for having observed a dying woman writhing on the floor of the hospital's Emergency Room lobby, and doing nothing to either treat her or see that she got treatment.

The woman, Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, soon died, and the publicity from this sad event went far and wide, soiling the hospital's already horrible reputation for gross negligence in the way it handles its patients.

Those employees not even quite reprimanded included a nurse and two nursing assistants. Earlier, a janitor who also observed the woman, was given verbal counseling, and a triage nurse who was apparently in overall supervision of the scene was placed on leave, and subsequently resigned.

Well, it's nice to be rid of her. But it's obvious that the hospital should have handed out punishments, not letters, to the six written about Saturday.

At a time when Paris Hilton is serving a county jail term for driving with a suspended license, and the popular majority cheers, there is something grossly wrong here in letting those who idly stood by while a woman died off in such a light way.

Yet the Martin Luther King hospital staff has been given one reprieve after another for its derelictions -- another sign just how badly minority communities are routinely treated in our society.

Were such a hospital operating in Sherman Oaks or Beverly Hills, rather than Willowbrook, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and federal inspectors, certainly would have taken strong action to see it didn't happen again.

But, even 40 years after the civil rights struggles of the 1960s led to major civil rights legislation, still there is this disparity in treatment.

And it is not only at the hospital. The unhappy truth is that police and Sheriff's deputies shoot and kill far more people on the south side of Los Angeles, than they do whites in other parts of town, stores often charge more, insurance premiums are higher, and lending terms more severe. Every crisis of modern life affects the South Los Angeles community more seriously.

Is this because crime ridden South L.A. is deserving of harder treatment, or does the harder treatment actually inspire more crime? I think it is the latter.

The poet W.H. Auden once wrote, "You and I know what all schoolchildren learn...Those to whom evil is done do evil in return."

And so it is. Society pays a heavy price because we accept these disparities, and we cannot expect that life in the city will be satisfactory, until it is satisfactory in all parts of it.

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Two days into power in Gaza, is the Hamas organization already acting in bad faith?

Surprise, it could be.

Just after taking power, Hamas officials said the BBC journalist, Alan Johnson, kidnapped this spring in Gaza, would be released within 24 hours.

Lo and behold, he was not released. The terrorists holding him now say he will not be released until the British meet their demands, which are to release terrorists held in British jails. Later in the day, they threatened to "slit his throat...to please God."

So, either the Hamas officials were lying, or the organization really does not hold dominant power in Gaza.

Immigration Bill Must Be Revised To Pass

Due to both bitter past and present experience, and despite a lot of pablum being produced right now by the bipartisan coalition headed by President Bush, it seems likely that without substantial revision the immigration legislation being considered by Congress will not pass this year.

The recent vote against cloture in the Senate is a strong indication that most Republicans in Congress and a significant number of Democrats are not willing to go along with anything that does not incorporate far more action to keep the American border with Mexico more firmly
closed to illegal immigrants, and, at the same time, restrict amnesty for the 12 million already here.

The fact is that despite the polls, there is a substantial and perhaps decisive minority of the American people who are uneasy about the massive illegal immigration that took place after passage of the 1986 Immigration act and continues to this day.

In 1986,, there were an estimated three million illegal immigrants in the United States, and the law's sponsors promised that the amnesty provisions approved that year, combined with better enforcement at the border, would solve the nation's immigration problems.

Far from doing that, the 1986 legislation only encouraged millions more people to come, largely from Mexico and Latin America, but from both Asia and Europe as well. Enforcement proved entirely inadequate.

This is really not surprising. The fact is, both the government's resources and willpower are lacking, and without a major change in attitude will continue to be lacking. We see from recent experience that the U.S. Government can't even successfully implement new requirements that every American citizen returning to the country carry a passport, including those coming from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. Since the State Department was inadequately staffed to process the number of passport applications that flooded in, the requirement has had to be postponed.

The immigration legislation already proposed talks of border enforcement, but, as Time magazine pointed out in a long article this week, it has many caveats stating that this will go ahead only if the money is available. So far, it isn't available, and, even if it were, it is doubtful the Immigration and Naturalization Service could gear up expeditiously to use it.

If there is anything that has become clear from recent experience -- both with Iraq and Hurricane Katrina -- it is that the national administration is prone to vastly underestimate the numbers of men and women that will be required, if major policy goals are to be successfully implemented. Inadequate numbers of people on the ground, inadequate resources, have meant substantial failure thus far in both the war and the hurricane relief.

The senators who voted against cloture are certainly going to insist upon passage of a number of amendments, before they agree to cut off debate on the immigration bill, and we have already seen that the skills and perseverance of the Senate majority leader, Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, are very much in question. He not only often says the wrong thing, he does not really understand the psychology of the Senate.

The tactic adopted by the bill's proponents on the amnesty is to incorporate a number of fees and bureaucratic restrictions to impede it. But to say the least, these rules have to be altered to make the bill more acceptable, and more workable. Time magazine took issue this week with those, like Sen. John McCain, who have proclaimed this is not really an amnesty bill. It is, but it is so loaded with impediments, it may actually, in its present form, make things worse for those struggling to legalize themselves.

There is no real reason for optimism that Congress will be able to work all this out. As I said at the outset of this blog, I doubt we're going to see this legislation passed this year.

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Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo has been proven in recent weeks more clearly than ever before to be an unsatisfactory public official. He is unwilling to be truthful or even mildly informative about the circumstances of an accident that occurred to his city-provided SUV, he has been fined for campaign funding violations, and he has sought to improperly take cases away from the District Attorney, who he is planning to challenge in the next election. His hardline statements in the Paris Hilton affair were ludicrous, given his own wife's record of driving with a suspended license and serving no jail time whatsoever.

Already, last year, he tried to defeat Jerry Brown for the Democratic nomination for state Attorney General through demagoguery, and he turned out to have lied about his resume.

Under these circumstances, Delgadillo should resign his office and leave public life permanently. If he were an attorney, which he is not, I'd say L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez would be a good replacement. (That is meant as a joke).

Alito Leads A Reactionary Court Against Workers

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, a disreputable ideologue, wrote the 5-4 High Court decision released yesterday that gutted an important feature of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, giving victims of salary discrimination only 180 days to file suit. Since many salary comparisons do not become known until much later, this in effect removes substantial workers rights, is a blow to women and minorities and confirms, as clearly as ever before, that President Bush's appointments of both Alito and John Roberts to the court were highly reactionary.

Alito insisted at his confirmation hearings that he would think independently. He lied. Chief Justice Roberts cloaked himself in a veneer of respectability, when, in fact, he is not respectable.
In the often corrupt system of justice in the Bush Administration, these two, along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, form a dishonorable quartet on the court. They are bound on a course to defy the public interest, and are often joined by the right of center Anthony Kennedy in rendering decisions that restrict the rights of the American people. Alito, more than any of the others, can most accurately be described as a petty fascist.

The New York Times editorial on the decision, appearing in the newspaper Thursday, was strong and to the point:

"The Supreme Court struck a blow for discrimination this week by stripping a key civil rights law of much of its potency. The majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, forced an unreasonalbe reading on the law, and tossed aside longstanding precedents to rule in favor of an Alabama employe that had underpaid a female employee for years. The ruling is the latest indication that a court that once proudly stood up for the disadvantaged is increasingly protective of the powerful..."

There is no getting around the fact that one of the best arguments to elect a Democrat to the presidency next year is to ultimately bring about court appointments that will reverse this unwholesome trend. If the Democrats were as devoted to protecting American freedoms with action abroad, as they are at home, theirs would be an ironclad case for removal of a Republican from the White House.

In a dissent delivered from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the Alito opinion "overlooks common characteristics of pay discrimination." She pointed out that given the secrecy in most workplaces about salaries, many employees would have no idea within 180 days that they had received lower raises than others, and the disparity would likely only increase with time.

The New York Times ran the Alito decision as its lead story on Page 1 this morning, which given its significance was the right place for it. The Los Angeles Times ran it back on Page 12, which may reflect the right wing, anti-labor bias of Chicago-toadying publisher David Hiller, and the nebbish editor, James O'Shea.

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Buyout losses of the L.A. Times include, in California, Ralph Frammolino. Jenifer Warren, Rone Tempest, Bob Salladay, Mike Kennedy, Jean Guccione, Nancy Cleeland, Nancy Wride, Roy Rivenburg, Gary Polakovic Mai Tran, Valerie Reitman, and Frank Clifford.

Not such a loss is Bob Sipchen, whose ill-informed educational column was the latest in a whole series of assignments he had filled unsuccessfully. Unfortunately for the good of California and the environmental movement, Sipchen is reportedly set to become editor of the Sierra Club's magazine.

In her memo, Janet Clayton said there will be hires to replace some of these folks. They are sure to be lower paid and less professional. The paper, in fact, is no longer great, despite claims Clayton made in her memo.

LA Observed this morning prints the form letters Hiller and O'Shea have been sending out to the readers who complained about the termination of columnist Al Martinez. They are the same kind of pap we have come to expect from these two usurpers and enemies of California.

Rogue LAPD Assaults Demonstrators, Press

There can be no surprise that when the State Supreme Court makes police misconduct the subject of secret proceedings, the Los Angeles city attorney supports the court decision and the Los Angeles mayor and police chief seek to weaken legislation to undo this wrongheaded ruling, that rogue cops are going to feel free to engage in all sorts of misdeeds.

It is in this context that Tuesday night's Los Angeles police assault against demonstrators in MacArthur Park, and news reporters covering them needs to be understood.

The Los Angeles Police Department has a long, sordid history of overreaction to demonstrations, especially by minorities and peace groups. It runs back to and even beyond the Watts riot of 1965 and the Century Plaza antiwar demonstrations of 1967, and it has helped fuel two major riots in Los Angeles that resulted in very heavy property damage and loss of life. There is a time for strong police action, and I do not underestimate the attempts of radical groups to exacerbate matters. But, often in Los Angeles, the police are as much or more to blame for civil unrest as anyone.

I'm not saying in short that there has never been provocation of police officers, but what I am saying is that they have often responded with undue use of force, and numerous LAPD reform efforts have been unavailing. There is also serious question about many police shootings. When disciplinary hearings to control miscreants on the force are kept closed to the public, and the names of errant officers never disclosed, it only encourages more of the same.

It is fine for Police Chief William Bratton to express "grave concern" as he did yesterday, and promise an aggressive investigation, but we have heard that before.

No investigation can possibly be productive unless the officers are named who were responsible for Tuesday night's excesses -- an unclear dispersal order from a helicopter, the firing of rubber bullets and the beating of the crowd and reporters with nightsticks. No investigation can possibly succeed without public punishment of the guilty, which may well include officers in command of the units on the scene.

Yet, let me emphasize, due to a Supreme Court which by its decisions positively abets such misconduct by mandating that individual rogue officers need never be publicly identified, there can be no justice at present in California.

Although State Sen. Gloria Romero has introduced legislation to undo that decision, both Chief Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have backed crippling amendments.

It is going to be hard in this state to clear any legislation that reins in the police, or lawless prison guards who have often made our justice system a mockery. Just last week, prison legislation was passed that would build more prisons but fail to come to grips with the problems of overcrowding, brutal and overpaid prison guards, and errant parole policies. Without the strong, steadfast support of officials like Villaraigosa, Bratton and City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, who should be but are not beholden to the public, the prospects of legislation to correct the situation both on the streets and in the prisons are poor to hopeless.

Again, we have been through all this before. But after the cries of public and press outrage die down, we are apt to go back to the bad old days of gross police misconduct of the kind we saw Tuesday night. And the increasing tendency of the courts to neglect First Amendment rights is only adding to the trouble.

It's time there be a housecleaning, and if Bratton can't control his own force any better than he has been doing, then certainly he doesn't deserve a second term as police chief. It is, in fact, a disgrace that 13 City Council members have already endorsed him for another five years.

Times and other media coverage of what happened in MacArthur Park was comprehensive and conscientious. The Times jumped on the story the first night, and has massive coverage today, including, on the Times Web site a first person account of what happened by Jill Leovy, an excellent reporter with much police experience.

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No wonder the Wall Street Journal staff is up in arms over the bid to buy the newspaper by the right wing newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch has destroyed the integrity of every journalistic enterprise with which he has ever been involved. His Fox News Network is a travesty of good journalism, his New York Post is a laughing stock for its sensationalism, and he has even managed to downgrade the quality of the London Times. He ought to be escorted back to Australia, not permitted to wreak more havoc by taking over the Wall Street Journal.

Why Is There So Little Gun Control In U.S.?

President Bush may mean well by participating today in a memorial service for those who so tragically lost their lives in the shootings at Virginia Tech University.

But the President has almost always opposed the gun control laws that could have averted the tragedy. Tonight, appearing on the NBC Nightly News, the President again ducked the issue.

As the shooter was identified, turning out to be another loner who carefully plotted the massacre, and was carrying the guns, chains and extra ammunition necessary to perpetrate it, the foolishness which has long characterized the nation's policies on gun control was being repeated in various quarters today.

Even the moderate Washington Post asked editorially whether the students and teachers at Virginia Tech would have been safer had the Virginia Legislature this past year not killed a law that would have allowed them to carry guns on campus.

But a massively-armed campus would be prone to more shootings, not fewer, through momentary flareups, misunderstandings and accidents.

The statistic are clear: the prevalence of guns in the United States causes a murder rate here that is far higher than in countries where guns are strictly controlled or prohibited.

Yes, Britain, which does have strong gun controls, had a massacre at Dunblane a few years ago, in which a crazed gunman slaughtered young schoolchildren. But, all told, Britain has had far fewer such incidents than the USA. In our own interest in these matters, we must play the odds. And after Dunblane, Britain tightened its laws, as did Australia, after a massacre there.

It is not enough to take the position the L.A. Times takes editorially today that silence and thoughtful contemplation is the best response to what happened yesterday at Virginia Tech. The New York Times, which presently has a stronger editorial page, was much more forthright when it said today, "What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss."

If we are ever to discourage the frequent repetition of such crimes (there have been several in the last year, including particularly poignant shootings in a Colorado high school and an Amish elementary school in Pennsylvania), then we must act, as citizens, to build the most powerful support for measures that will reduce the number of guns and make them more difficult for such loners as the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung Hui, to obtain.

Serrano-Schmitt Rove Stories In LAT Were Stronger

Often, it's not only what is said in a story, but where it is played that makes the difference. That is clear this morning in comparing the New York Times and Los Angeles Times stories on the question of Karl Rove's role in the firing of U.S. attorneys.

The able Los Angeles Times Washington reporters, Richard Serrano and Richard Schmitt, had considerably stronger and more direct stories than David Johnston and Eric Lipton's in the New York Times. But the more hard-headed and news conscious NYT editors put their lead story on Page 1, while the Times stories ran on Page 13.

This kind of thing has been a distinction between the two newspapers for a long time. I remember as a college sophomore when the New York Times played the Soviet Union's firing of the first earth satellite into orbit as a banner, while the L.A. Times played it at the bottom of the page.

The scandal enveloping the U.S. Justice Department and the White House over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys is the hottest news of the week, and it is truly a shame that on a morning when the stories written out of the L.A. Times Washington bureau are more newsworthy than the ones written out of the New York Times Washington bureau, the L.A. stories get such paltry play.

Perhaps Doyle McManus, the Times Washington bureau chief, pushed for better play for the Serrano-Schmitt stories, but didn't get it. In that case, he was hung out to dry, because just recently, when the New York Times appointed Dean Baquet as its new Washington bureau chief, McManus issued a statement promising that his bureau would compete vigorously with Baquet's.

That can't be the case when the L.A. Times publishes stronger stories on Page 13 than the New York Times publishes on Page 1.

The competitive breakdown occurs this morning, because the Serrano-Schmitt stories raise points directly that the New York Times is not nearly as clear on, and a L.A. Times sidebar by Serrano is much more newsworthy than the NYT sidebar.

First, in their second paragraph, Serrano and Schmitt state clearly, in relation to e-mails released yesterday, "The e-mails also show that the Justice Department was willing to defer to Rove on the matter." The New York Times story is not clear or direct on that point. And it is central to the scandal, because the issue here is White House political interference in the work of the Justice Department.

When he underwent confirmation proceedings, Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales testified he would, as attorney general as distinct from his position as White House chief counsel, put the interests of the American people first. The indication is now that he has not done that, and that's why I argued in a blog three days ago, he should resign.

Second, Serrano's sidebar, an interview with H.E. Cummins, one of the U.S. attorneys who was fired, is far more newsworthy than the New York Times sidebar on White House counsel Fred Fielding negotiating with Congress on who is to testify now on the affair.

L.A. Times editors need to give such stories the play they deserve, not relegate them to the back pages. Otherwise, they may find Serrano and Schmitt following Alissa Rubin and Lee Hotz to either the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, and, possibly just as important, they will not be serving their readers.

Alberto Gonzales Should Resign As A.G.

Gradually, the controversy has been mounting over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys by the Bush Administration, and fresh revelations today would seem to make it clear that Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, never one of the brighter lights in an afflicted administration, should resign.

Gonzales accepted the resignation of his chief staff aide, D. Kyle Sampson, today and cancelled travel plans. Strong criticism of the attorney general by Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner, senior Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee, as well as questions from Sen. Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, show that Gonzales' problems are now bipartisan.

It was revealed today (lead story in the New York Times) that Harriet Myers, the failed Bush nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, when she was serving as White House Counsel, had raised the possibility with Sampson of firing all U.S. attorneys when their terms expired. He then went to work on a list, and came up with the eight names.

Apparently, Karl Rove, the President's political advisor, had been passing along complaints about the U.S. attorneys, some of whom had been prosecuting such GOP miscreants as Rep. Randy Cunningham, who was convicted of taking bribes from defense contractors and is now in federal prison. The U.S. attorney in San Diego in that case, Carol Lam, was among the U.S. attorneys fired. It was a McClatchy newspaper story that first implicated Rove in crude attempts to prejudice the work of the Justice Department.

Gonzales, when he was White House counsel and at the Justice Dept., has been a Bush loyalist, and he also was one of the President's most prominent minority appointees.

But such factors must give way to serious wrongdoing in office. When Gonzales actually went ahead and fired the eight U.S. attorneys, instead of resisting doing so, he branded himself as an unsatisfactory attorney general.

So, just two months into the new Democratic-controlled Congress, Democrats who have been sharply critical of the Administration are having some successes. It's not so much that they have discovered wrongdoing themselves, but the scandals -- Walter Reed Army Hospital, the U.S. attorneys -- are dropping into their laps, and they are able to take advantage.

Republicans in Congress are also getting more and more uneasy, and it's obvious why. With next year's presidential election around the corner, they recognize that if the Bush Administration continues to foul up, Republican chances to hold the White House next year may vanish or at least be seriously compromised.

Gonzales also has a questionable record because of excesses he is accused of in the War on Terror.

He has too many problems. It would be best, if he would step down.

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The L.A. Times had a sensible editorial yesterday warning against Democratic micromanaging from Congress of the war in Iraq. And the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has wisely seen to the withdrawal of a proposal to bar specific U.S. actions in relation to Iran. The Times properly points out that if the Democrats are opposed to the war in Iraq, they should try to stop funding for the war, not try to impose onerous conditions on U.S. fighting forces. It is doubtful at this point, whether there would be commanding support in Congress for cutting off funds.

California Prison Population Must Be Reduced

Higher courts hearing appeals will have to sort out the issues raised by a Superior Court decision yesterday barring the Schwarzenegger Administration from sending prisoners to penal institutions out of state to relieve prison crowding in California.

The ruling by Judge Gail D. Ghanesian raises questions, in part, because it seems to side with the nefarious prison workers union whose chief concern is its members overtime pay, and not the well being of either the prisons or the state's criminal justice system.

But nonetheless elements of the Ghanesian decision do raise very serious questions about the constitutionality of moving hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of prisoners out of the state, mostly against their will.

And the court decision brings to the fore issues about California's prisons that can no longer be ignored. Jenifer Warren, the L.A.Times writer who has been covering these issues, is doing a public service.

Specifically, the three-strikes law, with its effect that thousands of elderly prisoners are kept in jail long beyond any reasonable need to do so, at immense expense to the state's taxpayers, has landed the system in crisis. Steps need to be taken urgently to amend this law to allow for timely prisoner releases so as to avert both overcrowding and a steady rise in tensions within the prison system.

It has to be recognized even by a crime-obsessed public that a very large proportion of prison inmates are in these institutions for drug offenses for which routine penalties are too long, and do not serve their purpose.

The overcrowded nature of the prison system not only has elevated prison expenses beyond reason, but the need to keep up with just feeding and housing the prisoners has led to a situation where rehabilitation goals of the system have been put in the shadow, and the prisoners allowed in most cases just to vegetate. This in turn contributes to the recidivism rate.

This, plus the overcrowding, has also contributed to the riots that now habitually mark the prison system. Ethnic tensions have soared, and the situation is explosive.

All of this, neither the governor nor the legislature have so far been able to cope with successfully.

The governor's top aides, such as the ethically-tainted executive secretary Susan Kennedy have played politics with the whole prison issue, and the legislature has dithered about solutions.

I do not, however, believe that one of those solutions is to increase the capacity of the prisons by 78,000, as the governor has proposed, even while he has suggested a review of the state's sentencing laws.

As the Times presentation today mentions, even former Gov. George Deukmejian, certainly no softie on crime, has held that overcrowdedness is at the root of the state's prison problems. The implication of such a finding is that sentences are too long and that many people in prison should not be there.

If the Ghanesian decision moves the state's politicians toward that conclusion, it will have done a public service, even if it also did a temporary service to the interests of the prison guards.

O.J. Simpson Is An Argument For Double Jeopardy

If there's ever been an argument for double jeopardy, it's the case of O.J. Simpson, who almost certainly has gotten away with murder, at least in terms of serving the long prison term he deserves.

This becomes even clearer in the partial transcript of Simpson's interview for his abortive book project, published in a compelling Saturday article by Russ Buettner and Edward Wyatt in the New York Times. The excerpts were leaked to the newspaper.

They show journalism at its best, because, after all the notoriety the Simpson case has received, it is certainly in the public interest that the truth about the sordid Los Angeles murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman emerge clearly.

Anyone reading the partial transcript can have little doubt that Simpson committed the crimes.

The fourth paragraph article suffices to form that definite conclusion. It reads:

"At one point during the interview, Mr. Simpson says: 'As things got heated, I just remember Nicole fell and hurt herself. And this guy kind of got into a karate thing.' It was then, he says, that "I remember I grabbed the knife." Later, asked about whether he had taken off a glove before handling the knife, Mr. Simpson says, "You know, I had no conscious member of doing that, but obviously I must have because they found a glove there."

It turns out, later in the transcript, that Simpson had an accomplice in the crimes, a man named Charlie who gave him the knife and disposed of bloody clothes thereafter.

Thank goodness, that in a rare instance of displaying (belated) good taste, Rupert Murdoch decided not to publish either the book, in which Simpson supposedly imagined the crime, or the interview. A Tim Rutten column in the L.A. Times was among the angry critiques which finally moved Murdoch to that wise decision.

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The New York Times does not come off as well in the tasteless publication of a picture of a soldier killed in Iraq. A letter also appearing in the Saturday paper from Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the number two U.S. commander of forces in Iraq, protested the photograph of the dying soldier, which he asserted dishonored a promise made by the reporter, Damien Cave, and the photographer, Robert Nickelsberg.

Odierno writes, notably, "This story can and should be told. That is not in question. What is disturbing to me personally and more important, to the family of the soldier depicted in the photograph and the video, is that the young man who so valiently gave his life in the serving of others was displayed for the entire world to see in the gravest condition and in such a fashion as to elicit horror at its sight.

"This photograph will be the last of this man that his family will ever see. Further, it will cause unnecessary worry among the families of other soldiers who fear that the last they see of their loved ones will be in a New York Times photograph lying grievously wounded and dying."

There is no editor's note under this letter, but the New York Times owes the family, and the Army, an apology. It is not the first instance of the newspaper not being sensitive enough about Iraq casualties.

Privacy Must Give Way To Public Interest in Police Cases

The L.A. Times today runs on its Op-Ed Page an article by Gary Ingemunson, a counsel for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, contending that the privacy concerns of police officers must trump the public right to know about proceedings in police misconduct investigations.

A lawyer will argue anything, if he's paid to do so, and Ingemunson has, presumably, been well paid to present this point of view.

But despite the State Supreme Court's ruling in the Copley case, and its exaggeration by Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, when he advised the Los Angeles Police Department to close all hearings into shootings by problem officers, the fact is that in the public interest in Los Angeles, we cannot afford to let police actions escape public scrutiny.

As the Christopher Commission and other inquiries into the matter have shown time and again, there is a crisis in this city in the way errant officers often open fire, killing or wounding, minority youths who may have committed transgressions but not ones deserving death. On many occasions, these shootings are unjustified, and the officers who commit them do not belong on the police force.

The effect of keeping disciplinary records and proceedings secret is that officers are getting away with severe misconduct. The record shows we simply cannot rely on the LAPD to police itself. Too often, the LAPD has proven itself insensitive to its own transgressions.

When someone joins the police force, he or she should be agreeing to have proceedings regarding his conduct open to press coverage and public knowledge. That does not mean divulging his or her home address or telephone number. But it does mean that reporters, like the Los Angeles Times' Scott Glover or Matt Lait, attend hearings into police shooting cases and write about the evidence regarding them.

In recent weeks, both the New York Times and L.A. Times have had lengthy articles about ethnic tensions in Los Angeles, and, specifically, clashes between black and Latino gangs. The number of crimes is up, and relations between the two groups deteriorating.

It is all the more important then to be certain that the police are operating properly in dealing with the incidents that occur, that when they are shooting, the shootings are justified. There is no way this can be done without opening the hearings. Not opening them can only exacerbate feelings in the minority communities (which, now, are, combined a majority of Los Angeles' population), and lead to a loss of public confidence in law enforcement. That consideration must trump the rights of privacy of officers.

Two Fabulous Holiday Choices: Jim Newton's Book On Warren, and John Grisham's "An Innocent Man."

I've been reading two tremendous books, both of which I can recommend without reservation.

These are L.A. Times editor Jim Newton's biography of Earl Warren, and John Grisham's best-selling book, "An Innocent Man," Grisham's first effort at non fiction.

Newton has done a superb job. His book on Warren is a volume of real scholarship, and very fair to both Warren's greatness, such as exemplified by the Supreme Court's school integration and criminal law decisions, and his occasional mistakes, such as his World War II support of internment of Japanese citizens of California.

The book is particularly good also on Warren's associations with such figures as Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon, not to mention his California political career and associations. I think this is a tour de force, probably the most lively book on the American Supreme Court and California politics I've ever read.

It is not a dry book. It is filled with tremendous reporting and analysis. If the Tribune Co. should really destroy the L.A. Times, unfortunately a real possibility, Newton can go on to a full time career as an author. I look forward to hearing what his next subject will be.

Grisham's book about Oklahoma murder cases, and specifically the framing by corrupt police and a district attorney, not to mention inept investigators, of two innocent men, for a murder they had nothing to do with, is absolutely spine tingling, and is now the top best seller on the New York Times' hard cover list.

I was therefore taken aback last Sunday when the NYT review of the book, by Edward Lewine was so negative.

There are some reviewers, like some journalists, who should shut up, because they have nothing constructive to say.

Lewine's suggestion in the review that Grisham should have embroidered the tale rather than stick to the facts was not only dishonorable but unnecessary. This book is fascinating as it is, and Grisham has given us a tale which is a stark warning of the shortcomings of our criminal justice system.

Good Christmas or Hanukkah presents! Both of these books fit the bill.

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, goes from one disgrace to another. His latest promise that Israel will be "wiped from the map" puts him squarely on the side of Hitler and other Nazis. The conference he is staging this week questioning whether the Holocaust ever happened, betrays his own plan for another Holocaust.

This is the man that James Baker and his foolish commission want the United States to negotiate with, when, in fact, we should be working to remove him and his ilk from Iran and the entire Middle East.

Among those attending this week's conference is David Duke, the American Ku Klux Klansman. In consorting with the enemy, Duke proves once again he is a traitor to American democracy. Since he likes Iran, he ought to stay there.

California Prison System In Crisis

Abraham Lincoln said more than once that every time he heard the virtues of slavery extolled, he felt a strong desire to see it tried on the person praising it.

The same thing could be said of the many persons in our society, including many prosecutors and judges, who support the present California criminal justice system, the long prison terms under the three-strikes law, the lack of adequate procedures for parole, the placing of former convicts back in jail for relatively minor breaches of parole, and so forth.

Two articles in the Los Angeles Times Sunday dealt with the injustices of a system in which the number of imprisoned constantly grows and many middle-aged persons, well past the age in which they might be most prone to commit new crimes and often suffering mental problems, remain in jail.

First, there was a column in the California section by Steve Lopez on the case of the psychologically-impaired Stephan Lilly, sentenced to 25 years in jail on a three-strike violation, despite the fact that two of the crimes were strictly verbal and the third was arguably a misdemeanor.

The prosecutor in this sad case was Angela Brunson and the judge was a relatively new Schwarzenegger appointee to the bench, Richard Goul. Lopez actually was able to interview Goul, who defended the shocking sentence.

I looked up Goul on the Internet. Before being appointed to the bench he was a deputy district attorney in Long Beach in charge of sexual assault cases. The Lilly case was not a sexual assault.

It would be interesting to know more about Goul and Brunson, but I believe that given their judgement, they belong in prison more than Lilly does, and, in a just world, would be sent there for awhile to give them the opportunity to alter their views. In Brunson's case, she had offered Lilli an 11-year sentence on a plea bargain. When he didn't take it and went to trial, she urged that he be sent up for 25 years, and the judge went along. Shame on her!

The crimes committed by Goul and Brunson in their handling of this case are worse than the one for which Lilly is being incarcerated, at immense public expense, for 25 years. Shame on both these miscreants.

The second article appeared in the L.A. Times' improving Current section and was by Joe Domanick, author of the book, "Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America's Golden State" as well as a senior fellow in criminal justice at USC's Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism.

Noting that in 1994 California voters "overwhelmingly approved a three-strikes law mandating a sentence of 25 years to life for a third felony conviction and a doubling of a sentence for a second strike," Domanick goes on:

"Criminal justice experts estimates that as much as 25% of California's -- and the nation's -- decade-long crime decline is attributable to this punish all-criminals strategy. But the approach has come at a huge cost. The longer sentences have swelled the inmate population far beyond the capacity of our prisons and contributed to the rise of an older criminal class, especially in California. In Los Angeles County, for instance, felony arrests and incarceration of 40 to 59-year-olds have jumped dramatically, a stunning development, given that criminals tend to commit fewer crimes as they reach their mid-20s, and fewer still as they grow older. But in L.A. County, 40-to-59-year-olds are incarcerated at a rate 1,200% higher than in 1980. Many return to prison because of technical violations -- failing drug tests or missing a parole appointment."

When Schwarzenegger was first elected governor, Domanick remarks, he backed prison reform, but he soon retreated under pressure from the (corrupt) prison guards union. Now, he has fallen back "on the old, failed bromide of building more prisons."

Not only is the system unjust, but it costs the taxpayers of California billions of dollars.

Both Lopez and Domanick have done a public service with their articles. Let's hope someone is paying attention.

The headline on Lopez's article was, "Inmate is unstable; the system is just nuts."

Amen!

(Another article on the California prison system in crisis appears today in the New York Times, Page A18, by Jennifer Steinhauer. She notes that California has the highest prison population in the nation, with state prisons currently housing 173,000 inmates. It costs $8 billion a year).