Elsewhere: Slate.com has an hilarious dialogue on the World Series, between Charles Pierce (the sportswriter from Friday Altercation) and Allan Barra; where else can you hear the Yankees middle relievers described as a "trip to Mordor"? Prof. DeLong has a scathing piece on Justice Scalia, who recently recused himself from hearing the Pledge of Allegiance case due to his personal relationship with one of the interested parties (ie., "God"), and the logical ramifications of his judicial philosophy. And Spinsanity tears a new one into NaziPundit.

This is an indication that I'm getting old. Yesterday's LA Times had a profile of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, who, it turns out, is an alumna of my high school, Harvard-Westlake. Except when I was going there, it was just "Harvard", and had an oh-so-strict policy about not admitting women onto our ivied corridors. The school went co-ed well after I graduated (in 1981; famous classmates: film directors Brad Silberling and Andrew Fleming, and novelist Ben Sherwood), which means she, like the Collins Twins, was born after I started matriculating there. I suck.

I used to live in an apartment on Bunker Hill that claimed in its advertising that it was "adjacent" to the soon-to-be-built Disney Center. That was fourteen years ago, just after I passed the bar and was earning good money for the first time. Unfortunately, the Disney Center wouldn't even be started for another ten years, and my memories of living and working in Downtown Los Angeles were bleak and depressing. Nothing ever happened there until the Troubles of April 1992, but by then I had returned to the glamour and excitement of the Valley.

Anyway, tonight the Frank Gehry-designed concert hall opens to the public for the first time. In the past year, two major architectural accomplishments (Our Lady of Angels Cathedral opened last year) have been completed in the Downtown area, and the people of this community are starting to get a civic center that they can go to, rather than escape from.

William Greider, on the late Vermont Senator George Aiken:

George Aiken was a conservative Republican of the old school -- a conservator of cherished values and regular order in governing institutions, not a radical right-winger like the present crowd. In private life, Aiken was a nurseryman. He wrote a celebrated book in the 1930s, "Pioneering in Wild Flowers," in which he described his self-learned methods for propagating the rare species of wild flowers hiding in his native woodlands. It's still in print and still a charming and educational book to read.

Aiken could see the future even then. Eventually, he realized, development and aesthetic tastes would put unbearable pressure on the pink lady slipper and other natural gems. To prevent their extinction, he explained, Vermont and other forested states needed laws prohibiting their harvest in the wild (those laws are now standard). Instead, people could cultivate the plants for sale from seed or cuttings, thus multiplying the supply and protecting the species in wild places from human predators.

He was, in other words, a wise, plain-spoken environmentalist before that term came into usage. One misses his type in public life, especially in the Republican party.

Not willing to be outdone by recent events in Texas and California, Florida Governor Jeb Bush has assertively moved to reclaim for his state the distinction of being the Moron Capital of America by signing this legislation, which gives him the arbitrary power to impose force-feeding on comatose patients, in defiance of the wishes of the next-of-kin.

Just in time for Halloween, an important public health warning.

State A.G. Bill Lockyer claims to have voted for Ahnold Ziffel, saying he opposed the recall, thought that the slate of replacement candidates was a "crappy list", but "...chose Schwarzenegger in the replacement election because he stood for 'hope, change, reform, opportunity, upbeat problem solving.' He added, 'I want that. I'm tired of transactional, cynical, dealmaking politics.' No word on whether the state's top law-enforcement officer, who was hinting in the days before the election that a criminal prosecution of The Pig might be warranted, is now soft on workplace groping, although he did add that while he now believed the charges against the governor-elect, "I'm convinced Arnold didn't really understand that he was caught up in frat boy behavior". Boys will be boys !!

A good encapsulation of everything wrong with Disney's decision to can Gregg Easterbrook may be found here. For those of you who don't follow controversies in the blogosphere or on the pages of the New Republic, Easterbrook is a very fine writer, famous for his oft-contrarian work on environmental issues, religion, and, of all things, pro football, who used an unfortunate choice of words in a blogpost concerning the movie Kill Bill, which made it seem like he was anti-Semitic.

One of his targets in his post was Michael Eisner, long-time CEO of Disney, parent company of ESPN.com, which terminated Easterbrook's hilarious football column, "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" (ironically, Easterbrook had criticized Eisner, among others, for being a Jewish movie executive who had greenlighted the Tarentino bloodfest, presumably in contradiction to the religious tenets of Judaism; TMQ is famous for its soft-core descriptions of pro football cheerleaders, which is not entirely consistent with the religious beliefs of most Christians).

As with the controversy over Rush Limbaugh's remarks several weeks ago about Donovan McNabb, I feel the corporate reaction of purging the officious commentator only exacerbates the problem. Even though I view most charges of "political correctness" skeptically, as an excuse by others to justify racist opinions, it doesn't mean that the phenomenum doesn't exist. Censoring ill-phrased comments is appropriate, and Limbaugh and Easterbrook were rightly attacked for the remarks they made. I thought that Rush never should have been hired by ESPN in the first place, and I disagree with most of Easterbrook's takes on pro football (he seems to have an unhealthy obsession with the running game).

But forcing the offender into some public Maoist self-criticism ritual is precisely the wrong approach, one that guarantees that a large portion of the public is going to view such opinions as forbidden fruit, and speaking such opinions as courageous rather than bigoted. In particular, ESPN has apparently removed TMQ from its website altogether, and its football parade ads that were so ubiquitous at the beginning of the season have been all but pulled, due to the conspicuous participation of Mr. Limbaugh. Down the memory hole....

Once Limbaugh was hired, ESPN knew what it was going to get from him. His statement, while wrong in the specific (McNabb isn't overrated b/c he's black; he's overrated b/c he's a quarterback), was not racist per se, and is certainly no more outrageous than some of the things Howard Cosell used to say on MNF. He was hired for his opinions, and when he was wrong, Tom Jackson and Steve Young certainly had the right to stand up to him.

Many of the same people who jumped down Easterbrook's back on this case do not hesitate to impose similar criteria on Clarence Thomas every time a civil rights case is brought to the Supreme Court, or on Catholic politicians where the issue of abortion is concerned (or, for that matter, on Jewish writers concerning the domestic policy of Sharon). Political discourse in a free society often means saying something that does not sound pleasant to the ear, and when an attempt to do so goes awry, the speaker should be argued with, not bullied by the rest of us.

Things not to do ever again: watch a Bruins game at the Rose Bowl. It is a depressing place, with none of the amenities a sports fan has come to expect when attending games. The game itself was boring (alma mater is now oh and four in games I've attended), the crowd was docile (who could have thought that 60,000 fans could make so little noise, on a day when their side was winning), and I actually had to use my cell phone in what was a futile attempt to get the SC-Notre Dame score. The word "stalinist" gets thrown around loosely, much like the words "racist" and "fascist", but there has to be a way to describe UCLA's unwillingness to announce any score that might favor their crosstown rival. When my friend Deborah asked, with a minute to go, if I wanted to leave to catch the shuttle to Old Town, I enthusiastically supported the motion; as it turns out, I missed CAL's only impressive drive of the game.

Well, I went and saw the Corvids tonight, and for those of you who might expect me to snark away at my less than ideologically-pure bloghomies, well, I can't help you. They were actually pretty good, much better than a band that has supposedly never performed live should be...it just makes me wish I had had the gumption to have abandoned my fledgling legal practice in the early-90's and sought asylum in the Czech Republic. Busking, pitchers of Budvar, smokin' fatties with Vaclav Havel...all of that must have been better than 3-day depos on CERCLA litigation in Riverside County, or helping my dad appraise the art collection of Peter Bogdanovich during his Chapter 7.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the American track and field program is as dirty as the East German women's swim team used to be. What is even more pathetic is how mediocre we are in track events: looking back on the '72 team, which was thought at the time to be a huge disappointment, what with Ryun and Pre getting shut out and two of our best sprinters not showing up for their prelims, the U.S. was still competitive in just about every running event. Today, the only events Americans have a prayer of winning are the sprints, and even then it's a battle just to win a medal.

In the end, this scandal is going to spread far beyond the U.S. track team....

Two new ballot initiatives to look forward to on the March ballot: an attempt to revoke the law permitting illegal immigrants from qualifying for drivers licenses, and a petition to revoke the LA ordinance banning lap dancing. And by the way, those of you who want to see some candid snaps of yours truly, check out this one, taken at my b-day party two weeks ago.

This probably won't shock anyone, but a lab in the Bay Area has been busted for distributing a designer version of anabolic steroids, THG, to an unknown number of American athletes. For what it's worth, the lab is run by one Victor Conte, who is the "nutritionist" for Barry Bonds, among others. Those athletes who've been caught using THG will be suspended for up to two years, making them ineligible for the 2004 Athens Games.

L.A.'s paper of record has some well-chosen words of praise for a blogger of renown:

Tonypierce.com, one of the most popular L.A. blogs among other bloggers, would seem to be written by a fictional character, but it is not. Tony Pierce, a Hollywood resident who works for a television station, calls it his busblog, though it began as a bus commuter's record of travails.

Then women started e-mailing him, so he claims, and the travails improved.

"What I think people really like on my site are my stories about picking up chicks," Pierce said. "People have this image of L.A. as a place where if you don't drive a Mercedes and aren't super good-looking and rich, you won't get any chicks. They love to hear about a guy who takes the bus to work who still gets a lot of chicks."

In fact, Pierce writes long screeds on the historical misfortunes of the Chicago Cubs far more often than he does tales of seduction, which, when they do arrive, have a kind of lovesick charm to them. He writes about L.A., sometimes adoringly, sometimes scathingly, sometimes both.

But would it have killed the Times to actually link to the Great Man's site?

YUCK !! After defeating their pretend-rival, the Boston Red Sox, for the umpteenth consecutive time (the BoSox have not won a game that mattered against the Yankees since 1904), we are now left with the World Series that absolutely no one outside the metropolitan area of either city wanted to see. Yanks in five, but who cares. The football season just started in earnest.

As in Vietnam, the complaint by hawks has been that the media exaggerates the bad news in Iraq, while ignoring positive developments: schools being built, guerrillas being routed, hearts and minds being won. This has the effect of compelling journalists to report stories more in line with government propaganda, until reality rears its ugly head.

It will be hard for the Administration to spin this story. According to the Pentagon, thirteen soldiers have committed suicide since engagements started back in March, or more than ten percent of the non-combat related fatalities among U.S. troops. Half of the soldiers polled by that notorious leftist broadsheet, Stars and Stripes, describe their unit's morale as "low" or "very low", and almost half said that they did not intend to reenlist once their hitch expires.

The Rumsfeld P.R. offensive has triggered negative reaction amongst the grunts as well ("a dog and pony show"), an opinion seemingly borne out by the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, who "told reporters he was personally worried that when he and other top officers visited troops, they were only allowed to talk to 'all the happy folks.' 'I want to see the folks that have complaints. And sometimes they won't let them near me,' Myers said when pressed about the Stars and Stripes newspaper survey...." Soldiers who took part in the survey expressed concern that statements of complaint had triggerred punishment in the form of "Article 15"s, which could lead to the loss of pay, reprimands, and extra work duties.

One thing I love about reading English newspapers is their occasional coverage of American sports. They make everything seem so high-brow...check out this column on Bartmangate:

Late on the evening of Tuesday 14 October in this the 95th year of the suffering of the Chicago Cubs, Steve Bartman did what any baseball fan does when the ball comes his way during the game.

He tried to catch it. By doing so, he has turned himself, in the Cub part of the Windy City at least, into a villain beside whom even the likes of Saddam Hussein pale.

Mr Bartman has not invaded other countries or murdered anyone, but, for fellow Cubs, devotees his crime is infinitely more serious.

By raising his hand when he did, he possibly cost their beloved but benighted team the chance of winning its first World Series since 1908.

It reminds me of a line a sportswriter in the Times of London came up with before England was to take on West Germany in the 1966 World Cup Final: "if on the morrow we shall lose to Germany in our national sport, let us remember that we vanquished them twice this century in theirs."

Sportsblogging should be left to people who know what they're talking about. I predict that Steve Bartman will become a beloved figure to the people of Chicago right around the time that Donnie Moore gets a high school named after him in Anaheim. Having been in the same position that Cub fans are now in back in 1986, I can testify that a loss like this haunts fans til the day they die, and can only be alleviated, in time, with a championship. Moore eventually went mad from the hostility he received from fans and reporters after Game 5, even though any sane person realized he was pitching with a wounded limb and shouldn't have been out there in the first place. Bartman was doing what fans do at baseball games (he wasn't the only one going for the ball), and the Cubs collapse was aggravated by a misplay on a double-play grounder later in the inning, but he would need to be a stronger man than I to continue to live anywhere near that city.

CRAP!!!

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight: After countless hours and taxpayer funds were spent trying to prevent the Kobe Defense Team from receiving info about the alleged victim's previous hospital stays, the prosecution now has to ask the court to get the records of said visits that they accidentally mailed to the defense team.

Dusty Baker is 27 outs from becoming the black Gene Mauch.

The place where the Oscar-nominated writer and "screener"- fetishist collector "takes some hits" can be found, below, in the Ahnold Ziffel Update on October 9. Blogger has trouble with archiving links, surprise, surprise.

LA Times editor John Carroll defends the Times coverage of Gropergate (reminding us, again, that the argument that most of the sixteen women who came forward were "anonymous" is the highest degree of bullshit). Conservative columnist Jill Stewart has a weak response, repeating old gossip about Gray Davis, using an anonymous (natch) source to claim that Mr. Carroll is obsessed with Ahnold, and reporting the gripes of an author of a Clinton-bashing bromide that he wasn't used as a source in the Times article.

Eventful week for yours truly. Went and saw Annette Summersett Thursday night with her new band at the Universal Bar and Grill; even for a Yooper, she is truly as talented as she is gorgeous. On Friday, I made a rare appearance at Joxers to watch the Cubs and Michigan pull out miracle wins.

Saturday I watched sports all day, then went to a veritable "blogapalooza" in Laurel Canyon. Everyone who counts in the SoCal blog scene made it, and the wine and pizza lasted forever, thanks to our host, Brian Linse. I even got to introduce myself to Mickey Kaus, who was gracious enough to tell me where the bathroom was (btw, most bloggers don't live in their mom's basement--that's an outdated stereotype). "Armed Liberal" was there, and he was surprisingly a) nice, and b) unarmed. And I got to converse with Kevin Drum, aka CalPundit, about the joys of being owned by cats.

And, of course, the Arvin Sloane of the blogosphere showed up, ominously informing me that the Recall, the possible Cubs-Bosox World Series, and the first Corvids gig next Saturday were just "Part I" of his master plan for world dominance; he's always just one step ahead of the rest of us. The night was marred only by Howard Owens' unwise decision to remove his clothes and start yelling into the night, "RECALL THIS !!" (for a candid photo of yours truly, check out the photo of "Emmanuel" and "Kate"; I'm in the background trying not to fall over. And a more sober account of the festivities can be found here, for those who actually want to know what went on).

Frank Rich, on Ahnold Ziffel:

Mr. Schwarzenegger's credo was laid out quite specifically in his autobiography, "Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder": "A certain amount of people are meant to be in control. Ninety-five percent of the people have to be told what to do, have to be given orders."

This philosophy, which he has repeated elsewhere and never retracted, sums up his politics far more than conventional conservative-vs.-liberal, Republican-vs.-Democrat paradigms. The budget deficit? Failing public schools? Mr. Schwarzenegger will make things right by terminating the malefactors from on high; let the other 95 percent of "the people" get out of the way. What was the plan? "Hasta la vista, car tax!" Such know-nothingness is not Nazism; it's too idea-free even to qualify as fascism-lite.

And for those of you who were hoping that the election last Tuesday would bring an end to the scandals, here's a story about how the Schwarzenegger campaign, either deliberately or recklessly, made a false criminal accusation about one of the women who had accused him, and how local AM and internet scumbags repeated the slur.[link via Mark A. Kleiman]

Two interesting bits of miscellany before I go watch Oklahoma-Texas...Kobe's attorneys actually have the goods showing that the oft-mentioned vaginal tearing in the alleged victim may have come during a prior sexual encounter earlier that night[link via TalkLeft]...and my former schoolmate Stephen Bing is putting part of his vast fortune into the Recall Arnold movement[link via Politics in the Zeros].

Even the "liberal" New Republic...sells out to the Saudis. [link via Alterman]

If you're looking for jokes about Rush Limbaugh today, you've come to the wrong place. Empathy is the soul of liberal politics, and it ain't selective; the fact that Rush wouldn't feel compassion for someone else with the same problem is irrelevant. And, as it turns out, William Greider agrees.

Professional Courtesy: Iranian judge and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi has won the Nobel Peace Prize, the first Muslim woman to do so. It's always good to see another member of the bar so honored.

Fans of the All-Blacks, the Wallabies, and the Eagles: I have no guarantees on this other than the owner's word, but Culver City's swingingest Irish pub, Joxer Daly's, will be picking up every game from the Rugby World Cup, which starts this morning and continues through the end of November.

For those of you visiting from Hit and Run: the anecdote you seek was written October 6, so scroll down. For some reason, none of my past posts are linkable.

Ahnold Ziffel Update: The honeymoon has begun. Already, the conventional wisdom is that the election Tuesday was a glorious triumph for "democracy", with pundits (here, here, and here) celebrating the high turnout, the greater number of votes for the winner, and all the things you might expect when you are trying to gloss over the fact that the largest state in the union has just elected a sexual pervert to its highest office. One blogger went so far as to compare this past Tuesday to the fall of the Iron Curtain !!

Today, Ahnold Ziffel appointed a "bipartisan" team of advisers to assist him in the transition, and with few exceptions it runs the gamut of the political spectrum from A to B. Any question that the next governor would end business-as-usual in Sacramento was quelled when he named an assortment of GOP party hacks and Wilson-era retreads to his team; his pet "liberals" include Susan Estrich, who only last week was shilling for him against those dastardly women who finked to the LA Times, and Tammy Bruce, the only person who has ever made OJ Simpson seem sympathetic. And, of course, "good government" Democrats are no doubt excited that the lame duck mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown, will be joining Team Ahnold.

Either Mr. Bryant's defense team has some devastating piece of evidence it is about to spring in the next day or so, or we have just witnessed several hours of legal malpractice the likes of which has not been seen since F.Lee Bailey defended Patty Hearst. There is simply no other way to justify the decision to go ahead with the preliminary hearing.

UPDATE: Never mind.

New vs. Old Media: Local billboard legend "Angelyne" edged blogger fave-babe Georgy Russell in the Recall ballot.

The estimable Kevin Drum advises California liberals to ignore tonight's result and focus on the bigger picture, which is to unseat George Bush next November. It's hard to argue with that; for all the talk about the significance of this result, it should be pointed out that a) there are not really significant political differences between Ahnolt and Gray, and b) that Ahnolt is a faux outsider, ie., although this was his first election, he comes from the class of people that usually dominate our government: lawyers, businessmen, celebrities, and heirs. If George B. Schwartzman had won tonight (and considering that the only thing he had going for him was that he was next to Ahnolt on the ballot, his ninth place finish is impressive), or if Georgy Russell had won (and yes, I admit it, I voted for her !!), that would be a sign that something historic had taken place. People like Schwartzman or Russell usually do not get elected to high office in this country, to our discredit.

But at some point, liberals have to fight back, or we risk being like the lowly gofers and A.D.'s that the next governor used to grope on his rowdy sets. We can either continue to be victims, or we can start to play hardball ourselves; it seems to me that's the only way to run a competitive race against George Bush. Being an Uncle Tom Democrat, willing to look the other way when we get bitchslapped, isn't a solution.

And we do have two things going for us. First, the charges that have come out in the past week aren't going away; even though the election is over, other women will continue to come forward, and it will put him further on the defensive. Although he won, the charges did take their toll on Tuesday [link via Calif. Insider]. As with the Clarence Thomas confirmation, the Republicans will find that they have won the initial battle, only to lose the war. And second, the transition will last several weeks. Democrats can graciously congratulate A.S. for his victory tonight, without having to worry about how they look when they change the tone next month.

So let's tip our caps to the winner, and give him the same honeymoon the Republican Party gave Gray Davis.

Mickey Kaus, on A.S.' character problems:

The difficult problems with Schwarzenegger have to do with his character--not even his credentials or abilities. He's certainly smart enough--if you interview enough politicians, you realize that a) they're not so brilliant (Willie Brown is an exception) and b) you can be a good leader even if you're not brilliant. He's also, by all accounts, geniunely funny, with an instinct for honesty. (Can you imagine Bill Clinton saying "where there's smoke, there's fire"?) But Schwarzenegger has two really troubling characterological defects:

a) He's a crude serotonin victim who enjoys bullying men and women alike. Everyone knew there were stories like the LAT presented last week. I've heard even more. He's not a groper the way Clinton was a groper--Schwarzenegger seems to actually have a cruel streak in which he enjoys humiliating others. With women, there's a sexual component--but there are plenty of stories of him humiliating men. (And at least one of the groping incidents seems designed to humiliate the woman's husband more than the woman.)

b) He may not even be a social egalitiarian. This is one way to reconcile the accounts from famous actresses of "Arnold the Gentlemen" and the repulsive stories told by "below the line" film personnel. Of course Schwarzenegger's charming to the people he needs to be charming too--such as fellow movie stars. But he lords it over people he can lord it over when he can get away with it. Let's just say this hierarchical behavior is not un-Germanic. But it is un-American. You'd think it would be especially troubling to someone, like me, who proclaims social equality the distinguishing goal of liberal politics.

And he voted for him, too !!

Florida 9, Chicago 8: Unfortunately, I saw most of this game from an empty bar that had the volume down, so the electric moments in this game were lost from where I was sitting. I'm not sure the Cubbies are going to be very competitive in this series when Wood and Prior aren't starting; perhaps the Lizard should come back with Prior in Game 5 on 3 days rest.

Phoe-Nix Update: Prime Suspect 6 will air in the U.K. in November.

Well, I voted. I did the right thing, and voted against the recall. I did not vote for any of the major replacement candidates, and since I intend to support an immediate recall of the almost-certain winner, I won't lose any sleep over that vote. In the meantime, here's an excellent piece on the pathetic attempt to spread a rumor through the media that Gov. Davis has battered women.

UPDATE: Drudge is reporting that the early exit polls show that both the recall and Ahnolt are going to win easily. Tomorrow, we begin the process of Recalling the Pig !!

What to do, on your fortieth birthday, when your family is out-of-town, and your friends are recuperating from a long weekend? Why, if you're me, you order two tacos (one beef, one chicken) and a beef burrito, w/out cheese, from Casa Vega for pick-up. And, as always, you pick the cheese out of the tacos, and chow down as much of the bean burrito as you can, because they always screw up the order, and I can pretend I'm a kid again, when going to the Roscoes-of-the-Valley with my parents and siblings on a Friday night was the highlight of the week.

I am going to vote against the recall. I have absolutely no idea who I'm going to vote for to replace Gray Davis. With little in the way of drama as to the result, I have a choice between the party candidate (Cruz), my ideological soulmate (Carnejo) and the best man with the worst politics (McClintock). And Larry Flynt, too. Ahnolt has this race in the bag, with the near certainty that a new recall effort will start Wednesday morning to oust the Austrian version of Roman Polanski in the March primary, when the new voters, the young white males who will make the difference tomorrow, will be less likely (and less motivated) to vote.

This piece by Joan Walsh really hits the nail on the head about the repugnant behaviour by our next governor. One of the truest tests of character about anyone is how well you treat people you don't have to be nice to. It could be the janitor in your building, or the girl behind the counter at McDonalds, or the brother of your worst enemy: if you can maintain at least a minimal level of politeness and decency, without any expectation that you will receive some material benefit from doing so, you're o.k., in my book.

The thing about each of the next governor's victims has been that they could do nothing to enhance his career, put money in his pocket, or improve his social status. They weren't his employees, nor his equals on the set. They were waitresses, bit actresses trying to earn a SAG card, assistant producers, gofers. He didn't just treat them like the help; he lorded his sense of superiority over them, just because he could.

UPDATE: I forgot all about this candidate. A group of Ahnolt's brownshirts beat her up yesterday at one of their torchlight rallies, but she seems to have taken the incident in good cheer. Georgy's got my vote !!! [link via Hit and Run]

An account of my indirect dealings with the governor of this state:

Years ago, my dad was a Democratic Party activist in California, closely associated with Jesse Unruh, the legendary Speaker of the Assembly during the Pat Brown and Ronald Reagan governorships. He ran campaigns back before there was big money to be had in that field, and in non-election years, he would support his family by doing odd jobs for the legislature (in particular, he helped draw the lines during the "one man/one vote" redistricting in 1964). During that time, he became very close to future lieutenant governor Mervyn Dymally, who appointed him to a government commission in the mid-70's and generally made sure that any patronage that was his to offer went my father's way.

Another benefactor was Ken Cory, who for years had the distinction of being the only elected Democrat from Orange County, and who served several terms as State Controller. Among the plums at his disposal was a position called "Inheritance Tax Referee". I still have no idea what that position did, but after the first Steve Smith passed the bar in 1977 (when he was the age I turned today, 40), his friend Ken Cory appointed him to a twelve-month term. For a struggling lawyer with a wife and four mouths to feed, it was a lucrative plum. My dad, being a paragon of virtue, actually took the position seriously, and spent a great deal of time administering the estates he was assigned; it later led to his appointment as a Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee.

Anyways, Unruh wins reelection to a fourth term as State Treasurer in 1986, but by this time, years of wine, women and song are beginning to catch up with him. Gray Davis is elected State Controller that same year. Davis and Unruh had never been exactly close, since the future governor had made his bones in a futile run against him for State Treasurer, but he clearly knew that Unruh remained a powerful figure in the state, and that he needed to kiss up to him. My father, who had been one of Dymally's men in state government, loathed Davis, reflecting the general disdain Unruh's people had for Jerry Brown and his people.

Well, the story goes that on his deathbed, Unruh got Davis' agreement to continue reappointing my father to the aforementioned Referee position. Actually, the state controller had two options: he could simply rollover the term for another twelve months, or he could make a six-month appointment, which was a subtle way of telling the appointee that he should not depend on this source of income in the future.

Unruh dies in 1987. Sometime in 1993, I'm working for my dad when he receives his notification of reappointment. For a six month term. In fact, the "six" was typed over a white-out mark on the certificate, with the number "twelve" having clearly been expunged, right above Gray Davis' freshly-inked signature. No doubt, Davis, after having discovered that with Unruh dead, he no longer had to be nice to my old man, had not only decided to terminate my father's position, but had done so in a way that it would be noticed by him (he probably had flung an ashtray at his assistant when he realized what he had been doing the previous six years). My father always thought it was funny that someone could be such an a-hole, and he always had a good laugh about it. I, on the other hand, have never forgotten the incident.

Four more women have come forward...eventually, stories about Ahnolt molesting women are going to become so mundane, it will be hard for the LA Times to justify putting them on the front page. The important thing to note about these incidents is that half of them have nothing to do with movies or movie sets, which is perhaps the biggest reason they're being reported (and certainly the principal reason that the victims are speaking on-the-record). Schwarzenegger has never had to deal with real journalists before, and he can't handle it.

And of course, Gray Davis has to show why he is so beloved by the people of California by raising the specter of a criminal investigation. One of these days (like tomorrow!), I'm going to have to tell you my own little Gray Davis anecdote....

Off to my 40th....

Kausfiles has an easy solution to the controversy over Ahnolt's "Hitler tapes": play them for one of his media shills (ie., William Bradley). After all, A.S. now has the ownership rights to the Pumping Iron outtakes.

Wonderful evisceration by Bob Somerby, on hatchet-job hypocrite Susan Estrich. I'm beginning to think that Michael Dukakis "lost" the '88 election for the same reason that the White Sox "lost" the 1919 World Series.

Another day, three more women with stories to tell about the next governor:

(Carla) Baron, then 28, said she was a stand-in for lead actress Kelly Preston. She said the stories reported this week about Schwarzenegger reminded her of the feelings of powerless and humiliation she experienced.

Baron said she was standing next to a food service table with Schwarzenegger and his longtime stand-in shortly after Shriver left the set. The men suggested making a "Carla sandwich," Baron said. The stand-in moved behind her while Schwarzenegger stood in front. "I said something along the line of, 'Boys, the sandbox is out back,' " Baron said.

"Arnold said, 'No, I think we should make a Carla sandwich,' " she said. With Schwarzenegger facing her and the stand-in behind, they squeezed her between them, Baron said. After they separated, Schwarzenegger, who had just been smoking a cigar, bent her over and pushed his tongue in her mouth, she said.

"There was this tongue just lunging down my throat," Baron said. "I am in shock at this point. I wanted to throw up from the taste. It was worse than licking an ashtray. It was like an ashtray of human flesh." (emphasis added)

Of interest is the fact that Kelly Preston, who co-starred with Schwarzenegger in the movie Twins, was one of the women who came to the support of Ahnolt after the infamous Premiere article two years ago, claiming that he was a gentleman on the set. I have a feeling A.S. probably doesn't make it a habit of groping A-list (or B-list) actresses; the power dynamics are much different.

William Greider gives his two cents on the recall:

Like many others, I hope Davis survives, but it won't be the end of history if he doesn't. It might even provide a new beginning if rebuked politicians absorb the message. Arnold may prove to be a clown or perhaps shrewder than people suppose. Either way, the Golden State will survive, still struggling with all of its deep problems. Given my understanding of where we are in corrupted representative democracy, we need more earthquakes -- lots of them. Who knows, maybe we will get another next year in Washington.

Two interesting, but opposing takes on the Limbaugh / McNabb controversy, by journalists David Neiwert and Allan Barra. As odious as I find Limbaugh, his politics, and his willingness to debase political commentary, I do not feel any sense of schadenfreude at his fall. Drug addiction is a disease, and I certainly hope for his recovery; I sense that neither he nor his dittoheads would feel much sympathy if the patient was Bill Clinton or Jesse Jackson.

He is not a new phenomenum, in any event. In the 30's, perhaps the most popular media figure of the day wasn't Clark Gable or F.D.R.; it was a radio priest named Father Charles Coughlin. One of the popular political writers was a gentleman named Westbrook Pegler. Like Limbaugh, each of those men had views that today would euphemistically be called "radical centrist"; that is to say, they were virulent bigots, who found easy scapegoats for the problems of society and used ad hominem attacks as a favored debating ploy. In the end, society turned their back on them, just as it has now begun to do with Rush Limbaugh.

Another woman has come forward:

Joy Browne, a psychologist whose advice program is syndicated to nearly 200 stations nationwide, described on the radio an encounter with Schwarzenegger that took place during an interview about the documentary, which was released in 1977.

Schwarzenegger fondled her legs under the table during the interview, she said. Then, she said, he left his Gold American Express card in the studio and insisted that Browne personally return it to his hotel room.

According to Browne, who was in her late 20s at the time, she took her young daughter along to return the credit card. Schwarzenegger, she said, answered the door in tight pants, wearing no shirt. He had champagne. He asked her if her daughter could "take a walk for a while?" She declined.

Rob Stutzman, a Schwarzenegger spokesman, said Thursday that the candidate had no recollection of the alleged incident.

Also, a woman who had been anonymous in yesterday's article is now on-the-record, further dispelling the myth that the Times story was based largely on anonymous sources. No word yet whether the Times will also report that Gray Davis has used the F-word on occasion.

An interesting follow-up to the piece last month on boxing: the LA Times interviews several judges about what it is they use to determine who wins a round. For anyone who follows the sport, the subjectivity involved is frightening. BTW, we may be getting the fight at my b-day bash tomorrow; all the more reason for my followers to attend.

From today's New York Times:

In a part of the interview not used in the film, Mr. Schwarzenegger was asked to name his heroes — "who do you admire most."

"It depends for what," Mr. Schwarzenegger said, according to the transcript in the book proposal. "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker."

In addition to the transcript, Mr. Butler wrote in his book proposal that in the 1970's, he considered Mr. Schwarzenegger a "flagrant, outspoken admirer of Hitler." In the proposal, Mr. Butler also said he had seen Mr. Schwarzenegger playing "Nazi marching songs from long-playing records in his collection at home" and said that the actor "frequently clicked his heels and pretended to be an S.S. officer."

Mr. Schwarzenegger, in a telephone interview on Thursday, said he did not recall making any of the comments attributed to him or engaging in any of the behavior described by Mr. Butler.

I have just one question: Is it possible that his memory is so bad he can't recall whether he used to goosestep to the beat of his favorite "Nazi marching song"?

Garry Trudeau is right. The next recall movement starts October 8. California is either going to elect a bully who is unable to keep his hands off women, or it will retain a governor that everybody hates. Lousy choice.

The latest Field Poll shows Ahnold comfortably ahead of non-candidate Bustamante, and the recall prevailing by a wide margin. Obviously, with the events of today, particularly the revelation that A.S. one time admitted to admiring Hitler, that poll is already out-of-date. Bustamante has quit even running a semblance of a campaign; one can certainly sympathize with a mediocrity who probably never intended to be governor, and found himself completely outmatched by the responsibility. More discouraging is the fact that McClintock has lost ground: even though I disagree with almost every position he's taken, his campaign has been one of the few honorable notes in this election. Even if Ahnolt takes a hit with his newfound backers among women and moderates, I doubt McClintock will be able to capture enough of their votes to prevail.

Although I have enjoyed watching the G.O.P. ditch all semblance of principle in backing a man whose licentiousness is more like the American Spectator fantasy version of Bill Clinton, and whose politics are to the left of Zell Miller, much less every other significant Republican in the country, the end result will probably be that my home state will be governed by this leech for the next few months. Let's just get this over with, get our petitions ready, and do it right next time.

Whether it be DiFi or Riordan, ALL IS FORGIVEN !!!

Mickey Kaus has been directing people to this bit of anti-Gray Davis invective from 1998, by "journalist" Jill Stewart. Unlike the L.A. Times piece, she relied entirely on unnamed "sources" to paint a picture of a violent and ill-tempered future governor, one who used the f-word and the like in front of subordinates. Loud and abusive bosses are a pain to work for, but it's not quite as bad as having to worry about your boss groping you in public (or your boss saying that he "admired Hitler"). Ms. Stewart should go back to stalking Kevin Murray.

Another woman has come forward to claim A.S. once demanded that she and a friend get in his car, or that he would rape her. No word yet as to whether this was one of the "playful" antics referred to earlier this morning.

At this point, what's really driving this story isn't the fact that the Times published this at the last second, but that Ahnold waited until election eve to confirm that these allegations were largely true.

UPDATE: The New York Times quotes a campaign spokesman for the actor, Todd Harris, as saying that some of the allegations in the LA Times article were true, and some were not true. He did not say which. It also mentioned that the woman, above, was heckled by supporters of A.S. with shouts of "lesbian" and "liar" after she made her accusation.

Men Behaving Badly: Ahnold denied the LA Times article, but "apologized" for being on some "pretty rowdy sets". LAME !! He has now given the press license to investigate what other incidents he might be referring to beyond what the Times reported, while validating the underlying inquiry.

The Times article names names and lists witnesses, and four of the six incidents weren't even on movie sets: one was at the gym; one, in an office; one, in a restaurant; and one incident, in a hotel room during an interview. He can hardly say that this is "trash politics", as his shills suggest, if he admits that he has something to apologize for, if not those incidents. In any event, since he doesn't refer to specific events or persons, it is hard to take his "apology" seriously. My bet is that while Republicans won't care at this stage, his gains amongst moderates and women over the past two weeks will disintegrate.

The LA Times reports that our next governor is a bit of a creep !! Anyone who has lived in this town could have told you that, and named five other actors who are even worse. [link via CalPundit]

With the baseball playoffs starting, ArchPundit has a timely scoop.

RECALL UPDATE: It's over !!! Davis is toast. Bustamante is an ambulatory stiff. Pete Wilson Ahnold is our next governor.

Comments are now fixed, so flame away.

While most commentators have seen the Valerie Plame scandal for what it is, as an attempt by the White House to intimidate a foe by potentially putting his spouse in danger, there is a dissenting view, one where the real scandal is the conspiracy that has been hatched by CIA spooks, "Arabists" in the State Department, and the lib'rul news media over this incident to bring down the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon. I'm still waiting for Christopher Hitchens to call Ms. Plame a "f***ing fat slag", or Lyndon LaRouche to weigh in on the role of the Council on Foreign Relations in this whole tawdry matter.

Surest sign that Cruz Bustamante has packed it in: his schedule has no campaign events today.

In what is a blow to soccer fans the world over, FIFA has rejected the joint bid of Libya and Tunisia to host the 2010 World Cup, in spite of the best efforts of Saadi Ghadaffi, number one son of the Libyan strongman. I guess we'll have to settle for North Korea's bid.

If I've seemed morose lately, my best and only excuse is that I turn 40 a week from tonight. This blog has been a good escape for me, but lately I seem to feel that posting is a chore. I'm not that into the recall election. I would rather watch sports than write about them. My law practice, such as it is, doesn't keep me occupied often enough, and there is only so much I can write about the local bankruptcy court. As hard as I try, I just can't motivate myself to have a take on those issues that seem to obsess others, like whether the Bush Administration is deliberately exposing CIA agents, or whether Howard Kurtz is a tool.

One of the nice things about my blog is that it's small; if "Smythe's World" were to disappear tomorrow, few would notice. So maybe I'll just give this site a rest for awhile. Or maybe not; it really depends on whether my sense of outrage can triumph over my feelings of melancholy and entropy.

For those of you who are interested, a b-day party is being thrown on my behalf (dig that passive tense !!) at 14-Below, in Santa Monica this Saturday. Hopefully, the hosts are providing an open bar, and since anyone who visits this site is a friend of mine, I would be honored if you ventured out that evening. I'll be the bald man in the corner, getting blind-drunk, and picking fights with younger men.

With Ahnolt opening up a sizable post-debate lead in at least one poll, it now appears that California may replace one a-hole governor with...an even bigger a-hole. Focusing on A.S.' past in the world of bodybuilding, this article reveals the character of the new darling of state Republicans:

"Sometimes, Schwarzenegger enjoyed disgracing his targets in full public view, veteran bodybuilders said. Gold's Gym regular Norman Williams recalled the time an earnest young man walked in seeking advice from his hero. No matter how hard he worked, he told Schwarzenegger, his muscles wouldn't grow.

Schwarzenegger told him to remove his shirt and slather his body with oil used to lubricate the weight equipment. He then ordered him to start flexing and to bellow louder with each pose. Only then, Schwarzenegger said, would the muscles bulge.

'Pretty soon, the gym was filled with this guy screaming,' Williams said. 'The guys were turning their backs trying not to crack up, but Arnold kept a straight face. He loved making a fool out of people.'

The young man, exhausted, wanted to wipe off the oil. 'Oh no,' witnesses quoted Schwarzenegger as saying. 'It needs to saturate the muscles. It's the only way to get bigger.' The guy walked out with oil bleeding through his shirt.

When asked to respond, Schwarzenegger's spokesman chalked up the incident to 'locker room humor.'"

Yeah, that's a thighslapper.

CAL 34, USC 31 [3OT] : I RULE !!!!

The author of Money Ball, Michael Lewis, has a must-read piece on the recall circus, which he concludes stems from the personal dislike many people have for Gray Davis (some of its biggest supporters are literally his next-door neighbors). The highlight: his encounter with the mysterious (and all-too-human) "S. Issa".

Former Crimson Tide football coach Bill Curry pays a touching tribute to his friend (and one-time co-author) George Plimpton.

LA Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik has a fascinating piece on one of the most oft-repeated cliches in California politics, that this state has the "world's fifth largest economy":

"The main implication is that California's economy is under the state government's control, in the same sense that the U.S. economy is under Washington's control. This is patently false.

State governments can't wield the economic tools available to federal policymakers to manage economic trends. They can't raise or lower tariffs to protect domestic industries such as farming. They can't manage interest rates. They can't spur demand by generating red ink.

'If California were a country we wouldn't have these problems,' notes UCLA's [Senior Economist Tom] Leiser. 'We'd just run a deficit.'"

This goes back a few months, but it shows that California is not the only state where there are concerns that attacks on "Indian Gaming" are racist.

Matt Welch has some interesting comments about a new poll, focusing specifically on the racial/ethnic breakdown of support for the recall and the various replacement candidates. One thing to note: Bustamante is underachieving right now with the African-American vote, even though he is marginally ahead in the polls. If he starts picking up, the race could be over, regardless of whether McClintock drops out or not.

When I mentioned what I thought was the rather unsubtle racist aspect of the "Indian gaming" issue in this campaign, I believed I was going to be alone on this issue. After all, if the fact that Ahnolt was an unlicensed contractor scamming white subarbanites in the early 70's wasn't considered a big deal, why would his attacks on a relatively small ethnic group (in terms of registered voters) be noticed.

That was, until I read this posting tonight, from the "BeeBlogger" himself, Daniel Weintraub. He, after all, is a conservative, pro-A.S. columnist, who has not been afraid to attack Bustamante on everything from his qualifications to his relationship with the Latino Caucus. If even he is uncomfortable with these attacks, then maybe I'm not crazy after all. It would be almost like a vicious, wedge-issue attack on a non-WASP ethnic group offending Mickey Kaus !! Pete Wilson must be losing his magic.

Billy Beane for President?!? Not so fast....

I wonder which Pete Wilson aide had the brilliant idea to have Ahnolt use the "Terminator 4" line on Arianna Huffington tonight. Their candidate has a serious gender gap problem. He has chosen to participate in only one debate. Yet he allows himself to get baited by an also-ran into making a reference to a movie where he recently admitted he wanted to shove the face of a villainess into a toilet that had something "floating" in it. That should rally the soccer moms around their candidate !! I mean, it's not as if the misogynist voting bloc is up for grabs in this election.

In what was an entertaining evening, the clear winners of the debate on both substance and style points were Bustamante and McClintock. Cruz has been the target of a rather unsubtle attack concerning his intelligence, and just by acting mature and adult, he seemed to counter that. Other than a few throwaway lines by Arianna, the "Indian gaming" issue never came up.

And McClintock, as Aaron Brown noted on CNN, was quite impressive. Had he been the G.O.P. nominee in 2002, he might have beaten Gray Davis. He has an earnestness about him that is quite appealing; whereas A.S. can pretty much take any position on issues ranging from Prop. 13 reform to gun control to stem cell research, and not have that hurt him in any way with the Republican establishment, McClintock actually has principles. If he were to come out in favor of the Brady Bill, or in opposition to the ban on late-term abortions, it would seriously impact his public image. It's no wonder he was the only G.O.P. nominee to come close to winning last November; after all, for many liberals, Barry Goldwater has been their favorite conservative, and he didn't equivocate either.

UPDATE: If anyone has a different take on what Ahnolt meant by his Terminator reference, please feel free to respond. Is there another reference that I'm missing that would also be humorous?

Doesn't the whole issue of "Indian gaming lobby" seem, well, a bit racist? If A.S. were to begin making attacks on the "Jewish entertainment lobby" or the "Korean liquor store lobby", he would be rightly attacked. So why is there a double standard?

It sucks to be right: My office mate and crony John Byrne and I have a line that we use every time the Dodgers are in a slump. If someone isn't hitting his weight, or if a player is coasting through the season, one of us will say, "...but at least he's great in the clubhouse". It's a line that has become imbedded in the subconscious of every Dodger fan since the local media hacks chased Gary Sheffield out of town; in spite of his numbers and his absolutely-hate-to-lose attitude, he was described by local sportswriters as a "cancer" on the team, and was traded to Atlanta in 2001 for Bryan Jordan and Odalis Perez. The Braves are about to win yet another division championship, while the Dodgers have a magic number of 3 before they get eliminated from the wild card race.

One of those hacks, Bill Plaschke, is having second thoughts about his instrumental role two years ago in running Gary Sheffield out of town. Since the trade is history, I prefer that he have second thoughts about his bullying Odalis Perez into starting on Monday, which turned into a predictable disaster when Perez couldn't grip the ball properly. Rather than harping on something that can't be undone, the media needs to look at its own role in this mess, and hopefully learn from it. An athlete, an actor, a politician, can be a loathsome creature, disagreeable to the core, and yet still possess some hard-to-define talent, an ability to make the world a better place, in spite of their personality. And nice guys sometimes finish last for a reason.

"PLAY BALL !!" sayeth the Ninth Circuit. The election will go on as originally scheduled, for October 7, or for those in the know, the day after I turn 40.

It seems Ms. Stewart isn't the only truth-impaired Coulter-wannabee out there: Tapped elegantly tears a new one into former Dartmouth Review bundist Laura Ingraham, while also explaining how Regnery Publishing performs its magic.

Baseball may have once been our national pastime, and football is our national sport, but basketball truly is the American game: David Stern, commissioner extraordinaire, comes to the defense of Kobe while simultaneously ripping the Patriot Act.

The San Jose Mercury News puts more meat on the story about Ahnolt's bricklaying venture in the early-70's. Not only does the story confirm what was originally reported here about European Brick Works not ever having possessed a contractor's license, but it further explores the legal ramifications, both in terms of A.S.' immigration status at the time, and the legal requirement in California for a bricklaying company to possess a license to charge over $100 for any job. [link via Calif. Insider]

HORSE RACE UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that a poll by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute shows Bustamante continuing to lead Ahnolt, 28-26, with McClintock trailing at 14%. Since most of the stories about Cruz have been negative, the fact that he maintains a small lead over one of the most famous people on earth indicates that A.S. is dead in the water, and he may need a K.O. in the debate this week to resuscitate his campaign. Support for the recall continues to collapse, with only 53% now in favor, and 42% against, a margin that will tighten further if the Big 3 do nothing but attack each other Wednesday.

As a follow-up to yesterday's post on Jill Stewart, I thought I would post links to the actual legislation the left-coast version of Ann Coulter refers to in her article. The bills are: AB 1245, AB 1309, AB 587, AB 1742, SB 796, SB 892, and AB 231. Since fact-checking and due dilligence seem to be rare commodities in blogtopia, I thought I would at least try to make a difference.

The Ninth Circuit has agreed to rehear this week's decision on the recall. My guess is that the panel will overturn the decision but still require the District Court to set a new date for the election (poss. the first week of November) so that the appeals can be properly heard.

UPDATE: Eight of the eleven judges on the en banc panel were originally nominated by Democratic Presidents, but none of the three who made the original ruling made it.

UPDATE [2]: The oral arguments before the Court of Appeals will be televised !!

He's not just your run-of-the-mill slimy politician, he's eeeeevvvvvviiilllllll:

Jill Stewart, on Gray Davis:

If the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals delays the recall, pity the voters who will be subjected to months of Gray Davis faking he likes church...and faking he's a good man.

The rest of her article is even better, if you like mendacious summaries of legislation (which she doesn't link to) with your breakfast. She even attacks a law that would punish schools if they don't keep sanitary bathrooms after getting 30 days notice to clean up !!

Anyone who saw Oscar de la Hoya kick the ass of Shane Mosley last Saturday must have been as baffled by the media reaction after the fight as the ridiculous decision by the three judges that created the fiasco. Sports contrarian Allan Barra explains why the viewers at home have a much better seat, and a more legitimate position, in determining who won the fight than the judges and reporters at ringside. One of the reforms he'd like to see for title fights is to allow judges to have access to the same TV angles of the fighters, and the same PunchStat numbers, that the TV audience has. [link via Off-Wing Opinion] It won't stop a crooked judge from overlooking the fact that one fighter landed over a hundred more punches than his opponent, but at least it's a start.

You know it's mid-September when the evenings start to get a little cooler, the kids are back in school, and Bill Plaschke has a column blaming the Dodgers' annual collapse on a non-white player. This time it's Odalis Perez, the team's most consistent (and hardest-working) pitcher, who gets attacked because he asked for (and received) a day off because one of the cuticles on his pitching hand broke off. Seems like a minor injury, sure, for those of us who don't have to put extreme pressure on that area of our body 100 times a night. Earlier this year, he attacked Kevin Brown for trying to pitch through injuries; now he rips a player for needing a day off because of an injury. Of course, the guy who replaced him in the rotation pitched brilliantly, and the team got shut out again, a problem that wouldn't have happened had Plaschke not driven Gary Sheffield out of town two years ago.

Ever since such stories became fashionable, nothing has been more boring to me than accounts of "political correctness" at schools and universities. I usually end up sympathizing with the person or group that has been attacked for taking offense at some alleged act of bigotry, due as much to my skepticism about the truthfulness of the account, rather than any political connection I might feel. Invariably, closer scrutiny of the story will reveal that either the Wall Street Journal editorial has once again taken the incident out of context, or that the frat boy really did use the "n-word", and the entire story will be revealed as a sham created out of thin air to attack some mythical stereotype of feminism, or to minimize the reality of bigotry by drawing a false moral equivalence between institutional racism and the misguided antics of some student groups.

Therefore, I think it is incumbent on me to comment on this little bit of outrage, which as far as I know has not been commented on by the usual suspects on the right. Here, you have an attempt to boycott the L.A. Daily News being organized by the Simi Valley teachers' union, to protest the newspapers criticisms of educational policy that the union finds unacceptable. The Daily News has a policy of providing free newspapers to local schools, and the United Association of Conejo is upset that the paper's policy of using often-hysterical headlines to publicize the editorial opinion on its news pages is giving short-shrift to their positions on teacher pay and the like.

Boycotting a newspaper is a reasonable political tactic, one that can be embraced as a worthy expression of free speech by those who do not have the funds, or the megaphone, that come from publishing a newspaper. I have defended the right of college students to toss student papers in the trash as an expression of that right, and oppose the efforts of people like Nat Hentoff to criminalize or punish such conduct. And, of course, conservatives themselves have used much the same tactics, when it comes to trying to censor the BBC or CNN because they were insufficiently supportive of both U.S. foreign and Israeli domestic policy.

But the teachers union has adopted an indefensible position on this issue, one that redounds to their discredit. Rather than using the paper's position as a starting point for the discussion of education issues in the classroom, or as a way of "teaching against the text" in better educating their students, and thereby using the paper to illustrate to impressionable children that simply because someone speaks from a position of authority doesn't mean that the person or institution is correct, instead the union is using its position to censure a contrary opinion, an opinion against their pecuniary interests.

Not surprisingly, as with any banned publication, that only makes the contents more alluring to their students. It is as unconstructive an educational policy as banning Huckleberry Finn or Catcher in the Rye because of objectionable language, and it only leads to making the rather banal political positions of a newspaper seem like forbidden fruit. [link via L.A. Observed]

Good summary of the political ramifications if the Supreme Court decides to get involved in the recall fracas. I'm still waiting for Volokh Conspiracy to weigh in on this; to date, the conservative reaction has spanned the range from ad hominem attacks on the three justices (here, here, here, and here) to strained efforts (here and here) at distinguishing Bush v. Gore, none of which has redounded to their credit, either politically or intellectually. I happen to believe that the Ninth Circuit's decision was a reasonable one from a legal standpoint (in any event, I have always thought that being the "most overturned appellate court" in the era of Rehnquist, Thomas and Scalia was the highest honor that could be given to a federal circuit; no one has any problems today with the dissents of either of the Harlans, for example), but may be questionable from a factual standpoint (are the methods of counting ballots to be used in March really that more accurate than the punch card system, so much that there is no "rational basis" to hold the quickie election?) I'm no law-review rat, so I'd be happy to read more learned opinions on this issue.

WHY I'M PROUDLY PALEO: This has to be the most clueless blog posting since the recall was scheduled, from Kausfiles:

Here's an anecdote from the Recorder's account that pretty much captures the seemingly condescending, museum-quality paleoliberal mindset of at least one of the three judges on the appelate panel:

[Judge Harry] Pregerson then playfully pointed out that education [in how to avoid punch card errors] might not work on tired workers, or workers harried by trying to find their polling place. Then he said those problems might be more of a concern to minority candidates (sic) who may have more reason to be tired at the end of the day than whites.

"In L.A., if you look around, see who's working and who isn't," Pregerson said, drawing laughter from the near-capacity courtroom.

I guess the definition of a neo-liberal is someone who believes non-whites don't work.

In a not-unexpected development, a justice on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has requested that the full circuit hear the appeal of yesterday's ruling on the recall circus. They will decide sometime tomorrow or Thursday whether to hear the appeal.

As you probably know already, the Ninth Circuit postponed the recall election until such time as each of the counties has done away with the archaic punch-card voting system. There isn't really a good argument for having the election in October, anyway, other than the fact that the arbitrary deadline for scheduling it was written into state law ninety years ago. It is generally a good thing in any democracy to allow voter passions to cool, which is why the recall proponents wanted (and needed) a quickie election.

If the Court's ruling stands, the election will likely be held in March, 2004, on the same date as the Presidential primary; that should improve Davis' chances of beating the recall (more Democrats will be voting then), but diminish the hopes of Bustamante (more time until the election allows the GOP to consolidate behind one candidate, who can spend Cruz into the ground over the next seven months). Since both Bustamante and A.S. have apparently stalled in the polls, any delay only serves to help the other candidates get their campaigns off the ground, or in the case of McClintock, to continue his momentum.

BTW, what a clever touch to base their decision on Bush v. Gore !!

Everyone have a nice weekend. I'm off to Santa Monica (prob. Over/Under) for some college football, followed by Mosley-de la Hoya tonight.

UPDATE: Never again !! Anyone (besides the de la Hoya haters) who thinks Mosley won that fight should be prevented from handling sharp objects. But it was nice to see Bill Plaschke finally find an African-American athlete he could get behind.

This may not mean much of anything, but readers of Kausfiles know that one of his current obsessions is about an appearance A.S. had on the Tonight Show a couple of decades ago, in which he boasted about being a part of a chimney repair scam when he first came to the country. The nation's paper of record fills in some of the gaps. The name of the venture, European Brick Works, was formed by the candidate and his pal and fellow bodybuilder, Franco Columbu, after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, to "repair" masonry devastated by the disaster. According to the records of the Contractor's State License Board, no entity by that name has ever been licensed in the state of California, either as a general contractor or a C-29 masonry specialist, nor do the names "Columbu" or "Schwarzenegger" appear as either officers or personnel of any licensed contractor.

Understand, I've only handled a few construction cases in my legal career, and I have only a passing knowledge of contracting law as it stands today, much less what it was like in the early-70's. "European Brick Works" may have obeyed the law in every respect, and the stories Ahnolt was telling Johnny Carson may have been apocryphal, like the now-infamous "gang-bang" story, designed to showcase the non-conformist, outlaw rep that he thought would sell his screen persona.

But I have a feeling that state law back then would have frowned on anyone, even skilled bricklayers, from falsely claiming they were licensed contractors, and I find it hard to believe that the typical Valley homeowner (or, for that matter, the homeowner's insurer covering their earthquake claim) would have employed an unlicensed business to "fix" their chimneys.

Being a friend sometimes requires you to tell someone that what they are doing is wrong; sycophancy and friendship are incompatible. It's called "tough love". If your friend has had too much to drink, and is acting in a belligerent and irrational manner, you call him a taxi, or you try to settle him down. You don't tell him he's okay to drive home.

Since September 11, 2001, Tony Blair has not been a very good friend to the United States. When we needed allies, instead we got co-dependents.

The latest L.A. Times poll is out, and it pretty much affirms the findings of the Field snap-shot earlier this week: Bustamante maintains a five-point lead, 30% to 25%, but he's pretty much hit the ceiling as far as his potential support is concerned; Ahnolt is failing to generate much excitement; and McClintock is hanging in there, with 18%. If this poll is accurate, there is absolutely no reason for McClintock to drop out. Support for the recall remains at 50%, but Davis has narrowed the gap to within the margin of error in the poll; he now trails by only 3%. If the big three in the replacement election continue to go negative on each other, the voters are going to choose the devil they know. Davis will probably survive, in spite of himself.

This is way beyond belief. How can any country that considers the Barbie doll to be a "Jewish" plot against Islamic morality be considered an ally in fighting terrorists? [link via Adam Felber]

If the blogosphere is the next big thing, then it will have to produce a writer as eloquent, as insightful, as fearless in speaking truth to power, as Prof. Krugman. We may all have to wait awhile on that one...UPDATE: My, what a stupid thing to post. Not about Krugman; he's still god. But about the blogosphere...what was I thinking? I only visit this site twice a day, this site several times, and wish that this site would resume posting. And the author of this article is what each of those blogs have in common. If the L.A. Times doesn't give him a bi-weekly column soon, their shareholders will hold them accountable.

The latest Field Poll has Bustamante maintaining a five-point lead over the pack...UPDATE: here's the actual polling data. At first glance, it appears that Bustamante may have problems getting above his current total, while A.S. continues to under-achieve, and McClintock may actually have an outside shot of pulling off a shocker. Wiser men than myself have already analyzed the significance of the ethnic and gender breakdown in the poll; what I think is interesting is the fact that almost a fifth of the self-described conservatives polled are undecided, as opposed to only 6% of the liberals polled. With his name recognition, Ahnolt should have already nailed down this group, so the fact that so many are still on the fence indicates that they have a hard time rationalizing a vote for him, but still remaining skeptical about McClintock's chances. If that attitude changes, if the State Senator actually starts running a halfway-decent media campaign, if Bustamante doesn't find a way to expand his current support beyond African-Americans, Latinos and women, and/or if A.S.' idiosyncracies become too hard for the typical Dana Point/Palos Verdes elector to stomach, McClintock could be our next governor.

TODAY'S DEBATING TOPICS:

Resolved: Any writer who continues to translate the MeChA slogan Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada as "For the Race, everything. For those outside the Race, nothing," is himself a racist.

Resolved: Anyone who says that MeChA is morally equivalent to the Nazis or the KKK, is himself sympathetic to the methods(if not the specific aims) of the Nazis and the KKK.

Resolved: Any blogger who denounces MeChA, or similar groups, as "misguided identity politics", has proven why "identity politics" is still going to be embraced by many non-WASPs.

Discuss.

Howard Owens, who's been taking me to task recently for my sympathies to MeChA and La Raza, has a lileksian piece on record collecting that's worth your time. I used to have a pretty decent and comprehensive collection of British Invasion LP's, but like the rest of my albums they all were ruined when the roof of my bedroom collapsed as a result of the Northridge Earthquake. BTW, do they even sell turntables anymore?

The usually-excellent conservative legal blog, Volokh Conspiracy, had this unfortunate cheap shot yesterday on the Alabama budget crisis. Quoting the nation's paper of record:

The Horror!

After the rally at Troy State, Lucy Skellett, a sophomore cheerleader, explained how the budget woes affected her. Last year, the cheerleading squad got to travel with the football team. This year, there is no money for away games.

"Four games," Ms. Skellett said. "That's all we get to cheer now, is four games. You know how hard we work out for that?"

If Alabamians won't vote for a $1.2 billion tax increase to help out Ms. Skellett ... well, I'm just speechless. Oh, the humanity!

As an unabashed and unapologetic fan of cheerleaders and cheerleading, I feel it incumbent to defend the honor of Lucy Skellett and the rest of her teammates on the Troy State squad. Unlike college football and basketball players, cheerleaders don't get paid for what they do. A great deal of work and practice goes into it, and their only reward (besides an improvement in their social life) is to hear the third-rate cracks from the geeks and nerds they won't go out with (like me).

More to the point, however, is the fact that this budget cutback is happening at Troy State. Not Alabama. Not Auburn. Troy State. I guarantee you, if the Crimson Tide were forced to cut back on any aspect of its football program due to budget cuts imposed by an outdated tax code, the powers-that-be in that state would rise up, and demand higher taxes !! But since the cutbacks are occurring at a "lesser" state school (no doubt similar sacrifices are going on at the historically black colleges in that state as well), well, we can laugh at the poor girl who has to work her ass off (figuratively speaking) for the honor of being treated like a joke by her home state.