What were people in the mood for last week? Not bromides about good government, public service or political commitment, that's for sure. P.J. O'Rourke's chainsaw tour of liberal platitudes brought in more than four times the traffic of the next-most-popular item — which was itself another bit of PC iconoclasm: Gregory Rodriguez' skeptical piece on the value of "dialogue." Is it time for the candidates to do something about all this cynicism? I hope not, and I thank you for reading Opinion L.A.

1. Fairness, idealism and other atrocities, by P.J. O'Rourke
2. Dialogue isn't the last word, by Gregory Rodriguez
3. Hillary's 'right' isn't the right thing, Rosa Brooks
4. Does your brain have a mind of its own? by Gary Marcus
5. Give voters a clue, by Jonah Goldberg
6. Government in secret, by Russ Feingold
7. Dust-Up: The new scarcity, by Gregory Clark and Gary Gardner
8. California wine? Down the drain, by Alice Feiring
9. Grand Old Party animal, by Joel Stein
10. China's next-generation nationalists, by Joshua Kurlantzick

     Oh, mama!

     It couldn't have been coincidence or ''shuffle'' programming that put these movies on cable on Mother's Day:

     First, ``Saving Private Ryan,'' a World War II-theme film whose plot is kick-started with the news that some American woman is about to get telegrams, all on the same day, informing her that she is a three-time Gold Star mother: three of her sons have been killed in combat.

     And then, the remake of ``The Manchurian Candidate,'' with Meryl Streep managing to get the edge even on the uber-creepy Angela Lansbury as the mother not from hell but worse -- from a sinister global corporation.

     What, did I oversleep and miss ''Serial Mom''?

     Thanks, Time Warner Cable -- but a card would have been just fine. 

When John McCain launched his Spanish-language website earlier this week, I commented that immigration would be a tough issue for him during the general election (and possibly problematic for Democrats too).

Even Bill O'Reilly gave him a gentle jab when McCain appeared on his show yesterday. Here's an excerpt of the interview from Fox:

O'REILLY: I know. All right, the issue that's hurt you the most among conservatives is the immigration issue. You know that? In fact, you and I had a nice chat in May of 2001. I don't know if you remember that.

MCCAIN: I tried to forget it.

(A quick summary for Opinion L.A. readers who have forgotten: O'Reilly said he wanted troops on the border; McCain said he didn't. Repeat several times, with McCain getting fewer and fewer words in and O'Reilly getting louder and mentioning the Mexican government's handing out "fanny packs" to border-crossers.)

Comes Beyonce Knowles' line of tartwear for little girls.

Where to start with how incredibly inappropriate this is? The come-hither pumps on preschoolers (OK, maybe they're really 7 or 8 years old), or the tight, hip-hugging jeans?

Once upon a time little girls played dress-up in their mothers' clothes, swanning around in gowns that were too long and pointy heels that were too big. This looks like man-hunting nightclub gear.

This isn't pointless fretting. All those people who slather makeup onto their girls' faces, buy them miniature corsets and shove them into Little Miss Artichoke pageants may actually buy this stuff.

Jimmy Carter's mom loooooved the Dodgers -- the Brooklyn Dodgers, he told me in an interview this week; "she adopted the Dodgers as her team because of them letting Jackie Robinson play.''

While Miz Lillian "hated" seeing the team move to Los Angeles, she reconciled herself, and followed the games via a huge antenna set up out by her fishpond in Georgia. Somehow, while Carter was in the White House, Miz Lillian finagled Tommy Lasorda's phone number. "On occasion she would call him on the phone and give him a hard time.'' Now, whenever Lasorda runs into Carter, he reminds the former president "that he's glad that my mother used to have his phone number, but he's kinda glad that it's more quiet now.''

Carter was in town promoting his Mother's Day homage book, "A Remarkable Mother.'' Want to hear the entire interview? Click here.

Tomdispatch.com associate editor Nick Turse shows how consumer firms like Apple and Krispy Kreme profit from Iraq, and columnist Joel Stein scores some (prescription) marijuana:

Sometimes I can't believe how Californian California is. Women walk around half-naked, waiters call patrons "dude," and medical marijuana is legal. But I wondered just how legal. Could anyone buy it? Even me, who doesn't have cancer, AIDS, arthritis, glaucoma or even any previous pot-smoking experience?

Medical marijuana isn't really legal -- in 2005, the Supreme Court said federal anti-drug laws trump state laws -- but California and 11 other hippie states have been flipping off Washington for years.

The editorial board criticizes President Bush for failing to hold the Reading First program accountable, and says California's misuse of the recall process may be one reason the state is in such bad shape.

Readers discuss the election, and whether Hillary Clinton should quit. Palm Springs' Eleanor Jackson wonders, "It's difficult to understand how anyone, particularly a Democrat or independent voter, can dislike Clinton (or for that matter, Obama) so much that they would be willing to not vote or vote for John McCain. Do they not realize the consequences of a Republican victory this November?"

Sorry, Bill Johnson supporters, but your man really is the gift that keeps on giving.

Devoted Johnsonians will recall that the good judicial candidate first appeared on our radar screen thanks to his help with an effort to unseat a group of Latino jurists and get Filipino-Americans get onto the bench. That effort was led by a minister in Carson, who explained his ambition:

"When you're running against a Caucasian, it's kind of hard," the Rev. Ronald C. Tan of Carson said. "As Filipinos, our names are almost the same as Hispanics, so that puts us on co-equal ground."

In Johnson's book they're already on co-equal ground. Amendment to the Constitution, the 1985 book written by Johnson under the alias "James O. Pace," presents the text of the proposed "Pace Amendment" mandating expulsion of non-whites from the United States, along with an extensive, Federalist Papers-style unpacking of the proposed law's text. Here's what the book has to say on Filipinos in its explanation of how folks of various ethnicities will be sent packing:

Filipinos. The Filipinos are generally new arrivals, and many are still Philippine citizens. Accordingly, they can be repatriated without much difficulty. The Philippine government can be encouraged to assist.

This is more mildly worded than Pace's suggestions for assorted Latinos ("The Puerto Ricans should be returned to Puerto Rico," "Central Americans should be returned to Central America," "It should be noted that repatriation has become necessary primarily because of the abuses that the Hispanics have made of our system"). But while Pace allows that "Hispanic whites who are basically indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is the British Isles or Northwestern Europe, need not be repatriated," he is silent on the matter of Filipinos who can pass. (Are there any of those? Is there a whiteometer we can check?)

But I'd rather light a candle than curse anybody's darkness. A few days ago our news side had an interesting story about the proliferation of headline-driven legislation bearing names like "R.J.'s Law," "Adam's Law" and so on.

Would the Pace Amendment have fared better if it had a nice round name attached?

"Ziegfried's Law," maybe?

Incoming University of California President Mark Yudof hasn't even settled into his office yet, and already the university's 2006 pay scandal is coming back to haunt him. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote yesterday about costly repairs for the university's presidential residence, and Contra Costa Times columnist Daniel Boreinstein pointed out last month that the university lowballed Yudof's compensation (a mere $828,000). The real figure, he said, would catapault Yudof to the top of the best paid university leaders:

The more accurate numbers: During his first year at UC, Yudof will receive $924,642 in salary, contributions to his retirement plans and car allowance, compared with his $832,560 in compensation at Texas.

University officials knew that the price for Yudof would raise concerns, especially considering he will receive about 76 percent more than ... outgoing President Robert Dynes.

UC Board of Regents chair Richard Blum (and the Los Angeles Times editorial board) call it a bargain, however. The departing University of Texas head is open to bonding with Gov. Schwarzenegger over a smoke in the governor's cigar tent, according to an interview with the Austin American-Statesman. He also hits the major talking points in today's clearly charmed San Francisco Chronicle:

He chews on a fat cigar and makes jokes about his sparse hair. He sports the burnt orange ties of his employer, the University of Texas, during trips to UC's Oakland headquarters and sucks down Coca-Cola Zero like he's in the Texas heat.

But behind his down-home manner is a man brought in to change the 10-campus university system to its very core.

Cue dramatic music!

Granted, state officials and the media are probably just happy to kick Dynes out the door, but it'll be interesting to see whether Yudof takes advantage all the good karma they're lavishing on him. Let's hope he means what he says about improving state support for the university -- and doesn't mention tuition deregulation.

What would the U.S. do if this happened here? AFP reports:

Authorities have lost track of 41,000 people ordered to leave Canada, and in most cases have stopped looking for them, said a federal watchdog Tuesday.

In a scathing report, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said most of the missing were failed asylum seekers allowed into the country on temporary permits while their immigration or refugee cases were assessed.

However, some of them "may pose a threat to public safety and security," she added.

Oh, wait -- it did happen here.

A Homeland Security Inspector General report (pdf) released last year said that the backlog of immigration cases involving immigrants ordered to leave the U.S. had reached 600,000 -- and the whereabouts of many of those, whether criminal offenders or non-criminal deportees, couldn't be determined. It's important to note that this number represents the backlog, not the number of people missing, as in Canada.

The report put the blame for the backlog, which had been increasing since 2001, on insufficient detention space and systems, along with inadequate staffing. (This focuses on ICE rather than CIS, so it doesn't take into account the long lines legal immigrants face to get in or change their status if they're already here.)

There hasn't been an internal assessment of where the "fugitive" backlog stands more recently. And though Homeland Security has received more beds and staff, it has also stepped up its enforcement efforts, so the backlog may very well still be rising, if at a slower pace.

The Canada case gives occasion to recall that this country's ad-hoc enforcement-first approach doesn't necessarily work as smoothly as advocates hope. And, as the editorial board would argue, it isn't the best approach for the country even when it works as intended.

Whether you're for or against immigration reform, some issues transcend those political borders. The NY Times' report on deaths in detention is one of them:

Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive.

But outside, for five days, no official notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. When frantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb. 5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later without ever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to find out why.

Twelve of the 66 deaths occurred in California, and some of the listed causes are frighteningly vague (from "internal injuries [self-inflicted]" to "unresponsive"). You can view the full list here.

This isn't the first time this issue has come up, but it's really been a bad few weeks for immigration enforcement: Homeland Security is facing lawsuits over care in detention facilities, and the feds recently admitted to negligence in the death of Francisco Castaneda, who testified in front of Congress last year:

While at the San Diego Correctional Facility, he notified immigration officials that he had a large, painful, growing lesion on his penis.

Despite recommendations from several doctors, the cancer was never biopsied and Castaneda received no treatment except for pain pills during his 11 months in detention, government records indicated.

A doctor at the Division of Immigration Health Services would not admit Castaneda to a hospital, saying her agency considered it "an elective outpatient procedure."

Castaneda was released last year, went to a hospital and was diagnosed with metastatic squamous cell carcinoma. He died in February.

The pressure seems to have spurred some action: California's own Zoe Lofgren is sponsoring legislation that would set standards for healthcare and require all deaths to be reported to the Justice Department and Congress. While we're waiting for meaningful reform, check out this interactive map courtesy of the Detention Watch Network.

Is North Carolina the fat lady that sang for Hillary Clinton? The editorial board suggested that it's finally over for her, and L.A. Times columnist Rosa Brooks called it way back in March. The Hill reports that backs are turning on her. What are the other papers saying?

The Washington Post editorial board focuses on Barack Obama even as it comes to the same conclusion on Clinton:

Hillary Clinton may, as she promised yesterday, fight on through the next few weeks of primaries, but after her disappointing showing Tuesday she has no plausible route to victory. So Mr. Obama was sounding themes for the coming battle against John McCain.... These are familiar phrases by now, appealing but also insubstantial.

Its columnists Harold Meyerson and George F. Will agree...

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) points out that the John Yoo torture memo is but one example of President Bush's hidden laws. High school junior Tom Stanley-Becker explains why opting out of an Advanced Placement class was a smart move. Columnist Patt Morrison says L.A. muralists have to fight for their work on two fronts -- taggers on one side, and numbskulls with paint rollers on the other. And columnist Rosa Brooks acknowledges that Hillary Clinton may have a right to keep campaigning, but says it isn't the right thing to do:

Tell an American he shouldn't do something, and odds are he'll respond by insisting that it's his "right" to do it, regardless of how pointless, destructive, offensive or downright stupid it may be....

Tell your 10-year-old daughter she's not allowed to buy thong underwear emblazoned with sexy slogans, and she'll give you an angry lecture about her free-expression rights.

Don't fall for it.

The editorial board agrees that it's over for Clinton:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has run a long and admirable campaign for president of the United States. The prospect of her presidency has energized voters, particularly but not exclusively women, and offered working people a champion for their cause in this time of economic malaise. She has demonstrated resolve and character. And yet, she has lost.

The board also praises the Los Angeles Unified School District's new deputy superintendent for disciplining LAUSD officials in a school sex case, and explores whether a new Sprint Nextel broadband venture could expand service across the country.

On the letters page, some readers aren't as enamored with taco trucks as the editorial board. East L.A.'s Omar Loya says, "I now have to deal with grease stains on the street, trash on the sidewalks, generators running late into the night and extra traffic."

Since I'm the resident thought-tormented Ron Paul fan on staff, I've taken a special interest in the Paul supporters who are objecting to the attention we've paid to the white-supremacist past of Paul-connected judicial candidate Bill Johnson.

Thanks, everybody, for commenting. Some clarifications are in order:

Commenter "Tracey," declares that Johnson is not the author of the so-called Pace Amendment. This is incorrect. Johnson confirmed in a phone call with our own Robert Greene that he is indeed the author of the Pace amendment and of the "James O. Pace" book Amendment to the Constitution.

Commenter "blakmira" calls us "lower than scum" for the "smear" on Paul in our editorial about the Johnson campaign, which noted that Johnson had affiliated himself with the Paul-for-president campaign; apparently our mentioning that was clear evidence of counter-rEVOLutionary tendencies. In any event, Paul himself appears to be taking the matter seriously enough that he has renounced his end of the affiliation. Here is an email we just received from Paul's congressional chief of staff Tom Lizardo:

Over the past several weeks, I have also been involved in assisting Dr Paul with the consideration of candidates who are seeking his endorsement for their campaigns.  We have gone through the process of setting up a method by which candidates are to be considered for such endorsements.  During that period, we have also received and reviewed requests from dozens of candidates.

Although Bill Johnson's name ended up on the endorsement list, he did not go through this process.  In light of this fact, and in light of the revelations regarding his past statements and associations, Dr Paul has retracted the endorsement and hopes that, in the future, the process that has been put into place will mitigate the likelihood of similar errors.

Several commenters claim that they know Bill Johnson and he couldn't possibly be a racist. We make no judgments on what Johnson believes in his heart, only on what he has publicly advocated. But Paul, whose attentiveness to such matters has not always been impressive, deserves credit for taking quick action in this case. The claim by another commenter that Johnson is part Japanese is also incorrect, though Johnson does speak fluent Japanese as a by-product of his LDS mission in the land of the Rising Sun. We can confirm that "Turning Japanese" by the Vapours remains one of the finest works of rock orientalism ever recorded.

Finally, a commenter at dailypaul.com claims that our staffer is the same Robert Greene who writes self-help books on "How to crush your competitor," "How to secure the corner office," "How to take over your supervisor's position" and "The 48 Laws of Power." I can confirm that Greene is not that person and that if he ever wrote a self-help book it would be about how you can become a better person by scrupulously reading the fine print of voter information packets in obscure municipal elections. Nor is he the Robert Greene who denounced Shakespeare in his "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a million of Repentaunce." Moreover, Robert Greene confirms that he is a Stratfordian in good standing, though if pressed he would put Pericles, Prince of Tyre in the "disputed authorship" category.

Hope that clears things up.

Well, you can't say the feds aren't getting serious about border enforcement. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is about to "deport" an entire U.S. business. Plans for the fence the feds are building along the Texas/Mexican border will slice the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course in Brownsville off from the rest of the U.S., locating it onto the Mexican side.

The course is owned by the University of Texas, and will be joined in exile by a Brownsville city park and bird sanctuary that are also located in a tricky bend of the Rio Grande riverbed. These Google Maps images suggest how the rights and property of American citizens ended up getting subordinated to the Department of Homeland Security's desire to build a more or less straight wall:

A spokesman for the golf course says there is a proposal to put a gate in the fence.

KNX 1070 radio has the story, but many questions remain unanswered.

Will golfers need passports?

Will Fort Brown still have to pay state taxes?

Will President George Bush be able to use the new as a holding site for prisoners of war by claiming it's not technically in the U.S.?

By holding a series of immigration hearings this week, Congress seems to be going beyond lapel pins and superdelegate-ship this election season. On Tuesday, the House Committee on Education and Labor considered whether U.S. businesses are hiring American workers before looking abroad for employees (something that they're concerned with across the pond as well). That same day, the House Way and Means Subcommittee on Social Security discussed the Employment Eligibility Verification Systems and agency backlog.

But in a year when comprehensive immigration reform is highly unlikely to happen -- and President Bush's recent mention of it is a case of too little, too late on a policy that might have been the rare jewel in his crown -- the hearings were primarily a chance for Democrats and Republicans to focus on small pieces of the immigration puzzle, and to unite disparate elements of their parties. As the Congressional Quarterly noted, the Democrats do have some internal divisions on this issue, even if they're not as problematic for the party as the split Republicans face.

But the hearings also highlighted another important November event -- that's when the voluntary E-Verify system is set to expire, meaning that the thousands of employers who use it to verify Social Security numbers will be out of luck. Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) testified (pdf) in favor of extending the bill through the SAVE Act, which he co-sponsored with Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) If the Tancredo name alone doesn't set off alarms, reading the fine print of that bill should: it doesn't simply extend the program -- it makes it mandatory, despite the problems that could pose for businesses, employees legal and illegal, and government agencies. The bill would also encourage local law enforcement to act as immigration agents, which is opposed by quite a few law enforcement and elected officials. An alternate proposal by Texas Republican Rep. Sam Johnson uses a different verification system, supported by some who criticize E-Verify, but others say it would lead to similar complications for workers, even if they're citizens.

More hearings should follow throughout the week -- we'll keep updating. And though they may not bring about much in the way of results, they're at least more useful than the summer 2006 hearings organized purely as publicity stunts. Need to refresh your memory on those? Here's what the editorial board said about them....

European policy experts John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell look to 'The Godfather' for diplomatic pointers:

[Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather"] is also a startlingly useful metaphor for the strategic problems and global power structure of our time. The don, emblematic of Cold War American power, is struck by forces he did not expect and does not understand, as was America on 9/11. Intriguingly, his heirs embrace very different visions of family strategy that approximate the three schools of thought -- liberal institutionalism, neoconservatism and realism -- vying for control of U.S. foreign policy today.

Freelance writer Lionel Beehner has another proposal for smoother diplomacy: pronouncing foreign dignitaries' names properly. Columnist Tim Rutten tells an L.A. version of "A Tale of Two Cities," and contributing editor Erin Aubry Kaplan explores why poet and long-time Watts resident Eric Priestley is fighting City Hall to keep his home.

The editorial board praises a California Supreme Court decision voiding the death sentence of Adam Miranda, presses for a shield law, and says now isn't the time to scold Myanmar's leaders:

It has been clear for more than a decade -- and especially since last year's suppression of the would-be Saffron Revolution -- that Myanmar's odious junta cannot be shamed into reform. It is too isolated and xenophobic to worry about its image, too paranoid to learn from outsiders and too blood-drenched to believe it can survive any loosening of control over its hapless people. The contradictory combination of U.S. sanctions and an engagement strategy adopted by its neighbors has failed to produce any improvement. Attempts to use the catastrophe of Tropical Cyclone Nargis as leverage to pry open the country will almost surely fail as well.

The problem with writing for a family newspaper — or being a screenwriter for a TV show on basic cable, for that matter — is that there are times when the most apt possible word for the situation you’re trying to describe or the dialogue you’re trying to convey is forbidden by company policy, or FCC regulations, or common decency. That is why I am so frakking in love with "Battlestar Gallactica."

The Sci Fi Channel hit didn’t coin the word "frak." It was introduced in the original 1978 series on ABC, though its meaning on that show was quite a bit more benign; the context in which it was used made it clear that it was a substitute for a harmless euphemism like "darn." In the new version of "Battlestar," which is free of blow-dried haircuts, adorable robot dogs or former "Bonanza" stars, the writers make it quite clear that "frak" means exactly the same as a common four-letter English word that starts with "F" and ends with "K." Hence you get words like "motherfrakker" and "clusterfrak," and phrases like, "We are well and truly frakked."

This all might seem a little childish, but it’s actually incredibly liberating. Screenwriters can write the kind of dialogue for basic cable that’s normally only allowed on a pay-cable channel. (I challenge even the stoutest frat boy to take a drink every time somebody drops an F-bomb on the HBO show "Deadwood.") You simply cannot accurately convey the chatter of a bunch of sweaty, tattooed, futuristic fighter pilots, who make up much of the cast of "Battlestar," without throwing in some colorful language. With "frak," you can do that without offending a soul: Even the most righteous member of the Parents Television Council would have a tough time objecting to a curse word that only has meaning in an alternate universe.

Which is why I hope this whole "frak" thing catches on. When you’re writing about government policy, sometimes the situation is so frakked up, involving people who know frak-all about basic economics or the unintended consequences of bad public policy, that you just frakking want to tell them to frak off.
Frak, that feels good.

So we've had all this back-and-forth about the effect of immigrants (legal and otherwise) on the economy, dwindling natural resources and societal well-being, as if it were a one-way street. But what about the economy's effect on immigrants? From NPR:

Fewer immigrants living in the United States are sending money back to their home countries. A survey by the Inter-American Development Bank shows remittances by Hispanic immigrants are flat. But the percentage of immigrants sending money home to Latin America is down dramatically in just two years. The report cites the U.S. economic slowdown and a tougher line on illegal immigrants.

Anti-immigration advocates need not gloat: This isn't doing the home front's economy any good. One undocumented construction worker told NPR he's only saving out of fear that he'll be rounded up: "We're not spending money. What we earn, we save, because we may need it."

So, no silver lining for the U.S. — though there is a catch-22: Restriction of immigration may be fueling the drop in remittances, but if that money doesn't keep supporting families abroad, more people may try to cross into the U.S. to find work. Let's hope Tom Tancredo needs some remodeling done.

Top of the Ticket blogger Don Frederick notes that Hillary Clinton has spoken out on one of the most pressing issues of the day — the racy Miley Cyrus photos. She told Yahoo:

"From everything I've heard she's a great kid and obviously very talented, but I think we need to do more to preserve our kids' childhood," Clinton said.

The presidential hopeful said she feels it is the parents' responsibility to protect a child.

"They grow up so fast and [there are] so many influences coming from all directions these days," Clinton said. "I think it's important that all of us as parents draw some lines here."

Let's leave aside whether the pics are appropriately allusive to classicism and the realities of contemporary young adulthood or plain creepy (and really, isn't the one of her with daddy Billy Ray way creepier?). And let's also ignore that people over the age of 18 probably can't even understand the Miley Cyrus-was-Destiny-Hope-is-Miley-Stewart-is-Hannah-Montana identity uroboros despite Slate's helpful explanation.

Instead, I'd just like to point out that John McCain and Barack Obama have both appeared with Miley Cyrus and seem to be supporters of her confounding identity politics and her corruption of American youth. I'm waiting for McCain and Obama to prove they're also for The Children with full Miley denunciations/renunciations/throws-under-the-bus.

*Photo courtesy the Associated Press.

We recently featured a Blowback by Mark Cromer of Californians for Population Stabilization, claiming that this country's rancorous immigration debate has stopped a sensible discussion of sustainable population growth.

It seems the opposite is true in Britain, where fears of overpopulation are stirring immigration policy reform, and big-time Conservative politicians aren't afraid to link the two. The Telegraph reports:

The population of England will increase by a third over the next 50 years as it becomes the most crowded major nation in Europe, official forecasts suggest.
The current population of England is 50 million, but by 2056 the figure will be 68 million, meaning an average of 1,349 people will live in every square mile. At the moment England’s population density is 1,010 people per square mile....
The Conservatives, who obtained the figures in a parliamentary answer, said they were a damning indictment of Labour’s immigration policy and once again called for tariffs on migration....
About 1.3 million immigrants have arrived in the past decade and ministers say the record levels are required because the British economy has 600,000 job vacancies. Yet the benefits to indigenous Britons have been questioned.

Today, the government announced the second stage of a new points-based immigration system. (I briefly discussed the issue, as it relates to the all-important forecasted curry shortage, here.) British employers will have to prove they can't find a skilled countryman to fill an open post, and potential immigrants have to speak English and earn over 24,000 pounds (or about $47,400). The first stage of the points system went into place in February, applying to immigrants already in England who wanted to extend their stay. A third stage will go into effect later this year, covering temporary workers and students.

Just how crowded is England? As the Telegraph notes, the most crowded place in the world, Macau, has a population density of over 47,000 people to a square mile. California's density is about 217 people per square mile, while the U.S. has a density of under 100. But Los Angeles County's is 2,344, which is lower than Orange County's 3,605.

In any case, the UK is working hard to keep out at least one temporary visitor.

(And, I can't resist linking this.)

Columnist Jonah Goldberg says issues that may seem irrelevant actually give us clues about the candidates:

Whatever the true import of Obama's relationship with Wright may be, or whatever the proper weight voters should give to his view that poor whites "cling" to guns and religion because they've suffered under bad economic policies, or, for that matter, what Clinton's "sniper fire" story says about her, it strikes me as absurd to argue that these data are meaningless but their stance on a gas-tax holiday is of enduring importance.

Pacific Council on International Policy adjunct fellow Joshua Kurlantzick profiles China's educated, wealthy next-generation nationalists who aren't afraid to be aggressive toward the West. And USC's Sara Catania has an idea for the Silver Lake Reservoir: a new kind of urban park.

The editorial board thinks a tax on services might work for California if done right and explains why Yahoo and Google's teaming up on advertising would be bad for consumers. The board also responds to the death of racehorse Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby last weekend:

As we explore the limits of physical performance, sports trend toward the more extreme, even if it harms rather than enhances the athlete's health. Steroids in baseball, eating disorders in prepubescent gymnasts, whatever it takes to win, until there's a public pushback that threatens the sport. Without industry reform in the near future, it's easy to imagine such a pushback against the biggest athlete of all -- the racehorse.

On the letters page, readers discuss May Day. Chino's Raul Perez asks, "How is it that I have to have a passport to enter the country in which I was born, raised and served in the armed forces while others come and go as they please?"

John McCain is using Cinco de Mayo, the most American of Mexican holidays, to launch a Spanish-language version of his website. He's also agreed to attend the National Council of La Raza annual conference this summer, which has the usual suspects up in arms.

McCain will have to pull off an interesting balancing act as the general election nears: wooing crucial, increasingly Democratic-leaning Latino voters while roping in Republicans who favor tighter immigration policies. He got a bit of practice doing just that during Republican debates -- goaded by single-issue long-shots Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo, not to mention the back-and-forth between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee over who dared show compassion to immigrants.

But since last summer, when comprehensive immigration reform lost another round in Congress, McCain has moved further away from his original position, as expressed in a bill he co-sponsored with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Now McCain emphasizes a security-first approach and he has said he wouldn't even vote for his original bill if it came up again in Congress (See The Times' McCain endorsement for the editorial board's take on that switch.)

And while it is pretty clear that a good number of Latino voters -- whether newly-registered or not -- don't like tough-on-immigration rhetoric, it's not clear whether having a Spanish-language website gets them all that excited. After all, most second-generation and almost all third-generation Latinos speak English. Symbolism does count for something, but it probably wouldn't compensate for an about-face on comprehensive immigration reform.

*Photo courtesy Bloomberg News.

No news here, but this strikes me as one of the great unresolved disputes in pop culture history:

I watched the original Star Wars a few days ago, and noted that on the commentary track George Lucas provides a new version of the development of the Obi-Wan Kenobi character. According to Lucas, he decided at some point in the production that Kenobi had to die part of the way through the movie — over the objections of Alec Guinness, who wanted to keep on working. Nothing remarkable there, except that Guinness very famously gave a totally different version of the story: that Guinness himself talked Lucas into killing off the character because he was bored with reciting "those bloody awful, banal lines." As the late actor told the late Talk magazine in 1999, "I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo."

That's two incompatible versions of the same event. One witness is dead and the other is a fairly energetic reinventor of his own back stories. Which one do you believe? Against my usual habit of not trusting anything George Lucas says, I'm inclined to say he is telling the truer story.

Guinness built up a great reputation as a Star Wars basher over the years, but he didn't start out that way; there's very little in the contemporary record to suggest the kind of contempt for the movie he later showed. The argument-from-self-interest also works against Guinness' version. Actors want to keep acting, as Guinness himself went on to prove: Well into his career as a Star Wars refusenik, he accepted cameo roles in both sequels. Finally, Lucas earned a small believability credit with me by including the original, blissfully non-remastered version of the original movie in the DVD package, which suggests he has given up on his subtle but persistent campaign to convince everybody that the original Star Wars was always called Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope.

Whichever version is true, I'm well satisfied that the entire Star Wars project ran out of steam once Kenobi got killed off. They kept making the movies, but from that point I tuned out, only waking up from time to time out of respect for Lando Calrissian, inter-galactic cock-blocker.

Native wisdom--and our own memories of fooling, disobeyind and just generally tormenting substitute teachers--tells us that when the regular teacher is gone, not a whole lot of learning takes place. And in a rare confluence of academic research and common sense, it turns out this is true: Kids learn better the more their teacher is around. It's expensive, too. Subs make lousy pay, but it adds up.

So simple and yet so frustrating. according to a report in the latest Education Week. Because no matter what incentives school administrators offer--up to prizes of three-year car leases to teachers who cut down on sick leave and other absences--teachers continue to take about the same number of days off.

You'd have to expect teacher sick days to be higher than the norm...they work with crowded classrooms of sniffly kids all day long. Still, the more generous the contract is about allowing paid days off, the more days teachers take. (Conversely: Would we really want teachers showing up when they're sick, afraid of losing a day's pay?) And principals note that a disproportionate amount of illness seems to occur on Fridays and during Thanksgiving week. So what's the answer here? Doctors' notes, just like for the kids?

Journalist and food critic Alice Feiring explores why California wines aren't what they used to be:

Forget "Eureka," the new state motto can well be: "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing." Today's California wines are overblown, over-alcoholed, over-oaked, overpriced and over-manipulated.

When I first stopped drinking the Left Coast, it was because I was offended by the overuse of wood, boring flavors and lack of structure. The wines, many of which had plenty of edge and personality, seemed neutered to me. I soon learned that the other part of the story was that an arsenal of technology was deployed to make them that way: yeast, enzymes, tannin, oak and acid, as well as over-extracting techniques, micro-oxygenation, dialysis and reverse osmosis.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez calls out Barack Obama for flip-flopping on Rev. Jeremiah A Wright Jr. And Los Angeles City Employees Retirement System trustee Kelly Candaele says CalPERS should stick to being an "activist" investor.

The editorial board warns Angelenos that a racial separatist running for judge could win if they don't get out the vote. The board also checks in on trouble in the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia and thinks California should bring fairness to its school spending.

The best, the brightest, the movers, the shakers and the thinkers came out, but it was a New Jersey high school student who took the Number 1 spot in the week's most popular Opinion stories. But fear not, James Q. Wilson fans: the Pepperdine professor whose textbook Matthew LaClair attacked gave as good as he got, and made the list at Number 9. And the rest of the week's winners? A mishmash of drugs, China, and Jeremiah Wright. See you next week, and thanks for reading Opinion L.A.

1. Give me the lesson without the spin, by Matthew LaClair 
2. Looking for Mr. Wright, by Jonah Goldberg
3. China's powerful weakness, by Francis Fukuyama
4. A commitment problem, by Norman Ornstein
5. The U.S. and China are over a barrel, by Michael T. Klare
6. Dust-up: America on drugs, by Jacob Sullum and Charles "Cully" Stimson
7. Men who explain things, by Rebecca Solnit
8. Rev. Wright deserves some attention, by Rosa Brooks
9. Quit twisting my words, by James Q. Wilson
10. Contrarian McCain, by the editorial board

"Everyone who has tried posting books online has done it again. That's a pretty good indicator it works. An artist's enemy is obscurity, not piracy."

That's the no-introduction-needed Cory Doctorow talking about the brave new freeware-everywhere world with his fellow Canucks at MacLeans.

It's easy enough (and probably premature) to mock the death throes of intellectual property behemoths. Doctorow goes one better by actually making a living in the barter economy, though the details are a bit vague: He says he lives off the advertising at BoingBoing and is getting bigger advances on his novels. All I know of life on earth tells me every time a writer gets a generous book advance a publisher gets a little bit poorer, and it's not clear to me how long such a system can last. But that would be in keeping with Doctorow's contempt for stability as a goal:

The question to ask about any intellectual property rights regime, he says, is "does it encourage or discourage involvement, art-making, information-sharing?" In his opinion, the current system only serves corporate dinosaurs, "big dying institutions." They use copyright to try to regulate technology, to criminalize (or at least turn a profit on) all the peer-to-peer file sharing that is the "Internet's greatest achievement: lowering the cost of mass collaboration, the barriers to innovation."

It adds up to an eternal and futile attempt to throttle the mechanisms of change. Long before sheet-music publishers fought record makers (who later battled radio stations, who complained of TV and so on), monks who produced manuscripts were damning the printing press as the devil's engine. What's particularly galling for Doctorow is that "yesterday's pirate is today's admiral — Sony, the VCR pirate, denounced by moviemakers a generation ago, has come full circle to sue Napster's successors." Of course, institutions — especially wealthy ones — want to live on, even past their times, Doctorow acknowledges. "I used to be a bartender, and there was always somebody who didn't want the night to end. But there comes a time when you have to put the chairs up on the table."

As a fulltime employee of a big, dying institution and as the guy who never wants the bar to close, I can confirm that Doctorow is exactly right. Read the whole story.

Depending on your perspective, Occidental Petroleum’s shareholder meeting in Santa Monica Friday was a celebration of historic financial achievments (profits are way up, the company ended 2007 with no debt and dividends just keep climbing) or, it was the scene of what is becoming a serious public relations irritation. Shortly before shareholders gathered, environmental activists in white hazmat suits picketed in front of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel chanting for Oxy to clean up the pollution they say it left in the Peruvian Amazon when it ended operations there about nine years ago.

Three tribal leaders from Peru had traveled days -- on foot, in canoes, by bus and airplane – to attend the meeting at the Fairmont Miramar and urge Oxy to clean up toxic waste from 30 years of operation. But even though the Achuar representatives’ requests were translated first into Spanish and then into English, it was clear that the demonstrators and Oxy execs, simply did not speak the same language.

The Achuar told Occidental Chairman and CEO Ray Irani that their parents and children were suffering and asked his company to help them. They promised to speak well of the company if it did. Actress Darryl Hannah asked Oxy officials to imagine their own children were suffering cadmium poisoning and to show compassion. Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch, invited Irani and Oxy execs to come to Peru to see the damage first hand. After about the third pro-Peruvian speaker, Irani grew a bit testy saying, “We can’t keep listening to every guy that came up from Peru.”

The company did address activists concerns, in its own language. It wishes the Achuar well, a nofficial said, but Oxy has fulfilled its legal obligations to the satisfaction of the government of Peru. Its successor, the Argentine company Pluspetrol, is legally responsible for any contamination past or present. Furthermore, despite its requests for scientific proof that the Achuar are suffering health consequences related to its past operations, activists have not provided it, and lastly, officials told shareholders, the Peruvian’s suit had been dismissed by a Los Angeles Federal Judge.

So the Achuar pressed their case for what they thought was right and Oxy answered by defining the legal parameters of its obligations. Shortly after that the meeting ended. But rarely has a translator been so badly needed.

Mayoral candidate Walter Moore said Thursday he has begun a drive to put "Jamiel's Law" on the March 2009 Los Angeles city ballot — the same one in which he is trying to unseat Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

If adopted, the law would permit Los Angeles police officers to arrest gang members for breaking U.S. immigration law. It would supersede Special Order 40, a 29-year-old LAPD policy that bars officers from arresting or questioning people solely on suspicion of being in the country illegally. Moore told a crowd of about 200 people — gathered at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre to hear about his proposal — that he decided on an initiative after hearing no response from City Council members to his request for an ordinance.

Jamiel's Law is named for Jamiel Shaw II, 17, who was shot to death by suspected gang members on March 2 close to his Arlington Heights home. Police arrested Pedro Espinoza, 19, who reportedly entered the U.S. illegally at age 4. Police say Espinoza is a member of the 18th Street Gang. He was released from jail, where he was being held on a weapons charge, a day before the killing.

Espinoza had been arrested by Culver City police and jailed and released by the Sheriff's Department, so the LAPD and Special Order 40 did not come into play. But Moore has dismissed that point, saying, in effect, that if his law had been in place, LAPD officers at some point prior to his weapons arrest would have seen Espinoza, identified him as a gang member, and arrested him on immigration charges.

The killing of Jamiel Shaw II, and Moore's advocacy for the change in the law, has united some black and white illegal immigration opponents, threatened to widen a gulf between African Americans and Latino immigrants, and forced city officials to refocus on Special Order 40. At least some LAPD officers appear to believe, incorrectly, that the policy prevents them from cooperating or even communicating with immigration authorities. A senior lead officer who misquoted Special Order 40 in a March newsletter, adding in anti-cooperation language, acknowledged that he got the wording not from the LAPD manual but from the American Patrol anti-illegal-immigration web site.

LAPD Chief William J. Bratton said he would clarify the policy for his officers. He also told the Times editorial board that he would make no changes to the order.

Moore repeated his assertion that the Times caters to Latino illegal immigrants because its parent company, Tribune, also owns the Spanish-language paper Hoy.

"The mayor, the City Council, and L.A. Times/Hoy won't take action," Moore said. "It's up to you."

Also speaking at the event were KRLA radio personality Kevin James and the young victim's father, Jamiel Shaw Sr.

James called for audience members to support Moore's campaign financially. "It's really expensive to run for mayor of Los Angeles against a former gang member who is the incumbent," James said.

Villaraigosa was not a gang member, but the claim that he was has become popular among illegal immigration opponents.

Shaw criticized the deputy district attorney prosecuting Espinoza, saying he worried she would try to portray his son as a gang member because he was carrying a red Spiderman backpack. "I want everybody to know," he said, "the fix is in."

There's a saying in the black community: "Blacks are like crabs in a barrel." This means that if one crab looks like it's going to escape from the barrel and avoid the frying pan, rather than follow that crab to freedom, the others pull it back down.

It was only a matter of time before the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's antics put him into this category; the black blogsphere is teeming with accusations of crab-like behavior hurled at the pastor. It's not that everyone disagrees with his positions on the damage caused by racist laws, policies and practices of the past; many blacks understand exactly why he's angry. But Wright had a choice between either helping Obama get elected or seizing his 15 minutes of fame. And since the choice would be clear to a child, the reverend's display of at the National Press Club last week has convinced many that he must be sabotaging America's chance to elect a black president on purpose.