Four-year-old Roberto Lopez is the latest symbol of a dying newspaper. The little boy was shot and killed as he walked with his sister to a community center near their Angelino Heights home around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Where did the Los Angeles Times play the story? Page B3 in my edition. It should, at least, have been the dominant story on the cover of the California section and knocked off a timeless feature about a fire-gutted Montecito monastery’s efforts to rebuild.

Instead, we get a short story, with no photo of the boy. No interviews with family, friends or neighbors. No neighborhood scene. Times’ editors should have followed the example of LAPD’s Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger, who told their reporter: “We’re throwing everything we have at this investigation.”

I’m so over blaming Sam Zell for every shortcoming of our once stronger daily; rarely great, just stronger. Reporters and photographers out to save their jobs from impending layoffs should have carpooled to the scene and produced an in-depth series of stories and hoisted them on their editors in time for today’s paper. Too bad a tipster couldn’t have phoned in an erroneous report of a celebrity spotted in the neighborhood. Maybe the sleepyheads on Spring Street will recover in time for Thursday’s paper. To its credit, the paper’s Web site shows some progress on the story, with video from Tribune’s KTLA. Still, it seems like their overdosing on sedatives in the Times newsroom again.

The criminal enterprise known as L.A. Unified, which should be overseen by a panel of federal judges, took steps to can 2,300 teachers if the nightmarish budget comes true. Where did the story run? Page B-4.

The Times should run front-page stories every day on the latest news of the budget debacle. Include email addresses, home phone numbers and home addresses of every GOP legislator who refuses to act responsibly and raise taxes. (OK, I hear you on the home addresses.) Interview the constitutents of these backward-thinking lawmakers to see if these cavemen really represent their views.

Even the governor, who continues to steal transit money, is calling for tax hikes. The same governor who would have billions more to spend today had he not slashed the car tax upon taking office in 2003.

Forgive me, L.A. Times, for suggesting you step up your game. You probably think what I’m calling for sounds like advocacy journalism and would force you to surrender your objectivity, an outdated term that only provides an excuse for your failure to inform a community about the meaning of events and issues.

Tell me, what’s your objective view of a bankrupt state that fails to meet the needs of its young and its most needy residents?

And what does your objectivity say about the sad end of 4-year-old Roberto’s life? How are we to cope when you don’t tell us more about him, our city, our struggles and our future?

While you think about it, leave a red rose on Roberto’s shrine. It’s OK to mourn while you ponder questions for Chief Bratton and the mayor.

Does Rick Warren’s homophobia mean Barack Obama should not have tapped him to give the invocation at the inauguration?

During the day, yesterday, the announcement about Warren drew comment from every direction, including from Obama himself.

The LA Times has an editorial on the topic, which was, I’m sorry to say, not one of its best, and mostly missed the point.

The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan went through his own narrative arc during thie course of the afternoon. Here’s Sullivan, several posts into the day, after the announcement was made.

Civil rights are not about left and right; they are about right and wrong. And the hurt that this choice has caused is not a function of an alienated base, it seems to me, so much as salt on the wound of Proposition 8. I understand why Obama did this. I just wonder if he understands how deeply hurtful it is to be asked to pray with someone who has compared my marriage with the sexual abuse of children, incest and polygamy. Yes, I am, in Warren’s eyes, the equivalent of a pedophile, as is my husband. This comparison is what Warren calls his commitment to “model civility. Some civility.

Several hours later, he wrote this:

My own view at the end of this deeply upsetting day is that we should all take a deep breath. That doesn’t mean forgetting this; or denying the untruths and prejudices of Rick Warren. It means focusing on getting Obama to support the substantive work of equality; and making the case ourselves.

Personally, I’m very ardently in favor of the reach-across-the-barriers concept—at least in the abstract. It is time we start healing the terrible and scarring divides in this country that the last administration used for political gain. And if Rick Warren thinks that my immortal soul is damned to hell for all eternity, what of it? He does a great deal of good, as well.

But he is also for restricting the rights of my friends and fellow citizens if they happen to be gay. And he said so in odious terms when he actively stumped for Prop 8.

So what to do?

For some further clarification, I turned to my very smart friend and former student, blogger Zach Sire, to see what he had to say.

Here’s a clip from his post (but the rest is worth reading, including his clip from—and reply to—Wonkette):

Your Barry inviting “Dr. Rick” is not a slap in the face to gays as much as it is a disingenuous olive branch to evangelicals. And they’re falling for it! You see, Obama is all about trying to please everyone with gestures and concessions. Until he actually starts enacting policies and putting forth his specific agenda, none of us should be freaking out. So, chill.

And remember, the other religious person on the bill on inauguration day (who is in fact overseeing the benediction) is Rev. Joe Lowery. Lowery founded the SCLC with Martin Luther King and, hold on to your hats, is a supporter of same sex marriage. You don’t see the religious right freaking out about this, do you? (Maybe you do, but I haven’t seen anything about it as of yet.)

So yeah. Relax. Warren is, as everyone knows, a tool. We should be proud of Obama for using him as well as he is. If this endears another couple hundred thousand evangelicals to Obama, and thus helps him out in 2012, then that’s fine by me.

Frankly, this whole issue would be a lot easier if Prop 8 had been defeated, and Californians could go back marrying the people they love, and Rick Warren could invoke to his heart’s content.

But that isn’t how it is.

CHILDREN NOW, a national nonprofit that monitors the wellbeing of American children, has just issued its yearly scorecard for California, with measurements that are separated by county.

So how does LA County score in relationship to the rest of the state?

We are home to 2.8 children under the age of 18. And when the scores are converted to grades, overall LA County gets a C -.

Among a number of decidedly uncheering scores, one of the most disheartening numbers was the percentage of high school students who had not been victimized and who felt physically safe at their school’s school: a mere 23 percent.

In other words, less than one fourth of LA County’s adolescents feel that school is a safe place.

Among the other scores, there is the fact that only 62 percent of LA’s kids “feel connected “to some adult or other. The same percentage, 62 percent, report very good to excellent health. (Meaning a more than a third of LA County kids do not report good health.)

There’s more at both a state and local level. So take a look.

ALL THS SCORING of the existing health and well-being of the state’s kids cannot help but bring to mind the suggested budget cuts that will affect the future health and educational scores of California’s children and young adults.

For instance, there is the following:

At present there are more than 900,000 California kids enrolled the state’s Healthy Families program. These are kids who would not have health insurance otherwise. But, because of the state’s budget woes, at a time when parents are losing their jobs and health benefits, the state, for the first time ever, is considering freezing enrollment and starting a waiting list.

That’s, of course, along with such other fun cuts like the planned amputations for K-12 education totaling $2.5 billion, and those that are causing the Cal State Universities to announce a likely enrollment cut-back of 10,000 students for next year, and the cuts that are making it necessary for the UC’s to raise their tuition (another) ten percent (triggering protests yesterday), and the positively draconian $332 million budget slashing that has been proposed for the lowest rung of the state’s higher education ladder, California’s community colleges.

One wonders what those cuts will do to the physical and educational health of California’s young.

And here’s her gay son, Mr. Christ!!

Come Judgment Day, many denominations surveyed about gay marriage by the Pew Forum on Religion and Tall Tales, or something like that, will be in a heap of trouble. My theological advice to them: Repent, renounce your damnable, intolerant, anti-human positions or surrender your tax-exempt status.

The survey is here.

It gets worse.

Yesterday Texas Child Protective Services, was told by the 3rd circuit Court of Appeals that they had no business taking over 450 children away from their families, that there simply wasn’t credible evidence to suggest that the majority of children were in enough danger to justify their removal.

Then today, CPS essentially said to the 3rd Circuit Court that it didn’t care about the court’s pesky opinion, that it was keeping the kids, and was going to the Supreme Court to overturn Thursday’s ruling.

Timothy Lynch, writing for the National Review, has a very thoughtful and informative run down on some of the underlying issues contained in this situation. Plus, he has reports from neutral observers that suggest CPS has repeatedly dealt with the children in ways that cannot help but traumatize them. Here are some clips:

Culture shock is not a crime. Today marriage and child bearing are commonly delayed into one’s 30s, so there was some culture shock when the news broke about a raid on a religious sect where teen pregnancy was reportedly the norm. Texas law-enforcement officials may recoil from such behavior but it cannot send agents out on a whim to enforce a new set of rules. The Mormon splinter group, known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), moved to Texas precisely because the state’s marriage laws were amenable to their religious beliefs. In 2004, the year FLDS members moved to Eldorado, Texas law allowed girls as young as 14 to marry with the permission of their parents. In 2005, Texas lawmakers heeded the advice of Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff to raise the minimum age that minors with parents’ permission can marry from 14 to 16. Shurtleff had experience dealing with FLDS communities in Utah. Texas also upgraded the penalties for bigamy from a misdemeanor to felony. There is nothing untoward about that — so long as those new laws are applied prospectively.

A Presumption of Guilt. Six weeks have now passed since the April 3 raid on the FLDS ranch and there have been no arrests for child abuse or child rape. The raid was prompted by an anonymous phone call by a lady named “Sarah.” “Sarah” claimed that she was 16, that she lived at the FLDS ranch in Eldorado, that she was forced into a marriage with a much older man by the name of Dale Barlow, that she had one eight-month-old child and that she was pregnant again. Texas CPS executed a search warrant at the ranch but could not find “Sarah” or Dale Barlow. Police now believe that the phone call was a hoax by a woman in Colorado who has a history of submitting false reports. Dale Barlow was found in Arizona. He has been interviewed by investigators, but Texas has chosen not to have Barlow arrested even though they had an arrest warrant for him when the initial raid took place. Texas CPS officials now stress that the seizure of the children is a “civil” matter unrelated to the raid and that the constitutional safeguards that pertain to criminal investigations do not apply. FLDS parents and their appointed lawyers were initially bewildered by the Kafkaesque manner of Texas’s “child removal” proceedings. The presumption of innocence was turned on its head, which means the parents were expected to prove a negative — that they committed no crime. Until yesterday’s ruling, CPS had been able to whimsically thwart any challenge to its authority. Some parents, for example, have tried to present government documentation, such as birth certificates and drivers licenses, to show they have violated no marriage law so that they could retrieve their children. Unacceptable, said CPS. When some mothers sought to meet with their attorneys before police interviews, CPS informed the mothers that if they left the shelter for such an appointment, they would not be able to rejoin their children, which are in CPS custody.

[SNIP]

Read the rest of this entry »

Years ago Parenting Magazine asked me to do an article on a homeless mother with children. The idea was simply to find such a family and follow them around for a month. I agreed and, for 30 days, entered the lives of a thirty-something woman and her three kids. The woman, whose name I’ve long ago forgotten, didn’t have a discernible drug problem. Nor was she a drinker. She’d ended up on the street to escape and abusive husband. I watched as she bounced around from shelter to shelter, trying to find a place that would accept both her and her fragile family.

But while there always seemed to be enough shelter beds for men who needed them, the beds for women with kids were extemely difficult to come by

I liked the mom, who struggled hard to overcome her circumstances, at least during the time I observed her. But she always seemed to be swimming upstream.

Yet it was her children who got to me. They were nice kids, and seemed intelligent behind their preternatural watchfulness. I remember one time when I asked the oldest girl, who was ten at the time. about her dreams for the future. She told me she wished she lived in a place where she could sometimes have friends over to play. That was it. But she recited the wish as if the possibility was as far out of reach as the moon.

I bring all this up because, in this week’s LA City Beat, the cover story is again by smart USC journalism grad student, Matt Mundy, and it’s about the homeless kids of Skid Row. Matt wrote the story in a longer version as his master’s thesis for his USC degree, then cut it down to feature size with the help of City’ Beat’s News Editor, my pal, the excellent Alan Mittelsteadt.

According to Mundy’s research, there are 13,521 homeless students in the Los Angeles Unified school system. In California, there are 178,014, and the country….907,000. And those are just the school-age children on the street we know about. The homeless are notoriously census resistant.

Homeless children are four times more likely to drop out of school and two times more likely to score lower on standardized tests; one in ten homeless students will miss at least one month of school each year, 36 percent have repeated a grade, and 14 percent – double that of other children – are diagnosed with a learning disability. All of these problems are caused, exacerbated and impacted in myriad ways by their troubled environments.

Read the rest here.

Let no child be left behind, indeed.

Photo by Monica Almeda, New York Times

And while we’re on the subject of rescue….. [SEE POST ABOVE]

My smart friend and commentator, Flavia Colgan, wrote this delightful column for the Philadelphia Daily News about what one can do to help California’s fire victims. She says she’s been getting a heartening response, even from as far away as her hometown of Philly, PA.

In the column she lists the following agencies that are collecting donations for fire victims:

American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund: 800-HELP-NOW or 800-257-7575 for Spanish speakers, .

Corporations and businesses interested in making in-kind donations may call 800-746-5463.

San Diego Food Bank: 866-350-3663

Goodwill Southern California: 888-4-GOODWILL

Salvation Army Southern California: 213-896-9160, www.salvationarmysocal.org.

Governor’s Office of Emergency Services: 800-750-2858

And for helping other species other than our own: Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: 888-SPCA-LA1

I’m headed out into the John Muir Wilderness with my smart son, Will, and Loup-Loup-the-wolf-dog. (I will no doubt freeze my butt off, but, hey, if your kid asks you to go back-packing, you go.)

I may not post again until Tuesday morning. Then back in full force.

(But, if you don’t hear from me by Tuesday, send out the mounted patrol.)

In the meantime, read the excellent Time Magazine cover story, titled “The Incredible Shrinking Court,” about the emerging trend of the Roberts court to take on smaller and smaller issues, focusing on narrower and narrower points of law, shying away from the larger questions of the day–and what this all portends.

(Sorry no photos. I’m doing this from my blackberry.

****************

UPDATE: Back safe, sound, slightly sore, shower-challenged and supremely happy.

Went to Cottonwood Lakes, an enchanting place to backpack. It did, however, get down to below 22 degrees at night, with an occasional nice, bracing breeze thrown in for good measure. So even the dog was a bit chilly after dark. (We wrapped a tarp wrap around her, nest-like, which she seemed to appreciate, while we relied on the miracle of down.)

One last thought before we head into the weekend. This is from a column that was syndicated yesterday in a number of newspapers around the country. I found it in the Sacramento Bee. It’s by Rod Dreher, a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. The subject will be made quickly evident by the clips posted below. [NOTE: see that the Sac Bee is now is making you register. Here's another link to the piece at Common Dreams.]

I have spent the last two weeks carrying around a chunk of bloody flesh. It is masquerading as a paperback novel called “All Quiet on the Western Front,” but in truth, it’s the ravaged heart of a man who was a soldier once. If there is a work of literature more searing in its description of modern warfare’s personal horrors, I have not read it and don’t know that I could withstand it.

I started reading Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel — a perennial high school lit fave — for the sake of civic edification. You know the drill: Read a certified Great Book…..

SNIP

“All Quiet” is thought by many to be the greatest war novel because it tells the universal combat experience of the soldier: the sanity-crushing bombardments, the murder of ideals, the barbaric clawing for survival, the scorn for authority figures who don’t suffer the consequences of their decisions, the alienation of fighting men from the people back home, who can’t possibly understand what they endure, and so forth…….

SNIP

As shattering as “All Quiet” is, the wretched truth remains that war we will always have with us. Because men are born to trouble, sometimes war is a necessary evil.

Ah, but on that one word — necessary — hangs the world.…

SNIP

As I read the final pages, I heard my 3-year-old stirring in his bedroom. I went to check on him and stood there regarding with wonderment the blond boy slumbering in the soft glow of the nightlight. I prayed hard for him and his brother to be spared war’s desolation. As I will pray constantly for their Uncle Mike — faithful husband, devoted father and brave soldier — when he deploys to Iraq this month.

SNIP

Kentucky poet Wendell Berry has written: There is no government so worthy as your son who fishes with you in silence beside the forest pool. There is no national glory so comely as your daughter whose hands have learned a music and go their own way on the keys. There is no national glory so comely as my daughter who dances and sings and is the brightness of my house. There is no government so worthy as my son who laughs, as he comes up the path from the river in the evening, for joy.

A novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa,” writes Dreher, “recently told The Wall Street Journal: ‘I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated.’”

Yep. Quite so. Read on.

Object:Clinton’s man in California a pro at digging up dirt:/c/a/2007/05/12/MNGIMPQ12L1.DTL

Article:Clinton’s man in California a pro at digging up dirt:/c/a/2007/05/12/MNGIMPQ12L1.DTL

Article:Clinton’s man in California a pro at digging up dirt:/c/a/2007/05/12/MNGIMPQ12L1.DTL

Connoisseur of Dirt: Ace Smith

Ace Smith hung up on me twice this week. And I was trying to help him. I wanted to put to rest the theory that this master of opposition research and trusted Antonio adviser might have somehow inspired the rash of anti-Rocky stories that broke last month. We all know Rocky has plenty of enemies and a phone-book size list of others who wouldn’t mind embarrassing him. So I certainly don’t blame Ace when he dismisses as “speculative shit” my June 25 post on this topic, “The Antonio-Rocky Show: Winners, losers, but who’s the producer?”
All that aside, it would be nice if Ace could answer 10 simple questions so we could move on to refocusing the mayor’s attention on solving the city’s more pressing problems of failing schools, killer air pollution, lost and forlorn youth and our ever deepening problems with traffic and a skeletal public transportation system that moves too few people. We need a mayor who commands respect and admiration and gets action in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, not only in a Studio City bedroom. (Note to editorial writers at the L.A. Times: Send reinforcements, please. You’ve been silent now for 27 days since the mayor first announced the end of his marriage. Use your firepower and influence to restart the civic discourse on important themes, though you should implore the mayor to come clean on when his relationship started with First Lady wannabe Mirthala Salinas to see whether it helped the mayor win gushing coverage of his school takeover bill. Can you imagine the chorus of editorials if this were New York?)
And Ace, it’s not like I’m the only guy in town wondering whether trusted Antonio loyalists might be planting anti-Rocky stories to deflect attention from the mayor’s soap opera. Take a look at what Steve Lopez posted online the same day the Daily News’ Beth Barrett exposed secrets of the mayor’s love life.
Plus, there’s a deeper reason to wonder about the sources of the wave of Rocky stories. The heap of negative press about our city attorney prompted the L.A. Times to call for his resignation. It’s one thing if investigative reporters doing their jobs uncovered all of the questionable goings-on in Rocky’s shop and home as part of a full-blown, independent examination of that powerful office. Such inquiries are the heart and soul of a free press in America. But if Rocky’s rivals orchestrated the coverage behind-the-scenes, and Rocky is driven from office by a plot masterminded by nameless, faceless confidential sources with an axe to grind, that stinks.

It’s important for the public to know who wields power in this city, and who is trying to oust the city attorney. If for no other reason than to keep the newspaper and its reporters from being beholden to sources who gave them such a great batch of stories that did in an elected official. Down the line, will it lead to punches being pulled or otherwise dilute needed scrutiny if similiar tactics are employed during, say, a gubernatorial run by Antonio in 2010 or a mayoral re-election bid in two years? The public is best served when all the players and their roles are known and examined in the theater called City Hall. In other words, if the mayor, even indirectly, flings dirt, we want to know; if the mayor or anyone near him, helps bring down a political foe, the public must know. (Note to Rocky: Don’t consider this post a defense of your tenure.)

Before I get to the list of 10 questions, let me explain my history with Ace. He emailed me on June 25, the same day that the original post went up, and accused me of fabricating the line that I had tried to reach him for comment. I told him I’d called the mayor’s communication staff and left a message on a Sunday explaining the gist of my post and that I would like their help getting a response from Ace. I never heard back from the office or Ace. Ace called my response “one of the most embarrassingly weak explanations I have heard in the decades I have been doing this.” Hey, I can take criticism. I let Ace know I still wanted to interview him. But my emails and four phone calls over the next two days went unreturned. Finally, last Friday I emailed questions and gave him a deadline of 5 p.m. Monday to respond. I told him if he chose not to answer them, I would probably list the questions in my next post. Again, no response. On Tuesday afternoon, I called his cell phone to verify that he had received the questions and to see if he planned to answer them. “I don’t think I was dealt with honestly by you, so I have no intention.” He hung up. I waited five minutes before calling back. He lashed out at what he called my “bogus attempt” to get a comment from him for the original post. Come on, Ace, let’s move on. I pressed him to respond to the questions, but he wouldn’t. “I don’t think it’s right to publish speculative shit that you have no basis for.” He hung up.
Ace, the offer still stands. Anytime you’re willing to tell your side of things and address these 10 questions, call or email. I’ll even buy lunch—so long as the conversation’s on the record.

The 10 questions:

1. What role, if any, did you play in the dissemination of information that may have led to any of the recent news stories about Rocky and Michelle Delgadillo’s problems?

2. Did you participate in any discussions with the mayor and/or his staff about ways to handle the announcement of the breakup of the mayor’s marriage?

3. Did you discuss with the mayor or any of his staff members alerting the media to Rocky and his wife’s driving/business/babysitting problems?

4. How many times did you meet at City Hall with the mayor and/or his staff in June?

5. What was discussed at those meetings?

6. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci wrote a story about your role in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which ran May 12 under the headline, “Clinton’s man in California a pro at digging up dirt.” In the article, Garry South, a top Democrat strategist and a former adviser to Gov. Gray Davis, called you “the best op research guy in America on either side of the aisle. He digs under every rock.” Do you take issue with that characterization or anything else in the Chronicle story?

7. Share your reaction to this observation Marinucci makes about you in the article: “As with any successful political opposition researcher, most of Smith’s best work needs to arise anonymously with few — other than his clients — recognizing who found it.”

8. You ran Jerry Brown’s campaign last year when he faced Rocky Delgadillo in the Democratic primary. Did you know at that time about any of the disclosures that emerged in June about Rocky and his wife?

9. Would you like to share any other thoughts on this matter?

10. By the way, do you know of any other Los Angeles politicians, current or former, whose city-owned vehicles were driven by family members? Who?