Talk about depravity -- knocking over a hot dog stand is it.

Pink's, the venerable and renowned Hollywood hot dog joint, got held up at gunpoint at 3:35 on Monday morning, which is one of the rare times of the day when he would not have had to wait in an immensely long line. And when the employees told the gunman they couldn't get into the safe, he made off with the tip jar. So low.

The reason this is personal is that I am happy to say that Pink's named a hot dog after me. The Patt Morrison Baja Veggie Dog is topped with guacamole, tomatoes and onions. All vegan, all delish. 

Bad as it was, I am bracing for something even worse -- that police find out that the guy who made off with the Pink's money spent his loot at In-N-Out Burger. Scum.

-- Patt Morrison

A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog post, then the Times editorialized, about state attorneys general (predominantly Republicans) who challenged the new healthcare reform law. This afternoon I ran across a piece on the Washington Post's website about attorneys general (all Democrats) who were defending Obamacare. In the interest of equal time, albeit at the risk of provoking yet another constitutional law debate about non-lawyers, here's a quote from the first two paragraphs of the article:

In states such as Georgia and Kentucky, Democratic attorneys general who support reform are now at loggerheads with state governors bent on joining the lawsuit against the federal government over its constitutionality. But there are pro-reform state officials who are becoming even more aggressive about getting out front and defending the bill.

On Friday, Politico published an op-ed by Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray and Iowa's attorney general, Tom Miller, explaining why they refused to file anti-reform lawsuits and why Congress "has ample power" to legislate under health care. And they don't shirk from defending the constitutionality of the mandate: "We live under mandates every day. Without them, society as we know it would disintegrate."

A better quote from the Politico op-ed is this one:

Nobody can seriously argue that the health care industry operates only in “intrastate” commerce and that the mandate provisions in this bill cannot be effectively disentangled from the comprehensive economic approach that Congress adopted to fix the deep flaws in our current health insurance system.

Alas, I think that Cordray and Miller may have tripped over their own complex syntax. I believe they meant to say that no one can seriously argue that the mandate can be disentangled from the larger regulation of insurance. But then, IANAL.

-- Jon Healey

Years ago, I mentally created a file called "Who Asked Him?" in which I lodged presumptuous comments by public officials and others. I just deposited Sen. Arlen Specter's suggestion that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens not retire at the end of this term, despite Stevens' own media blitz suggesting that his days, and dissents, are numbered.

Not that we asked, but Specter (D-Pa.) told Fox News that he hopes Stevens won't step down this year because "gridlock in the Senate might well produce a filibuster, which will tie up the Senate with the Supreme Court nominee." He added, apparently in a rejection of the conventional wisdom that his former Republican Party will pick up seats this year: "I think that if a year passes, there is a much better chance we can come to a consensus." To quote Specter's preferred vote in the Clinton impeachment trial, that theory is "not proven."

Cynics would suggest that Specter himself doesn't want to be tied up by a Supreme Court confirmation at a time he is seeking reelection, the first time as a Democrat. Or maybe from the viewpoint of an 80-year-old senator, a 90-year-old Supreme Court Justice is just hitting his prime.

-- Michael McGough

The Commerce Department sent a "views" letter Thursday to the Senate Judiciary Committee that expressed the administration's "strong support" for the record labels' No. 1 priority: legislation (S 379 in the Senate, HR 848 in the House) that would require radio stations to pay royalties to recording artists. It's not a huge surprise, yet it's still a win for the Recording Industry Assn. of America and performers in their pitched battle with the National Assn. of Broadcasters. (Download the letter here)

At issue is whether sound recordings should carry the same performance rights as musical compositions. Today, sound recordings have performance rights online and on satellite radio, enabling labels and recording artists to collect royalties from webcasters and Sirius XM. But those rights do not extend to over-the-air broadcasts, so local radio stations pay royalties only to songwriters. Opponents of the legislation call it a tax that could crush many stations. They also contend that the promotion artists receive from stations that play their music is compensation enough.

In Thursday's letter, the Commerce Department's general counsel, Cameron F. Kerry, noted that the department had urged lawmakers several times since the 1970s to create a public-performance right for sound recordings. Such a right would be "a matter of fundamental fairness," Kerry wrote, and would bring the U.S. into compliance with the rest of the world. Because radio stations here don't pay performance royalties to foreign artists, foreign stations withhold royalties they would otherwise be paying U.S. artists. In addition, Kerry wrote, extending the performance right for sound recordings "would provide a level playing field for all broadcasters to compete in the current environment of rapid technological change, including the Internet, satellite and terrestrial broadcasters."

The NAB responded, as usual, by blasting the RIAA. Said Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton:

We're disappointed the Commerce Department would embrace legislation that would kill jobs in the U.S. and send hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign record labels that have historically exploited artists whose careers were nurtured by American radio stations. The good news is that 260 members of the House of Representatives and 27 U.S. Senators are standing with hometown radio stations and against the RIAA.

Last year the judiciary committees in the House and Senate approved HR 848 and S 379, respectively, but neither bill has advanced further. They both enjoy bipartisan backing, which is unusual for this Congress. But then, the opponents are bipartisan as well. Stay tuned.

-- Jon Healey

Environmentalists, predictably, aren't pleased with Obama's decision, but Republicans aren't exactly mollified either. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed doubts that the president would actually do the legwork needed to expand offshore-oil exploration; McConnell's counterpart in the House, Rep. John Boehner, said the president didn't go far enough. Obama dismissed his detractors in a way he does perhaps more formulaically than any other politician I can think of: He accused his critics on all sides of being intractable partisans, framing his position as the purely pragmatic alternative. From the New York Times:

What do you think about the president's offshore-drilling decision? Does his plan toe the middle ground between environmentalists and the "drill, baby, drill" crowd? Weigh in by taking our (unscientific) poll, leaving a comment or doing both.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: President Obama speaks on energy security on March 31, 2010, at Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility Washington in Morningside, Md. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images

Perhaps the very first effect of the new healthcare reform law was to cause a number of major corporations to restate their earnings -- dramatically so. AT&T announced a $1-billion charge. Deere & Co. and Caterpillar said they would take charges of $150 million and $100 million, respectively. And Boeing cut $150 million from its first-quarter earnings. That's because the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act eliminated a 4-year-old tax break for employers that provided prescription drug benefits to retirees. The tax break doesn't go away until 2013, but some companies felt compelled by securities law to report the hit to their earnings right away.

Some critics of the bill have pointed to the numbers as evidence of yet more of the bill's hidden costs to industry and the economy. But it's worth keeping them in perspective. Analysts at Credit Suisse predicted that the restatements would have minimal impact on company valuations, despite the fact that they would add up to a whopping $4.5 billion in lower earnings industrywide. Marie Leone of CFO magazine explains why:

Indeed, the "eye-popping" numbers being reported are not a good indication of the costs being incurred in the first quarter, notes [Credit Suisse] study co-author Christopher Cornett. That's because a quirk in the accounting rules requires companies to recognize the present value today of future cash costs going out as far as the drug benefits are offered. "So that's a big number," says Cornett. (Accounting rules mandate such current-period true-ups when tax-code changes require accounting adjustments to items that are already on the balance sheet, he explains. In most cases, an ongoing future cost would be recognized every quarter, year after year.)

UC Berkeley Economist Brad DeLong also points out that the tax break being eliminated was an extraordinary one to begin with. When Congress was working on a bill to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, some lawmakers worried that the new benefit would lead employers to eliminate the drug benefits that they had been providing retirees. So they agreed to reimburse employers for 28% of the cost of any plan that was at least as generous as the new Medicare benefit. That bit of corporate welfare was unusual in and of itself. But lawmakers also made the subsidies tax free, allowing employers to deduct the full cost of the benefit they provided -- even the part financed by the taxpayers. 

By DeLong's calculation, that approach resulted in the government covering 63% of the price of retiree drug benefits at companies in the top tax bracket. The change will leave the government covering about 53%. As subsidies go, that's still pretty generous.

Nevertheless, you might argue that the reduction in the tax subsidy might lead fewer companies to provide these benefits, and it's better to have the government paying 63% of the bill than 100%. But that overlooks an important reality of the market. Companies don't agree to provide drug benefits to retirees out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because employees (or more typically, their unions) demand them and are willing to accept lower wages, pensions or other forms of compensation as a trade-off. It's hard to see how such a small reduction in their employer's subsidy would affect their willingness to make that trade.

-- Jon Healey

Can it be that the only growth sector in California state government is the money that Meg Whitman is willing to spend to make herself governor of it?

The primary is just over two months away, and she’s already gone through $46 million -- $27 million of that in the last 11 weeks, in a carpet-bombing ad campaign that's reaching shows like "American Idol."

She could save herself some money if she actually took part in what campaign strategists call "free media," and which we reporters call "news coverage."

Yet Whitman hasn’t been exactly been convening news conferences regularly. Can you blame her? One last year, when she was asked about what she characterized as her "unacceptable" record of not voting, ended up as YouTube fodder.

And a recent "press event" – a Bay Area TV station put those words in quotes in its graphic – turned out to be an invitation from the Whitman campaign to take pictures of the candidate talking to railroad officials. When reporters tried to ask questions at an event they’d been invited to cover, Whitman turned to her spokeswoman to deflect questions; eventually, reporters were given the bum’s rush, and security ended up setting up some kind of screen to block their view of Whitman.

But in these times, we’re all grateful that she’s buoying the economy by spending money like it was Trader Joe’s Two-Buck Chuck cabernet [water’s too scarce]. Allowing for 12 years of inflation, Whitman is on course to outspend Al Checchi, who famously spent $40 million trying to get the Democratic nomination for governor in 1998. [If it's slipped your mind, Gray Davis won that one.]

Whitman is, of course, the former CEO of EBay. I mention this because she has pledged that one of the first things she’d do if she were to become governor would be to slam the brakes on AB32 for a year. AB32 is a signature achievement of Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – a measure that would cut carbon emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020.

I thought of Whitman’s promise, or threat, depending on how you regard the global warming threat, when I saw an advertisement in fashion magazine this week.

There was a brightly illustrated fold-out EBay ad (labeled a "promotion") bragging about how green the online shopping site is. "The greenest product is the one that already exists," it insisted.

Buying a "previously loved leather handbag saves as much energy as a flight from London to Paris," it calculated. A pre-owned espresso machine "saves 90% of the CO2 needed to produce a new one." And a secondhand watch "saves the energy equivalent of 39 days of refrigerator use."

It’s good to know that Whitman supports one kind of green – the kind she’s spending. One of these days we may find out more about what she thinks of the environmental kind of green; she might even hold a news conference to clear the air on that one.

-- Patt Morrison

The Times' editorial board on Monday gave its thumbs-down to the L.A. Department of Water and Power's and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's proposal to increase electricity rates by between 8% and 28% over the next year. The problem the editorial board had with the proposal wasn't so much that DWP customers would have to pay higher rates -- an inevitability given the increasing use of renewable energy sources and the rise in fossil fuel prices -- but the hastiness and lack of transparency with which the mayor and DWP sought to impose the rate hikes:

A few hours after DWP and some city officials unveiled the rate-hike proposal, several of the proponents stopped by The Times for a discussion with reporters and editorial board members. In the meeting, DWP General Manager S. David Freeman said he didn't see transparency as an urgent issue, noting that the DWP "isn't any more opaque" that the other utilities he's run and that the technical nature of its work doesn't lend itself to openness. You can listen to audio clips of that interview here. 

While The Times' editorial focused mostly on transparency -- though it did call for a more modest initial rate increase than the one proposed by Villaraigosa and the DWP -- much of the reader commentary on this issue has been in response to increased costs for Los Angeles ratepayers, the subject of our poll. Would you be willing to pay more for your electricity to fund a shift to renewable energy resources? Take our poll, leave a comment or do both.

-- Paul Thornton

Economist Mark Thoma of the University of Oregon is no fan of Republicans, so he's probably not a go-to source for suggestions on how they should conduct themselves in Congress. But he raised an interesting point in a blog post Saturday that questioned the rationale of the GOP's "Nobama" approach in response to the most obvious market failures of our generation:

There's an inconsistency between free market ideology and the need for reform in areas like health care and financial services. One of the first steps in reforming the system is to acknowledge that the market won't take care of the problems itself. Once that is acknowledged, i.e. that regulation is needed to fix these market failures, the only question is whether that regulation will be of the "market-based" variety or by edict (e.g. this is the difference between system of tradable carbon permits that allow least cost carbon reduction strategies to emerge and a government set emission limit for each industry which generally does not achieve carbon reductions at least cost).

With Democrats mostly opposed to old fashioned edict style regulation -- with their willingness to embrace market-based solutions to regulatory issues --  and with Republicans unwilling to embrace anything that Democrats propose, there is little ground left for those Republicans who are willing to admit that markets sometimes fail to stand upon. Democrats have taken the middle ground -- market based regulation -- from Republicans. This leaves Republicans with a choice of going along and compromising (and thereby embracing proposals they have made in the past, e.g. the health care bill looks an awful lot like the health care program [then-Gov. Mitt] Romney put in place in Massachusetts), or standing in opposition simply because it is a Democratic proposal. The choice they've made, standing in opposition to everything, is a losing strategy that allows policy to be shaped entirely be the other side. It will be interesting to see if a fissure develops within the Republican Party over this.

Will Republicans be able to share the market-based regulatory ground Democrats have taken away? There are already signs that Republicans will work with Democrats on financial reform, but there were early signs of a bi-partisan effort on health care as well, so we'll see how this plays out. I think people are fed up with banks and want something to be done, and Republican attempts to block legislation won't play well with the public at all. So I expect the coalition of no to be broken -- some legislators will see that they cannot continue just saying no and expect public support -- but not without big fights within the Republican Party between the extremists and the centrists. If Republicans do move in this direction, and it's more likely they'll do so on financial reform than on climate change legislation, you'll see an attempt to reclaim these policies as Republican (here's a great example: Health Care Reform--A Republican Idea?). And given the administration's centrist tendencies, in many cases they'll have a pretty good argument.

For those who might want to argue that the debacle triggered by the subprime collapse wasn't a market failure, please revisit then-Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson's comments to the Times' editorial board in December 2007. That's in the halcyon days prior to the failure and/or bailout of Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros., AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and others, when "market failure" seemed more like a treatable illness than a pandemic.

-- Jon Healey

No doubt some anti-Catholics are reveling in reports that the future Pope Benedict XVI was aware that a pedophile priest in Germany had been returned to ministry and that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger succumbed to a plea by an American abuser that he be allowed "to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood." But it's wrongheaded for defenders of the church to portray media interest in these questions as the result of prejudice.

Yet here is Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, a close advisor to the pope, telling reporters that there is "a conspiracy" against the Church. Meanwhile, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reacted to the New York Times report about the American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, by warning about "an ignoble attempt to strike at Pope Benedict and his closest aides at any cost."

And Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, the scourge of anti-Catholicism real and imagined, has decried "selective indignation" directed at the Catholic Church. Noting that the New York Times ignored an abuse case involving a rabbi, Donohue said: "Catholics aren't fooled."

The pope may have plausible deniability in the cases reported by the New York Times. But the best defense for the Vatican and its supporters is to contest the accuracy of these and other reports, not to accuse journalists (or activists) of selective criticism, let alone an ignoble conspiracy. Playing the anti-Catholic card just won't work. The sex-abuse scandal in the United States should have demonstrated that.

-- Michael McGough

The Times editorial Thursday defending the constitutionality of the new healthcare reform law drew a number of responses from readers asking a singularly important question: If it's OK for the federal government to order Americans to buy insurance, where does its power stop? For example, "brianb2970" wrote:

The reality is that Congress DOESN'T have the power to "mandate" that anyone buy anything. How about this: I'll accept your "mandate" to purchase health insurance if YOU accept a mandate that all law-abiding citizens MUST purchase a gun.

After all, the evidence is clear that society is safer with widespread gun ownership, violent crime rates fall, and at least gun ownership is a real right per the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

And "msplion" offered this comment:

So if for the general welfare of the United States, Congress decides that we should keep a car manufacturer in business. In their infinite wisdom they enact a law stating that we as americans just virtue being citizens can be mandated to buy Chevy? Or better yet, because it is determined to bring down the costs and use of healthcare and thus commerce, every american citizen shall be mandated to exercise 10 hours a week? Still sound Constitutional to you?

I'm not a lawyer, let alone a constitutional scholar. Nevertheless, I think it's possible to defend the individual mandate without granting the feds unlimited power to regulate individual lives.

In his concurring opinion in Gonzalez v. Raich, Justice Antonin Scalia tried to clarify the boundaries that previous decisions laid out for federal regulatory power. "Where necessary to make a regulation of interstate commerce effective, Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that do not themselves substantially affect interstate commerce," Scalia wrote. An important limiting factor, though, is that such rules must be an essential part of a larger regulatory scheme that "could be undercut unless the intrastate activity were regulated." He added: "Congress may regulate even noneconomic local activity if that regulation is a necessary part of a more general regulation of interstate commerce. ... The relevant question is simply whether the means chosen are 'reasonably adapted' to the attainment of a legitimate end under the commerce power."

The courts have already held that health insurance is interstate commerce subject to federal regulation. The healthcare reform law would build on existing rules in an effort to extend insurance to more people, in part by prohibiting insurers from rescinding policies or denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. But that regulatory regime would be undercut by "free riders" -- people who wait to obtain insurance until they need expensive treatment. Another aim of the new insurance rules is to slow the growth of costs. But people who don't obtain insurance can undermine that effort by failing to obtain preventative care and relying on the most expensive venue for treatment: the hospital emergency room.

In sum, the bill regulates a form of interstate commerce, but that regulation would be ineffective without an individual mandate.

It's hard to make a similar case for a mandate to buy guns or GM cars. Start with guns. Assume the overall regulatory regime is designed to promote public safety, as brianb2970 suggests. Would it be undermined if some people chose not to own guns? That would be tough to prove.

The federal government regulates car manufacturing to protect public safety, improve air quality and reduce energy consumption. Would that regulation be undermined without a requirement that Americans buy Chevys (or any other brand)? Of course not.

As for mandating 10 hours of exercise a week, that one probably fails on multiple legal grounds. It's not essential to the new law's regulatory regime because it's neither the only way to reduce insurance costs nor a sure means to do so. Beyond that, it runs afoul of the less-well-defined notion of a "zone of personal autonomy" or right to privacy that the Supreme Court has recognized (see, e.g., Griswold v Connecticut from 1965). Many readers probably would argue that being forced to buy insurance is just as intrusive as being required to exercise, but at least the former is commerce. The latter is just behavior. 

-- Jon Healey

I never thought I'd say this, but I have a bit of sympathy for Sarah Palin, who is being accused of fomenting violence because of a graphic on her Facebook page showing 20 vulnerable Democratic House districts in cross-hairs. The districts are represented by Democrats who voted for "Obamacare."

TPM notes darkly that  "Palin's call follows several incidents of violence against Democrats who voted for the healthcare bill." Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine said: "Sarah Palin has invoked healthcare 'death panels' and has now placed gun sights on 20 members of Congress who supported reform."

Hmm. Gun metaphors are part of politics, from "targeted districts" to "under fire" to "took a shot at the presidency." For all her demagoguery and ditziness, Palin isn't inciting anyone to violence. The vandalism and vile epithets that have been aimed at some supporters of healthcare reform ought to be condemned, but it's a reach to attribute them to Palin and other loose-tongued Republicans, just as it was unfair to blame the civil rights movement for the Watts riots or Palestinian nationalists for acts of terror.

Nothing is so seductive for political partisans as the temptation to paint your opponents as violent nuts. But Democrats would be wise not to link threats and acts of vandalism to Republicans. It's not only unfair; it sets you up for the day when some of your own supporters go rogue

--Michael McGough

Education historian Diane Ravitch, who penned this March 14 Times Op-Ed article explaining her turnabout on the efficacy of school choice and standardized testing in improving public education, e-mailed us the following response to Blowback writer Ron Wolk's defense of charter schools:

I'm sure these nuggets will keep emerging from the healthcare overhaul bill, but so far here's my favorite:

A 10% tanning tax.

Indoor tanning services will now carry an additional tax. (California, remember, has been talking about taxing all services, which presumably includes tanning, although given that in these parts, it's copious and free outdoors, I expect people would flock to that alternative.)

I expect it's being regarded in health circles as the melanoma tax, not the tanning tax; an agency of the World Health Organization has found those UV rays to be carcinogenic to humans.

There is, as you will not be surprised to learn, an Indoor Tanning Assn., which, also not astonishingly, opposes this as a ''body blow to the industry,'' as its executive director says.

It's a blow, all right, but not that one: Healthcare reform strikes a blow for solar power!

-- Patt Morrison

The Times will weigh in later Tuesday or Wednesday morning on the impending shutdown of ACORN, the national community organizing group accused by Republicans (and their presidential candidate) of threatening democracy with its error-prone voter registration drives and busted for advising incognito conservative activists on how to hide illegal activity from government scrutiny. The paper's editorial record on ACORN is mixed. The editorial board accused the GOP of hubris when it started attacking the group for alleged widespread voter fraud in the 2008 campaign, but also said the group's head organizer should have resigned after the hidden-camera sting. Read our editorials on the ACORN saga here, here and here.

As The Times pointed out in one of its editorials, the controversy over ACORN could tarnish the practice of community organizing itself. Barack Obama's campaign, which emphasized the yet-to-be elected president's years of nontraditional public service following his graduation from law school, brought increased attention to this sector of activism, which Sarah Palin mocked in her vice presidential acceptance speech at the GOP convention in 2008. Though groups like ACORN engage in patently political activism, their survival depends on government funding and other grants for the more pedestrian charitable work they do, such as free tax preparation and assisting would-be entrepreneurs. Ironically, had ACORN shunned such charitable work and stuck only to political activism, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles would have had nothing to bust.

Feel free to weigh in on the matter by taking our unscientific poll: Has ACORN discredited the idea of community organizing?

-- Paul Thornton

Photo credit: Mark Wilson / Getty Images

The gears of justice may turn slowly on the average day, but apply some political grease and the machinery springs to life. Tuesday morning the attorneys general in 13 states, led by former Republican congressman Bill McCollum in Florida, filed suit in Pensacola seeking to block implementation of two central pieces of the healthcare reform bill that President Obama just signed into law.

In particular, the AGs' complaint alleges that Congress violated Article I of the Constitution and the 10th Amendment by requiring all Americans to obtain insurance coverage and by  enforcing the mandate with tax penalties (a maneuver that, the AGs say, violates the constitutional ban on direct taxes). It also contends that the expansion of Medicaid violates the 10th Amendment by turning a voluntary partnership into a "compulsory, top-down federal program in which the discretion of the plaintiffs and their sister states is removed." The law, it says, turned Medicaid into a bait-and-switch, trapping states in a program they can't control or afford.

Finally, it argues the law contains unfunded mandates, particularly in the creation of state insurance exchanges for individuals and small groups to shop for policies. Those unfunded mandates violate state sovereignty under Article IV of the Constitution, the lawsuit contends.

The complaint asks the court to declare the entire law invalid.

I'm not a constitutional lawyer, so I'm not going to try to predict the chances of success here. Instead, I'll just point once again to Tim Noah's piece from Slate last year that explored the legality of the mandate. He concludes that it's constitutional, but his piece suggests it's no slam dunk. On the other hand, an Op-Ed by Edwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine Law School (and noted liberal), in the Los Angeles Times claimed that the House and Senate reform bills were "unquestionably" constitutional.

If any of you readers are constitutional scholars, I'd love to hear your take on the specific issues the suit raises. If you're only pretending to be a constitutional scholar, please be clear about that too.

And just for the record, one of the AGs joining McCollum's lawsuit was a Democrat, albeit from Louisiana, where the partisan lines are defined a bit differently than they are in many other states. Perhaps the six other GOP attorneys general around the country are working on a lawsuit of their own.

Updated, 3:40 p.m.: In fact, at least one of them was. Virginia's Republican attorney general filed a separate suit this afternoon in U.S. District Court in Richmond. The lawsuit argues that the individual mandate is an unconstitutional "citizen to citizen subsidy or redistribution" in violation of Congress' enumerated powers under the Commerce Clause.

Updated, 5:54 p.m.: There's been an excellent discussion of the issue over at the Volokh Conspiracy, which defies ideological characterization. On Monday David Kopel argued that Congress overstepped its bounds, while Orin Kerr said the chances of the mandate being upheld were close to 100%. Today, Jonathan Adler was more iffy, although he generally agreed with Kerr.

Photo: Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. Credit: AP Photo / Phil Coale

-- Jon Healey

Could someone please explain why 211 House members voted "no" on the reconciliation bill? Granted, it's not great policy to delay the excise tax on high-cost plans until 2018, but the tax is the least popular feature of the healthcare bill that the House had just passed. The bottom line is that the bill would reduce the cost of healthcare reform *and* make it more affordable to working-class Americans, while also reducing the cost of the federal student loan program. Are there really that many votes for continuing to pay banks to issue loans they can't lose money on? Or is it just that Republicans reflexively vote "no" on anything the Democrats offer on health care?

Remember, the vote had no effect on the fate of comprehensive healthcare reform. That became a done deal when the House passed the Senate's healthcare bill, HR 3590. All reconciliation would do on that topic is make the bill better, or at the very least more politically palatable. And less costly.

-- Jon Healey

England was where I first heard the term "multicultural," long before it entered popular American speech as an inexact synonym for multiracial. Today, as even a week's visit dramatizes, the UK is both multicultural (as controversies over the role of Islam in public education demonstrate) and multiracial. In 2004 the non-white population of the UK was 14.7%; it's no doubt higher now.

Anyone watching British TV or living (or vacationing) in London would think the proportion to be much larger. Racial tension is mitigated, so an expat American told me, by a natural British reluctance to offend -- a quality not shared by the British National Party.

And yet ... contradictions abound. Last weekend I was in Bath on shopping day; the number of non-white faces was minuscule. The daughter of a friend of mine from London had this reaction to a visit to the hinterland: "Daddy, everybody was white!" And judging by postcards on sale in London, tourists want to bask in the afterglow of the old England, the one of which Roger Miller sang in "England Swing (Like a Pendulum Do)" of the "rosy-red cheeks of the little children."  

I don't want to exaggerate the demographic polarization between London and elsewhere in the UK. Notable non-white populations are found in other cities. But one wonders, despite British civility, if racist politicians, even in cities, will exploit the widespread feeling in "little England" that London isn't Britain any more than Los Angeles or New York is America. "I don't go to London anymore," an elderly lady told me. "No one speaks English there."

Former Rep. Tom Campbell, one of three Republican candidates vying to replace Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer later this year, took plenty of heat from his GOP rivals last month over his allegedly soft support for Israel (Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center went so far as to say that some of Campbell's votes as a congressman "send real alarms that this is someone who maybe doesn't ... fully support a strong ongoing relationship with the state of Israel"). In Republican -- and some would say Democratic -- politics, lock-step support for the Jewish state is something of a third rail; declaring that a candidate has an "Israel problem" can derail a campaign in a hurry.

The Times' editorial board examined Campbell's voting record and wrote in a Feb. 27 editorial, on the question of whether it indicates he's an anti-Semite or soft on terrorism, "So far, we're not persuaded." Neither are the state's Republican voters, according to a new Field Poll. The Sacramento Bee reported Thursday:

Campbell's front-runner status may be due in part to the fact that most of us are not yet paying much attention, but it's still somewhat remarkable that he's polling ahead of Fiorina considering he was still mulling a gubernatorial bid while the former Hewlett-Packard CEO's campaign was months underway.

This is not to say the anti-Israel accusations will never resurface in the campaign, even beyond a GOP primary victory for Campbell. Boxer, who is seeking her fourth term as senator, faced in 1998 a strong Republican opponent in the form of Matt Fong. She ended up winning reelection by a comfortable margin, but in the weeks preceding election day Fong still posed a viable threat. Shrewdly, the incumbent ran TV ads portraying Fong as an anti-environmentalist who'd expose your kids to toxic waste and super-imposing a faint nuclear radiation warning sign over a menacing image of her opponent (I can't find a clip online, but the spot was ridiculous enough to burn itself into my memory). Imagine the possibilities for an opponent accused of harboring an anti-Israel bias.

Last year, Campbell held down one side of an online debate for The Times on fixing California's budgeting process. He fleshed out in some detail -- the kind that's a little too technical for short TV spots and effective campaign messages -- his thoughts on taxation, budgeting and GOP politics. Click here to read the discussion.

(Note: This post in no way indicates an editorial board endorsement.)

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Campbell discusses his decision to switch to the U.S. Senate contest during a news conference in Sacramento on Jan. 15.

Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

Like an old and somewhat tiresome friend, the controversy over public versus private education greets me every time I return to Britain. Quick refresher: British children used to take an exam at age 11 to determine whether they would attend grammar schools, which prepared them for university, or secondary modern schools, a.k.a. trade schools. In most places, the two sorts of schools have been merged into so-called comprehensives.

Meanwhile, better-off parents send their kids, now as in the old days, to private schools known (to confuse Americans) as "public schools." The most famous of these is Eton, whose most prominent current alumnus is Conservative leader David Cameron, who is challenging Prime Minister Gordon Brown in an upcoming general election..

To a far greater extent than in America, sending your children to private schools is regarded here as anti-egalitarian. This perception hurts, according to a classic class-conscious story in the Guardian this week. The nub:

Parents are made to feel guilty if they send their child to a private school, but are allowed to hold the moral high ground if they accept a place at a comprehensive and spend their money on expensive cars, a leading headteacher said today. Andrew Grant, chair of the Headmasters and Headmistresses' Conference, an association of 250 private schools, said. British society put moral pressure on parents for choosing to spend their income on their children's education rather than fritter it away on luxuries.

I'm skeptical of the cars-versus-kids argument, but even if it were true, I think lots of Britons would opt for the cars rather than send their kids to what are still regarded as bastions of privilege. I don't think such reverse snobbery is so common in the States, where striving in general is regarded as natural, not class treason. No wonder Cameron is trying to play down his posh roots.

-- Michael McGough

We must be approaching the endgame in the healthcare reform debate. Consider the latest statement from Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans (the health insurers lobby), which works five (count 'em five) different and largely unrelated hot-button topics into a mere two sentences:

The current legislation is going to make healthcare even more expensive by imposing billions of dollars in new healthcare taxes and encouraging people to wait until they are sick before getting insurance.  Healthcare reform legislation that fails to address costs will set the stage for the nation’s next financial crisis. (emphasis added)

It's hard to tell where to start rebutting that one, so we'll just point to our last editorial, which debunked the myth that the bill doesn't address costs. The bill's tax penalties might not give young, healthy Americans enough incentive to sign up for policies. The real problem for AHIP, though, is that its members' abusive cherry-picking practices keep giving lawmakers incentives to vote for the healthcare reform bill.

Consider the case of Jerome Mitchell, a young South Carolinian who signed up for an insurance policy at age 17 but was later diagnosed with HIV. His insurer, Fortis -- now known as Assurant -- summarily canceled his policy after the HIV diagnosis. Mitchell sued and won, and in so doing revealed perhaps the most sinister practice by any insurance company among the many revealed during the healthcare reform debate. Reuters reports Wednesday:

So much for government-run "death panels."

Anyhow, there's little need to make a larger point about the healthcare debate in Congress, since even the most self-assured "tea party" members would say that this kind of practice (and Assurant isn't the only villain) does deserve some corrective action by lawmakers. But before Mitchell received his HIV diagnosis, his age and even the fact that he bought his own policy suggest he was the kind of customer insurers crave. The young, relatively healthy among us are the least likely to need care, making their premium dollars highly coveted. Persuading more such people to essentially pay for a product they're likely to use sparingly until they grow older is an important part of reducing the cost of healthcare.

Mitchell essentially bought into that system, and as it turned out, he needed the care. There are other perfectly healthy insured people his age who ended up requiring expensive care but have been denied some of the coverage they thought they were paying for all along. The cases we know of personally, though nightmarish enough for the aggrieved, don't approach the level of premeditated evil displayed by Assurant.

Update, 10:15 a.m., March 24: Donald G. Hamm Jr., president and CEO of Assurant Health, e-mailed us the following response:

-- Paul Thornton and Jon Healey

Way back in October 2007, when the unseasoned Barack Obama was polling far behind New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, I compiled a brief history of Times editorials on healthcare reform. At the time, the public conversation on expanding insurance was centered on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempts to cover the state's then-6.5 million uninsured. The Times' editorial board supported the concept of expanded coverage for California (as it does now for the country) but took issue with the governor's proposal to finance the state's new insurance system with lottery revenue.

Click here to read the Cold Copy. The editorials go as far back as 1918, when The Times published alarmist anti-socialist screeds against reform (everything old is new again, you could say).

-- Paul Thornton

Fashion repeats its trends endlessly. This is because chic doesn’t take George Santayana’s advice about learning the lessons of history – in fashion’s case sometimes bad history – it’s doomed to repeat them, even the hideous ones. [Do you hear me, disco divas redux? Are you listening, Joan Collins shoulder pad fanciers?]

Now we have a particularly repellent case of fashion repeating itself. I read in that other Times, the Big Apple one, that for the first time since the end of the Reagan years, a majority of fashion designers are using fur. In New York, that number reaches two-thirds.

In spite of the PETA ads and our advancing moral awareness of animal cruelty, in spite of James Cameron’s wife’s Oscar dress that didn’t even have to kill silkworms to make silk, in spite of the estimable Tim Gunn’s fearless opposition to fur, which he talked to me about in a blog I posted a few months ago – fur is back. Which means that all the cruelties of trapping and breeding and cages and killing are back too.

Fashion plays with the superfluous and ornamental – which is what makes it fun – but why does it insist on having blood on its hands and on runway models’ bodies?

Evidently, according to that Big Apple Times, for the same reason some congressmen open themselves to accusations of being in the pockets of some special interest or another: It’s the money. Reports are that furriers and fur breeders, just like defense contractors and pharmaceutical companies, have been courting their targets – in this case, not members of Congress but couturiers.

They romance the designers with samples and technical assistance and junkets [all-expenses-paid trips to where? Fur farms? Charming]. And young designers – members of the greenest generation in modern history, the generation that’s grown up aware of Rwanda and blood diamonds – evidently don’t have a problem with blood fur.

The personal is still political, isn’t it? And it doesn’t get much more personal than what you put on your person.

Scientists have just found the two genes in opium poppies that make morphine and codeine, which means that pretty soon they can make it in the laboratory, not in a field. They can already create meat in a Petri dish without killing the creature. So where’s lab-grown, cruelty-free fur?

Vintage TV shows and movies where fur was the ne plus ultra of chic, a must-have merit badge of moolah, are a reminder of how far we’d come – or so I had thought. Remember the ‘’I Love Lucy’’ episode where she connives and whines until Ricky buys her the corpses of stone martens to sling around her neck?

That was the same era as Sen. Joseph McCarthy and cigarette ads with doctors in them. We’re better than all of that now. Surely we’re better than fashionista fur, too.

-- Patt Morrison

Shortly after unveiling on Monday a plan to increase rates by between 8% and 28% on Los Angeles electricity users to cover the fluctuating cost of coal and natural gas and boost the city's efforts to get more of its energy from renewable sources, Department of Water and Power General Manager S. David Freeman, environmental activists supporting the proposal and other city officials stopped by The Times to pitch their plan to reporters and editorial board members. Much of the discussion focused on how revenue generated by the so-called carbon surcharge on each customer of 2.7 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed would be divvied up to pay for the increasing cost of fossil fuels -- the city currently gets most of its energy from sources such as coal and natural gas -- and improving conservation. Also discussed were the potential financial consequences the city faces if its continues to generate much of its electricity in out-of-state coal-fired power plants and how this proposal signals a change in the DWP's mission from a utility that provides power cheaply to one that does so cleanly.

Below are audio clips of the discussion divided roughly by topic. Those in attendance at the discussion to support the proposal were Freeman; Matt Szabo, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's deputy chief of staff; David Libatique, the mayor's energy policy director; Rhonda Mills, the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies' Southern California director; and Bill Corcoran, senior regional representative for the Sierra Club. The Times staff members at the discussion who asked questions are editorial writers Dan Turner and Robert Green, and reporter David Zahniser.

An overview by S. David Freeman              (8:05)

Freeman introduces the city's proposal by first citing a recent Times editorial calling for increased conservation efforts during periods of high unemployment. He emphasized that the utility's efforts to increase its renewable energy use would be focused on creating jobs in Los Angeles.

What these rate increases will pay for        (5:58)

Editorial writer Dan Turner asks Freeman to which funds the revenue generated by the rate increase would be directed; Freeman responds, "We're deeply in the hole on the items in the ECAF that exist today like coal; railroad rates have gone up." He talks briefly about the process of increasing the DWP's surcharge, called the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor (or ECAF), noting that in 2006 the City Council and the utility, "in its infinite wisdom, quote end-quote," placed a cap on the ECAF increase of 1/10th of 1% per quarter, limiting the city's ability to pay for the fluctuating costs of both renewable and non-renewable energy sources. He points out that 2 cents of the surcharge will allow the DWP to "break even," while the 0.7 cents will be devoted to expanding the city's renewable energy portfolio.

Meeting L.A.'s renewable energy goals      (4:24)

Reporter David Zahniser asks how far the 0.7-cent increase gets the city to meeting Villaraigosa's goal of 40% renewable energy use by 2020. Freeman says he hopes the rate increase will get the city beyond its 20% goal by 2010, but without the rate increase the city's renewable energy use could drop to 13% over the next five years.

Dividing up the 2.7 cents                           (13:12)

Turner asks another question about what the 2.7 cents will pay for. Freeman says half of the 2-cent increase will pay for current energy efficiency efforts, and half will go toward covering the fluctuating price of coal. He also notes part of the revenue will be devoted to increased payments into the city treasury. Matt Szabo says the rate increase will also be "retrospective; it's because we've been under-collecting, which is why there is a need to have an increase of this size at all." There's also some discussion of the process by which the city will pass the DWP rate increases.

DWP bills compared to other utilities          (1:46)

Turner notes a consulting firm report that said the DWP rate increase would inflate its customers' bills to levels equal to or higher than private utilities. Freeman says the report didn't take into account the pending rate increases at those utilities.

Changing the DWP's mission                       (4:13)

Weaning L.A. off coal                                  (2:00)

The the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies' Rhonda Mills speaks about the importance of reducing L.A.'s demand for coal-generated electricity, noting that the city could face hundreds of millions of dollars in fees should the federal government impose carbon penalties.

Salaries and benefits for DWP workers       (3:44)

Turner brings up the criticism raised whenever rates increase that unionized DWP workers receive generous pay and benefits compared to other city employees. Freeman replies that DWP workers receive salaries comparable to what other local utilities pay their employees.

DWP's lack of transparency                         (4:33)

Greene raises the issue of DWP transparency. Freeman says the DWP, while continuing to make improvements in this area, "isn't any more opaque" than the other publicly owned utilities he's run, noting that the highly technical nature of the DWP's work doesn't lend itself to transparency. He says the biggest change from when he previously headed the DWP during the 2001 energy crisis was that customers were happy "that we kept the lights on." He continues, "We weren't any more transparent then than we are now.... Now we're raising the electric rates in a time of recession." He says the DWP will hold meetings with the City Council more often.

Dirty energy and its consequences for L.A. (7:44)

The Sierra Club's Bill Corcoran says weaning the DWP off dirty energy won't happen overnight, so the city needs to start budgeting now for the transition. He also points out that "there is a suite of federal regulations forthcoming" that will force owners of coal power plants to undertake expensive cleanup efforts. Mills says, "It's at the peril of the rate payer, really, if in a few years if we don't do it."

Photo: The solar array on a covered parking lot at DWP headquarters in downtown Los Angeles.

Credit: Brian VanderBrug / Los Angeles Times

Britain is abuzz -- I always wanted to say that -- over the possibility that no party will win a parliamentary majority in elections expected in May. A so-called hung parliament, in which Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg might dangle his support in front of both Gordon Brown and David Cameron, would be a nightmare scenario for Brown's Labor Party or Cameron's Conservatives, but a clear loss would be even more frightening. Thus the idea of Inviting Clegg into the government, resulting in an Israeli- or German-style coalition.

Which is why (along with other reasons) I never have understood Americans who pine for parliamentary government as an answer to gridlock. Barack Obama is free to include a token Republican in his Cabinet, but it's good that he's a unitary executive, to coin a phrase. Can you imagine a situation in which the leader of the Free World would have to negotiate with a third party -- the tea party, for example -- in order to govern? Blimey!

-- Michael McGough

I go on a busman's holiday to Britain at least once a year, and one of my diversions is to update myself on the differences between British and American attitudes toward free speech and other 1st Amendment values. Of course, Britain doesn't have a 1st Amendment, which explains today's news that a court has struck down the membership rules of the British National Party.

The BNP is a far-right party that opposes immigration -- particularly "coloured" immigration -- and used to require that members be white.  That provision was removed after a challenge from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, a government watchdog. But the BNP is still in trouble because of what American lawyers would call a race-blind provision: Although the whites-only clause was removed, a judge found that the party still discriminated because part of its credo is a belief in the "continued creation, fostering, maintenance and existence" of an indigenous British race.

The judge's decision on one level is common sense: An organization devoted to a white Britain, even if it's technically open to nonwhites, isn't likely to attract many. But in the U.S. it would violate the constitutional right of free association to order an organization to revise its basic beliefs, repugnant as they may be to many. I think we in the U.S. have the right take on this, but as in other areas -- news coverage of crime and national security, for example -- Britain is proof that culture as well as constitutional principles shape a country's attitude to free speech.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, speaking in the Virginia House of Delegates chamber (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Meanwhile, according to the Tenth Amendment Center's helpful "Health Care Nullification" tracking page, similar bills have passed one chamber of the legislature in five other states. The legislation has stalled in four states, and it has yet to be taken up in 19 others, the center reports.

The constitutional experts I've talked to say that nullification is about as valid as, well, Wesley Snipes' views on the federal income tax. Here's what University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson had to say in a piece last month in the Austin American-Statesman:

[N]o serious lawyer could believe that nullification could possibly be effective as a legal possibility. Anyone who believes otherwise is simply deluded or being misled by an ignorant demagogue. To paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, we conduct our politics under the Constitution we have, not the Constitution some people wish we had.

I know there's plenty of emotion on the other side, but I think it's long been settled law that the courts, not state legislatures, have the power to overturn acts of Congress. By "long" I mean "pre-Civil War." So in a battle between Virginia's statute and a federally enacted individual mandate, I'd put my money on the individual mandate -- at least until someone (from Virginia, even) successfully challenged the constitutionality of the federal law in court. (The Arizona referendum poses a more intriguing question about a clash between Congress and state constitutions, which may not be settled law. If you can point to any Supreme Court decisions on that issue, please do.)

I've argued before that the mandate is constitutional (and good policyto boot). What proponents of nullification are really trying to do, though, isn't about law as much as it is about politics. They're trying to build the case for their representatives in Congress to vote against the comprehensive healthcare reform bill. That's a valid pursuit, and it raises really interesting questions about the role of lawmakers in a representative democracy (CliffsNotes version: Should they make policy decisions by relying on research or on public-opinion polls?). It would be a more honest exercise, though, if state legislators passed resolutions calling on Congress to reject the individual mandate, rather than pretending they have the power to nullify it by statute.

-- Jon Healey

The Rams have been gone from Los Angeles for twice as long as Merlin Olsen ever played for them.

Olsen died this week, and the Rams field teams in a different time zone, but he and his fellow Los Angeles Rams are still more identified with the team in the curled-horn helmets than just about anyone who’s played for the team since.

The Rams came to L.A. from Cleveland in 1946, the baby-boom year after VJ Day. In those early glory days, their blue and gold helmets showed black and white on that new medium of television.

As L.A. flourished in the 1960s, so did the Rams. I always loved their ornate names, like Restoration cavaliers': Norm Van Brocklin, Roman Gabriel, Merlin Olsen, all of them in the football Hall of Fame.

The team moved away from LA – but not far away – after the 1979 season. They went as far as Anaheim, which made former Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn declare memorably, ‘’Who’d go to see the Anaheim Rams?’’ Lots of people, as it turned out, but not enough to keep the team from skedaddling to St. Louis after 15 seasons in Disneytown.

Merlin Olsen was a rare sports star whose second career at least equaled his first; his entertainment work, and then his charity work. I'm sure there were some Gen X-ers who were surprised to find in his obituary that the man they knew as Jonathan from ''Little House on the Prairie'' had played world-class football as one of the Rams' ''Fearsome Foursome.''

I don’t miss having a pro team in LA – no blackouts of any NFL games, after all. But I miss not having been here in time to know the spirit of those Rams, and that Ram in particular.

-- Patt Morrison

Producing the next generation of Reagan worshipers is one thing, but the Texas Board of Education may go a giant leap further: Social studies textbooks may cast Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis (a traitor to the republic who nevertheless has his own statue in the Capitol) as moral equivalents. You can't make this stuff up:

This seems like garden-variety conservatism -- a challenge to the educational orthodoxy, not the historical record. But the New York Times' article gets more interesting as it nears its end. Close to the bottom of the story is this, the money item:

Why stop with Stonewall and Davis? Confederate propaganda makes for great history lessons; plus, much of it is a lot more honest about the South's true cause -- slavery -- than the states-rights inaugural address by Davis, whose birthday is still celebrated in parts of the country by neo-Confederate revisionists. The Texas education board ought to consider including each of the Confederate states' secession statements; here are excerpts from the Lone Star State's, adopted Feb. 2, 1861, to remind schoolchildren what the Civil War was really all about:

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: Confederate President Jefferson Davis

Credit: Associated Press

In response to California's stubborn 12%-plus unemployment rate, Republicans lawmakers are proposing to roll back a few environmental protection laws -- including a temporary suspension of AB 32,  the landmark 2006 bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 -- as a way to create jobs. The Times will take up this issue on its editorial page Thursday; in the meantime, here's part of a Wednesday story by Times staff writer Alana Semuels painting a pretty grim unemployment picture for California:

Click here to read the whole story.

Republicans want to forestall AB 32's implementation until the state's unemployment rate dips below 5.5% for a full year, a provision that -- if you look at California's unemployment data  over the last 30-plus years  (you'll have to enter the search parameters yourself to yield the right spreadsheets) -- would likely kill the bill outright rather than merely delaying its implementation. The last time the state saw an unemployment rate that low for any significant period of time was between April 2005 and August 2007; before then, the jobless rate last dipped below the 5.5% threshold for a 27-month period ending in August 2001. For nearly all of the 1990s, the state's jobless rate never touched -- let alone averaged for a year -- 5.5%. The state's recent history suggest that low unemployment rates are the exception, not the norm, for California. 

What do you think about suspending (or killing) such laws in hopes of spurring job growth? Does curbing joblessness take precedence over environmental stewardship? Take our poll, leave a comment or do both.

-- Paul Thornton

Update, 10:16 a.m., March 11: The Times' editorial can be found here.