Opinion: In today’s pages: RIP Hal Fishman, voting machines, Weekly World News
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The editorial board says goodbye to KTLA anchor Hal Fishman:
We all knew who Hal Fishman was, whether we watched the ‘News @ Ten’ or not. He was our Kent Brockman, the coiffed local news broadcaster on ‘The Simpsons’ (as voiced by Angeleno Harry Shearer), committed to delivering items about bears in Monrovia with the same gravitas as the latest bombings in Iraq. He was a more accurate version of himself in movies such as ‘Spider-Man 3’ and ‘Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles,’ trying to make scripted sense out of the highly improbable. Most of all, he was the model for what you see on almost every local TV newscast -- the father-figure anchor, steadfastly keeping his dignity in not-always-dignified circumstances, exuding a technical mastery of the process for covering any late-breaking disasters.
The board isn’t so sad to see electronic voting machines go, even if trying to fix the system by the primary election could be difficult. Finally, the board is grateful that a wrongfully deported U.S. citizen has been reunited with his family after going missing in May.
Comedy writer Mark Miller remembers his days making up stories for the Weekly World News. David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey ask if too much FISA oversight violates the Constitution. Haim Watzman explains why Israeli soldiers who refused to obey a command to evict Jewish settlers deserved severe discipline.
Letter writers react to The Times’ series on adoption. Paradise, Calif.’s Susan P. Hall says, ‘Adoption, now open adoption, is a wonderful invention. I am sorry you chose a situation fraught with confusion and distress to share with your readers.’