Opinion: In today’s pages: The Olympics, bullet trains, gay marriage and the black vote
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Hoping to catch a bullet train to San Francisco? The editorial board warns that a bill affecting the fate of the new rail line is caught in the state capital’s budget morass.
In a world where logic and common sense ruled, it would have been approved months ago; in Sacramento, it has been stalled by turf wars among politicians who want the line to pass through their districts or who simply object to the notion of spending bond money on a bullet train, and now it has been derailed by the legislative blockade imposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The board also chides the International Olympic Committee and NBC for putting so many restrictions on online coverage of this year’s events.
And so it is that we have this nice parallel: The year the Games are held in a country whose government aggressively censors the Net, the IOC begins allowing live coverage online -- if it’s electronically restricted. Evidently, the committee doesn’t have a sense of irony.
UPDATE -- The board chastises the Interior Department for a proposal that would undermine the Endangered Species Act, a law not well loved by the Bush Administration. A glitch on the site prevented today’s third editorial from being available at latimes.com, but now it’s up.
Over in op-ed land, we devote yet more space to the Russian invasion of Georgia. In a counterpoint to Tuesday’s double-barreled blast of right-of-center commentary, left-leaning columnist Rosa Brooks goes for the trifecta in a piece that faults President Bush, John McCain and McCain foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann. Timothy Stewart-Winter, a University of Chicago professor specializing in lesbian and gay studies, challenges the conventional wisdom that African Americans in California will vote en masse for Proposition 8. And columnist Patt Morrison shows little sympathy for either artificial turf or government micromanagement of lawn care.
This is California. Brown is one of our seasons. The sere, fallow contrast of high summer and fall, against the lavish recompense of early rain and spring.
The photo of a Japanese bullet train is from EPA/Dai Kurokawa