Actress Jane Fonda has become a political...

Actress Jane Fonda has become a political issue in Texas.

Rick Perry, a Republican candidate for state agriculture commissioner, accused his opponent, Jim Hightower, of having visited “Jane Fonda’s home.” As you might guess, it’s been a vicious campaign.

Hightower, the incumbent, replied that not only hadn’t he visited her, he had never even spoken to the controversial liberal.

Intrigued, Dallas Times Herald columnist Molly Ivins phoned Perry’s office for an explanation. A spokeswoman for the candidate told Ivins that Hightower has visited L.A. several times, and “Los Angeles is the home of Jane Fonda.”

Using that reasoning, Ivins confessed: “I have been in the homes of Billy the Kid, Richard Nixon, Bonnie and Clyde, Judge Crater and the Abominable Snowman.”

The revelation that LAX is calling in the Feds--some Agriculture Department scientists--to battle its pigeon population brings to mind a previous onslaught on the airport by rabbits.

Four decades ago, Times photographer Art Rogers (now retired) took a striking shot of the fearless intruders.

Most of the rabbits, says Mario Polselli, the chief of airport operations, were eventually eliminated by a local force: Foxes.

Now, however, “most of the foxes are gone” as well, Polselli noted this week. “Some of them were run over, I guess. I hadn’t seen any for a long time and then one day, three or four weeks ago, I saw one running parallel to the runways.”

Destination unknown.

You think the Valley is a rough commute now?

“Don’t try to drive between Burbank and Lankershim,” warned Touring Topics, the Auto Club magazine, 87 years ago. “The present road is deep with dust, full of ruts and chuckholes. It is a spring-breaker to most cars.”

Jim Laris of the Pasadena Weekly compared the dispute to “an emotional Viper ride.”

Laris and co-publisher Marge Wood, as well as their readers, had been debating whether the newspaper should run 900-number sexually oriented ads.

Laris wrote that he favored a “free marketplace of ideas.” Wood wrote: “It’s MY freedom of expression to NOT have them in MY newspaper!” Readers voted 13 to 5 against the ads in one issue.

Finally, Laris agreed that the 900 ads should be 86ed, admitting: “Marge was more important to me than supporting the right of some sex kitten named Chantrice to tell some lonely guy from Monrovia what she would do. . . .”

The co-publishers, by the way, are engaged to be married.

miscelLAny:

Las Tunas State Beach, south of Malibu, was originally named by Spanish explorers. But they had an inland feature, not fish, in mind. Tuna is Spanish for prickly pear cactus.