Opinion: In today’s pages: Schwarzenegger and Feinstein make a watery appeal
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sen. Dianne Feinstein prod state lawmakers today to act on their proposal for a comprehensive (read: $9.3 billion) bond issue to modernize and expand the state’s water supplies. You won’t find many specifics in their piece, but it offers plenty of reasons for the Legislature to pick up the pace on this issue:
Put simply, our water supply is in jeopardy. We are experiencing the second year of drought, and 2008 had the driest spring ever recorded in the northern Sierra and other parts of Northern California. If the dry conditions continue into next year, we could be facing the worst drought in California history.
Columnist Rosa Brooks opines, with evident dismay, that the chance of prosecuting Bush administration officials for possible war crimes and other misdeeds is pretty much nil.
As far back as 2001, administration lawyers were crafting legal opinions designed to shelter their bosses from any future criminal liability, and much evidence has since been hidden and destroyed. Then in 2006, the GOP-dominated Congress amended the War Crimes Act -- with retroactive effect -- to make future prosecutions almost impossible.
Yeah, that one’s going to generate some comments. Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, another of the Bush administration’s, umm, greatest admirers, the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait, urges Barack Obama to go negative on John McCain (because heaven knows, the Obama campaign would never do so on its own accord). And KFI host Joe Hicks, vice president of Community Associates Inc., berates the Los Angeles City Council for trying to micromanage diets in selected L.A. neighborhoods by temporarily banning new fast-food restaurants.
It is not the role of government to intervene in the personal food choices of individuals, and it is not appropriate for city officials to manage what businesses can serve L.A.’s communities. Unlike the argument made against the proliferation of liquor stores some years ago, fast-food restaurants do not produce the kind of harmful side effects, such as crime and public drunkenness, that might justify City Council action.
The Times’ editorial board takes a page from the Sammy Hagar songbook and blasts a proposal for lower highway speed limits. It also welcomes reports that the FCC will tell Comcast -- and other broadband ISPs -- not to use discriminatory and surreptitious techniques to battle congestion online.