Opinion: In today’s pages: War wounds, tools, and fallacies
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Columnist Jonah Goldberg explains what Yucca Mountain and Guantanamo Bay have in common:
Well, there’s the obvious stuff. Both have Spanish names. Neither is a great spot for a family vacation. And each is under the control of the federal government. Oh, and both are essential tools in wars a lot of people claim they want to win.
Boston University’s Andrew J. Bacevich argues that Iraq has illustrated the limits of U.S. power and new Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) wants an independent review of the state’s revenue. And freelance writer Mary Kolesnikova says KMN (that’s ‘kill me now’) in response to a Pew report finding that teens let Internet chat speak into their homework.
The editorial board notes a new study finding that many Iraq veterans suffer from untreated brain injuries, and supports a state bill that would create CalPERS-managed portable retirement plans for private employees. The board also laments the sad state of the Southern California bookstore and the latest one to fall into financial dire straits, Libreria Martinez:
...Libreria Martinez, Santa Ana’s nationally honored Latino-themed bookstore, is now threatened. After all, how many booksellers win a MacArthur Foundation genius grant? (Though Rueben Martinez was forced to use some of that $500,000 to pay his store’s bills.) For that matter, how odd is it that the landlord forcing the store to move is a charter school for the arts with a well-regarded creative writing program?
On the letters page, readers react to the notion that Barack Obama’s biggest problem is his elitism, not his race. Long Beach’s Charles Q. Clay III says, ‘Hogwash! Obama has exactly half as many Ivy League degrees as our current president, who, you might recall, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and was not raised by a single mother on food stamps.’