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Everyone's got an opinion about Proposition 8, the proposed amendment to the state Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. Plenty of people and organizations are voting with their pocketbooks, both from within and from outside California.
Now comes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which grabbed some TV time in Utah to urge the 770,000 Mormon church members in California to weigh in on the matter. Here's the story from the Associated Press: Two members of the church's second-highest governing body, the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, quoted from Mormon scripture on the sanctity of marriage as they laid out a week-by-week strategy for boosting Mormon involvement before the Nov. 4 election in voter registration efforts, phone banks and distributing campaign materials.
“What we're about is the work of the Lord, and He will bless you for your involvement,” apostle M. Russell Ballard said during the hour-long meeting, which was broadcast to church buildings in California, Utah, Hawaii and Idaho.
So far, Proposition 8 supporters have poured $19,778,208 to outlaw same-sex marriage, about $1.6 million more than opponents of the measure. Add the two sides together and that's about $38 million. Imagine the good it could be doing elsewhere.
The rest of the Associated Press story is after the jump.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Inside the LDS conference center in Salt Lake City. Credit: Associated Press
Read on »
Remember the kayak expedition earlier this year down the rugged Los Angeles River? Well, there are some serious consequences for at least one of those involved, according to AP:
A federal biologist was threatened with a 30-day job suspension over a kayaking trip she took to protest perceived government threats to the Los Angeles River and other waterways, according to documents released Wednesday.
Heather Wylie, a project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Los Angeles, went kayaking on the river one Saturday in July to draw attention to a proposal by the corps that could have exempted parts of the Los Angeles River from federal clean water protections.
Shortly thereafter, her supervisors told her they were proposing to suspend her for 30 days without pay because of the “unsafe and unauthorized boating expedition” and because of an “unauthorized and inappropriate e-mail message” she had sent to co-workers about the clean water issue.
The group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility announced plans Wednesday to file a whistle-blower complaint on Wylie’s behalf, and released the letter she received from her supervisors.
That photo's of another kayaker during a different expedition. For more on the biologist, keep reading after the jump.
--Shelby Grad
Photo: Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times
Read on »
 Two religious leaders from Orange County were among the dozens of pastors across the United States who preached politics from the pulpit on Sunday, hoping to become the basis of an IRS test case on the ban against politicking from the pulpit.
Though they didn't explicitly name candidates' names — except for the Rev. Wiley S. Drake, who asked his Buena Park parishioners to vote for him — the pastors instructed listeners to judge the candidates by the Bible and Christian scripture, and to vote accordingly.
Our own Bob Pool and My-Thuan Tran attended the services: Pastor Stephen B. Orman urged those attending his Warner Avenue Baptist Church service in Huntington Beach to use the Bible as a voters' guide and evaluate candidates and issues on the basis of Christian scripture.
The Rev. Wiley S. Drake suggested that those at his First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park vote for him -- and for his presidential running mate on the American Independent Party ticket, Alan Keyes.
Drake asked his congregation to support the challenge to the federal ban on political campaigning by nonprofit groups.
"I am angry because the government and the IRS and some Christians have taken away the rights of pastors," Drake said to about 45 people at his service. "I have a right to endorse anybody I doggone well please. And if they don't like that, too bad."
While pastors aren't prohibited from political speech-making, doing so can put their tax-exempt status in jeopardy. More details (and a poll) in the full story here.
— Veronique de Turenne
Photo: The Rev. Wiley S. Drake prays with a parishioner. Credit: Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times
 Last week, Brad Pitt gave $100k to help defeat Prop 8. Yesterday, director Steven Spielberg added another $100k to coffers of activists trying to beat the Nov. 4 ballot measure, which would write a gay marriage ban into the California constitution. Last month, the Knights of Columbus weighed in on the issue with a $1-million contribution in favor of Prop 8.
According to our database, which tracks Prop 8 contributions, supporters of the measure raised $16.2 million, with $4.1 million of it coming from outside the state. Those who want to preserve California's gay marriage laws have donated $10.8 million, with close to half of that coming from outside the state.
Check out today's story, by Dan Morain and Jessica Garrison, about the Prop. 8 money race and why donors on both sides of the issue feel compelled to vote with their pocketbooks.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Reuters
It's finally here, the appeal hearing about the proposed toll road in San Onofre, reviled by environmentalists, revered by business interests. More than 650 people met the requirement and wrote letters to reserve a chance to speak at the hearing -- both for and against the road -- no small feat in this pixelated age of e-mail and text messages. Our own Susannah Rosenblatt has details: Seven months after thousands poured into the Del Mar Fairgrounds for a raucous state Coastal Commission hearing on whether to build a 16-mile toll road through a state park in north San Diego County, both sides are set to be back at it today. Repeat or not, the stakes remain high. Advocates say the toll road is critical to untangling freeway congestion across the region, while opponents contend it will be ruinous to one of the state's most popular coastal parks and famed surf spots. The latest round in the byzantine battle is a much-anticipated 10-hour appeal hearing before an attorney with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Commerce secretary can override the February decision by the Coastal Commission to reject plans for the tollway.
More about the restrictions imposed on today's hearing, as well as what happens next (hint: we're dealing with government agencies here) in Susannah's full story.
Also in the OC Register, the Union-Tribune, and the Mercury News.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
The surprise in the latest legal maneuvering about the oft-proposed and long-resisted extension of the 710 Freeway through South Pasadena isn't that a lawsuit has been filed by two of the affected cities, but that it took this long to get started.
South Pasadena and La Canada Flintridge both filed suits against the the Metropolitan Transportation Authority this week to try to block $780 million in funding, according to the Pasadena Star-News.
The latest version of the 710 Freeway extension calls for a tunnel to run beneath South Pasadena, a plan the city has both supported and opposed in recent months.
"You can't fund a project before it goes through an environmental review," said South Pasadena Councilman Richard Schneider, a vocal opponent of the 710 extension. "The lawsuit's goal is to knock out the funding for this project."
The 4.5-mile tunnel, which would connect the 710 and 210 freeways, does not have a proposed route. A preliminary feasibility study on the project was completed in 2006, but a follow-up study has not been done.
The project would receive $780 million from a proposed half-cent sales tax measure, if a state bill authorizing the measure is signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and if the measure is passed by two-thirds of county voters in November.
If either of those things does not happen, the lawsuits would be withdrawn, according to city officials.
What city officials really fear is that, despite promises to move the reviled freeway extension underground, MTA officials will use the tax fund to build an overland route. Stay tuned for more 710 Freeway news to come.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Myung Chun / Los Angeles Times
Jerry Brown leads the fight for lead-free artificial grass. The Times
Plans for a new courthouse in Long Beach continue to move forward. Long Beach Press-Telegram
Donors ride to the rescue of the Dream Catcher horse sanctuary. LA Unleashed
Britney Spears is headed to the VMAs. Soundboard
Arcadia considers tougher penalties for contractors who use illegal immigrants. San Gabriel Valley Tribune
The parent company of Costa Mesa-based Ditech will cut 5,000 jobs. Orange County Register
The spat between San Bernardino's police chief and some of his officers gets more complicated. San Bernardino Sun
It's a girl! The 100,000th baby is born at the Women's Center of Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center. Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
No one is hurt when a small plane flips over while landing at the Camarillo Airport. Ventura County Star
—Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Los Angeles Times
 That American Airlines 737 with a blown tire landed safely at LAX. LAT
The Ventura County man accused of slamming his car into the front gates of the Playboy Mansion pleads "not guilty." Daily News
Grand opening of a new LAPD Rampart station station this Thursday. Angelenic
"Stop the Killing" -- that's the message of a billboard in Carson, created by the families of slain children. Daily Breeze
A trade agreement with China that allows tour groups to get travel visas will bring millions of tourists to Los Angeles. SGV Tribune
A woman in Garden Grove has been arrested on suspicion of growing psychedelic mushrooms. OC Register
Ontario is jazzed about its helicopter crime patrol. Daily Bulletin
Tonight in rock. LAist
--Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times
 He showed up at Acres of Books (pictured) in Long Beach when the venerable bookstore announced its closing, and now author Ray Bradbury is rallying to the rescue of the Long Beach Main Library, the latest bastion of reading to be rocked by the tanking economy. The Press-Telegram reports on the library's woes, and its latest champion, who is scheduled to appear there Saturday as part of the Blanche Collins Forum speaker series:
"We told him it was kind of an emergency," said Carol Collins, director of the forum (no relation to Blanche Collins). "He'll be speaking in support, of course, of the library."
The emergency to which Collins referred is a budget proposal that would close the Main Library to the public and beef up services and hours at branch locations while the city searches for a new downtown branch. The city is working toward closing a $16.9-million budget gap. Closing the Main Library, which needs infrastructure repairs, is among the cost-cutting proposals.
Bradbury made his views on the proposal known in an Aug. 6 letter to the editor of the Press-Telegram.
"This is heartbreak and an outrage," he wrote. "Libraries are also an essential core public service. How can a major city not provide public access to a civic center library?"
He went on to explain how he wrote his best-regarded book, "Fahrenheit 451," on a typewriter in a library at UCLA.
Residents are also pitching in to save the library, which could be shuttered to help get Long Beach out of the budgetary red. Something wicked this way comes, indeed. --Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Alex Gallardo / Los Angeles Times
 It's been a banner week for nudity in California. First the naked sunbathers at San Onofre got permission to keep their most private parts public, now a pair of women arrested in Sacramento in 2005 for baring their breasts in the name of peace have won a legal victory of their own.
According to a Superior Court judge in Sacramento, the arrest of "Breasts Not Bombs" protesters Sherry Glaser and Sheba Love was unlawful because their action was symbolic speech and the women were not, as accused, indecently exposed or committing a lewd act.
Our own Evan Halper covered the lead-up to the protest, in which officials warned that the sight of the women's bare bosoms could, as Evan put it, "corrupt children, prompt drivers to veer off the road and cause sex offenders to run amok." He was also there on Nov. 7, when the women shed their shirts and police arrested them. The women faced the possibility of a trial, and of having to register as sex offenders.
In case you're a bit hazy about the whole breasts-to-bombs connection, the women say breasts represent peace and the survival of the human race while bombs, well, don't. The group has protested in San Francisco without incident (natch) and in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., where neither the women nor the men in the group were told to put on shirts.
If you're made of sterner stuff, this site has not only photos of the bare-breasted women protesting in Berkeley in July of 2005, but some men who dropped by and, in the spirit of things, dropped trou for peace.
America. What a country.
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times
(A previous version of this post misidentified Sheba Love as Shoba Love.)
 Actor and liberal activist Martin Sheen has agreed to co-chair the People Against Proposition 5 campaign, a coalition of groups and individuals whose stated aim is to defeat the Nov. 4 ballot measure. Proposition 5, which would ease criminal consequences of some drug offenses and rewrite some parole guidelines, has among its supporters billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who has donated $1 million in support of the measure. Opponents include MADD, the California District Attorneys Assn. and the California Police Chiefs Assn.
The actor's stance against Prop. 5 puts him arm in arm with the conservatives whom Sheen, as an outspoken critic of President Bush and his Iraq policies, usually fights. GOP consultant Kevin Spillane is spokesman for the campaign against Proposition 5, which now makes him and Sheen allies.
It's a toss-up what the actor is best known for -- portraying President Jed Bartlet on "The West Wing" or being the father of bad boy Brat Packer Charlie Sheen, whose drug addiction and repeat stints in rehab played out in the public eye.
"I am accepting a leading role in this effort because I believe Proposition 5 will do so much harm to so many people," Sheen said in a statement. "Fighting drug addiction is an issue that is very close to my heart. I believe in rehabilitation and not incarceration."
Politics does make strange bedfellows.
—Veronique de Turenne
A new PETA documentary about the brutal treatment of some great apes in Hollywood is being distributed to studios by its narrator, Anjelica Huston, and cites films like "Any Which Way You Can," "Clyde," and this summer's "Speed Racer," shown in the photo at right. Our own Rachel Abramowitz watched and, despite a certain skepticism about some of PETA's causes and methods, uncovered some ugly facts:
In 2002-03, primatologist Sarah Baeckler conducted a 14-month
undercover investigation of Amazing Animal Actors, then a prime chimp
facility, on behalf of a consortium of chimpanzee advocates including
[Jane] Goodall. "It was really rough," says Baeckler, now executive director
of a chimp sanctuary near Seattle. "I saw a lot of physical violence. A
lot of punching and kicking, and the use of the 'ugly stick,' a
sawed-off broom handle, to beat the chimps. The youngest I met were 18
months old and were pretty similar to an 18-month-old human child. They
were being kicked in the face and punched in the head and subject to
all kinds of physical abuse to keep them paying attention and in line
with the trainer."
Baeckler does not "think it has gotten better" since her investigation,
and says it's perfectly plausible that a trainer would treat an animal
well in public and mistreat it behind the scenes. "It's very similar to
an abusive human relationship...."
The American Humane
Assn., a group that tracks how animals in films are treated, gave "Speed Racer" an "unacceptable" rating because the chimpanzee used in the movie was abused. More details in Rachel's thoughtful piece here.
--Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Warner Bros
* Oy. In a previous version of this post, I spelled Anjelica Huston's name "Angelica", which is incorrect. As a fan of her work, you think I'd know better. Also, the previous version of the post had a different photograph. The animal in that previous photo was not abused.
A law to require the spaying and neutering of unlicensed strays -- a reaction by a Van Nuys legislator to the 500,000 unwanted dogs and cats killed in California's animal shelters each year -- was vigorously rejected by the Senate today in a 5-27 vote.
The vote on the bill, considered one of the most controversial in this year's legislative session, reveals a divide between the state's densely populated cities and its rural areas. Patrick McGreevy has the details:
"On behalf of my dog, he’d like to remain intact,’’ said state Sen. Bob Dutton (R-Rancho Cucamonga), voicing the sentiment of many of his colleagues who represent rural areas. "He hasn’t caused any problems."
The bill, proposed by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys) was watered down to apply only to unlicensed pets. But lawmakers, particularly those from rural areas, were having none of it.
"What works for Mr. Levine in Los Angeles County won’t necessarily work in Alpine or Modoc County," said state Sen. Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks).
His colleague, state Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster), was more direct. "This a myopic view from those who come from the big city."
The bill would have required that the owner pay a $50 fine for the first offense. The second offense would result in a $100 fine and a requirement that a microchip be implanted so the dog could be traced. On the third offense, the dog would be spayed or neutered. Spaying and neutering of cats, however, would be required on the second offense. I do my best to stay neutral in this blog, but I can't help wondering whether spending a week in the euthanasia room of a shelter might change a few senators' minds.
--Veronique de Turenne
Photo credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times
 We pass along a lot of rotten news during a day's work here at LA Now, so when a group of people who call themselves "metaphysical activists" get ready for their first-ever "Vibe Demonstration," we feel honor-bound to share that as well.
They're going to gather -- sorry, "peacefully convene" -- at the corner of LaBrea and Santa Monica boulevards today at 6 p.m. and, carrying posters, will aim positive thoughts right at you and everyone else who lives in Gotham our fair city. From their press release: "The group hopes to create and exhibit a positive vibration that will be felt throughout the city. The demonstration will serve as both an act of metaphysical activism and a street art installation."
(skip)
"We want to make it known that you can change your life for the better regardless of your circumstances. You just have to be armed with the knowledge that if you're willing to work, it's impossible not to see dramatic and satisfactory life changes."
Fingers crossed. Really.
--Veronique de Turenne
Photo: linh.ngân / via Creative Commons on Flickr
Read the full press release after the jump.
Read on »
 The Midnight Ridazz (motto: "Tighten your buns, not your budget") plan a ride today to City Hall to lobby leaders for bike safety and, if you know anything about the community, just for the sheer joy of riding.
From activist Stephen Box: We've got a Bastillion ideas on ways to make this a GREAT city but we're gonna start with the Cyclists' Bill of Rights and we're gonna call on our City Leadership to join us in making this a GREAT City with GREAT streets! (6500 miles of roadway, all of it rideable!)
See you on the streets!
The ride starts at 11 a.m. at Santa Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue Red Line Station
The ride comes in the wake of the highly publicized car versus bike collision in Mandeville Canyon last week, which wound up with a cyclist in the hospital and the driver of the car facing felony charges. A town hall meeting was quickly scheduled and just as quickly canceled.
--Veronique de Turenne
There are a million billboards in the naked city (well, not quite) and about 4,000 of them are illegal. Now comes a handy searchable database to help you fight for a less cluttered skyscape. Here's the story, from the LA Weekly: Last April, LA Weekly went to Los Angeles Superior Court to force the city to hand over
public information about the locations of thousands of potentially
illegal billboards erected without permits or formal safety
inspections. Over the objections of Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS
Outdoor, a judge ruled that the public had the right to these
sought-after and plainly public lists.
But the lists failed to show which of the billboards were illegal, so Jim Bursch, publisher of West LA Online, took on the remarkable task of creating a searchable billboard database. He's got photos, too.
There's a lot of cash at stake, the Weekly points out in a previous story: Billboard companies reap roughly $14,000 a month in easy money from a
double-sided standard-size 14-by-48-foot billboard that costs about
$50,000 to $80,000 to build. And they earn up to $128,000 monthly from
"digital" billboards, oil wells in the sky that, when fully leased with
ads, will earn $1.34 billion a year for L.A.'s billboard giants. These
riches will flow to the very firms that have vociferously fought paying
a single penny into an annual, modest, $186-per-billboard municipal fee
— which their lawyers hammered down from $314.
Bursch's database tips the balance of power into residents hands, your hands. What are you going to do with it?
-- Veronique de Turenne
Photo: Los Angeles Times
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Veronique de Turenne
Veronique de Turenne is a journalist, essayist, book critic and blogger, and has been a staff writer at virtually every newspaper in Southern California. One of the highlights of her career was interviewing Vin Scully in his broadcast booth at Dodger Stadium, then receiving a handwritten thank you note from him a week later. She lives in Malibu.
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