Liberals

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a challenge to the constitutionality of a Maryland law -- similar to one in California -- that requires police to take DNA samples from people arrested for serious crimes. Starting with what she obviously thought was her strongest argument, the lawyer for the state noted that DNA profiles generated from arrests had matched those from the scenes of unsolved crimes more than 200 times, resulting in 75 prosecutions and 42 convictions.

SACRAMENTO - As the Democrats who control the Capitol congratulated themselves over this week's state budget deal, another dynamic emerged: support from across the political divide for Gov. Jerry Brown's thrifty ways. Republicans who a few years ago had enough clout to hold up spending plans and block tax increases now rely on the governor, once the epitome of liberalism, to give them a voice in budget talks. They praised Brown as "conservative" and "restrained" - even if their support lacked a certain warmth - saying he at least attempted to put the brakes on the Legislature's more generous Democratic leadership.

Again we have letters panning George Bush's "caring conservative" position on the death penalty (letters, April 16). Let's see. Liberals think that caring is protecting murderers. Gov. Bush thinks caring is protecting good citizens from murderers. But liberals think they're the compassionate ones. Liberal logic is something to behold. JOHN HAMAKER Laguna Niguel

With his decision to elevate Susan Rice to become his national security advisor and the nomination of Samantha Power as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, President Obama is not simply rewarding the loyalty of two women who have backed him from the start. Nor is he merely increasing the diversity of his foreign policy team. Rather, their promotions hints at a new source of fireworks in a growing foreign policy battle in the Obama administration. Liberal hawks and doves in the White House and the Democratic Party are struggling for hearts and minds over whether it makes sense to intervene in Syria and to attack Iran.

A few years ago Ann Coulter published a book titled "How to Talk to Liberal (If You Must). " With all due respect, Coulter, one of my favorite conservative eye-pokers, was wrong. There is no "how" in talking to a liberal. You can't talk to a liberal, period. Believe me, I've tried. I've got a liberal mother, four liberal siblings and their assorted liberal offspring, and a horde of liberal friends (I went to college and grad school). Whenever I advance to them even the mildest of challenges to liberal orthodoxies, on topics ranging from the welfare state to illegal immigration to abortion, I'm greeted with name-calling, obscenities, shout-overs and, finally, the grave-like silence of ostracism.

I recently played poker with a bunch of Republicans. My husband and I, both bleeding-heart liberals, are part owners of a cabin in the Sierra outside Fresno, a very conservative area. The Camp Sierra Assn. president has an annual poker game, and this year we, the newcomers, were invited. No one mentioned politics. We talked instead about our kids and Las Vegas and the odd warm weather. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of very good Scotch. I had fun even though I lost $4. When the game was over, we walked home with our across-the-road neighbors and invited them in for a final nightcap.

In 1996, Milos Forman directed "The People vs. Larry Flynt," the propagandistic film that made a "1st Amendment hero" out of the publisher of Hustler, a racist and filthy porn magazine. And yet Frank Rich of the New York Times dubbed it "the most timely and patriotic movie of the year." Even if you've never seen the movie (or read Hanna Rosin's contemporaneous debunking of it in the New Republic), it's easy to guess why the film was a favorite of people like Rich.

For months, anxious Democrats have been asking why Barack Obama couldn't be more like Bill Clinton, their last successful president. Now Obama has gone and done something Clintonian by striking a compromise with Republicans to extend high-income tax cuts, and his own party's liberals are furiously accusing him of betraying their ideals. That should come as no great surprise. Liberals often accused Clinton of the same sin ? a bit of history many Democrats appear to have forgotten.

The Republican National Committee's Spring gathering is taking place this week at Loews Hollywood. That is not Hollywood, Fla., or Hollywood, S.C., or Hollywood, Ala. - all real towns in really red states - but Hollywood, Calif., the place where Sean Penn, Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, George Clooney and the rest of the entertainment industry's liberal horde earn their keep. Like Nixon going to China, the Republicans have entered hostile territory.

I see that Brenda Allaman from the Radical Religious Right has sent in a "Godless- liberals- are- picking- on- us- Christians- because- we're- becoming- politically- involved" letter (Aug. 15). It's full of name calling, distortions and untruths. The attempt to demonize liberals by claiming they are anti-religious is laughable. There's nothing mutually exclusive about being religious and being liberal. Jesse Jackson and Jimmy Carter are both devout Christians and are about as liberal as they come.

SAN DIEGO - Under a pro-business Republican mayor, it was a no-brainer: allocating millions of dollars each year to buy national advertising for the tourism industry - a major economic driver in this vacation mecca. Then Bob Filner got elected, and he had questions: Why couldn't Sheraton and Hilton buy their own advertising? And why should the cash-strapped city lavish funds on an industry that pays low wages to bottom-rung employees like maids and bellhops? The new Democratic mayor also thought the city attorney should provide him with legal guidance on the matter in private, not in front of reporters.

WASHINGTON - Although the controversies dominating political headlines eventually might undermine President Obama's standing with voters, a longer-term reality - a declining number of people who identify themselves as conservatives - could cause much more trouble for his Republican opponents. Republicans won big in the 2010 midterm election, taking control of the House and numerous state legislatures. That victory corresponded with a significant increase in the percentage of Americans calling themselves conservative, particularly on economic issues.

WASHINGTON - A bearded young comedy writer espousing progressive views in Hollywood in the early 1970s might not have surprised anyone. But when the same man, who is now the Very Rev. Gary Hall, started advocating the same views from the Washington National Cathedral's pulpit, people noticed. Shortly after Hall became the Episcopal cathedral's 10th dean in October, the church's leaders announced the cathedral would start performing same-sex marriages. The ensuing wave of news stories surprised Hall, who said he has been blessing same-sex relationships since 1990, when he was a priest at Pasadena's All Saints Episcopal Church.

Kjerstin Gruys is a UCLA doctoral student in sociology with a keen, feminist's interest in body image. Her dissertation will plumb the relationship between appearance and inequalities in the workplace. Acutely aware of how our permeating obsession with beauty and thinness instills insecurity in young women, she nevertheless embraces her girly side. Gruys loves clothes, makeup and shopping. But in 2011, six months before her wedding at a Woodside, Calif., winery, Gruys, now 30, did the unthinkable.

We have once again entered the college commencement season, which means we'll soon be reading about uplifting graduation speeches delivered by prominent Americans. Or at least by prominent liberal Americans. It's becoming increasingly apparent that conservative speakers aren't welcome on college and university campuses. Last month, in the span of a few days, student protests disrupted a presentation by Karl Rove at the University of Massachusetts and one by Rand Paul at Howard University.

Here's a scientific news flash about our recent presidential election: You could assume that President Obama was more kindly disposed to redistribution of wealth than Mitt Romney just by looking at them. Not because Obama is African American and Romney is white. Not because Romney is a Republican and Obama is a Democrat. You could have made the assumption, according to researchers at Denmark's Aarhus University, Australia's Griffith University and UC Santa Barbara, just by looking at their biceps.

Liberals, the small but often important electoral group, seem to be holding fast in their support for President Obama, according to the latest Gallup poll being circulated by Democrats. In an email to reporters Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee highlighted the poll, buried earlier this week under the crush of reporting about the debt-ceiling crisis. The poll comes amid growing media reports that liberals are becoming disenchanted with Obama, especially after what they see as the president's caving in to Republicans in the debt-limit negotiations.

The Times editorial board offended some liberal readers when it urged a no vote on Proposition C , which asks voters in the city of Los Angeles to “instruct” local members of Congress to support a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. One commenter asked: “Did the Koch Bros already buy the Times and I missed it?” As our editorial noted, The Times was critical of Citizens United when it was handed down. But we raised several objections to Proposition C: It wouldn't be binding; it was “vague and question-begging” and didn't provide the actual text of a proposed constitutional amendment; and its sweeping assertion that corporations "do not have the constitutional rights of human beings” could be interpreted to say that corporations could be stripped of constitutional protections that have nothing to do with political speech - such as the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

WASHINGTON - An influential network of some of the country's wealthiest liberal political donors is steering resources to an advocacy group backing President Obama's agenda and to organizations working to pass immigration reform, providing a surge of money that could boost the president's legislative goals. Democracy Alliance, an invitation-only group that makes funding recommendations to its members, selected the pro-Obama Organizing for Action and immigration reform groups such as the National Immigration Forum as some of its top 2013 priorities at its spring conference in Laguna Beach last week, according to leaders of the organization.