Meddling

Re "LAPD: Getting to 'Yes,' " editorial, July 23: You just don't get it! So what's the problem? The problem is any intervention by a federal agency in the city of Los Angeles' business, whether it be the Police Department or the public library. Carry your thought to its conclusion and you don't need any city, county or state government. Let the folks who have managed the Social Security system to a sorry mess take care of us. While the U.S. Constitution is often ignored, there is that little part about reserving to the states (and by extension to lesser governmental units)

If you're like me, your mailbox is getting stuffed with political mailers. What to do? The best course of action is to take a shovel and dig a hole in the backyard, toss the mailers in and set them ablaze. At best, they're filled with useless simplifications and generalizations about candidates and issues, and a lot of them contain gross exaggerations or distortions, if not outright lies. If you live in Los Angeles and it seems like you're getting more of this junk than ever, it's because millions of dollars are being spent by committees to either support or demolish candidates for City Council, mayor and school board.

Re "Iraqi leader upset by arrest of Iranians," Dec. 26 The Times reports that the Iraqi government is unhappy because U.S. troops detained two Iranians who had diplomatic immunity and had been invited to Iraq by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. White House spokesman Alex Conant announced that "this event validates our claims about Iranian meddling." But just what does it do about the world's claim that it is the U.S. that is doing the meddling in Iraq? NORM GOTTLIEB Los Angeles

Re "N.Y. mayor gives to L.A. campaigns," Feb. 13 An out-of-state billionaire decides to give $1 million to anti-union candidates running for the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education. Could this be one of the right-wing Koch brothers meddling in local campaigns? No, it is New York's "moderate" mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg. The candidates receiving this money because of their tough stance on United Teachers Los Angeles' influence consider themselves progressive educators.

Re "History lesson: stop meddling," Opinion, May 13 Stephen Kinzer is right. Our attempts to impose new governments on other countries, whatever our motives, inevitably backfire. Conservatives, who correctly cite the Law of Unintended Consequences in their critique of expensive, heavy-handed domestic policy, have developed a blind spot to this same phenomenon in foreign affairs. The best way to promote American values abroad is by example. Look at China. Without a single U.S. soldier entering Beijing, the world's biggest communist country is turning into the world's biggest capitalist country.

Re "Misuse of Gov.'s Role Alleged," Dec. 24: I can't understand what all the fuss is about. Surely Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger knows what's best for us. Why is the legislative analyst meddling? Why not do away with the Legislature entirely? That way, we could save some money and leave it all to the governor. Donald Broder Studio City

The opinions expressed by Cruz on the Arias peace plan made me wonder if his organization, Democratic Action for Nicaragua, is actually a front for the CIA. As a person who has recently experienced some of the significant flavor of Nicaraguan society in a visit arranged by various religious workers in that country, I was particularly struck by Cruz's "hope" that people like the 60,000 to 70,000 Americans who have visited the new Nicaragua should...

Ignored in the hue and cry of the hearings is the question of the basic authority and responsibility of the President as to foreign policy. Raymond Price's "End the Goldfish-Bowl Theory of Diplomacy" (Editorial Pages, July 16) states the underlying problem very well when he writes: "In recent years Congress has gone on a binge of institutional meddling. Ignoring constitutional limits, it has voted itself increasing power to hogtie Presidents, to trip them up on the way to summit meetings, to strip away their powers as commander-in-chief and thus vitiate the effectiveness of U.S. force even when it is deployed, to pull the rug out from threatened allies, to oversee even the most sensitive covert activities--all without accepting the last shred of accountability for the outcome."

It is pathetic that Yitzhak Rabin and his dovish Labor Party has won the national election in Israel (June 24). Any attempt to relinquish land for a promise of peace would not be in the best interest of the Israeli people. Israel is a very small country surrounded by many Arab nations. Most of them have not even accepted the right of Israel to exist. Israel should depend on itself and not bend to pressure from President Bush. The United States has no business meddling in the affairs of other nations.

I would like to give an opposite viewpoint to your editorial. It is precisely because of the principle of separation of church and state that the pastors should have been indicted. As long as clerics stay within their pastoral bounds and provide religious services only, the state should not inject itself into their affairs. But what happens when religious figures enter into secular practices and start performing professional services for which the state requires licensing and for which practitioners can be held liable?

MEXICO CITY - Here is what you probably won't see in the coming weeks as the U.S. Congress debates a sweeping immigration overhaul: Mexico becoming involved. Though the United States' southern neighbor is the country with the most at stake as Washington considers changing its policy toward illegal immigrants, Mexican diplomats and government officials are expected to keep a low profile to avoid the appearance of meddling in U.S. affairs and to minimize any potential backlash among conservatives in the States.

MOSCOW - Prisoners detained without charges. Prisons operating outside the legal system. Limits on free speech and the Internet. Legitimate voters prevented from casting their ballots. Sanctioned kidnappings. Witch hunts and torture. It's all part of life, says the Russian government - in the United States. The Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday issued a 56-page report in Russian and English titled, " On the Human Rights Situation in the United States . " The report, distributed at hearings held by the International Affairs Committee of Russia's lower house of parliament, was the first such full examination of the U.S. human rights record issued here since the fall of communism in 1991.

MOSCOW - Russia's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said that the U.S. Agency for International Development was being barred from operating in the country beginning Oct. 1 because it had meddled in elections. The statement followed a State Department announcement the day before that USAID had been ordered out after operating in Russia for two decades. The U.S. agency had strayed from "the declared goals of assisting the development of bilateral humanitarian cooperation," Alexander Lukashevich, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said in a statement posted on the ministry's website.

Give Lana Del Rey this much credit: She knows how to get press. Yet her latest ploy -- playing the roles of Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy in the video for her song "National Anthem" -- is curiously naive. The clip reappropriates American symbols with the seeming belief that the visuals themselves will carry thesis-worthy meaning. But this is politics as accessory, which comes across especially slight during an election year, when artists regularly feel compelled to campaign and even those who are apolitical are granted a reprieve for speaking their mind.  Along with rapper A$AP Rocky, Del Rey and director Anthony Mandler aim to provoke but instead play with our expectations.

The latest ad buy in the Michigan Republican primary battle is from a Democrat -- President Obama. The president's reelection campaign announced Thursday it is running a new 30-second advertisement in the state, the latest bit of Democratic meddling in the tight GOP contest (see video below). The spot, the campaign's first single-state ad campaign, touts the Obama administration's bailout of the auto industry by hailing the "grit and sacrifice of Michigan workers. " "When a million jobs were on the line, every Republican candidate turned their back," the ad states.

Five days into this new NBA, there is already a new rivalry . The city of Los Angeles versus David Stern. We don't like each other, not anymore, not one bit, not after the NBA commissioner's misuse of his powers has ripped out the heart of one Los Angeles team and the hopes of the other. Stern is the Boston Celtics with a smug grin. He is the Dallas Mavericks with a weak spine. He wears a suit, but he has shamefully spent the last week as if sitting in a Sacramento cheap seat screaming a chant that can be heard from here to Bourbon Street.

Re "Who's meddling in Mesopotamia?" Current, Feb. 18 Adam Shatz fails to mention several incidents in which the U.S. "meddled" in other nations' affairs to a greater degree than has Iran in Iraq. Consider U.S. involvement in the mujahedin resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. These anti-Soviet fighters were provided with equipment more advanced than Iran is supposedly supplying to Iraqi militias. In the 1950s, the U.S. was involved in the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected but left-leaning prime minister.

At the latest international conference on Afghanistan, held this month in Istanbul, participants affirmed their resolve to "combat the financing, harboring, training, and equipping" of terrorism. The words were directed largely at Pakistan and what is increasingly recognized as that country's deliberate and long-standing policy of utilizing violent extremism to advance its security interests. Yet now the U.S. government seems poised to reward this policy by asking its architects, the Pakistani military and its intelligence agency, to broker Afghanistan peace negotiations with the very insurgents they fostered.

Here's a mind-bending thought: The United States can wean itself from oil and coal by 2050 — and without action by presidents or Congress. "It's refreshing to think that we needn't wait for Washington," Amory Lovins told me recently. The founder and chairman of the Old Snowmass, Colo.-based Rocky Mountain Institute, Lovins has been a leader in the science of energy efficiency for decades. His institute's latest book, "Reinventing Fire," is a manifesto for a new approach to converting the U.S. to an economy based on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power while enhancing the efficiency of everything we use energy for, whether it's running our cars, manufacturing plastics and pharmaceuticals or heating our offices.