A Tribute to the ACLU, for Better or Verse

“The Practice” actress Camryn Manheim more or less sang for her supper at the recent ACLU Bill of Rights dinner, reciting a 22-quatrain poetic tribute to the ACLU and a few slings and arrows flung at the present administration. A sampling:

“They’re peeking at your privacy/Through windows and louvers/This new generation/Of J. Edgar Hoovers.”

“One thing we know for certain/The framers would find abhorrent/Is listening in on lawyers/Without a judge’s warrant.”

“Call me a Nervous Nellie/But I find it kind of scary/When our executive branch/Castrates our Judish-iary.”

“But a brave band fights on/No ‘sunshine patriots’ these few/May the God of your choosing/Bless the ACLU.”

Whereupon she took her bow, thanked the crowd and reminded it that she is “available for bar mitzvahs and brises.”

As Sen. Sam Goldwyn Said, Include Me Out

It was unanimous in the Senate and that close to it in the House of Representatives:

The Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Response Act of 2001 puts up a billion bucks to train emergency and health care workers, another billion to expand national vaccine stockpiles and nearly a half-billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It passed the House by a vote of 418 to 2. Which two? These two: Texas Republican Ron Paul and Stockton Republican Richard W. Pombo.

Paul had already cast a solo vote before, against a terrorism bill to help the feds cut off the flow of illicit money to organizations linked to terrorism. Paul is a constitutional literalist, tending to vote against anything not laid out specifically in the Constitution. As for Pombo’s reasons--they’ll remain a mystery for now because his offices were home for the holidays.

Pombo and Paul probably won’t be singled out the way Barbara Lee has been; she’s the Oakland Democrat who needed an armed guard after casting the only vote against giving President Bush the go-ahead to take military action after Sept. 11.

Government at Work, Word for Word

Excerpts from an exchange at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, as Supervisor Gloria Molina got her colleagues’ unanimous approval to have the county’s agricultural inspector--as director of weights and measures--check the accuracy of price-scanners.

Molina: “It all stems from . . . my own personal experience. . . . I watched them put up these reduced prices at Kmart on certain items, and . . . I thought, well, it’s a good price. I took them to the register and of course there was no reduced price. When I challenged the check stand, they said I had to go to customer service, and of course who is going to do that for a couple of pennies on some of these items?”

Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky: “This is something that we’ve been watching for a long time. . . . The more generic problem is just the error rate. . . . I believe it’s some 4% on a nationwide average. . . . The funny thing is that the error rate is always on the upside. . . . In other words, people don’t get charged less for an item.”

Molina: “There should be inspections in all of these areas. . . . I know that at Macy’s, even when I said, ‘Please take down this sign if you’re not selling those blouses for 25 bucks’ . . . they refused to take down the sign. I got my blouse, which was a 48-dollar blouse, for 25, but everyone after me probably did not if they’re not assertive enough.”

Yaroslavsky: “Not as assertive as you are.”

Molina: “Well, maybe not. . . . Even when you point it out to them, they are not willing to take down the signs, and I think that’s unfair to the consumer. . . . My mother is one of those people. . . . She is not going to challenge anyone. . . . I think we have a duty to protect and that’s what I would like us to do.”

Yaroslavsky: “Your mother is not assertive?”

Molina: “My mother is not assertive.”

Yaroslavsky: “Where did you get your assertiveness?”

A Bridge Too Near, for Far Too Long

It’s time to bring the boys home--from San Francisco.

Since Nov. 1, when Gov. Gray Davis issued the order, members of the National Guard have been on duty protecting several bridges against potential terrorist attacks.

Now state Senate leader John L. Burton, a San Fran Democrat, says it’s time to send ‘em home. “I don’t feel a lot safer driving across the Golden Gate Bridge and seeing two National Guard guys sitting in a car,” he said. “They don’t do much for me and I don’t think they’d do much for the bridge.”

As for what it’s done for the state budget: Bridge duty has cost $850,000 so far . . . and San Franciscans can only wish that if and when they do depart, they’d take the toll-takers with them.

Her Constituents Keep Representative in Line

That familiar-looking woman standing in the rather daunting line at the Orange County Federal Credit Union in Santa Ana a few days before Christmas . . . Garden Grove Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez. She took advantage of the queue, debriefing constituents while waiting for the next available teller to sing out. When public relations exec Mike Stockstill, waiting behind Sanchez in the same line, told her he was surprised to see her lined up with the hoi polloi, she answered, “I need Christmas shopping money like everyone else.”

Quick Hits

* National security concerns have ended publication of the Golden Eagle, the weekly newspaper at Lemoore Naval Air Station, after officials realized it violated a July 1999 policy barring naval Web sites from posting Internet information about routine deployments.

* Pedestrians wanted even higher fines, but San Francisco has contented itself with a New Year’s rise in ticket fines for parking on sidewalks, from $25 to $50, which will increase to $100 over three years.

* On the subject of fines, the Democrats’ state central committee has been fined $22,000 by the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission for not disclosing “subvendor information on reported expenditures” of more than $4 million over more than two years.

* The University of San Francisco is creating the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, funded in part by a million-dollar gift from McCarthy, the former lieutenant governor and Assembly speaker, and committed to scrutinizing such concerns as environmental degradation, poverty, disease, illiteracy and economic growth.

Word Perfect

“This has nothing to do with politics. We’ve been planning our float for three years. There will be no political references.”

Mark Johnson, president and CEO of Chapin Medical Co. and state fund-raising chairman for the gubernatorial campaign of former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan. Riordan, come New Year’s morning, will be riding on the Chapin company float, whose theme is “Helping Friends in Need.” Riordan’s not there as a candidate, Johnson said, but because his Riordan Foundation has donated $31 million in grants for youth reading programs.

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Columnist Patt Morrison’s e-mail is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include James Gerstenzang, Carl Ingram, Jean O. Pasco and Nicholas Riccardi.