It’s Turkey Time!

If they could do such a thing to the Raymond, would they have the stones to convert the Rose Bowl, the “Granddaddy” of all major football stadiums in the country, into an NFL-created and –subsidized monstrosity in order to turn a couple bucks?

You bet they would, with even a few of the top Raymond haters on the council leading a failed ballot initiative to force the city to seek out negotiations with the NFL to do just that.

Let’s just say we’ll be happy to see some new faces on the council come spring.

Caltech

No, they aren’t really nuclear tests, just an amazing facsimile. In 1997, Caltech entered a multimillion-dollar contract with the Department of Energy to develop advanced computer modeling techniques to study the effects of large explosions with the ultimate goal being the replacement of nuclear weapons testing with computerized “virtual testing.”

Mathematics Professor Dan Meiron, head of that research team, explained that “this has nothing to do with nuclear testing at national labs. What we’re doing is so generic, it’s in support of basic computation and algorithms and is very much an extension of what everyone has been doing for years.” Meiron added that none of Caltech’s computer simulation work has dealt directly with nuclear explosions, and would more accurately apply to jet or space shuttle engine experiments. But, as Pasadena activist John Grula knows, at Caltech today’s dart gun can become tomorrow’s “Star Trek” phaser overnight.

Grula, who did post-doctorate work at Caltech, worries that findings made by Caltech researchers may be used or adapted by other scientists not only for “virtual” weapons testing, but also for development of nuclear weapons in violation of nonproliferation agreements. He’s not alone. Government support for virtual nuclear testing “could also be used to develop entirely new weapons that would be ready for explosive proof-testing should future national security concerns prompt a quick exit from the test ban treaty,” wrote Christopher Paine, a senior Natural Resources Defense Council researcher, in the September 1999 issue of Scientific American.

The Glendale City Council

Like any typical Southern California city, there are lots of women living and working in Glendale. Only in this town, unlike nearly all others in these parts, you won’t find any women sitting in elected city office here.

Zip. Zilch. Zero.

Why? Maybe it’s because Glendale city officials have been less than receptive to women’s concerns in general, and to some women in particular, namely members of that city’s newly formed Commission on the Status of Women, which the all-male City Council, led by Mayor Dave Weaver, considered disbanding earlier this year as a way to save money.

The council eventually backed off that idea. But come on, fellas. Honestly.

And to all the women out there who may be put off by the behavior of some of these councilmen, just remember, success is the best revenge. Run for office.

Tribune Co.

If they knew what was good for everyone, the Los Angeles Times would have never canned Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Dean Baquet.

Then again, if they knew anything at all, they wouldn’t have fired Baquet’s boss, former Publisher Jeff Johnson, who refused to toe the company line and fire employees to balance budgets.

Then again, Tribune Co., which bought the Times back in 2000, should have never gotten rid of former editor and Pulitzer magnet John Carroll either.

Then again, the Chandler family should have never sold the LA oracle to what one activist described as a bunch of hog butchers from Chicago.

Oh, well. Where all this will end no one knows. But where the paper is now is plain to see, and it’s a crying shame.

Pasadena taxis

The irony would be delicious if it weren’t so sickening.

The evening that Donna Pomerantz was to receive a proclamation from the Pasadena City Council marking the 15th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, she and her sight-impaired husband Mitch said they were discriminated against when a taxi driver refused to allow them in the car with Mitch’s guide dog, Scotch.

If the incident had occurred in Los Angeles, where Mitch works as an ADA compliance officer, a complaint could have been filed with the city’s Taxi Commission and investigators might have resolved the matter in a few weeks.

But in Pasadena, where Donna serves as vice chair of the Accessibility and Disability Commission, there is no one to hear such complaints. It’s a reality not just for the disabled but also for seniors and others who feel they are being mistreated.

Last December, attorneys with the Los Angeles-based Disability Rights Legal Center filed a complaint in LA Superior Court against City Cab Co., which along with People’s Taxi has a franchise in Pasadena, alleging their driver’s refusal to accept the couple and their service animal was an act of negligence and a violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act and another state law. Said Mitch Pomerantz, “I just want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody else.”

FEMA

After its pitiful performance in Hurricane Katrina, one would probably understand employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency being eligible for handicap parking placards.

We don’t know if they actually qualify now, but just more than six months after the hurricane it appeared as though lots of people at FEMA in Pasadena had their disabled parking access passes courtesy of the Department of Motor Vehicles out and on display, creating something of a parking disaster of their own.

According to several irate shop owners, as many as a dozen men and women wearing business attire and what appeared to be FEMA nametags parked in front of local businesses. Then they entered the nearby east annex of the Parsons Engineering complex, a building FEMA leases for work on closing accounts opened during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. The problem was the cars stayed throughout the afternoon by virtue of using blue, apparently state-issued disabled parking placards, although the drivers appeared to be physically healthy.

FEMA spokesperson James Shebl was upset to hear that federal employees might actually be feigning disabilities and crowding limited public parking on Holly Street, but said he could not confirm whether the culprits actually worked at the agency.

But agency bosses talked to all the employees anyway. “As federal employees, we want to do the right thing and set an example as good citizens,” the agency flack said afterward.

The IRS

As Jesus reportedly said, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s; render unto God what is God’s.

But apparently that’s not quite enough for the Internal Revenue Service, which is threatening to strip All Saints Church of its tax-exempt status. In a pre-2004 presidential election sermon, Rector Emeritus George Regas criticized President Bush’s stands on the Iraq War, abortion and poverty issues by imagining what Jesus Christ would say to Bush and his opponent, Sen. John Kerry, as the moderator of a debate between the candidates. The IRS is now attempting to determine if Regas and All Saints broke rules against publicly endorsing political candidates from the pulpit. The Rev. Ed Bacon said Regas never directly endorsed either candidate in his sermon, a detail they hope will be buffered by the fact that the sermon used an allegorical setting to make its points. “Ideally, the IRS should drop the case immediately. They are on the wrong side of the law and are misinterpreting the law,” said Bacon.

“My main concern is not whether we lose our tax-exempt status, but rather it’s the chilling effect on the pulpit that gives me my most passionate concerns.”

Even though we do not have tax-exempt status, we’re pretty concerned too.

Glendale Community College administration

With friends like former Glendale Community College Superintendent John Davitt, the First Amendment doesn’t need any more enemies.

After learning of the suicides of two nursing department students, the Glendale Community College’s campus newspaper El Vaquero ran a story on the deaths and the various resources the college offers for students contemplating similar ideas.

But once the papers hit the distribution racks, hundreds of copies were removed on two separate occasions, leaving the paper’s editor, the article’s author and a faculty adviser wondering if the school administration was trying to silence their First Amendment rights.

Although it was never proven, many suspect Davitt ordered the papers pulled.

“Whoever’s responsible for this is definitely going against the tide in which free expression should be displayed on campus,” said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Washington, DC-based advocacy group Student Press Law Center, which has kept records of campus censorship and offered legal advice to student journalists and faculty advisers since 1974. “This kind of problem is definitely getting worse, because we hear from between 2,000 to 3,000 students or advisers a year who are experiencing problems with their publications. On an anecdotal level, more college editors are being threatened or censored by school administrators who don’t like what they publish.”