There we go again. Cartoonists love to represent the present through presidents pasts. Chip Bok, breaking with the liberal AFL-CIA (Amalgamated Federation of Lithographers, Cartoonists, Illustrators and Animators) quotes FDR against AFSCME. Tony Auth harks back to a Union icon (stovepipe-hat-fitters?), linking Lincoln to civil unions. Finally, I penned a more recent threesome of executive members of the Order of Blame Avoidance Managers of America.

-- Joel Pett

Editorial cartoon by Chip Bok / creators.com

Editorial cartoon by Tony Auth / Philadelphia Inquirer

Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett / Lexington Herald-Leader

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Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist at the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. His work also appears in USA Today.

Some regard him as a whistle-blower, others as a weasel. Whatever one's view of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the young soldier suspected of supplying documents to WikiLeaks, he ought to be treated humanely.

That hasn't been the case, and isn't now.

A Times editorial  in January offered this description of Manning's confinement:

"[U]under a 'Protection of Injury' order, he is confined to his cell for 23 hours a day, even though his lawyer says a psychologist has determined he isn't a threat to himself. His lawyer also says that Manning is denied sheets and is unable to exercise in his cell, and that he is not allowed to sleep between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. If he attempts to sleep during those hours, he is made to sit up or stand by his guards."

Now, according to Manning's lawyer, the conditions have become more humiliating. David Coombs  writes on his web page: "PFC Manning was forced to strip naked in his cell again last night.  As with the previous evening, Quantico Brig guards required him to surrender all of his clothing.  PFC Manning then walked back to his bed, and spent the next seven hours in humiliation."

I'm not an expert on military law, but this sort of treatment seems pointlessly degrading. If the military plans to prosecute Manning, it shouldn't be generating sympathy for him.

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--Michael McGough

Photo: Army Specialist Bradley Manning. Credit: EPA / bradleymanning.org

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Will the spirit of protest find its way to North Korea? It’s unlikely, writes Laura Ling in North Korea: A nation in the dark. "There's no need for the government to block threatening websites, because most North Koreans have never used a computer, let alone understand what a URL is," she writes. And if they did come across news of the Arab revolution, Ling continues, "I question whether the North Korean people would even know what to do with knowledge of protests in the Arab world. Theirs is one of the most isolated societies on the planet, and both absolute reverence for and total fear of Kim run deep."

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The Westboro Baptist Church, which pickets military funerals claiming that the deaths of service members are divine retribution for America's toleration of homosexuality, has the right to be vile. Of this, our commenters have a lot to say.

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In Thursday's Blowback, our recurring feature that gives readers the opportunity to take on Los Angeles Times articles, editorials or Op-Eds, Patrick Connors explained why he took issue with Britain, Italy condemned for Libya ties. The article, he wrote, "provides helpful insight into the uproar caused by British and Italian military aid to Libya. However, readers would be well served by further information on how, with our government's support, U.S. companies have provided military and crowd-control equipment that has propped up authoritarian governments throughout the Middle East." Read on: Weapons of Mideast oppression, 'Made in U.S.A.'

-- Alexandra Le Tellier

Los Angeles County Supervisors Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky support incumbent Bernard C. Parks in the race for the City Council's 8th District seat, and so do we.

Molina and Yaroslavsky spoke on behalf of Parks at a rally on Wednesday. The Los Angeles Times news blog, L.A. Now, reported:

"What's wrong with the city is that every weak-kneed politician is bending over backwards for special interests," Molina said. "What we've had in Bernard Parks is courageous leadership all the way through. …The only special interests he is responsible to are the constituents in his district."

[…]

"Bernard has had a long vision, a grand vision, of how to keep the city of Los Angeles solvent," said Yaroslavsky, who lives in Los Angeles and said he was speaking as a taxpayer. "If the city would listen to Bernard, we wouldn't have potholes on every street in this city. ... We wouldn't be half a billion dollars in the hole if they'd listened to Bernard. And they’re going to come around to Bernard -- not because they want to, but because they have to because he's right."

Our editorial board agrees that Parks is the best man for the job. "The Los Angeles City Council would have a tough time functioning with 15 members like Bernard C. Parks. But it needs at least one," said the board in its endorsement. "Parks combines independence, strength and acuity, a rare combination on a council where many members prefer to wish away the city's problems."

Find all of the recommendations by The Times' editorial board in our voter guide. And check back here on Sunday for an endorsements recap -– perfect for printing out and bringing to the polls on Tuesday.

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--Alexandra Le Tellier

Photo: Bernard Parks, left, and the two challengers vying for his seat, Forescee Hogan-Rowles and Jabari Jumaane, before their debate at Park Mesa Heights neighborhood council meeting held in Angeles Mesa Elementary School on Feb. 13. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

All I can say is: Wow, man, far out.

I've seen the Volkswagen Bulli, and it blew my mind. 

Introduced at the Geneva Motor Show this week, the Bulli is a kind of magical mystery tour bus. It's so groovy, it’ll make you want to pack up your old lady (or your old man), pull on the bell bottoms and the tie-dye, throw Rover in the back and head for Woodstock.

Heck, take Sky, and Cheyenne and Dweezil with you.  And don't forget the Ripple.

Automakers have been on a nostalgia trip in the last few years.  Volkswagen gave us the New Beetle in 1998.  BMW brought back the Mini Cooper in 2001. Ford redid the Thunderbird, then the Mustang, and then Chevy gave us the new Camaro and Chrysler the new Challenger.

Thankfully, AMC is defunct, so we don’t have to worry about a new Pacer or a new Hornet -- kids, ask your parents.

And while you're at it, kids, have your parents -– or your grandparents -– tell you their VW Bus stories.  Watch their eyes get misty.  Then watch them squirm.  Then watch them change the subject.

A Times story Friday said that fewer teens and young adults are having sex. Researchers couldn't explain why. But if VW brings back the Bus …

Anyway, the Bulli  is shockingly cool.  And it's also 21st century:  Powered by a 40-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack, Volkswagen says it’ll go 180+ miles on a charge, with a top speed of 87 mph.

Which, as anyone who ever owned a VW Bus knows, is about 40 mph faster than the original, and about 100 miles farther than an original would go before breaking down.

No word yet on whether the new model will also catch fire unexpectedly. Or if it will have a heater that heats, or a defroster that defrosts, or windshield wipers that wipe. 

Sadly, being electric-powered, it probably won't backfire every 100 yards either.

What the concept does have is a single bench seat in the front, and a rear bench seat that collapses. (See "fewer teens having sex," above.)

Also, there’s no eight-track. Instead, there’s an iPad in the center console that, according to The Times' story, "works as a multifunctional touchscreen, controlling the car's Bluetooth and navigation functions, as well as entertainment media, including Internet access."

All that, but no bong holder?

Volkswagen won't say whether it's going to produce the Bulli. A VW spokeswoman said the manufacturer sees "great opportunity for it in the U.S." 

But if you can't wait, you can always buy a nicely restored original.  There’s one on EBay right now, a beautiful 1967.  The owner wants $59,500.

Which, as we used to say, is a lot of bread, man.

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--Paul Whitefield

Photo: A study of a Volkswagen named Bulli is on display at the International Geneva Motor Show at the Palexpo fairground in Geneva. Credit: Uli Deck / EPA

Patrick Connors, a member of Adalah-NY: The New York campaign for the Boycott of Israel, a New York City-based group advocating for Palestinian rights, takes on a Feb. 22 Los Angeles Times article. If you also have a bone to pick regarding a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed and would like to participate in Blowback, here are our FAQs and submission policy.  

The Times' Feb. 22 article, "Britain, Italy condemned for Libya ties," provides helpful insight into the uproar caused by British and Italian military aid to Libya. However, readers would be well served by further information on how, with our government's support, U.S. companies have provided military and crowd-control equipment that has propped up authoritarian governments throughout the Middle East.

Rather than seeing the U.S. as spreading freedom, Arabs who have taken to the streets have experienced "Made in U.S.A." tear gas used by repressive governments to kill and maim unarmed protesters and crush popular movements for justice.

For unarmed Arab protesters in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Tunisia and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Pennsylvania may seem to be the tear-gas capital of the world judging by the labels on the canisters fired at them. Combined Systems Inc. (CSI) is headquartered in Jamestown, Pa., and NonLethal Technologies Inc.'s home is in Homer City, Pa. The apparently defunct Federal Laboratories was based in Saltsburg, Pa.

The recent wave of deaths and injuries from tear gas began in the West Bank. Jawaher Abu Rahmah died on Jan. 1 after she was overcome by tear gas the day before at a protest against Israel's construction of its illegal wall and settlements on the farmland of the village of Bil'in. CSI tear-gas canisters littered the village. Jawaher's brother, Bassem Abu Rahmah, was killed in 2009 in Bil'in when he was shot directly in the chest during a peaceful protest by an Israeli soldier with an extended-range CSI tear-gas canister.

Also in 2009 in the neighboring village of Ni'ilin, American citizen Tristan Anderson was left partially disabled after he was shot in the head by an extended-range tear-gas canister from CSI. In May 2010, New York art student Emily Henochowicz lost her left eye when she was shot in the face by an Israeli soldier with an aluminum tube tear-gas canister, very likely made in the U.S.

In Tunisia, Lucas Mebrouk Dolega, a 32-year-old photographer from France, died on Jan. 17 after being hit by a tear-gas grenade fired at close range by Tunisian police. On Feb. 6, a Tunisian protester was killed when he was shot in the head with a tear-gas canister. Photos and news reports have shown that CSI is a major tear-gas provider for Tunisia.

In Egypt, Agence France Press reported on Jan. 28 that "Dozens of the canisters made by [CSI subsidiary] Combined Tactical Systems in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, were fired at crowds on one Cairo street on Friday … with the security forces sometimes firing them straight at demonstrators." Human Rights Watch staff reported seeing dead protesters in Alexandria with "massive head wounds from tear-gas canisters we were told had been fired directly at their heads at close range."

In Bahrain, according to news reports and photos posted online, peaceful protesters have been shot at with tear gas from NonLethal Technologies and Federal Laboratories. In Yemen, CSI tear gas has reportedly been used on protesters.

The U.S. gives billions in military aid annually to these countries — $3 billion to Israel, $1.3 billion to Egypt, $155 million to Yemen, $20 million to Bahrain and about $15 million to Tunisia. The U.S. State Department at a minimum approves the export and sale of tear gas by U.S. companies to these governments.

The American-made tear gas is a symbol of U.S. policy in the Middle East that has supported repression and cheap oil at the expense of human rights, and has favored Israel and Arab autocrats who tempered criticism of Israel's many abuses of Palestinian rights.

Americans should follow the example of people in Britain and France and demand that the State Department stop approving the sale of tear gas and other weapons that are being used by repressive governments in the Middle East, including Israel, to deny basic freedoms and rights.

We also need to demand that U.S. companies such as CSI and NonLethal Technologies ensure that their products are not being sold to governments that will use them to violate basic human rights. Death, injury and the denial of freedom and basic human rights in the Middle East should no longer be made in the U.S.A.

--Patrick Connors

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Photo: An Israeli soldier (not pictured) fires a tear gas canister towards Palestinian protesters during a demonstration against Israel's controversial separation barrier in the West Bank village of Maasarah, near the biblical town of Bethlehem on Feb. 18, 2011. Credit: Abed Al Hashlamoun / EPA

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Get a grip, people. Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign isn't part of a socialist plot to control what Americans eat. In A feeding frenzy, Meghan Daum writes:

What's going on here (besides the last gasps of an increasingly irrelevant radio blowhard) obviously has nothing to do with keeping kids from being obese. Surely even the most obtuse tea partyers know deep down that Michelle Obama is not planning to force-feed you vegetables and hijack your desserts any more than Laura Bush, who advocated for reading, was interested in foisting books on people and carting away their televisions. Instead, Republicans are turning a patently apolitical issue into an opportunity to bash the president, suggesting that the first lady has wasted tax dollars with her campaign and that the president's budget proposal, which includes adding $1 billion a year for the next 10 years to fund children's nutrition programs, will ruin the nation because it caters to her elitist whims. (Does anyone remember that Nancy Reagan's anti-drug campaign "Just Say No" coincided with $1.7 billion in funding to fight the growing drug problem?)

Given how much sugar comes in school cafeteria meals, we ought to praise the first lady. Perhaps Jamie Oliver could help her in her cause?

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Cartoonist Ted Rall really struck a nerve with his Thursday cartoon about tax increases for the rich.  But really, how can we expect the wealthy to stimulate the stores on Rodeo Drive and the entire state of California?

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Speaking of the well-to-do: Some unpaid Huffington Post contributors have decided to ask for some reimbursement via this manifesto.

-- Alexandra Le Tellier

On the 20-year anniversary of Rodney King's beating by Los Angeles police, which was captured by onlooker George Holliday's Sony Handycam, Joel Rubin, Andrew Blankstein and Scott Gold have written a story detailing just how much video technology has changed the way the LAPD operates. From pedestrians with cellphones that double as video cams to surveillance in patrol cars, big brother is always watching.

"Early on in their training, I always tell them, 'I don't care if you're in a bathroom taking care of your personal business…. Whatever you do, assume it will be caught on video,' " said Sgt. Heather Fungaroli, who supervises recruits at the LAPD's academy. "We tell them if they're doing the right thing then they have no reason to worry."

But LAPD officers aren't just motivated to do the right thing for fear that their bad actions will go viral. After the 1992 riots, sparked by the acquittals of officers involved in the King beating, the LAPD's ethos changed. Op-Ed columnist Jim Newton remarked on this shift in his Jan. 18 column:  

For the LAPD, life began to change under the administration of Mayor Richard Riordan, who campaigned on a promise to expand the department and both enlarged and equipped it. Mayor James Hahn built on that success by hiring William J. Bratton as chief. And Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to his lasting credit, has gone still further, pushing through an increase in trash fees that helped pay for an expansion of the force and defending those gains even as the budget has come under increasing pressure.

Assessing today's LAPD through the lens of the Olympic Division, Newton continued:

Perhaps more important, it's a police station where officers and commanders listen to the public rather than preside over it. When an officer shot a young autistic man in the spring of 2010, the community at first recoiled. "In the old days," Blake acknowledges, the police response would have been to "bar the gates, don't say anything." Instead, he met with the family, explained why his officers saw a threat in a hooded, non-responsive man, hands at his waist, reactions hard to discern. Tensions, once strained to breaking, subsided.

Now, we have to work on the younger generation of Angelenos who are like, "Rodney who?" so that history doesn’t repeat itself.

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--Alexandra Le Tellier

Photo: The nine minutes of grainy video footage George Holliday captured of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King 20 years ago helped to spur dramatic reforms in a department that many felt operated with impunity. Credit: George Holliday

As President Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon address the nation via live press conference (watch above), the editorial board has laid out its hopes for Calderon's U.S. visit.

First and foremost, they must push forward with a binational plan to fight Mexican drug cartels and quell the violence that threatens to spill across the border. The U.S. has already pledged more than $1.4 billion as part of the 2008 Merida Initiative aimed at providing equipment and technical assistance. Mexican officials have said that some of the help has yet to arrive. Both sides must air those concerns privately and move forward.

Keep reading "Working with Mexico" here.

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--Alexandra Le Tellier

Where have you gone, Jimmy Carter. A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Every time I pull in for gas these days I think of Carter, and what might have been.

Oh, sure. Go ahead and laugh. Worst president ever, right? Thank God for Ronald Reagan, right?

Well, it's not Carter's fault that you're pumping $4-a-gallon gas into a car that gets about the same mpg as the Datsun I owned in 1975.

Ah, Carter was a wimp, you say. Wouldn't stand up to the Iranians. Told us to turn down the thermostat; told us to take the bus; put solar panels on the White House roof. 

Who wanted that? We wanted what Reagan was selling -– we still do, at least if you listen to most Republican leaders. And we got it, with Reagan, and George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton (who was such a beaten-down Democrat, he was practically a Republican) and then George W. Bush.

But imagine if we'd heeded Carter's advice on energy. Imagine where this nation would be, more than three decades later, if we'd accomplished what Carter laid out in his "Crisis of Confidence" speech  on July 15, 1979:

The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them …

I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation…

I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20% of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000…

To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun…

 I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which … will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects. We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it…

I'm proposing a bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford. To further conserve energy, I'm proposing tonight an extra $10 billion over the next decade to strengthen our public transportation systems. And I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense -- I tell you it is an act of patriotism.

Didn't happen. Carter was out after one term. Reagan brought back the good old days. He took down those stupid solar panels on the White House roof.

And while North Korea, which doesn't sit on a pool of oil, developed nuclear weapons, America fought two wars in the Persian Gulf against Iraq, which does sit on a big pool of oil -- but wasn't developing nuclear weapons. 

And in 2005, just four years after Saudi-bred terrorists attacked us on 9/11, George W. Bush strolled hand in hand with Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, which also sits on a big pool of oil. Heck, President Obama even bowed, sort of, to the Saudi king in 2009. 

Energy independence is still talked about. Just last month, for example, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman argued for a gasoline tax as a way to encourage conservation and pay down the deficit.

But I didn't hear anyone on Capitol Hill signing on, nor anyone at the White House, and certainly no one who hopes to replace Obama in 2012.

Jimmy Carter is still with us -- a good, decent man who keeps trying to make the world a better place.

And as for our energy policy, all I can say is this: Carter's 30-year-old ideas sound a lot more thoughtful than "Drill, baby, drill!"

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Trivia: How much do you know about U.S. presidents?

--Paul Whitefield

Photo: A wax sculpture depicts the 39th President, Jimmy Carter, standing beside a Shell gasoline pump to illustrate the late-1970's oil crisis in the U.S. Presidential Gallery at Madame Tussauds wax museum in Washington. Credit: Michael Reynolds / European Pressphoto Agency

Ted Rall / For the Times

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Op-Ed columnist Tim Rutten took Arianna Huffington to task for HuffPo's business model (unpaid writers) after her company merged with AOL for $315 million. He wrote:

The Huffington Post is a brilliantly packaged product with a particular flair for addressing the cultural and entertainment tastes of its overwhelmingly liberal audience. To grasp its business model, though, you need to picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates. Given the fact that its founder, Huffington, reportedly will walk away from this acquisition with a personal profit of as much as $100 million, it makes all the Post's raging against Wall Street plutocrats, crony capitalism and the Bush and Obama administrations' insensitivities to the middle class and the unemployed a bit much.

The fact is that AOL and the Huffington Post simply recapitulate in the new media many of the worst abuses of the old economy's industrial capitalism — the sweatshop, the speedup and piecework; huge profits for the owners; desperation, drudgery and exploitation for the workers. No child labor, yet, but if there were more page views in it…

One such galley slave has had it. Bill Lasarow, publisher of ArtScene and Visual Art Source, has formed a group and set out some demands. They will no longer provide free content to HuffPo. In the manifesto (via The Wrap), Lasarow says they’ll remain on strike until:

First, a pay schedule must be proposed and steps initiated to implement it for all contributing writers and bloggers. Second, paid promotional material must no longer be posted alongside editorial content; a press release or exhibition catalogue essay is fundamentally different from editorial content and must be either segregated and indicated as such, or not published at all.

Of course, what the Huffington Post hasn't forked over in terms of cash, it's made up for with what some might say is invaluable exposure  among an engaged audience, which Lasarow acknowledges. Still, he feels, the practice is unethical, especially in light of the HuffPo’s new cash flow.

It is unethical to expect trained and qualified professionals to contribute quality content for nothing. It is unethical to cannibalize the investment of other organizations who bear the cost of compensation and other overhead without payment for the usage of their content. It is extremely unethical to not merely blur but eradicate the distinction between the independent and informed voice of news and opinion and the voice of a shill.

None of this is illegal, only unethical and oh so very hypocritical, so Ms Huffington if you insist do carry on, by all means. However we are taking this action, with the full knowledge of our contributing writers and editors, in the belief that your better angels will enable you to do the right thing. We stand ready to provide whatever helpful input we can. 

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--Alexandra Le Tellier

Photo: Arianna Huffington.  Credit: Angela Weiss/Getty Images