A recent proposal in Hawthorne, a city in Los Angeles county, would require business signs be in English. This is another example of government officials being busy bodies, wasting taxpayers' money. It is none of the government's business what language one chooses to use to attract customers. If a business depends on English speaking customers, it will only hurt itself by not using English. Throughout the world, business that want to attract English speaking tourists have signs in English. A Hawthorne councilwoman said that she is not bias against immigrants but want to help them. The best way the government can help businesses is by putting up as little restrictions on them as possible. Let them have the freedom to run their business as they see fit.

People who believe in "English only" are not necessary racist. Sometimes I agree with them. For example, we don't need voting ballots in languages ranging from Spanish to Chinese to Tagalog plus many others as they do here in LA county. Since citizenship supposedly require knowledge of English, I don't see why we should spend money to print ballots in so many different languages. Even people who are native English speakers vote infrequently and, judging by recent voting results, poorly. So let us just have one ballot for everybody. The people who truly care about the issues will vote in any language.

The situation with the business signs, however, is different than that of ballots. The rest of the world is learning English in greater number than ever. While in the U.S., the most diverse nation on earth, we are worrying about different languages on business signs? The children of immigrants will speak English anyway and become Americanized. I don't want to walk down every street in America and see signs like McDonald and Subway only. Signs in different languages are far more interesting and make America different from most other nations. None of these languages will ever take over for English in this country. We don't need busy bodies scaring us.

Thoughts regarding the Winter Olympics: The most amazing thing about this is that I actually have any thought about the Winter Olympics. There are not many sports in the Winter Olympics that I enjoy watching. Most of the sports seem to be praciticed by crazy people. Who was the first guy who jumped off a mountain on a ski? Who was the first guy who dug up a winding trench so that he can go down it and called it luge? And who was the first guy who wanted to be the second man in the 2-man luge? There is a guy on the Canadian curling team that is 54 years old! Sorry, but I have no respect for a sport in which a 54 years old man can be world class. Even speed skating which seems like a tough sport doesn't look so impressive now that in-line skaters like Derek Parra and Chad Hedrick can come in and become champions in a short time.

Having made fun of the Winter Olympics, I now would like to compliment about some of the people I saw on television and read about over the 2 weeks. Joey Cheek deserved to be the flag carrier at the closing ceremony. His contribution to the charity Right To Play will be remembered long after these games. Don't forget Johann Olav Kloss the Norwegian speedskater who started the charity and thus is a mentor to Cheek. Speaking of Norweigians, the cross-country ski coach who handed the Canadian skier a pole after her pole broke should be considered for sportsman of the year. His gesture cost his team a medal but he shrugged it off as the right thing to do. I was impressed with Toby Dawson, the mogul skier who won a bronze medal. I was more impressed by his mother who had adopted him from Korea. Parents like her who adopt children and love them like their own are special people.

Three people who need to grow up: Bode Miller, Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis.

One person who surprisingly has grown up: Apollo Anton Ono who still looks cool but is a much better speaker than 4 years ago and showed good sportsmanship and lots of heart after a poor start in this Olympic.

One more person I have to comment on is Lindsey Jacobellis. Jacobellis lost a gold medal when she showboated at the end of her race and fell. This was a rather childish behavior. However, I will give her credit because she is only 20 years old and her action afterward was impressive. Twenty year olds do stupid things (well, even old people like me do stupid things). But she was able to speak in front of the media afterwards and handled herself well. If this happened to me when I was 20 years old, I would have been so distraught I wouldn't have been able to speak to anyone. So if this is the stupidest thing she will do in her life, Jacobellis will have a very good life.

The Medicare Drug Plan is a worthless piece of legislation that will cost the taxpayers billions of dollars that could have been better spent on other areas. The whole framework of the plan was flawed from the beginning. The Republicans, who are usually against entitlements, put their name on this one with the idea that it can also benefit their corporate friends in the insurance and drug industries. The initial price tag was 400 billion which was a staggering sum. The real figure, however, was more than 530 billion. This was known by the administration before the congressional vote but was witheld to the legislators. The plan passed narrowly and may well have been defeated if the truth was known. This seems like fraud to begin with.

This legislation prohibited Medicare from negotiating with the drug companies on prices. Sure the drug companies should make a profit but as taxpayers we should demand our government get the best prices possible. Would you hire someone to do a big job in your house without bidding and negotiating the price? The Medicaid system already have negotiated prices with the drug companies so why should we pay much higher prices for this Medicare plan?

If you are a senior who has Medicare and Medicaid, your medicine used to be paid for by Medicaid so that the government was paying the lowest prices possible. With the new Medicare plan you have been switched to a private plan for your medicine. Not only are the medicines costing the government more because of no negotiation but there is also a middle man, the insurance company, involved. Not only that, in the past your doctor knew what medicines are covered by Medicaid but now since you are assigned to an insurance company for your medications, there is no guarantee that the medicines your are taking are still covered. Each insurance plan has its own formulary. This is very confusing to the doctors and the patients. In many cases the doctor has to switch medicine for you because your medicine is not on the plan's formulary. Whereas the people who have Medicare only have a choice not to enroll in the drug program, the Medicare/Medicaid patients have no such choice.

For seniors not on Medicaid, this plan may not be better than paying a private insurance on your own or paying cash for your medicine. You have to figure out the cost of all of your medications and which plan covers your medicine need the best. This is not easy to do. I am a physician and in trying to figure it out for my parents and in-laws, I got confused. I am not sure this plan is worthwhile for them. So you can imagine what the average senior is facing.

There has been lots of foul-ups and problems in the first couple of months of the plan. California is suing the federal government to recover the costs of covering its seniors who couldn't get medicines due to the confusion. I am sure most of the glitches in the system will be worked out eventually. Nevertheless, I do not think that this plan will ever be worth anywhere the money that is costing the taxpayers.

Academic freedom or brain washing?

Recently an UCLA alumni group called the Bruin Alumni Association made headlines by coming out with a list of liberal professors at UCLA that the BAA considers too radical to be teaching at a public university. The group is willing to pay students to bring in tapes or lecture notes from these professors so that it can be demonstrated that they indoctrinate students. Of course the liberals are complaining about interfernce with academic freedom and that it is mean spirited to single out certain professors. Well, this is the same argument I made last year when a group of liberal called for the firing of John Woo, a law professor at Berkely, who was an apologist for the Bush administration. I did not see any liberal group coming to the defense of Woo then. As usual, I feel both sides just want their views to be heard and not the others.

I checked out the BAA website and frankly I was impressed with the length Andrew Jones, the writer of the site, goes to give a biography of each of the professors. I don't know if everything in the biographies are true but Jones does put out a lot information and references. I would have to say some of the views of these professors are way out in left field. The only thing is that Jones has not proven in these biographies that these professors are indoctrinating students with their views in class. For example, being an Asian American, I have heard of Jerry Kang. He is a law professor whose view on affirmative action I strongly disagree with. Jones made a point that Kang felt affirmative action was partly responsible for his being at UCLA. Kang had said that UCLA needed an Asian American law professor when the only one it had left for Georgetown and so he was hired. I think Kang was just showing his Asian upbringing which calls for humblenes. Kang graduated from Harvard with a degree in physics and then got his J.D. from Harvard. He graduated magna cum laude in both instances. He hardly needed affirmative action to get a job at UCLA. I believe his view on affirmative action is wrong but I did not see anyone come out with any evidence that he tried to indoctrinate students with his views.

The same goes for John Woo. I don't think much of the Bush administration especially its handling of the war. Woo is one of Bush's apologists on the torturing and unending detention of prisoners of war. The liberals at Berkeley called for firing. Again there was never any evidence of poor teaching or indoctrination in his classroom. I am not defending Kang and Woo because they are Asian Americans. I am defending them because having some knowledge about them I see where both liberals and conservatives are just trying to get people they disagree with.

You don't have to agree with anybody just because he is a so-called intellectual. But it would be beneficial if everybody listens to both sides of the argument before making up his mind. I don't agree with John Roberts on many of his views but if I have an opportunity to listen to one of his lectures, I would do so. The same with Ruth Ginsburg. Keeping an open mind is the best way to prevent indoctrination. If a student at a law school like Berkeley or UCLA can be indoctrinated by a bias professor, then that student wasn't qualify to be admitted in the first place.

Many Congreesmen are scrambling to return money donated by Jack Abramoff or his clients. It is nice that some of the money ended up in charities but the whole thing is rather silly. If you accepted money from the mob and committed a crime in exchange, would giving back the money absolve you of the crime? A Congressman who voted according to his conscience should not have returned the money. A Congressman who was bought by the money would still be guilty even if he returned every cent. The problem is that even money that is contributed legally may influence a politician to do the wrong thing. If a lobbyst contributed money legally to a Congressman which causes him to change his vote, wouldn't that be a bribe also? There are too many loop holes in the law because the lawmakers like it that way. Campaign reform will unlikely be able to solve this problem.

Ideally voters should be the ones making judgments on this. If voters feel their representatives are being bought, they can voted them out. Unfortunately, unless there is a situation like with Abramoff, the voters will have no idea who is bribing their representatives. Even now, do most voters check to see if Abramoff contributed money to their Congressman? Voters are unlikely to be able to figure out who contributed to their Congressman and more unlikely to know if he/she was influenced by the money. The only time the voters will hear about their politician being influenced by special interests is during election when negative advertising is all over the place. Nobody can sort out what is true or false during those times.

I advocate an ombudsman system for the federal and state governments. The system will hire people who are nonparisian and have no ties with any business or union. They will investigate to see whether there is a connection between a large donation and how a politician votes. Periodically, a report will be sent to each voter in the district of a particular politician. Of course, the voters may like the politician even if he gets a negative report. This is because many politicians bring "pork" home to his districts. If the voters do not read these reports or ignore them then they deserve what they get.

As Ariel Sharon lies comatose, struggling for life, sad thoughts come to my mind. Recemtly, an article in my local newspaper suggested that the U.S. learn from Israel's experience with terrorism. Among the lessons was that one must use force against your enemy. The following is part of my reaction to that article:

"Force was necessary when Israel had to defend herself against the Arab armies in 1967 and 1973. Force, however, is obviously not the best answer against terrorism. Israel has used force for many years in her fight against terrorism but she has never been secured. For every Israeli killed by Palestinians, Israel has killed two or three Palestinians in retaliation. After so many years of two eyes for an eye, is Israel feeling safer? Was it worth it for Israel to go into Lebanon and then refuse to withdrawl when the situation became a quagmire? Eventually Israel had to withdraw after thousands of lives on both sides were lost.

If you want to learn from Israel, look at Ariel Sharon. Sharon was probably the most hawkish of all Israeli leaders. He was responsible for the invasion of Lebanon and the entanglement of Israel there. He was the godfather of the settlements of West Bank and Gaza. His visit to Temple Mount in 2000 was calculated to draw a Palestinian response that led to the Al Aqsa intifada and thus strengthened his own power. Somehow Sharon has seen the light. He has finally realized that aggressive and brutal tactics will not bring peace to Israel. He has left the conservative Likud Party to pursue peace as the leader of a new centrist party. It won't be easy to obtain peace, but it can be done. Israel's peace with Egypt has held. I think Sharon has finally learned that being the strongest nation in the region may mean survival but it does not mean security. This is a lesson that the strongest nation in the world should learn from Israel."

Unfortunately Sharon will not be able to teach the strongest nation in the world how to achieve peace and security. Even if Sharon survives this stroke, his condition will never allow him to lead Israel again. If someone would have suggested three years ago that Ariel Sharon was Israel's best hope for peace, I would have sent this person to a psychiatrist right away. Sadly, this is the truth today. There is basically nobody in Israel who can replace him. Many politician from the Labor Party want to negotiate a peace but they are dismissed by the public as too liberal and too weak. The Likud Party has no interest in negotiating and that's why Sharon left. The Israel public trusted Sharon's strength and charisma. His remarkable transformation from an extreme hawk to a possible dove gave peace a chance. Unfortunately, this chance is disappearing into the vaccum of Israeli leadership.

Having just finished watching the fourth season of the show "24", I thought about President Bush's problems with tortures and spying on American citizens without warrants. Watching shows like "24" gives the impression that torturing and eavesdropping on suspects' conversations are absolutely necessary. If someone is trying to hit the U.S. with a nuclear weapon, we must do everything possible to prevent it. This is the argument the Bush administration has been giving.

Of course, in real life torturing do not usually bring about critical information. Most of the time even if the right person is in custody, he will not say the truth. He may say something that you want to hear and it may cause a wrong turn in the investigation. However, I am not so naive to say that torturing is never necessary. I am sure it has been going on in all countries, including the U.S. I have not seen anyone convicted for torturing in an attempt to get critical information. The convictions as the result of the disgrace treatment of prisoners in Iraq had nothing to do with security. I think Senator McCain's torture law is right. It may stop people from acting irresponsibly. If you believe that a situation where torturing is absolutely necessary, like in "24", then you should also believe the government would cover it up so that the person who did prevent a castastrophe would not be prosecuted. Bush should have accepted the torure law because in reality it would not have stopped torturing totally but would make commenders think about it carefully before ordering it.

By writing an executive order allowing spying on Americans without a warrant was something Bush did not have to do. In the past the court has given the government authority retroactively for listening conversation without getting a warrant before hand. (We are talking about national security situations, not routine criminal investiagations.) Courts understand that in national security situations, the government must be given some leeway. The government, however, should have to explain later why they had to listen to a conversation. I don't have any problem with that if a court is given the opportunity to determine whether the explaination is adequate. By signing this executive order the Bush administration bypasses the courts altogether. This is not acceptable in a democracy with checks and balances.

It was a tremendous defeat for the intelligent design movement when Judge John E. Jones III ruled that a school board violated the constitution by requiring the teaching of the theory as an alternative to evolution. In a 139 page ruling Judge Jones presented such eloquent arguments against the intelligent design movement that I cannot add anything of value to his writing. If you have not read excerpts of his ruling in your local newspaper, please do so. Basically Judge Jones points out that intelligent design is not science and should not be taught to students as such. He also said that the school board members lied to disguise their real purpose which is the promotion of religion.

The interesting thing about this is that Judge Jones is a church going conservative appointed by President Bush. So the intelligent design movement cannot claim bias against religion. It is also heartening to me because I believe that there are courageous and ethical people who do not go with the party line but are independent thinkers. My gut feeling is that the two most recent Supreme Court nominees, Judges Roberts and Alito, will not be as conservative as people think they are. It is obvious that they are well qualified and are extremely intelligent. I believe that while I may not agree with all of their rulings they will be fair-minded about each case that come before them. Of course they can be the next Scalia or Ginsburg, well qualified but totally predictable in how they rule. Worse, they can be another Thomas who is predictable and not even qualified. Anyways, this ruling by Judge Jones give me a little more hope that Judges Roberts and Alito will follow the law rather than follow personal beliefs.

Once again the government has looked incompetent in trying to convict a Chinese American for espionage. Following the cases of Wen Ho Lee and James Yee, the case of Katrina Leung has also come unravel. Leung was a business woman who worked for the FBI by obtaining sensitive information from China. She was acccused of switching sides and taking information from her FBI handler and lover James Smith and passed them on to China. Leung pleaded guilty to lying about a sexual affair and filing a false income tax return. Just as in the cases of Lee and Yee, the prosecution failed miserably and this plea bargain is just a face-saving attempt for the government. While I believe that Lee and Yee are totally innocent and it was a waste of time and money for the government to prosecute them, the Leung case could have helped the U.S. avoid losing secrets to China and other countries. Unfortunately, by zealously going after the alleged Chinese American spy while giving her co-defendant an easy way out, the prosecution committed misconduct and lost the chance to help our national defense.

Let's assume that Leung was a double agent. It is incredible that James Smith had no idea that she was spying for China. The first thing the prosecution did was to grant immunity to Smith with the idea that they can nail Leung. They didn't care if Smith was punished adequately for his crime. Even if they had succeeded and put Leung in jail, so what? She was guilty of doing for China against the U.S. what the U.S. had hired her to do against China. In other words, spying was something used by all countries. By putting a foreign spy into jail would not stop spying from that country. It will have no deterrent effect. To safe-guard our secrets we must make sure our own people cannot be bought. Leung could not be have been successful if Smith did not take the bait and succumb to sexual temptations. Most people become traitors not because of ideology but because of greed or sex. The logical thing to do would be to punish someone like Smith more harshly than Leung because he was higher up and was the one who gave up secrets that Leung could never have gotton without him. Instead the government just let Smith go and thus give a message to others that if you have sex with a spy from another country and lose information as a result, you would not have to go to jail.

It is not a pure racial issue where the white guy gets off while they try to punish the Asian. It is however, apparent that the government thinks that Chinese Americans are more likely to spy for China than white Americans because of ethnicity. It may be that more Chinese Americans than Americans of other races are spying for China but that is because China is trying to recruit Chinese Americans rather than people of other races. You would expect that Israel would recruit Jewish Americans to spy in the U.S., not Arab Americans. People of Chinese origin are as likely to succumb to sex or money as other races but I don't think ideologically they are more for China. In fact if they originated from Hong Kong or Taiwan they would more likely be ideologically opposed to communist China than the average American. I don't think Leung was a communist since she did provide excellent information for the U.S. against China. I believe that she is a person who craves for power and prestige and by playing off both sides she gets that feeling of power and prestige.

Chinese Americans want people who betray the U.S. to be brought to justice. It is unfortunate that in many high profile cases the government usually portray the Chinese Americans as guilty of great crimes before any substantial evidence are found. This makes people think that the average Chinese American is less patriotic than other ethnic groups. Even when the judge in the Lee case apologized to Lee for the government's conducts, the government has never acknowledge their slandering of this fine American. In the Leung case they used illegal tactics to try to secure a conviction against her but lets her white co-defendant go with practically no punishment. This is the wrong message to send to the Chinese American community as well as the intelligence community. Do you think China cares if they get Leung for spying for the U.S.? I am sure they are concentrating their effort to punish harshly those in their government who gave Leung information. They know that even if they catch Leung or other American spies, more will be coming. We should understand this and that to keep our secrets safe, we must be sure that the people who has acess to them cannot be bought.

I am glad that the Illinois Supreme Court has overturned a $10.1 billion verdict against Philip Morris over claims that the company deceptively marketed "light" cigarettes. I am against smoking and I know the tobacco companies are bad guys but this lawsuit is ridiculous. There are 1.14 million smokers who signed up for this class action suit. These people are morons. You can't figure out that light cigarettes are also dangerous? Who on this earth doesn't know that smoking any type of cigarettes can kill you? For those who signed on because of greed, you should know that 3 billion dollars of the award would have gone to the state. Dividing the 7.1 billion leaves each plaintiff less than $7000 before attorney fees. So for a few thousand bucks you are selling out your dignity as a human being who would take personal responsibility for your action.

Sure the tobacco companies are tricky but they followed federal guidelines and their marketing practice in this case was approved by the Federal Trade Commission. If smoked the same amount these light cigarettes are less toxic than regular cigarettes. The claim by the plaintiff is that to get more nicotine, smoker then smoked more cigarettes or inhaled more deeply and thus nullify the effect of the light cigarettes. This is an absurd argument. I use the lower sodium soy sauce at my favorite Japanese restaurant. If I use twice as much becasue it is not salty enough, I can't blame the soy sauce maker of false advertising when I get hypertension. If you think that you can smoke twice as much light cigarette as the regular ones you must be a moron.

Another moron is the judge who ruled against Philip Morris in the original trial. I can see stupid, sympathetic juries giving outrage verdicts, but this is a judge. If he thinks this case is fraud, then I should sue beer companies in his court for showing that drinking beer makes men look cool in front of women. I am sure I can find a few million men who would testified that this is false advertising!

The tobacco companies have done some despicable things in the past but the dangers of their products are well known today. If an adult makes a decision to smoke any tobacco product in the past 30 years, he has to take responsibility for his own action. The attorney for the plaintiffs in this case said that the Supreme Court decision will cause consumers to suffer. I am a consumer, and I am not suffering since I don't smoke. For those who swithched from regular to light cigarettes because they believed the advertising, they would be killing themselves anyway whether they switched or not. This is not a case of fraud but an example of greed and lack of personal responsibility in our society.