What to do with 30 newly acquired acres of Hahamongna Watershed Park once owned by the Metropolitan Water District will be up for discussion today during a community meeting at the Salvation Army building in Pasadena.

The land is currently home to the Rose Bowl Riders, Tom Sawyer camp, the March 1 program, the former USFS Oak Grove Ranger Station buildings, LA County Fire Camp 2, oak woodlands, trails and a Frisbee golf course.

Pasadena’s master plan for the new Arroyo Seco parkland between La Canada Flintridge and Altadena would, among other unprecedented changes, add soccer fields and a paved road perimeter to the undeveloped area.

Another community meeting about the new parkland will be held on May 18.

The Salvation Army building is located at 960 Walnut St.

For more information, call city Public Works Supervisor Rosa Laveaga at (626) 744-4321.

The stage was set — literally, and at two separate events — for Democrats to tee off on President Bush for admittedly leaking once classified information on the war in Iraq, but neither former President Clinton nor former Ambassador Joe Wilson, perhaps Bush’s most vocal critic, pounced on the opportunity.

In fact, both Clinton and Wilson, who were speaking at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Cal State Northridge, respectively, on April 6, the very day that the Bush White House declined to deny Bush’s authorization to have former vice presidential aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby leak sensitive information to a reporter, chose instead to sidestep major pronouncements, with Wilson encouraging people to vote Republicans out of office come the November elections.

Wilson, however, called for “serious investigation” into what he called “treasonous acts” by Bush and his administration.

During his presentation, Clinton’s tone was largely deferential toward Bush.

But Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s wasn’t.

“I remember when we had a president who sent our young men and women into battle for the same reasons we gave them. I remember when we had a president who believed in science and who was known far and wide for his intellectual curiosity. I remember when our sense of the future wasn’t clouded by fear. But I have hope that we may even see Bill Clinton back in the White House someday, in a much more historic role,” the mayor said in his introduction of the former president.

That comment hinted at the widespread speculation about a possible run for the White House in 2008 by Hillary Clinton, which would make the former President the first First Husband in the nation’s history. Perhaps keeping his wife’s electoral prospects in mind, his speech had an inspirational, largely apolitical tone.

During his presentation, Clinton’s tone was largely deferential toward Bush, only mentioning the current administration and its policies in his prepared remarks when he spoke of how much bureaucratic waste eats into funding to fight AIDS in Africa.

Speaking as part of the Music Center Speaker Series, Clinton fielded only a few inquiries from the more than 300 questions submitted by audience members. No one appeared to seek out his opinion on a Bush censure or impeachment, instead focusing their interest on how he would handle the Iraq War.

To that, Clinton said the US needs to stay there ,“or risk a far worse destruction there than if we’d never gone.”

Clinton also touched on the issue of illegal immigration, noting that “it’s a problem without a very satisfactory solution.” He spoke of the need to tighten the Mexican border against narcotics and “terrorists masquerading as Mexicans,” but he also said many of the Republican proposals are taking a completely wrong approach to the crisis.

“There’s one proposal out there that would send [illegal immigrants] home who have been here less than two years. Now I hate to pass a law that you can’t enforce,” said Clinton. “Try sending 8 million people home at once. It’s just not possible, and I’ll be a damned fool if they get it going. Instead, we need legislation with a clear path to citizenship and we need to beef up the Labor Department to enforce the laws we already do have and make everyone’s lives better.”

The husband of former CIA agent Valerie Plame whose identity was revealed soon after Wilson started criticizing the administration’s rationale for waging war in Iraq, spent two and a half years in Iraq during the Desert Shield part of the first Gulf War. He was nominated to be ambassador by President George Herbert Walker Bush, and later praised as a “true American hero” by the president for his work during the war, which included freeing 150 American hostages and making sure Saddam Hussein understood what the consequences would be if he didn’t pull out of Kuwait. It was this experience and that of his time as ambassador in Africa that convinced him to re-enter the public square four years after his retirement in 1998 from the U.S. Diplomatic Service.

“Once the drums of war started beating strong again in 2002, it was apparent to me the people beating those drums didn’t know squat about the region or about what the possible consequences of our actions would be,” said Wilson to a packed Performing Arts Center on the CSUN campus. “I felt I had real experience with the Iraqi regime to offer as part of Bush Senior’s team in the first Gulf War. I spent three years on the ground working with that sociopathic son of a bitch Saddam Hussein and the thuggish goon regime he surrounded himself with.”

Wilson said he was willing to give up his anonymity because he believed that “when a government makes the most awesome decision any government ever has to make, that decision to send our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines off to kill and die in the name of the American people, we owe it to them and to ourselves to fully understand what it is we’re asking them to do and what the potential consequences of those actions are.”

With that, the young crowd erupted in applause.

“It is not enough to tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree and say, ‘I support the troops.’ The best way to support them is to ensure you never send them off unless and until our national security depends on it,” he said to more thunderous applause.

Wilson then offered some ideas regarding Iraq that he’s been mulling over the past four or five months. He said the US military should stop putting Americans unnecessarily in harms way and stop unnecessarily killing Arabs. They should be focused on training the Iraqi military, providing logistical support for the Iraqi military, help them develop an intelligence institution to enable them to go after jihadists and insurgents, and provide the last ditch security in the event the Green Zone is overrun by insurgents and civil warriors.

“Once we’ve determined what the tasks are for the military, we need to rededicate our efforts to finding a political solution, which will be very difficult,” he said. It is made ever harder each passing day we don’t address ourselves to that task.”

He suggested that everyone should be at the table discussing solutions: America, the Iraqi government, the insurgents, Egypt, Western Europe, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. He charged Condoleezza Rice to get to work building the coalition necessary to form a compromise.

Wilson concluded speech by taking a final jab at Bush and the Republicans, saying, “The future of our country is worth the fight and these sons of bitches ain’t that tough.”

When asked about impeachment, Wilson replied, “The Republican majority has decided that loyalty to the president far exceeds their constitutional responsibility to provide oversight of the executive branch. You cannot hope there will be an investigation into the White House’s activities. We have to win the midterm elections this November. When that is done, and I have every confidence in the world that it will be done, then we can look to the next two years to seriously investigate these people who I believe have so badly mistreated my democracy.”

Elle Young, a CSUN political science major, enjoyed what she called a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear Wilson speak.

“I really liked how [Wilson] didn’t just talk shit about Bush, which he could have,” she said. “He offered some well thought out ideas based on his personal experience in the region about how to turn this quagmire in Iraq around.”

How would you like being called a cash-crazed sexual deviant with homicidal tendencies?

That’s essentially what comedy news host Stephen Colbert called Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff in a recent episode of Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report.”

And although he didn’t say much, it was clear that Schiff was not happy at all with how Colbert portrayed him, even if it was all in jest.

The show’s March 29 episode featured an installment of the ongoing “Better Know a District” series, which that night featured California’s 29th Congressional District and its three-term congressman.

First, Colbert took a shot at the wild parrots that fly around this end of the San Gabriel Valley, introducing the “Fightin’ 29th” as “the third most likely place for the next pandemic.”

Then Colbert took an indirect swipe at the Rose Parade, saying “The 29th avoids a reputation of a West Coast den of inequity by parades; from Altadena’s Old Fashioned Days to Pasadena’s Cherry Blossom Parade. Yes, there’s something for everyone who’s fascinated by slow-moving chunks of papier-mâché.”

Playing a self-righteous conservative pundit who often refers to FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly affectionately as “Papa Bear,” Colbert then asked about Schiff’s first congressional election, which was the costliest in congressional history.

After defeating then-incumbent Republican Jim Rogan, Schiff passed legislation banning unregulated donations.

“Isn’t that the equivalent of sleeping with a prostitute and then strangling her to hide your shame?” asked a straight-faced Colbert.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to say it like that,” replied a clearly irritated Schiff.

Then Colbert pulled out a $100 bill and mercilessly faux-tempted the congressman with it. At one point, he even folded it into a paper airplane and threw it at him, then picked it up and put it in Schiff’s front pocket.

When Schiff handed the bill back to him, Colbert asked, “What do you want me to do for this $100? I’ve never taken a bribe before.”

Schiff did not answer, but was clearly not amused.

With President Bush’s popularity ratings plummeting and Republican leaders in Washington, DC, awash in scandal, corruption and war, Congress is now poised for historic party power shifts come the fall midterm elections.

With 33 seats open in the US Senate and 435 House of Representatives elections slated for Nov. 7, Democrats are hoping to make Bush more of a lame duck in his last two years in office than anything Vice President Dick Cheney might bring home for dinner.

In Pasadena, the 29th Congressional District has been represented by Democrat Adam Schiff, who replaced Republican former Judge Jim Rogan in 2000 and has held onto his seat for two terms.

A former federal prosecutor, Schiff, like all other members of Congress, faces re-election, first in the June 6 primary if another Democrat decides to run. So far, Bob McCloskey of Monterey Park is the only Democrat running in a field of candidates that includes Republican Bill Bodell of Glendale and Bill Paparian, a former Pasadena City Council member who was registered Independent, but is running as a Green Party candidate.

During his time in office, Schiff has been tough on issues related to law and order, as well as the war on terrorism, co-authoring portions of the PATRIOT Act and siding with keeping American troops in Iraq until that country stabilizes politically, a proposition bitterly opposed by a growing faction of his own party.

Nevertheless, Schiff has remained one of the Bush administration’s harshest critics, especially on domestic issues, and particularly on its handling of the war and its decision to conduct domestic spying on citizens without first acquiring warrants or court approval.

The Weekly sat down with Schiff in his Washington, DC, office recently to discuss such issues as congressional scandals, domestic spying, the country’s ever-widening political divisions and what it’s going to take to bring our troops home from Iraq.

Schiff also touched on the possibilities of impeaching Bush, a process which, ironically, his predecessor, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, led against President Clinton in 1998. Today, Schiff is a member of that powerful committee.

Pasadena Weekly: How has the culture of Washington changed because of recent scandals?

Adam Schiff: It’s probably too early to tell. There will definitely be reform packages introduced and parts of them will become law. The bigger question is whether there will be anything significant done to change the political environment and campaign finance reform. A lot of the proposals are pretty skin deep at this point.

Do you think the two-party system effectively checks itself, or do you think it would be more effective to introduce more parties to the game?

The problem isn’t with the two-party system so much as that when you have one-party rule every branch of government for too long it tends to become arrogant and corrupt. The Democratic Party was in the majority for 40 years and in 1994 the country decided they’d grown arrogant and corrupt. The GOP seems to have done that in 10. There’ll be a chance in November to change the majority, which is obviously what I’m hoping will take place.

Do you think the president’s excuse for not using the FISA court’s 72-hour loophole is justified?

I have found the administration’s case for avoiding the FISA court to be very unpersuasive, both as a legal matter and as a practical matter. The law is very clear and the congressional intent is very clear about conducting electronic eavesdropping. The authorization to use force against al Qaeda was neither at the time nor after the fact viewed by Congress as authorizing a run around FISA. So his legal arguments are very unpersuasive. His practical arguments are even weaker, and that is the administration’s claim that it was too cumbersome to go through FISA court, that the standard was too high to meet. The FISA court acts very quickly; it approves the vast, overwhelming majority of applications. (Please see a related column on page 9.)

If it’s determined that the president did break the law, would impeachment be considered and would you support that?

The impeachment the country went through with President Clinton was such a disastrous chapter in our national history; we have to be very circumspect about raising the prospect of going through that again. I don’t want to prejudge the outcome of what I hope will be a very thorough investigation of the NSA program and what the consequence should be, but I can say from having studied the law on the subject that the administration’s legal case is very weak.

What issues have you been working on in your home district?

A number of issues. We have what we call the Kids First initiative, which is a whole package of programs, outreach and legislation designed to try to support education, health care and safety for kids. We were successful this year in getting substantial funding for the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles for pediatric cancer research. I’m very proud of that. They’re doing some phenomenal work at the Core Proteomics Laboratory, which basically, through the use of technology, can now identify the proteins in a tumor in a child and develop a very specific therapy for that child and that tumor that gives it a much greater prospect of success with much less side effects. We hope to get to the point where cancer therapy is individualized, where even two children with the same cancer will have different treatments depending on the protein composition of the tumor. We’re also working on legislation this year to try to better protect the community from sex offenders using GPS technology for people that are on parole or probation. We’re working on the potential expansion of the Santa Monica Mountains recreation area to include parts of the rim of the valley, which go all the way through the Arroyo Seco, the Verdugos, San Gabriel Valley, and others. So we’re working on a panoply of initiatives that have a very strong focus on our kids.

Would you like to see the USA PATRIOT Act extended, revised or made permanent?

I’d like to see the PATRIOT Act extended. There are ways that the PATRIOT Act can be improved to better protect civil liberties and at the same time give the government all the tools it needs to ferret out those who would do us harm. I don’t want it to be repealed or go out of existence, but we can do a better job of striking a balance. Frankly, though, the NSA issue troubles me more than anything in the PATRIOT bill. The administration argued during the discussion about the PATRIOT bill that it did not need to amend FISA, didn’t need to lower the standard of the FISA Act, that it operated just fine as it was. Never disclosing, of course, to the vast majority of members that it was taking a position and by putting it into operation it didn’t need to go through the FISA court at all. That seems to me very troubling. They’re making precisely the opposite argument they made in open hearing. And of course, the whole debate over the PATRIOT Act when you think about it is pretty moot if the administration takes the position that none of this is really binding anyway. I also don’t accept the argument that somehow having a discussion in Congress about FISA undercuts the effort to track down/capture/kill/destroy al Qaeda. Al Qaeda doesn’t care whether the wiretap goes through the FISA court or not, but the American people care. As long as it can be done expeditiously it has no impact on our intelligence gathering. If the argument is being made that al Qaeda is somehow oblivious to the fact that we do electronic eavesdropping, then we’re kidding ourselves if we think they’re that unsophisticated.

When would you like to see the troops come home?

As soon as we see a situation in Iraq that’s stable and won’t disintegrate into civil war, when they have a government that is representative of the people, and that doesn’t become an even worse haven for terrorism. I hope we make enough progress in building up the Iraqi’s security forces where we start to see draw downs of our forces in the near future. This year will be a significant year of transition. I was just in Iraq in December and I have the most tremendous respect for our men and women in uniform. They’re doing everything we’re asking of them. There’s a lot more we could have done to have them better prepared for what they were to encounter, provide them with better equipment, armored vehicles, more body vests. But I’m hopeful that the government that emerges from the elections will include the Sunnis and will lay the foundation for us to be able to draw down our troops.

WASHINGTON, DC – As lawmakers gathered for a joint session of Congress to hear President Bush’s fifth State of the Union address Tuesday, about 500 people led by the activist group World Can’t Wait tried to "drown out Bush’s lies" outside the heavily fortified US Capitol Building.

Facing a nearly $400 billion deficit, a critical election year, growing criticism over his domestic spying program and increasing dissatisfaction with the War on Terror, Bush’s speech was met with not just skepticism but also cynicism by many – and not just protesters – who heard him speak.

At a restaurant less than a quarter-mile from the Capitol, diners were unimpressed.

"We’ve heard this speech five times now," said Nate Johnson, a Washington resident. "It was funny to watch what the Democrats and Republicans applaud for. Even that is politically motivated."

Some felt the issue of Iran was out of place in the speech, in which Bush pleaded for renewed support for the war in Iraq and called on Congress to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act.

"There are nuclear threats all over the world," said artist and self-described revolutionary Hawah, who teaches in DC-area schools. "Why not bring up Syria or North Korea or China? His motive seems ambiguous."

Perhaps that ambiguity explains why the president’s overall ratings now hover around 40 percent – the lowest approval ratings ever for a sitting wartime president.

In cities around the country, including Los Angeles, protesters took to the streets to demonstrate against the administration.

Josh Collins, an English teacher from Glendale, said he brought some of his students to the World Can’t Wait-sponsored protest at Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street, outside the CNN Building in Hollywood.

"We’re reading Orwell’s ‘1984,’ and I brought some of the students here as opposed to [them] just hearing the doublespeak and Newspeak and all the crap of this regime," said Collins.

In fact, the LA demonstration attracted a generally much younger crowd than previous demonstrations.

"A lot of young people are very much aware of how serious the situation is and don’t believe it’s possible to wait until the Bush term expires because every day there’s a new action contrary to the interests of the people of the United States. Bush is not serving the common good," said longtime anti-war activist Blase Bonpane.

"The more I learn, the more to the left I become. It’s the war, it’s the torture – the policies all over the world. It’s how many innocent people are dying for nothing. We should get out of Iraq right now, and it’s amazing how many people feel the same way," said Anne Goldin, 24, of West Hollywood.

World Can’t Wait organizer Adam Grimes, a 29-year-old TV actor who’s appeared in such shows as "CSI Miami" and "The OC," said, "There’s nothing I believe in more than eliminating these guys from office."

Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild, who hosts a program on KPFK 90.7-FM, said the PATRIOT Act and government eavesdropping have nothing to do with making us safer. "It has to do with making the ruling elite safer from us and what we’re doing tonight," he said.

Mari Riddle of Pasadena turned her 50th birthday party last week at the Avenue 50 Studio art gallery in Highland Park into a fundraiser for World Can’t Wait’s print-ad campaign, which last month placed ads demanding "Bush Step Down" in The New York Times.

"We’re different from most of the other rallies, which chip away at Bush with a single cause of some sort. We’re saying we have to repudiate his entire agenda and force him out with all of it," Riddle said.

Back in Washington, peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested and removed from the House gallery just before Bush’s address. She was wearing a shirt with an anti-war slogan, which she kept covered up until she sat down. After an ineffective warning, she was charged with demonstrating in the Capitol building, a misdemeanor.

Sheehan, who has considered a run for Democratic US Sen. Diane Feinstein’s seat in California, wants Bush not only impeached but also tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"During Bush’s speech, every time he says ‘terrorist,’ replace it with ‘me and my insane policies’ and it fits right in," she told the Weekly Tuesday in Washington.

Today, the Bush War Crimes Commission, initiated by Not in Our Name, is expected to announce "indictments" against the Bush administration at the National Press Club in Washington. Harry Belafonte and Michael Ratner will deliver the opening remarks.

Carl Kozlowski contributed to this report.