I understand why the mayor and his allies want the outgoing City Council to name Scott Peters' successor as council president, not the council that will take office in December with several new members. In the former scenario, Ben Hueso is likely to win; in the latter, it could be Donna Frye, no friend of Jerry Sanders.

But talk about a flimsy rationale for letting departing council members help choose the next council president: The argument that “we've always done it this way.”Huh? We're not talking about a precedent that dates back to Independence Hall in 1776. We're talking about a practice that's all of two years old. There was no City Council president before the “strong mayor” form of government took effect in 2006.

In the spirit of this argument, I propose that the next City Council president be compelled to use more than 1 million gallons of drinking water a year at his home. It's what Peters did in 2007 – and once established, a tradition must be honored!

It may not make sense. It may not be something any other city does. It may seem progressively goofier the more you think about it. But we must revere our past. It's all we have. Oh, and billions in debt, too.

PATRIOTISM: LAST REFUGE OF THE DOLT

There's a great comic monologue near the end of “Animal House,” when Otter (Tim Matheson) rises to speak in defense of Delta Tau Chi at a hearing on whether the depraved frat should be expelled.

The court, says Otter, “can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few sick, twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? ... Isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.” And the Deltas walk out en masse.

Now, in a case of life imitating art, Rep. Laura Richardson – the Long Beach congresswoman who can't be bothered to pay any of her mortgages – says she had no choice but “to borrow money against my home to help finance my campaign. The election was too important to me, to our community and to our country ... .”

You follow? She only defaulted on her loan in service of the national interest. Irresponsible? Hardly. It was an act of patriotism!

ARE ANIMAL-RIGHTS EXTREMISTS COPYING THE IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY?

With many of its goals achieved, the Irish Republican Army renounced violence in 2005. Before that, for many decades, the IRA played a clever game in its push to end British control of Northern Ireland and help the province's minority Catholics in their power struggle with majority Protestants. While the IRA was one of the most aggressive terrorist groups in the world, regularly bombing not just in Northern Ireland but downtown London, it also had a political arm: Sinn Fein (pronounced Shin Fain). It pursued the IRA's goals through conventional political means.

The strategy was famously dubbed the “ArmaLite and ballot box” approach. (ArmaLite is a small-arms manufacturer whose products include the M-4 and M-16 rifles.)

Are we now seeing animal-rights extremists beginning to adopt a similar strategy in the United States? Maybe. Consider the events of the last couple of months in Sacramento:

In May, after dozens of incidents of violence and harassment against University of California animal researchers and their families, the Assembly unanimously passed a UC-crafted bill extending researchers the same protections against cyberstalking already provided to elected officials and abortion clinic workers. Conventional measures, such as making it easier to get restraining orders and file civil suits against animal-rights extremists, were also in the bill. But the key was the provisions that would make it illegal to post pictures of researchers and their families on Internet hate sites that encouraged violence against them.

Cue the U.S., animal-rights version of Sinn Fein. Out of nowhere, little-known groups – Animal Place, Animal Switchboard, Center for Constitutional Rights, Commission of Animal Control and Welfare, etc. – emerged to announce a long list of objections to the measure. All were easily shown to be bogus.

The cyber protections are unconstitutional. Yeah, right, they're OK for pols and clinic workers but not animal researchers.

The law would chill open debate. Yeah, right, it's going to shut animal-rights activists up.

The law is unnecessary because of existing laws. Yeah, right, they've done a great job protecting researchers and their families.

This one is my favorite for its vacuousness and idiocy: The law would add to prison overcrowding. Yeah, right, targeting animal-rights terrorists would lead to such a mass influx of prisoners that our troubled prison system could collapse.

The real goal of these groups was obvious: maintaining a status quo in which the nation's worst domestic terrorists could keep doing their thing without facing an aggressive pushback.

They didn't have to look far in Sacramento to find a powerful ally. Astonishingly enough, Senate Judiciary Chairwoman Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, gutted the bill so thoroughly that all it contained was language making it easier to prosecute terrorists for ... trespassing. The mind reels.

Corbett might well have gotten away with this, too, but then the terrorists went back into action, firebombing the property of two UC Santa Cruz researchers. The juxtaposition of the bombings with the revelation of the bill's gutting was too much for Corbett's colleagues to take, and behind the scenes they forced the ban on cyberstalking to be restored. Quick Senate approval now looks likely, and the bill – an “urgency” measure that takes effect as soon as it is signed by the governor – could be law very soon.

Despite the worst efforts of Sen. Ellen Corbett and the political wing of the Animal Liberation Front.