The Wall Street Journal has published on its website the text of the proposed 10-point checklist for determining whether a Republican candidate is orthodox enough  to benefit from the party's endorsement and fund-raising.

The affirmations issues are quite a mixed bag. Some are perennial and cosmic, such as: "We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership." Others are micro-specific and could be obsolescent by the time they are proposed to the Republican National Committee in January.  Take: "We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare." In January, they  might have to change "oppose" to "opposed."

And, even if you're a true-blue conservative, is legislation opposing "card check" as a way to organize unions as big a deal as abortion or the right to keep and bear arms? Presumably not, but all of the propositions are weighted the same. As George W. Bush said of Al Gore's economic proposals, this is fuzzy math.

-- Michael McGough

Lou Dobbs is not ruling out running for president. But if the past is any guide (remember presidential candidate Joe Biden?), he may be willing to take second place on the ticket. Palin-Dobbs, anyone? The only condition that Lou might impose on the deal would be for Palin to show ID if she came to the GOP convention through Canada.

-- Michael McGough

The New York Times reports that conservatives  have been drawing up a 10-point checklist -- to be printed on litmus paper? -- against which the Republican National Committee should measure prospective GOP candidates.

There's nothing surprising about the contents of the proposed creed (for example, opposition to government funding of abortion and President Obama's "socialist agenda"). Nor is the idea of a conservative loyalty test. It was implicit in the muscling by true believers of a Republican nominee for a House seat in New York who didn't toe the ideological line.

Never mind that Democrats captured that seat after the withdrawal of the scorned RINO (Republican in Name Only). Conservative Republicans increasingly seem willing to sacrifice electoral success on the altar of philosophical purity, and moderate Republicans are increasingly are an endangered species. That's good news for Democrats, but bad news for those of us who believe that a modicum of diversity in both parties is conducive to compromise and good government.

But back to the surprising thing about the proposed Index of Acceptability: the fact that 70% is a passing grade. Answer seven questions right and you get an endorsement and funding. Get six right and you flunk.  ("Bummer! I messed up that abortion question. Maybe I can do something for extra credit.") If too many candidates fall short, the party may have to start grading on the curve.

-- Michael McGough

With the fuss we make over Thanksgiving, I’d bet most Americans believe the Pilgrims were the first nonnative American settlers in North America.

And that narrative didn’t begin at Plymouth Rock.

The first permanent English settlement was in Virginia, not Massachusetts, in Jamestown, not Plymouth – in 1607, not in 1620.

So how did the Pilgrims, and not the folk of Jamestown, manage to get top billing, even though they showed up 13 years late to the party that became the United States of America (and about 35 years after the short-lived Roanoke Colony)?

Maybe it was demographics. The Pilgrims came with women and children (and some nonbelievers); women didn’t come to the Jamestown colony until the year after it was settled.

Maybe it was class structure. The Pilgrims arrived with indentured laborers, as did the Jamestown company. But the Jamestown group seemed more class-stratified, being, at least by Captain John Smith’s account, excessively burdened with ‘’gentlemen’’ averse to labor.

Maybe it was because, at the outset anyway, the Pilgrims evidently got on better with the native Americans than the Virginia colonists did (save for the renowned story of Pocahontas saving the life of Captain John Smith, for what that’s worth).

Maybe it was the motive for coming here in the first place, at least motive through the lens of history. Plymouth and Jamestown both had feet in a couple of joint English stock companies. One of its excursions actually set up housekeeping in Maine in the same year that Jamestown was settled, but it was soon abandoned.

Anyway, that’s my thinking. What’s yours? How did Bay State turkey trump Virginia ham, and the Pilgrims trump the Virginians in history and imagination? 

-- Patt Morrison

America's Roman Catholic bishops aren't completely obsessed by abortion and gay marriage. My former colleague Ann Rodgers, one of the best religion reporters around, reports in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that bishops have been battling over whether to approve a retro English translation of the Mass with more traditional (and, critics charge, more stilted) language.

The new/old language won out at the recent bishops' conference. So now when the priest says "The Lord be with you," the congregation will reply "And with your spirit," not "and also with you," the current, clunky and inaccurate translation of the response I learned as an altar boy: "Et cum spiritu tuo." Like W.H. Auden, I believe that you can combine conservatism in liturgical language with more progressive political view.

Conservatism is cool even when it leads to technical language. Take the line in the Nicene Creed in which, in recent years, Jesus has been described as "one in being with the Father." Now he will be described as  "consubstantial with the Father." Abstruse? Perhaps. But truer to the Latin rendering of a Greek theological distinction that once led to violence between Christians. Confusion can beget a look into church history.

Even archaic non-theological language can be a spur to education. When Christians used to say that Christ would return to judge the "quick and the dead," parents could explain to their bewildered children that "quick" referred not to marathon runners but to those who were living, who had been quickened in their mothers' wombs. The lesson could then turn to the expression "cut to the quick."

Now that the Vatican has invited restive Anglicans to bring at least some parts of their majestic Book of Common Prayer with them when they cross the Tiber, the "regular" Catholic Church has to worry about non-tone-deaf believers switching  to the new church-within-a-church. The new/old liturgy approved by the bishops could be a bulwark against such defections.

-- Michael McGough

Good news today from the backstage maneuverings on the Senate Democrats' healthcare reform bill. As The New Republic reported, Democratic leaders have agreed to give more flexibility to millions of Americans who get their health insurance today through their workplace.

First, a little background. My favorite healthcare reform proposal was the Healthy Americans Act by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Robert Bennett (R-Utah). In addition to being a genuinely bipartisan approach to the issue, it was smart about bringing market forces to bear on the industry. But it also was the most radical departure from the current system, because it would have decoupled health insurance from employment. Instead of continuing to have employers cut deals with insurers and then pay part of the cost of coverage on their workers' behalf, it would have given employees the subsidies and tax benefits directly, grouped them into statewide risk pools and created new markets for them to shop for policies. In addition to giving workers far more choice of insurer and plan -- most employers have a take-it-or-leave-it approach to health benefits -- it would encourage them to spend their healthcare dollars more wisely. That's because, for the first time, they'd see the total cost of their insurance and all the options for managing it.

Wyden tried in vain add a variation of that plan to the Senate Finance Committee's healthcare bill -- his amendment would have let workers take vouchers from their employers in lieu of health benefits, then use those vouchers to help buy individual policies through new state insurance exchanges. Now, finally, he has persuaded Senate Democratic leaders to give his vision of employee choice a foot in the door. Wyden announced a deal this afternoon with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to add a slimmed-down version of his plan to the healthcare reform bill the Senate may take up Saturday.

As with his earlier amendment, the proposal would give workers the option of converting the money their employer spends on health benefits into vouchers they could use to buy policies through the state exchanges. The main difference is that this capability would be available only to certain workers who would be exempt from the bill's requirement to obtain insurance. Specifically, it would apply only to those earning less than four times the federal poverty threshold (e.g., $88,200 for a family of four) whose employer-sponsored insurance premiums would consume 8% to 9.8% of their total income.

It's not much, but it's a start. Now let's see if Reid can get the 60 votes needed to start debate on the bill....

Photo: Sen. Ron Wyden. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images

-- Jon Healey

I met Tim Russert only once, before a "Meet the Press" debate between two Senate candidates from my home state of Pennsylvania. Russert was engaging, impressively au courant with Keystone State politics and, well, a nice guy. I also admired his work, and I was sad when he died before his time. (You never hear about someone dying at his time.)

Still, I cringed at the excessiveness of his obsequies. Journalism has a long, and appealingly human, tradition of providing a little nicer send-off to colleagues than someone in another business might receive. That's why newspapers give their own printers and truck drivers suspiciously long obituaries. The over-the-top eulogies for Russert were a species of this phenomenon, but that didn't make them less bizarre. I like to think that Russert, looking down, would want to interrupt his media mourners in mid-gush just the way he called politicians on their prevarications.

But at least that's over now -- except that it isn't. Tomorrow the Newseum (I know, it's a goofy name for an interesting resource) will unveil a new exhibit: a re-creation of Russert's office at NBC News, complete with his desk "stacked high with research material, books and handwritten notes, illustrating the rigorous preparation Russert put into each show" and "mementos of his beloved Buffalo Bills." What, no Rolodex?

This has just a whiff of the medieval Catholic practice of venerating relics of the saints, which probably would amuse Russert -- and, I hope, embarrass him.

We've seen taxes on death, luxury and sin, and now the Senate is poised to impose one on vanity. To help cover the cost of health insurance subsidies for the working class, the bill cobbled together by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) would create a 5% excise tax on elective cosmetic surgery. "Elective" is the important word here; the new levy wouldn't apply to reconstructive surgery for people who'd been disfigured.

The idea, which some Senate Democrats have been kicking around for months, has already been tried out in New Jersey, where it reportedly brought in a fraction of the expected amount. That's probably true because it's relatively easy to evade a tax levied by only one state; dodging one assessed in all 50 would be a bigger challenge, although hardly an insurmountable one.

If this were a Republican proposal, I'd suspect it was a form of payback to Hollywood liberals. But it's a Democratic idea, a small piece of the party's attempt to make the wealthy pick up as much of the tab for healthcare reform as possible. (Not that cosmetic surgery is only for the rich, but it certainly takes a fair amount of disposable income.)

The biggest problem with this kind of tax is that, as the Tax Foundation points out, it distorts behavior. And unlike smoking or even drinking sugary cola, it's not a behavior that policymakers have a reason to discourage. Elective cosmetic surgeries aren't covered by insurance, and they don't contribute rising healthcare costs or the looming insolvency in Medicare.

No, these procedures are simply an inviting target, as per Russell Long's axiom about taxing the man behind the tree. 

Along the same lines, Reid's bill would hike the Medicare tax on wages above $200,000 by almost 35%. The change is projected to raise 10 times as much as the tax on plastic surgeries -- $54 billion over 10 years vs. $5 billion. But it violates the spirit of Medicare, which is an insurance program, not a savings plan. The benefits it provides are the same regardless of how much you've paid into the system, and they're no more valuable to a retiree who was a big earner than one who was a low-wage worker bee.

By adding those two taxes to the bill, Reid and company were able to reduce the amount collected through a tax on expensive health insurance plans. Such a tax would distort behavior too, but in a good way -- by encouraging people to obtain insurance plans with higher deductibles and co-payments, which would be less likely to promote overconsumption of healthcare services.

Organized labor bitterly opposes this surcharge, however, because it would affect rank-and-file union members who've bargained for rich insurance plans, not just CEOs with gold-plated benefits. That makes it a tough sell for Democrats, even if it's better policy than simply slapping more taxes on the rich.

-- Jon Healey

Photo credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

That's $26,000 for a single year at a University of California campus, not the four usually needed to graduate. The UC Board of Regents voted today to increase basic education fees for undergraduates by 32% to more than $10,000 for the 20010-11 academic year. Throw in the roughly $16,000 per year required for room, board and books, and the UC system fees approach $30,000 per year -- and feel a lot like the cost of an Ivy League education with few of the perks. (None of this is to say, mind you, that the regents won't be forced to raise fees again in 2010, with the state facing a massive budget deficit of $21 billion over the next year and a half.)

My days as a UC Berkeley undergraduate, from 2000-05, saw a series of fee increases, spurred in part by an agreement in 2004 struck between then-university system President Robert C. Dynes and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The so-called compact (it wasn't a contract, much to Sacramento's benefit) promised long-term, predictable increases in state funding for the UC system in exchange for annual student fee hikes. I'll admit that fees when I started school in 2000 seemed generously low (they were less than $4,000 per year), so when they started going up a few years later there was some mild resistance by students but a consensus nonetheless that most of us could afford to pay more. With each fee increase came the mantra that UC was still very much a bargain for students, a contention that rang true at the time.

But I wonder: With fees having doubled in less than a decade, is a UC education still a deal? Is there a student-fee ceiling at which it isn't? I'm interested in hearing your views, especially if you're a student at a UC campus or a parent of a student. Feel free to post your thoughts below.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: UCLA students protest student fee hikes on Wednesday at UCLA. Credit: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

The California Energy Commission unanimously approved a proposed regulation today capping the power consumption of televisions sold in California, starting in 2011. Although the Consumer Electronics Assn., which represents the world's largest TV makers, was apoplectic about the ruling, The Times' Marc Lifsher reports that one faction -- the LCD TV Assn. -- was all smiles. The reason? LCD sets are less power-hungry than plasma TVs. In other words, as so often happens when the government regulates products, it favors one technology over another -- and manufacturers know it, even if the regulators insist otherwise.

(We on the Times' editorial board had also urged the commission last month not to adopt the rules, warning that they could inhibit innovations that might do more for the environment in the long run.)

The real bite in the regulations won't come until 2013, when the caps are reduced and, potentially, the rules are extended to larger TVs. Representatives of the CEA struggled at a news conference this afternoon to cite specific examples of new, feature-laden TVs that couldn't meet the 2011 cut-off -- after a bit of research, they offered one 50-inch Samsung plasma set, although more examples are likely to be forthcoming soon. But they warned that few if any of today's models would meet the tougher limits.

Granted, this is an industry that innovates rapidly and has been particularly good in recent years at lowering power consumption. On the other hand, this is also an industry that regularly loads new features into its products to try to restore the profit margins that erode quickly in the brutal competition for buyers. At the moment, manufacturers are racing to present digital TVs that can present 3-D pictures, a task that requires either a high screen-refresh rate or polarized glass. The former drinks power, the latter drinks dollars. Manufacturers are also integrating more robust Internet capabilities into their sets, which also can demand more power.

The CEA fears that the new regulations will kill that kind of innovation and feature-expansion, as well as blocking new technologies that, like plasma and LCD, enter the market as relatively inefficient users of power only to become significantly better at managing their electricity use as they mature. It's certainly true that the rules would hold technologies off the market until they're efficient enough to meet the new standards; the question is whether manufacturers would be willing to develop generation after generation of products they can't sell just to get to that point.

One other caveat: California's new rules may have little effect on the market if no other state follows California's lead. In that case, the main losers would be California retailers, who wouldn't be able to offer as full a selection of products as online merchants in other states.

The energy commission insisted that the regulations would benefit consumers because the new TVs they buy will use less power -- an average of $30 per year. That seems overstated, however, because it ignores the improvements the industry has been making on its own. And even if $30 is the right number, that's chicken feed compared with the higher prices shoppers may have to pay to get a more efficient set with the performance they want.

The commission didn't seem to recognize that not all TVs are created equal. Just because consumers can find a more efficient model that's the same size as a power-hungry TV they like, that doesn't mean they can find one with the same picture quality in the same price range. Of course, exceptional TV picture quality isn't a birthright, and conserving energy is good for public health and the environment. But the commission asserted that its rules would be all gain, no pain, and that's a quixotic view of the market, to put it kindly.

-- Jon Healey

It's a combination of issues so hot, an op-ed about reopening King-Harbor hospital doesn't even make the top three! Leading off is a pair of op-eds about best-selling memoirist Sarah Palin -- one friendly, one not so much. Matthew Continetti, associate editor of the right-leaning Weekly Standard and author of "The Persecution of Sarah Palin," tops the page with an analysis of the many reinventions of Alaska's erstwhile governor: first culture warrior, then watchdog, reformer, would-be vice president and, now, celebrity:

But Michael Carey, a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News, retorts that Palin's new book shows her to be more of a whiner than a leader:

(Are you planning to help Palin's publisher recoup its advance? Take our poll!)

Rounding out the op-ed page, Times columnist Tim Rutten urges the University of California Board of Regents to approve a proposed partnership with the county Board of Supervisors to reopen and jointly oversee Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital.

On the other side of the Opinion divide, the Times editorial board gives Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown a dash of sympathy being "trapped in a political cage from which there will be no easy escape." The cause? His office just gave a pass to Brown's former communications director for surreptitiously recording interviews with reporters, and now liberals are pushing him to investigate a pair of independent filmmakers who surreptitiously recorded ACORN employees in California advising them how to set up a prostitution ring (or, in the case of ACORN's Felix Harris in Los Angeles, refusing to help after learning the prostitutes would be minors).

The board also urges the District of Columbia Council not to bow to pressure from the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, which has threatened to stop providing social services if the council approves same-sex marriages in D.C.

(True personal story to illustrate how conservative the Archdiocese of Washington is: I'm a Catholic, and I got engaged to be married while I was living in D.C. But when I asked a priest at my church if I could have the nuptials there in five months, he told me I needed to wait at least a year to receive the church's blessing. And if I didn't receive the church's blessing, my soul would be "lost to perdition." In other words, I'd spend eternity in Hell because I'd gotten married the wrong way. As it happened, my future mother-in-law lived outside Baltimore, and the diocese there accommodated us without hesitation. That was 19 years ago, and we're still happily married. Whether I'm on the road to perdition is a wholly separate issue.)

Finally, the board gives its support, with reservations, to the latest version of a proposed federal "shield law" to help journalists shield the identity of confidential sources.

Illustration: Ken Fallin For The Times

-- Jon Healey

The frat boys at Newsweek were probably chugging some brewskies when they came up with the idea for this cover. How pathetic. I don't care whether this is done to a woman who is conservative or moderate or liberal. A Democrat, a Republican, a Green Party member or a Libertarian. It's sexist as hell. "The problem," with Sarah Palin, is what? That she's fit and attractive? Are they kidding?

There are legitimate reasons to disagree with her politics and her positions on issues. But this is not the way. (On the other hand, if it turns out that she's actually wearing pantyhose with her running shoes in this photo, consider this defense null and void.)

Anyway, I may be underestimating Newsweek's cynicism in using a photo the ex-governor of Alaska posed for when she was featured in Runners' World.  Pictures of pretty women sell magazines, so maybe that's all it really cares about.

Here's Editor Jon Meacham's defense of the photo:

Right. I'm not a regular reader of Newsweek so maybe he's telling the truth. Maybe Newsweek really has run lots of out-of-context covers trivializing male political figures because of their looks.

-- Lisa Richardson

A new Associated Press poll, done by Stanford University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, provides more evidence that the public wants comprehensive healthcare reform but rejects just about everything that implies. Although you should take a moment to look at all the results -- and comment on them below! -- here's a quick summary.

As shown in the screen shot to the right, people are eager for major improvements to the healthcare system. They want someone else to pay for the changes, however.

In particular, they strongly oppose raising income taxes or taxing health insurance benefits, but almost 60% favor dunning the rich. They like the idea of requiring everyone to obtain insurance, but they hate the idea of financial penalties on those who don't. Similarly, they want a mandate on businesses to provide insurance, but are lukewarm about enforcing it. Finally, more than 70% said insurers are too profitable and medicines too expensive, but most opposed raising taxes on them, drug companies or medical device makers.

My interpretation: the survey is yet another indication that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats haven't persuaded Americans, most of whom have health insurance and aren't seriously ill, that the proposed reform will benefit them, too. Not convinced that they have much to gain personally, they're not willing to pay more to achieve it.

About 1,500 randomly selected adults were surveyed, giving the poll a margin of error of  plus/minus 2.5%.

-- Jon Healey

Top of the morning, Opinion L.A. followers! I thought I'd start off the day by gathering a snapshot of our readers' feelings on Sarah Palin's book, "Going Rogue: An American Life," which comes out today.

Take our unscientific poll, leave a comment or do both (my vote: I hope someone gives it to me for Christmas).

-- Paul Thornton

Photo credit: Matthew Cavanaugh / EPA

So Californians may yet again endure the letdown of an electoral battle royal that never was. In 2002, it was supposed to be Riordan-Davis; in 2010, the "what if" may be Fiorina-Boxer. The outcome of a Boxer-DeVore match (the latter, as Weigel reports in his article, has expressed Obama birther sympathies) would seem a foregone conclusion. After all, when asked to choose between a far-from-the-mainstream partisan and an incumbent with limited legislative accomplishments, Californians in the past have sided with the bland over the bracing.

-- Paul Thornton

Left photo: U.S. Sen. Barabara Boxer. Credit: Michael Reynolds / European Pressphoto Agency.
Right photo: GOP Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina. Credit: Michal Czerwonka / Getty Images.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is, in a sense, having a similar argument thrown in its face, as reported in the Washington Post:

Read the whole Post article here.

So there you have it: Charities associated with the Catholic Church in Washington do indeed have the same rights as every other group -- to contract with the city to provide services without discriminating against gay men and women. Of course, there's a far more pressing issue facing the archdiocese, as articulated by D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh: "'Are they really going to harm people because they have a philosophical disagreement with us on one issue? I hope, in the silver light of day, when this passes, because it will pass, they will not really act on this threat."

The Times briefly addressed the conflict between religious charities and legalizing same-sex marriage in its editorial against Proposition 8.

-- Paul Thornton

Perhaps CNN was growing tired of Lou Dobbs lying about those dirty, leprosy-infected illegals from Mexico, or railing against newspapers for being so distracted by May Day immigration protests that they neglected to notice -- when they actually did notice -- that May 1 is officially Law Day. Whatever his concrete motives, Dobbs is out at CNN, having offered the following to his viewers Wednesday as a reason for his abrupt departure: "And some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond my role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving, as well as to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day." You have to admire a man who wants to be a real doer.

So how should Dobbs make the world a better place for Americans? I've offered a few likely jobs below from off the top of my head; if you feel this list is incomplete, feel free to leave your suggestion as a comment.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo credit: Karen Bleier / AFP/Getty Images

A Rasmussen Reports poll released Tuesday seems to confirm a point The Times made in an editorial last month on a California regulation that would ban large-screen TVs from being sold because they consume too much energy: Leave it up to the market to catch up on electricity-inefficient televisions. An excerpt from the Rasmussen summary:

Conservation-minded folks (this bike and bus commuter considers himself one) may be discouraged by the majority opinion that most people feel being able to buy whatever mega-screen television they darn well please is more important than saving energy. But the energy-unregulated TV market is working in conservation's favor: Nearly the same percentage of people -- 54% -- say efficiency is important enough to them that would pay more for televisions that use less electricity.

As The Times' editorial pointed out, the new regulation would actually hamper the innovation already underway in the industry. The Rasmussen poll adds another point: California's action may deprive consumers of the energy-efficient entertainment they'd pay a premium for.

Hat tip: Katherine Mangu-Ward and Reason's Hit and Run.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Maybe it's because I'm a long-ago high school newspaper editor, but I was shocked and appalled (nobody is ever shocked but not appalled) by a New York Times report that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy -- "widely regarded as one of the court’s most vigilant defenders of First Amendment values" -- insisted on reviewing and tweaking an article about his appearance at a private school in New York. The student newspaper at the Dalton School published a tantalizing editor's note saying: "We are not able to cover the recent visit by a Supreme Court justice due to numerous publication constraints."

Then I read the Times article again and discerned some shades of ethical gray. It's true, as Frank D. LoMonte of the Student Press Law Center said, that "in the professional world, it would be a nonstarter if a source demanded prior approval of coverage of a speech." But apparently Kennedy's purpose wasn't to vet the article as a whole but to reconsider the felicity of some of his phraseology.

It wasn't clear whether he made this request in advance. But if he did, and the agreement was confined to allowing him to polish his prose, I'm less shocked but still somewhat appalled. My own practice as a reporter was to refuse at the outset to show my completed story to an interviewee. As for quotes, I never would allow someone to retract or rephrase an answer because of second thoughts about its political effect.

But I made an exception when I did a series of interviews with prominent intellectuals. One law professor, in explaining his constitutional philosophy, used an analogy in reference to the Constitution. He later called me to suggest a different analogy that he said more precisely made his point. I let him change it, because the whole purpose of the piece was to let him present his thinking in his own words.

The difference here is that the Kennedy story was an account of an event at which an audience heard the justice's original words. That tips the scales of journalistic justice. Kennedy said what he said; if he wanted to correct it, he should have written a letter to the editor.

Actually, there's a precedent. Last year the court ruled that the death penalty couldn't be imposed for rape. Writing for the court, Kennedy cited as proof that the penalty was cruel and unusual the fact that, while 26 states and the federal government, had the death penalty, "only six of those jurisdictions authorize the death penalty for the rape of a child." After the decision, a blogger pointed out that the Uniform Code of Military Justice allowed the death sentence in the rape of a child, a fact the court had overlooked

The court added a footnote rectifying its omission -- but it didn't blot out the original language.

--Michael McGough

I've encountered a fair amount of confusion about the abortion language the House actually adopted on Saturday. Read it for yourself here -- it's a little more than three pages in large type, much of it spent removing abortion-related provisions in the underlying bill. The amendment by Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) would restrict only the new insurance marketplace (a.k.a. the "exchange") that the bill would create for uninsured individuals and small businesses. It would have no direct effect on the group insurance policies that cover many American workers and their families. Whether it would have an indirect effect on those policies, however, is an open question. Feel free to offer your speculation in the comment section below.

Specifically, the Stupak amendment would prohibit federal dollars from being used to buy any policy offered through the exchange that covered abortions other than those related to rape, incest or danger to the mother's life. It also would require insurers that offered elective abortion coverage through the exchange to also offer policies "identical in every respect" except that they did not cover such abortions.

The main effects of the amendment would be to stop anyone receiving a federal subsidy from buying a comprehensive health insurance policy that covered elective abortions, and to bar the proposed government-run insurance plan (a.k.a. the "public option") from covering such procedures. The amendment would allow insurers to offer "supplemental" policies that covered abortions, but their customers could not use federal subsidies to buy them.

Prior to the Stupak amendment, the House bill would have required insurers to jump through some accounting hoops to segregate the money collected for coverage that was mandated by the bill -- and eligible for subsidies -- from coverage for elective abortions. But abortion opponents argued that this arrangement didn't go far enough. Money is fungible, after all, and making the mandatory coverage more affordable with subsidies would also make any additional coverage more affordable.

The same argument applies to the Stupak amendment. The Stupak language would require women seeking coverage of elective abortions through the exchange to sign up for a separate policy, potentially (but not necessarily) forcing them to spend more for the two than they would have spent on a single plan that included the coverage. Of course, their ability to afford the supplemental coverage would be greatly enhanced by the federal subsidies that shrink the cost of the main plan.

So why is the pro-life camp so enthusiastic about the amendment? Maybe they expect it to lead insurers to stop offering any kind of coverage for elective abortions through the exchange. That's what Planned Parenthood and its allies fear. These advocates complain that insurers wouldn't offer the supplemental coverage because there wouldn't be enough demand, given that abortions result from unplanned pregnancies. I'm not so sure about that -- no one plans to get sick or break a bone either, and yet everyone who buys health insurance wants to be covered for such things.

It's also worth noting that although many insurance policies cover elective abortions today, a high percentage of them aren't paid for by insurers. In addition, 17 states use their own Medicaid budgets to pay for "medically necessary" abortions for poor women.

So the Stupak amendment may not have much effect on the poorest women in states such as California, women covered by group insurance policies, or women of means. But it's undeniable that the amendment threatens the availability of insurance coverage for elective abortions for the working poor and lower middle class -- the ones who would receive subsidies under the House bill to buy insurance through the exchange. That category includes those making 150% to 400% of the federal poverty line -- up to $43,000 for a single woman.

Updated, Wednesday at 3:27 p.m.: I see from the comments left by Karen, Nate and a few others that I shouldn't have referred to abortions not covered by the so-called Hyde amendment restrictions (i.e., to terminate pregnancies not caused by rape or incest and not needed to save the mother's life) as "elective." My bad. The non-Hyde category includes abortions that would be deemed "medically necessary," which is a very broad classification. In fact, some abortion opponents view "medically necessary" as a loophole so wide, it opens the door to abortions for practically any reason.

-- Jon Healey

Lots of folks are writing these days about Rupert Murdoch's recent statement that News Corp. plans to stop its newspaper stories from being indexed by Google when it throws up a more comprehensive pay wall next year. His comments came days after the American Press Institute released an intriguing report on digital business models that exposed a gap between the industry's sense of its content's value and the public's perception. Hmm, "gap" isn't exactly the right word. Make that "yawning chasm."

API and ITZBelden surveyed daily-newspaper executives in North America in August and September, reaching a total of about 7% of the publications in the U.S. and Canada. Their responses were compared with results from consumer surveys aggregated by Belden earlier this year. The comparison revealed that news execs believed their stories were more valuable and harder to replace than readers did. For example, 52% of the readers surveyed said it would be somewhat easy or very easy to find a substitute for the online content that news industry websites were providing; 68% of the executives said the opposite.

Here's the most telling table, in my opinion -- it shows just how slim the chances are that readers who can no longer find the content they want on a newspaper's website will migrate to the paper's print edition:

Granted, the API study didn't seem to address the central issue posed by pay walls: how much, if anything, would people be willing to pay to read a story? But it did say this about the fees that newspapers charge for subscriptions to their websites:

"Respondents report a wide range of online subscription charges (from $1 to $27.50 a month), yet they report surprisingly uniform levels of uptake on subscriptions, typically 1 percent to 3 percent of print circulation -- regardless of price."

In other words, the vast majority of readers don't like the subscription model, regardless of how cheap it might be. Micropayments, anyone?

(Thanks to the Center for Media Research for putting the API report on my radar screen.)

-- Jon Healey

It was a blow to Roman Catholic liberals when the Vatican announced last month that it would welcome, en masse, conservative Anglicans who share the pope's opposition to female clergy and traditional views about homosexuality. But there was a silver lining for liberals: The fact that in welcoming married Anglican priests to the fold, Pope Benedict XVI was perhaps opening the door to married priests within so-called Latin Rite Catholicism. (Eastern Rite Catholics, who recognize the pope's authority but follow rites similar to those of Eastern Orthodoxy, do ordain married men, though Eastern Catholics in the United States were pressured to conform to Western practice so as not to "scandalize" their Irish Catholic neighbors).

But the publication this week of the decree implementing the overture to Anglicans suggests that the slope to married Catholic priests isn't that slippery. After saying that married former Anglican priests could be ordained as Catholic priests, the "Apostolic Constitution" stops short of adopting the Anglican practice of routinely ordaining men who want to become priests.

While authorities of the new church-within-a-church will abide by "the discipline of celibate clergy in the Latin Church, as a rule," an "ordinary" (a bishop or former Anglican bishop) may also ask the pope for permission to ordain married men "on a case-by-case basis." This could be a face-saving way to perpetuate the Anglican tradition of a married clergy without saying so, or it could be a warning that married Anglican laymen will be ordained only rarely. Either way, the new Anglican body within Catholicism will not have the autonomy enjoyed by the Eastern Catholic churches.

The more stinging rebuff to Roman Catholic advocates of married priests is this rather mean-spirited provision of a companion document: "Those who have been previously ordained in the Catholic Church and subsequently have become Anglicans, may not exercise sacred ministry in the Ordinariate." In other words, if you left the Catholic Church and now want to return alongside other Anglican priests, you are treated worse than an Anglican priest who never belonged to the Catholic Church in the first place.

Perhaps the purpose of this provision is to prevent married Roman Catholics who want to be ordained as priests to pretend to convert to Anglicanism so that they can go back through the revolving church door and be accepted as married Catholic priests. But how likely is that? And if the church is willing to incorporate Anglican traditions that don't violate Catholic doctrine (as opposed to a mere regulation like mandatory celibacy), why not treat the new Anglican Rite exactly as the Eastern churches are treated? The only justification for that inconsistency is to stifle discussion about ending mandatory celibacy for Roman Catholic priests.

-- Michael McGough

After signing up for the 2010 L.A. Marathon early this morning and studying the course map -- which was unveiled today -- I remembered a piece on the 2007 race by then-Times Deputy Editorial Page Editor Michael Newman, my boss at the time. After finishing the marathon, Newman panned race organizers for ignoring L.A.'s best asset (the ocean) in routing runners from Universal City through Koreatown, Boyle Heights and other inland neighborhoods on their way to downtown L.A. Newman garnered his share of provincial scorn for declaring, based on his race experience, that "much of L.A. isn't very pretty."

I thoroughly agreed with Newman at the time -- that much of L.A. is ugly -- and I still do. But having actually signed up for the 2010 L.A. Marathon, my thoughts on the "stadium to the sea" route are mixed; perhaps bipolar would be a better way to put it. As a first-time marathoner, I look forward to the beach finish providing a major psychological boost to those of us pounding our feet on pavement for 26.2 miles. But putting on my lifelong Southern Californian hat -- which comes with a deep "warts and all" affection for Los Angeles -- the new route strikes me as ... just not right.

Despite its Hollywood-inspired reputation, Los Angeles has always struck me as a city unafraid to put its gritty face forward. Past marathon routes -- which started and ended in downtown L.A. -- reflected this attitude. Sure, runners would bisect tonier neighborhoods such as Hancock Park and Larchmont Village. But this is L.A., a city whose wealthy enclaves are often adjacent to or surrounded by working-class neighborhoods. Running in Hancock Park and Larchmont Village practically requires passing through Koreatown or the yet-to-be gentrified areas of Hollywood.

Looking at the route closely, and how magnetically it seems to abut the Hollywood Hills and Santa Monica Mountains for much of the race, it's hard not to come away with the impression that race organizers deliberately avoided areas some may not consider "nice" (Rodeo Drive -- really?). You can call this the Los Angeles Marathon if you want, and come race day, I'll gladly run. But I won't be surprised if, for much of the race, some Southern Californians viewing the event from home on March 21 wonder what marathon they're watching.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: The start line at the 24th annual Los Angeles Marathon on May 25, 2009. Credit: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times.

When I say "our," I mean the collection of Times editorial writers and editors who worked in the same department 20 years ago as I do now (for the record, I was 9 years old when the then-undead German Democratic Republic announced on Nov. 9, 1989, that it  would allow its prisoners -- er, citizens -- to travel freely to capitalist West Berlin and West Germany). Brighter minds than mine have already weighed in on the historical significance of the intervening 20 years between the democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe of 1989 and now (click here for a roundup of today's Berlin Wall punditry). Today on our own Op-Ed page, columnist Gregory Rodriguez waxes historical about the Cold War nostalgia for the moral clarity provided by the Berlin Wall, and Mitchell Koss reminds us of the revolutionary actions of Hungarians several months prior to the events in East Germany. On Sunday we published the accounts of six former East Germans on their experiences as citizens of a reunited Germany.

Below is a Times editorial published on Nov. 10, 1989, the day after the East German politburo lifted emigration restrictions on its own citizens and precipitated the demolition of the Berlin Wall. Though The Times relishes the excitement of the moment, the editorial steers clear of any prognostication about the future of communism in Eastern Europe (much less the Soviet Union, which would cease to exist two years later) and devotes much of its ink to analyzing the realpolitik behind East Germany's actions.

-- Paul Thornton

The full editorial:

Charlie Beck, chief-designate of the Los Angeles Police Department, visited with reporters, editors and members of The Times' editorial board Wednesday, the day after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced his nomination of Beck as the next LAPD chief. In some areas, Beck distinguished himself (though cordially so) from former Chief William J. Bratton, pointing out that his method of effecting change by focusing on rank-and-file officers differs from his predecessor's emphasis on establishing policy and working with political leaders. Beck expressed support for greater transparency in police oversight (the subject of a Times editorial Saturday*) and Special Order 40, the department mandate that prevents officers from initiating police action for the purpose of determining someone's immigration status.*

Below are audio clips of the session; I've included notable quotes by Beck on each topic. Segments two through eight begin, in order, with questions posed by Times staff members Jim Newton, Patt Morrison, Nick Goldberg, Marjorie Miller, Joel Rubin, David Lauter, Eddy Hartenstein and Newton. The first clip doesn't begin with a question.

LAPD reform, from the ground up

Federal consent decree

"All of the issues that the consent decree was created to address, I agree with, and those will continue. Now, some of the mechanics have become ill-suited because either we've reached universal compliance on them, but that doesn't necessarily declare victory on the issue. There are other ways to do this monitoring that is smart."

Transparency in police oversight

"My core belief is that when you become a police officer -- and you're entrusted with life, liberty and life and death of people in the community -- that you give up some right to anonymity that most other people enjoy. Unfortunately, state law doesn't agree with me on that."

Relationship with the Police Protective League

"I think the union is a huge ally. I think that a manager that ignores the authority and power of a union, such as some of ours have done in the past, ignores a huge opportunity to mold his workforce. So the union is very important. Do I think we're going to agree on all issues? No."

Immigration and drug enforcement

"I believe in Special Order 40. I believe in not just the words on paper, but the spirit of Special Order 40. I think that especially in Los Angeles, that we have to represent everybody, that everybody has the right to quality police service, regardless of status. I don't think that we should be an arm of the federal government in enforcing immigration laws specifically. However, if we make a legal arrest on another charge, and a criminal is monitored by Immigration, then they should have access to him."

LAPD size

"At 10,000 [officers], we can start to address core issues, because you are able to provide that basic level of service and add on the problem-solving piece. So I think that size that we're at right now should be looked at as a floor, the basement."

Beck's leadership team

"The team that got us here in the first place is still here. Nobody is being thrown out; nobody has told me that they're leaving. I intend to use the players that we have."

Work outside Los Angeles

"I'm going to go out a lot more than I would have if Bill Bratton had never been here, but I certainly won't travel as much as he did. This is my home, this is where my family is, this is where all my avocations are, all the things I like to do, so I'm going to be -- I'm a local boy, always have been. So that's the way I'll be as a chief."

Lessons learned from predecessors

-- Paul Thornton

*Update: The Times' editorial on transparency in the LAPD is now online; click here to read it.

*Update 2: A retired LAPD captain kindly wrote to inform me that my previous summary of Special Order 40 -- "the department mandate that prevents officers from obtaining the immigration status of detained suspects" -- was incorrect.

Photo: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief-designate Charlie Beck. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Public option, shmublic option. If you really want to get people worked up about healthcare reform, start talking about whether it should cover abortions and illegal immigrants. Today, the editorial board tackles both those issues, saying that abortion opponents are looking to "extend federal prohibitions into private pocketbooks. By restricting coverage offered through the exchange, they hope to make abortion coverage so unattractive that insurers eventually stop offering it in the market for individual and small-group policies." Healthcare reform thus should not restrict those who receive subsidies from buying extra coverage for abortions. And it's an odd healthcare policy that would eliminate all possibility for illegal immigrants to participate in subsidized care, but require them to purchase their own coverage regardless of their personal finances, the board argues.

"Extraordinary rendition" is just a dressed-up word for kidnapping in the editorial board's eyes, and it praises Italy for recognizing that fact, if mainly symbolically, by convicting 23 Americans and two Italians in absentia for grabbing an Egyptian cleric in Milan six years ago.

On the other side of the fold, the author of a book on the Cold War argues that former President  Reagan's seemingly bold words to Mikhail S. Gorbachev --"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." -- were for the most part a cover intended to build popular support for the president while he worked on effective diplomatic relations with the then-Soviet president.

And writer Joe Mathews raises his hand for the job of lieutenant governor. It's not that he has ambitions to run anything, he says, and that's exactly what qualifies him for the job. Meanwhile, think of all the spare time he'd have for blogging.

-- Karin Klein

Photo: People stroll by the giant dominoes set up at the site of the Berlin Wall, part of a gala celebration of its toppling. Credit: Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters

I'd deliberately stopped watching the news late Thursday evening after being overwhelmed by the horror out of Ft. Hood and the daylong tsunami of news in general. Sometimes, you've got to switch brain hemispheres.

I thought comedy and fashion would do that for me. So I skipped over to ''Project Runway,'' now with extra added fun in the sighting of L.A. landmarks, inasmuch as this season was shot here.

Lo and behold, there on the Lifetime channel was one landmark I didn't expect to see. Beaming bright in the sunshine, on a hillside above the 405 freeway -- yes, that was indeed the Getty Center, But it was also Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, immaculately suited, with a smile measurable in lumens, welcoming the designers to Los Angeles. Then, boom, faster than you could say ''auf wiedersehen,'' he was gone. As cameos go, though, it was probably more air time than he's used to getting on the six o'clock news..

And then, on Comedy Central, a little more than 90 minutes later, William Bratton, who just left the job of L.A. police chief on Saturday, was in the ejector seat on the "Colbert Report." He was a bit more subdued than we're used to seeing him here, maybe because Colbert only really asked about policing New York, a city Bratton characterized as ''a hellhole'' of broken-window offenders like squeegee pests and turnstile jumpers before he was able to work his police chiefly way on the Big Apple. I'm sorry Colbert didn't ask him anything about L.A.; I already miss Bratton's pungent observations about the sundry scofflaw ''knuckleheads'' and ''loony tunes'' of California.

And then I turned off the television and went to bed. I don't think I could have handled the surprise of seeing Sheriff Lee Baca in a guest spot on the SyFy channel.

-- Patt Morrison

Federal law gives copyright owners a legal monopoly over public performance of their works, among other uses. But their market power is supposed to be limited by the competition from other copyright owners. Consider the case of songwriters. Paul McCartney can make you pay for the privilege of including "Jet" in your movie, even if it's recorded by Shonen Knife instead of McCartney's Wings. But if you don't like what he charges, you can write your own material or go to another songwriter who demands less.

Unless you can't go to someone else. That's the problem TV broadcasters face when they air syndicated programming. They're contractually bound to air the programs they buy with the music that's already in the soundtrack. As a result, they have zero leverage with songwriters when it comes to negotiating for the rights to broadcast those songs. A group of broadcasters has now gone to federal court in New York for help, filing a class-action antitrust lawsuit against SESAC, one of the three performing rights organizations representing songwriters and music publishers. (You can download a copy here.)

The complaint was filed Wednesday afternoon by lawyers from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, and SESAC hasn't offered any comment yet. It singles out SESAC, the smallest of the performing rights groups (the others are ASCAP and BMI), for two reasons: SESAC's stable of composers includes many of the leading music writers for TV and commercials, and the other two rights groups' rates are already overseen by federal courts through longstanding consent decrees with the Justice Department.

Not being a lawyer, I won't try to guess how strong the broadcasters' case is. What's interesting to me about this case is that, unlike many of the lawsuits I write about, it doesn't challenge the breadth of the copyright owners' rights. Instead, it challenges how they're being used. According to the lawsuit, SESAC gives broadcasters the choice between buying a blanket license — the right to make unlimited use of all the music in SESAC's repertoire — or buying rights for songs on a per-program basis. But SESAC increased the cost of the per-program deal so much in recent years, it has become uneconomic, the lawsuit contends. As a result, broadcasters have been stuck buying ever-more-expensive blanket licenses, rendering moot their efforts to shop around for programs with less costly sources of music. In other words, SESAC is accused of eliminating the competition that mitigates the copyright holders' monopoly power. Meanwhile, the lawsuit claims, SESAC has used the higher fees it's been collecting to attract more soundtrack and commercial composers, tightening its grip on the market.

The broadcasters asked the court for a permanent injunction barring SESAC from fixing prices and other anticompetitive behavior. If they succeed, SESAC could find itself in the same court-supervised posture as ASCAP and BMI. But another way to restore the full benefits of competition among songwriters would be to have the producers of TV shows and commercials obtain the performance rights to the music they use, on top of the sync licenses and other clearances they routinely negotiate for. (Most networks obtain the performance rights for the new shows they produce for their stations and affiliates, but not for the same shows when they're sold into syndication.) As it is, the competition among songwriters ends as soon as a soundtrack is picked. That's why SESAC is allegedly in position to make take-it-or-leave-it offers to broadcasters, who have little choice but to take it.

-- Jon Healey

This won't take long to spell out. How long it'll take to fix, I don't know.

Spinning around the radio dial Wednesday, I alighted on a news story about the water deal reached in Sacramento. The announcer said something to the effect that the deal balances both ''human and environmental'' concerns.

What? Stop! When are we going to get it through our still-insufficiently evolved craniums [crania, if you like] that environmental concerns ARE human concerns, that we are only as healthy and as likely to survive as are our fellow species and the land and water and air on this planet?

For years, we've been shoved into accepting the false, manipulated choice of jobs versus the environment; now there's the insidious manufactured either-or of "us versus them,"'  the `"them'' being a balanced water system and the habitat and creatures that are part of it. Well, here's some breaking news that should be old news: We ARE them.

-- Patt Morrison

The Times editorial board and columnist Tim Rutten both throw their support behind Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's choice of Charlie Beck to lead the Los Angeles Police Department. The board likes Beck's credentials as a reformer, but notes the work still to be done on that front. Rutten echoes that sentiment, and throws in a few more issues that matter to the City Council.

On a less sanguine note, Edward H. Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argues that neoconservatives transformed the Republican Party into an interventionist, big-government operation with no conservative policy agenda. Them's fighting words! Good thing they came out of Crane's word processor and not, say, Rutten's.

And Jeff Bleich, chairman of the Cal State University Board of Trustees, laments the slow death of the California dream. No, not the one about having a house on the beach. That died a long time ago. He's referring to "the promise of low-cost education that brought so many here, and kept so many here":

Speaking of schools, the editorial board criticizes a bill by Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) that combines some common-sense reforms to the public system with ill-considered ones. And, although it agrees that colleges and universities could do a better job controlling costs, it defends the decision by some to pay top dollar for top-drawer presidents.

-- Jon Healey

Illustration: Ted Rall / For The Times