Contributing editor Gustavo Arellano tells Santa Ana city officials that they aren't running Newport Beach:

Teens killing teens. Corrupt school officials. Graffiti that blooms every night. Streets withering into dust. Not enough parks. Two libraries to serve a city of 400,000. A huge, unassimilated and poor immigrant population. Segregated neighborhoods. Overcrowding. Santa Ana, Calif., has all the problems of a metropolis but little of the compensating urban charm. (Although the overpriced downtown lofts amid the quinceañera shops and fruit ladies are trying to change that pronto.)

City officials are understandably concerned about their 'burb, especially because it's the government seat of Orange County, where image trumps all and "Santa Ana" is code for "Mexican." But instead of focusing on the city's underlying ills, Santa Ana's leaders are ignoring the burrito for the beans.

Fellow contributing editor Bill Stall goes behind-the-scenes of California's budget process to tell why the state missed its deadline. Atlantic Monthly blogger Matthew Yglesias explains why the D.C. elite wants Iraq protestors to hush up. And columnist Patt Morrison says there's no mystery to why bottled water sells -- it's becuase "[w]e're suckers."

The editorial board notes that while the U.S. may be getting somewhere in Iraq militarily, it's still in a political muddle. It considers how Rupert Murdoch may run his newest acquisition, Dow Jones, and urges the Senate to finally pass an ethics bill.

Letter writers react to Murdoch's big buy. See why Ocean, N.J.'s Steven M. Clayton says, "This is a sad day for American journalism."