SUNDAY UPDATE: Half-truths and mistruths about adoption, field trips and church weddings: See today's editorial on Proposition 8.

The No on Proposition 8 campaign reports that it has obtained from campaign finance statements the name of a "secret million-dollar donor" to the Yes on 8 campaign to ban same-sex marriage -- John Ashton of Utah, grandson of David O. McKay, who was president of the Mormon Church for nearly 20 years.

A week ago, the Yes on 8 campaign sent letters to businesses that had donated to the other side, to keep same-sex marriage legal in California, demanding that they donate an equal amount against gay marriage or the Yes campaign would "out" them. There are no reports that any businesses caved to this demand. The No campaign seems to have been wise enough not to seek a million bucks from Ashton.

* Photo by Ken Hively/LA Times

Rescuing homeowners who ventured into their own unwise and unaffordable mortgages isn't a popular  idea, the Times editorial board acknowledges, but it holds real value for all of us:

Such aid also is consistent with the principle of intervening when the market can't help itself. Despite the banking industry's voluntary efforts to help borrowers, statistics compiled by the industry show that the number of loan modifications only recently has caught up to the number of borrowers starting the foreclosure process.

The board also advises the state drop its hasty decision requiring all eighth graders to take algebra by 2011, and begins a series of handy endorsement recaps to help you figure out all those names and issues on the Tuesday ballot.

On the other side of the fold, op-ed writer Jenny Price tells the story of her brother's murder and why this is no reason to approve the "victim's rights" promised by the Proposition 9 campaign.

Punishment for murder should not depend on how angry and bereft survivors are, or how beloved the victim was. It should not be proportional to the size of the victim's family, or to how many family members are willing to go to court or a parole hearing, or to how long they are willing to keep going to hearings.

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute is pleased that no one seems to be talking any more about paying reparations to the descendants of slaves in this country, and Joel Stein asserts that he's an erudite kinda guy even if he doesn't know at what temperature water boils, what language they speak in Iraq or--well, a bunch of other things.

Photo by Damian Dovarganes/AP

SUNDAY UPDATE: Half-truths and mistruths about adoption, field trips and church weddings: See today's editorial on Proposition 8.

Catholic Charities in San Francisco has done a lot of good works, including finding adoptive homes for the kids most families want nothing to do with -- hard-case, hard-to-place older children who have circled the foster-care world. They have special needs and dark pasts.

And the single biggest group of prospective parents willing to adopt these kids and make homes for them are in gay and lesbian households. An interesting irony when you consider all the muck going on in the anti-gay campaign conducted by Yes on Proposition 8 about how all kids ought to be raised in straight households with their heterosexual mothers and fathers. Most of these children were abused or neglected by their heterosexual mothers and fathers.

Catholic Charities was happy to find good homes in both homosexual and heterosexual households for otherwise unwanted, rejected children. But a couple of years ago, under pressure from church hierarchy not to place children with gay and lesbian parents, yet facing state laws that ban discrimination against gays, the nonprofit stopped doing direct adoption altogether.

Note that this has nothing to do with same-sex marriage, which did not become legal until the state Supreme Court ruling some 18 months later. Similarly, the case of Catholic Charities in Massachusetts that the Yes on 8 people are so fond of bruiting had nothing to do with same-sex marriage, but with anti-discrimination laws and the public funding Catholic Charities received to do the state-contracted work of finding homes for these children. The story of the Mormon adoption agency in Massachusetts -- a successful balancing of religious doctrine and state law that the Times editorial board will explore in detail soon -- offers an interesting contrast to the claims of religious discrimination. But that''s not a story the Yes on 8 campaign would like you to hear.

As the board prepares to publish its final pre-election editorial on Proposition 8, which would take away the existing right of California's same-sex couples to marry, it has discovered that the scare stories advertised by the campaign not only are full of untruths and half-truths, but they don't have anything to do with same-sex marriage itself. Gay and lesbian people still are entitled to adopt, to receive health care, to use public spaces. They were entitled to that before the state Supreme Court ruling, and they'll be entitled to it after the Tuesday election, unless the next goal of the anti-gay coalition is to deprive them constitutionally of those rights as well.

Unthinkable? Arkansas voters will be deciding a ballot initiative Tuesday under which gay and lesbian households would be unable to adopt. Clearly, fairness -- including fairness to rejected, troubled children who can't find a stable home -- is not a goal of such campaigns.

Photos by Justin Sullivan and David McNew/Getty Images

Having spent a total of about one hour with Barack Obama, I'm no expert on his personality. But from what I've seen and read about him, he doesn't seem like a knee-slapping kind of guy. John McCain, on the other hand, is a pretty humorous fellow, especially when mocking himself and the people around him (my ilk included). Or at least he was back when I was in Washington in the 80s and 90s; like most folks on the campaign trail, his scripted humor isn't Improv-grade.

Anyway, according to the AP, tomorrow the GOP standard-bearer is due to appear again on "Saturday Night Live," where perhaps he can teach Darrell Hammond a thing or two about verisimilitude. (NBC declined to confirm the story, and said it had "an open door to all candidates.") Assuming the report is true, my guess is that McCain will do as Sarah Palin did earlier this month, making one or two brief appearances in skits but not reprising his medley of Streisand songs from 2002. The appearances may not offset Obama's multi-million-dollar purchase of prime-time airwaves Wednesday, but at least any laughs they produce will be intentional.

I'm no expert on campaigning, either, but I think this is a smart use of McCain's time. Candidates who are trailing in the polls often struggle to strike the positive tone that voters crave, particularly in tough times like the ones we're in now. McCain's main focus for the past month or so has been on Obama's flaws, rather than the promise of his own candidacy. SNL gives him the opportunity to put a different image in front of people, both on TV and through clips that get passed around the Net.

Here's my hope: I'd like to see SNL put McCain in a skit with actors playing William Ayers, Tony Rezko and Charles Keating -- sort of a Ghost of Associations Past thing. But I don't have an Improv-grade sense of humor, either. What about you? Tell us your ideas for McCain on SNL, and remember -- if only Republicans would laugh (or Democrats), then it's not really funny.

AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

I am looking at a Yes-on-Proposition 2 campaign mailer with a picture of a piglet and the line, ‘’you are their only voice.’’

But I am thinking of other piglets, and a hideous story out of an Iowa pig farm, an undercover video of farm hands slamming little pigs down on a concrete floor and beating the piglets’ mothers with iron rods –- abusing pigs, creatures who sometimes live with humans as pets, and who some credit with the intelligence and emotional capacity of a two-year-old human.

There are other hideous stories, some right out of California, like the undercover video of the appalling abuse of sick and lame "downer" cows being shoved and beaten into the butchering maw our food system.... Veal calves being imprisoned in tiny crates for all of their short lives.... California’s egg "ranches," where four, five, six hens spend their lives crammed in the same small wire cage, their feet never touching ground, the living and the dead sometimes stuffed together, the filth falling on them from the hens in the cages above them. Now multiply this times millions of hens and millions of eggs in the same "ranch."

You really want to eat this? Proposition 2 ...

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday once again delayed signing off on a plan to ask voters to approve instant runoff voting. IRV, as it is known, has been knocking around the council for a couple years but hasn't gotten majority support, despite rapt enthusiasm among a core of supporters.

IRV has been in place in San Francisco for several years and, according to testimony at the council meeting, is used in Australia and other progressive jurisdictions such as Papua-New Guinea. The system allows voters to rank the candidates instead of just picking one. If no one wins a majority of first-ranked votes, candidates are peeled off the bottom and second and third-choice votes counted until one candidate has a majority and is declared the winner.

The idea is to eliminate costly runoff campaigns and elections, like the one in which Jim Hahn (who finished second in the "primary") defeated Antonio Villaraigosa for mayor in 2001, or the one in which Villaraigosa defeated Hahn in 2005. Or those in which several current members of the City Council came in second but after continuing and focusing their campaigns went on to win in a runoff.

Supporters say eliminating runoff elections will save money and reduce voter fatigue. The city would have to purchase new equipment capable of recording and counting ranked votes and would have to mount an aggressive, and presumably expensive, public education program.

Wednesday was the deadline for the council to send measures to the city attorney for the March 3 election, so IRV supporters on the council asked for a report back from city staff by the end of the year, in time to get the measure on the May 19 runoff ballot.

Once more, in case you missed it: in time to get the measure on the May 19 runoff ballot. Which they could do, because Los Angeles has runoffs. Otherwise they would have to schedule a special election in order to ask voters to reduce voter fatigue. Or wait until the 2011 city election.

Alas, the irony is wasted; they'll have to wait anyway. The city clerk's office won't have time to do the necessary studies by Jan. 14, the deadline for the May runoff ballot, because staff, which is currently working on the Nov. 4 election, will by then be busy working on the March 3 election.

The Sacramento Bee has pulled together state proposition endorsements from 10 California newspapers and some results are predictable, like the fact that every editorial board went for Proposition 11, the redistricting reform measure. Newspaper ed boards just love redistricting reform. It remains to be seen whether anyone else does.

All papers were against Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban, as well.

But some results are surprising. The Orange County Register, which generally produces the most reliably conservative editorials (often with a libertarian twist), was the only one of the 10 to endorse Proposition 5, the measure to promote rehab and diversion from jail for drug offense. Prosecutors, judges, some rehab specialists and all the supposedly liberal papers, like the San Francisco Chronicle (OK, and the Los Angeles Times) oppose the proposition as a potentially dangerous measure that would remove incentives for kicking an addiction. The Register ed page sees it differently:

It is becoming increasingly clear that the expensive and counterproductive "war on drugs" is not working. Drug addiction can be tragic for individuals and their families. But most of the ancillary damage to society – increased street crime, funding gang activity, fundraising crimes like burglary, robbery and mugging – are caused by the laws against drugs rather than the drugs themselves. Prop. 5 is a modest step toward a more humane and productive approach to the problem of drug use than the strictly punitive approach that has failed so abysmally.

The San Diego Union-Tribune's ed page, also reliably conservative, weighed in for Proposition 2, the measure to mandate more wing-room for caged chickens kept for egg-laying. The L.A. Daily News - moderate-to-conservative for Los Angeles, perhaps - went to bat for it as well (so did the San Jose  Mercury News and the Oakland Tribune, but that's less of a surprise). The Times went the other way, making many of our readers none too happy.

Here's part of the U-T's take:

In the end, Proposition 2 is about the basic humane treatment of animals, even those raised for food. There are an estimated 40 million farm animals raised for commercial purposes in California. Every one of them deserves at least that much civility.

The Sacramento Bee was especially crotchety, saying no to everything - except, of course, Prop. 11. The Merc was the one that said yes the most - to five of the 12.

So who has the best, most useful, clearest and most thoughtful endorsements? Besides the Times, of course?

Opinions about opinions are matters of opinion, but I'm a big fan of the (Riverside) Press-Enterprise editorial page when it comes to election endorsements. In addition to obvious thought and analysis, I'm impressed with the sheer volume of endorsements, including council races and local ballot measures. That doesn't mean the P-E is always right. But check it out.

When is a ballot measure a cartoon? When is it so outlandish that you can appreciate it for its entertainment value?

Way back in May, Councilman Richard Alarcon's motion for a luxury tax - no, come back, I'm being serious - Alarcon's motion to put a luxury tax on the March 3, 2009 city ballot was set for the budget committee. Well, the panel had a hearing Monday but couldn't muster a quorum, so couldn't vote, and it was pretty clear that even if it could, the members were a little, shall we say, skeptical of the plan to impose an annual $6,000 tax on Really Big Houses to reimburse the city for.... Well, not to reimburse the city for anything, but just because.

So the committee sent the motion to the full council, which has until Wednesday (item 63 on the agenda) to approve anything that's going to voters in March. It's a given that Alarcon's proposal isn't going anywhere, at least in its present form; not only couldn't it get a vote in the budget committee, it couldn't even get a hearing in the rules committee.

Alarcon is working on some fine-tuning to make the proposed law enforceable. As written, it would almost certainly violate the state Constitution's restriction on ad valorem property taxes; that is, it would tax property in ways not permitted by Proposition 13, which limits annual increases in those taxes despite increases in value. The asserted distinction here (taxing size instead of value) is unlikely to fly in court since there's an obvious connection between square footage and value.

In case you were wondering (and of course you were), L.A. has 6,336 single family homes of more than 5,000 square feet and 534 of more than 10,000. Who knew all those houses would fit on Boardwalk and Park Place?

The Opinion Manufacturing Division steers well left of center today as it takes on voting rights, the Cuban embargo, food regulation, research earmarks and next week's election, among other topics. On the Op-Ed page, columnist Tim Rutten declares that the GOP has lost its grip on the Catholic vote, largely because Catholics' views on abortion now mirror the average voter's:

National polls have shown for some time that, although Catholics are personally opposed to abortion, they believe it ought to be legal in nearly identical percentages to the rest of America. Moreover, as a survey by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found earlier this year, only 18% of Catholics "strongly" agree with the statement: "In deciding what is morally acceptable, I look to the church teachings and statements by the pope and bishops to form my conscience."

Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, novelist Susan Straight pens a moving tribute to the recently deceased father of her ex-husband, General Roscoe Conklin Sims Jr. Lawrence M. Krauss, director of an Oregon State University research institute, defends three earmarks for scientific projects that John McCain and Sarah Palin have attacked on the campaign trail. And Anchorage Daily News columnist Michael Carey offers a portrait of his state's embattled "senator for life" and sugar daddy (with Uncle Sugar's money), Ted Stevens.

In the editorial stack, the Times board endorses a bill to let ex-cons vote in federal elections, and urges states to follow suit. It rails against the U.S. embargo against Cuba, whose sanctions "worsen poverty and its attendant ills but only strengthen the Castro regime." And in light of the spreading problem of melamine-tainted Chinese goods, the board calls on the U.S. to hold Chinese food imports for testing before it reaches supermarkets and restaurants.

Photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images

Each week, your Letters Maven receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letters through the good old U.S. postal service, and even a few faxes here and there.

After she cuts out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems,) she is usually left with several hundred eligible items, from which she selects the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.

Last week The Times received 985 usable letters, 836 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

Presidential election: 502 letters, including 134 reacting to the editorial board's endorsement of Barack Obama and 76 pondering Joe the Plumber;

Gay marriage: 190 letters about Proposition 8, reacting to stories about Father Geoffrey Farrow, the California Teachers Assn.'s opposition to the initiative and other coverage;

Other election: 52 letters reacting to election day mechanics, the plight of the caged chicken, and more;

Economy: 51 letters; and

Healthcare: 41 letters, reacting to the first installment of a Times investigation of the health insurance industry.