The editorial pages welcome you to Monday morning with a call for lame ducks in Washington and Sacramento to get quacking on plans to extend unemployment benefits and do something to spur the economy.

"What's not acceptable in Sacramento is inaction. Without quick and dramatic moves, the state could run out of operating money early next year. That would shut down essential services to those who most need them at a time they need them most. As in Washington, it's important not just to make tough decisions but to make the right ones."

The pages also weigh in on the Catholic Church's statement re-emphasizing that gay men are to be barred from the priesthood. Should psychologists put their training and expertise to work to help the church ferret out gay men who want to become priests?

Yet even if the U.S. church is following a more compassionate policy than Vatican pronouncements would seem to authorize, the role of psychologists in screening applicants raises troubling ethical questions, as even psychologists who approve of such cooperation admit.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez writes about the possible underside of the whole getting-beyond-race discussion. UCLA professor Saree Makdisi warns against education cuts in California. And Hastings professor Brian E. Gray explains how Colorado's adoption of an anti-gay-rights law, struck down in 1996 by the U.S. Supreme Court, could be precedent for California's gay marriage ban.

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