Columnist Jonah Goldberg gangs up on the Gang of Three today, blasting the "centrist" Republicans led by Sen. Arlen Specter who are approving President Obama's stimulus plan after cutting $100 million from the package. This paragraph pretty much sums up Goldberg's feelings on the matter:

Now, to be honest, I think President Obama's stimulus bill is a monstrosity, a bloated behemoth unleashed on America with staggering dishonesty. The centrist "improvements" are like throwing a new coat of paint on a condemned building.

"The architect" Karl Rove, meanwhile, defends government secrecy and the need for presidential administrations to control media leaks, in excerpts from a speech he delivered last week at Loyola Marymount University. And Nina Hachigian, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, gives Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a checklist of things to discuss with Chinese leaders when she visits Beijing next week: the economy, nuclear proliferation, climate change and pandemic disease.

Over on the Editorial Page, the board bemoans Israel's shift to the right, which is likely to signal a retreat from peacemaking efforts. The increasing hostility and retrenchment by both sides only make peace more elusive and decrease the chances that Israel ever will be secure.

We also take note of Friday's accidental disclosure of the names and badge numbers of hundreds of Los Angeles Police Department officers accused of racial profiling over the last year. The police union has for years been bullying politicians to prevent the release of such information, claiming it would lead to irresponsible actions by the media and put officers' lives in danger -- yet no such problems have emerged. It's time to publicly disclose police misconduct proceedings as a matter of course, not accident. And we argue that cutting back mail service to five days a week instead of six, as the U.S. Postal Service is proposing, wouldn't be such a bad thing if it saves snail mail from extinction.

* Photo of Karl Rove by Gerald Herbert / AP