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

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

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

I don't usually consider Facebook posts to be worthy of transplanting to a (cough cough) professional blog like this one, but I'm making an exception for an FB thread about a Washington Post story.

The article focused on Georgetown University sophomore who has advertised for a personal assistant who would handle tasks "such as organizing his closet, dropping him off and picking him up from work, scheduling haircuts, putting gas in the car and taking it in for service, managing his electronic accounts and doing laundry (although the assistant will be paid only for the time spent loading, unloading and folding clothes, not the entire laundry cycle)." The pay: $10-$12 an hour.

One response was whimsical: "Just this morning I told my mom I needed a PA. She laughed at me. Then [she] saw this article on Facebook and told me about it." (Oh, oh, Parent On Social Media Alert!) But the Facebooker who introduced the subject considered the student's quest  "the most egregious of all insults."

 I weighed in ...

I was in high school when I learned that "fungible" was a concept in economics, not something that could give rise to a fungus infection. The idea worked its way into non-economic political discourse in the 1980s, when the Supreme Court ruled that the fact that students at a private college received federal aid didn't mean that all of the college's operations were subject to civil rights laws.

Critics of the decision -- who persuaded Congress to change the law -- argued that federal funds for individual students freed up money that the discriminatory college otherwise might have provided for scholarships. The fungibility of funds meant that the taxpayers were indirectly but actually subsidizing a refusal to comply with civil rights laws.

Flash forward to the current debate over healthcare reform. Catholic bishops and other pro-life advocates don't want federal funds to pay for abortions, primarily  because it would spare anti-abortion taxpayers from subsidizing a procedure they consider immoral. It isn't just bishops, or conservative bishops, who endorse what President Obama has called the "tradition" of not using government funds to pay for abortion. Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, an influential liberal group zealously supportive of health reform, has said that "maintaining current policy of not using federal taxpayer funds for abortions and retaining responsible conscience protections for health care workers is critical to achieving the broad consensus necessary for reform."

As Obama has argued, the major proposals being considered by Congress don't overturn the so-called Hyde Amendment, which bars federal financing of abortions. But pro-lifers, including the Catholic bishops, have been suspicious. So the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved an amendment that would allow health care plans to cover abortion so long as they were funded by premiums paid by the insured, not by federal funds.

This where fungibility rears its head, as Sarah Palin would say. By reducing the cost of other medical services, the bill would enhance a woman's ability to buy abortion coverage. Likewise, federal support for private plans will support abortion services by reducing a plan's overall cost, making it easier for a woman to pay for abortion coverage with her own money. The archbishop of Philadelphia ridiculed this as "a legal fiction, a paper separation between federal funding and abortion.”

He has a point. The problem is that the "fungibility" argument proves too much. Even without healthcare legislation, federal assistance to an individual or family -- such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps or a federal education grant  -- frees up private funds that can be spent on an insurance plan that covers abortion -- or an abortion itself. In a welfare state, the only way completely to eliminate government involvement in abortion is to recriminalize it, and that's not going to happen.

GOP Chairman Michael Steele was for Medicare before he was against it, which was before he couldn't give an answer to the question of whether he was for or against it. In other words, the leader of a major political party is confused about his position on a massive government program that consumes more than one-fifth of total federal budget and has been around since the Vietnam War.

The question that comes up is how this guy ever managed to become the leader of a political party. Having looked through our archives for coverage of Steele's selection earlier this year as GOP chairman, it's apparent that he wasn't a very inspired pick by Republicans. Here's an excerpt from a Times news article published on Jan. 31, the day after his election:

What Steele needed to do was shore up party support. Instead, he engaged in a useless public turf war with Limbaugh for which he later apologized. In a preview of his current indecisiveness over bread-and-butter issues for Republicans, he suggested that abortion is an individual choice. And after promising to make the GOP available to "every corner, every boardroom, every neighborhood, every community," he threatened to withhold party funds from moderate Republicans who voted for President Obama's stimulus package.

So now we're on to healthcare reform, and enormously complex field of public policy. Republicans, don't say you didn't see this train wreck coming.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: Steele speaks at the annual Indiana GOP state dinner in Indianapolis July 8. Credit: AP Photo / Tom Strickland.

The Times endorses an unusual idea being considered today by the L.A. Unified School Board: allowing assorted groups inside and outside the district to operate 50 newly built schools over the next four years. Yes, there are pitfalls to this idea, but it's still the most intriguing experiment to reinvent local education to come along in years.

The ongoing crisis in Honduras, meanwhile, is starting to look like it won't be resolved without some "superpower pressure" from the United States, The Times opines. It's time to impose sanctions on those behind the coup that ousted the country's rightful president, Manuel Zelaya, and take other actions aimed at restoring democracy. "Failure to return to constitutional order would send a signal to the rest of Latin America that once again political problems can be solved with an old-style coup."

And we celebrate the nomination of Regina Benjamin as surgeon general. This "angel-like" figure, known for her work bringing clinics to rural areas, rebuilding health centers devastated by Hurricane Katrina and leading medical associations, "has the potential to be one of the strongest voices in public health in decades."

On the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg raises an eyebrow over a recent comment in the New York Times from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

'Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe vs. Wade] was decided,' Ginsburg told her interviewer, Emily Bazelon, 'there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of.'

Goldberg lists other prominent abortion backers, including former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who appeared to think that abortion was necessary to cull undesirable elements -- like the poor and minorities -- from the population. He'd like to see more questioning of such attitudes in the media.

Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project says the Obama administration is breaking its promise to bring transparency to government surveillance programs. The administration is reportedly proceeding with a Bush-era plan to use the National Security Agency to screen government computer traffic on private-sector networks, a program known as Einstein 3 that has no intrinsic security value -- but will allow spooks to read e-mail communication between the government and private citizens.

And Deborah Doctor of Disability Rights California challenges Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to document all the fraud he claims to have identified in the state's In-Home Supportive Services program, a quarter of whose funds he says are wasted. The governor not only hasn't proven the accuracy of that figure, he has proposed fixes that could well cost more than they would save.

As I sat listening to Sen. Orrin Hatch's (predictable) opening remarks at Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation, I hoped -- against hope? -- that Republicans eventually would move beyond whining about "Democrat" opposition to President Bush's nominees. If that happens, C-SPAN junkies will be bombarded by technical terms and case citations. Click here for a crib sheet, originally published on the first day of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s confirmation hearings. Here's a sample:

• United States v. Lopez. In this 1995 decision the court by a 5-4 vote struck down the federal Gun Free School Zone Law, saying that Congress had exceeded its power under the Commerce Clause to regulate activities under the purview of the states.
• Color-blindness. The notion, frequently invoked by opponents of affirmative action, that the Constitution's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws" and the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibit laws that confer any benefits on the basis of race, even if the beneficiaries are members of groups that were the victims of racial discrimination in the past.
• Comparable worth. A system in which a government agency sets pay scales based on whether jobs done primarily by women (e.g., nursing) are of "comparable worth" to those mostly done by men (e.g., truckdriver). As a lawyer in the Reagan administration, Roberts called the concept "pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."
• Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. A July 15, 2005, decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in which Roberts joined the majority opinion upholding the legality of the military tribunals established by the Bush administration to try foreign suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

As a bonus, here's the Supreme Court decision overruling Sotomayor's ruling in the now-famous New Haven firefighters case. Who knows, somebody might bring it up.

Nicholas Kamm / AFP/Getty Images

The Times' editorial page today takes President Obama to task for his back-and-forth pronouncements on the destructive practice of mountaintop coal mining. We say the president merits "quiet applause" for new restrictions, but we also note that they come on the heels of approval of two-dozen new projects.

The best approach to mountaintop mining would be to ban it completely. It's cheaper and less labor-intensive than underground mining, but not worth the environmental cost. At a minimum, Obama should address some other highly destructive rule changes imposed by the Bush administration -- a good place to start would be restoring a regulation that forbade mining within 100 feet of a stream, and disallowing the use of mine waste as "fill" material in waterways.

The editorial board also scolds the president about his exception-filled "paygo" plan and the rest of the decisions that may show how comfortable Washington is getting with deficit spending. Growing the debt may have had some merit as a way to stimulate the economy, but where are the plans to restore fiscal balance?

And we take another look at the difficulty in firing bad teachers, and the role that unions play in elevating teacher job security over the welfare of students. The new secretary of Education wants teachers to be paid based on how well their students learn. California isn't close to that, or any other objective measure.

Here, it is considered revolutionary for a school board to beg for relief from a tortuous, money-wasting teacher termination process that is nearly doomed to failure anyway.

On the Op-Ed page, Ben Ehrenreich calls on the U.S. to get down off its high horse on torture. It isn't new, he argues, and it isn't a thing of the past either.

Despite our protestations, we have little to be surprised about. The Bush administration's great act of hubris was not to allow torture -- that was nothing new -- but to attempt to shelter it within the law. Now, when President Obama vows that "the United States does not torture" and spars with the former vice president over details, he crosses his fingers behind his back and saves himself a loophole. Via "extraordinary rendition" -- a Clinton administration innovation -- our government is still free to outsource torture and claim it doesn't know.

Ehrenreich last wrote for The Times in April, when he reviewed "News From the Empire" by Spanish novelist Fernando del Paso.

Author Craig Childs is friends with and lives among private collectors who grab pot fragments and other archaeological artifacts, robbing the bits and pieces of much of their historical value. He opposes the practice -- but describes the mixed feelings he has about recent raids that resulted in the arrest of some of his friends.

Childs last wrote for The Times in February, when he discussed what a recent finding of chocolate in an ancient New Mexico jar has to say about pre-Columbian North American civilization.

And Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez wonders whether the recent murderous attacks on an abortion doctor and the Holocaust museum in Washington mean we have entered the era of the angry old man.

Photo credit: Jeff Gentner / Associated Press

Here at the Opinion Manufacturing Division, we've got our minds on our money and our money on our minds. In particular, that would be our state tax dollars. On the Op-Ed page, Timothy A. Hodson, head of the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State University, urges lawmakers in Sacramento to take a more realistic approach to power sharing in a divided but still largely Democratic state:

Many Republicans declared the defeat of Proposition 1A as the triumph of "tea parties" and the return of the anti-tax spirit of Proposition 13. Good spin; lousy analysis. It's fantasy to think that voters in San Francisco, Santa Monica and other liberal and Democratic strongholds who overwhelming voted against 1A did so for the same reasons as Republicans.

The editorial board, meanwhile, says the state may need to close some parks temporarily, but that's not as great a money-saving opportunity as it seems:

The state must patrol and minimally maintain the parks with or without visitors or it almost surely will incur worse expense, not just long term but in the immediate future. Closing parks doesn't mean that people won't use them. It means that law-abiding people won't use them. Among those who will: meth lab operators, marijuana farmers, the homeless, taggers, poachers, rogue mountain bikers and off-roaders, as well as just plain campers who think the rules don't apply to their personal visits.

Rounding out the editorial stack, the board calls for the Organization of American States to readmit Cuba, and editorial writer Dan Turner lambastes the multi-billion-dollar plans to restore the Los Angeles River. Back on the Op-Ed page, columnist Tim Rutten argues that the murder of a late-term abortion provider in Kansas illustrates the need for both sides in the abortion debate to "break with the rhetorical recklenssness of the past." And Michael Siegel, a professor and tobacco-policy specialist at the Boston University School of Public Health, blasts a proposal in Congress to give the Food and Drug Administration purview over tobacco products, saying it would create "the appearance of regulation without allowing actual regulation."

Credit: Signe Wilkinson / Philadelphia Daily News