The Times editorial board praises President Obama for scrapping the missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, calling the program "immensely expensive technology that still doesn't work, designed for a threat that may never materialize."

As various versions of health-care reform wend their contentious way around Washington, the board finds several weaknesses in the proposal by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) but finds reason to hope those very weaknesses will help "bring the public's focus back to the flaws in the current system and the challenges posed by any attempt to fix them."

Health care reform and several other moves and policies by the Obama administration have led to some vitriolic protest, which prompted  former President Jimmy Carter to declare that most of this protest was racial in nature. The board finds a kernel of truth in Carter's statement but also sees much legitimate protest about political differences.

On the other side of the fold, two writers debate whether the U.N. Human Rights Council report alleging war crimes by Israel in its Gaza fighting was the product of a prejudicial probe or a clear indication of abuses of international law that should not be tolerated by Israel's allies.

Photo of Jimmy Carter by Paul Abell / AP

--Karin Klein

Today the Opinion Manufacturing Division takes both sides of the debate over whether to investigate CIA interrogators, with columnist Tim Rutten lamenting the appointment of a special prosecutor and the editorial board applauding it. Rutten argues that it would be a "travesty" to charge the small fry without going after the higher ups in the Justice Department and the White House who egged them on. And that, he says, is a road to a place we don't want to go:

The editorial board, on the other hand, sees wisdom in having a respected career prosecutor conduct a limited inquiry into whether interrogators violated laws against torture or exceeded the "minimal" limits imposed by the Justice Department. It also opines:

The board also questions the motives ...

The editorial board grants rare praise to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday for his actions with regards to the California Nursing Board. The governor dismissed four members of the board after a L.A. Times and ProPublica article exposed negligent nurses who stayed on duty during protracted investigations into their conduct. While the board members called Schwarzenegger an "action hero" for his response, they wished it would have come sooner -- and with other boards too:

The Times editorial board gives a qualified "no" today to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to sell some of the state's real estate. The idea might be worth considering, the editorial board concludes, but it's not going to help with the state's current financial crisis. It would take years to complete Schwarzenegger's proposed sales of such iconic properties as San Quentin and the Memorial Coliseum, which would have to go for bargain prices in today's market, anyway.

The board applauds Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Christine Varney's pledge to hold big business to a tougher antitrust standard than the previous administration did, and points to the European Commission's fine on Intel as an example of how such standards might play out. As for former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Cuban President Fidel Castro, both of whom have been busily talking up the policies of yesterday while trying to forestall the progress of new administrations, the advice goes more like: You worked hard, now take a break. Spend more time with your family. And for heaven's sake, quiet, already.

On the other side of the fold, author Lisa Sweetingham, a Manny Ramirez fan brought up short by his suspension for violating baseball's drug rules, reviews the reasons why so many athletes -- and so many others -- have taken hormones and "accessory" medications. And environmental activist Bill McKibben writes that the combined might of environment groups is still too small to push faster government action on global warming. That, he says, will take grassroots action of the type his 350.org group is promoting.

Illustration by Patrick O'Connor for the Times

Dick Cheney is pressing for the release of memos that he claims will vindicate the usefulness of "enhanced interrogation tactics," including waterboarding. Even if he's right, his gambit is a reminder of a flaw in the argument that, say, waterboarding can be justified because it produced information that could avert another 9/11.

The problem, as lawyers say, is that the argument proves too much. It justifies not only waterboarding, sleep deprivation and pushing prisoners into a wall -- the sort of tactics Bush administration lawyers strained to exclude from the definition of torture -- but also even more horrific measures.

Let's assume that waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed (who, like JFK and LBJ, is often referred to by his initials) produced information that allowed the U.S. government to avert a planned attack on Los Angeles. Why, given the thousands of lives at stake, should the CIA have stopped there if KSM hadn't capitulated? Why not pluck out one of his eyes or castrate him to prove that we meant business? In the moral calculus the Cheneyites are urging on us, abusing a couple of terrorists is an acceptable price to pay for vital intelligence. The logic of the argument doesn't distinguish between waterboarding and blinding or amputating a limb.

If Cheney and his apologists had the courage of their convictions, they would repudiate George W. Bush's repeated assertions that "we do not torture," because their efficacy argument trumps that position regardless of how "torture" is defined.

During the week ending April 25, The Times received 655 usable letters, 336 of which were in our Top Five Topics.  Fallout from the Bush Administration torture memos dominated our mailbag, making up more than a quarter of the usable mail we received.

President Obama is receiving both praise and criticism for promising not to prosecute CIA interrogators who followed the Justice Department’s perverse legal advice. But Obama’s decision may be less consequential than it seems. Congress already has anticipated the possibility of prosecution and has erected a significant barrier to it.

In the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act Congress provided as follows (it's worth wading through the legalese):

"In any civil action or criminal prosecution against an officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States Government who is a United States person, arising out of the officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent's engaging in specific operational practices, that involve detention and interrogation of aliens who the President or his designees have determined are believed to be engaged in or associated with international terrorist activity that poses a serious, continuing threat to the United States, its interests, or its allies, and that were officially authorized and determined to be lawful at the time that they were conducted, it shall be a defense that such officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent did not know that the practices were unlawful and a person of ordinary sense and understanding would not know the practices were unlawful. Good faith reliance on advice of counsel should be an important factor, among others, to consider in assessing whether a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the practices to be unlawful. "

But wait -- there’s more! The DTA also says that the government "may provide or employ counsel, and pay counsel fees, court costs, bail, and other expenses" for interrogators."

In 2006 Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which preserved legal protection for interrogators -- indeed, strengthened it by requiring, instead of just permitting, legal aid for interrogators. The Supreme Court found fault with the act for other reasons, but it didn’t object to protection for interrogators.

Granted, interrogators haven’t received total immunity. But Congress has erected a high hurdle for prosecutors to clear even if they do a better job than the Justice Department team in the Ted Stevens case. Obama’s "look forward, not backwards" mantra also reflects Congress’ attitude – and probably a jury’s as well.

In Wednesday's letters, reaction to North Korea's diplomatically-if-not-technically-effective rocket launch.

Cynthia Yeung, of Chino Hills, worries that

Once again, the United Nations Security Council fails to come to a hasty agreement when countries need it most.

When a threat such as North Korea's missile launch becomes evident, shouldn't we put aside our differences and try to craft a response that might quickly put a stop to the danger?

It is fortunate that this rocket failed to send a satellite to orbit. But the next time an issue similar to this threatens our peace, how are we supposed to quickly solve the problem if no country is willing to sacrifice a little to benefit everyone?

While San Diego's Randall Smith sees some irony in U.S. reaction to the test:

So the U.S. is shocked to find that a country has developed nuclear weapons as well as the ability to launch payloads into space and hit far-flung targets, all at the whim of a dangerously fanatical leader!

Who would want to perpetrate such a threat to peace, nay, to life itself? God forbid the day will come when someone will drop one of these heinous weapons, or perhaps two, on major cities, killing untold numbers of innocent people and leaving a poisonous radioactive legacy for generations to come.

Wait a minute! The U.S. already did all those things. Never mind.

Chris Ungar, of Los Osos, sees a different dark humor in the situation:

Kim Jong Il to starving North Koreans: "Let them eat rockets!"

Reactions to stories about college admissions and tuition, a controversial professor, investigating the Bush Administration's war on terror and the Binghamton massacre, too.

Photo: Image believed to be rocket and exhaust trail launched from Korean Peninsula on Sunday.  Credit: AP Photo/DigitalGlobe.

At first I thought, ''Riiiiiight ... ''

The Bush White House, on its last night in power, announced that Vice President Dick Cheney pulled a muscle in his back while moving boxes. He'll be in a wheelchair for the Obama inauguration.

Dick Cheney -- a man with a ticker so bum that even Dr. House couldn't help him -- is moving boxes? Don't those people have people to do all that menial schlepping for them?

And then I thought, hmmmm, what kind of boxes would be so important that the almost-ex-vice president would be moving them himself?

And then I thought ... oh, those kinds of boxes. Boxes full of papers that he doesn't want anyone else to see, ever? Boxes destined for his home shredder? That would be, uh, back in Wyoming?

A week before Christmas -- which was about three months after a federal judge had ordered Cheney's office to preserve all his official records -- Cheney's lawyers were back in court, blathering that only the vice president can decide which records from his eight years in office should by law be handed over to the National Archives by ... oh, what's that deadline again?

Oh yes -- noon on January 20, when he ceases to be the vice president. The same date when, according to the Associated Press story about the court case, Cheney could be ''potentially taking millions of records that might otherwise become public.''

Cheney's being sued by a public watchdog group under a 30-year-old law requiring the departing president and vice president to hand over to the National Archives virtually all of their records from their time in office. Cheney's essentially blown raspberries at the law, and its enforcers. After some National Archives staff tried to conduct a routine inspection of Cheney's papers several years ago, his staff reportedly tried to get that inspection unit abolished.

Cheney will be in a wheelchair for only a couple of days, the White House assured us. Wheelchair or no, can someone please frisk him on his way out? Remember, Oliver North's secretary, Fawn Hall, eluded NSC investigators by smuggling highly classified documents out of her boss' office -- in her boots.

EPA/Mike Theiler