Today's Times editorial page tells FINA to get a grip. Or, rather, loosen its grip. FINA -- that's Fédération Internationale de Natation Amateur to you -- is the body that governs competitive swimming, and it recently said non to the high-tech, full-body polyurethane suits that have helped swimmers set new world records. Don't fear the modern world and its innovations, the editorial says:

But short of a swimsuit fitted with motorized propellers, or high-jump shoes soled with rocket boosters, there's little reason to reject improved design and materials based on skittishness about the records set and broken in seemingly less time than the 20 minutes it takes to don one of the new swimsuits. Fans like to compare performances of the past with those of the present. Who's the greater golfer, Tiger Woods or Arnold Palmer? Sporting events should be a contest among athletes, not between current athletes and the ghosts of athletes past.

The editorial page also says it's high time for Los Angeles to weed out the medical marijuana joints ... sorry ... dispensaries ... that can't or won't abide by reasonable restrictions. Like not being next door to a school. Or a bong supplier: "If the city doesn't regulate its dispensaries, there's a chance the Drug Enforcement Administration will, with results many Californians would rather avoid."

The page also raises a glass to President Obama, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the guy who arrested him, Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley. See, they're having a beer in the White House today to talk over old times ("Dude, remember that time you came to my house, and I yelled at you, and you arrested me, and the president took my side, and then he backed down? That was cool."). We don't deal with the fact that the president's beer of choice, Bud Light, is now foreign-owned.

OK, turn the page. Op-Ed leads off with Israeli blogger Yisrael Medad and his observation of a Jewish day of lamentation -- and his assertion that the U.S. stance toward the status of Jerusalem has created "another lamentable situation between the two nations."

UCLA law professor Gary Blasi, a persistent thorn in the side of cities trying to "clean up" homelessness rather than help the homeless, takes on Santa Monica for its aggressive enforcement:

The city's budget documents praise "the rigid enforcement of laws and ordinances to discourage" what it calls "encampments." The budget included $250,000 for "homeless intervention" but also $240,000 for a panhandling education campaign, presumably to reduce giving to people perceived to be homeless. And last winter, Santa Monica closed pickup locations from which homeless people could get to cold-weather shelters in adjacent cities.

Read previous Blasi Op-Ed articles in the Times here.

And Jersey girl Meghan Daum compares her state of birth with her new home. Is L.A. New Jersey West?

And yet it's also the way both places are blessed with a commendable lack of smugness about themselves. Just as New Jersey lives in the shadow of New York and Philly, Southern California is forever contending with the sanctimonious posturing of Northern California. We are perpetually being told our coastline isn't as dramatic and our populace not as literate. San Franciscans refer to their town as The City and do a lot of chest-thumping about how the taxi drivers quote Rilke and the sourdough starter dates back to the Gold Rush.

You know, Meghan, the West Coast has the sunshine.

But, I guess, down on the shore everything's all right.

Photo: Martin Bureau / AFP / Getty Images

Is the Mexican army the solution to battling the violent drug cartels, or part of the problem? The Times editorial board considers the question in light of allegations of rape and other abuses leveled against troops deployed by Mexican President Felipe Calderon in the front lines of the drug war:

Calderon was taking a gamble when he sent combat forces to fight the drug war, which involves police and intelligence work among civilians -- a role the Mexican military isn't fully trained to play. Now, U.S. and Mexican human rights activists say they have documented the murder, rape and torture by soldiers of scores of Mexicans believed to be innocent civilians, and the country's National Human Rights Commission received 559 complaints against members of the army in the first six months of this year. Although Mexican law calls for the military to prosecute its own criminal abuses, advocacy groups note that there has not been a successful military prosecution of a human rights case in the last decade.

The board also notes that U.S. government actions on behalf of religions might be constitutionally banned if performed in this country, but might be a necessary part of foreign relations in nations with state religion--such as repairing mosques damaged in the Iraq War. Still, the board cautions, the government must not see this as an excuse to fund missionary work or in other ways promote religion abroad.

On the other side of the fold, two trade specialists chide resident President Obama for what they call his "de facto protectionism." And the author of a newly published biography of baseball legend Leroy "Satchel" Paige remembers back to when the Negro League player finally won recognition from the Hall of Fame -- and how racism in baseball did not completely die on that day.:

Six months after they announced his election to the Hall of Fame, Paige was in Cooperstown for the induction. The public had weighed in with outrage at the spectacle of a segregated museum, forcing baseball's rulers to agree to hang his plaque alongside the rest. He quieted his competing instincts by siding, as he always had, with moderation over militancy. "Thank you, commissioner, and my fans and baseball players from all around as far as Honolulu, Mexico, and I don't know where the rest of 'em come from. I know they're my friends, I know that," Paige said as he looked out at the mostly white audience.

His remarks were touching and funny. He talked about barnstorming across the country in cars so tightly packed that his knees were "sticking up in front of me. For five years, I didn't know where I was going. I couldn't see."

Photo of Leroy "Satchel" Paige from MLB Photos via Getty Images.

In Wednesday's Los Angeles Times opinion pages, California finally has a balanced budget! Sort of. OK, not really. Fine. Not at all.

That sort of delayed reckoning and outsourced accountability should not be portrayed as forward momentum. The state should not try to take credit for solving the budget problems when in fact it has merely foisted its problems onto local governments. There is no separation, in the minds of voters or in the pangs of those most in need, between state and local government. We'd prefer a little more honesty from both the Capitol and the many city and county halls, all of which should acknowledge that their budget woes are but two sides of the same worn coin.

Editorial writers also take note of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., a black man who was trying to break into the home of a famous Harvard scholar, best-selling author and professor. Good thing they caught him. The professor's name was ...let's see, it's here somewhere... Oh. Oops. It's Henry Louis Gates Jr. The editorial board writes:

The police say Gates asked if the officer knew "who he was." That may sound arrogant, but many a black man in the same position has asked a similar question. It means: "Can you see who I am, not just what I am?" Because regardless of their achievements, wealth or status, they are vulnerable to the universal black male experience -- finding themselves in handcuffs first and charges dropped later.

Times columnist Tim Rutten has a preview of Thursday's MTA board vote on whether to contract out Metro car construction to Italian firm AnsaldoBreda. David Wise catalogs the CIA's attempts to assassinate foreign leaders and perceived nuisances, and discovers that our spooks aren't very good at bumping people off. Finally, author Christopher Lane walks us through the changes in direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, which have given us, among other things, Brooke Shields shilling for a liquid to combat the horrors of eyelash hypotrichosis.

But that's just our Opinion.

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / AP

On Wednesday, Councilwoman Janice Hahn called for Los Angeles to make a little (or a lot) of money off the city's medical marijuana dispensaries.

Hahn suggested during last week's L.A. city council meeting that a city tax on medical marijuana could provide millions of dollars to a cash-strapped city. More than 400 dispensaries operate in Los Angeles, none of which are currently taxed. Her argument: pot is like any other commodity. 

Oakland has a similar measure on the table (Measure F) that their city council will consider on Tuesday. Also, the California legislature is contemplating a statewide tax on marijuana that would be taxed similarly to alcohol. State officials say it could make upwards of $1 billion for California.

L.A. Weekly points out that a tax on marijuana could end up just like any other "sin tax," or a tax on things such as cigarettes and liquor (products considered bad for one's health, though the whole purpose of medical mary jane is, well, medicinal, right?). The newspaper envisions little or no opposition to the bill, as the city lacks a pot pharmacy lobby and sin taxes are generally approved by the greater population.

Though such a proposal could make Los Angeles hundreds of millions of dollars richer, the fact remains that medical marijuana is still illegal on the federal level, and the Drug Enforcement Agency raids pharmacies regularly. So would imposing a tax on medical marijuana hasten the complete legitimization of dispensaries? And at what cost? Tell us what you think.

--Catherine Lyons

Photo: Tom Romero packs one-eighth-ounce bags of medical marijuana at The Green Door dispensary in San Francisco. Credit: AP Photo / Jeff Chiu

It's been interesting to watch the slowly developing concerns about Ritalin and other stimulants used to help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). After a few reports of sudden deaths among children taking the drugs, the Food and Drug Administration asked drug manufacturers in 2007 to include better warnings with the medications. Now a new study is out that might concern some parents, although it provides no real answers for them.

The study, funded by the FDA and National Institutues of Mental Health, looked at the files on 564 children and teenagers who had died suddenly, with no real explanation for their death. They compared those files with those of an equal number of youngsters who had died in auto accidents. The findings: 10 of those in the first group had been taking Ritalin (other medications were not widely available at the time), while only two of those in the control group had been.

It sounds frightening at first glance-- five times as many? But the children taking Ritalin made up a small portion of either group, and sudden unexplained death is itself an extremely rare occurrence among children and teens. There were other possible factors the researchers couldn't account for. For example, teenagers with ADHD are more likely to experiment with illegal drugs. Could it be that those drugs, rather than Ritalin, caused some or all of the deaths?

The study's conclusion: That there is an association between stimulant use and sudden unexplained death in use. NIMH's conclusion: It always pays to remember that correlation does not imply causality. Just because there was an association doesn't mean that one caused the other. NIMH calls for further studies as well as better screening for heart conditions among youth. And parents are left, as always, to make the best judgment they can on whether to use these daily medications.

Photo by Robert Bukaly/AP

Liberals and conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed dramatically during the past term on everything from the regulation of "indecent" broadcasting to employment discrimination to whether elected judges should recuse themselves from cases involving campaign benefactors.

A notable exception came in the 8-1 holding that an Arizona school had violated the 4th Amendment rights of a 13-year-old girl by subjecting her to a strip search (the dissenter was Clarence Thomas, taking his familiar role as outlier). The near-unanimity confounded publicly expressed fears by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that the result might be affected by the fact that her eight male colleagues "have never been a 13-year-old girl."

Ginsburg's anxiety was understandable given the gender divide at oral arguments over whether removing your clothes is all that traumatic for a teenager. Ginsburg must have cringed ...

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

Move over, marijuana. A new study finds that adding ginger to food in the days surrounding chemotherapy treatments reduces nausea and vomiting.

My grandmother could have told them that. Ginger ale was her remedy for all abdominal ills. And ginger has been touted by the alternative-health community in recent years as well.

Will this wipe out the whole debate around use of that other herbal remedy for chemotherapy discomfort? It's hard to imagine "medical ginger clinics" having quite the same ring -- or popularity. Besides, ginger can't possibly do as much to stimulate the appetite.

Photograph of cannabis plant by Richard Pedroncelli / AP

No one was surprised when it turned out the majority of 19 banks undergoing "stress tests" needed more money. While the editorial board is sorry about their stress, it also says we need a few more rules here before the federal government shells about billions more in rescue funding.

Companies whose solvency is implicitly guaranteed by the government don't have to pay as much for the money they borrow to fund their operations, giving them a competitive advantage, and they're more cavalier about risk. So they have a strong incentive to become so complex and interconnected that the government will be compelled to bail them out if they stumble again.

Our relief that the flu unfairly named for pigs looks much less deadly than first suspected should not stop the government from instituing some common-sense policy changes that will help slow the spread of such disease in the future. the board says, such as requiring employers to provide paid sick time to every employee so that people in contagious phases of illness will stay home. And the board takes a moment to envy the French who not only eat more brie, drink more wine, stay slimmer and work less, but also get more shut-eye. At least, that's what we think they meant when they said they sleep more.

On the other side of the fold, a pediatrician and a professor of education urge voters not to approve Proposition 1D, which would cut funds for pediatric medical care and preschool for the youngest Californians. Former Times columnist Mike Downey mourns the loss of L.A.'s collective baseball happiness this season after Manny Ramirez was suspended for 50 games, discipline for taking a banned female fertility drug.

He apologized to everybody in Southern California except the octomom, the topless Miss USA contestant, Steve Lopez and the dude with the cello.

And Kapil Komireddi, an Indian writer whgo specializes in South Asian affairs calls on the U.S. government to safeguard Pakistant's nuclear weapons arsenal as well as offer the country humanitarian aid.

Credit: Lisa Benson / Washington Post Writers Group

Health reform took a major step forward, the editorial board notes, when insurers indicated they were open to ending some of the practices that have kept so many people from being able to obtain insurance -- basing premiums on health history and refusing to cover pre-existing conditions -- as long as everyone is required to purchase insurance.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton earns the board's praise for acknowledging that the U.S. market for illegal drugs contributes to the drug violence that has seized Mexico. And the board warns that an attempt by Sen. Dianne Feinstein to give new protections to large swaths of the Mojave Desert could backfire for the environment -- and the desert itself -- if it keeps significant solar projects from being built.

On the other side of the fold, Sarah Chayes, who heads the Arghand Cooperative in Afghanistan, writes that the United States' scaled-back commitments to that country have not only disappointed the population there, but caused many to turn back toward the Taliban.

So when Obama said recently that there were no plans on tap to "rebuild Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy," or when Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the aim wasn't to create "some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there," my colleagues were listening. Such formulations have the effect on Afghans of a cold shower. And without the energy and commitment of the Afghan population, even the narrowest of U.S. goals in Afghanistan -- denying sanctuary to international terrorists -- will not be achieved.

Joel Stein argues against tax deductions for charitable donations. And in the Letters to the Editor, readers weigh in on whether President Obama is wrecking a promising start as the nation's leader.

Illustration: Matt Davies/The Journal News