Columnist Tim Rutten notes the recent complaints about the California initiative process by the state's chief justice and a top fund manager and asks, what to do? The answer is, umm, unclear:

Also on the Op-Ed page, James D. Zirin, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, urges President Obama to hurry up and appoint a cyber security czar because the risks are so great. And hey, you can never have enough czars! And author Barbara Ehrenreich scoffs at a recent study, "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness," that "purports to show that women have become steadily unhappier since 1972." Says Ehrenreich:

On the editorial pages, the board blasts the health insurance lobby for hiring PricewaterhouseCooper to do a hatchet job on the Senate Finance Committee's healthcare reform bill. But it admits that the insurers have a point: The bill falls critically short of the goal of providing universal health insurance. And it argues that the recent botched execution in Ohio, the latest in a string of similar incidents in that state, adds to the evidence that lethal injections don't pass constitutional muster.

Photo credit: Susan Tibbles / For The Times

-- Jon Healey

From the start of the buzz about Gardasil, the vaccine that guards against the two most common forms of the virus that can cause cervical cancer, I've wondered why public health officials were concerned only about vaccinating girls. Wouldn't society be better protected if the boys were vaccinated, too?

As it turns out, the Food and Drug Administration recently wondered too. An FDA panel recommended the vaccine for boys -- but then a study out of the Harvard School of Public health found that this wouldn't be cost-effective. It all has to do with a complex formula, described this way by HealthDay News:

Other experts say Harvard failed to take some factors into account that make it worthwhile to vaccinate boys. then of course there are parents who worry about giving their daughters a new vaccine. In any case,  not all girls are vaccinated and women and older girls who move here from other nations also might not be protected. I certainly understand the need to figure out cost-effectiveness, but wonder how others are feeling about Gardasil.'

Photo: Mick Tsikas / EPA

-- Karin Klein

What's not to like about a proposed fee on California hospitals? The hospitals themselves support it, because it would bring in billions of dollars in federal funding to repay the hospitals and other health care providers for the medical care they give to poor people. The Times editorial board urges Gov. Schwarzenegger to see the logic and sign the bill to make it happen.

They call it overdraft protection, but there's little to protect the consumer from the multibillion-dollar flow of money to banks that charge a fee over and over and over again to debit-card users whose accounts can't cover their purchases. Often the fee is bigger than the purchase, but the customer simply doesn't realize the account is overdrawn. The Times calls on the Federal Reserve to fix this with rules that require better consumer information, a choice for customers who don't want the so-called protection and notification for the customer before that costly but unaffordable purchase is made.

And the board calls on Honduras to allow the return of President Manuel Zelaya -- with limited powers -- until the Nov. 29 election, though it also calls on the international community to make sure Zelaya understands he should not attempt to stay in power.

Let's admit this openly: Tuna aren't as awe-inspiring as whales. They don't spout in the middle of the ocean or do a slow dive that ends with the farewell wave of a giant tail. Nonetheless, they need protection after drastic overfishing, writes Joshua Reichert of the Pew Environment Group. On the Times Op-Ed page, Reichert argues that fishing caps haven't worked and that nothing but endangered-species status will save the Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Finally, energy journalist Richard Nemec writes that Los Angeles has been playing political musical chairs in determining leadership for the Department of Water and Power instead of hiring the experts it so desperately needs.

Photo: Gavin Newman / Greenpeace International / EPA

-- Karin Klein

Small-government conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg makes a startling argument on today's Op-Ed page: We should make the House of Representatives bigger. A lot bigger, in fact; Goldberg says a Congress with 5,000 members would shake up our nation's calcified two-party system and more closely approximate the kind of democracy the founding fathers intended.

UC Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, meanwhile, debunks arguments that the healthcare bills pending in the House and Senate would be unconstitutional. And obesity experts Kelly D. Brownell and David S. Ludwig argue in favor of a tax on sugar-sweetened sodas, which would help fund healthcare reform programs and lower healthcare costs by decreasing obesity and related ailments such as diabetes.

On the editorial page, the board urges the Obama administration to consider backing new elections in Afghanistan or a transitional government, unless monitors can determine that the country's Aug. 20 election was legitimate.

The editorial board also takes up a gun-rights case and argues, surprisingly enough, in favor of stronger protections for gun owners. Though the board favors measures to reduce gun violence, it thinks the Supreme Court should rule that the 2nd Amendment applies to states as well as the federal government. That's because allowing states to ignore this part of the Bill of Rights could undermine the requirement that they abide by others.

Finally, the board notes that Comcast Corp.'s proposal to buy NBC Universal cuts against the grain of recent media deals, and its effect on the marketplace may be limited. But it will be interesting to watch how the combined company's approach to the Internet might change.

* Cartoon by Rob Rogers / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Times editorial board laments the departure of Guy Mehula, the man who oversaw the recent surge construction for the Los Angeles Unified School District. That program operated with an efficiency and competence rarely found at LAUSD, the board asserts, and those qualities are threatened by Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines' reported plans to supervise the unit more closely:

Elsewhere on the editorial page, the board defends Facebook's handling of a user-generated poll asking whether President Obama should be assassinated. And it urges lawmakers to grow spines and stop blocking the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to maximum security federal prisons in the U.S.

On the Op-Ed side of the fold, columnist Tim Rutten runs through the list of policy challenges facing President Obama -- the jobless recovery, rising health insurance premiums, the war in Afghanistan, the Iranian leadership's nuclear ambitions -- and finds no easy choices. Nina Hachigian, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, says the Chinese government is sending mixed signals about its willingness to play ball with international organizations to address global problems: And writer Kathryn Wilkens of Upland muses about the life and death of the mission fig tree that had anchored her garden for decades:

Insert your ironic comment about this article appearing in dead tree media here.

Illustration: Blair Thornley / For The Times

-- Jon Healey

The proposed mandate that everyone obtain health insurance may actually be unifying the left and right -- in opposition. I wrote a post yesterday about the conservative critique of the mandate (it's an attack on liberty). Today, our front page offers the liberals' complaint about the requirement, to wit, that it isn't accompanied by price controls on insurance premiums. The zippy headline on the Web version of the story is, "Mandate minus price controls may increase healthcare costs."

To which I say: You can't be serious. Price controls? I'm no economist, but I don't know of any successful efforts by government to restrain fast-growing prices by slapping caps on them. The House and Senate healthcare bills take the much more fruitful approach of attacking the perverse incentives that lead to overconsumption of medical services, promoting preventative medicine and trying to boost efficiency through the use of technology and scientifically sound treatments. They're not aggressive enough in these efforts, nor are they doing enough to harness market forces. But at least they're focusing on the roots of the problem. 

If you want a preview of how well price controls would work, consider Medicare. The federal government has tried for years to impose a form of price controls on Medicare -- it sets reimbursement rates at artificially low levels for many services. The low rates have reduced supply by persuading some providers to curtail or eliminate their Medicare caseloads. They've also been politically impossible to maintain. In 1997 Congress enacted the "sustainable growth rate" formula to dial back the rise in reimbursements, tying their annual growth to the increase in GDP. For the past several years, however, Congress has lifted the limits in the face of pressure from doctors, hospitals and seniors. And the healthcare reform bills would waive the formula again.

As my previous post pointed out, the main proponent of the individual mandate has been the insurance industry. With conservatives bailing and liberals demanding what amounts to a pound of flesh, you have to wonder how badly the industry still wants it.

-- Jon Healey

An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal finds a new setting for the argument that the Democrats' healthcare reform bills would reduce Medicare benefits -- this time, lambasting Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) for calling on an Obama administration "crony" to punish Humana Inc. for warning customers that their Medicare Advantage benefits were at risk. According to the Journal's editorial, Humana wasn't saying anything that Congress' chief budget analyst, Doug Elmendorf, hasn't said.

The Journal's right about Baucus and the Democrats' proposals, and yet it paints a misleading picture of the policy at issue. Medicare Advantage is an HMO-style approach to Medicare, with care managed by private insurers such as Humana. The healthcare reform bills would phase out the additional subsidies that insurers receive for Medicare Advantage programs, bringing the cost into line with conventional Medicare. The reduction will almost certainly lead to the elimination of some of the extra benefits that those programs provide. But think about that for a moment. 

Insurers created HMOs to cut healthcare costs by steering consumers to a network of doctors and hospitals that had agreed to charge the insurer lower fees. Hoping to tap into those savings, Medicare has been encouraging seniors to join HMOs since the 1970s. In the past decade, however, the insurance industry's allies in Congress have ratcheted up the subsidies for Medicare HMOs (dubbed "Medicare Advantage" in 2003), enabling those programs to offer extra benefits in the hope of attracting more subscribers. By MedPAC's estimate, every $1 in added benefit cost the Medicare program $1.30. Medicare Advantage no longer tries to save taxpayer dollars; instead, it exists mainly to shift the elderly into privately run plans by delivering more benefits, but in a less efficient way than the basic Medicare program does. 

Those extra benefits, by the way, typically consist of lower co-payments, although they occasionally take the form of additional services. Medicare Advantage plans aren't as generous as Medigap policies, but those have monthly premiums and Medicare Advantage doesn't. If the healthcare reform legislation drains the extra subsidies from Medicare Advantage, those enrollees will feel the pinch. But they won't receive less than their counterparts in the basic Medicare program -- most likely, there will still be some advantage to Medicare Advantage. Which brings us back to the issue here. Are the Democrats proposing to cut Medicare benefits? No, they're proposing to trim the sweeteners that had been used to draw the elderly into privately managed plans. And if the private plans cost taxpayers more than basic Medicare, why do we have them?

Picture credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images

-- Jon Healey

Republican members of Congress have started spouting Reason magazine-style arguments against the individual mandate in the healthcare reform bills moving through the House and Senate. For example, Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) called the mandate "a stunning assault on liberty," and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) declared that "Individuals should maintain their freedom to chose health-care coverage, or not." Setting aside for a moment the support that Republican lawmakers expressed in the not-too-distant past for the individual mandate (including the Republican governor of a certain large West Coast state), it's just ... unseemly for the GOP to stick a shiv in the ribs of the insurance companies they've been protecting throughout this debate.

Remember, the main proponents of the mandate are private insurers, who like it for at least two reasons. It brings a significant number of young, healthy people into the risk pool, which should improve their margins. And it helps solve the "adverse selection" problem that would be caused if insurers were required to offer coverage to everyone, with no increase in price for those with pre-existing conditions. The insurance industry's trade association has agreed to such regulations as part of a package of changes that includes an individual mandate.

The main argument these days against the mandate is that Congress doesn't have the power to impose it. Slate's Timothy Noah has explored this interesting constitutional question, concluding that it is, in fact, legal. It would be more of a slam dunk, IMHO, if Congress allowed insurers to offer policies across state lines, which the proposal from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) would do under certain circumstances. Even without interstate policies, I think there's a good case to be made that requiring people to carry health insurance is akin to requiring them to pay into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds -- it's a forced contribution into a national system of shared risk and cost, albeit one administered largely by private entities.

Nevertheless, I'll freely admit that there are compelling arguments on the other side too. It's just strange to hear that position taken by the same Republican lawmakers who fight even the mildest version of a public-plan option on the grounds that it's bad for private insurers.

Updated on Sept. 24 at 2:50 p.m.: I just came across a thorough discussion of the constitutional issues triggered last month by Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy blog, with a follow-up last week by Adler. The posts are well worth reading, along with the comments, if you want to dive further into the weeds.

Photo: Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and John Kyl (R-Ariz.) debate healthcare legislation at the Senate Finance Committee. Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

-- Jon Healey

Former Times staff writer Johanna Neuman polled Washington insiders for the cause of today's hyper-partisanship in the Capitol, and names the most-cited culprit: Newt Gingrich. The architect of the Republican takeover of Congress in the mid-1990s also changed the congressional calendar and urged Republican lawmakers to spend their weekends at home, not mingling with colleagues of both parties in D.C. as they'd done before.

Updated at 1:05 p.m.: Neuman will discuss her Op-Ed on the "Michael Smerconish Show" at 7 a.m. EDT Wednesday, in case you're up that early and want to listen online. Or if you're in Philadelphia.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg eulogizes the "godfather of neoconservatism" Irving Kristol, who died last week at 89 -- and who had a major impact on Goldberg's political thinking.

On the Editorial Page, The Times examines the much-delayed work of the blue-ribbon panel trying to reimagine California's tax structure, and wonders if it might be a little too innovative. Its business receipt tax might not stand up to legal scrutiny, and its attempts to decrease revenue volatility appear to come at the expense of the poor and middle class.

We also address the backfiring strategy of seven former CIA directors who sent a letter to President Obama urging him to abort a Justice Department inquiry into torture... er, enhanced interrogation techniques... by the CIA under the Bush administration. The directors seem not to have realized that they were asking the president to abandon his assurances that Atty. Gen. Eric Holder would put the law above loyalty to the White House. The unintended result: Obama was forced to renew his promise, the opposite of the outcome they wanted.

And on the tangled question of Net neutrality, we weigh in on the side of new FCC chief Julius Genachowski, who wants to develop new rules governing what Internet service providers can do with the data that travels through their networks. Without such rules, the major phone and Internet companies have too much power to quash innovation in the name of "managing congestion."

Cartoon by Tom Toles / Washington Post

-- Dan Turner

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