Iraq still owes $24 billion in reparations to Kuwait for Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion and attempted conquest, but now Iraq has problems of its own. Should it still pay? The Times editorial page says Kuwait should consider reducing reparations in the name of stability in that part of the world:

Plenty of bankers would give their eye teeth for 50 cents on a dollar owed, and Kuwait already has received that. Iraq's political and economic development is in the interest of its neighbors, as well as of the United States. Kuwait should consider reducing reparations, and its proposal to reinvest some of the remaining debt in Iraq would benefit both countries.

The page also gives props to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of Florida for his vote for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor -- and for trying to keep the high court from being just another panel for political appointments:

During the Alito hearings, Graham reminded Democrats that "elections matter." He was true to his word Tuesday in supporting Sotomayor. "I didn't feel good about the election, but we lost," Graham said. Then he offered his colleagues a lesson in political science: "What I'm trying to do with my vote is to recognize that [during the Bush administration] we came perilously close to damaging an institution, the judiciary, that has held this country together in difficult times."

And we round out the page with more props, this time for L.A. residents and their response to the drought:

Let's consider the very real possibility that Los Angeles residents saved water because they take the drought seriously. They have a high degree of environmental awareness. They want to conserve -- even if that means their lawns may turn brown.

On the Op-Ed page, we offer a collection of punditry from around the nation on the state budget. Also, author Helen Winternitz calls on the U.S. and other western nations to support Congo -- the former Zaire -- in part by accepting China as the nation's primary creditor.

And Kathy J. Sackman, president of United Nurses Assns. of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, takes Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to task for undermining oversight of nurses. Sackman says more oversight of her union's members is better:

The board should implement a better tracking system so that comprehensive records of allegations against individual nurses are maintained (both in-state and out-of-state) and compared against any new claims. And finally, the board should recruit enforcement monitors to guarantee that action recommended by the board against individual nurses is completed and that any required oversight during a probationary period is fulfilled.

Photo: Gustavo Ferrari / EPA

A warning is bouncing through cyberspace today, landing on the Facebook statuses of many of the social networking site's users. The message: "Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission." It continues with a prescription of how you can protect your photos.

On its face, Facebook's actions seem like a classic case of misappropriation, or the intentional, illegal use of the property of someone else for one's own use or some other unauthorized purpose. Facebook admits in its terms of service that all Intellectual Property content, like photos and videos, belong to you, the user. But the fine print essentially allows Facebook to do what its pleases with such content, with some limitations.

Elsewhere in those terms of service that no one ever reads before hastily clicking "I agree," Facebook says, "You can use your privacy settings to limit how your name and profile picture may be associated with commercial or sponsored content. You give us permission to use your name and profile picture in connection with that content, subject to the limits you place." (emphasis added).

Well, that's not vague or anything. What does "in connection with" these third-party ads (i.e. ads on Facebook but not for Facebook) mean? According to the Facebook-wide status panic about this, apparently it means that your married face could end up on a sexy singles ad.

But Facebook administrators say that's simply not true, and their policy has not changed regarding photos being used in third-party advertisements. Still, the Facebook blog says the site can use your photo for something that you have expressed interest in (say, by becoming a "fan") -- without your permission. Don't worry though, your data won't be shared.

According to All Facebook, the social networking site only allows its users' content to show up on third-party ads if the content is not being cached. But some ad networks do cache data. While many of those networks have been shut down and the site is doing its best to regulate, this is where the major problem lies. In some cases, pictures are appearing even outside the Facebook site.

As underhanded as this may seem, this should be a lesson to actually read the terms of service, vague as they may be, before signing up for a social networking service that wants to use your pictures in ads. That, or don't put up pictures you're not comfortable sharing with people outside your network of friends. In the meantime, you can change your privacy settings. The Facebook ads privacy settings are under "Newsfeeds and Wall."   

--Catherine Lyons

Credit: AP Photo / The Canadian Press, Sean Kilpatrick

   In today's opinion pages, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson acknowledges that today's situation in Sacramento is different from the Newt Gingrich Congress of 1995-96, because there are no GOP moderates to prod their leaders into reversing their demand for cuts. And he acknowledges, obliquely, that it's different because Bill Clinton was president then, and there's someone else as governor of California now (psst: It's Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he's a Republican). But he still thinks Democrats in the Legislature should act like Clinton did back then and call the bluff of, well, someone, and reject the current budget deal. If only Gavin Newsom or Jerry Brown tells them to do it. And then Republicans will apologize and raise taxes.

The provisions in California's Constitution that require a two-thirds vote to pass the state's budget and all tax increases were always something of a booby trap, and in the current crop of legislative Republicans -- a minority party with just over one-third representation in both houses -- it found its boobies.

Are we even allowed to say that?

More Clinton: Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, sees shadowy Clinton operatives behond the coup in Honduras, and he calls on President Obama, and perhaps his secretary of state, whoever that may be, to freeze Honduran assets in the U.S. to force the nation to reinstate its ousted president.

Elsewhere, columnist Meghan Daum takes on elderly would-be mothers who use medical science to get pregnant, and then aren't around to riase their kids. Here's the money quote:

Having a kid later in life is great if that's your thing. But, come on -- no one with a kid in Pampers should be in Depends.

On the editorial page, we cheer the Senate for standing up to the gun lobby. And we grudgingly admit that Democrats, too, play politics when selecting U.S. attorneys, but we insist that all political pressure must be off once the lawyer is in office.

But it's all a matter of Opinion.

Photo: Max Whittaker / Getty Images

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

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 editorial board bemoans the U.S. Supreme Court decision that inmates have no right to DNA testing that could exonerate them. Attempts by an accused person to find exculpatory evidence should be considered a basic part of due process. The board agrees with Colombian leaders that they, not the United States, should be the ones to try a man accused of holding 15 hostages including three who worked for military contractors. The board also takes a look at the Alameda Unified School District's new curriculum for teaching elementary school children about tolerance toward gays and lesbians, and concludes that the lessons take too heavy-handed an approach for such young children:

It's high time that schools took anti-bullying measures more seriously. We just never thought that would include requiring fifth-graders to recite the meaning of each letter in LGBT.

In attempting to discourage taunting of gay students, the Alameda Unified School District turned what should be a basic lesson on treating others kindly into a primer on sexual identity. Its new anti-bullying curriculum for kindergartners through fifth-graders will begin in the fall and focus solely on gay and lesbian issues -- as if harassment based on race, religion or failure to wear cool clothes were nonexistent. Parents who might object cannot opt their children out of it.

On the other side of the fold, writer Richard Farrell describes the haunting heights and low points of life with his domineering, sometimes abusive, sometimes intensely loving father. And a UCLA English professor parses the language of Middle East coverage and finds that it favors Israel over the concerns of Palestinians.

Illustration by Polly Becker for The Times

Even though it's a variation on the "Area Man" (or Area Woman) chestnut, the New York Daily News has a piece about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that offers another twist on identity politics. Under the headline "Will Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Finally Meet His Match?", the article notes: "Neither of the brassy New Yorkers -- he's from Queens, she's from the Bronx -- suffers fools, or unprepared lawyers." (For the record, Scalia was born in New Joisey but raised in Queens.)

For a lot of non-New York readers, the adjective "brassy" is redundant: All New Yorkers are brassy types who won't suffer fools -- or sages -- gladly. My favorite New York story involves a freelance pitch I made years ago (eventually successfully) to The New York Times. When I reached the editor recommended to me, she answered the phone: "Who are you?"

Like ethnic stereotypes, their regional counterparts are rules proved (or unproved) by endless exceptions. Not every New Yorker is obnoxious, not every Southerner is hospitable, not every Californian says "like" a zillion times in every sentence. And yet  regional differences do survive even in an Internet-homogenized culture. Trial lawyers in my hometown of Pittsburgh loved to be pitted against Philadelphia lawyers, because the Philly mouthpieces hectored juries a mile a minute in a foreign, quasi-New York accent. It isn't just Southerners who preface their summations with "I'm just a simple, small-town lawyer."

I happen to enjoy the persistence of regional differences, especially the superior civility of Southerners. My Exhibit A appropriately comes from the U.S. Supreme Court, which I covered for a few years. At heavily attended oral arguments, spectators -- including student groups -- often were let out at the end of proceedings through the press section. As the students and teachers brushed by us, we would engage in small talk about where they were from and how the students had enjoyed the argument. ("I was riveted to my seat," one sarcastic seventh grader spat out. He reminded me of myself at that age.)

It's impressionistic, I admit, but I was struck by how many kids from Southern schools -- including boys --  addressed me as "Sir." It wasn't the first time I had encountered the North-South politeness differential. A TV news producer who moved from North Carolina to  Pittsburgh once told me that his son's high school classmates teased him relentlessly for addressing teachers and other adults as "Sir" or "Ma'am." I also have noted that Southerners of all ages who are caught up in CNN-friendly natural disasters address annoying TV reporters as "Sir" and "Ma'am."

Assuming Sotomayor becomes the third New York City product on the court (the decorous Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the exception that proves the rule here), it would be nice if a soft-spoken justice from the South would inject some civility into the judicial equivalent of a subway series. Alas, the only Southerner on the bench -- Clarence Thomas -- is soft-spoken to a fault, almost never opening his mouth during arguments.

I'm a big believer in simulations. For most of my career I have moonlighted (or, as with my current early-morning  gig at George Washington University, mornlighted) as a university journalism instructor. One of my most useful teaching tools, if I do say so myself, is a mock news conference at which a newly appointed "special assistant to the president for youth affairs" (impersonated by a series of glib twentysomethings) answers questions from students about his plans for the job (a "listening tour" of college campuses), his embarrassing past opinions (excavated from a bogus database) and his personal background (including a marijuana rap). I prefer a simulated press conference to a real one with say, a city council member, because it works better pedagogically. Students tend to be tongue-tied in the presence of a real politico, however small-time.

But a journalism class isn't a Supreme Court confirmation, which is why I'm distressed to read that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, like previous nominees, apparently will be put though the mock Senate confirmation hearings by the Obama White House. These rehearsals are known as "murder boards," and Harriet Miers' performance in such simulations reportedly contributed to the demise of her nomination.

It's fine for presidential candidates to engage in role-playing before debates, and allow staffers to shape their answers and critique their deportment. Campaign gurus, like congressional aides, are part of a politician's extended family. The relationship between the White House and a Supreme Court nominee is, or should be, different. Apparently President Obama was scrupulous about not asking Sotomayor about her view of Roe v. Wade, for fear of conditioning her appointment on a promise that she would vote a particular way on a contested issue. Is it any less troublesome from a separation-of-powers perspective for Obama's aides to stage-manage Sotomayor's presentation of what are supposed to be her own views?

Let the woman speak for herself, and leave the role-playing to computer geeks and journalism professors.

Credit: AP Photo / Alex Brandon

Two topics dominate today's Opinion pages: the California Supreme Court's validation of Proposition 8, and President Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. The editorial board said the debate prompted by the Prop. 8 and the subsequent appeal has helped persuade lawmakers in other states to legalize gay marriage. The challenge for proponents in California, the board said, is to conduct a better campaign for legalization here:

Civil rights groups should be focusing their time and money on reaching out to moderate voters with information that quells misdirected fears. Contrary to what the pro-Proposition 8 ads implied, no religious group ever lost tax-exempt status over refusal to perform same-sex weddings; San Francisco students who attended their lesbian teacher's wedding had the written endorsements of their parents; gay marriage will not be forced into the California schools curriculum; and faith-based adoption agencies will continue to operate.

Columnist Tim Rutten, meanwhile, focused on the ruling itself, calling the justices' reasoning "intellectually and morally incoherent":

So, if a majority of Californians voted to "carve out a narrow exception" to California's right to privacy and applied it only to Jews, would it be constitutionally acceptable? If Native Americans were accorded all the protections of the law by a ballot proposition, except the right to marry a non-Indian, would that be legal?

This is social and moral nonsense.

Regarding Obama's Supreme Court pick, the editorial board likened Sotomayor to 2005 nominee John Roberts (whom the board supported). Her point of view wouldn't be confused with his, the board said, but she also fits "squarely within the tradition" of nominees with excellent legal credentials and views that "fall within the mainstream." On the Op-Ed side of the fold, Rutgers University professor David Greenberg speculates that Obama's choice of Sotomayor was so politically shrewd, it may have "checkmated" conservative opponents. (Backing Greenberg's thesis, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee all but ruled out a filibuster.)

Rounding out the pages, author David Wolman offers an entertaining history of American spelling rules. And readers weigh in on small cows, shrunken education budgets, reduced spending on military cargo planes and a life cut tragically short in Vernon.

Credit: AP Photo / Alex Brandon 

After President Obama announced the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, some colleagues and I tried to answer the question "Is she or isn't she?" -- not "Is she or isn't she a judicial activist?", but "Is she or isn't she a Catholic?" The blogosphere yesterday featured a catholic (lower-case C) collection of opinions about whether the nominee, a Latina educated at a school named after Cardinal Spellman, was one of us, and to what extent. (The Boston Globe website offers a comprehensive survey of the speculations.)

Under the headline, "This Just In . . . Sotomayor IS Catholic," Steve Waldman at Beliefnet revealed that "a White House official just confirmed to me that she, in fact, Catholic." Later, however, Waldman caveated his scoop: "Another White House official elaborated slightly, Judge Sotomayor was raised as a Catholic and attends church for family celebrations and other important events."

This would make her a "cultural Catholic." Does that count? It certainly does when Catholic activists point to the size (and political clout) of their flock. As the saying goes, "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic." Or as a priest in Pittsburgh observed, after a friend of mine referred to someone as an ex-Catholic: "There are no ex-Catholics, only bad Catholics."

So, given that definition, Sotomayor would be would be the sixth RC on the court, reducing the Protestant cohort to one, Justice John Paul Stevens. Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are Jewish.

In a recent blog post, I warned of this marginalization of a group that long dominated the court (and everything else in America, except Hollywood, big-city police forces and organized crime). Still, no WASP Anti-Defamation League has formed to protest -- maybe because Sotomayor is a liberal Catholic, unlike co-religionists like John Roberts and Nino Scalia.

Which raises another question: Will hard-line Catholic bishops demand that a Justice Sotomayor enforce the church's opposition to abortion in her decisions? Will she be denied Holy Communion at one of those "family celebrations"? Or, as Waldman put it: "Will We have a SCOTUS "Wafer Watch'?"

Photo: Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor visiting her alma mater, Cardinal Spellman High School. Credit: White House handout, courtesy Getty Images.