If you've been wondering how Laura Ling and Euna Lee wound up prisoners of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, read the pair's Op-Ed today and find out. In addition to providing chilling details about their capture (sounds to me like they were set up, but judge for yourself), they also explain why they were so determined to report on human trafficking between North Korea and China:

It's a compelling piece. Rounding out the page, columnist Tim Rutten provides a history lesson about the observatory on Mt. Wilson that's now threatened by the rampaging Station fire, as well as some harsh words about the policies that have seemingly turned Southern California into a tinderbox.

On the editorial side of the stack, the Times board says it's too early to abandon comprehensive healthcare reform for a more incremental, less controversial approach. Besides, the board says, "piecemeal efforts ... quickly run into the same complexities" that a sweeping overhaul faces, such as the need for expensive subsidies. The board also endorses moves by Latin American countries to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana and other drugs, while also praising the Obama administration for taking a "wait-and-see approach" to the changes.

Photo: Laura Ling, left, and Euna Lee. Credit: Gabriel Bouys / AFP/Getty Images

-- Jon Healey

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 ...

It's all about budgets and spending programs today on the Times Opinion pages. Well, OK, there are pieces on North Korea and Gitmo, too, but work with me here.

The editorial board blasts Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for using his line-item veto power to make deeper cuts than the legislature enacted in its hard-fought budget revision -- a power grab that probably violates the state's constitution:

California vests lawmaking power in the Legislature and properly limits the executive by allowing him to veto appropriations, line-by-line if he likes, but not to unilaterally alter those already on the books.

The board also calls on Congress to put more money into the Kash4Klunkers CARS program that subsidizes the purchase of more fuel-efficient vehicles, despite the grumbling from some economists, because it's providing a much-needed boost to consumer confidence. But the money should come out of the unspent portion of the $787 billion stimulus package enacted in February, and there should be no more refills, the board says.

On the Op-Ed page ...

Today's editorial page leads off with a plea to the Los Angeles City Council to stop dawdling on a water conservation plan that would raise rates for water guzzlers. The need for conservation is dire, with a dwindling Sierra snowpack and supply reductions intended to reverse environmental damage, but a sensible rate plan will be jeopardized if the council doesn't act soon.

The Times also celebrates the remarkable rescue by Navy personnel of container-ship Capt. Richard Phillips after a five-day standoff with pirates off the coast of Somalia, but warns that the aggressive U.S. response could endanger the lives of more ships' crews. And we give thumbs-up to last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision restricting law-enforcement agents from giving the "third degree" to criminal suspects -- the court has clearly signaled that confessions will only be considered voluntary if they are made within six hours of arrest.

Today's Op-Edsters include columnist Jonah Goldberg, whose take on the pirate hostage drama is that it should mark the beginning of a tougher stance against pirates, one that has been delayed for too long by a "pro-pirate" culture, misplaced sympathy for criminals and, above all, lawyers.

Also opining today is Juan Carlos Zarate, former deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism, who says the best way to coerce North Korea's rogue regime to stop pursuing nuclear arms is to apply smart financial pressure. Even without support from the United Nations, the tools are in place for the U.S. to cut banks that do business with the regime off from the U.S. financial system, a strategy that the Obama administration should pursue.

Finally, writer and parent Lorenza Munoz recounts the tale of a PTA effort to put on a show by controversial comedian Carlos Mencia as a benefit for a low-income school, and the firestorm that erupted.

* Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett / USA Today

During the week ending April 11, The Times received a rather sparse 430 usable letters -- perhaps spring break is slowing writers down -- just 134 of which were in our Top Five Topics.

• Limbaugh challenge: 39 letters, reacting to four essays from prominent local liberals accepting Andrew Klavan's Limbaugh Challenge;
• Obama's trip: 31 letters, about President Obama's swing through Europe and the Near East;
• Binghamton shootings: 26 letters, reacting to a tragic shooting spree in an upstate New York immigrant center;
• Ana's story: 20 letters, responding to Times reporter Thomas Curwen's two-part series about neurofibromatosis sufferer Ana Rodarte; and
• North Korean rocket: 18 letters, focusing on North Korea's rocket launch and what it means for the world.

How the Top Five is tabulated: Each week, your letters maven receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letters through the good old U.S. postal service, and even a few faxes here and there.

After she cuts out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems), she is usually left with several hundred eligible items, represented in the Letters Top Five tally. From these, she selects the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper. Faxes and snail mail are not reflected in the chart.

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.

The Times editorial page sums up President Obama's tour of Europe and Turkey as an impressive show that won the president accolades, but very little else; Obama's hopes for more stimulus spending by the G-20, more troops for Afghanistan and more condemnation of North Korea's nuclear ambitions went largely unrealized. We also find much to like in Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' military budget proposal, which aims to shift the emphasis from fighting big conventional wars to taking on insurgencies like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gates and Obama hardly aim to disarm America, but there's no question that they intend to buy less ammo. Given that the United States spends nearly as much on defense as every other country on Earth combined, that's not a bad plan.

Finally, The Times praises Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's efforts to wrest sacrifices from city employees, who must accept pay cuts in this tough economy if they want to avoid widescale layoffs that would only worsen local unemployment.

Over on the Op-Ed page, American Prospect associate editor Ezra Klein compares "nationalized" healthcare systems in Britain and Canada to the private health system in the U.S., and finds that both systems find ways to ration care. The choice comes down to occasional waiting times for elective surgery, or excluding many people from getting care at all:

So although Britain and Canada have decided that no one will go without, even if some must occasionally wait, the U.S. has decided that most of those who can't afford care simply won't get it.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg assails the Obama administration for opening its arms to the discredited United Nations Human Rights Council, a pack of nations that ignores rampant human rights abuses in places like Sudan and Cuba while taking every opportunity to condemn Israel. Rather than trying to change this reprehensible group from the inside, Obama should cut all ties and delegitimize it by ignoring it. And novelist Susan Straight finds that her husband's simple advice to the girls' basketball team he coaches applies as much to everyday life as it does to the court.

Editorial cartoon by Lisa Benson / Washington Post Writers Group

The Times endorses candidates today for the four contested seats on the Los Angeles Community College District: Angela J. Reddock, Kelly Candaele, Jozef Essavi and Kurt S. Lowry. The editorial board also offers kudos to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for projecting a "nonconfrontational foreign policy" during her Asia tour, her first official trip overseas.

Over on the Op-Ed Page, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid bemoans the concessions being made in Islamabad toward the Taliban, which is negotiating a deal that might allow the Swat Valley region to impose Islamic law -- a deal that Rashid calls "an unmistakable defeat in the country's losing battle against Islamic extremism."

Also, columnist Jonah Goldberg sees Barack Obama morphing into someone who resembles George W. Bush -- now that he has taken office, Obama is turning out to be a good deal more centrist than liberals or conservatives expected. "It's early yet, but I think we're seeing with Obama what happened with Bush," Goldberg concludes. "The chess master is really just a man who's figuring it out as he goes along. Sometimes he'll be right; other times, horribly wrong. But whether he's right or wrong, left-wing or centrist, liberalism will likely mean whatever Barack Obama says it means."

Finallly, oceanographer William Patzert and water board member Timothy F. Brick point out that higher temperatures are reducing mountain runoff even as other traditional sources of water for Southern California are in severe distress, leading to only one possible outcome: higher water prices and more rationing. That's something Californians are going to have to get used to.

Photo: Residents of Pakistan's Swat valley gathering to listen to an Islamic political party leader. Credit: EPA / Rashid Iqbal

Today's Op-Ed page presents a critique by former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's approach to North Korea. Guess what? He's not a fan:

Clinton accurately called North Korea's nuclear program "the most acute challenge to stability in northeast Asia," and she established the objective that the North "completely and verifiably eliminate" its nuclear weapons activities. This familiar formulation implicitly -- and very unfortunately -- accepts that North Korea can keep a nuclear program as long as it is "peaceful." Whatever else it may be, this deal is not "smart." Leaving Pyongyang with any nuclear capability simply invites future abuse and a recurrence of the very problem we need to "eliminate."

Columnist Tim Rutten urges President Obama to lift his predecessor's ban on news coverage of military coffins returning to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Wrapping up the page, Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, and former LA Times scribe James Gerstenzang tell Detroit automakers to change their approach to a federal bailout:

What the automakers don't get is this: What's good for America is good for GM (and Chrysler), and not the other way around. With billions of dollars of taxpayer cash in their bank accounts and billions more coming, GM and Chrysler work for us now. And they have to start thinking about how to serve the country.

Americans need cars that go farther on a gallon of gasoline, pollute less and save money at the pump.

On the editorial page, the Times board lays into state Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) for demanding good-government reforms in exhange for the vote that would end the state's budget crisis. It ridicules the "Buy America" provision of the newly passed federal stimulus package. And demonstrating impeccable timing, it levels a broadside at Facebook, calling on it to drop new terms of service that claimed the right to use members' material even after they remove it or delete their accounts. Ahem. Turns out that late last night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company had dropped the controversial change and was working on new language. I console myself with the thought that the editorial ran on the Times website for at least half an hour last night before becoming outdated.

Credit: Matt Wuerker, Politico

Michael Steele, the new chairman of the Republican Party, declared in his acceptance speech that it was "time for something completely different," but the Times editorial board wonders what he meant; other than the fact that he's a different color (Steele is the first African American ever to lead the GOP), he's pretty much a cookie-cutter Republican who sticks close to the party line on most issues. That makes him a safe choice for a party that realizes it needs to change but is conflicted about how to do it. "Along with a new messenger, the GOP might consider a new message," the editorial concludes.

The board also considers, and rejects, AB 103, an attempt by state Assemblyman Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) to make up for the perceived unfairness of Proposition 8 (California's ban on same-sex marriage) by extending Proposition 13's property tax benefits to any two people who own a house together. That's an extension that goes too far. And we urge more guidelines and oversight of the fertility industry as increasingly troubling questions arise over the birth of octuplets in Bellflower to a divorced mother who already had six young children. "She and her family will live with the consequences, happy or not. That's their business. Curbing the potential for medical abuse, though, is a matter of public concern," the editorial states.

Over on the Op-Ed page, former Times religion reporter William Lobdell praises U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien's attempt to hold Cardinal Roger Mahony accountable for his role in the priest sex abuse scandal. The federal grand jury probe of Mahony raises hopes, Lobdell says, that "there will finally be justice." Author Matt Bai, meanwhile, offers his take on the text messages President Obama is sending from his famous Blackberry (Sample message to Hillary Clinton: "I'm sprawled out on the Oval Office rug, just luxuriating. Thought u'd like to know. LOL.")

Speculation over the health of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il prompts Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Paul B. Stares to warn that the U.S. government should have a contingency plan in place in case of Kim's sudden demise. And columnist Jonah Goldberg decries Democrats' hypocrisy in moralizing about the righteousness of paying taxes while staying quiet about tax-cheating members of their party such as Timothy F. Geithner and Tom Daschle.

* Photo of President Obama and his Blackberry by Getty Images