It's a combination of issues so hot, an op-ed about reopening King-Harbor hospital doesn't even make the top three! Leading off is a pair of op-eds about best-selling memoirist Sarah Palin -- one friendly, one not so much. Matthew Continetti, associate editor of the right-leaning Weekly Standard and author of "The Persecution of Sarah Palin," tops the page with an analysis of the many reinventions of Alaska's erstwhile governor: first culture warrior, then watchdog, reformer, would-be vice president and, now, celebrity:

But Michael Carey, a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News, retorts that Palin's new book shows her to be more of a whiner than a leader:

(Are you planning to help Palin's publisher recoup its advance? Take our poll!)

Rounding out the op-ed page, Times columnist Tim Rutten urges the University of California Board of Regents to approve a proposed partnership with the county Board of Supervisors to reopen and jointly oversee Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital.

On the other side of the Opinion divide, the Times editorial board gives Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown a dash of sympathy being "trapped in a political cage from which there will be no easy escape." The cause? His office just gave a pass to Brown's former communications director for surreptitiously recording interviews with reporters, and now liberals are pushing him to investigate a pair of independent filmmakers who surreptitiously recorded ACORN employees in California advising them how to set up a prostitution ring (or, in the case of ACORN's Felix Harris in Los Angeles, refusing to help after learning the prostitutes would be minors).

The board also urges the District of Columbia Council not to bow to pressure from the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, which has threatened to stop providing social services if the council approves same-sex marriages in D.C.

(True personal story to illustrate how conservative the Archdiocese of Washington is: I'm a Catholic, and I got engaged to be married while I was living in D.C. But when I asked a priest at my church if I could have the nuptials there in five months, he told me I needed to wait at least a year to receive the church's blessing. And if I didn't receive the church's blessing, my soul would be "lost to perdition." In other words, I'd spend eternity in Hell because I'd gotten married the wrong way. As it happened, my future mother-in-law lived outside Baltimore, and the diocese there accommodated us without hesitation. That was 19 years ago, and we're still happily married. Whether I'm on the road to perdition is a wholly separate issue.)

Finally, the board gives its support, with reservations, to the latest version of a proposed federal "shield law" to help journalists shield the identity of confidential sources.

Illustration: Ken Fallin For The Times

-- Jon Healey

When I say "our," I mean the collection of Times editorial writers and editors who worked in the same department 20 years ago as I do now (for the record, I was 9 years old when the then-undead German Democratic Republic announced on Nov. 9, 1989, that it  would allow its prisoners -- er, citizens -- to travel freely to capitalist West Berlin and West Germany). Brighter minds than mine have already weighed in on the historical significance of the intervening 20 years between the democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe of 1989 and now (click here for a roundup of today's Berlin Wall punditry). Today on our own Op-Ed page, columnist Gregory Rodriguez waxes historical about the Cold War nostalgia for the moral clarity provided by the Berlin Wall, and Mitchell Koss reminds us of the revolutionary actions of Hungarians several months prior to the events in East Germany. On Sunday we published the accounts of six former East Germans on their experiences as citizens of a reunited Germany.

Below is a Times editorial published on Nov. 10, 1989, the day after the East German politburo lifted emigration restrictions on its own citizens and precipitated the demolition of the Berlin Wall. Though The Times relishes the excitement of the moment, the editorial steers clear of any prognostication about the future of communism in Eastern Europe (much less the Soviet Union, which would cease to exist two years later) and devotes much of its ink to analyzing the realpolitik behind East Germany's actions.

-- Paul Thornton

The full editorial:

The Times editorial board and columnist Tim Rutten both throw their support behind Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's choice of Charlie Beck to lead the Los Angeles Police Department. The board likes Beck's credentials as a reformer, but notes the work still to be done on that front. Rutten echoes that sentiment, and throws in a few more issues that matter to the City Council.

On a less sanguine note, Edward H. Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argues that neoconservatives transformed the Republican Party into an interventionist, big-government operation with no conservative policy agenda. Them's fighting words! Good thing they came out of Crane's word processor and not, say, Rutten's.

And Jeff Bleich, chairman of the Cal State University Board of Trustees, laments the slow death of the California dream. No, not the one about having a house on the beach. That died a long time ago. He's referring to "the promise of low-cost education that brought so many here, and kept so many here":

Speaking of schools, the editorial board criticizes a bill by Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) that combines some common-sense reforms to the public system with ill-considered ones. And, although it agrees that colleges and universities could do a better job controlling costs, it defends the decision by some to pay top dollar for top-drawer presidents.

-- Jon Healey

Illustration: Ted Rall / For The Times

An ounce of enforcement is worth a pound of new laws. Or something to that effect. The editorial board points out today that Los Angeles could more effectively limit the proliferation of marijuana clinics by enforcing existing state law against for-profit operations than by dithering over municipal restrictions.

The board mourns the deaths of more than 100 men, women and children in a Pakistani car-bombing, saying that such terrible events should convince Pakistanis that the fight against violent Islamic extremism is their fight too:

More than anything [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton can say, a series of assaults that have taken the lives of more than 500 civilians this year should serve to convince typical Pakistanis that this is not just a U.S. war. The United States and Pakistan have a common enemy in Islamist extremists, and the Pakistani state is fighting for its survival.

And the board urges President Obama to stand by his deadline for closing Guantanamo:

The legal axiom that "justice delayed is justice denied" applies with special force to Guantanamo. Whether they are dangerous terrorists or, like many of those already released, bystanders caught up in a post- 9/11 dragnet, these detainees have languished for years without adequate due process.

On the other side of the fold, a consultant to a documentary on convicted murderer Leo Frank writes about his 1915 lynching in Georgia. The subsequent campaigns either to vilify him or clear his name echo today, with haves and have-nots viewing the same events from markedly different perspectives.

Bernstein is just plain wrong that the organization's Middle East program focuses on Israel's alleged human rights violations while ignoring those committed by Arab governments and the Iranian regime. Even a quick glance at Human Rights Watch's website, where recent reports are posted, shows that the majority of those on the Middle East relate to countries other than Israel. According to Human Rights Watch, it has produced 1,776 total documents on the Middle East since 2000 -- 250, or 14%, of which were devoted to Israel.

--Karin Klein

Photo of the aftermath of the Pakistan bombing, Credit: Arshad Arbab / EPA

The police commission picked three finalists in its search for Los Angeles' new police chief, and the editorial board says each possesses many of the qualities needed to succeed atop the LAPD. Just so there won't be any confusion on that point, the board also describes what those qualities might be. The board also notes that two proposed ballot measures are due to be submitted today to enable and call a state constitutional convention, and it all but endorses them in a near-desperate plea for functional governance in California.

On the Op-Ed page, Raphael J. Sonenshein, former executive director of the city's charter reform commission, accuses rookie City Atty. Carmen Trutanich of not understanding what a city attorney is supposed to do in this town. Columnist Tim Rutten gives a highly nuanced defense of the push to reveal who is contributing to efforts in other states to put Prop. 8-style bans on gay marriage on the ballot. Musing about the Northwest Airlines flight that overshot its destination by 150 miles, Peter Garrison, a pilot and contributing editor to Flying magazine, reveals just how boring it is to fly a modern airline jet. And columnist Doyle McManus dissects the Obama administration's decision-making process on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan:

Credit: Ted Rall / For The Times

-- Jon Healey

Departing Police Chief William Bratton prods immigration culture warriors today with an op-ed explaining why the LAPD doesn't, and shouldn't, participate in the controversial 287(g) program, which gives local law enforcement officers the powers of federal immigration agents. Turning police into de facto Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents harms community policing and discourages witnesses who might be illegal immigrants from coming forward.

Also on the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that trying to limit carbon emissions to fight global warming is a pointless waste of money because it can't solve the problem; better to invest in technological solutions and adjusting to a warmer world. And think tank scholars Leo Michel and Robert Hunter argue that U.S. allies are already doing plenty of heavy lifting as part of the NATO contingent in Afghanistan, so American officials should do less lecturing and more listening if they want more cooperation.

Speaking of Afghanistan, the Editorial page says the country can't be pacified simply by sending more troops. That has become abundantly clear in the face of increased suicide bombings in Iraq, which like Afghanistan has been slow to build a credible government.

We also send a rare love note to the California Legislature, pointing out two genuinely worthwhile bills that will help cities make better use of water, an increasingly precious resource in this dry and crowded state. And we weigh in on Operation Gatekeeper, the federal effort started in 1994 to tighten border security in a five-mile stretch from the Pacific Ocean to San Ysidro. Though the program has been successful in reducing crossings in that area, it has had an unintended consequence that must be addressed: Deaths of people trying to cross the desert farther to the east have skyrocketed.

Editorial cartoon by Tom Toles / Washington Post

Columnist Jonah Goldberg foresees clouds ahead for the Democrats -- in fact, a coming storm so severe that it could end Democratic control of Congress. It's building from the Tea Party movement, which Goldberg sees as an heir to the Ross Perot third-party movement of the 1990s. "If the GOP can convincingly align with and exploit the growing Perotista discontent, it very well might ride to victory on a tsunami the Democrats can't even see."

Also on today's Op-Ed page, scholar Giles Dorronsoro explains why U.S. attempts to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan's Pashtun areas in the south and east are probably doomed to fail. And ACLU National Security Project chief Jameel Jaffer decries an attempt by Congress to circumvent the courts by giving the secretary of Defense the power to withhold photographs of combatants "engaged, captured or detained" by the U.S. during the Bush administration.

On the Editorial page, The Times weighs in on Atty. Gen. Eric Holder's policy change on medical marijuana. Though we're happy that federal prosecutors will make marijuana cases a low priority in states like California that have passed laws approving its medicinal use, we think that's the wrong approach. The administration shouldn't be picking and choosing states in which to enforce federal law -- rather, it should de-emphasize medical marijuana cases in all 50.

We also note that the best place for local health departments to conduct swine flu vaccinations is at public schools -- yet that's not where the inoculations will take place in Los Angeles, thanks to a failure by the school district and the county to properly coordinate.

And we muse on the bizarre spectacle presented by Colorado's Heene family, accused of perpetrating the "balloon boy" hoax in an attempt to drum up publicity for a reality show. "As much as some people will do just about anything for a Hollywood contract, a good number of the rest will lap up the juicy story of their wrongdoing. In reality, perhaps we all get what we wanted."

Illustration by Jonathan Twingley / For The Times

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

Matthew Continetti, associate editor of the Weekly Standard, gets the Op-Ed page rolling this morning by accusing President Obama of being organized labor's Santa Claus. The First Community Organizer may believe that unionization helps lift workers into the middle class, Continetti writes, but the numbers don't support that argument:

Speaking of a unionized workforce, columnist Tim Rutten urges the state Senate to waive some California environmental rules to let developer Ed Roski Jr. build a football stadium in the City of Industry. Why?

Alllll-righty then. Closing out the page, Anna Husarska, senior policy advisor at the International Rescue Committee, laments the "huge human cost" of the Taliban's operations in Pakistan's Swat Valley and the government's counteroffensive. The image above is an illustration of the psychic toll; it's a drawing by a schoolgirl in the Swat Valley named Sheema.

On the other half of the opinion pages, the Times editorial board blasts the L.A. Department of Water and Power for the fabulous parting gifts it's planning to shower on departing chief H. David Nahai. We like how Nahai defied union leaders (the Opinion page's méchants du jour) to bring in more renewable power from outside the district, but we still don't see the need to pay him his salary for the rest of the year:

The board also says the Federal Trade Commission's new guidelines for online advertisers could put too much scrutiny on bloggers and amateur product reviewers. And it warns that the Supreme Court's review of a case involving the giant cross in California's Mojave National Preserve threatens to "blow a gaping hole" in the 1st Amendment's wall between church and state.

-- Jon Healey

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