Today's memorial service for Michael Jackson at the privately owned Staples Center reminds The Times editorial board of a sad fact of life in Los Angeles: It's a city without a public square. Though the backers of LA Live once promised that the downtown entertainment mall would become L.A.'s version of Times Square, the fact remains that it's a private space whose owners can bar the public anytime they choose.

We also weigh in on President Obama's trip to Russia, which isn't expected to accomplish much -- but even a small thaw in relations between the two countries, and the modest improvement represented by the nuclear weapons pact concluded Monday, is better than the chilly status quo.

And we ponder the lessons to be learned from the example of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died Monday at 93. Though many see parallels between the mistakes made in Iraq and the mistakes made by McNamara in Vietnam, we think the larger lesson is that using yesterday's solutions to today's problems is often the pathway to failure.

Over on the opposite page, columnist Jonah Goldberg thinks all the sturm und drang over the canceled "salons" by the Washington Post, in which lobbyists were invited to pay heavily to attend get-togethers with the newspaper's journalists and top politicians, amounts to little more than posing. After all, many publications offer similar meet-and-greet opportunities, Goldberg says.

The hand-wringing over genetically modified foods, meanwhile, reminds author Tom Standage of another food-related hysteria from a few centuries ago -- over the potato. When the tubers were first discovered in the New World, Europeans feared they were a dangerous, unholy poison. They got over it, just as they'll probably eventually get over their irrational fears about improved crops.

And psychiatry professor Sander L. Gilman cautions against jumping to conclusions about Michael Jackson's cosmetic surgery. True, the King of Pop clearly was fond of surgical reshaping, but that doesn't necessarily indicate self-loathing.

* Illustration by Bob Daly / For the Times

An international poll comes along showing that although Americans are fairly knowledgeable about Charles Darwin, they don't hold much truck with this whole theory-of-evolution business.

Some 71% of Americans know of Darwin and at least a little about his theory of natural selection, a number right up there with Great Britain, according to the poll of 10 countries conducted by the British Council, which describes itself as "the UK's international body for cultural relations." And if 71% seems sort of low, compare it with South Africa, where 73% had never even heard of Darwin.

But knowing isn't necessarily loving. Among those who are familiar with the author of "On the Origin of Species," only 41% of Americans agreed with the statement that "Enough scientific evidence exists to support Charles Darwin's theory of evolution." Where were the believers in evolution most likely to live? India, with 77%. And we wonder why that country is renowned for its good education, especially in the sciences--and why this country historically tests in the mediocre realm.

Photo by Darko Vojinovic/AP
 

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

... and other things to get your mind off swine flu.

In today's editorial pages, The Times editorial board examines President Obama's attempt to triangulate on torture. Our conclusion: We can't close this chapter in history without reading it first.

It's now clear that if the country is to move beyond what the president called a "dark and painful chapter in our history," there must be a credible and comprehensive accounting of what went wrong and a serious study of whether the architects of the Bush policy violated the law. Equally important is the need to move strategically to secure two sometimes conflicting goals: punishment for any official who knowingly broke the law and accountability to the public.

On another front, the board builds on its Sunday endorsement of five of the six measures on the May 19 special election ballot by drilling down into Proposition 1C, which would revamp the California Lottery and get some cash out of it without waiting for the state's numbers to come up.

We're not enthusiastic about giving lawmakers the power to borrow against every penny of lottery revenue in perpetuity, because we fear that's what they will do. But if the spending caps in Proposition 1A work as advertised -- admittedly, a big if -- there will be less financial pressure on the state to sell another round of lottery securities after the first one is paid off.

On the Op-Ed page, we're back to torture, this time in a piece by author and KNBC news producer Frank Snepp.He knows what he's talking about. Snepp was a CIA interrogator in Vietnam during the war, and by his own account he put his soul "at extreme peril." He draws a link between his actions and those of the Bush administration at Guantanamo.

Controlled brutality is a slippery slope, and once you pass through the moral membrane that should contain our worst impulses, it becomes so very easy to rationalize another step, and yet another, in the wrong direction.

Also in Op-Ed today: Molecular biologist Henry I. Miller chides government for standing in the way of what he claims is one rational and useful response to drought -- gene-splicing. And columnist Gregory Rodriguez takes apart Texas Gov. Rick Perry's flirtation with secession.

Photo of Camp V at Guantanamo Bay by Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Images

When it comes to definitions of life before birth, our society tends to draw lines in the sand. Are you pro-choice or anti-abortion? Do you consider an embryo a human life or a collection of cells?

But the editorial board's discussion earlier this week on embryonic stem-cell research revealed a more unsettled group of reactions, even among a board that has been a booster of such research for years, that endorsed Proposition 71 and that welcomed President Obama's decision to qualify hundreds of new stem-cell lines for federal grants.

At the heart of the matter was this: Is it acceptable to create human embryos with the sole intent of destroying them to create new stem-cell lines? Current law prohibits federal funding from being used for that; for that matter, it also prohibits the use of such money to derive stem-cell lines from any of the 400,000 or so embryos now frozen in fertility labs, even though about 8,000 of those are slated for destruction in any case.

Board members had no qualms about using embryos that would be destroyed, but several shuddered at the thought of creating embryos for the purpose of research, which means for the purpose of destroying them. A couple were unaware that Proposition 71 allows the state bond money to be used for both types of research work.

The question is how we reconcile these two reactions. If we have no problem with the idea of destroying embryos that would have been destroyed anyway, we imply a belief that trash is trash, embryos no different from any other, and we might as well make good use of it. Sort of like turning a milk carton into a bird feeder instead of shipping it off to the landfill, as long as we didn't create the milk carton to be a bird feeder. To the extent that we as a society have a gut reaction against creating embryos for destruction, though, we are saying we don't look at these microscopic collections of cells as simply scientific supplies that might be used to bring new life into the world, or to embark on potentially life-saving research, or to simply discard if we have no better use for it.

Perhaps we -- and by this I mean supporters of embryonic stem-cell research -- are of feeling and thought more mixed than we might have assumed. 

Photo: Paul Sancya/AP

Today's editorial page leads off with kudos to President Obama for reversing the Bush administration's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, but chides him for not calling on Congress to reverse its own restrictions. While we're at it, we helpfully point out that California would be a terrific place to invest some of that federal money, given all the facilities and scientists here thanks to 2004's Proposition 71.

We also call for more transparency on earmarks, as the Senate prepares to approve an omnibus spending bill that contains more than 8,500 of them accounting for $7.7 billion. And we urge Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder to reverse the Bush administration's position on medical marijuana research and change the culture at the Drug Enforcement Agency, whose rigid ideological position on cannabis is thwarting the advancement of science.

On the Op-Ed page, Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver and environmental lawyer Joel Reynolds plea for the state Legislature to fix what ails the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies, an organization whose devotion to toll roads is threatening mobility, the environment and recreation.

David Schenker, Arab politics expert at a Washington think tank, worries that the Obama administration's efforts to reach out toward Syria's authoritarian government will come at the cost of U.S. attempts to advance human rights.  And writer Charles Fleming, in an installment of the "Postcards from the Recession" series about the real-world impacts of the troubled economy, describes the wrenching effects of hard times on Southern California's self-employed creative community.

Finally, columnist Jonah Goldberg wonders why liberals think it's OK for the Obama administration to use the economic crisis as an opportunity to impose a far-reaching liberal agenda, when they excoriated President Bush for using 9/11 as an opportunity to encourage right-wing policies. "It's not leadership. It's fear-mongering," Goldberg says of Obama's style.

All that, and Letters too!

* Photo of a public hearing for the Foothill South toll road by Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

A biologist friend of mine who works at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says everyone is walking around the office these days with big grins plastered on their faces. Once again, science reigns at the EPA--along with things like, you know, the environment.

The grins must have widened a little when the Obama administration neatly undid one of former Presidenti Bush's last-minute bits of harmful rulemaking, which told federal agencies that engage in construction projects that they didn't need to bother consulting with actual scientists about the projects' effects on endangered species  before revving  up the bulldozers.

There had been some thinking that this particular rule would take time and a good bit of trouble to  reverse, but Obama simply called for a new review and instructed staff to follow the old, scientific way of doing things.

Obama has been, piece by piece, working on dismantling many of Bush's more harmful last-minute  changes. Not that Bush is first president to do this kind of hurried "I'll leave the world the way I want it" rulemaking right before ending his administration. Unsupervised rushing seldom makes for good government. What about some congressional rulemaking at the beginning of the new administration to put curbs on this sort of thing?

Photo of polar bear: Steffi Loos/Getty Images. California condor: Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

In Tuesday's Letters to the editor, responses to this article about President Barack Obama's proposed budget and its affect on wealthy Americans.  Does the document amount to an opening shot in the class wars?  Gary Nagy, of Gardena, thinks not:

Brian Reidl, budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, says President Obama's tax plan amounts to class warfare against the rich.

What he doesn't seem to realize is that if the growing inequality between the rich and the poor and the shrinking middle class continues as it has during the past 10-plus years, we are apt to experience real class warfare.

Supply-side, trickle-down economics has been thoroughly discredited. It has resulted in an unstable economy and a less equitable society.

But Kay Santos, of Diamond Bar, is calling out the cavalry.  She writes:

I have no incentive to hire people or expand my business, because the more I make, the more President Obama will take to expand government. This discourages expansion of the private sector. It will backfire with disastrous consequences for all.

It is repulsive that Obama is being allowed to take this country backward by pickpocketing the very people who run the private sector through their energy, money and creativity.

And letters readers are also joining the fray.  In an e-mail sent this morning, Eugene Wood of Fountain Valley marvels:

Santos says she is going to cut back production and lay off several employees, thus contributing, in her own small way, to increasing unemployment and worsening the economy even though it will have no effect on her income?

This cutting off one's own nose seems all too typical of the 'Grand Outmoded Party's' lack of concern for anyone but themselves.

More on the drought, Joel Stein's column about liberal science skeptics, and some suspiciously pruned trees near the 405 freeway.

Photo: The proposed federal budget.  Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

The editorial board continues to parse President Obama's budget intentions, noting that though his blueprint is indeed transparent about the costs of the Iraq war, it is less forthright about the probably near-term future of the economy. The board also bemoans fractured immigration policies that provide residency to some refugees but not others, and sides with a student who gave a religiously-based speech in class about his views against same-sex marriage, after which he allegedly was taken to task by the professor.

As long as he was opposing same-sex marriage on religious grounds -- and not harassing individual students -- he was making an argument that figured prominently in the public debate about Proposition 8. It's not an argument this page finds persuasive, but we wouldn't try to suppress it. Neither should a college preparing students to live in a contentious democracy.

On the other side of the fold, political journalist Marc Cooper chides Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for his  fuzzy response to questions about whether he will commit to serving out a full second term if he is elected. Take a pass on running for governor and pay full attention to the city's tremendous needs, Cooper advises. And Joel Stein reflects on how everyone loves science, until it contradicts what they want to believe.

People on the far right don't believe in evolution, global warming or doing stem cell research. Most of their opposition is rooted in the fact that these ideas challenge the Bible, which is the oldest book they know. I'm guessing Greek conservatives are OK with killing your dad and making love to your mom.

But since I moved to L.A., I've discovered that liberals hate science just as much as conservatives, and they talk about it a lot more. They'll reject any study that contradicts their Mother-Nature-is-perfect myth, which is oddly similar to the conservatives' thesis."

California's budget crisis overtook the economic stimulus package to lead the Letters Top Five tally last week.

During the week ending Feb. 21, The Times received 1,040 usable letters, 535 of which were in our Top Five Topics.

• California's budget: 256 letters, reacting to the drama in Sacramento;
• Stimulus: 118 letters;
• Octuplets: 69 letters;
• Israel's election: 64 letters, reacting to Times news coverage as well as this editorial; and
• Evolution: 28 letters, commenting on this editorial commemorating Charles Darwin's 200th birthday.

How the Top Five is tabulated: Each week, your letters maven receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letter 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.