Because counties don't keep a tally of whether the couples who get marriage licenses are of the same gender, it's been impossible to know how many gay and lesbian weddings have occurred since the state Supreme Court ruling took effect in mid-June. All of these marriages would probably be declared invalid--a kind of mass divorce by state initiative--if Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage passes in November.

The Williams Institute at UCLA came out today with a number, or at least an estimate: 11,000 same-sex weddings from June 17 to September 17. They did this by totting up, county by county, the number of marriages last year during that time and comparing it with this year, assuming that most of the increase would have been a result of the Supreme Court ruling. That seems like a pretty good assumption, since the biggest increases were seen in counties like L.A. and San Francisco that are known to have big gay populations.

This fits in neatly with the big delay to the big Proposition 8 sign-planting. Remember how in late September, a possible 1 million religionists were supposed to march out of their homes, at roughly the same time, and plant a Yes on Proposition 8 sign on their front lawns? Seems the printing of a number of those signs was outsourced to another country or countries--the campaign isn't saying which, but the blog rumor mill has been saying China--and the signs were somehow delayed. I see that the bumper stickers, which showed up in a more timely fashion, exhort people to "Restore Marriage." But what does this mean in the context of 11,000 same-sex marriages that stand to be undone by the initiative, a 17% increase in the number of all marriages in the state? Whose bumper stickers are these, anyway? Seems like the anti-Prop. 8 folks could use the same slogan; maybe there should be a few last-minute changes to those lawn signs before they arrive, whenever that is.

Photo by Ben Margot/AP

On the first Monday in October, the Times editorial page crosses its collective fingers and hopes the U.S. Supreme Court's docket of low-profile cases will mean a relatively apolitical, civil and consensus-seeking year.

The page also takes a very non-picturesque look at very real and very non-jolly pirates, and criticizes the penny-wise, multi-million-dollar-foolish Bush administration order that California change the way it tallies illegal immigrants who use a state family planning and health treatment program. California's Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment Program reduces abortion rates and saves $1.4 billion in welfare and other costs so, of course, the administration can't let that go on.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez calls for a different way of looking at why people are religious, and Cal State Northridge economics Professor Shirley Svorny weighs in on the side of the market in the continuing saga of U.S. health care. The market breeds innovation, Svorny says, and innovation delivers lower costs:

For all its faults, America's healthcare sector has its advantages. It produces some of the highest survival rates in the world for cancer and other serious illnesses. Patients generally don't have to wait a year for a hip replacement. Being 70 doesn't make you ineligible for a kidney transplant. And U.S. medical innovations benefit other countries that suffer from the lack of them in their government-run schemes.

Rather than give up on all that, let's deregulate medical care so that providers can find innovative ways to deliver high-quality care cheaply. Let's eliminate the increasingly strict education requirements for clinicians and let medical professionals offer walk-in physicals or other services at competitive prices. Like Wal-Mart and MinuteClinic, they will rely on brand name and reputation to assure quality.

Washington, D.C., attorneys David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey express some alarm, or at least concern, over the increasing frequency of "universal jurisdiction" to bring indictments in one nation against accused criminals in another.

What we are seeing is not the birth of a global rule of law but a type of worldwide judicial anarchy. Spain's judges should not be driving foreign policy at the United Nations -- but they are. That is a problem, just as it would be a problem if some other country's judiciary were doing it. There is, in the end, a difference between an independent and an imperial judiciary.

Graphic: Christopher Serra, For The Times

Great news from the campaign on the rescue front!

Not the economic rescue package. The canine rescue package.

Michelle Obama pledged on ``Entertainment Tonight’’ that when the family gets a dog – Barack Obama has promised one to his daughters once the campaign is over – it will be a rescue dog from a shelter.

Online petitions urging the Obamas to do just that have been circulating, accumulating thousands of signatures from people – most of them probably voters – who want the Obamas to adopt a homeless dog, not buy a purebred. Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA, wrote to the senator personally, asking that he adopt a ``Great American Mutt’’ from the thousands upon thousands of dogs doomed to die, ``When you are ready, please adopt a homeless pound puppy – a grateful refugee from a society that has not always treated the true ‘’underdog’’ kindly ...’’

[Personally, I am tickled by the Obamas’ decision, and hope it will set an example. The North Central city shelter I visit is overflowing with strays and dumped dogs – while I was dropping off old newspapers for the puppy and kitten cages the other day, people gave up three dogs in almost as few minutes, because they didn’t want them or couldn’t take care of them any more.]

Icing on the dog-biscuit cake: the Humane Society Legislative Fund is endorsing Obama, in no small part because of Sarah Palin’s support for the appalling practice of aerial hunting of wolves, overruling Alaska voters -- real sportsmanship there -- and that she sued to keep polar bears from being listed as a threatened species.

There have been a lot of Presidential dogs, most of them purebreds. The most famous political dog since FDR’s Fala, however, belonged to a vice presidential candidate – Richard Nixon.

Checkers was a black and white cocker spaniel puppy given to the Nixon family by a Texas supporter, and as accusations boiled that Nixon had accepted illegal campaign contributions, Nixon battled to stay on the ticket with Eisenhower. His televised ‘’Checkers’’ speech, written at the Ambassador Hotel and broadcast from the El Capitan theatre on September 23, 1952, defended his family’s ‘’respectable Republican cloth coat’’ lifestyle. But he admitted that Checkers was a gift, and he wasn’t giving him back.

The speech, both mawkish and defiant, kept Nixon on the ticket.

Checkers wasn’t a rescue dog, but evidently a purebred cocker spaniel.

I take that back. Checkers was a rescue dog of sorts: he rescued Nixon’s political career.

Top photo: The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace; bottom photo: AP

Each week, Letters to the Editor 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 we cut 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,) we usually are left with several hundred eligible items, from which we select the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.

Last week we received 964 usable letters, 204 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

• The bailout: 453 letters, reacting to the back-and-forth between the Treasury Secretary, the House, and the Senate;
• The presidential election: 133 letters, responding to stories about John McCain, Barack Obama, and the first presidential debate;
• Sarah Palin: 80 letters;
• California's ballot propositions: 61 letters, mostly from readers taking issue with the editorial board's endorsements;
• Height of arrogance: 27 letters, reacting to this editorial about the Bush administration's modus operandum for expanding executive power. 

Barack Obama supporters have infiltrated the Senate's Republican bloc.

That's the only explanation possible for why Republicans balked at extending benefits last week for unemployed workers, even though they went along with a bailout for the financial industry. These red-state Obamaphiles know the country's economic woes are endangering John McCain's chances and they want Obama to win the election.

Just as the McCain/Palin ticket is making a dash to the presidential finish line, its putative supporters create this scenario: 800,000 people who already are struggling to pay the rent or stave off foreclosure, hang on to health care and feed their kids, lose the last shred of help from the federal government. All because of Republican opposition in the Senate. Coincidence? I think not!

Of course the Senate can (and should) revisit the issue when it reconvenes next month -- after the election. And I bet it will ... when it's too late to help McCain become president. But all exaggeration aside, it's not McCain who needs the help. According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, 9.5 million Americans are out of work, and almost 6.1 million are making do with part-time jobs because they can't find full-time jobs.

More details about the non-vote to extend benefits here, on Pro Publica.

Photos: Rednecks for Obama, Jae C. Hong/AP; Job seekers, Mark Lennihan/AP

   Apparently Tina Fey isn't the only one who's fed up hearing the word "Maverick" used to describe Sen. John McCain. According to the New York Times, members of the Maverick family, which has a centuries-old tradition of progressive politics and liberal leanings, also are steamed. They can't believe a party man like John McCain is being promoted, doggone it, as the Mavericky leader of a team of Maverickistic Mavericks -- instead of the conservative Republican that he is. (Listening to Gov. Sarah Palin mention the maverick thing over and over again her debate with Sen. Joe Biden, I started picturing a herd. I kept envisioning the Budweiser Clydesdales. Then I realize I was confusing mustangs with mavericks while pondering Cindy McCain's beer fortune).

The NYT's piece says the Maverick family's reputation as liberals took root in the 1600s when an ancestor in Boston stood up for indentured servants. A couple of hundred years later, Samuel Augustus Maverick moved to Texas and refused to brand his cattle. That's what mavericks were, once upon a time, unbranded cattle -- not standard bearers for their political party. Of course, over time the name came to mean a free-thinking person who wasn't an identifiable part of a herd.

Now the poor Maverick descendants wince when McCain takes their name in vain: "Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, 'Oh my God, he said it again.' "

And if they can't stand it from McCain, they probably did backflips during Palin's mavericklicious debate performance last week.

I supposed the sensation for the Mavericks is what other would feel if, say, a conservative politician called on the memory of liberal John F. Kennedy. But wait. That did happen, didn't it? Good ole Lloyd Bentsen. Thank goodness he was there to smack down Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle. Too bad there's nobody we can teleport from the 1800s to turn on McPalin and say: "I served with Sam Maverick. I knew Sam Maverick. Sam Maverick was a friend of mine. You're no Sam Maverick."

Photos: Bentsen/Quayle, Ron Edmonds/AP. Cattle, Karen Bleier/AFP Getty. McCain/Palin, Stephan Savoia/AP

In all the cross-charges of last night's debate, one particularly pointed exchange occurred over the power of the office that Joe Biden and Sarah Palin are seeking. It featured some clumsy analysis by both candidates.

Asked whether the vice presidency is properly considered part of the executive or legislative branch, Palin dodged the question by saying the framers "were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president." She then proceeded to tout her executive experience as a governor, mayor, business owner and, weirdly, "oil and gas regulator," suggesting without quite saying that she viewed the position as within the executive branch (a view that the current vice president has occasionally questioned).

Responding, Biden was more responsive and better on the concept but gaffed the details. He squarely endorsed the notion that the vice president is part of the executive branch and correctly noted that the job is spelled out in the Constitution, but incorrectly asserted that the job is defined in Article 1. Although Article 1 mentions the vice president, it does so only to note that the vice president breaks ties in the Senate. It's in Article 2, Section 1 that the Constitution makes it clear to most scholars that the vice president is part of the executive branch. That section begins: "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows..."

Photo: AP Photo/Don Emmert, Pool

Don Emmert-Pool/Getty Images

From this I took away two things.

One, that at least this one professor at an East Coast institution of learning -- Jill Biden teaches college English -- is exempt from Palin's Roll Call of Contempt, which otherwise includes such intellectuals, the Ivy League schools they attend, and pretty much the entire East Coast.

The other is teachers' pay. By saying Jill Biden would have her reward in heaven, I had assumed Palin meant that she and other teachers wouldn't be getting it in more tangible currency here on earth.

But no! Palin went on: ``I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they deserve. Teachers deserve to be paid more.''

You'll get no argument from me there. But wait: what pays teachers' salaries? Taxes! And where was Palin a few moments later in the debate? Back in her anti-tax groove. Taxes aren't patriotic. Taxes are bad. Taxes have to be cut, cut, cut. Did I say taxes are bad? Well, doggonit, they are.

Maybe in Alaska, teachers get paid in moose stew. Here in the lower 48, public school teachers get paid with the public's tax dollars. 

In Friday's Letters to the editor, readers comment on the Senate's bailout vote, healthcare in California, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and the Middle East peace process, and victims' rights.

And two readers arrive at the same conclusion--sort of--after reading Steve Lopez's Wednesday column. Writes Mark Papas, of Los Angeles:

How reaffirming to read that two people of opposing views can get together over coffee for a proper discussion of their politics.

Of course the more liberal party offered after the more conservative complained of his bias.  I'd bet, had the roles been reversed, that this meeting would not have taken place.

Here's Encino's Roger Powers' take:

If more Democrats would sit down and talk with Republicans I think we would find more common ground.

My observation is that Democrats demonize Republicans whereas Republicans just think Democrats are wrong.  It's ironic that the group that isn't particularly religious sees the other side as the Devil.

Hmmm.  Democrats say tomato; Republicans say tomahto.  Looks like they still have more talking to do.

*Elephant and donkey photographed by Karen Bleier, AFP/Getty Images.

We have yet to see whether Sarah Palin will wow audiences in tonight's debate, but she's certainly wowed Times readers so far.  Over the past month, Letters to the Editor has been inundated with mail about Sarah Palin.  (To get an idea of just how inundated, check out this tally, this tally and this tally of recent mail.)

Most of this correspondence has been of the conventional sort: lamentations, lambastings, and a few "you go, girl!"s here and there. 

But some of our dreamier-eyed writers have been inspired to loftier pursuits.  Perhaps it's the small town values.  Perhaps it's the X-chromosome.  Perhaps it's that unmistakable pile of hair.   

Whatever that spark may be, here is its result: Palin Poetry. 

We'll post more if tonight's debate fans the creative flames.

OH, MOOSE, YOUR SAD EYES TELL IT ALL

I see a proud moose on a hill --
he looks so lone and sad-eyed still.
His antlers nicely frame the sky;
his steamy breath makes rain clouds cry.
And as he trumpets to call his mate,
a hunter stalks him in the night,
her name is Palin and with her gun,
she kills the moose. Its life is done.
She hangs his head upon her wall.
Oh, moose, your sad eyes tell it all.

Robert Mauro, Levittown, N.Y.

Suggested bumper sticker:

Sarah Palin for Vice-President
Pro-Life, Pro-Gun - A Foxymoron

Jerry Arbogast, Glendale

The California Coastal Commission has already said no way. Now the fate of the proposed toll road through San Onofre State Beach lies with the Bush administration--and given the administration's distaste for environmental protection and near-hostility toward parks, that can't be a good thing for the "Save Trestles" crowd.

But the feds aren't supposed to just decide based on how much they like the road. The criteria are supposed to be narrow--the road's supporters are supposed to show that it's in the national interest, overriding local and state interests.

The Transportation Corridor Agencies have come up with some creative arguments for why the road, which would travel the length of the inland canyon that's also part of the state park, as well as running through a nature preserve in south Orange County, is in the national interest. Like it would make coastal access easier. Actually, I always thought coastal access was supposed to mean people's ability to use the beach up to the high tide line, not to provide high-speed transit from, say, the desert. Another argument involved quick evacuation in case of an accident at the San Onofre nuclear plant. Not only has the plant been operating for decades without one, but it's odd to think that residents of San Clemente, by far the closest community to the nuclear plant, would escape it by driving south to the entrance of the freeway.

The editorial board has taken a stand several times against the toll road, and a new editorial is in the works. But the federal government's involvement raises different questions to address about the road. Exactly what should it mean for the toll road to be in the national interest? Here's a place for all of you who didn't get to speak at the big Del Mar hearing to have your say. A summary of the toll-road agency's viewpoint, sent to me by its public affairs person, is after the jump.

Photo: L.A. Times

Well, for a while there I thought the only thing that would make tonight's debate between Joe "Gaffer" Biden and Sarah "Caribou Barbie" Palin bearable would be making it a drinking game (you have to chug every time Biden says "Scranton" or Palin says "Maverick"). Thankfully for my liver, though, there's another option: Palin Bingo.

I can't think of very many things I'd rather hear than a spontaneous chat between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin on a broad range of issues, but that isn't what we're going to be presented with tonight. The two campaigns have structured the rules of the debate to ensure there's only 90 seconds for each response and very little challenging of answers by the moderator or either side. That will allow each candidate just enough time to spit out the scripted answers they've been memorizing over the past weeks, whether it's responsive to the question or not. Despite all the anticipation, and the high ratings tonight's debate is expected to draw, it should be about as interesting as watching sliced apples turn brown.

I've got to hand it to whoever is behind Palin Bingo, though, they've collected an impressive assortment of the Alaskan governor's buzzwords for each bingo card. Just one I'd like to add: "I'll bring 'em to ya."

*Image from the Palin Bingo website.

Like the medieval church, modern-day activists use the calendar to commemorate the dead and inspire the living. So the fact that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month means that people otherwise unmindful of the disease and the need for a cure will focus in a special way on breast cancer. Unless, of course,  their attention is captured by the fact that October is also Disability Awareness Month. And Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And Energy Awareness Month. And Down Syndrome Awareness Month. And Cyber Security Awareness Month. And while no one has declared October Financial Insecurity Awareness month, we're all celebrating it unofficially.

In the welter of awareness-worthy causes, it's easy to think that all of them are important but none of them is paramount. That, of course, is the way we feel year-round about a multiplicity of good causes. So why designate October, or any other month, as (Fill in the blank) Awareness Month? The concept would click only if some Awareness Traffic Controller were able to even things out by reassigning some observances to different months.  But even that might not work, because every month is already an awareness month. Moving Disability Month to November might seem like a good idea, until you realize that it's already pretty booked. November, as you probably don't know, is National Adoption Awareness Month, Lung Cancer Awareness Month,  American Diabetes Awareness Month and National Alzheimers Awareness Month.

Maybe it's time for a Cluttered Calendar Awareness Month.

There may be millions of dittoheads--Rush Limbaugh fans--out there in America, but the writers to Letters to the editor on Thursday are not among them. 

Responding to Zev Chafets' Op-Ed about the controversial right-wing radio host, Linda Browne of Granada Hills writes:

When the thrice-divorced, recovering drug addict and blowhard of monumental proportions Limbaugh is a moral authority and the most influential voice in the Republican Party, we have seen the beginning of the end of the United States.

Limbaugh is nothing more than a narcissistic provocateur who has a radio entertainment show.  That so many millions of Americans actually take him seriously and think that his ideas are in their best interest is very sad indeed.

A defense of anesthesiologists at UCI, memories of Paul Newman, and the ever-present Sarah Palin, too.

*2007 photo of Rush Limbaugh by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images.

If you think that Congress is having a tough time nailing down the terms of a $700-billion bailout because of high-minded concerns about fairness, proper use of taxpayer funds or regulatory oversight, think again. Actually, it seems much of the horse-trading is over the amount of pork lawmakers can get away with inserting into the legislation.

Bloomberg News reports that dozens of tax breaks for a wide assortment of business interests are being added to the bailout package, mostly in an effort to bring recalcitrant Republicans on board. So, for example, Rose City Archery, an Oregon company that makes bows and arrows for kids, might be the beneficiary of a provision inserted by Oregon senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith to end a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows. Talk about giving taxpayers the shaft -- it's mystifying how these senators think we're going to pay for this bailout when they're busy cutting deals on behalf of special interests.

Not all the new provisions are bad, and some might even be good for the overall economy, such as a tax break for movie and television producers who film in the United States, which would stem runaway production and thus might even raise overall tax revenues from Hollywood. But mostly all this deal-making raises worries about the future of a country that solves its lending crisis by cranking up the national debt and then reducing the taxes that will be needed to pay it off.

Feathers are flying over proposed redevelopment of a resort in Laguna Beach's Aliso Canyon, including the developer's touting of the renovated 9-hole golf course as having "Audubon International Certification Program Intention."

Turns out that Audubon International Certification isn't exactly the same thing as having the bird-loving environmentalists conjured by the title give their blessing.

Or to quote from the statement that the National Audubon Society hands out:

"Since its inception in 1991, Audubon International, funded in part by the United States Golf Association, has been certifying golf courses that pay an annual membership as Audubon Cooperative Sanctuaries. Similar fee-based certifications are available from Audubon International to developers of cemeteries, municipal parks, marinas, residential communities and preparatory schools.

"Audubon is not associated with Audubon International in any way. Audubon does not certify golf courses, or any other development, as being environmentally sound."

Wildlife artist John James Audubon, who died in 1851, could never have imagined how popular his name would be in the development world. It was also used for a tract in south Orange County named Laguna Audubon, which was marketed with giant pictures of shorebirds with a vaguely oceanlike background. The houses are a few miles from the ocean--but the streets are named for the birds.

Photo by Rick Roach/AP

Hard to believe, but the Opinion Manufacturing Division goes silent for a day about the presidential race and the Wall Street bailout (with the exception of J.D. Crowe's political cartoon from the Press-Register, at right). Instead, the Op-Ed page leads with an insider account of the politicization of the Bush administration Justice Department. The author is David Iglesias, one of the U.S. attorneys fired for not being sufficiently zealous in pursuing GOP priorities:

Some people have argued that it was acceptable for the Bush administration to fire us because we were "political appointees" hired and serving at the will of the president. The death blow to this school of thought came Monday when the report was made public. The 358-page tome systematically described a "fundamentally flawed" system of slipshod, ad hoc job termination based on rumor and innuendo rather than evidence, one in which no due diligence was ever exercised by Department of Justice leadership before asking my colleagues and me to resign.

Journalist and author Howard Blum recounts the lethal bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, which occurred precisely 98 years ago, by radical union activists. And columnist Tim Rutten excoriates the media for glossing over the menacing, anti-Semitic statements made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations last week:

He happens to belong to a Shiite sect that believes it can hasten the coming of the Mahdi, the Islamic savior, by the creation of chaos in the world. And like his brethren among the Sunni jihadists, he means what he says.

Over on the editorial page, the Times board urges the new climate-change alliance of Western states to auction carbon credits to the highest bidder, rather than giving them away. It offers cautious praise for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's $5 billion affordable-housing initiative. And it urges the feds to provide consumers more protection against tainted Chinese food, in terms of inspections and information.

The day after I hit the ‘’send’’ button on my Los Angeles Times book review of Christopher Buckley’s latest novel of political satire, John McCain put Sarah Palin on his ticket.How was I to know? How did Buckley know? The main character in ``Supreme Courtship’’ is Pepper Cartwright, a hottie in judicial robes, a glasses-wearing, gun-slinging TV judge -- a Maxim magazine version of Judge Judy. A sullen president who hates his job and just wants to go home to bowl sees her one night on TV, and nominates her to the Supreme Court.

Pepper doesn’t know squat about Constitutional law, but she’s sassy and spunky and down home [from Texas, like Alaska another big state with oil], and that’s all it takes to win the Senate’s votes. Remember, it’s satire I’m still talking here. I think.

Pepper Cartwright’s fictional confirmation hearing is worth noting as we approach the Joe Biden-Sarah Palin debate. In Buckley’s book, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee is a character unmistakably Biden. At Cartwright’s confirmation hearing, he gets completely blindsided and steamrollered and flummoxed by her folksiness. She doesn’t address case law and precedent but she does talk about her granddaddy and the back-to-school sale at Wal-Mart and throwing out Texanisms like "It’s your rodeo." She gets confirmed.

I talked to Buckley a couple of weeks ago on my radio program on KPCC, and he was stupefied by the parallels -- ``I hereby announce my resignation from satire.’’ His Pepper Cartwright is ‘’exactly like Sarah Palin,’’ he said, except Cartwright knows more.

Including what she doesn't know. She is alarmed by her own nomination and its implications for the country –- aware, as Buckley says, that she is ‘’the least qualified’’ candidate ever nominated for the job.

I guess that’s what makes it fiction.

Photo: AP/NBC, Dana Edelson

What is in a name? A great deal when the subject is the $700 billion program for shoring up the economy. At least that's the view of the Bush administration, John McCain and Nancy Pelosi. They have been propagating the idea that the failure of the proposal in the House on Monday owes at least in part to the "bailout" label the media have affixed to the deal. The preferred term is now "rescue." (The Times split the difference on Wednesday's front page, calling the deal a "bailout" in the headline but referring to it as a "rescue plan" in the lead paragraph of  the actual story.)

I'm skeptical. Even if the media had forsworn the B word, the angry citizens who jammed Capitol Hill switchboards this week would have opposed it for offering a lifeline to Wall Street, never mind the argument that the real beneficiary will be Main Street.

The semantic fuss over "bailout" remind me of the great Banana Incident during Jimmy Carter's administration. Alfred Kahn, a Carter economic adviser, infurated the president when he warned that runaway inflation threatened a  "deep, deep depression." After being chastised, Kahn substituted the word "banana" for "depression." His new warning: "We're in danger of having the worst banana in 45 years."

Washington is obsessed with the supposed power of nomenclature. That's why bills in Congress are named after crime victims (see "Jacob's Law") and why lobbying groups conceal their agendas and affiliations with neutral-sounding name (e.g., Citizens for a Sound Economy"). This is the place, after all, where tax increases were euphemized as "revenue enhancements." But, for good or ill, voters see through the semantic fog.

If the much-tweaked financial legislation is enacted, it won't be because its proponents stopped calling it a "bailout" and instead pleaded for passage of a "rescue plan" -- or a banana.

Bailout photo by Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images

Against the advice of the Times editorial board, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have set some rules for private, for-profit trade schools. Previous regulations (which were fairly weak) expired a couple of months ago, and California already is getting a reputation as the place where bad operators open after they're shut down in other states.

Problems with trade schools over the years have included exaggerated claims that students could transfer credits to other schools and land lucrative jobs. In addition, a few schools have closed after students paid their money but before they received their training.

With SB 823 dead, it's all about the buyer being aware. Tough one, since ferreting out the good schools from the bad takes real reporting. Here's some advice Venice High School gave its students:

"Don't sign anything on your first visit to a school. And don't make a hasty decision because someone tells you there is limited space in the next class. This is a common sales ploy. Even if it's true, you'd be better off researching the school and waiting until the next semester than paying for the last seat in a class where you don't learn any real skills.

"Some application forms are binding contracts, so read them carefully before signing. Get a receipt for all payments and keep a copy of the application, contract, and all other documents."

I know what you're thinking -- the big rebound for the Dow today is a sign that the Wall Street bailout bill is a sham! But that's the wrong indicator, folks. You need to be watching the credit markets, not the stock indices. Start with LIBOR, an index of what banks charge one another for loans. As Investopedia put it, LIBOR is "the rate at which the world's most preferred borrowers are able to borrow money" (emphasis added). It hit an all-time high today, at 6.88 percent for an overnight loan. Ponder that for a bit -- nearly 7% interest on an extremely short-term loan to a blue-ribbon borrower. Ouch.

Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Lloyd Doggett, (D-TX), Donna Edwards (D-MD) pitch DeFazio's No BAILOUTS Act (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Anyway, the stock market's steady climb today may have been buoyed by hopes that Congress would take another stab at the bill. Lawmakers have done plenty of that today, floating alternatives on the left and the right. They're pretty similar, actually -- both revolve around a new self-insurance effort. There's also a renewed effort by some Democrats to provide more help to borrowers, and a push by Republicans to eliminate a provision that would steer a portion of any profits realized from the sale of assets acquired during the bailout to an affordable housing trust fund controlled by state and local governments. The GOP's concern is that the money would actually go to a low-income housing and community organizing group, ACORN, that Republicans despise. See this CBS News blog post, which seems a bit hastily written but gets to the heart of the matter. I'm with the GOP on this, not because of the shadow of ACORN, but because it's ridiculous to parcel out profits from some asset sales when taxpayers could take a beating on others.

Meanwhile, back in sunny California, supporters of AB 1830 are still licking their wounds over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto. You can't blame the Gubernator for the subprime mortgage meltdown, but you can certainly fault him for not doing his part to prevent the next one. AB 1830 would have gone further than the Federal Reserve's new Truth in Lending Act rules ("Reg Z") to crack down on the excesses that fueled the housing bubble, particularly the damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead tactics by mortgage brokers and specialized lenders that proliferated as the market lost steam. Among the provisions of 1830 were a ban on loans that allowed subprime borrowers to grow more deeply in debt over time, and a prohibition on financial incentives that induced brokers to steer borrowers into more expensive or riskier loans.

In his veto message, Schwarzenegger said the measure would put state-licensed brokers at a disadvantage when competing with federally chartered banks that made subprime loans. A disadvantage in what respect -- having less ability to mislead gullible consumers, or to steer them into products that aren't in their best interests? Yup, that's a problem. The governor also complained that the bill would allow consumers to enforce its provisions through lawsuits, and would allow them to recover their legal fees if they won -- but wouldn't allow lenders and other defendants to recover their fees if they prevailed. "This provision will likely lead to increased litigation based on de minimis violations as plaintiffs attorneys will have much to gain and little to lose," Schwarzenegger wrote in his veto measure. The California Supreme Court disagrees on that point -- see Ketchum v. Moses ("Because a prevailing party will receive attorney fees only if the case is successful, there is little or no incentive to pursue nonmeritorious cases.") Besides, the Truth in Lending Act has a similar benefit for prevailing plaintiffs, as does the California covered loan law and numerous other consumer-protection laws here. Sounds like the governor was searching for a pretext, rather than finding legitimate flaws in the bill. (Full disclosure -- the editorial board pushed hard for the measure.)

Three cheers for the Vatican. Here's the Catholic church practicing what Pope Benedict XVI preaches about conserving energy and the moral obligation to live an eco-friendly life. The photo shows a worker for a German company attaching a solar panel to the roof of Paul VI hall at the Vatican yesterday. According to the Associated Press:

A total of 2700 panels will be placed to provide 300,000 kilowatt hours which will be used to illuminate, heat or cool the building where the pontiff holds his general audiences in the winter and in bad weather. Concerts in honor of the pontiff are also staged in the 6,300-seat audience hall. In the background St. Peter's Basilica.

Photo: Riccardo De Lucca/AP

The Times' editorial board and columnist Jonah Goldberg typically view the world in very different ways, but they see eye-to-eye today on the House vote against the Wall Street bailout plan. The board blasted the White House, top administration officials and congressional leaders for failing to sell the public on the urgency of the credit crisis and the necessity to take extreme measures. Goldberg spends a bit more time on the roots of the crisis -- not surprisingly, he sees regulatory excess where Democrats see regulatory failure -- but he, too, spreads blame widely for the plan's demise:

The bill failed on a bipartisan basis, but it was the Republicans who failed to deliver the votes they promised. Some complained that Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi drove some of them to switch their votes with her needlessly partisan floor speech on the subject. Of course Pelosi's needlessly partisan. This is news?

Elsewhere on the op-ed page, children's librarian and teacher Regina Powers laments the state public school system's fixation with rating books by how hard they are to read -- a straight-jacketed, enthusiasm-sapping approach to literacy. And Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, co-founders of the Breakthrough Institute think tank, argue that Democrats hurt their own chances in November by heeding the greens' opposition to expanded oil drilling:

The most influential environmental groups in Washington -- the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund -- are continuing to bet the farm on a strategy that relies on emissions limits and other regulations aimed at making fossil fuels more expensive in order to encourage conservation, efficiency and renewable energy. But with an economic recession likely, and energy prices sure to remain high for years to come thanks to expanding demand in China and other developing countries, any strategy predicated centrally on making fossil fuels more expensive is doomed to failure.

The editorial board also welcomes Attorney General Michael Mukasey's appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the decision by his, shall we say, detached predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, to fire nine U.S. attorneys. And it calls on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign four bills passed by the legislature: AB 2447, which would limit development in fire-prone areas; SB 974, which would impose a container fee at the ports to help clean up their emissions; AB 1945, which would bar health insurance companies from retroactively canceling policies to avoid paying for care; and SB 375, which would allow state transportation funds to support plans to limit sprawl.

Photo: Jin Lee/Bloomberg News

Each week, Letters to the Editor 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 we cut 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), we are left usually with several hundred eligible items, from which we select the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.

Last week was a busy one.  Thanks to the bailout and the presidential campaign, we received 1602 usable letters, 1258 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

The bailout: 680 letters, many dismayed by the size of the proposed $700 billion rescue for Wall Street;

Gay marriage: 220 letters, responding to this Op-Ed by David Blankenhorn;

Presidential election: 181 letters responding to articles about John McCain, Barack Obama and the campaign;

Sarah Palin: a respectable 117 letters (but not enough to maintain the vice presidential candidate's three-week domination over the Letters Top Five); and

Metrolink: 60 letters, reacting to Times coverage of the Sept. 12 rail crash in Chatsworth.

Before Monday's report on the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, Alberto R. Gonzales was forgotten and gone. He's back in the news with a finding by two Justice Department watchdogs that the former attorney general (and his deputy)  “abdicated their responsibility to safeguard the integrity and independence of the department…”

Gonzales' AWOL management style was perhaps not foreseeable in 2005 when he went before the U.S. Senate for confirmation hearings. But other problematic qualities were obvious -- notably his chumminess with George W. Bush going back to Texas and his compliant attitude toward cutting corners in the war on terror. So how did he win confirmation on a 60-36 vote?

One clue came in the opening statement of Sen. Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in charge of Gonzales' confirmation: "Judge Gonzales comes to this nomination with a very distinguished career; really a Horatio Alger story. Hispanic background, of seven siblings, the first to go to college, attended the Air Force Academy for two years and then received degrees from Rice and Harvard Law School" (emphasis added).

Not for the first time, a nominee successfully played the race -- or ethnicity -- card. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was confirmed with plenty of votes from Democrats who overlooked his conservative philosophy because he would be the first Italian-American to serve on the court. Justice Clarence Thomas may have owed his much narrower confirmation to his race -- and his rags-to-Republican resilience.

"I've overcome a lot of obstacles in my life to become attorney general," he told reporters. As Sarah Palin may also demonstrate, an inspirational biography is not necessarily a qualification for public office.

It's against the law to use a hand-held cell phone while driving. A new state law bans text-messaging while driving. But it's OK to have any sort of live animal in your lap while you drive?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have said, sensibly enough, that pets--remember, unpredictable, moving animals that can go bonkers if they see another moving animal, or fly into the driver's face in the event of a short stop--can't be held in the driver's lap. Incomprehensibly, the governor's reason for this was that he sure had a lot of bills to sign and veto.

But there might yet be hope here. Schwarzenegger got enthusiastic about restrictions on cell-phone use in cars when his own daughter began driving. Maybe the kid needs a Great Dane.

If you Google the news on gay marriage, you'll find something you might not have expected -- Google on gay marriage. The company officially took a stand against Proposition 8, the measure on California's November ballot that would ban gays and lesbians from marrying, or having their marriages recognized by the state.

The reasoning given by co-founder Sergey Brin, though, was especially interesting. Because so many of Google's employees would be affected by such a ban, he said, the company had decided to take a political stand, a rarity for it.

Since most people probably see a lot more of Google than of, say, "Lost," it will be fun to see whether Google uses its visibility to its advantage. Given its penchant for playful decorations to its logo, does this mean the two little Os will be topped by matching tophats or veils? 

This much is already known: Over-the-counter cough and cold medicines don't work for young children. Or, rather, they do work. They just don't work better than a placebo, which actually works pretty well with children a lot of the time.

But if a medicine can't do more than a placebo, why continue to give the medicine, which can have side effects, aside from that OTC pediatric meds are a big money-maker? (Speaking of which, one woman actually developed a placebo for kids. They make the chewable flavored pills to seem like candy, and she makes a chewable flavored pill to seem like medicine.) When parents don't see the medIcine working, they tend to think they didn't give enough and overdose the child; toddlers 2 and under have been espeCially likely to end up in emergency rooms over this sort of thing.

Seeing which way things were going, the manufacturers voluntarily yanked their infant formulations, but an FDA medical panel wants to take it further. Saying the meds clearly don't work for kids younger than 6, they want those off the market, too. The FDA is holding a hearing this week, trying to figure out which way to go on this.

The medicines were approved years ago, under much weaker standards. The question the FDA has to ask itself is, now that they're here, and a billion-dollar industry to boot, should they be thrown out?

The Op-Ed page focuses on the presidential election today, starting with Rush Limbaugh biographer (and admirer) Zev Chafets' piece about the role the "Excellence in Broadcasting" kingpin is playing on behalf of John McCain -- a candidate Limbaugh ridiculed during the GOP primary season:

A satisfied Limbaugh means an enthusiastic Limbaugh, and an enthusiastic Limbaugh could be the difference in a close race. Between 14 million and 20 million people listen to him every week, by far the largest audience in talk radio. His show energizes the Republican base, but, even more important, it appeals to a great many conservative Democrats and independents of the kind McCain needs to win swing states.

Pollster and author Douglas E. Schoen talks about the very real potential of third-party candidates Bob Barr, Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney to tip the outcome in either McCain's or Barack Obama's favor. And columnist Gregory Rodriguez, noting the McCain camp's attacks on the New York Times, wonders if conservatives no longer value truth over relativism:

Conservatives may have a point that the traditional media are slanted to the left, but it is also clear that they aren't content with simple ideological balance. What they want, as we have seen, is their own biased media, in the form of Fox News and the Washington Times.

The upshot, ironically, is that conservatives -- those who generally embrace the idea of absolutes -- have put the final nail in the coffin of truth.

Over on the other side of the seam, the Times' editorial board urges Congress to let troubled homeowners reorganize mortgage debts in bankruptcy court. It argues that customs agents shouldn't have the power to rummage through the contents of laptops at the border. And it calls on the federal government to renew subsidies for border-state hospitals that care for disproportionate numbers of illegal immigrants:

[I]t should be noted that citizens, not illegal immigrants, make up the bulk of poor patients whom hospitals could turn away if not for the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. But poor Americans who meet income guidelines are eligible for Medi-Cal, and hospitals are reimbursed for their care. Illegal immigrants are not, so hospitals that care for them fulfill their ethical and legal obligations at the expense of their financial health.

The bailout cartoon is by Matt Davies of The Journal News (New York).