Editorials

Trial judges are, on the books, elected officials, and even the vast majority of those whose names never appear on a ballot are subject to election challenge every six years. Should voters not call them to account for their performance, as they do with any other politician, on election day? Should they not encourage opponents to challenge incumbent judges? Or are judges different from members of Congress or city councils? Judges are most definitely different. The last thing we want or need in California is trial judges who sit on the bench with one eye on justice and the other on how any particular ruling is going to play with the public.

The state's new health insurance exchange gave an encouraging preview Thursday of the sweeping effects that the 2010 federal healthcare law will have on consumers next year, announcing lower-than-expected prices for individual policies. Still, the success of the exchange - which goes by the name Covered California - hinges on its ability to attract a large number of uninsured Californians to its policies, and to persuade health plans, doctors and hospitals to hold the line on costs. If it doesn't, Covered California could face a vicious cycle of ever-escalating premiums and dwindling customers.

When Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell was put on trial for murder, activists seized on the case as a symbol of all that is wrong with abortion in America, and used it to call for tighter restrictions and stepped-up oversight. But though Gosnell's behavior was deplorable, macabre and unquestionably illegal, it was aberrational, not symbolic. He has now been convicted, and he will be punished. This does not weaken the case for safe, legal and accessible abortion. Gosnell, a 72-year-old doctor who was neither an obstetrician nor a gynecologist (having failed to complete a residency in those specialties, according to a grand jury report)

The movement to force the labeling of genetically engineered food is gaining momentum. In November 2012, an initiative to require the labels in California was on the ballot; it was defeated. Now, federal legislation carried by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) would mandate labeling most bioengineered food nationwide. Yet the movement's argument is weakened by the lack of evidence that inserting fragments of DNA into crops harms our health. Pro-labeling activists - who also tend to be anti-Monsanto activists - point to polls finding that most Americans want the information labeled.

A breakthrough in stem cell research has again raised the specter of human cloning. The discovery by a team at Oregon Health and Science University moves the world incrementally closer to that result, but its more immediate effect will be to spur efforts to regenerate healthy tissue for the injured and the ailing. Although it's reasonable to worry about where such a discovery may lead, those concerns shouldn't stop researchers from exploring the restorative properties of stem cells. The promise of stem cells is that they can develop into many different kinds of tissues rather than being locked into a specific cellular fate.

Although the recession drove many businesses into bankruptcy, times have been particularly hard for the state's dairy farmers. Almost 400 California dairies have closed in the last five years - 105 in 2012 alone - plagued by soaring prices for feed and an antiquated regulatory system that keeps their prices artificially low, at least in the farmers' view. The right solution for the long term would be to scrap the current approach in favor of a market-based one, but there's little political will to take such a disruptive step.

California finds itself in an unaccustomed place these days: behind the curve. Another state, Rhode Island, and two more countries, France and New Zealand, were just added to the steadily growing list of places where same-sex marriage will receive full recognition and status. The roster now encompasses 14 nations and 10 states - as soon as the Rhode Island legislation is signed - as well as Washington, D.C. Missing from it is California. How could California, with its frontier live-and-let-live sensibility and a reputation for social progressiveness that verges on downright weirdness, have ended up in this situation?

Another tragedy at a Bangladesh clothing factory, another announcement by Wal-Mart about additional steps it will take to beef up worker safety, this time by inspecting all of its suppliers' facilities itself. Not that the retailing giant hasn't made real efforts already to improve employee safety in notoriously bad factories overseas, but the deaths of more than 1,100 people at the Rana Plaza factory last month should signal that a piecemeal, go-it-alone approach is insufficient, even for the biggest retailer in the world.

In a few months, the Los Angeles County Housing Authority will begin allowing rent subsidies to be granted to homeless ex-convicts on parole or probation. The move is controversial, with some critics complaining that it rewards criminals, giving them special treatment and moving them to the front of the line for the limited and much-sought-after subsidies. But that's shortsighted. Homeless ex-convicts, including many who committed only minor, nonviolent crimes, don't go away if they don't get housing aid. Although there are risks associated with the new rule, they're risks worth taking.

More than 1 million Americans visit an emergency room each year because of prescription drug abuse, and the toll has been rising steadily since 2004. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration thinks it has an idea that will help: Reclassify the pain reliever Vicodin and other medications containing hydrocodone as Schedule II drugs, the most restrictive category for pharmaceuticals with accepted medical uses. The suggestion was turned down by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2008, but DEA officials believe that the signs of increasing abuse call for another look.

As Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti assembles his new administration, it is interesting, and encouraging, to note the odd confluence of circumstances that will leave him beholden less to factions or special interests and more to the people of Los Angeles. Garcetti may be the most politically progressive mayor Los Angeles has seen in recent history. He has been a friend to organized labor, including the city's public employee unions. But the biggest city unions, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the unions representing Department of Water and Power workers, firefighters and police officers all cast their lots with Controller Wendy Greuel, helping to raise and spend millions of dollars for her campaign and for independent campaigns backing her. Greuel came up short, and they came up short with her. Money sometimes makes the difference, and in fact the independent expenditure groups led by labor were relatively successful at electing many of the candidates on their slate to the City Council.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to send the bipartisan immigration bill - more formally known as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernizing Act - to the full Senate. The 800-plus page bill is by far the most ambitious attempt to overhaul the nation's immigration system in nearly three decades. The version that will reach the floor is, not surprisingly, imperfect, but the fact that it emerged from committee at all, and largely intact, is a testament to both political parties' willingness to compromise - a characteristic that has been in short supply in Washington for a long time.

In downtown Los Angeles, elevated pedestrian walkways - called pedways - slice the air between tall buildings on Bunker Hill, like a 1970s vision of a future metropolis. That's exactly what they were intended to be - the first phase of what would become a mechanized people mover. Those plans were abandoned long ago, but the existing 10 pedways have something of a cult following among the residents, office workers, bike messengers and high schoolers who traverse them. Yet as beloved as they are, the pedways are something of a stepchild when it comes to getting the resources and funds to erase graffiti and repair smashed lights and guard against future vandalism.

Under California's "parent trigger" law, parents at underperforming public schools can force dramatic changes in management if half or more sign a petition. It's a well-intentioned law that school reformers have applauded, but it is desperately in need of certain fixes. The most recent example involves a rule that was intended to bring more openness to the process - but which in practice appears to disenfranchise some parents. The issue came up in last month's successful campaign to transform 24th Street Elementary in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

A new government report singles out Los Angeles County's Twin Towers as having one of the worst rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual assault of any men's jail in the nation. One in 20 inmates held there reported that he had been victimized by another inmate while in custody, far higher than the national average of 1 in 60, according to the Department of Justice. The report is just the latest reminder that sexual abuse remains an intractable reality of incarceration in this country. Congress took a first step toward confronting this behavior in 2003 when it passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The landmark legislation required the Justice Department to adopt new detention regulations that are expected to take effect in August.

Pushed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Obama administration may ask Congress for the power to snoop on more types of communication online. The timing couldn't be worse, given the outcry over the Justice Department secretly grabbing journalists' phone records and emails in its pursuit of government leakers. The bigger issue with what the FBI is seeking, though, is that it applies 20th century assumptions about surveillance to 21st century technologies. Congress passed the Wiretap Act in 1968 to give federal investigators the power to listen in on suspects' phone calls if they obtained a federal court's permission.

It may come as a disappointment to Gov. Jerry Brown - but it certainly should not come as a surprise - that a panel of federal judges rejected his request that they return control of California's still-overcrowded prison system to the state. The network of 33 state prisons continues to hold more than 9,000 inmates beyond the court's mandated cap, and Brown's administration has not presented a realistic plan to eliminate that excess, even though the court has extended the deadline for compliance from June 30 to the end of the year.

The Senate Judiciary Committee took up comprehensive immigration reform late last week. And, as expected, opponents are already rushing to derail it, arguing that any bill that legalizes the vast majority of undocumented immigrants in the United States will cost billions of dollars and place an unfair burden on taxpayers. Such arguments are merely scare tactics. There's no doubt that granting citizenship to millions of immigrants 13 years from now, as the Senate bill would, will carry a cost, but how much is unclear.

With any luck, the campaign for mayor of Los Angeles will end Tuesday in a decisive victory for one candidate or the other. Then the winner can begin the task of building an administration and filling the ranks of commission appointments that will form the city's leadership core for the next four - or possibly eight - years. But this is a close race, and many residents have voted by mail or will cast ballots provisionally or by other means rather than simply going to a polling place and inking the ballot.

Ideally, governmental bodies would refrain from including prayers - even ecumenical, "lowest-common-denominator" ones - in their public proceedings. But if prayers are to be offered, they certainly shouldn't be monopolized by a single religious tradition. That is how the Supreme Court should rule in a case involving a town in New York state. On Monday, the justices agreed to hear a case involving the town of Greece, N.Y., which since 1999 has begun its official meetings with a prayer.