Editorials

A bill before the California Assembly would outlaw the use of lead ammunition by hunters. There is already a federal prohibition on its use in hunting waterfowl, and in 2007 the state banned it in the range of the endangered California condor. AB 711, written by Assemblymen Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) and Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), would take these restrictions a step further in an effort to safeguard animals as well as the environment. Lead pellets in shotgun shells, typically used to shoot birds, spray across land and water.

California already had what were arguably the nation's toughest sex offender laws in 2006 when voters, spurred on nightly by fear-mongering television hosts such as Nancy Grace and Bill O'Reilly, adopted this state's version of Jessica's Law . Proposition 83 required all convicted sex felons, whether violent or not, whether still on parole or not, and whether at high or low risk of reoffending, to wear electronic monitoring devices for the rest...

In requiring the U.S. Senate to confirm presidential appointments, the Constitution aims to ensure a second level of scrutiny of the qualifications of government officials. But Senate Republicans have hijacked the confirmation process, not only to thwart individual nominees but to undermine laws they don't agree with. If they continue in their obstructionism, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) should revisit the possibility of doing away with the filibuster for nominations. The most immediate test case involves the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that moderates disputes between labor and management.

For too long in the Philippine Congress, the priorities of the Roman Catholic Church took precedence over what most Filipinos wanted - and needed. Finally, after 14 years of debate and delay, lawmakers passed a bill that will provide free or subsidized birth control to poor people as well as require sex education in schools and mandate training in family planning for community health workers. Even though 80% of the nation's population is Catholic, birth control has long been available to those who want it - as long as they could pay. Contraception has been out of reach for most of the poor, though.

If a law enforcement agency wants to examine your snail mail or the contents of your computer hard drive, it must obtain a search warrant, which means it must convince a judge that there is probable cause that a crime has been committed. But no warrant is required to obtain email or documents you have stored in a computer "cloud" so long as they are 180 days old. That would have changed under legislation recently approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee at the behest of its chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.)

President Obama may be engaging in political damage control in proposing that Congress resurrect legislation to protect the confidentiality of journalists' sources. But his call for action on a federal shield law is welcome even if it is inspired by a desire to deflect criticism of the Justice Department's seizure of the phone records of the Associated Press. Although described as a "reporter's privilege," protection for confidential news sources actually benefits the public by making it easier for journalists to obtain information about wrongdoing in government and elsewhere.

The federal government has the authority to detain and deport immigrants who violate the law. But it also has the responsibility to ensure that those it holds while they fight their deportation cases aren't locked up for months, or years, without an opportunity to appear before an immigration judge who can determine whether their prolonged detention is warranted. This week the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the Obama administration's obligation to provide such hearings to immigrants detained for more than six months, at least in Southern California.

Conservatives argue that Washington never cuts programs, it just increases spending on them more slowly than planned. But to recipients of federal benefits, that type of "cut" can seem just as painful. That's why there is an intense battle looming over a proposal to reduce the cost-of-living adjustments applied to numerous federal programs, including Social Security. The change is billed as a more accurate way to calculate the effects of inflation, but it's really just a way to make Washington's financial picture marginally brighter.

Republicans are livid about the way the Obama administration handled the apprehension and arrest of an accused Somali terrorist. But — with one exception — the treatment of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was a creditable balancing of national security concerns and due process. President Obama should resist pressure in Congress to make such an approach impossible. Warsame was arrested April 19 and interrogated on a U.S. Navy ship before being flown to New York. He is accused in a nine-count federal indictment of supplying material support to Al Qaeda in Yemen and the Somali group Shabab.

In its 2007 report on the effects of global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that glaciers could vanish from the Himalayas by 2035. As has since been widely reported, with ill-disguised glee by many blogs and right-wing news outlets, this was a blunder. The prediction didn't come from a peer-reviewed scientific study but from a prominent Indian glacier expert who was quoted in a British popular science magazine -- and who now claims he never gave such a date.