Golden Rule

Stay in Washington a few days and you will quickly learn that the East Coast media are reveling in California's budget woes. However, the Beltway's current mantra -- a crisis is too good an opportunity to waste -- can be a guide for Sacramento. Cutting $20 billion to $25 billion from a state budget that has been cut repeatedly and, according to the U.S. census, supports one of the leanest state workforces in the country will be tough and traumatic.

Re "Forgive me, Father, for I have tailgated," June 21 Is the Vatican serious? The Ten Commandments for drivers? Isn't there enough poverty, rape, war and suffering to deal with? These Ten Commandments -- as applicable and relevant as they are to Los Angeles -- are trivial in the grand scheme of things. There are bigger fish to fry. So what does this latest set of guidelines have to say about the church? Too much time on its hands, or misplaced priorities? RYAN CONLEY Los Angeles The article is funny but serious.

The great traditions, author Karen Armstrong likes to observe, flowered in response to a time of violence similar to our own. Turbulent times accompanied the birth of Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in China, monotheism in the Middle East and rationalism in Greece. All shared a core vision for building a better world that was both simple and drastic: Do not harm others.

IN the dog days of summer, everything seems to slow. When the temperature's high, motivation is lackluster and so are many of our major entertainment options. Most of the blockbuster movies have opened, the big concerts have swung through town, museums have unveiled their major exhibits. Whatever beach reads we'd stocked for the season are dwindling to their last pages. Yet one activity continues unabated throughout Southern California: pursuing the perfect tan.

Imagine being arrested in a foreign country where you are unfamiliar with the language, the culture, the legal system or your rights, and never being allowed to contact a U.S. Consulate for help. That's a nightmare that Americans overseas could face if the United States continues to be lax in respecting the rights of foreign nationals arrested in this country.

Re "To Hell With Values," Commentary, Nov. 28: Michael Kinsley's exasperation with "values" is widely shared, I expect -- certainly by me -- because the term "values" is bandied about in the Bush era as a feature of political marketing denoting personal beliefs, sometimes religious beliefs, sometimes fleeting and changing as one's life changes. Values can be broadly shared among sociopolitical groups that say, for example, that "family" is a "value." But when that value is examined, it might turn out to be nothing more than a judgment insisting that gay parents are excluded from "family."

Re "Down the Sewer to Abu Ghraib," Commentary, May 26: Rebecca Hagelin points out that Americans in the past were taught to treat others as we would wish to be treated and then focuses blame for our current actions on the use of sex in popular culture to sell products. Although popular culture is to blame, she totally fails to account for another part of popular culture: the glorification of violence and the demonizing of anyone who does not conform to one's chosen brand of "group thinking."