Public Opinion

At the entrance to the Hazrat Usman camp just south of the Swat Valley, a welcoming committee greets those fleeing violence between the government and militants with a cool glass of water, a meal and a place to sleep with fans and a pharmacy. Though camp organizers don't voice any overt sympathy for the Taliban, their view is clear: The entire crisis is a creation of the government and the army. Two miles up the road sits the much larger government-run Jalala camp.

California voters sent Sacramento a mixed and somewhat contradictory message Tuesday. But the politicians' response should be unequivocal. They should fix the budget themselves, right now, and not dither over any pain it inflicts. All those steamy summers of squabbling over unconstitutionally late spending plans without honestly making ends meet finally caught up with the policymakers when the electorate emphatically trashed their convoluted offering.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama left some fuzzy edges to his biography. He affirmed strong support for Israel but implied a strong empathy for Palestinians. His personal story played up his introduction to the black church, leaving his father's Islamic roots in the shadows. It was a narrative designed to ease any voter concern about Obama's background and counter false Internet rumors that he was a Muslim.

In Hollywood, bad news travels fast. I was sitting in the stands Saturday evening at a Little League playoff game when one of my fellow coaches, who happens to work in the business, leaned over and shared the news -- "Land of the Lost" was a goner, getting trounced by "The Hangover." The Will Ferrell film ended up a distant third to "The Hangover" and "Up," making $18.7 million in its opening weekend, an especially woeful number for a movie that cost $100-million-plus to produce.

The annual survey of frequent fliers by Seatguru.com, the popular online guide to airline seating, doesn't have a lot of highlights for U.S.-based airlines. U.S. carriers serve the worst food -- if they serve food at all, that is -- and have the least comfortable seats, the survey of 1,600 fliers found. Meals on American Airlines, United Airlines and US Airways were considered the worst of the bunch. The best?

Sipping guava juice under cover from a steamy tropical downpour, Tommy Remengesau Jr. says he's always considered his Pacific island home a refuge from the troubles of the outside world. "While the rest of the planet was in conflict, waging its wars, we remained a little piece of paradise," the former Palauan president said as his pet fruit bat swayed upside down in a nearby cage. "Now, the world's headaches have come home to roost in Palau."

It starts with two young female voices, quietly at first, almost gently piercing the quiet of the night. "Allahu akbar!" they cry out a few minutes after 10 p.m. "God is great!" Then another voice joins in from the other side of the block. This one belongs to an older woman. "God is great!" she responds in a rasp that suggests decades of hardship and swallowed rage. "Allahu akbar!" After a minute or two, a male voice joins in.

For two decades he was considered to be above the petty political squabbles, a cautious elder contemplating questions of faith and Islam while guiding his nation into the future. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose title of supreme leader makes him Iran's ultimate authority, has gotten his hands dirty.

Public support for Measure R, the new Los Angeles County sales tax for highway and transit improvements passed by voters in November, remains hearty despite the recession, but there are concerns that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is not building projects fast enough, a new MTA poll shows. The survey of 605 registered county voters found that 68% generally favor Measure R, which is expected to provide up to $40 billion during the next 30 years for highway and transit projects.

President Obama ventured into the summer's unpredictable town hall meetings on healthcare Tuesday, facing a polite audience, while lawmakers elsewhere continued to confront enraged citizens -- a contrast that showed how far the administration still must go to bridge the divide. The president used his appearance at a high school in Portsmouth, N.H., to frame his view of the healthcare crisis, appeal to wavering Americans and counter what he said were outlandish fallacies in arguments by Republicans and conservatives.