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In their new book, "American Grace," Robert D. Putman and David E. Campbell make two assertions about the decline of religious affiliation in the United States, which they summarize in their Oct. 17 Times Op-Ed article, "Walking away from the church. " They correctly observe that Americans, especially the youngest generations, are rapidly losing a lot of their faith. The nonreligious are far and away the fastest-growing group, with nonbelievers having tripled as a portion of the general population since the 1960s and nonreligious twentysomethings doubling in just two decades.

Nine studio executives sat in a glass-enclosed conference room in Beverly Hills, discussing potential snowy locales for filming later this year. Utah was a viable option, advised the head of production. So, too, was upstate New York — in part because of tax credits. Over the course of the hourlong production meeting, the executives also received casting updates, discussed social media plans for one soon-to-debut series and mulled over a festival screening strategy for another project.

Editor's note: This edition of Blowback offers four responses to the package of three Op-Eds about bilingual education that The Times ran on July 11. The opinion pieces — "The Spanish road to English" by Bruce Fuller, "A skill, not a weakness" by Laurie Olsen and Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, and "Quality Counts" by Alice Callaghan — generated a lot of feedback from readers, and much of the "Letters to the editor" section on...

As a physician who has researched and written extensively about MDMA, I took a keen interest in the Ecstasy fact card controversy developing in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Department of Public Health is taking quite a bit of heat right now for the card it created to be distributed at large-scale rave dance parties in the city, as reported in a Feb. 8 L.A. Now blog post. The fact card explains the physical effects of Ecstasy, the risks involved in its use and how to reduce these risks, including by choosing not to take the substance at all. These cards were developed and approved by a panel of experts, including physicians, public health experts and harm reductionists.

French novelist Victor Hugo is widely quoted as saying that there is "nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come." The time for advertising and sending messages to motorists traveling along California's highways came long before I introduced SB 1453, which The Times pilloried in its July 9 editorial, "What's wrong with this picture?" Blinking, scrolling, flashing billboards already beam advertisements to passing motorists on California's freeways. Vanity and environmental license plates tell motorists who you are, what you like and where you are from.

In 2007, Los Angeles County launched a pilot program, Project 50, intended to provide "housing first" — no treatment or sobriety required — to the worst 50 cases of homelessness on skid row. A recent series in The Times profiled several of the new tenants and their caretakers. To readers familiar with the story of Nathaniel Ayers, the occasional subject of Steve Lopez's columns and of a subsequent book and film, the portraits were unsurprising. The lives of the tenants were tragically derailed by unyielding addictions and terrifying, untreated psychoses, and the train wreck is tough to watch.

As a 16-year veteran of a California police department who's worked various patrol, investigative and undercover assignments, I feel the need to respond to the June 30 story about the death of Sasha Rodriguez at the recent Electric Daisy Carnival so the citizens of Los Angeles as well as the rest of California know. I cannot believe that public officials approved the use of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for this event. Have we not learned yet what a rave is? Since the 1980s, "rave" has denoted a specific type of party that includes the use of psychedelic drugs.

The latest numbers are in and it's clear: For the first time since 1981, fewer high school seniors report having used cigarettes in the past month than marijuana. This is a victory for U.S. tobacco policy, which has used education, prevention and regulation to massively reduce cigarette smoking; it's also an embarrassment for marijuana prohibition, which has wasted enormous amounts of taxpayer money arresting millions of citizens with very little to show for it except construction of new prisons and shocking racial disparities.

There is the world of neoconservative columnists such as The Times' Jonah Goldberg, who in an Aug. 24 column asserted that the anti-Muslim backlash is mainly a myth. Then there is the world where the rest of us live. Anyone who is witnessing the debates over the proposal to build an Islamic center in New York City has watched an unraveling of emotions across America. Muslims in America — numbering between 4 million and 7 million — have been chastised for not being sufficiently sorry for the acts of 19 hijackers on that terrible day in September 2001, or sensitive enough to the victims' families.

The Times' editorial board and others who support banning plastic bags are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Before the California Legislature makes any decision on this issue, let's carefully consider what the economic and scientific facts are. As the president of a plastic bag manufacturer in Los Angeles County, I know all about this issue. We make all sorts of plastic bags — reusable, recycled content and compostable. And we do it right here in the Los Angeles area.

Aaron David Miller, a former Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" point person in the George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, is correct to assert in his Jan. 26 Times Op-Ed article that the recent cache of formerly secret documents on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations leaked to Al Jazeera "are bound to have a chilling effect on a process already in the deep freeze. " He errs, however, in lamenting the potential demise of a U.S.-sponsored "peace process" that is premised on Israel's demands, not Palestinian rights.

In her Jan. 9 Times Op-Ed article, " Tighter belts, later bumps ," Elizabeth Gregory writes that the trend of delaying motherhood is a good thing, as doing so allows women to complete their educations and establish themselves in careers. Later parenting certainly has advantages for parents, who may feel themselves more stable, financially and emotionally, to rear children. Nowhere, though, does Gregory consider later parenting from the children's viewpoints. My interviews with now-adult children born to comparatively older parents reveal some negatives in addition to the positives.

On Dec. 9, the website Media Matters published a leaked e-mail written by Fox News' Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon. In the e-mail, Sammon instructed reporters to avoid the phrase "public option" when referencing President Obama's healthcare plan. He wanted employees to instead call it the "government option," a phrase that Republican pollster Frank Luntz instructed Fox News personality Sean Hannity to use simply because "public option" was polling too well. I wrote that the e-mail "once again illustrates just how laughable the Fox News slogan 'Fair and Balanced' really is. " Here was a high-ranking Fox News official explicitly instructing employees to avoid using the term "public option.

The latest numbers are in and it's clear: For the first time since 1981, fewer high school seniors report having used cigarettes in the past month than marijuana. This is a victory for U.S. tobacco policy, which has used education, prevention and regulation to massively reduce cigarette smoking; it's also an embarrassment for marijuana prohibition, which has wasted enormous amounts of taxpayer money arresting millions of citizens with very little to show for it except construction of new prisons and shocking racial disparities.

The Times should be congratulated for opposing Assembly Speaker John A. Peréz's proposed legislation to unincorporate the city of Vernon. The Times, however, repeats several commonly cited arguments against Vernon that contribute to the unnecessary hue and cry for the city's dissolution. The Times states as fact that the city is "run largely for the benefit of its 2,000 businesses and two founding families. " First, there should be nothing wrong with an industrial city with virtually no other residents being run for the benefit of its business community.

As Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the misplaced priorities of the George W. Bush administration, the Carmel fire has similarly exposed the reality of Israel's domestic and foreign policy priorities. Rather than address these issues in his Dec. 7 Op-Ed article, Israeli Ambassador Michael B. Oren instead used the tragedy for cheap political gain. While Oren extolled the possible benefits of "enlightened cooperation" to achieve peace, he and the government he represents ignore that enlightened policies not only lead to cooperation and peace but are the requisite precursor.

In his July 22 Times Op-Ed article, " Every soldier a hero? Hardly ," retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. William J. Astore lists all the technical, logical and semantic reasons why our fighting men and women should not collectively be called "heroes." I am one of those misguided people who, when writing about our military men and women slugging it out in Iraq and Afghanistan — engaged in combat, just trying not to get killed or maimed by an improvised explosive device or just driving a truck with supplies across the desert — instinctively and invariably refers to them as heroes.

As I read Dr. Drew Pinsky's comments on Lindsay Lohan's problems and prognosis — that the actress should be framed so a judge could order her to a long-term treatment program, remarks for which he has since apologized — I felt worried and even scared for all the people who are suffering with addiction today. Why? Because what Dr. Drew was saying expressed the attitude that so many people have regarding addiction and recovery, which, in my experience, is ineffective and even damaging for some of us. I suspect Lohan is one such person.

The Times' Nov. 23 editorial on local municipalities imposing beach curfews was well intentioned but misinformed. While recognizing fundamental public beach access rights and acknowledging that allowing local governments unilateral discretion over beach closures ? which the California Coastal Commission opposes -- is not a good idea, the editorial the commission's historic approach to dealing with this issue. The Commission is always concerned about public safety issues and takes them into careful consideration when reviewing locally imposed access restrictions.

Just as the credits are about to roll on Arnold Schwarzenegger's tenure as governor, Pepperdine University constitutional law professor Barry P. McDonald granted him an 11th-hour pardon for having gotten there by being so good at making ultraviolent action films. McDonald seemingly absolves the Governator for his on-screen murders, assaults and mayhem because he helped push to the U.S. Supreme Court an appeal defending an ambiguous law punishing sales of so-called violent video games to minors.