Editorials

Compared to the size of the state's revenue shortfall, the pay raises that lawmakers granted to more than 200 staff members this year don't amount to much.

Two toddlers have been shot to death and a third young child has been hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the head. A wife and a husband, the parents of the children, are dead too, both shot. The Sacramento County coroner has concluded that the killings were a classic murder-suicide. An out-of-work father allegedly killed his wife and children and then himself.

Now we'll see what kind of leader House Speaker Nancy Pelosi really is.

Sacramento has a new arts and sciences charter high school, a merger of two small high schools. It opened in September and was officially dedicated on Monday.

Whenever California builds freeway lanes, flood-control levees or other major construction projects, the public gets a chance to review the plans and suggest changes to minimize the environmental impact.

Slowly but surely, Sacramento's alleys are stepping out of the shadows.

For termed-out and defeated legislators or former high-ranking gubernatorial staffers in search of a soft landing, there is none softer than the California Integrated Waste Management Board.

When Kevin Johnson takes office as mayor Tuesday, he will bring with him a broad and ambitious agenda. Given the limited powers of his office in Sacramento's weak-mayor system, some parts of that agenda may prove to be unrealistic.

Dear Sen. Darrell Steinberg: On the occasion of your swearing-in as president pro tem of the California State Senate, we offer you our congratulations – and our condolences.

You can't be the parent of a normal teenager without sometimes secretly wishing that the kid would just go away.

Don't stop buying, but do remember an old lesson: You don't have to buy the most expensive items to get pleasure from them.

While it's hard to detect many silver linings amid the current gloom, the economic slowdown creates an opening for local leaders to plan this region's quality of life.

The day after the election, President George W. Bush told President-elect Barack Obama he could "count on complete cooperation from my administration as he makes the transition to the White House."

The story of paranoid schizophrenic Ofiu Edwards Foto, detailed Sunday by The Bee's Andy Furillo, exposes dangerous loopholes in the state's mental health and criminal justice systems.

Ideological boxes. Uninspired leadership. Lawmakers beholden to special interests. A two-thirds vote requirement to pass budget bills. It's time to get citizens engaged.

Caught napping? Don't feel guilty. It's just what the doctor ordered.

It looked like a scene from the Great Depression.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to use some of the $60 billion rescue package to bail out providers of high-cost private student loans – the "alternative" student loan market that had expanded with little federal oversight during the early part of this decade. That idea is irredeemably bad.

With a median household income of $56,629, El Dorado County is one of this region's wealthier counties. As of 2004, less than 7 percent of its population was living below the poverty line.