The San Diego Union Tribune

California first lady Maria Shriver, John Edwards and other political luminaries have converged on Los Angeles for a summit on California poverty. The organizers asked speakers to present ways to help California's poor that are "innovative, practical and achievable."

With members of Congress home for summer recess, the smoke is still clearing over the smoldering ruins of what's left to fiscal restraint and the federal budget. Even a Republican-controlled Congress can't seem to resist spending Americans' tax dollars. The incentive for each district representative and GOP leaders to bring home the bacon is too tempting to resist.

Prospects for the governor's controversial redistricting initiative have grown appropriately dim. Whatever its ultimate fate, Schwarzenegger has done a good and decent thing in using his considerable bully pulpit power to raise awareness about the relatively obscure, but important issue of political gerrymandering. Without his call to arms, the powers that be in Sacramento almost certainly would have continued ignoring the very obvious problems with our process for drawing legislative districts lines. They're paying attention now.

For the past month, San Diego voters have been witnessing the breakdown of the method used to elect the mayor. That method is so confusing that San Diego still does not know the winner four weeks after the election. Blame and finger pointing are dividing the city. The legal costs of several lawsuits, as well as the expense of an unnecessary second election to determine the winner, is hitting taxpayers in the wallet.

President Bush's vision of an "ownership society" expounded on the campaign trail certainly sounds good. In his travels across the country, he touts his plan to promote Americans' ability to save, invest and own their homes.

The campaign strategists may have stumbled upon a potent rhetorical device because the power of ownership has been experienced by the more fortunate families across the country. Financial success in America today increasingly requires not just a job and growing income, but the ability to accumulate a wide range of assets.

The U.S. government has yet again hit the debt ceiling -- a limit that was increased by $450 billion to a whopping $6.4 trillion just last year. The lack of fanfare surrounding the event reflects that the debt ceiling is now little more than a whisper of a reminder that there is a downside to excessive government borrowing, not the closing of the credit line it was intended to be.

Social Security reform has long been considered an issue so dangerously charged it has been heralded as the third rail of politics -- touch it and you die.

Benjamin Jowett once wrote, "The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit of doing them." This was the secret of Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's success in Japan -- and succeed he did. Unfortunately, much of what Obuchi achieved for his nation may be undone by his successor, Yoshiro Mori, Japan's new rugby-loving prime minister who is the wrong man for the job.

When George W. Bush's campaign leaked his economic plan to the press recently, the lucky recipients were forced to accept a special condition: Any reporter who wanted to see it had to agree not to share the details with other campaigns or, more importantly, outside analysts. "This is between you, me, and your typewriter," a Bush aide told one reporter.

Anyone who has followed America's culture wars of the past few decades can be excused for thinking that the process of assimilation is a thing of the past. Right-wing nativists have been chanting their mantra that contemporary immigrants are actively resisting mainstream culture and will never integrate. Left-wing multiculturalists and ethnic nationalists have been insisting that today's immigrants should not be expected to adopt the practices of their host country at the expense of their native culture.