An editorial / By Dale McFeatters , Scripps Howard News Service

With predictable cynicism, Iran is preparing to charge three young American backpackers with espionage. The trio was arrested in July upon straying into Iran while hiking in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.

It is safe to say that the right-wing talkers and pundits who are hailing Republican gubernatorial victories in increasingly Democratic Virginia and very Democratic New Jersey as heralding the end of the Age of Obama could not pick Bob McDonnell and Chris Cristie, the respective victors in those contests, out of a police line up.

It is not a stretch to say that if Sen. Edward M. Kennedy had not been stricken last year with the brain cancer that ultimately took his life, President Obama would have a health-care bill, one very likely on the verge of Senate passage. He was that good a legislator.

One of the more obnoxious tactics of the left, especially the student left, during the 1960s and '70s was to disrupt the meetings of those with whom they disagreed -- on the war, race, feminism, whatever -- until finally the targeted speaker gave up and left.

You would have hoped we had learned our lesson, but apparently not.

President Obama's momentum on health care has clearly slowed. A new poll showed that for the first time his public approval rating on health care has dipped below the 50 percent mark. And despite the intense work of five congressional committees there is still not a completed reform bill ready to be brought to the floor of the House and Senate.

The state of California desperately needs cash.

President Obama's response to the mass protests in Iran was measured and restrained -- appropriately so -- yet he is being criticized all the same for not doing more. His critics are hazy as to what more he should be doing.

President Obama's response to the mass protests in Iran was measured and restrained -- appropriately so -- yet he is being criticized all the same for not doing more. His critics are hazy as to what more he should be doing.

A symbol of American automotive excess is now a symbol of Chinese automotive excess.

Come on, Liberty University, confess. Conan O'Brien's producers, anxious to get his "Tonight" show off to a roaring start, bribed you to do this. So the school gets ridiculed a bit -- well, a lot -- but it gets great network exposure.