An editorial / By Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may need all his considerable election-rigging skills to win the upcoming Russian presidential election.

Swallowing hard, congressional Republican leaders have reversed course on a position that was a political loser from the start and only growing worse with time.

Inevitably, some lawmaker or activist group with better political than math skills will raise the shiny but illusory prospect of a "peace dividend." This would be money we don't have to spend to continue fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Once upon a time in Washington, the annual presentation of the president's budget was a big deal. But over the years -- the Reagan administration is as good a place to start as any -- the opposition would gleefully greet the arrival of the budget on Capitol Hill with the pronouncement that it was DOA, or "dead on arrival."

Islamic and Hindu fundamentalists are fighting a losing rear-guard action against an insidious Western custom -- Valentine's Day.

In the mid-1990s, there was a mini-wave of "granny dumping." Elderly people, abandoned by families, showed up at hospitals and Salvation Army facilities, often with a note to the effect: "Please take care of her. We no longer can."

President Barack Obama's military advisers plan on the U.S. and its NATO allies ending combat operations in Afghanistan perhaps as soon as mid-2013, a year and a half early. That lays the groundwork for the coalition leaving well before the announced 2014 deadline.

The Federal Aviation Administration bill was delayed 23 times, but the agency finally has a law giving it $63 billion and full operating authority for the next four years. For those of you counting, that's only one year less than the five years it took Congress to enact the measure.

The National Park Service says 1,825 Burmese pythons have been caught in and around the Florida Everglades since 2000. One of the largest -- over 16 feet long and weighing 156 pounds -- was caught just in January.

On Jan. 1, 1999, 11 members of the European Union took what seemed to be the next logical step in European unity by creating a common currency zone. Three years later, the old national currencies were replaced by new coins and banknotes, the euro.