An editorial / By Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service

After Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme collapsed, having bilked charities, hedge funds and retirees of as much as $65 billion, the temptation is to say: "We've learned our lesson. That will never happen again."

There are small signs that Cuba is interested in a modest series of steps to improve relations with the United States. Cuba's fallback position on negotiating any positive changes in the standoff has traditionally been that first the United States has to lift its 1960 embargo.

Libya's Moammar Gadhafi is a man of seemingly limitless talents, the most striking of them, in many people's minds, was fashion designer.

It is progress that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were able to meet in a free and independent Poland to mark the 70th anniversary of the opening salvo of World War II that did horrific damage to all three countries.

However, Poland and Russia have diverging narratives on how the two nations arrived at this landmark anniversary.

Wildfires are a natural and even necessary phase of the eco-cycle in parts of the West. Dense scrub brush and chaparral grow up, leaving a dense carpet of dry detritus on the forest floor. Periodic fires clear it away, opening the landscape to regeneration.

Just as the economy is showing hopeful signs of life and the federal government is turning a profit on the early bailout money, the country may get blitzed by a second round of foreclosures -- this time on commercial property instead of homes.

The ouster of Japan's long-ruling -- all but 11 months since 1955 -- Liberal Democratic Party may not be quite the sea change in Japanese politics it seems.

A disappointing feature of the Obama administration is its continuing support of the Bush administration's assertion of the federal government's unfettered right to snoop.

Mohammed Jawad, believed to have been the youngest detainee at Guantanamo is now free and back in Afghanistan because the U.S. military justice system and civilian courts were finally allowed to do their work.

Congressional Republicans lined up to denounce on principle President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus bill -- a wasteful big-government giveaway, they said. No GOP House member voted for the bill and only three Senate Republicans.

Now the Republicans are lining up again. Only this time it's to try to get a piece of some of that wasteful spending.