editorials and opinion

MEXICO CITY - Last week, a Mississippi state legislator proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

In introducing the bill Thursday to the state House of Representatives' Marine Resources Committee, Daniel Steve Holland, a Democrat, said he wanted the body of water identified in all official state dealings by his proposed name.

The Save Mart supermarket chain unveiled a plan Tuesday to keep Sacramento's public swimming pools open this summer and thus provide recreation for thousands of youngsters whose families can't afford backyard pools.

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

The bloody slaughter of civilians in Syria was playing in cable-news snippets on television sets throughout the White House West Wing and State Department on Tuesday, as the man who expects to become China's new leader this year met with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden and was feted at a State Department luncheon.

Now that President Barack Obama has treated us to a madcap budgetary joke, it's time to get serious for the sake of national survival.

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.

When Jerry Brown goes into his bunker -- or monk's cell or man-cave -- and issues cryptic messages, you know he's up to something.

California's governor did it again last weekend during a brief appearance before a state Democratic convention in San Diego.

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.