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Most Americans believe people have become less civil and polite when they talk about the federal government and its policies.

Fifty-seven percent of adults in a Scripps Howard survey answered "yes" to the question: "Does it seem to you that people, in general, have become less civil and less polite when they talk about the federal government?"

I'm no big fan of capital punishment, but it's hard to argue that John Allen Muhammad didn't deserve to die last week. Much more than most murders, his were particularly meaningless.

Roy A. Hallums, who endured 311 days in captivity as a hostage in Baghdad, has a way of stating what might appear hyperbolic with a calm earnestness.

As America's trade with the Far East -- principally China -- expanded massively during the 1980s and 1990s, California reaped the benefits as the gateway for both exports and imports.

With trade emerging as a major component of the state's very diverse economy, traffic and payrolls blossomed at its major ports.

SAN FRANCISCO - California Attorney General Jerry Brown, a likely Democratic candidate for governor next year, faces political blowback no matter how he rules on the undercover videotaping by conservative filmmakers at offices of the community group ACORN in southern California.

WASHINGTON - Look for Republicans to continue to press for a measure that would require everyone to list their citizenship status on 2010 census forms.

The Democratic majority in the Senate blocked a GOP amendment Nov. 5 that, its partisans said, would have produced solid numbers on how many undocumented aliens live here.

BEIJING - Was Mao Zedong the Abraham Lincoln of China?

In an attempt to convince President Barack Obama of its claim to Tibet, the Chinese government has likened the 1959 Communist takeover of the area to the American Civil War, inferring that Mao freed Tibetans from slavery much as Lincoln ended slavery in the United States.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - California Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate announced this week that the state has a plan to reduce the prison population that will satisfy a judicial panel of judges.

Brad and Janell live in the bushes near in Golden Gate Park. In the last two years, they have heard the pitch from the Homeless Outreach Team, they've been rousted by the dawn patrol, and they've huddled under a tree during drenching rain and numbing cold.

SAN FRANCISCO - And they won't leave.

Even if it means a roof over their heads or a bed to sleep in every night.

KABUL - First came the Brezhnev Market. Then the Bush Market.

Now Afghans are beginning to call their notorious bazaar full of chow and supplies bought or stolen from the vast U.S. military bases by the name of the current American president, a modest counterweight to his Nobel Peace Prize.