Another tragic how-the--mighty-have-fallen story, with another set of employee and consumer victims left in the wake.

High gas prices, higher prices for most goods and now miserable vehicle sales -- all problems of our own making, through poor consumer choices and poor government planning, and now the problems have come home to roost.

Don't forget, the state's new hands-free mandate for using cell phones while driving takes effect today. $20 fine for the first violation, $50 for the next. Whoever manufactures "Bluetooth" headsets thanks you...

I do other cartooning for the paper besides my editorial cartoons for the Opinion page. Each week in our Time Out section i do a humorous drawing for the syndicated feature "News of the Weird." In the case of the drawing shown here, it was with a brief story about camel breeders and buyers who get a little too obsessed with aspects of the camels' beauty. Time Out editor Mark Wyckoff lets me pick the brief with the best illustration potential, then he writes funny headlines to tie it all together (for this one, "Those eyes, those lips: it's love at first spit for Saudi camel breeders."

The Star has run stories about campaign donations by Altria (Philip Morris to the rest of us) to local campaigns, mentioning some that went to Tony Strickland, candidate for the 19th State Senate district. His opponent, Hanna-Beth Jackson, proclaimed she isn't taking any tobacco money. Perhaps not knowingly, but nowadays it's pretty hard to segregate all donations from where they eventually may filter down to.

The inevitable ballot proposition to overturn just-legalized gay marriage in California has gathered enough signatures to make it onto the November ballot. Gay couples waiting to get married now have to decide if it's worth proceeding, knowing their ceremonies might become moot within months. Of course, if the proposition does pass, there will be lawsuits and maybe counter-propositions to overturn it. This may go on for quite some time.

No matter what you think of Barack Obama, we are witnessing history. Consider, when he was still too young for school, police used dogs and fire hoses against blacks in places like Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, and segregation ruled the South. Remarkable, considering when he was a young child he could not possibly aspire to be where he now stands.

A new book by President Bush's former press secretary Scott McClellan confirms what we suspected all along: the invasion of Iraq was planned early on, and Bush wasn't going to let any contrary facts stand in the way of a decision already made.

This has happened before: competing and similar ballot initiatives, one done by special interests and one by politicians to counter it. In this case, of two measures dealing with eminent domain, Prop. 98 is a rather deceptive measure that threw in the elimination of rent control (it is sponsored in part by apartment owners) beyond its supposed focus about eminent domain. The other measure, Prop. 99, might not do a huge amount on this, but would help some and -- more importantly -- doesn't harm like 98 could.