OPINION: Trial over Kate Steinle’s death + Wine country fires + Mitt Romney’s future + John Kelly’s present

Oct. 23--Our take

Editorials

Don't blame Kate Steinle's death on sanctuary cities. Here's what matters in her accused killer's trial: The Steinle family deserves the facts -- and that means a case that's tried the court of law, not in the conservative echo chamber.

What's to blame for wine country fires? PG&E isn't the only suspect: The cause of the Northern California fires is yet to be determined. But lessons are emerging as victims ask whom to blame.

Jack Ohman has cinematic view of the 2018 U.S. Senate race. Get a private screening here.

Columns

Marcos Breton: How highly paid bureaucrats are blocking a massive plan to help Sacramento's homeless.

Dan Walters, CalMatters: Not always fairly, history tends to judge political executives -- presidents and governors, especially -- by how they handle crises. Brown handled the budget crisis he inherited from Schwarzenegger with aplomb and showed similar ability when Oroville Dam threatened to collapse and when killer wildfires swept through California's scenic wine country this month.

Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: While Barack Obama was dogged by accusations he wasn't patriotic, Donald Trump has faced no sustained questions about his patriotism, though the evidence for his lack thereof is far more substantial.

Op-eds

Daniel Zingale: The president's policies are jacking up premiums and letting skimpy health plans flood the marketplace. The good news is that in California, the federal government won't have the last word.

Deborah Burger: On Monday, an Assembly select committee on health care holds its first hearing. It has no authority to act on legislation, but is essentially a discussion group designed to give the appearance of moving forward on reform.

Ayako Miyashita: By modernizing HIV laws, California took a step toward reducing stigma around HIV, which can help people feel safe to get tested, seek care and protect themselves.

Todd Gartner: Fires are costing taxpayers $1 billion a year. Here's an idea to help pay for prevention now.

Andrew Grant: U.S. diplomacy has to be tough to work with North Korea and Iran. Rep. Ami Bera has it all wrong.

On behalf of The Sacramento Bee's editorial board, welcome to The Take, your opinion-politics newsletter. Please sign up for it here.

Their take

Salt Lake City Tribune: Mitt Romney should run for Senate. At least that is what many Utahns are hoping for. A recent poll shows that 75 percent of Utah voters do not want to see Sen. Orrin Hatch run for Senate again. Hatch hasn't yet announced whether he will run again, but Romney is his heir apparent. There were unconfirmed rumors last month that Romney was considering a run.

Miami Herald: Gen. John F. Kelly's journey to the dark side is complete. At best, he was seriously mistaken when he declared that in 2015 Rep. Frederica Wilson boasted about securing the funds for the FBI's new Miramar headquarters. At worst, the very worst, he lied.

Seattle Times: Anyone breathing a sigh of relief over the bipartisan deal to stabilize the health-insurance market may want to hold off on that exhale. U.S. Sens. Patty Murray, D-Washington, and Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, have crafted a proposal to keep the Affordable Care Act rolling for at least two more years, but the work unfortunately is far from finished.

Raleigh News & Observer: The so-called compromise crafted by Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a Republican, and Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat, is a move to undo a horrendous Trump mistake in ending health care insurance subsidies from the federal government that enabled millions of people to afford insurance. Trump likely has never read the ACA and probably doesn't know any of the details. He also likely wouldn't care if the United States had a single-payer, national health care system.

Lexington Herald Leader: It may be true, as its title suggests, that the pension plan outlined last week by Gov. Matt Bevin and Republican legislative leaders is "keeping the promise." But what promise and to whom? Certainly, it doesn't keep a promise to current or future public workers and retirees that they will retire with financial security.

Daniel Borenstein, East Bay Times: The Bay Area includes the world's technology center, but the region's largest rail transit system scoffs at adopting 21st century equipment. BART directors have given lip service to the notion of driverless trains, but when it comes to spending billions of dollars on upgrades, they're sticking with the status quo -- no matter the long-term cost.

Mercury News: Sometimes good government is less about making good things happen than stopping bad things from happening. In that spirit -- thank you, Gov. Jerry Brown. With a scrawl of his veto pen, Brown stopped multibillion-dollar telecom companies from getting carte blanche to put cellphone antennas anywhere they want on taxpayer-owned public property and pay next to nothing for the privilege.

Syndicates' take

Maureen Dowd: If Donald Trump were truly bold, he would tap Jimmy Carter to help with Kim Jong Un. Jimmy Carter tells Maureen Dowd many things about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and about he is offering to help Trump solve the North Korea problem.

Ross Douthat: Why Roy Moore will win Alabama senate seat, and Democrats will continue to lose the South. Democrats seem to never want to win another tossup Senate seat and apparently would prefer Donald Trump be re-elected.

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama reminded us last week that there is nothing normal about this moment. They issued searing, overlapping condemnations of Trumpism. Former commanders in chief of opposing parties don't do this sort of thing unless the country faces an emergency.

Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer: Signals from Washington indicate small interest in the Kurds' fate once their fighters are no longer needed. How the United States treats its Kurdish friends now will signal whether the Trump team has a long-term strategy to help keep the region stable post-Islamic State. If it doesn't, the biggest victor will be Iran.

Timothy Egan: Amazon took Seattle's soul. It's been strange to watch nearly every city in the United States pimp itself out for the right to become HQ2 -- and us. Be careful, all you urban suitors longing for a hip, creative class. You think you can shape Amazon? Not a chance. It will shape you. Well before Amazon disrupted books, music, television, furniture -- everything -- it disrupted Seattle.

Ruben Navarrette Jr.: There's no doubt that President Trump sees himself as superior to the rest of us. But Trump's egotistical view of himself and his exaggerated self-importance appear to have little or nothing to do with him having white skin. They stem from the fact that he's rich, and hails from Manhattan.

Kathleen Parker: "Fake news" is President Trump's own invention, his greatest fabrication to date and very much in the vein of propaganda. Russia was responsible for real fake news in the 2016 election, and members of Trump's campaign and family retweeted some of these items.

Mailbag

"People have the right to speak. Our authorities should protect that right, no matter how vile the speech. Don't listen to it, or give your own speech." -- Bill Jurkovich, Citrus Heights

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