California votes down a tax hike and looks for a federal bailout. We’ll ask where this story ends.

It may be beautiful, but everybody knows marriage isn’t easy.
Who pays the bills? Who works or stays home? Who unloads the dishwasher?
So what about gay marriage? Gay partnerships?
Yesterday, California was ringing with gay wedding bells, on its first full day of legal gay marriage. But gay marriage is not new anymore. [...]

For much of the country, it felt like a bolt from the blue. Last week, giant California gave a green light to gay marriage.
California’s high court, in a 4-3 ruling, said civil union rights were not enough. Gay Californians — and those from anywhere else who barrel west to the Golden State — are entitled, [...]

Fires — big wildfires — are as natural as wind and rain and sunshine in Southern California. But there’s nothing natural about the giant human populations that now live in Southern California’s burning hills — or did live there until more than half a million were ordered out this week in the teeth of the [...]