An editorial / By Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service

A new federal regulation intended to limit how long passengers can be kept aboard a delayed airliner is already having an unintended consequence even though it doesn't take effect until April 29.

Another of President Barack Obama's initiatives may be in trouble. Legislators from states with a heavy NASA presence are beginning to push back against his plan to kill a Bush-era lunar-landing program.

In accord with the mnemonic "Spring Forward, Fall Back," this Sunday we set our clocks forward one hour. We lose an hour of sleep, but it is the law -- the Energy Policy Act of 2005, to be precise.

The effects of the recession haven't been altogether malign. The government says U.S. highway deaths last year were the lowest in more than half a century.

Colleen LaRose, a/k/a "JihadJane," was apparently discreet enough to keep secret from her live-in boyfriend her plans for a new career as a Muslim terrorist.

Kurt Gorman said he had no inkling of her religious conversion or her growing fanaticism right up until she abruptly moved out of their suburban Philadelphia apartment last August, taking his passport with her.

The governors and chief education officials of 48 states have agreed on uniform national standards for the teaching of math and English. The federal government is about to spend $350 million to develop uniform national tests to measure how well those standards are being met.

To cushion the crush of the recession, Congress has repeatedly extended the duration of unemployment insurance until now it's possible to receive benefits for as long as 99 weeks in some states especially hard hit by joblessness. Around 11.4 million people are receiving the benefits, half for longer than six months, at a cost of $10 billion a month.

The Obama administration is having no better luck with Mideast peace talks than the Bush administration. Worse, actually.

Israeli governments ignored George W. Bush's demands for a freeze on settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, but at least they were relatively restrained about it.

President Barack Obama has taken his sweet time about finding someone to head the Transportation Security Administration even though Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano says the job is one of the most important unfilled posts in his administration.

Iraq's terrorists had vowed to derail their nation's U.S.-backed parliamentary elections, and shortly after dawn it looked like they might succeed. In Baghdad, there were as many as 100 explosions -- mortars, rockets, bombs -- but, urged on by loudspeakers from the mosques, Iraqis flocked to the polling places; at least 38 of them would pay for it with their lives.