An editorial / By Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service

The European Union can't be accused of being dazzled by celebrity and star power in its choices for its first president and first foreign minister under the recently ratified Lisbon Treaty.

A group of Islamic nations, led by Algeria and Pakistan, is lobbying to bring before the U.N. General Assembly a proposed treaty banning mockery of religion, according to the Associated Press. The pact would, in effect, be a global anti-blasphemy treaty and an obvious and alarming threat to freedom of expression.

The government-funded -- but independent -- U.S. Preventive Service Task Force, made up of 16 physicians and public-health experts, did what it was supposed to, and indeed should be done routinely under any health-care-reform plan, a periodic examination and re-evaluation of current medical practice.

Heart disease has generally been thought to be an affliction associated with modern civilization -- fast food, salt, lack of exercise, smoking, stress. And it's true that as countries like China and India become increasingly developed, heart disease is increasingly prevalent.

In a series of interviews with the TV networks before he left China, President Barack Obama disclosed that he is angered by the leaks that have accompanied his protracted deliberations over Afghanistan and considered the unauthorized disclosures a firing offense.

The official American attitude toward the king of England, and by extension royalty generally, is in the Declaration of Independence, the less-read part after the famous first two paragraphs. The signers were opposed to any kind of obeisance to an autocrat.

Those who believe the End Times are imminent will be pleased to know that physicists in Switzerland are planning to fire up the Large Hadron Collider this weekend, fortuitously one week after the doomsday movie "2012" opened.

When Sarah Palin comes to your house for dinner, do not invite John McCain's campaign manager, Steve Schmidt; his top aide, Nicole Wallace; or CBS anchor Katie Couric. They come in for a real beating as America's most interesting politician settles scores that still rankle from the 2008 presidential campaign in "Going Rogue: An American Life."

Shooting a rocket booster into the moon, followed four minutes later by an instrument-laden spacecraft, turned out to be, if not a public-relations dud, at least a major letdown.

The accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four of his accused accomplices will stand trial where they should have been tried in the first place -- a civilian federal courthouse in Manhattan only blocks from the site of the World Trade Center.