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Los Angeles County supervisors, faced with a lawsuit to remove a tiny gold cross from the county seal, have voted to remove it, but the Roman goddess Pomona will stay. County supervisors voted June 1 to remove the cross, which was incorporated into the seal’s original 1957 design to represent the Catholic missions founded by Jesuit missionaries. The American Civil Liberties Union had said the cross represented an “impermissible endorsement of Christianity” and was “unconstitutional” as a violation of the separation of church and state.

When the New York Times admitted that its reporting on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction came from unsupported allegations, it did so not on page one, where all the dire predictions about WMDs had appeared, but on page ten. This is a quiet mea culpa.