The year in editorials

Life and death

By any reasonable definition of medical science, Jahi McMath died on Dec. 12. So declared two Children’s Hospital doctors who determined that her brain was irreversibly and completely nonfunctional, so declared the head of neurosurgery at Stanford University who examined her for the court, and so declared the Alameda County coroner on Friday.

That a ventilator can keep the heart and lungs working in the face of brain death does not, in their expert opinions, offer even the remotest hope that Jahi might recover.

Yet no one can really blame her relatives for clinging to hope for a miraculous resurrection.

( Jan. 8)

Lion of the Hill

Rep. George Miller never took the job for granted. He flew home to Martinez nearly every weekend and was as active and accessible as anyone in the Bay Area delegation.

It’s refreshing to see a member of the House step down while still at the top of his game after a long, highly productive career. Too many politicians seem to regard congressional seats (which, unlike the state Legislature, are not subject to term limits) as lifetime appointments, and treat challengers with dismissive contempt.

Miller earned his routinely landslide re-elections, and he has earned an extended and enjoyable retirement from a job he did well.

( Jan. 14)

Beach battle

This case is broader than the narrow road to Martins Beach. The public’s right to use California’s beaches has been threatened over the years in disputes from Malibu to the North Coast. Any decision to keep this little path closed would drastically erode the public’s right to access the beaches it owns. That right was affirmed in 1972 by the California Coastal Zone Conservation Initiative, which made the entire coast, including beaches below the mean high tide, public property.

(Feb. 24)

Senator indicted

To his allies, state Sen. Leland Yee was a combustible mix: a confident lawmaker who rarely lost an election, but also a public official with reckless habits. ... Still, the charges of conspiring to traffic in firearms and scheming to defraud citizens of honest services are stunning — and the reaction from his colleagues in Sacramento was nearly instantaneous. Within hours of Yee’s arrest, a band of top state senators led by President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg called on Yee to resign, an angry shift from the go-slow treatment that two other senators received over legal troubles in the last two months.

(March 27)

Racist rant

The Los Angeles Clippers made a bold statement against the disclosure of an audio recording of despicable, racist comments by their owner, Donald Sterling.

It was hard to observe the scene at Sunday’s playoff game against the Warriors without feeling a dose of sympathy for the players who have found themselves laboring for a real estate mogul whose racist rant was merely the latest and ugliest in his history of deplorable comments about blacks and Latinos. Coach Doc Rivers openly wondered about what the team will encounter Tuesday when the series resumes in what had been “our safe haven” — the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

(April 28)