In the wake of last year's financial meltdown, members of Congress vowed to investigate and crack down on excesses and abuses in the financial industry, not least the subprime loan debacle that helped send the economy into a tailspin and cost taxpayers billions in bailouts.

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 Massachusetts Legislature can't seem to do much legislating without a deadline, and another one is looming this week. Its last formal session is scheduled for Wednesday, after which the lawmakers go on holiday break for the rest of the year. As the clock ticks, lawmakers are preparing to act on the most significant legislation - perhaps the only significant legislation - they have taken up since they left for a holiday break last summer: a long overdue education reform bill.

Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation last week that provides an array of new benefits for veterans, but after months of drawing fire overseas, what these men and women really need now is to draw a salary at home.

First, it took a Minnesota Congress member to reveal that Massachusetts was trailing the rest of the country at putting highway stimulus dollars to work. Now newspaper reports are exposing the bogus jobs numbers the state has been trumpeting. So much for the transparency the Patrick administration promised last spring - and the oversight promised by the Legislature.

The deficit for the federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30 was an astounding $1.42 trillion, $958 billion in red ink more than the short-lived record set the previous year. And there doesn't seem to be much outlook for improvement.

It's too bad Rosewood Middle School in Wayne County, N.C., wasn't allowed to go ahead with its planned fundraiser. The results might have proved fascinating.

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.

The four Democrats vying for the nomination to fill Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat in a primary just a few weeks away squared off again Thursday, but you had to be listening to a Boston radio station in the morning to hear it.

With predictable cynicism, Iran is preparing to charge three young American backpackers with espionage. The trio was arrested in July upon straying into Iran while hiking in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.