Can a highly trained nurse deliver anesthetics as well as a physician who has specialized in anesthesiology, or does the nurse require close medical supervision? That issue emerges from two recent studies and from California’s decision last year to join 14 other states in freeing the nurses from a federal requirement that they be supervised by a physician. Colorado seems poised to join the group.

Japan’s frequent leadership changes are dizzying and increasingly counterproductive. The country has had 14 prime ministers in the last two decades and could soon have another. That would make three in the last 12 months alone — hardly time enough to introduce new policies, much less effectively implement them.

Three House members got word the other day that investigators have recommended that the ethics committee delve into their fund-raising from Wall Street donors — lucrative labors that happened to coincide precisely with some big votes on reforming Wall Street.

The August employment report, released Friday, was not as bad as economists had forecast. Unfortunately, exceeding low expectations and making progress are not the same thing. Yet, speaking from the Rose Garden after the report was released, President Obama said the economy was moving in a “positive direction.”

New Orleans is rebounding well from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and could conceivably end up on a stronger economic footing than before the storm — if the city redevelops in the right way. For that to happen, federal, state and local authorities must step up the effort to restore flood-damaged neighborhoods, some of which are heavily blighted and still have less than half their pre-storm populations.

We were glad to see President Obama go to Fort Bliss on Tuesday before his Oval Office speech on Iraq, to thank those Americans who most shouldered the burdens of a tragic, pointless war.

THE provisions of the Internal Revenue Code can’t be any clearer: organizations with tax-exempt status “are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

If a country sinks beneath the sea, is it still a country? That is a question about which the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a Micronesian nation of 29 low-lying coral atolls — is now seeking expert legal advice.

IF IF PRESIDENT Obama has a big economic initiative up his sleeve, as he hinted recently, now would be a good time to let the rest of us in on it.

THE $65.7 million bond earmarked for the reconstruction of the John F. Kennedy High School has been sold, finally removing the last hurdle that delayed the Department of Public Works’ official awarding of contract to the International Bridge Corporation.