Democrats sure must be thanking their lucky stars it is not John Edwards they picked to bear their standard. And, if Edwards ever was on the short list for Barack Obama's veep job, he is there no longer.

Confirming the prescience of those who saw Edwards as a man of transparently phony piety - good son of the sawmill, devoted family man, clasping his sick wife's hand as the violins played and the white doves flew - here now is a man forced to admit to a reckless marital infidelity, one he has been denying for weeks.

Here now is a man who went happily philandering as he was about to start a run for the White House - and who gave his sexual partner a job and paid her out of campaign funds.

Americans, large of heart, forgive many offenders.

Flat-out liars, not so much.

- The Daily News, New York

Truly free international trade is a myth, of course. Virtually every country in the world has some pet peeve concerning trade rules.

Seven years of negotiations on a new World Trade Organization agreement collapsed recently in Geneva, Switzerland - because of protectionist demands by China and India.

Obviously, collapse of the talks is bad news for the world economy, especially for high-productivity nations such as ours.

But failure of the trade talks will harm residents of developing countries even more, by limiting their abilities to grow through trade and by making them continue to rely primarily on their own nations' farms for food.

No one involved in the Geneva talks was willing to say that they had failed entirely. Negotiators should resume discussing trade later this year - without allowing the Chinese and Indians to scuttle the project.

- The Leader-Herald, Gloversville