On gray wolves:

Not everyone was happy when the gray wolf population in the Northern Rockies, near extinction in the mid-1970s, staged a remarkable comeback under the protections of the Endangered Species Act. By the end of last year there were about 1,650 in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Ranchers complained that the wolves were killing their sheep and cattle; hunters complained that they were devastating big game, mainly elk.

So when protections were lifted earlier this year in Idaho and Montana the states immediately approved wolf hunting seasons. But what seemed to be an ordinary big-game hunt, with licenses and duly apportioned quotas (75 in Montana, 220 in Idaho) now looks like the opening of a new front in the age-old war on wolves.

Once the season opened in Montana, some of the most-studied wolves in Yellowstone, including a female that scientists had been tracking for years, were killed almost immediately just outside the park, jeopardizing several scientific studies. By the time Montana’s season ended on Nov. 17, 72 wolves had been shot — 3 short of the state’s quota — out of a total population of some 500.

Environmental groups and other wolf advocates argued, before protections were lifted last spring, that populations across the Northern Rockies had not in fact reached sustainable levels. Having lost that argument, they are now insisting on stronger state management plans, and a moratorium on hunting until such plans can be formulated. This is a fair request. What matters is the survival of not just a few token wolves, but strong, genetically healthy wolf populations.

– The New York Times

On debt collection tactics:

Thanks to a stubbornly persistent recession, millions of Americans find themselves saddled with debt that they can’t repay or can repay only with such difficulty it discourages them from even trying.

Trying to collect these debts has become a big and fast-growing business with debts being packaged and sold, often for pennies on the dollar, in financial instruments with a disturbing resemblance to the way sub-prime mortgages were packaged and sold off. The whole point of buying deeply discounted debt is that the buyers keep every dollar they collect. So-called secondary debt is now a $60 billion industry.

Aggressive attempts to collect the debts threaten to overwhelm the courts and have resulted in a record number of complaints to the Federal Trade Commission. Those collection tactics may get even more aggressive if the industry can persuade Congress to allow it to make automated calls to cell phones.

Ample and easily available consumer credit is essential to a capitalist economy and U.S. economic growth. And for that system to function properly, it is also essential to have an effective and fair system to make sure those debts are repaid. Debt collectors working on behalf of lenders return $40 billion a year, money that is then recycled as fresh credit.

– The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.

On Tiger Woods:

Tiger Woods has spent the 14 years of his professional golfing career cashing in on his charismatic image at least as much as he has on his immense, perhaps unprecedented talent. Except for a few relatively minor cracks in his carefully maintained facade — an expletive here, a thrown club there — he has mostly succeeded in managing what the public was allowed to see of this appealing and gifted athlete.

That facade sustained major damage in a weird incident that was officially in the books as a traffic accident as of Tuesday, but which continues to raise questions as to what really happened, and why. ...

Woods reportedly has the right, under Florida law, to refuse any information to authorities beyond his driver’s license and other official documentation — as long as the incident is being treated officially as a traffic accident. Thus have ESPN and other sports media outlets explained Woods’ repeated cancellations of interviews with Florida state troopers. Whether somebody not named Tiger Woods and not living in an exclusive gated community would be granted that kind of kid-gloves treatment under similar circumstances is a matter about which it is hardly “irresponsible” (to use Woods’ own term) to speculate. ...

Whatever his legal obligations, Woods has every right to clam up publicly. Perhaps he sincerely thinks he owes the public nothing more, and he might be right. But when he insists that people stop speculating about this strange sequence of events, maybe he needs to rethink what the rest of us owe him.

– Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer

On Comcast acquisition of NBC:

It is a fine thing that General Electric has reached a deal to buy back the last 20 percent of NBC Universal from the French. The French should not own it. Neither should GE, which has enough on its plate — refrigerators, jet engines, compact fluorescence, etc. — without running a media empire.

NBC Universal should be independent.

Consider what it owns. Start with NBC Entertainment, whose offerings include “The Office” and “30 Rock.” Add NBC News, NBC Local Media, which owns TV stations in the largest U.S. cities (in San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego on the West Coast), and NBC TV Network, which reaches almost every home in the country. NBC also owns Telemundo, which reaches big U.S. Spanish-speaking communities.

Add Universal Pictures, which makes movies, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, which sells DVDs, and interests in the several Universal Studios theme parks.

The public argument ought to be whether, in such a sensitive industry, even this is too much for one company. Instead, all of NBC Universal becomes a mere Park Place or Boardwalk deed to be consolidated by GE and resold to the happy buyer.

That would be Comcast, which already is America’s biggest cable-TV and broadband Internet company.

This page said Monday that “if there ever was a corporate marriage federal regulators should block, it is Comcast Corp.’s proposition to buy NBC Universal.” We say it again, and we hope others say it.

The consolidation in media is dangerous — to the economic interests of the public and to democracy itself. The trend toward media giantism should be stopped, and the place to begin is this proposed deal.

– The Seattle Times