When he hinted to the Israeli Knesset last week that Barack Obama was an appeaser for being willing to talk to Iran, President Bush broke an unwritten rule against partisan politicking on foreign shores. He also displayed confusion about his own policies -- and about the cause of his calamitous foreign policy failures. ...

"Some seem to believe," Bush told the Knesset, "that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." He was comparing unnamed appeasers of today to isolationists who thought they could negotiate with Nazi Germany and keep the United States out of World War II. Bush implied that Obama would be just that naive. ...

On the matter of negotiating with radicals and terrorists, somebody on Bush's staff ought to remind him that among his few foreign policy achievements are the agreements his diplomats negotiated with Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and Kim Jong-il of North Korea. Taking nuclear weapons out of the hands of those old terrorists has meant talking to them -- and giving them some things they wanted badly.

BOSTON GLOBE, MAY 17

Married, filing separately Sen. John McCain's wife, Cindy, has decided not to release her tax returns -- not now and not in the future. In the interest of transparency and to support her husband's frequent calls for clean and open government, she should rethink that decision.

Since their marriage in 1980, Cindy McCain, the daughter of a multimillionaire Anheuser-Busch distributor, and her husband have filed separate tax returns. In April, the senator released his own returns, but just for the last two years -- a paltry nod to openness. Cindy McCain, it was explained, would not release her tax returns in "the interest of protecting the privacy of her children." ...

There is no question that McCain -- the candidate -- has reaped considerable benefits from his wife's wealth, including discounted use of her company's corporate jet to fly from state to state during this campaign. During the 2004 presidential campaign, we urged Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wealthy wife of Sen. John Kerry, to release her tax returns. So did the Republican National Committee. This time, predictably, the RNC has switched sides.

NEW YORK TIMES, MAY 19

The problem pastor This eventful 2008 contest for the White House is constantly rewriting the campaign rule books, and by now there must be a chapter on associations with firebrand pastors whose preachings can't survive national scrutiny.

Democrat Barack Obama has already been through hell because of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. ...Then it was Republican John McCain's turn to deal with the Rev. John Hagee, the head of an 18,000-member church in San Antonio. McCain sought his endorsement and got it -- along with the uproar over Hagee's harsh views of Catholicism. ...

The new rule for presidential candidates should be a simple one: Some benedictions aren't worth the trouble.

NEWSDAY, MAY 15