• Beware of campaign claims
With the much- touted vice presidential debate of last week behind us and another presidential candidate debate tonight in front of us, voters should remember this:

• The voter explosion
Something unprecedented is happening in New Jersey: The electorate is more energized than it has ever been. With a week to go before the voter registration deadline, the state's voter rolls are bulging with names.

• Don't do retailers' bidding
The way the National Retail Federation sees it, many average people get "hooked" by the "addictive qualities" of selling items online. So great is this addiction that when people run out of things to sell, the retailers claim, they start stealing to get more.

• A windfall of energy
The state Board of Pub lic Utilities' decision last week to award $4 million to develop a wind farm off the South Jersey coast will flip the switch on an effort that can produce clean energy, jobs and more electricity.

• Make streets safe for cycling
Bicyclists, it appears, would rather ride on the sidewalks of Raritan Borough's business district than take their chances with traffic on the Somerset County community's main thoroughfares. Although understandable, this situation isn't safe for pedestrians. The mayor and borough council are rightly moving to ban sidewalk cycling by adults.

• Bailout is the lesser evil
There was nothing pretty about the financial bailout bill the House passed Friday or the down-to-the-wire drama of representatives delaying pressing the voting button until the final possible seconds. But then what would have ensued without that vote would have been very, very ugly. Evidence of that might lie in the speed with which President Bush signed the bill.

• A gamble in India nuke deal
It has taken more than three years since the initial agreement, but President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will soon sign a deal approved by Congress last week that will allow full civilian nuclear trade between the two countries.

• How not to limit guns
Public officials in places like Jersey City are understandably concerned about the proliferation of guns in their communities. That's why it's tough to criticize Jersey City Mayor Jerra miah Healy's decision to embrace an ordinance preventing local residents from purchasing more than one handgun within 30 days.

• A savior for the innocent
Given the seemingly intractable problems of the world -- hunger, AIDS, poverty, illiteracy -- it's easy for even the most caring among us to feel there is little we can do to make a change.

• Finish workers' comp job
New Jersey's $1.8 billion-a-year workers' compensation system hasn't worked properly for many people who've been in jured on the job.

• Food safety requires more
Federal legislation prompted by a spate of food safety scares, some of them deadly, took effect this week. It will require labels identifying the country of origin of fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, meats and frozen produce. Seafood origin has been labeled since 2005.

• This time, pass the bailout
The House is headed for a do-over tomorrow on the nation's economy, and this time the members -- particularly the New Jersey seven who rejected the $700 billion rescue plan on Monday -- need to get it right.

• Let hospitals pay for errors
As of this month, the federal Medicare program is no longer paying hospitals for care they provide to make up for medical mistakes and patient injuries that could have been prevented. The policy makes such basic good sense, it's a wonder that Medicare was not making hospitals swallow the cost of their bad medicine all along.

• Keeping witnesses safe
The law that says an accused must be presumed innocent until proven guilty applies even when the crime is as horrible as the one in Irvington last month: Four women, three of them teenagers, were shot to death in an apartment that was then set afire, apparently to cover up the crime.

• Sniping prevents solutions
When the vote tally showed that the House had rejected the rewritten $700 billion rescue plan, the first reaction of lawmakers on Capitol Hill was to start blaming somebody else.

• Make a better case for a financial bailout
Summoning enthusiastic public support for the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion financial bailout has been tough. Getting Congress to authorize that spending is proving even tougher, as the negative House vote yesterday showed.

• Helpers could use a hand
The First Occupational Center in New Jersey, which has dedicated itself to helping people find work, needs help itself to repair the fire and water damage to its sheltered workshop in Orange.

• Test the school formula
The state Supreme Court is considering whether the new $7.8 billion school funding plan writ ten by the Corzine administration will improve upon the goals the court enunciated more than three decades ago in ordering extra state aid for communities that could not afford to give their kids a decent education.

• Economic argument will do
Lawmakers love to cloak a bill in the mantle of homeland secu rity. It sounds much better to present a measure to block public access to prime waterfront land as a safeguard against terrorism rather than a money-saving sop to industry.

• Delivering on ethics reform
Praise for Gov. Jon Corzine's comprehensive ethics package has been bipartisan and deserved. If enacted, the rewriting of government ethics standards will go a long way toward eliminat ing many of the practices that have resulted in a parade of officials marching from town hall offices to prison cells.

• Too far on victims' rights
New Jersey has been a trailblazer in protecting the rights of crime victims, beginning in 1991 when the state constitution was amended to create a Crime Victims' Bill of Rights.

• Use caution in Pakistan
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has won widespread bipartisan admiration in Washington for his solid, unflappable realism, puts his threat assessment succinctly: "If you ask me today ... where the greatest threat to the (U.S.) homeland lies, I would tell you it's in western Pakistan."

• Stop slithering intruders
Asian swamp eels are an invasive foreign species that is dangerously prolific and adaptive, threatening fish and other native creatures. They grow up to 3 feet long, can breathe in or out of water and crawl from pond to lake to stream. They can even switch gender to boost breeding.

• A derelict Justice Department
Justice really is blind -- at least if the reference is to the Jus tice Department and its see-no-evil attitude about alleged wrongdoing by energy companies and the government workers who are supposed to be overseeing the firms.

• End feuding on homicides
The number of homicides in the city of Elizabeth has remained constant in recent years, but the number of those cases that get resolved has not. For the past five years, the number of homicides resulting in arrests has declined alarmingly.

• A right to their rat
Giant inflatable Uncle Sams, maybe even big Homer Simpsons, might be welcome in Lawrence Township, but giant blow- up rats, the kind widely recognized as symbols of union protest, are not.

• Two speeches tell a tale
President Bush and Ira nian President Mah moud Ahmadinejad ap peared in separate speeches at the United Nations yesterday -- CNN, trying to give it the pulse of a sports event, called it a "big showdown" -- that were a painful reminder of just how much Bush's two terms have eroded respect for the United States and of just how much that has skewed global priorities.

• Strengthen education first
New Jersey is planning to strengthen math, science and language requirements for high school graduation. The Education Department, however, says it may take eight years to polish the plan. And that's not a bad idea.