History > 2006 > USA > States > Legislation / Constitutions (I)

Jessi Faris, 13, with her parents, Paul and Shaun, at an event in Sioux Falls.

Carmel Zucker for The New York Times

Ripples From Law Banning Abortion Spread Through South Dakota        NYT

16.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/us/16dakota.html

Vermont signs ambitious health-insurance law

Thu May 25, 2006 8:16 PM ET
Reuters
By Darren M. Allen

MONTPELIER, Vermont (Reuters) - Vermont's governor signed a bill on Thursday that would make the state the second in the nation with near-universal health-care insurance by extending coverage to as much as 96 percent of its residents by 2010.

The law comes a month after neighboring Massachusetts passed the nation's first near-universal health-care reform plan, which aims to provide insurance to about 95 percent of the state's half-million uninsured residents by 2009.

Both plans reflect state efforts to tackle growing concerns over health care with 46 million Americans uninsured, traditional employer-based coverage shrinking and the cost of insurance premiums steadily rising.

Vermont's legislation, signed by Gov. James Douglas at a ceremony at the state's second-largest hospital, aims to reduce the ranks of uninsured -- about 10 percent of the state's 620,000 residents -- while also streamlining care given to those with coverage.

A new subsidized health-care plan called Catamount Health will be offered by insurance companies and paid for in part with a hike in the state's cigarette tax and a fee on employers who do not offer health insurance to their workers.

It will provide coverage similar to that offered to state employees, taking nearly 25,000 people off the rolls of the uninsured, backers of the legislation say.

"This is potentially a national model," said Kenneth Thorpe, an Emory University professor and health-care consultant who helped create Vermont's reforms.

Massachusetts' plan has also been touted as a possible national model by requiring all residents to obtain health insurance by July 1, 2007, or face possible tax penalties.

The Massachusetts plan will provide insurance to the lowest-earning residents by offering low- or no-cost plans, with premiums and co-payments paid entirely by the state.

In Vermont, insurers can begin offering the new plan from July 1, 2007, but some benefits will be phased-in sooner.

Douglas, a Republican, had up to a month ago threatened the Democrat-controlled Legislature with a veto if they rejected his demand that the plan be run by private insurers.

"This law preserves the private sector role in providing insurance, it preserves economic security of our state and it makes a strong commitment toward wellness and the management of chronic diseases," he said.

The reforms follow a two-year debate in the state Legislature and call for streamlined record keeping, free immunizations, and greater access to preventive care.

    Vermont signs ambitious health-insurance law, R, 25.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-05-26T001458Z_01_N25196970_RTRUKOC_0_US-VERMONT.xml

States get tougher with sex offenders

Posted 5/23/2006 11:29 PM ET
USA Today
By Wendy Koch

Public fear of sex offenders is spurring a wave of tougher laws this year, both in Congress and statehouses nationwide.

At least 14 governors have signed bills this year, including Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle on Monday. The measures extend prison sentences, restrict where offenders can live, improve public notification of their whereabouts, order electronic monitoring or broaden prosecutorial power, according to a USA TODAY survey based on media reports and interviews with state officials.

Lawmakers in at least 10 states have passed tough bills that await final approval. More bills are pending elsewhere, including one in South Carolina that would make some molesters eligible for the death penalty and another in Louisiana that would require them to get special orange driver's licenses stamped with the words "sex offender."

Members of Congress are also crafting bipartisan legislation that would create a national Internet database to track convicted sex offenders.

"This is probably the most important piece of legislation I've seen in the 25 years since my son Adam was murdered," says John Walsh, host of the Fox TV show America's Most Wanted. He has spent three years lobbying for the bill. Adam Walsh was 6 when he was abducted in 1981 from a department store in Florida and killed.

The House and Senate have passed different versions this year and need to agree on a compromise. Both would set uniform rules for when and what information sex offenders would report. They would make failure to register a felony and give states money for global positioning system tracking devices.

All states have registries, but they offer varying information. Many don't make non-compliance a crime.

"We track library books better than we do sex offenders," says the bill's author, Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. About 564,000 offenders are registered, but police lack current addresses for at least 100,000, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

"Public outcry for this bill has been unbelievable," says Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a co-author. "I'm confident the bill will be on the president's desk before the year's end." President Bush told senators he'd sign it.

Despite public fear, government data show a dramatic drop in sex crimes against kids in the past decade, says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. He sees election-year politics in some efforts: "A lot of people want to be identified with doing something about child molestation, so they sign on."

The push to toughen laws has accelerated in the past 18 months. In 2005, 45 states passed 150 laws, double the number of laws in 2004, says Blake Harrison, analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    States get tougher with sex offenders, UT, 23.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-23-sex-offenders_x.htm

Schools Plan in Nebraska Is Challenged

May 17, 2006
The New York Times
By SAM DILLON

In a constitutional challenge to a state law that would divide the Omaha public schools into three racially identifiable districts, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sued the governor of Nebraska and other state officials yesterday in federal court in Omaha, arguing that the law "intentionally furthers racial segregation."

Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican, called the suit "a distraction" to recent talks intended to bring an accommodation among warring school superintendents. His spokesman said Nebraska's attorney general, Jon Bruning, also a Republican, would represent Mr. Heineman and the education officials named as defendants.

That task, however, may put Mr. Bruning in an awkward position. Before lawmakers passed the legislation and Mr. Heineman signed it on April 13, Mr. Bruning wrote that he expected legal challenges because its provisions dividing the Omaha district could violate the federal Constitution's equal protection clause.

"We believe the state may face serious risk due to the potential constitutional problems raised" by the law, Mr. Bruning wrote in a letter distributed to lawmakers. Mary Nelson, a spokeswoman, said yesterday that the attorney general had not yet read the lawsuit and would not comment.

The law, intended to resolve a boundary dispute between the Omaha schools and largely white suburban districts, created a learning community of area school districts that would operate with a common tax levy and required them to draw up an integration plan for metropolitan Omaha.

An amendment that passed late in the legislative session required that the Omaha public schools be split by 2008 into three districts following the attendance areas of existing high schools. The lawsuit argues that because Omaha is racially segregated by neighborhood, dividing the district that way would create one largely black, one largely white and one mostly Hispanic district.

The suit says the law violates the constitutional principle that in public education "the doctrine of separate but equal has no place."

The prime force behind the provision of the law under challenge was Senator Ernie Chambers, Nebraska's only black legislator, who argued that Omaha schools were already segregated and that the plan would allow blacks to control a district in which their children were a majority.

Theodore M. Shaw, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., who filed the suit on behalf of the Omaha branch of the N.A.A.C.P., said he respected Mr. Chambers's effort to give minority communities increased control over school administration.

"But we disagree with actions that will exacerbate segregation in the public schools," Mr. Shaw said. "I mean this is 2006, in a society that is diverse and multicultural."

    Schools Plan in Nebraska Is Challenged, NYT, 17.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/us/17naacp.html

Same-Sex Marriage Amendment Is Struck Down by Georgia Judge

May 17, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

ATLANTA, May 16 — A state amendment banning same-sex marriage was struck down Tuesday by a judge who upheld the voters' right to limit marriage to heterosexual couples but cited procedural flaws in the wording of the amendment, which was approved by more than three-quarters of voters.

The decision is one of the first successful challenges to a ban on same-sex marriage, one of a spate of similar amendments passed in 11 states in November 2004, said Jack Senterfitt, a senior staff lawyer in the Southern regional office of Lambda Legal, a national gay rights group.

Lambda Legal filed the suit along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. Besides Georgia, 18 states have such laws, a spokeswoman for Lambda Legal said.

The Georgia amendment defined marriage as between a man and a woman, banned same-sex civil unions and said that same-sex unions performed in other states would not be recognized. The judge, Constance C. Russell of Fulton County Superior Court, ruled that the amendment violated Georgia's single-subject rule, which limits each amendment put before voters to one topic.

"People who believe marriages between men and women should have a unique and privileged place in our society may also believe that same-sex relationships should have some place, although not marriage," the judge wrote. "The single-subject rule protects the right of those people to hold both views and reflect both judgments by their vote."

Mr. Senterfitt said he expected the ruling to be appealed.

    Same-Sex Marriage Amendment Is Struck Down by Georgia Judge, NYT, 17.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/us/17georgia.html

From TV Role in 'Dobie Gillis' to Rights Fight in Legislature

May 14, 2006
The New York Times
By JESSE McKINLEY

SAN FRANCISCO, May 13 — Sheila Kuehl has done a few things that someday may merit mention in the history books: more than a decade in the California Legislature, a public crusade against domestic violence and a stint as the tenacious busybody Zelda on the classic sitcom "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis."

But if such immortality were to happen, Ms. Kuehl says, she would want one fact listed with the rest of her accomplishments: she is gay.

So this year, Ms. Kuehl, a state senator representing western Los Angeles, introduced a bill to assure that lesbians and gay men get what she feels is their due in California textbooks. The bill, which passed the Senate on Thursday and is now headed to the Assembly, would forbid the teaching of any material that "reflects adversely on persons due to sexual orientation," and add the "age appropriate study of the role and contributions of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender."

For Ms. Kuehl, 65, the bill seems to have as much to do with school security as it does with the A B C's.

"One of the things that contribute to a safe or unsafe environment for kids are the teaching materials," Ms. Kuehl said. "If you have teaching material that didn't say anything at all about gay and lesbian people, it is assumed that they never did anything at all. But if it said anything about gay and lesbian people, the whole atmosphere of the school was safer for gay and lesbian kids, or those thought to be gay and lesbian."

At a time when same-sex marriage is a polarizing presence in the courts and in voting booths across the country, any issue dealing with gay rights is bound to cause a fluster, and this bill is no exception. The Capitol Resource Institute, a conservative organization, labeled the proposal "the most outrageous bill in the California Legislature this year."

Concerned Women for America, a Christian public policy group, filed a letter with the Senate suggesting that such studies were the domain of the home, not the schools.

Cindy Moles, the state director of Concerned Women for America, said the bill was trying to indoctrinate children to "dangerous sexual lifestyles" and was unnecessary from an educational standpoint.

"We don't need to list all the behavior of historical figures," Ms. Moles said. "Certainly not their sexual behavior."

Representatives for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to comment on the bill, as did Jack O'Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction.

Ms. Kuehl says she traces her quest to include material on gay figures in textbooks to her days as a student in Los Angeles public schools in the late 1940's and early 50's.

"When I was a kid, there were no women in the textbooks, no black people, no Latinos," she said. "As far as I knew, the only people who ever did anything worthwhile were white men."

Ms. Kuehl said the practical applications of the law would be limited to including the accomplishments of gay figures in textbooks and class studies alongside those of other social and ethnic groups. For example, a teacher talking about Langston Hughes would not only mention the fact that he was a black poet, but also mention his sexuality, Ms. Kuehl said.

If the law were to pass, new textbooks probably would not hit desks until 2012, by which time Ms. Kuehl, who is recognized as the state's first openly gay legislator, might merit a mention or two. What might she like it to say?

"I'd like to be remembered as a person that fought for civil rights and social justice," she said.

But what of "Dobie Gillis"? "I'm proud of that work, too," she said.

    From TV Role in 'Dobie Gillis' to Rights Fight in Legislature, NYT, 14.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/us/14gays.html

Court Asks if Residency Follows Inmates Up the River

May 13, 2006
The New York Times
By SAM ROBERTS

For years, New York Republicans have propped up their slim majority in the State Senate partly by seizing on a quirk in the federal census: counting prisoners as residents of the rural districts where they are incarcerated, rather than of the urban neighborhoods where they last lived.

That way, predominantly Republican rural districts wind up with more seats in the state Legislature, since seats are apportioned on the basis of population.

But last week, a federal appeals court in New York hinted that counting prisoners as upstaters might illegally dilute the voting rights of downstaters.

If that legal argument is pursued and upheld, the political implications could be profound. Republicans now have a four-seat margin in the Senate. A shift in only a few seats could give the Democrats, who already control the Assembly, a majority in the Senate, and with it, enormous power over legislative and Congressional redistricting.

Except for a brief hiatus in 1965, Republicans have dominated the Senate since 1939.

States typically use the census to reapportion legislative and Congressional districts. But the impact of this practice is magnified in New York, where most of the inmates come from downstate and are shipped to prisons upstate.

Voting rights advocates estimate that without the inmates, as many as seven upstate Senate districts might have to be redrawn, with downstate picking up some seats.

The issue came up in passing in a lawsuit seeking to give prisoners the right to vote. While the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected that request, it did express interest in the argument that counting inmates upstate dilutes the voting power of minority groups in urban districts, and kicked that matter back to the District Court for consideration.

Eric Hecker, a lawyer who pursued an earlier voting rights case involving inmates, said, "I don't think there's any question but that if the prisoners were counted where they lived the legislative districts would be unconstitutional."

Eric T. Schneiderman, a Manhattan Democrat who is the deputy Senate minority leader, agreed. "The court has clearly remanded to the district judge to consider the voting rights argument — that people who live in districts that are net exporters of prisoners to districts upstate may have a voting rights claim," he said. "I think it has to be pursued."

Senator Schneiderman has urged the Census Bureau to change its policy and has introduced legislation that would require the state to use prisoners' home addresses in apportioning legislative districts.

The 8-to-5 appeals court decision opens a "small window," said Juan Cartegena, general counsel of the Community Service Society, which joined the appeal.

"It's an opening that we really don't know what to do with yet," he said.

Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts-based research and advocacy group, suggested that wherever the window leads, the mere mention by the court seems meaningful.

"I think it is a significant signal that the New York's reliance on bogus census counts of prisoners creates a serious problem for democracy," he said. "The court has given us a great opportunity."

Noting that the same appeals court also ruled that an inmate whose home was in California but is imprisoned in New York does not have standing to sue here, Mr. Wagner added: "He remains a resident of California, much like the 43,760 residents of New York City incarcerated upstate remain residents of New York City."

Mr. Wagner estimated that while 66 percent of state prisoners come from New York City, 91 percent of them are imprisoned upstate. "In one assembly district," he wrote, "seven percent of the reported census population is actually prisoners from other parts of the state. The votes of each group of 93 residents in that district are unconstitutionally equated with the weight of 100 voters elsewhere in the state who do not happen to live near a prison."

The average population of Senate districts is about 306,000. In one rural district, according to Mr. Wagner, not counting the nearly 13,000 or so prisoners as residents would reduce the population to about 286,000, compared with more than 320,000 in some Queens districts.

Just by calling attention to what amounted to a footnote in the advocates' case, the judges almost seemed to be prodding the plaintiffs, and the lower court, to examine the case against counting prisoners where they are incarcerated in drawing legislative districts.

"That's the way I read it," said Michelle M. Aronowitz, the deputy solicitor general, who successfully defended the state.

The advocates argued that because most inmates are black or Hispanic, disenfranchising convicted felons is not only racially discriminatory, but also waters down the voting power of people who live in the same districts that the prisoners hail from or where parolees now live. But the appeals court was uncertain whether the advocates for prisoners and parolees also claimed that ordinary citizens are disenfranchised because of the way inmates are counted for reapportionment.

"Inasmuch as this question was neither considered by the District Court nor briefed by defendants," the court continued, "we intimate no view on the question and remand to the District Court to consider whether plaintiffs have indeed properly raised the claim, and, if so, to rule on the merits of the claim."

The Census Bureau has said changing the way it counts would be too difficult.

Senator Schneiderman introduced legislation last year that would make counting for legislative apportionment purposes conform to the New York Constitution, which says that "no person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a residence, by reason of his presence or absence ... while confined in any public prison."

John McCardle, a spokesman for the Senate Majority Leader, Joseph L. Bruno, an upstate Republican, said yesterday: "What we do with the lines and with reapportionment is based on the law, and this is what the law allows for. I don't want to equate students with prisoners, but we count both where they are."

    Court Asks if Residency Follows Inmates Up the River, NYT, 13.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/nyregion/13prisoners.html

G.O.P. Lawmakers Deal a Setback to Governor Bush in Florida

May 13, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBIN POGREBIN

MIAMI, May 12 — Seven months before Gov. Jeb Bush leaves office, his chance of leaving a legacy on his signature issue of education has been significantly impaired by state legislators from his own Republican Party.

Two of Mr. Bush's education priorities were voted down by the Legislature last week at the end of this year's session. The constitutional amendments would have reversed a State Supreme Court decision invalidating school vouchers and loosened strict limits on class size.

Six of the Senate's 26 Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the class-size initiative; four did the same against the voucher plan.

Politicians of both parties acknowledge that Mr. Bush's losses marked a change for a Republican-led Legislature that typically fell in line behind the two-term governor.

Newspapers have made much of these setbacks for Mr. Bush. The Orlando Sentinel called them "the biggest defeats of his eight years in office." The Miami Herald said they were "some of the most stinging defeats of his political career." The St. Petersburg Times said, "Florida is entering a period of profound transition: the post-Jeb era."

Democrats are clearly enjoying the moment. "The voucher thing — it's his baby," State Representative Ron L. Greenstein, Democrat of Coconut Creek, said in an interview. "It's a sour note to leave on."

Some suggest that Mr. Bush is paying the price for his status as a departing officeholder — and maybe even for that of his brother President Bush. "They're both lame ducks," said State Representative Dan Gelber, a Miami Democrat who is the incoming House minority leader. "On the other hand, they are still the Republican family in the country. It's hard to deny the power of that family, certainly in the Republican Party and in the nation."

The two amendments were at the heart of Mr. Bush's efforts to reduce the influence of teachers' unions and to allow private schools to become a more accessible alternative to those run by the state. His office nonetheless continues to emphasize Mr. Bush's legislative victories, like the passage of his "A++" education plan that allows high school students to select majors and minors.

"We have seen great accomplishments out of the session," said Alia Faraj, Mr. Bush's communications director. "Economic development, tax cuts, hurricane preparedness — it's been a banner year."

Mr. Bush's supporters play down the significance of the two legislative defeats, saying his education agenda has always been larger. "His accomplishments in the education field have been historic," said Bob Martinez, whom Mr. Bush appointed to the State Board of Education. "It doesn't get done overnight."

Class sizes in Florida were limited in 2002 by a ballot initiative that was approved by voters and supported by teachers' unions. The law calls for gradually cutting class sizes by 2010 to 18 students in kindergarten through third grade; 22 students in fourth grade through eighth grade, and 25 in high school.

While running for re-election in 2002, Mr. Bush made the class size issue central to his platform, warning that it would cost billions of dollars to build schools and hire teachers to comply with the limits.

He has since tried repeatedly to offer enticements to eliminate the limits, tying the plan to teacher salary increases and to a requirement that school districts direct at least 65 percent of their money toward classroom spending. The amendment most recently defeated would have raised the class size limits by five students, among other changes.

Mr. Bush's voucher proposal would have amended the State Constitution to allow public money to be used for scholarships to private schools, overturning a Florida Supreme Court ruling that declared them unconstitutional.

State Senator Dennis L. Jones, Republican of Seminole, was one of the Republicans who broke with his party on the issue. During the debate, he pointed out that voters have opposed vouchers in referendums in Colorado, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Michigan, Oregon and Washington State. "Quit using public money to send our kids to private schools," Mr. Jones said, as reported by The Tallahassee Democrat.

State Senator Evelyn J. Lynn, an Ormond Beach Republican and chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, also joined Democrats in voting against the plan. Ms. Lynn said vouchers did not belong in the Constitution and called the plan an attack on the public school system.

State Senator J. Alex Villalobos, a Republican from Miami who opposed both amendments, was fired as majority leader by the Senate president, Tom Lee, Republican of Brandon. Mr. Villalobos said he chose to vote with his constituents and his principles.

"I think what it signals is the senators aren't rubber stamps," he said. "I voted with my district, which is overwhelmingly Republican. How the party line is 'stick it to South Florida schools' is beyond my imagination."

But others say the crossing of party lines signals a political shift to the middle as the state prepares to elect a new governor in November.

"It's important on a lot of levels, showing there's a moderate center that held," said State Senator Rod Smith of Alachua, a Democratic candidate for governor. "The Bush administration is hitting the shoreline. He's more popular than his policies."

One political pollster warned against making too much of a governor's last legislative hurrah.

"He didn't have a great session, but I don't know how much that affects his popularity in the state," said the pollster, Brad Coker, the managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling and Research. "The legislative stuff is really more insider baseball."

Mr. Coker said that compared with other two-term Florida governors in recent history, Mr. Bush falls squarely in the middle in terms of approval ratings, with 63 percent. Gov. Lawton Chiles had a 54 percent approval rating toward the end of the 1998 legislative session, and Gov. Bob Graham had 83 percent in July 1986.

"Each of them faced rough last-term sessions," Mr. Coker said. "When you have a two-term governor, I think people tend to evaluate over the full eight years of office. One bad session is not going to hurt you."

    G.O.P. Lawmakers Deal a Setback to Governor Bush in Florida, NYT, 13.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/us/13jeb.html

In Georgia Law, a Wide-Angle View of Immigration

May 12, 2006
The New York Times
By RICK LYMAN

ATLANTA — With dozens of states rushing to fill the vacuum left by long-stalled Congressional action on immigration legislation, none have rushed faster and further than Georgia, which recently passed a law that all sides describe as among the most far-reaching in the nation.

Rather than focusing tightly on restricting access to specific benefits or cracking down on employment or bogus identity documents, as other states tried to do, Georgia took the blunderbuss approach, passing a bill hitting as many areas as possible.

The new law requires Georgia employers to use a federal database to verify that their workers are legal, instead of using a voluntary system that was widely ignored. Recipients of most state benefits, including welfare and Medicaid, must prove they are in the country legally, although some medical services are exempt. Workers who cannot provide a Social Security number or other taxpayer identification will be required to pay a 6 percent state withholding tax, taken from their paychecks.

Jailers must inform the federal authorities if anyone incarcerated is in the country illegally, and the local authorities are specifically authorized to seek training to enforce federal immigration laws. And a new criminal offense, human trafficking, has been added to the books to crack down on those who bring in large groups of immigrants.

The bill, known as the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, was signed by Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, on April 17 and will begin to take effect on July 1, 2007, with various provisions taking effect over the next several years.

Ann Morse, director of the Immigrant Policy Project at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said no other state had gone so far as Georgia in trying to restrict immigrant benefits and rights since Proposition 187 in California (passed in 1994 and ruled unconstitutional four years later) and Proposition 200 in Arizona (passed in 2004). Both measure denied many social services to illegal immigrants.

"There are other bills in legislatures around the country that are somewhat comprehensive, but nothing as comprehensive as Georgia's," Ms. Morse said.

This came about, the bill's author said, because Republican leaders in Georgia decided that public support was growing for such an initiative.

"We decided that the best thing to do was to take a lot of ideas and put them together in one bill," said State Senator Chip Rogers, a Republican representing some of Atlanta's far northern suburbs, who wrote the new law and spearheaded its passage. "The climate was certainly right."

Everyone has a theory about why Georgia, of all the states, was the one to produce such a comprehensive bill on the issue. "You have to start with the fact that we have a very conservative Republican Legislature and a conservative Republican governor," Mr. Rogers said. "And we are the state with the second fastest-growing immigrant population."

Tisha Tallman, legal counsel for the Atlanta office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said something else was at work: the rise of the issue on the national stage, after several years of gradual ferment in the trenches, stirred by conservative talk shows.

"There has been legislation proposed the last two sessions, but it was not taken very seriously until this year," she said. "A certain climate had been created over the last few years, and it resulted in the whole issue becoming more mainstream."

State Senator Sam Zamarripa of Atlanta, an opponent of the new law who is the Democrats' point man on the issue, said there was something more insidious at work: a coalition of opportunistic Republicans eager to exploit a fresh-edge issue in the November elections and anti-immigrant groups hungry for a success to build upon.

"In my opinion, the national anti-immigrant groups, the nativist organizations, basically picked Georgia as a place where they could try to devolve immigration," he said. "They needed a state they could point to, and now they have one."

D. A. King, a retired insurance salesman in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta who has become one of the most prominent voices for the new legislation, said he resented the accusations that the law was anti-immigrant. He is simply against illegal immigrants, he said, and Washington has failed to act.

"The Georgia legislation is a direct result of the federal government's refusal to secure our borders in the war on terror and to get illegal immigration under control," said Mr. King, adding that he had spent most of his savings and much of the last two years leafleting legislators, writing local newspaper columns and organizing more than a dozen protests.

No one can say for sure how many illegal immigrants live and work in Georgia. Estimates run from a quarter of a million to many hundreds of thousands more. What is known is that they are prevalent in certain industries, like agriculture, construction, poultry processing and carpet mills.

What surprised many of those on both sides of the issue was how silent the state's business leaders were during the debate, even as national business groups had spoken against Washington legislation focused on employers of illegal workers.

Senator Rogers said this was partly a result of supporters of the bill reaching out to those who employed illegal immigrants in Georgia and shaping the bill to meet their objections. Even at the 11th hour, he said, changes were made so that some of the enforcement provisions deemed most onerous by business owners would not take effect for several years, giving them time to prepare.

Mr. King said he thought employers simply sensed the new public mood. "They could see the writing on the wall," he said.

Wishful thinking, Senator Zamarripa said. He said business owners had been quite active behind the scenes getting those provisions of the bill softened to which they objected and having the rest deferred to later years, giving them time to push for superseding federal legislation.

"What you saw, I think, was a fairly typical business reaction, which was that they would not let this all play out in public," Mr. Zamarripa said. "Instead, they turned it over to their lobbyists. A lot of stuff got pushed far into the future. The strategy was to delay implementation while they transferred their work to the national level."

Without question, Mr. Rogers said, the bill changed through the session, and especially in the final days before it was passed. An initial provision to put a 5 percent tax on foreign cash wire transfers by those without proper residency documents was discarded, partly because some groups had complained, but also because it would have been unwieldy to enforce, he said.

    In Georgia Law, a Wide-Angle View of Immigration, NYT, 12.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12georgia.html

California okays lessons on gays in textbooks

Thu May 11, 2006 7:57 PM ET
Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's state Senate passed a bill on Thursday that would require textbooks in public schools to instruct students on contributions by gays and lesbians in the state's development.

The Democrat-led state Senate passed the bill on a 22-15 vote and forwarded it to the state Assembly.

The bill by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, the legislature's first openly gay member, would also mandate public school textbooks to include lessons on contributions by transgender people.

Kuehl told Reuters she believes her bill is the first of its kind at the state level and predicted it would win support in the Assembly, where Democrats also have a majority.

"I think it has a very good chance in the Assembly because its members voted for marriage equality," Kuehl said, referring to the chamber's endorsement of same-sex marriage. "I think this is a lot easier vote."

"It would help to shape attitudes of what gay people are really like," Kuehl said, noting their absence in state history textbooks.

Karen England of the conservative Capitol Resource Institute said in a statement the bill "seeks to indoctrinate innocent children caught in the tug-of-war between traditional families and the outrageous homosexual agenda."

A spokesman said Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on Kuehl's bill.

    California okays lessons on gays in textbooks, R, 11.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-05-11T235723Z_01_N11352907_RTRUKOC_0_US-RIGHTS-GAYS.xml

States aim to raise minimum wage

Updated 5/10/2006 12:24 AM ET
USA Today
By Charisse Jones

Campaigns to raise the minimum wage are gaining ground in a dozen states during an election year in which some political activists say the issue could help swell Democratic voter turnout.

Seven state legislatures have raised the wage this year, and efforts are underway in six states to put similar proposals on the November ballot.

States are using legislation and ballot initiatives to do what Congress has not done since 1997, when it last increased the federal minimum wage to $5.15 an hour.

Twenty-one states have minimum wages above $5.15. Joining the list this year are Maryland, Rhode Island, Michigan, Arkansas and Maine. West Virginia hiked wages, but only for a limited set of workers. Ohio raised its minimum to match the federal wage.

Nevada voters will decide in November whether to raise the state wage to $6.15 an hour. Drives for similar initiatives are taking place in Arizona, Ohio, Colorado, Missouri and Montana.

As campaigns for governorships and congressional seats heat up, the issue could attract liberal voters in November, just as measures outlawing gay marriage galvanized conservative voters in 2004.

"That kind of effort can really draw voters out to not only support the minimum wage but to support the candidates who support the minimum wage," says Oliver Griswold of the liberal Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, an advocacy group based in Washington.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says raising the federal minimum wage will be a top priority for Democrats if they regain control of the House of Representatives in November.

Last year, 1.9 million workers — 2.5% of hourly earners — earned $5.15 or less, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pay for millions of others is influenced by the wage.

Some opponents of a wage hike say it would force up wages for all workers, straining businesses. "I think it will cause some people to actually lose their jobs," says Thom Coffman, vice president of the Ohio Restaurant Association.

Michigan lawmakers increased the state's minimum wage in March to $7.40 over the next two years. The idea that Democrats might use the issue to mobilize their constituents influenced Republican state senators, who unanimously approved the hike, says Ari Adler, spokesman for Senate Republican leader Ken Sikkema.

    States aim to raise minimum wage, UT, 10.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-09-minimum-wage_x.htm

New York Pushes for DNA in Crimes Big and Small

May 4, 2006
The New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL

A push to require all convicted criminals in New York to submit their DNA to a central database is gaining crucial support in Albany, where officials say it could create the most comprehensive DNA collection system in the nation.

If the proposal becomes law, it would make New York the only state to require collecting DNA from everyone convicted of felonies and misdemeanors, including youthful offenders convicted in criminal court, officials said.

Currently, 43 states require that people convicted of all felonies submit DNA, but none require samples from those convicted of all misdemeanors, and New York has required those convicted only of some felonies and some misdemeanors to do so , officials said.

Gov. George E. Pataki has pushed for an all-crimes DNA database for years and the Republican-led State Senate has approved such a bill, first introduced seven years ago. The legislation, however, has languished in the Democratic-led Assembly. But key lawmakers now say passage of a bill is quite likely if their concerns are addressed about DNA samples held by local crime labs that have been taken from people who have not been convicted.

"I think we're on our way this year to a DNA bill that will be the first in the nation to do all crimes," said Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, the chairman of the Codes Committee, which has jurisdiction over criminal justice.

The movement in Albany comes as public pressure to expand the state's database is mounting. Yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg gathered the city's five district attorneys outside a forensics lab the city is building on East 26th Street to push for the measure's passage.

"This is by far the most powerful and precise crime-solving tool since the advent of fingerprint identification a century ago," Mr. Bloomberg said. "When it comes to cutting-edge investigative technologies, New York should be leading the charge, not lagging behind. And as long as we are lagging behind, make no mistake: People are being murdered and raped by criminals who should already be behind bars."

Law enforcement officials say that DNA evidence has become increasingly crucial in solving and preventing crimes, from murders and sexual assaults to robberies and burglaries. According to the Mr. Pataki's office, New York's DNA database has linked suspects to more than 3,500 crimes since 2000. And in recent weeks, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said, DNA evidence has proved crucial in investigating the case of Imette St. Guillen, a graduate student who was raped and murdered, and identifying a man who committed a series of rapes dating to 1995.

"Most sex offenders and murderers are not specialists — they get convicted of every crime in the book, including more minor offenses like petty larceny and trespassing," Mr. Bloomberg said, "and each time that happens it is an opportunity to stop career criminals in their tracks and prevent another rape or save another life."

If it adopts the law, New York would in some ways be catching up to the rest of the country, where most states already require DNA collection from felons.

But extending that requirement to everyone convicted of misdemeanors would appear to make New York stand out. Five states allow samples to be taken from some people who are arrested, and in several states certain misdemeanor offenses also require DNA sampling, said Donna Lyons, criminal justice program director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan research group.

According to John Feinblatt, the city's criminal justice coordinator, Louisiana has a more comprehensive law on its books, which would collect DNA from all people who are arrested. But, he said, the state has not been able to put the law into effect because of a lack of financing.

Currently New York collects DNA from fewer than half its convicted felons and from about 6 percent of those convicted of misdemeanors and compares them to DNA profiles linked to unsolved crimes. Each time the databank has expanded to include more types of convictions, officials said, the number of matches has increased. In 1999, when the law added convictions for certain violent felonies to its list of sex crimes and homicide, 80 percent of the next 1,000 matches directly resulted from that expansion.

Chauncey Parker, the state director of criminal justice, said, "The more you expand, the more crimes you're going to solve."

On average, he added, five years pass from an offender's first conviction until a type of conviction that allows the state to take DNA, and the court records are full of criminals who were not linked to rapes and murders for years after committing them.

But critics worry that a new deluge of genetic material will overtax labs and yield insufficient crime-fighting improvements.

Expanding the law to include those convicted of misdemeanors, said Stephen Saloom, policy director at the Innocence Project, which supports DNA sampling of convicted felons, "is an inefficient use of resources, increases the risk of wrongful prosecution and conviction of innocent people whose DNA might end up at a crime scene and further strains a forensics community that is already complaining of the lack of qualified and trained analysts to work in their labs."

In addition, civil libertarians and other advocates say that the potential for abuse has been growing, especially given the proliferation of DNA databases maintained by local crime labs that include genetic profiles from people who have not been convicted of crimes.

"There are numbers of occasions where innocent people's DNA has been collected to eliminate them as suspects," Mr. Lentol said, adding that the Assembly wanted to see that issue addressed as part of expanding the state database. "It's our wish that hasn't been listened to yet that those samples be destroyed."

    New York Pushes for DNA in Crimes Big and Small, NYT, 4.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/04/nyregion/04dna.html?hp&ex=1146801600&en=b474b830a015a2b8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Pardons Granted 88 Years After Crimes of Sedition

May 3, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM ROBBINS

HELENA, Mont., May 2 — When Steve Milch found out recently that his great-grandfather, an immigrant from Bavaria, had been convicted of sedition in Montana during World War I, he was taken aback. It was something no one in the family had ever talked about.

For the past 88 years, a lot of secrets have been kept in Montana families, especially those of German descent, about a flurry of wartime sedition prosecutions in 1918, when public sentiment against Germany was at a feverish pitch.

Seventy-nine Montanans were convicted under the state law, considered among the harshest in the country, for speaking out in ways deemed critical of the United States. In one instance, a traveling wine and brandy salesman was sentenced to 7 to 20 years in prison for calling wartime food regulations a "big joke."

But the silence — and for some families, the shame — has ended. The convictions will be undone on Wednesday when Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a descendant of ethnic Germans who migrated here from Russia in 1909, posthumously pardons 75 men and three women. One man was pardoned shortly after the war.

Forty-one of those convicted, including one woman, went to prison on sentences from 1 to 20 years and paid fines from $200 to $20,000.

"I'm going to say what Gov. Sam Stewart should have said," Mr. Schweitzer said, referring to the man who signed the sedition legislation into law in 1918. "I'm sorry, forgive me, and God bless America, because we can criticize our government."

Dozens of relatives of the convicted seditionists will be at the State Capitol to witness the signing of the pardons, with some traveling from as far as Florida. Marie Van Middlesworth, the 90-year-old daughter of one of those convicted, Fay Rumsey, will be coming from Medford, Ore. She was among 12 children put up for adoption when the family farm failed after her father was imprisoned.

Mr. Milch said the official acknowledgment, even after so many years, offered comfort and closure to the families.

"The whole Milch clan is appreciative of making things right," he said.

The pardon ceremony is a result of a book by Clemens P. Work, director of graduate studies at the University of Montana School of Journalism, called "Darkest Before Dawn: Sedition and Free Speech in the American West" (University of New Mexico Press, 2005). The book chronicled a contentious period in Montana history when people were convicted and jailed for voicing their opinion about the war.

"It was an ugly time," Mr. Work said.

After reading the book, Jeffrey Renz, a law professor at the University of Montana, asked Mr. Work what he intended to do about the convictions. Mr. Work had no plans, he said, "but I told them in my box of dreams I hoped these people would be exonerated."

Professor Renz's students took the project on as part of a criminal law clinic. Some contacted family members of the convicted seditionists, and others researched the law, leading to a petition for pardon being sent to the governor last month.

The sedition law, which made it a crime to say or publish anything "disloyal, profane, violent, scurrilous, contemptuous or abusive" about the government, soldiers or the American flag, was unanimously passed by the Legislature in February 1918. It expired when the war ended, Mr. Work said.

During that time, though Germans were the largest ethnic group in Montana, it was also illegal to speak German, and books written in it were banned. Local groups called third-degree committees were formed to ferret out people not supportive of the war, especially those who did not buy Liberty Bonds.

"They leaned on people to ante up and buy bonds, and if they didn't, they were disloyal and considered pro-German," Mr. Work said.

Farida Briner said she was told that a committee showed up at her father's farm. "They threatened to hang him and tar and feather him," Ms. Briner said. Her father, Herman Bausch, was taken to town, interrogated and later convicted. He spent two years in prison.

Officials encouraged neighbor to inform on neighbor, and one person's accusation was often enough for an arrest.

Mr. Milch's great-grandfather, John Milch, was turned in by an undercover agent named Eberhard Von Waldru, who was working for the prosecutor in Helena, the state capital. Mr. Von Waldru went into a German beer hall and drew out people's feelings on the war. His testimony was used against Mr. Milch; his brother, Joseph; and six other men. All were convicted, and four went to prison.

John Milch was sentenced to three to six years, but the law had expired by the time he was to begin serving his term. Joseph was fined $1,800.

Steve Milch said that although his family was not aware of the arrest, they did know about the anti-German sentiment of the time.

"There was a story that a mob of people was going around asking Germans to kiss the flag," Mr. Milch said. "My great-grandfather told them he didn't kiss anybody's flag, whether it was American or German."

Mr. Milch also had another surprise in store. He discovered that the great-grandfather of another lawyer in his firm was the Helena prosecutor who hired Mr. Von Waldru. "His great-grandfather prosecuted my great-grandfather," Mr. Milch said.

Mr. Work, who was conducting research for the book when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred, said he had found the similarities between 2001 and 1918 to be eerie.

"The hair on the back of my neck stood up," Mr. Work said. "The rhetoric was so similar, from the demonization of the enemy to saying 'either you're with us or against us' to the hasty passage of laws."

Twenty-seven states had sedition laws during World War I. Montana's became the template for a federal law, enacted by Congress later in 1918. More than 30 Montanans were arrested under the federal law, though none were convicted, according to the Montana Sedition Project, which Mr. Work directs.

Mr. Work and other historians believe that the harshness of the Montana law was influenced by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, which dominated the state economically and viewed the law as a way to deal with labor unrest. Many of those charged with sedition were immigrant laborers.

But blame should also be laid at the feet of Governor Stewart, Mr. Work said.

"In the last 100 days of his term, he commuted 50 sentences, including 13 murderers and 7 rapists," he said, "but not a single seditionist."

    Pardons Granted 88 Years After Crimes of Sedition, NYT, 3.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/us/03pardon.html?hp&ex=1146715200&en=f311f6249221e76b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Connecticut bans sodas in schools

Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:11 PM ET
Reuters

HARTFORD, Connecticut (Reuters) - Connecticut's state legislature voted on Thursday to ban sales of sodas and other sugary beverages in state elementary, middle and high schools as part of an effort to stem teen obesity.

Gov. Jodi Rell has pledged to sign the bill, which would make Connecticut the fourth state with a strong law in schools to trim the growing American teenage waistline.

The ban includes all regular and diet sodas, along with "electrolyte replacement beverages" such as Gatorade. The only drinks allowed to go on sale in schools would be bottled water, milk or 100-percent fruit and vegetable drinks.

"The bill clearly won't solve all food and beverage questions that lead to the increase in excess weight and obesity that we are seeing among children and adults in our society, but it's a good start," said state Rep. Andrew Fleischmann.

A Northwestern University study released in December showed more than one in three American adolescents are physically unfit and have many of the risk factors for heart disease.

The Connecticut law, which will take effect from July, will allow soda sales at concession stands at school-sponsored events after school and on weekends. Students can also pack their own sodas and sports drinks and bring them to school.

The House approved the bill on Thursday by a slim 76-to-71 vote margin largely on party lines in the Democrat-controlled state Legislature. Last week it passed the Senate 24-to-8.

Republicans proposed multiple amendments that were all voted down and said the issue should be left to local communities and not decided by the state.

"This is a decision that should be decided at the local level," Republican state Rep. David Labriola said during the five hours of debate over the bill in the House. "That's what our local boards of education are for."

Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. are the two largest U.S. soda companies. Officials at both companies were not immediately available to comment.

    Connecticut bans sodas in schools, R, 27.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-28T031055Z_01_N27223748_RTRUKOC_0_US-OBESITY-CONNECTICUT.xml

Big Race

Senate Campaign Tests Democrats' Abortion Tack                        Part II

April 23, 2006
the New York Times
By ROBIN TONER

LANCASTER, Pa., April 20 — As the Democratic Party tries to inch its way toward a new, less polarized politics of abortion, seeking some common ground between supporters and opponents of abortion rights, there is no better case study than the Pennsylvania Senate race.

Many supporters of abortion rights — sometimes grudgingly, sometimes led more by their minds than by their hearts — are lining up behind Bob Casey Jr., a Democratic contender for the Senate who opposes abortion rights. The invitation to a recent Casey event in Philadelphia, raising money for his campaign to unseat Senator Rick Santorum, a Republican, perhaps captured the mood. "Pragmatic Progressive Women for Casey," it declared.

The nine Democratic women in the Senate, including some of the strongest advocates of abortion rights, recently signed a letter of support that struck a similar note, describing Mr. Casey's election as "critical to our efforts of regaining the majority in the U.S. Senate."

Mr. Casey himself is emphasizing that while there is "tremendous disagreement" on abortion, there is also a broad consensus of which he is a part: to reduce the number of abortions by reducing the number of unintended pregnancies, through greater access to contraception and family planning.

Other Democratic leaders have been making similar appeals to this "prevention consensus," including, in an op-ed article this week in The Times Union of Albany, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a supporter of abortion rights, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, who describes himself as pro-life.

Critics dismiss these efforts as mere political posturing, an effort to obscure the profound divide on abortion's morality and legality. But since the 2004 election, many Democratic strategists have argued that the party must find a way to signal tolerance to opposing views on this issue, and sensitivity to conflicting values.

Mr. Casey, the state treasurer, an experienced statewide candidate and the son of a popular former governor who also opposed abortion, is a symbol of that "big tent" strategy. National party leaders recruited him for this Senate campaign, despite his position on abortion, because they believed he was the strongest potential challenger to Mr. Santorum. With that, they established a high-stakes test: can the Democratic Party, nationally and in the state, rally its abortion-rights base for a candidate who disagrees?

This tension between principle and pragmatism is apparent across the landscape of the Democratic Party this year, weighing on issues that include the war in Iraq and same-sex marriage. Party strategists are trying to piece together enough winning races to take control of the House and Senate, which means paying close attention to swing voters in the middle. But that strategy angers some on the party's left, most vocally in the blogosphere, who argue that the times demand more than a careful centrism.

Mr. Casey, all agree, has been helped immensely by the deep animosity among Democrats and abortion-rights supporters toward Mr. Santorum, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate leadership and a staunch social conservative. Mr. Santorum has been a consistent leader in the anti-abortion cause in the Senate.

"We couldn't think any more highly of him," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.

Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who for many years has squared off against Mr. Santorum on abortion, said she had been "making the case" for Mr. Casey "all over the country," arguing that his support for birth control, emergency contraception and international family planning programs made him a "huge improvement" over Mr. Santorum. She also reminds her audiences, she said, that Mr. Casey's election would help deliver control of the Senate to the Democrats.

"It's a pragmatic choice," she said. "And by the way, to dislodge Santorum is a pro-choice victory."

Similarly, Mrs. Clinton played host to a fund-raising reception for Mr. Casey in Chicago last week, and contributed money to his campaign early on. (For all those efforts, Mr. Santorum still has a 2-to-1 cash advantage over Mr. Casey.)

Not everyone is on board; there is still anger and resistance to the Casey candidacy among some Democrats, which bubbled over in a Democratic primary debate here on Wednesday night.

Alan Sandals, a pension lawyer challenging Mr. Casey for the Democratic nomination in the May 16 primary, has argued that abortion rights are under siege and that the party must not waver in its defense. Mr. Sandals was recently endorsed by the National Organization for Women.

Chuck Pennacchio, another candidate in the primary, has assailed the party's national establishment for anointing Mr. Casey in defiance of what Mr. Pennacchio asserts Pennsylvania Democrats really want.

Both candidates sharply criticized Mr. Casey on Wednesday for his endorsement of the Supreme Court nominations of John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. "Be brave, Bob," Mr. Sandals admonished.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Casey is in many ways a traditional Democrat of the economic populist school, talking about the plight of average families worried about their jobs, their health insurance and their energy costs. He accuses Mr. Santorum of blindly rubber-stamping Bush administration policies to the detriment of Pennsylvania, "voting for tax cuts for multimillionaires, even in a time of war." He strikes a classic theme for an uneasy time, declaring, "I say we need a new direction."

His spokesman says abortion rarely came up, other than from reporters, although he drew fire on the issue from his primary opponents in two recent debates. In an interview, Mr. Casey highlighted his commitment to reducing unintended pregnancies, which he asserted stood in stark contrast to Mr. Santorum. "And then there's a whole series of related questions of how do you help a mother and child before and after birth, and his record is terrible on that," Mr. Casey asserted.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Santorum said the senator had voted consistently for spending bills that included family planning programs, and that "as a matter of public policy, Senator Santorum does not oppose birth control."

John Brabender, a media consultant advising the Santorum campaign, argued that Mr. Casey was putting himself into a box on the issue, and risked alienating both conservative Democrats and Republican suburbanites who supported abortion rights. "This desire to be all things to all people puts him in the category of both sides saying, 'Well, he's not what I thought he was.' "

So far, neither of Mr. Casey's Democratic rivals has broken into double digits in recent polls on the primary. And in a recent survey by Quinnipiac University, pollsters concluded that Mr. Casey's stand was not — at least so far — having a major effect in either the Democratic primary or the general election.

That survey showed that Mr. Casey retained an 11-percentage-point lead over Mr. Santorum, 48 percent to 37 percent. Two-thirds of the voters said they did not know where Mr. Casey stood on abortion. But only 15 percent of voters, most of them anti-abortion, said they would vote against a candidate on the basis of that issue alone. That poll was conducted March 28 through April 3, based on interviews with 1,354 voters, and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Even for some of the staunchest advocates of abortion rights, pragmatism seems to be carrying the day. After two major defeats in Supreme Court nomination battles, a new wave of restrictive state laws in South Dakota and elsewhere, and a sense that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision declaring a constitutional right to abortion, could be hanging on the next vacancy, many say they simply cannot afford to do anything that jeopardizes Democrats' chances of retaking the Senate.

Kate Michelman, the former president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said she had seriously considered an independent candidacy for the Senate, outraged over Mr. Casey's support for the Alito nomination. But she decided against it, she said, because she did not want to contribute to the re-election of Mr. Santorum. When she discussed her rationale for not running at a recent speech before a gathering of Planned Parenthood supporters in central Pennsylvania, they burst into applause.

Some Democrats note that their party has always had some opponents of abortion rights in their ranks. Mr. Casey's father, the former governor, famously feuded with his national party over the abortion issue in the early 1990's. And over the years, both Congressional parties have polarized on the issue; when the Senate voted in 2003 on a resolution expressing support for Roe v. Wade, only 5 of the 48 Democrats voted against it, and two of them are now gone. Only nine Republicans voted for it.

Against that overriding political reality, what message would Mr. Casey send if he is successful this November? Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic strategist and friend of the Casey family, said Mr. Casey's rise would signal that opposition to abortion rights was not like opposition to civil rights.

"Can you be a good Democrat and be pro-life? Yes," Mr. Begala said.

But some abortion rights leaders beg to differ. Kim Gandy, president of NOW, said: "It's not 'like' civil rights. It is civil rights." Ms. Gandy added that she believed the recruitment of Mr. Casey was a poor strategy, but added, "What concerns me is if they win in spite of their bad strategy, they'll get the idea that it was a good strategy they should replicate."

    Senate Campaign Tests Democrats' Abortion Tack, NYT, 23.4.2006,http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/washington/23abort.html?hp&ex=1145851200&en=128719cf8d8e0e95&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Judge Rules Suits Challenging Stem Cell Agency Have No Merit

April 22, 2006
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO, April 21 (AP) — A state judge ruled on Friday that California's $3 billion stem cell research institute was a legitimate state agency and that two lawsuits challenging its constitutionality had no merit.

The decision came a month after a four-day trial in which lawyers with connections to anti-abortion groups claimed the stem cell institute violated California law because it was not a true state agency and its managers had several conflicts of interest.

But Judge Bonnie Lewman Sabraw of Alameda County Superior Court handed the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine an unambiguous victory, writing that the lawsuits failed to show that the voter-approved law that created the agency in 2004 "is clearly, positively and unmistakably unconstitutional."

The ruling becomes official in 10 days unless the lawyers representing the losing side put forth new and significantly different arguments.

Proposition 71 was placed on the California ballot in November 2004 to counter President Bush's stem cell research policy, which greatly restricts the amount of federal financing that can be used for the work, which is opposed by many conservatives.

The measure was approved by 59 percent of the state's voters, and it will finance about $300 million annually in stem cell research that the federal government will not.

"It's unfortunate that the plaintiffs, after losing at the polls, went to court to frustrate the voters' will," the state attorney general, Bill Lockyer, said. "The sooner this legal fight is over, the sooner California can move to where the people want it — in the forefront of stem cell research."

David L. Llewellyn Jr., a lawyer for one of the groups suing the stem cell institute, said he would probably petition the California Supreme Court to take the case directly, bypassing the appellate courts.

"There are several curiosities in the verdict," said Mr. Llewellyn, who represents the California Family Bioethics Council.

Mr. Llewellyn had argued that because Proposition 71 authorized financing for both stem cell work and other kinds of medical research, it violated state laws against proposing two subjects on a single ballot measure

The stem cell agency's finances will remain in limbo even after Friday's ruling.

The litigation prevented the Institute for Regenerative Medicine from selling securities to traditional Wall Street bond buyers to raise any of the $3 billion it is authorized to borrow. That will not change until the expected appeals of the verdict are exhausted, probably next year.

Still, the agency managed to finance its first research grants this month after six philanthropic organizations lent it a combined $14 million, to be paid back once bond market financing is available.

The grants, totaling $12.1 million, went to 16 universities and nonprofit research centers to set up basic stem cell research training programs.

    Judge Rules Suits Challenging Stem Cell Agency Have No Merit, NYT, 22.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/business/22cell.html

After 50 years, Alabama pardons Rosa Parks

Tue Apr 18, 2006 7:26 PM ET
Reuters
By Verna Gates

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - More than half a century after U.S. civil rights icon Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, the Alabama legislature on Tuesday voted to pardon her and others convicted for breaking segregation-era race laws.

The "Rosa Parks Act," approved unanimously by the state House of Representatives but opposed by three senators in the Senate, also clears the way for hundreds of other activists to wipe out their arrest records for acts of civil disobedience in the struggle for black civil rights.

The Alabama Senate revised the act to allow museums to continue to display such arrest records as well as a famous mug shot of Parks, who died last October at the age of 92.

"It is long overdue," said Thad McClammy, a Democrat who sponsored the House bill. "It will bring closure."

Hundreds of people accrued arrest records in Alabama during the turbulent civil rights struggle, which was galvanized by Parks' simple act of disobedience on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery.

Her arrest for refusing to give up her seat sparked a 381-day boycott by black residents of the bus system.

Led by Rev. Martin Luther King, then a little-known preacher, the boycott led to Supreme Court rulings forcing Montgomery to desegregate its transport system and ultimately helped end laws that separated blacks and whites in public facilities across the South.

"Mrs. Parks sat down to stand up for justice," said Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader in the Birmingham civil rights movement, who was arrested more than 30 times.

While the pardon is available to all those arrested under "Jim Crow" segregation laws, applicants have to go through a process to attain it and many may refuse.

Some activists say they need no pardon because they never did anything wrong. Others are proud of their arrest records.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley has still to sign the act into law.

    After 50 years, Alabama pardons Rosa Parks, R, 18.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-04-18T232641Z_01_N18401187_RTRUKOC_0_US-RIGHTS-ALABAMA.xml

Arizona governor vetoes criminalization of immigrants

Updated 4/19/2006 12:43 AM ET
USA Today

PHOENIX (AP) — Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed a bill that would have criminalized the presence of illegal immigrants in Arizona, citing opposition from police agencies that want immigration arrests to remain the responsibility of the federal government.

The proposal would have expanded the state's trespassing law to let local authorities arrest illegal immigrants anywhere in Arizona, the nation's busiest illegal entry point. Congress also had considered criminalizing the presence of illegal immigrants in the country.

In a letter to lawmakers, Napolitano said she opposes automatically turning all immigrants who sneaked into the state into criminals and that the bill provided no funding for the new duties.

"It is unfortunate that the Legislature has once again ignored the officials who are most directly affected by illegal immigration and instead has passed yet another bill that will have no effect on the problem but that will impose an unfunded burden on law enforcement," Napolitano wrote Monday.

Supporters said the bill would have given Arizona a chance to get a handle on its vast border problems by providing a second layer of enforcement to catch the tens of thousands of immigrants who slip past federal agents each year.

Republican Sen. Barbara Leff of Paradise Valley, who proposed the bill, said the governor has painted herself as tough on illegal immigration by declaring a state of emergency at Arizona's border, but has taken little action to back up her rhetoric.

"I don't think the governor wants to do anything about this problem," Leff said. She said the bill would have been a means to detain illegal immigrants until federal agents can pick them up.

The Democratic governor, accused by her Republican critics of being soft on immigration, has vetoed other immigration bills from the GOP-majority Legislature within the past year, including a proposal to give police the power to enforce federal immigration laws.

While immigrants provide the economy with cheap labor, Arizona spends tens of millions of dollars each year in health care and education costs for illegal workers and their families. An estimated 500,000 of the state's population of about 6 million are illegal immigrants.

    Arizona governor vetoes criminalization of immigrants, UT, 19.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-19-immigration-arizona_x.htm

Georgia governor signs sweeping immigration law

Mon Apr 17, 2006 10:19 PM ET
Reuters
By Karen Jacobs

ATLANTA (Reuters) - The state of Georgia approved a sweeping measure on Monday to crack down on illegal immigrants, while in a sign of the national division on the issue, Arizona's governor vetoed a bill that would have allowed undocumented workers to be prosecuted as trespassers.

The moves come as the federal government and states consider how to deal with an estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented workers while immigrants, many of whom are Hispanic, are displaying their political power through mass demonstrations in cities across the United States.

The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, signed into law by Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, denies many state services paid for by taxpayers to people who are in the United States illegally.

It also forces contractors doing business with the state to verify the legal status of new workers, and requires police to notify immigration officials if people charged with crimes are illegal immigrants.

"It's our responsibility to ensure that our famous Georgia hospitality is not abused, that our taxpayers are not taken advantage of and that our citizens are protected," Perdue said before signing the law.

But Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, backed by key law enforcement officials, vetoed the bill in her state, the nation's hot spot for illegal crossing of the roughly 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, saying there were no resources to pay police and prosecutors for an increased burden.

Under the proposal, first-time offenders would have faced a misdemeanor charge and up to six months in jail. A second offense would have been a felony, punishable by up to one year in jail.

Arizona officials also were concerned about its effect in the community.

"There is a real concern that crimes will go unreported by immigrants for fear that they would be turned into federal agents," said Wendy Balazik, a spokeswoman for the 20,000-member International Association of Chiefs of Police. "Law enforcement would lose valuable information."

But state Rep. Russell Pearce said the governor needs to take a stand to slow the flow into Arizona.

"It is a federal responsibility, it is everyone's responsibility," said Pearce, a Republican behind several bills targeting immigrants. "When are we going to wake up and start enforcing the law?"

GEORGIA BILL

Other provisions of the Georgia law prohibit employers from claiming a tax deduction for wages of $600 or more paid to undocumented workers, impose prison terms for human trafficking and limit the services commercial companies can provide to illegal immigrants.

Hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated at rallies in major U.S. cities in recent weeks demanding rights for illegal immigrants in the United States.

"It's a punitive bill," said Sara Gonzalez, president and chief executive of the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "This is a very complicated issue, and I don't see any good coming out of this."

Outside the Georgia Capitol, a few demonstrators cheered when word spread that the immigration bill had been signed. The measure had garnered overwhelming support in both houses of Georgia's Republican-controlled Legislature.

"If you are not a U.S. citizen, you should not receive a U.S. benefit," said Steve Bray, a Georgia resident who was waving a U.S. flag and said he supports legal immigration.

(Additional reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix)

    Georgia governor signs sweeping immigration law, R, 17.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-04-18T021907Z_01_N17284809_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION-GEORGIA.xml

'Roe v. Wade': The divided states of America

Updated 4/16/2006 11:17 PM ET
USA TODAY
By Susan Page

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Two hours after South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds signed an abortion ban last month, NARAL Pro-Choice America blasted an e-mail to its supporters: "Is your state next?"

The South Dakota legislation and the abortion rights group's warning are early skirmishes in a battle over what states would do if the landmark Roe v. Wade decision were overturned — though both sides concede that may never happen.

If it does, a fight that for three decades has focused on nine members of the Supreme Court would be waged instead among more than 7,000 legislators in 50 state capitals.

"Now is the time to get moving on this in Ohio," says Tom Brinkman, a state legislator who has introduced a bill to ban almost all abortions. Meanwhile, Kellie Copeland of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio is braced. "Our supporters feel the fight is coming back to the states," she says.

What would states do?

Ultimately, that would depend on factors ranging from who was governor to where public opinion stood. Even so, there are clues from what state legislatures have chosen to do already and what they're considering doing next.

For instance, four states have passed "trigger" bans on abortion that would go into effect immediately if Roe were reversed. Six other states have passed laws that would automatically protect access to abortion. Three states have enacted all 11 of the current restrictions on abortion tracked by the non-profit Alan Guttmacher Institute, from requiring waiting periods to limiting abortion coverage in insurance plans. One state, Vermont, hasn't passed any restriction.

USA TODAY used the Guttmacher data and other factors to calculate how states would be likely to respond if Roe were reversed. The 1973 decision recognized access to abortion as part of a constitutional right to privacy and limited states' ability to restrict it.

The conclusions:

•Twenty-two state legislatures are likely to impose significant new restrictions on abortion. They include nearly every state in the South and a swath of big states across the industrial Rust Belt, from Pennsylvania to Ohio and Michigan. These states have enacted most of the abortion restrictions now allowed.

Nine states are considering bans similar to the one passed in South Dakota — it's scheduled to go into effect July 1 — and four states are debating restrictions that would be triggered if the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

•Sixteen state legislatures are likely to continue current access to abortion. They include every state on the West Coast and almost every state in the Northeast. A half-dozen already have passed laws that specifically protect abortion rights. Most of the states in this group have enacted fewer than half of the abortion restrictions now available to states.

•Twelve states fall into a middle ground between those two categories. About half are in the Midwest, the rest scattered from Arizona to Rhode Island.

The result, according to this analysis, would be less a patchwork of laws than broad regional divisions that generally reinforce the nation's political split. All but three of the states likely to significantly restrict abortions voted for President Bush in 2004. All but four of the states likely to maintain access to abortion voted for Democrat John Kerry.

The 22 states likely to enact new restrictions include 50% of the U.S. population and accounted for 37% of the abortions performed in 2000, the latest year for which complete data were available.

The 16 states likely to protect access to abortion include 35% of the U.S. population and accounted for 48% of the abortions performed.

Other factors to weigh

There are some factors that this analysis doesn't take into account.

Among the states ranked as likely to enact new restrictions, Michigan and Wisconsin now have governors who support abortion rights and presumably would veto a ban if they were still in office. Courts in Florida and Tennessee have ruled that their state constitutions protect abortion rights, limiting the impact of Roe's reversal.

(That's not necessarily an insurmountable hurdle, though: Florida voters amended the state constitution in 2004 to allow a law requiring minors seeking abortions to notify their parents, and Tennessee activists are pursuing a constitutional amendment to limit abortion rights there.)

The states ranked as likely to continue current access to abortion could be pre-empted if Congress passed laws that restricted or criminalized abortion nationwide.

And first things first: Reversing Roe may be a more distant prospect than activists in both camps think. It would require a change of heart or retirement by at least one of the five current Supreme Court justices who have endorsed it.

What's more, while the confirmation of two new justices has heartened abortion foes, neither Chief Justice John Roberts nor Justice Samuel Alito has said clearly where he stands on Roe.

In Ohio, Brinkman, a three-term legislator and father of six, acknowledges that he may be rushing things with the bill he has submitted to ban all abortions in the state except those necessary to save the life of the woman.

But the 48-year-old Republican, who owns a small printing firm in suburban Cincinnati, predicts it's just a matter of time. "It will happen," he declares in an interview just off the floor of the ornate House chamber.

Copeland says Brinkman and other abortion opponents "feel emboldened" by the latest appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. "We're going to be fighting more and more bills," she says.

Going beyond current law

Ohio already has done nearly all it can to restrict abortions. The state requires women seeking abortions to be told about alternatives and then to wait at least 24 hours. Hospitals and doctors can refuse to perform them. Minors must get a parent's consent. A controversial late-term procedure that opponents call "partial-birth abortion" is barred.

Brinkman's bill would go much further. It would make performing an abortion or transporting a woman across state lines to have an abortion a felony.

Another proposal, sponsored by Rep. Michelle Schneider, also a Republican, would ban abortions at state-funded hospitals and by public employees except those needed to save the life of the mother or mandated by the federal Medicaid program. It would declare that "the public policy of the state of Ohio (is) to prefer childbirth over abortion to the extent that is constitutionally permissible."

"It's not the golden ring that a lot of the anti-abortion people want," concedes Schneider, who owns a nursing home and home health care business in the Cincinnati suburb of Madeira. She supports Brinkman's ban but says she worries that it "could take years and years" to test in the courts.

"My bill would take the state of Ohio out of the abortion business" right now, she says.

There's no guarantee that the Legislature will vote on either measure this year. Ohio Republicans already are navigating difficult waters. Gov. Bob Taft is retiring after being convicted of ethics charges. U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine faces a tough re-election fight. U.S. Rep. Bob Ney is enmeshed in the investigation into disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, although Ney denies wrongdoing.

Some of his fellow Republican officials worry that a debate over abortion could provoke a backlash among moderate voters, Brinkman acknowledges.

John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron, agrees. "A lot of Republicans think there's enough controversy on the table anyway, without having to add the abortion issue," he says.

Still, Brinkman boasts that a hearing finally has been scheduled on his bill for early next month, and he notes that the Assembly plans a lame-duck session after the November elections. If a Democrat is elected governor, the Republican-controlled Legislature might rush to enact legislation that Taft can sign before leaving office.

"We could have a substantial lame-duck session — more substantial if a Democrat governor got elected," Brinkman says.

Either bill would have some prospect of passing.

House Democratic leader Joyce Beatty, 56, a small-business owner from Columbus who has been a chief statehouse defender of abortion rights, says flatly: "If we voted on this tomorrow in this House, I would lose." She estimates that one-third of her fellow Democrats join nearly all Republican legislators in opposing abortion.

Promises, but no guarantees

In fact, 63 of the 99 members of the Ohio House are committed, if Roe is overturned, to support a state ban on abortions except those needed to save the life of the woman. (Seven members add exceptions in cases of rape and incest.) Their pledges are posted on the website of Ohio Right to Life, which conducted a candidates' survey during the 2004 campaign.

Even that is no guarantee, says Denise Mackura, director of governmental relations for the anti-abortion group. "What candidates say in their surveys sometimes doesn't come to pass," she says. "People who said they were pro-life as a matter of expediency — I'd like to think they're not many, but that would be naïve."

Both sides are now mustering volunteers for post-Roe battles. NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio works out of a cramped bay-window office in a historic neighborhood a mile from the state Capitol in the center of the city. Ohio Right to Life fills a warren of offices on the second floor of a nondescript office building at the outskirts of town.

Mackura, 54, a lawyer by training who has been working in the anti-abortion movement since her college days, says her group already has supporters lined up in every district, ready to hold state legislators to their campaign promises.

Copeland, 36, a former organizer for the AFL-CIO, hopes the intense debate sure to be sparked if a state ban was a legal possibility, not a hypothetical question, would persuade some legislators to change their minds.

She notes that the Roe decision consistently commands majority support in public opinion surveys. The USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll in January found that Americans backed it by 66%-25%. In the survey, 53% said they considered themselves "pro-choice" and 42% said they were "pro-life," a breakdown that has stayed about the same for a decade.

In a USA TODAY poll last month, six of 10 Americans opposed statewide bans on abortion; 36% supported them.

'A little bit of encouragement'

There wasn't much difference on that issue by gender or age, but there was by political party. A ban that would permit abortions only to save the life of the mother was supported by 54% of Republicans but opposed by 66% of Democrats and 70% of independents.

That's one reason some anti-abortion leaders are leery of moving too quickly to push broad restrictions.

"We still need to change the culture," Mackura says, and she cautions against assuming that Roe is history. Ohio Right to Life supports Brinkman's goal but hasn't endorsed his bill. "Sometimes when you get a little bit of encouragement you get very excited and you think, 'This is the time to do it,' " only to be disappointed, she says.

In contrast, groups on the other side of the issue are using the prospect of battles in state capitals to rouse those who support abortion rights but haven't seen the issue as a priority. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, says half of the first 900 contributions from the South Dakota appeal came from people who hadn't contributed to the group before.

Determining abortion restrictions state-by-state only makes sense to Dorothy Timbs, legislative counsel for the department of state legislation at National Right to Life.

"Obviously the issue would return back to the states to decide for themselves," she says. "We believe an issue as sensitive as abortion, that affects so many women and their children, should be up to their legislators who are accountable to the people."

Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, protests that overturning Roe would make access to a fundamental right dependent on geography. She predicts it will inflame what is already one of the most divisive issues in American politics. "It is going to make abortion the center of every local race for office, every state legislative race, of every state judicial race, of every state executive race, not to mention a battle for federal elections," she says. "It will be a never-ending battle."

Contributing: Paul Overberg

UNDERSTANDING THE MAP

A look at the criteria used to rate state legislatures' likely action if Roe v. Wade were overturned. (Some states have characteristics that fall into more than one category; the ranking reflects consideration of multiple factors.)

1. States considered likely to enact significant additional restrictions on abortion:

• Some have in place "trigger" laws -- bans on abortion that would take effect if Roe were reversed.

• Some are debating bans on abortion or "trigger" laws this year, or are gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to ban abortion.

• All have passed eight or more of 11 current restrictions on abortion tracked by the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

2. States in the middle:

• None has an abortion ban that would be triggered by Roe's reversal.

• None has enacted legislation to protect access to abortion if Roe were reversed.

• All have passed four to nine of the 11 current restrictions on abortion tracked by the Guttmacher Institute.

3. States considered most likely to protect access to abortion:

• Some have enacted laws that would ensure abortion rights if Roe were overturned.

• All have passed seven or fewer of the 11 current restrictions.

Contributing: Source: USA TODAY analysis of data from the Alan Guttmacher Institute

________________

THE 'ROE' RULING

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade in 1973 that a Texas law criminalizing most abortions violated a woman's constitutional right of privacy, which the court said was implicit in the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment.

"Jane Roe" was an alias used to shield the identity of Norma McCorvey, who sued Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade.

In the 7-2 decision, the court sought to balance a woman's right to privacy with a state's interest in regulating abortion. Only a "compelling state interest" would justify restrictions, it concluded. Legal challenges have limited the reach of Roe but not overturned it.

    'Roe v. Wade': The divided states of America, UT, 16.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-04-16-abortion-states_x.htm

 

A billboard stands by the side of a road, reflecting the political ripples of an abortion ban that was passed in February.

Carmel Zucker for The New York Times

Ripples From Law Banning Abortion Spread Through South Dakota        NYT        16.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/us/16dakota.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


 

Ripples From Law Banning Abortion Spread Through South Dakota

April 16, 2006
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Plenty of places would wish to find themselves at the center of a national philosophical debate, but this is South Dakota.

In the two months since the State Legislature set off a political and legal war by passing the most sweeping abortion ban in the country, residents have seemed awkward and uneasy in their spot at the leading edge of the country's clash over abortion.

Some say that they are stunned to find South Dakota, the fifth least populous state, at the center of any such thing and that they are put off by the thought of outsiders arriving here with fancy advertising campaigns. And although they have seen nasty political skirmishes before, as recently as the 2004 defeat of Senator Tom Daschle, they say they are uncomfortable with the prospect of such a personal matter becoming fodder for so much public debate.

Political war, after all, is not cordial, and most South Dakotans are.

Outside the Minnehaha County administration building here on a blustery morning, Elizabeth M. Hulscher approached anyone who came her way, asking them to sign a petition that would put the abortion ban on hold and send it to the ballot for the state's voters to consider in November.

"I have been waiting for the chance to sign this," one woman told her. A man in a suit stopped, too, and politely agreed to sign. Only after he left did Ms. Hulscher, 43, notice that he had written something other than his name: "No abortions. I pray for you."

Another woman pushing a stroller smiled but declined to sign. With that, Ms. Hulscher set aside her clipboard to hold the door open for her.

Effects of the ban seem to be emerging all around, with fallen poll numbers for the governor who signed the law and growing ranks of candidates who want to replace the state's lawmakers. Ordinary people, too, said they had found themselves tangling unpleasantly with their closest friends over a question they had never really discussed much outside their homes. Some said they feared that as the fight over the ballot measure intensified, it would bring only more painful division.

Toni L. Popham, 48, grew emotional as she wondered aloud what her acquaintances near Watertown, 100 miles north of Sioux Falls, might think if she agreed to gather signatures in the beauty shop she owns. "Some of my clients may not like it," Ms. Popham said on a recent evening, tears suddenly filling her eyes. "I guess this is the time to stand up, but I don't know what people will think."

The sponsors of the bill, which outlaws abortions except when a woman's life is in jeopardy, intended it to set up a direct challenge — the first in more than a decade — to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision making abortion legal.

For now, though, the fight is taking place not in the courts but on the mainly quiet streets of places like Sioux Falls, the state's biggest city, with more than 130,000 residents, and Estelline, a corn and soybean town of about 700. Rather than filing a lawsuit immediately, opponents of the abortion ban have called on a state provision dating to 1898 that allows voters to reconsider a law passed by the Legislature if enough signatures are gathered.

As opponents of the ban went to gather signatures outside public buildings, at bowling leagues and in coffee shops, those who favor it said they were setting out across the state as well, on a bus they had dubbed "the Fleet for Little Feet," complete with an ultrasound machine and plastic models of a growing fetus. The leader of the largest Indian reservation here, meanwhile, has pledged to open an abortion clinic on tribal land if the state ban stands.

Reeling from all the attention, some here said they were still confused about how South Dakota had become the focus of such a fundamental fight. Many said they had been swamped with phone calls and e-mail messages (some supportive; others not) from relatives and friends in other states, and only then recognized the significance of what was happening.

The political ripples are already being felt. After signing the bill in March, Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican seeking re-election in November, saw his job approval ratings drop to 58 percent from 72 percent in the next month, according to a Survey USA poll. Mr. Rounds faces two Democratic challengers, whose campaigns, political analysts say, have been energized by the abortion decision.

And many more candidates than usual filed to run for the Legislature, all 105 seats of which are on the ballot this fall, said Chris Nelson, the secretary of state. Democrats, the minority in both legislative chambers, have challengers in most of the races, a fact that some here tie directly to the abortion fight.

"Frankly, we had been anticipating a ho-hum election year," said Robert Burns, a political scientist at South Dakota State University in Brookings. "But this issue is spilling over in the House race, into the governor's race, and into many of the legislative races."

Along a commercial strip in Sioux Falls, a nondescript building houses Planned Parenthood, the only abortion clinic in the state. In 2004, the last year for which state health records are available, 814 abortions were performed in South Dakota, or about half as many as were performed in this state a quarter century ago. In 1982, for instance, the state reported 1,693 abortions.

For now, the clinic, which has long flown doctors in from Minnesota because it is difficult to find South Dakota doctors willing to perform abortions, is still open. The new law does not go into effect until July 1, but it will be put on hold if opponents can gather signatures from at least 16,728 of the state's 486,000 registered voters by June 19.

"From our standpoint, the opportunity for South Dakota to loudly proclaim that the Legislature has overreached is very important," said Sarah Stoesz, the president of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. If the ballot effort fails, Planned Parenthood officials said, the organization will file a lawsuit in federal court to block the ban, which would set off the legal challenge the ban's authors still hope for.

Less than two miles from the Planned Parenthood clinic, between a taco shop and a carwash, another bland building houses Alpha Health Services, whose sign promises "Free pregnancy tests, abortion information and S.T.D. testing."

Once an abortion clinic, this is now home to the projects of Leslee J. Unruh, one of the most vocal leaders of the effort to ban abortion here. Ms. Unruh, who said she had had an abortion in the late 1970's and regretted it deeply, said 6,000 women came here each year for ultrasound tests, counseling and other assistance.

"The people have already spoken," Ms. Unruh said of the Legislature's vote.

She said the voting patterns here would be simple: "Our polls are, we will win. Our people are not going to be taken in by all the lies."

But a woman from Rapid City, on the state's western edge, drove alone for more than five hours in March to have an abortion at the Planned Parenthood clinic. The woman, who is in her 30's and said she feared for her safety if her name was used in this article, went to the clinic the very day Governor Rounds signed the ban.

Had the law been in effect, she said, she still would have found a way — legal or not — to have an abortion. "Once that type of decision is made, it's going to be done," she said. "Are we really going to go that route?"

    Ripples From Law Banning Abortion Spread Through South Dakota, NYT, 16.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/us/16dakota.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

    Related > http://news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/abortion/sdabortionlaw06.html

Law to Segregate Omaha Schools Divides Nebraska

April 15, 2006
The New York Times
By SAM DILLON

OMAHA, April 14 — Ernie Chambers is Nebraska's only African-American state senator, a man who has fought for causes including the abolition of capital punishment and the end of apartheid in South Africa. A magazine writer once described him as the "angriest black man in Nebraska."

He was also a driving force behind a measure passed by the Legislature on Thursday and signed into law by the governor that calls for dividing the Omaha public schools into three racially identifiable districts, one largely black, one white and one mostly Hispanic.

The law, which opponents are calling state-sponsored segregation, has thrown Nebraska into an uproar, prompting fierce debate about the value of integration versus what Mr. Chambers calls a desire by blacks to control a school district in which their children are a majority.

Civil rights scholars call the legislation the most blatant recent effort in the nation to create segregated school systems or, as in Omaha, to resegregate districts that had been integrated by court order. Omaha ran a mandatory busing program from 1976 to 1999.

"These efforts to resegregate schools by race keep popping up in various parts of the country," said Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard, adding that such programs skate near or across the line of what is constitutionally permissible. "I hear about something like this every few months, but usually when districts hear the legal realities from civil rights lawyers, they tend to back off their plans."

Nebraska's attorney general, Jon Bruning, said in a letter to a state senator that preliminary scrutiny had led him to believe that the law could violate the federal Constitution's equal protection clause, and that he expected legal challenges.

The debate here began when the Omaha district, which educates most of the state's minority students, moved last June to absorb a string of largely white schools that were within the Omaha city limits but were controlled by suburban or independent districts.

"Multiple school districts in Omaha stratify our community," John J. Mackiel, the Omaha schools superintendent, said last year. "They create inequity, and they compromise the opportunity for a genuine sense of community."

Omaha school authorities and business leaders marketed the expansion under the slogan, "One City, One School District." The plan, the district said, would create a more equitable tax base and foster integration through magnet programs to be set up in largely white schools on Omaha's western edge that would attract minority students.

The district had no plans to renew busing, but some suburban parents feared that it might. The suburban districts rebelled, and the unicameral Legislature drew up a measure to blunt the district's expansion.

The bill contained provisions creating a "learning community" to include 11 school districts in the Omaha area operating with a common tax levy while maintaining current borders. It required districts to work together to promote voluntary integration.

But the legislation changed radically with a two-page amendment by Mr. Chambers that carved the Omaha schools into racially identifiable districts, a move he told his colleagues would allow black educators to control schools in black areas.

Nebraska's 49-member, nonpartisan Legislature approved the measure by a vote of 31 to 16, with Mr. Chambers's support and with the votes of 30 conservative lawmakers from affluent white suburbs and ranching counties with a visceral dislike of the Omaha school bureaucracy. Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican facing a tough primary fight, said he did not consider the measure segregationist and immediately signed it.

Dr. Mackiel, the Omaha superintendent, said the school board was "committed to protecting young people's constitutional rights."

"If that includes litigation, then that certainly is a consideration," Dr. Mackiel said.

Some of Nebraska's richest and most powerful residents have also questioned the legislation, including the billionaire investor Warren Buffett as well as David Sokol, the chief executive of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, which employs thousands in Nebraska and Iowa.

"This is going to make our state a laughingstock, and it's going to increase racial tensions and segregation," Mr. Sokol said in an interview.

The Omaha district has 46,700 students, 44 percent of them white, 32 percent black, 21 percent Hispanic and 3 percent Asian or Native American. The suburban systems that surround it range in size from the Millard Public School District, with about 20,000 students, 9 percent of whom are members of minorities, to the Bennington district, with 704 students, 4 percent of whom are members of minorities.

Parent reaction is divided. Darold Bauer, a professional fund-raiser who has three children in Millard schools, said he was pleased that the law had eliminated the threat of busing, although he said he was not thrilled about sharing a common tax levy with the Omaha schools.

"What this law does is protect the boundaries of my district," said Mr. Bauer, who is white. "All the districts in the area are now required to work together on an integration plan, and I'm fine with that, because my kids won't be bused."

Brenda J. Council, a prominent black lawyer whose niece and nephew attend Omaha's North High School, said of the law, "I'm adamantly opposed because it'll only institutionalize racial isolation."

Whether the law goes unchallenged is unclear. "We believe the state may face serious risk due to the potential constitutional problems," Attorney General Bruning said in his letter.

But Senator Chambers, a 68-year-old former barber who earned a law degree after his election to the Legislature in 1970, was unmoved. He lists his occupation as "defender of the downtrodden," and suggests that is precisely what he is doing.

"Several years ago I began discussing in my community the possibility of carving our area out of Omaha Public Schools and establishing a district over which we would have control," Mr. Chambers said during the debate on the floor of the Legislature. "My intent is not to have an exclusionary system, but we, meaning black people, whose children make up the vast majority of the student population, would control."

During an interview in his office, Mr. Chambers took time out to answer calls questioning the plan. He told several people bluntly that they were misinformed, but he remained polite.

"You call me anytime, whether you agree with me or not," he signed off one conversation.

He acknowledged that he had nursed a latent fury with the Omaha district since enduring the taunting of schoolmates during classroom readings of "Little Black Sambo" when he attended during the 1940's. He also accused the district of returning to segregated neighborhood schools when it ended busing in 1999, although no high school is more than 48 percent black.

Other black leaders in Omaha criticized the new law.

"This is a disaster," said Ben Gray, a television news producer and co-chairman of the African-American Achievement Council, a group of volunteers who mentor black students. "Throughout our time in America, we've had people who continuously fought for equality, and from Brown vs. Board of Education, we know that separate is not equal. We cannot go back to segregating our schools."

    Law to Segregate Omaha Schools Divides Nebraska, NYT, 15.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/us/15omaha.html?hp&ex=1145160000&en=c7750a12dc28149b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Massachusetts Legislation on Insurance Becomes Law

April 13, 2006
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK and KATIE ZEZIMA

BOSTON, April 12 — In a ceremony full of pomp and political backpatting, Gov. Mitt Romney signed Massachusetts' landmark health care legislation Wednesday, setting the stage for the state to be the first to provide health coverage to virtually all of its citizens.

But the celebratory atmosphere was accompanied by some friction because Mr. Romney, a Republican, vetoed a provision some Democrats and health care advocates adamantly support: a requirement that employers who do not provide health insurance to their employees pay the state up to $295 per worker each year.

Leaders of the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, which passed the bill last week, said they expected to override that veto in the next few weeks and were examining Mr. Romney's vetoes of seven other less controversial provisions.

The signing ceremony, complete with fife and drum corps, was held in the historic Faneuil Hall before 300 ticketed guests. Speakers included Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who last shared the Faneuil Hall stage with Mr. Romney in 1994 at a debate in Mr. Romney's unsuccessful campaign for Mr. Kennedy's Senate seat. Now, Mr. Romney is considering running for president in 2008, and the success of the bipartisan health care plan could become a major selling point of his candidacy.

The event reflected only a shade of the political distance between Mr. Romney and the state's Democratic lawmakers. Representative Salvatore F. DiMasi, the speaker of the House, chided Mr. Romney for his line-item vetoes, saying: "Governor Romney, if you change anything, you will disturb the delicate balance that made this law possible. Every element is critical to accomplishing this law's goals."

Mostly, however, the tone was congratulatory.

"This isn't 100 percent of what anyone in this room wanted," Mr. Romney said. "But the differences between us are small."

Mr. Kennedy said, "You may well have fired the shot heard round the world on health care in America. I hope so."

The law is projected to provide coverage for about 515,000 of the state's 550,000 uninsured people and leave less than 1 percent of the population uncovered. It goes further than those of any other state.

It requires residents to obtain health insurance by July 1, 2007. People who can afford insurance and do not buy it will be penalized on their state income taxes.

The law takes the $1 billion in the state's free-care pool, which paid for medical care for patients without insurance, and uses it to subsidize insurance for people who cannot afford it. The legislation also makes it possible for more individuals and businesses to buy insurance with pre-tax dollars, saving them money. And it includes a system to encourage insurance companies to provide more affordable plans with fewer benefits or higher deductibles.

Several details have yet to be worked out, and questions remain about whether enough affordable plans can be created to allow everyone to afford coverage.

The law also expands some Medicaid coverage, including coverage for children. Mr. Romney vetoed a provision that reinstated dental coverage for adults, saying it would cost $75 million a year and was a benefit not provided by most employers.

The legislation, months in the making, almost fell apart over disagreements about whether businesses should be charged and how much if they were. Mr. Romney wanted no business fee. Mr. DiMasi wanted a much higher business assessment of 5 percent of a company's payroll, but Senator Robert E. Travaglini, a Democrat who is president of Senate, was against any business contribution because he worried that it would adversely affect the economy.

Mr. Romney said in an interview last week that the bill's charge of $295 per worker, which would yield about $48 million a year, was "not necessary for funding" the law. He also said that $295 was "such a small figure," much less than the cost of insurance, "that it doesn't have any significant incentive value" to encourage companies to insure their workers.

On Wednesday, Mr. Romney told reporters, "There were many businesses that have been flooding my office with calls as well as business associations that were very concerned about it," adding, "There's no reason to put an extra charge on certain employers."

But several health care advocates and some hospital and business leaders said Wednesday that the fee was fair and reasonable. Mr. DiMasi, in an interview last week, said: "I see a significant commitment of businesses to contribute in some way to the insurance costs of the uninsured. I see this as a significant principle, whatever the dollar figure is."

Mr. Romney said the law would be "a big part of the legacy I will have personally for my four years of service as governor."

"But," he added, "I have no way of telling if it's going to be a help or a hindrance down the road."

    Massachusetts Legislation on Insurance Becomes Law, NYT, 13.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/us/13health.html

Governor Vetoes Legislative Plan for State Budget

April 13, 2006
The New York Times
By DANNY HAKIM

ALBANY, April 12 — Gov. George E. Pataki has vetoed nearly $3 billion worth of tax cuts and spending initiatives from the Legislature's budget, saying on Wednesday that they would lead to irresponsible future deficits.

In the current fiscal year, his vetoes of tax cuts worth more than $1 billion struck down rebate checks for property owners, a new child tax credit and the elimination of a tax provision felt by married couples. His spending cuts included $650 million from Medicaid alone and $500 million from the State University of New York.

Mr. Pataki's 202 separate vetoes were a striking exercise of power by a lame-duck Republican governor considering a future in national politics, and they suggested that he was trying to establish an image of fiscal conservatism in his final year in office. [News analysis, Page B7.]

Yet his wholesale rejection of the Legislature's tax cuts has enraged fellow Republicans in the Senate.

"I cannot believe he's vetoed something like $4 billion in tax cuts," said Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, referring to the value of the Legislature's tax cut packages over two years. "I can't for the life of me understand what he's doing."

Mr. Pataki issued the vetoes after lawmakers rejected his more limited tax cut plan, and he was emboldened by a recent court ruling establishing the administration's vast powers over the state budget, which is now at $112.8 billion. In fact, Mr. Pataki's actions set the stage for a potentially bruising legal fight with the Legislature that could leave the final shape of the budget in doubt for months.

The governor maintains that courts have established that the Legislature does not have the power to override most of his vetoes. Legislative leaders sharply disagree, and a prominent health workers' union and a hospital association have threatened to sue over the Medicaid cuts.

Mr. Pataki did not rule out negotiating further with the Legislature and possibly amending the budget in the coming months, though communications between the sides are increasingly fractious. Lawmakers will certainly try to override many of the vetoes, although the administration appears poised to battle some overrides in court.

The governor appeared ready for any outcome.

"I've been sued so many times," he said at a news conference on Wednesday when asked about the possibility. "I expect that there will be more."

"These are vetoes that I would have preferred not to have to make," he said, adding that the Legislature's budget created "fiscal difficulties, very real ones for this state."

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Mr. Pataki's chief Democratic antagonist in the Legislature, said he did not concede the governor's contention that lawmakers could not override him. He has repeatedly referred to Mr. Pataki as "the governor of technicalities" for finding legal problems with the Legislature's budget as justification for his vetoes.

Under the recent court ruling, the Legislature cannot alter the language of the governor's budget proposals, only specific appropriations. As a result, lawmakers are limited in making substantive changes to the governor's budget.

Mr. Silver appeared to come out better than Mr. Bruno in the budget battle. The governor did not veto the $11.2 billion bonding plan to finance construction of New York City schools, which has been the top priority of Mr. Silver, who represents Lower Manhattan. Senate Republicans, on the other hand, saw the governor veto their main priority, the property tax rebate checks that would have been mailed shortly before the November election. Those rebates were considered a way to please the Senate Republicans' upstate base and hold on to their majority.

Mr. Pataki's vetoes began shortly before midnight Monday and continued into Wednesday afternoon.

In reinstating $650 million in cuts to Medicaid that were in his original executive budget, he eliminated the practice by which married couples who normally would not qualify for Medicaid can qualify for benefits for the ailing spouse by transferring their assets to the healthy spouse. He also made it harder for Medicaid recipients to receive prescriptions that are not on the state's preferred drug list. His cuts to Medicaid would be in effect for a year, through next April.

He cut nearly $120 million to tuition assistance programs, halting financial aid payments to college students who default on loans or do not meet more stringent course credit requirements. His $500 million aid cut to SUNY was mostly designated for building improvements.

More than $2 million was cut from Legal Aid programs around the state, as was $19 million earmarked for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Mr. Pataki also vetoed an often-maligned $200 million fund that he and the Legislature have traditionally used for secretive "pork barrel" spending, but he did not veto a similar appropriation used for capital projects.

There were many cuts to such diverse projects as the Staten Island Ferry, a PBS documentary on the Erie Canal and a rabies research center at Cornell University.

Mr. Pataki also blocked a legislative attempt to grab control of more than $150 million collected by utilities each year and used to support energy conservation and clean energy programs in the state. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority currently selects the projects to be financed by the program, and environmentalists supported keeping the money in the authority's hands and out of the budget process.

It was the governor's veto of the broad package of tax cuts that struck at the heart of the Legislature's budget proposal. Mr. Pataki did not object to all the tax cuts but said he was required to veto the entire package if he wanted to strike any one item.

"The governor's playing political hardball," said Blair Horner, the legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group. "This is major league hardball, it's not Triple A, and he has apparently chosen to make this the year he's going to dig in."

The vetoes capped a period of worsening relations between the governor and leaders of the Legislature.

On Wednesday, Mr. Pataki swung back at comments Mr. Silver made Tuesday suggesting the governor would deliberately reveal his vetoes after the beginning of Passover, Wednesday evening. That would have meant that Mr. Silver, an Orthodox Jew, could not respond.

"To me that's extremely disappointing, because I think it's just wrong to challenge somebody doing their job when it's an incredibly difficult job and making some sort of a religious allegation that this is somehow anti-Semitic," Mr. Pataki said. "It is wrong and it is beneath the speaker. He knows that I have gone out of my way to be cognizant of his observation, as I am of all religious peoples' observations."

As it happened, the governor announced his vetoes early in the afternoon Wednesday.

Mr. Silver said he never called the governor anti-Semitic. "That's typical of what this governor is doing," he said. "He doesn't want to talk about substance, he doesn't want to talk about dropping people from health care, he'd rather talk about technicalities and his interpretation of things that were said."

For his part, Mr. Bruno offered a blunt assessment of the state of affairs in an interview on WROW, an Albany radio station.

"The governor is well intentioned, the Assembly is well intentioned, we're well intentioned," he said. "And the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Anthony DePalma contributed reporting for this article.

    Governor Vetoes Legislative Plan for State Budget, NYT, 13.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/nyregion/13budget.html?hp&ex=1144987200&en=bb5a42d3d7e46eb4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Prosecution of Midwife Casts Light on Home Births

April 3, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., March 29 — Angela Hendrix-Petry gave birth to her daughter Chloe by candlelight in her bedroom here in the early morning of March 12, with a thunderstorm raging outside and her family and midwife huddled around her.

"It was the most cozy, lovely, lush experience," Ms. Hendrix-Petry said.

According to Indiana law, though, the midwife who assisted Ms. Hendrix-Petry, Mary Helen Ayres, committed a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison. Ms. Ayres was, according to the state, practicing medicine and midwifery without a license.

Doctors, legislators and prosecutors in Indiana and in the nine other states with laws prohibiting midwifery by people other than doctors and nurses say home births supervised by midwives present grave and unacceptable medical risks. Nurse-midwives in Indiana are permitted to deliver babies at home, but most work in hospitals.

Midwives see it differently. They say the ability of women to choose to give birth at home is under assault from a medical establishment dominated by men who, for reasons of money and status, resent a centuries-old tradition that long ago anticipated the concerns of modern feminism.

Chloe Hendrix-Petry's birth has not given rise to criminal charges, but a prosecution against another midwife, Jennifer Williams, is pending in Shelbyville, Ind. It was prompted by the death of a baby named Oliver Meredith that Ms. Williams delivered in June. But she is not charged with causing or contributing to Oliver's death.

Instead, to hear the county prosecutor tell it, the case against Ms. Williams is not unlike one against a trucker caught driving without a license.

"He may be doing an awfully fine job of driving his truck," the prosecutor, R. Kent Apsley, a trim, intense and direct man, said in his office in the basement of the Shelby County courthouse. "But the state requires him to go through training, have his license and be subject to review."

Legal experts said prosecutions of midwives were rare but not unheard of, and Mr. Apsley suggested that he might have looked the other way but for Oliver's death. "There isn't anyone I'm aware of going out and doing surveillance of midwives," he said.

Stacey A. Tovino, who teaches at the Health Law and Policy Institute at the University of Houston Law Center and has written on midwifery and the law, said prosecutions of midwives almost always started with a tragedy.

"No one complains until a baby dies or a mom dies," Professor Tovino said. But once the issue arises, she said, legislatures often become involved as well, with doctors and midwives engaging in a bitter struggle over the proper regulation of midwives, one driven by a mix of motives that are difficult to disentangle.

"There has always been a tension between true quality-of-care concerns and anticompetitive concerns," Professor Tovino said.

Around the nation, there are some 3,000 midwives without formal medical training, according to the Midwives Alliance of North America. About 1,100 of them, including Ms. Williams, have been certified by the North American Registry of Midwives, a private agency whose evaluations are recognized in some 20 states. In Indiana, though, only doctors and nurses may deliver babies.

That is a misguided approach, said Ms. Ayres, who helped deliver Chloe Hendrix-Petry and who is the president of the Indiana Midwives Association.

"Midwifery is an autonomous profession," Ms. Ayres said. "It's an art and a science that predates the medical model of care. Midwifery sees birth as normal and basically safe.

"It's made safer by reliance on the woman's power," she continued. "The medical model assumes the woman is passive and her body needs to be acted upon. Every birth is presented as a potential disaster from which every woman needs to be protected and potentially rescued."

Mr. Apsley said his decision to prosecute Ms. Williams was driven solely by the law as it currently stood. "We can all have different opinions about the speed limit or the age of consent or whether drugs should be legalized," he said. "Those decisions are for the legislature."

He added that the evidence against Ms. Williams was strong.

According to an affidavit filed by Rick Isgrigg, an investigator with the Shelby County Sheriff's Department, Ms. Williams conducted a dozen prenatal examinations on Oliver's mother, Kristi Jo Meredith; monitored the fetal heart rate during labor; made a surgical incision known as an episiotomy when she detected fetal distress; performed frantic CPR on the baby when he emerged; and sutured the incision afterward. Ms. Williams charged the Merediths $1,550.

Sipping bottled water at a cafe in Bloomington, Ms. Williams, 54, was as soft-spoken and halting as Mr. Apsley was forceful and precise. She would not talk about the details of her case, citing her lawyer's advice. Her trial is scheduled for July.

She did say that she missed her practice terribly.

"You get to be there when her baby is born," Ms. Williams said. "It never loses its magic or miraculous quality."

Oliver Meredith's parents have showed little enthusiasm for the prosecution, people on both sides of the case said. "It's not like they're knocking down our doors to pursue the matter," Mr. Apsley acknowledged. "They just want to get on with their lives." Efforts to reach the Merediths by telephone and e-mail were unsuccessful.

Some 99 percent of all births take place in hospitals, and nurse-midwives participate in about 8 percent of them, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Two-thirds of the remaining births are in homes, and the last third in freestanding birthing centers. Reliable data for how many births outside of hospitals were attended by midwives with and without formal medical training were not available.

Women choosing to give birth at home are taking a big risk, said Dr. Kevin R. Burke, president of the Indiana State Medical Association.

"Because routine things sometimes become very un-routine, the best environment for labor and delivery is in a hospital or in a facility that adjoins the hospital," Dr. Burke said. If some women say that medical settings can be sterile and demeaning, he added, "well, then, let's make the hospital a more friendly, user-comfortable environment."

Ms. Williams scoffed at that.

"They hide the IV pole behind a fern," she said. "There are women who don't want a nice hospital. They want to have their baby at home."

Peggy Welch, a Democratic state representative in Bloomington, has introduced legislation in Indiana to recognize and regulate lay midwives. She said the issue boiled down to choice and safety.

"It is not illegal to have a home birth," Ms. Welch said, noting that about 1,000 Indiana families had their children at home each year. "But doctors and nurses are choosing not to do home births."

The current law, Ms. Welch said, drives midwives underground. "I don't want to have a midwife hesitate to take a woman to the hospital because she is afraid she will be arrested," she said.

Ms. Hendrix-Petry gave birth to three children before Chloe. Her oldest son was born in a hospital, where she said she received "adequate care." But, she added, "I felt like I wasn't getting the answers I needed from my high-tech doctors."

Her experience with Ms. Ayres was different, Ms. Hendrix-Petry said. "The care I have received from her felt so genuine," Ms. Hendrix-Petry said. "It was healing and miraculous."

Professor Tovino, who has studied the question for years, said she remained on the fence.

"Midwives have a terrific service to provide, and our hospitals can be overmedicalized," Professor Tovino said. "But I hope people are making informed decisions."

    Prosecution of Midwife Casts Light on Home Births, NYT, 3.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/us/03midwife.html?hp&ex=1144123200&en=e23100361c5df4b1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

20 Nebraska Senators to Lose Their Seats Under Term Limit Law

April 2, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

LINCOLN, Neb., April 1 (AP) — Nearly half of Nebraska's state legislators will be turned out of office early next year, a result of term limits approved by voters after a petition campaign six years ago.

Under the Nebraska law, which was approved in 2000 by 56 percent of the voters, 20 of the state's 49 senators will have to give up their seats. The law bars senators from serving more than two consecutive four-year terms, but they can return after sitting out one term. Eighty-three candidates will vie for the 20 open seats.

A legal challenge to the law is pending before the State Supreme Court, but arguments have not been scheduled. The plaintiffs say the term limits violate their First Amendment free speech and association rights and their 14th Amendment equal protection rights.

A debate has also arisen among supporters and critics of the law over the merits of experience and whether term limits will increase or reduce the power of special interests.

The senators affected by the law include the current speaker and nine committee leaders, whose combined service is 239 years.

Critics say the loss of legislative experience could bring difficulties.

But Doug Kagan of Omaha, chairman of a group called Don't Touch Term Limits, said it was imperative that sitting senators be removed.

"We'd like to get the current crop of people out of there and get new people in who we think will take a fresh look at the state's finances," Mr. Kagan said.

Supporters of the law frequently mentioned Senator Ernie Chambers as a reason to vote for the amendment. Mr. Chambers, 68, is in his 36th year in the legislature.

In Nebraska, the senate is the sole legislative body. Mr. Chambers said that the lack of balance provided by a second legislative body made Nebraska more reliant on lawmakers who were experienced. He said that new senators could be easily swayed and outmaneuvered by lobbyists and others with special interests.

Supporters of term limits are not convinced. "There's only one group that hates term limits more than politicians, and that's lobbyists," said Paul Jacob, a spokesman for U.S. Term Limits, an advocacy group based in Glenview, Ill.

    20 Nebraska Senators to Lose Their Seats Under Term Limit Law, NYT, 2.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/us/02nebraska.html

New Maine Law Shields Animals in Domestic Violence Cases

April 1, 2006
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

Susan Walsh told Maine legislators a chilling tale in January. She said she had wanted many times to take her two children and leave her husband, ending a relationship she found frightening and controlling.

But she said she was afraid he would harm the animals on their 32-acre plot called Blessed Be Farm in Ellsworth, Me. In the past, she said in a telephone interview yesterday, he had retaliated against her by running over her blind and deaf border collie named Katydid, shooting two sheep and wringing the necks of her prized turkeys.

"It wasn't just the cats and the dogs I had, it was the sheep and the chickens — I was terrified for their welfare," Ms. Walsh, 50, said. "I knew if I were to leave, he wouldn't hesitate to kill them. He had done it before."

Experts on domestic violence say accounts like that of Ms. Walsh, who is now divorced, are not unusual. They say many men who abuse wives or girlfriends threaten or harm their animals to coerce or control the women.

To address the problem, Maine's governor, John Baldacci, signed a bill yesterday that allows animals to be included in protection orders in domestic violence cases.

"Many national studies on victims of domestic violence tell us that their abusers have threatened to kill, threatened to harm or actually harmed their pets as a means of keeping the victim from leaving the relationship," Mr. Baldacci, a Democrat, said. "With this new law, we hope to help remove another tool for emotional and physical violence used by the abuser to exert power and control over their victims."

Maine is believed to be the first state with such a law. But the issue has captured attention around the country as police departments, domestic-violence programs, animal protection societies and state officials become increasingly aware of a link between domestic violence and animal abuse.

A new program in Columbus, Ohio, takes animals of victims of domestic violence and places them in a women's prison, where the inmates care for them. In Nashville, the city gives such pets a safe haven for up to 30 days. And in St. Louis, the Domestic Violence Pet Assistance Program finds foster homes for the animals.

"There are some batterers who are prone to using coercion and terrorizing tactics who very well know how strongly attached their partner is to the animals in her life," said Frank A. Ascione, a psychologist at Utah State University. "It's the dynamic of preying on the love and affection that women often have for the animals in their lives, who may be their only source of solace, their only source of unconditional love."

In the late 1990's, Dr. Ascione and colleagues interviewed 101 women in shelters for battered women and 120 women who were not victims of domestic violence.

They found that 54 percent of the battered women said their abusers had harmed or killed their animals, compared with 5 percent of women in the other group. Thirty-four percent of the women whose pets had been both threatened and harmed delayed going to the shelters out of concern for their pets.

In 2002, Dr. Ascione said, he interviewed 42 men in prison who had had violent relationships with women and found that half of them said they had hurt or killed pets.

"Police and prosecutors are well aware of the very close link between threats to pets and threats to family members," Maine's public safety commissioner, Michael P. Cantara, said. He cited a 2002 case in which an abusive husband had beaten the family's cats to death, buried them in the backyard and threatened a similar fate for his wife and children.

"To our horror," Mr. Cantara said, "that yard was filled with dead Maine pets."

Karen Days, president of the Columbus Coalition Against Family Violence in Ohio, said of her work at the Columbus city prosecutor's office: "I had a victim who was in my office, and the prosecutor agreed to issue a warrant for the arrest of her partner. But she was just adamant that she be able to go home first and get her dog. When I asked why, she said, 'When I left him before, he started mailing me pieces of my cat to tell me if you don't come back this is what I'm going to continue to do.' "

Ms. Days and others said that battered women without children might be the most attached to their pets. But in homes with children, there are other concerns, Dr. Ascione said.

He said that seeing animals abused made "some kids likely to act out what they may have witnessed," while others "get even more strongly attached to their pets," which can be dangerous if the "children start trying to intervene to protect the animals."

Jill Morris, the public policy director at the National Coalition against Domestic Violence, said that she had not heard of another law like Maine's but that some judges had begun to include animals in protective orders.

Ms. Days said her organization would be lobbying the Ohio Legislature to make penalties for domestic violence stiffer if animal abuse was involved.

Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, said his organization conducted workshops for police departments, prosecutors and social workers on the problem.

"Oftentimes these situations go on for a long period, say months or years," Mr. Pacelle said. "We really try to spread the word about this."

Ariel Sabar contributed reporting from Augusta, Me., for this article, and Katie Zezima from Boston.

    New Maine Law Shields Animals in Domestic Violence Cases, NYT, 1.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/01/us/01pets.html

Massachusetts Court Limits Same-Sex Marriage Law

March 30, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BOSTON (AP) -- The state's highest court ruled Thursday that same-sex couples from other states cannot legally marry in Massachusetts.

The Supreme Judicial Court, which three years ago made Massachusetts the first state to legalize gay marriage, ruled in a challenge to a 1913 state law that forbids non-residents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be recognized in their home state.

''The laws of this commonwealth have not endowed non-residents with an unfettered right to marry,'' the court wrote in its 38-page opinion. ''Only non-resident couples who come to Massachusetts to marry and intend to reside in this commonwealth thereafter can be issued a marriage license without consideration of any impediments to marriage that existed in their former home states.''

Eight gay couples from surrounding states challenged the law after they were denied marriage licenses in Massachusetts.

In oral arguments before the high court in October, a lawyer for the couples argued that the 1913 law sat unused for decades and was ''dusted off'' by Gov. Mitt Romney in an attempt to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Romney ordered city and town clerks to enforce the 1913 law after the first same-sex marriages were performed in Massachusetts in May 2004.

Attorneys for the state said Massachusetts risks a backlash if it ignores the laws of other states by allowing same-sex couples to marry here when such unions are prohibited in their own states.

More than 6,000 gay couples have tied the knot in Massachusetts since the court's landmark ruling in 2003 that under the Massachusetts Constitution, same-sex couples have the same right to marry as heterosexual couples.

    Massachusetts Court Limits Same-Sex Marriage Law, NYT, 30.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Gay-Marriage.html?hp&ex=1143781200&en=667e59bad8a87baf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Lawmakers Reach a Deal on $11 Billion for Schools

March 29, 2006
The New York Times
By DANNY HAKIM and JENNIFER MEDINA

ALBANY, March 28 — Legislative leaders agreed Tuesday to provide $11 billion for school construction in New York City and were finishing the details of a multibillion tax-cut package that would grant property-tax relief to homeowners.

The deal to provide the city with school construction money through a complex bonding plan came in last-minute negotiations as the Assembly and the Senate raced toward a midnight deadline to print budget bills. New York's fiscal year ends on Friday, but under the state's Constitution, bills must be printed three days before they can be voted on by lawmakers.

The tax-cut plan is expected to have as its largest component relief from New York's soaring property taxes, a central agenda of the Republican-led Senate. The Legislature has also agreed to reject Gov. George E. Pataki's proposal to cancel a planned year-round sales-tax break for clothing purchases of less than $110, a priority of the Democrat-led Assembly.

The final details of the proposed budget were being negotiated Tuesday night. If lawmakers vote to approve an agreement on Friday, Mr. Pataki and the Legislature will have a 10-day window in early April to work out their differences. If they fail to reach an agreement, Mr. Pataki can veto individual elements of the budget, although the Legislature can override it with a two-thirds vote.

The governor's staff was reviewing the school construction plan Tuesday night, although earlier in the day, Mr. Pataki had expressed general concern about the overall spending plan exceeding his own proposed $110 billion budget blueprint.

The agreement on school construction aid for New York City comes after a court order issued last week for the state to increase financing for city schools. The legal battle over education financing stems from a lawsuit brought by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a coalition of community groups and parents.

Under the agreement in the Legislature, Albany would issue a $2.6 billion bond through the state's dormitory authority, with New York City receiving $1.8 billion this year. That would allow the city to build the 21 schools that the mayor had threatened to shelve this year. The remaining $800 million from the bond would be distributed to other school districts throughout the state.

But the biggest victory for the city came in the form of an unusual plan to allow the city to borrow up to $9.4 billion through the New York City Transitional Finance Authority. The state's annual payments for school construction would be used to guarantee the new bonds.

"This is a major change in the way we've ever done things in Albany," said Catherine T. Nolan, a Democratic assemblywoman who is the co-chairwoman of the Legislature's education committee. "It is coming up with funding in a new way, in a creative way and in a way that is going to help the children who are in these aging schools."

The plan will likely draw opposition from fiscal monitors concerned about the state's rising debt. And the plaintiffs in the court case said the agreement still falls far short of last week's court order, which directed the Legislature to come up with a plan to send $4.7 billion to $5.6 billion in operating aid to New York City schools over four years.

The legislative plan would also increase spending on operating aid to schools by $1.1 billion in the coming fiscal year, with somewhere between $400 million and $450 million going to New York City.

"As far as we're concerned, they're out of compliance," said Geri D. Palast, the executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. "This is what the mayor had asked for all along, which shows that where there is a political will, at the end of the day, it happens. It is still nowhere near enough."

But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a statement, said "this money to build new schools — if passed by both houses and signed into law by Governor Pataki — is a great deal for this and future generations of New York City schoolchildren."

Michael Marr, a spokesman for the governor, said, "We need to review the actual legislation before making any determination."

Legislative aides said they expected some issues to remain unresolved Tuesday and to be deferred to early April, including the structure of a new office to fight Medicaid fraud. The Legislature had been counting on the office to recover $325 million by cracking down on Medicaid fraud in the upcoming year.

The Legislature also rejected requests by officials in Mayor Bloomberg's office to curb a joint state and city program that has extended tax breaks for film and television productions. Instead of cutting back the program, which exhausted its allotted funds far more quickly than anticipated, the state is proposing to increase the state funds available to $60 million a year, from $25 million, and increase the city's portion of the tax-credit program to $30 million from $12.5 million. The city can only opt in or out of the program as constructed by the state.

"To his credit, the mayor has championed this program at the city level," said Assemblyman Michael N. Gianaris, a Democrat of Queens. "Fortunately, the efforts by some bureaucrats in his administration to scale back the program were unsuccessful."

Mr. Pataki has been negotiating with lawmakers as they draw up their budget plans, but has said that one of his chief concerns is by how much the legislative spending increases his $110.6 billion budget.

"We're in the strongest financial position we've been in over a generation," he said on Tuesday morning to reporters in Albany. "I don't want to see us lose that by a budget that spends too much, reforms too little, takes care of the short-term needs of people in an election year, but doesn't look at the longer term finances of the state.

"We're going to have a lot of work to do if we're going to have a budget that is not just on time but is sound and fiscally balanced," he added.

Michael Cooper contributed reporting for this article.

    Lawmakers Reach a Deal on $11 Billion for Schools, NYT, 29.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/nyregion/29fiscal.html

Same-sex marriage battles escalate

Posted 3/23/2006 11:38 PM
USA TODAY
By Joan Biskupic

WASHINGTON — Gay rights advocates are pushing to legalize same-sex marriage with an unprecedented wave of lawsuits in state courts, while those seeking to ban such unions are gaining ground in state legislatures.

The contrasting strategies reflect how judges have begun to show a willingness to expand the rights of same-sex couples at a time when many state lawmakers — and most Americans — are cool to the idea.

Several key developments are likely soon. The top state courts in Washington state and New Jersey have heard arguments brought by gay men and lesbians. Either court could open the door to a second state joining Massachusetts in allowing same-sex marriages. (Related story: Lawsuits target bans)

Other lawsuits backed by the ACLU, Lambda Legal and other gay rights groups are wending their way through courts in California, Connecticut, Iowa, Maryland and New York. The groups want courts to declare that same-sex couples have a right to marry based on state constitutional protections for equality and due process of law. The groups also hope to win legal precedents that could influence the U.S. Supreme Court to endorse a constitutional right to same-sex unions nationwide.

Meanwhile, the Alliance for Marriage and other groups against same-sex marriage hope to win legislative ballot initiatives this year in Alabama, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. The measures would amend state constitutions to ban same-sex marriages.

Nineteen states have such bans. Most have been adopted since November 2003, when Massachusetts' highest state court said same-sex couples have a right to marry under state law. Massachusetts then became the first state to give marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

The legislative moves against gay marriages aren't limited to the states. In June, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to begin debating a measure intended to lead to a U.S. constitutional amendment banning such marriages. The proposals in legislatures and in Congress partly reflect public-opinion polls, which for five years have indicated that about 60% of Americans oppose legalizing same-sex marriage.

The ACLU and others supporting same-sex marriages hope to turn public opinion by casting the ability to marry one's chosen partner as a basic right. They also are trying to tie their campaign with the efforts against bans on interracial marriage four decades ago.

A few judges, including Manhattan Judge Doris Ling-Cohan, have made such a link in backing same-sex marriages. Her ruling was reversed in December, however, by an appeals court that said the state has "a strong interest in fostering heterosexual marriage."

    Same-sex marriage battles escalate, UT, 23.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-23-gay-marriage_x.htm

Mich. governor to sign ultrasound bill

Posted 3/20/2006 5:43 PM
USA Today

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Gov. Jennifer Granholm will sign a bill requiring abortion providers to give pregnant women the option to see ultrasound images of their fetuses, a spokeswoman says.

Granholm generally has opposed anti-abortion legislation, but the bill was amended so it no longer requires pregnant women to see the ultrasound images, spokeswoman Liz Boyd said Sunday.

Until now, Michigan law has required that women seeking abortions be allowed to review diagrams and descriptions showing a developing fetus, but not their own.

Abortion opponents hailed the new law. Right to Life of Michigan said it ensures that pregnant women have fuller access to accurate information before having abortions.

Critics called it a further erosion of women's rights.

The ultrasound bill is one of the "small, incremental steps ... all designed to put up barriers" to legal abortion, Kary Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, told the Detroit Free Press. However, the ACLU does not plan legal action to block the measure, she said.

The law passed the House two weeks ago on an 84-21 vote and unanimously passed the Senate last week

    Mich. governor to sign ultrasound bill, UT, 20.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-20-ultrasound-abortion-bill_x.htm

Time Served

Iowa's Residency Rules Drive Sex Offenders Underground

March 15, 2006
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — One cornfield beyond the trim white farmhouse where the Boland family lives and a road sign warns, "Watch for children and dogs," is a faded motel.

For years a layover for budget-conscious motorists and construction crews, the motel has lately become a disquieting symbol of what has gone wrong with Iowa's crackdown on sexual offenders of children. With just 24 rooms, the motel, the Ced-Rel, was home to 26 registered sex offenders by the start of March.

"Nobody wants to have something associated with sex offenders right beside them," said Steve Boland, a farmer and father of two who learns about his newest neighbors every few weeks when sheriff's deputies stop by with photographs of them.

"Us showing the kids some mug shots sure wasn't going to help," Mr. Boland said. "How were they going to remember that many faces?"

The men have flocked to the Ced-Rel and other rural motels and trailer parks because no one else will, or can, have them. A new state law barring those convicted of sex crimes involving children from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care center has brought unintended and disturbing consequences. It has rendered some offenders homeless and left others sleeping in cars or in the cabs of their trucks.

And the authorities say that many have simply vanished from their sight, with nearly three times as many registered sex offenders considered missing since before the law took effect in September.

"The truth is that we're starting to lose people," said Don Vrotsos, chief deputy for the Dubuque County sheriff's office and the man whose job it is to keep track of that county's 101 sex offenders.

The statute has set off a law-making race in the cities and towns of Iowa, with each trying to be more restrictive than the next by adding parks, swimming pools, libraries and bus stops to the list of off-limits places. Fearful that Iowa's sex offenders might seek refuge across state lines, six neighboring states have joined the frenzy.

"We don't want to be the dumping ground for their sex offenders," said Tom Brusch, the mayor of Galena, Ill., which passed an ordinance in January.

But even as new bans ripple across the Midwest, the rocky start of the Iowa law — one of at least 18 state laws governing the living arrangements of those convicted of sex crimes — has led to a round of second-guessing about whether such laws really work.

"Nobody wants sex offenders in their area, and on its face, it makes sense that people wouldn't want them near day cares and schools," said Scott Matson, a research associate at the Center for Sex Offender Management, a nonprofit project financed by the federal Department of Justice. "But there are consequences of removing them."

While some of the Iowa's largest cities, like Des Moines, have become virtually off limits for those convicted of sex crimes involving children, the new rules have pushed many to live in groups away from their families, in places like the Ced-Rel, or the Red Carpet Inn in nearby Bouton, where nine offenders rent rooms.

Michele Costigan, whose driveway is right across Highway 30 from the Ced-Rel in this rural stretch just outside Cedar Rapids, said she had stopped leaving any of her four children at home alone, had told them to dial 911 if anyone they did not recognize pulled into the family driveway, and was considering moving.

"If the point of his law was to make us safer, we are not," Ms. Costigan said.

Even more worrisome to law enforcement officials in Iowa, the restrictions appear to be leading some offenders to slip out of sight.

Of the more than 6,000 people on Iowa's registry of sex offenders, 400 are now listed as "whereabouts unconfirmed" or living in "non-structure locations" (like tents, parking lots or rest areas). Last summer, the number was 140.

"When it comes down to it, we would rather know where these people are living than to have the restriction," said Deputy Vrotsos. He said that he devoted at least 20 hours extra a week, along with the work of two clerks, to administering the new state law.

Last fall, Deputy Vrotsos told about 30 of the offenders that they would have to move to meet the requirements of Iowa's law, which he said made about 90 percent of the city of Dubuque off limits.

Some complied, he said, moving to trailer parks, across the Mississippi River into Illinois, to motels or, in the case of one man who had been living with his parents, to a truck at the Ioco Truck Stop on the outskirts of town. But at least three of the offenders have disappeared, Deputy Vrotsos said, giving false addresses or not providing any address at all.

The effectiveness and fairness of the restrictions has become a matter of great debate.

Some law enforcement officials say they believe that restrictions keep the most serious sexual predators away from places where they would be most likely to hurt a child again. But others argue that while such laws are politically appealing, there is little empirical evidence to suggest a connection between recidivism and proximity to schools or day care centers, and that the policies are too broad, drawing in, for example, people who as teenagers had sex with an under-age girlfriend.

In Arkansas, a 2001 study found that sexual offenders of children often lived near schools, day care centers and parks. Those results suggested, said Jeffrey T. Walker, a professor from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock who was a co-author of the research, that residency restrictions could be a reasonable deterrent.

But studies for the Colorado Department of Public Safety in 2004 and the Minnesota Department of Corrections in 2003 have suggested that where an offender lives appears to have no bearing on whether he commits another sex crime on a child.

The problems have left some states turning to other means for controlling registered sex offenders, particularly with public outcry after cases like the rape and killing of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in Florida last year; a convicted sex offender is accused in the attack.

A flurry of new legislation is being considered all over the country. More legislatures are considering joining a dozen that already use satellite tracking devices on offenders. Others, including Iowa, are considering harsher prison sentences for those who attack children. Lawmakers reason that they would not have to worry about recidivism if offenders rarely emerged from prison.

Jerry Behn, a Republican state senator, proposed Iowa's residency law after a constituent called him to point out that a registered sex offender was living in a home that looked out over a schoolyard in Boone, Mr. Behn's hometown.

The legislation passed overwhelmingly in 2002, but was challenged in a lawsuit. A federal judge ruled that the law was unconstitutional, but a three judge panel from the appeals court overturned the ruling.

Almost immediately, other states felt the reverberations. Chief Steven M. O'Connell of the East Dubuque, Ill., police said he began getting "an appalling number" of calls from offenders from Dubuque who wanted to know if they could legally live in his town instead. Sheriff Timothy F. Dunning of Douglas County, Neb., not far from Council Bluffs, Iowa, said that new sex offenders rarely moved to town in the past, but that since last fall, 28 had arrived.

Despite the problems, legislators in Iowa are unlikely to ease the distance restriction anytime soon, said State Senator Larry McKibben, a Republican who is leading a legislative task force on sex offender policies.

"It may have created some hardships for sex offenders," Mr. McKibben said. "But over all, I feel like with the spate of sex offenders in the past few years, this has at least caused parents to be more aware of what is going on."

Corwin R. Ritchie, executive director of the Iowa Association of County Attorneys, which opposes the law, said it had created a "false sense of security" for Iowa residents.

"This is very close to banishment," Mr. Ritchie said. "They quit registering with the sex offender registry and they start sleeping under bridges and at rest stops"

Back at the Ced-Rel motel, Kenneth Selzer, the owner, angrily defended his renters to a reporter, saying they caused little trouble to anyone, not to his neighbors, not to his wife, who sometimes worked late at the motel by herself.

Don Zeller, the sheriff here in Linn County, said however that he had heard a lot of concerns from people over sex offenders in the county, 30 of whom face charges for not complying with the state law's residency restrictions.

Before September, Sheriff Zeller said, he knew where 90 percent of Linn County's sex offenders were living, and today he knows where slightly more than half live. Just before Christmas, the sheriff said, one man began spending his days inside the sheriff's office because he had no where else to go.

Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.

    Iowa's Residency Rules Drive Sex Offenders Underground, NYT, 15.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/national/15offenders.html?hp&ex=1142398800&en=185f637e466679f0&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Stem Cell Proposal Splits Missouri G.O.P.

March 12, 2006
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo., March 11 (AP) — A ballot proposal promoting embryonic stem cell research is turning conservatives against one another in Missouri and threatening to tear apart the state Republican Party at the height of its modern-day influence.

The measure — sponsored by a coalition of medical groups, researchers, businesses and advocates for patients — would make Missouri the only state besides California to include the right to stem cell research in its state constitution.

Partly by pulling together business interests with religious conservatives opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage, Republicans in Missouri have surged in the past five years, winning the governor's office and control of both houses of the Legislature for the first time since the 1920's. The party also holds both of the state's Senate seats.

But the debate over embryonic stem cell research is breaking up the partnership. The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry supports the ballot measure, for example, while Missouri Right to Life vehemently opposes it.

Republicans like Gov. Matt Blunt and John C. Danforth, a former senator and United Nations ambassador who is an ordained Episcopal priest, are backing the measure. In response, Missouri Right to Life has declared that Mr. Blunt, who is not on the ballot until 2008, is no longer "pro-life."

"This referendum has the potential to rip our party apart," Representative Kenny Hulshof warned fellow Republicans at a recent statewide convention.

Because embryonic stem cells can develop into a variety of tissues, some scientists believe they could be used someday to treat spinal cord injuries and diseases like diabetes and Parkinson's.

The political furor focuses on a form of research in which embryos are cloned and the stem cells removed. Because the embryos are destroyed in the process, some say the practice amounts to the destruction of human life.

Missouri lawmakers backed by anti-abortion and church groups, particularly the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptists, have tried unsuccessfully for several years to make the cloning procedure a criminal offense.

The ballot measure, guaranteeing that any federally allowed stem cell research or treatments could occur in Missouri, is a direct response to that effort. Its chief financiers are the founders of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City and supporters of Washington University in St. Louis, which conducts stem cell research.

Unlike the California measure, which devotes $3 billion to stem cell research, the Missouri proposal commits no tax dollars to such experiments.

Despite continuing court challenges over the wording of the Missouri measure, the proposal appears certain to get enough petition signatures to be placed on the ballot in November.

A January poll by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch found that about two-thirds of respondents supported the measure. But since then, opponents have formed their own group, Missourians Against Human Cloning. Both sides plan to spend millions of dollars to influence voters.

Among those caught in the middle is Senator Jim Talent, a Republican who faces a re-election challenge in November from the state auditor, Claire McCaskill, a Democrat. Mr. Talent recently dropped his support of a federal bill to criminalize the cloning of human embryos but has not taken a position on the ballot measure. Ms. McCaskill supports it.

Republicans like Stella Sollars, who opposes embryonic stem cell research, are monitoring Mr. Talent's every utterance on the topic. "That issue of stem cells is the undercover issue that people are going to be voting on," Ms. Sollars said.

Doug Krtek, a self-described "pro-life" Republican and an elder at his Kansas City-area Disciples of Christ church, is nevertheless backing the stem cell measure. His 16-year-old daughter, Sarah, has juvenile diabetes and is an honorary co-chairwoman for the Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, the organization behind the proposal.

"I think God can allow people to find new cures, new ways of doing things," Mr. Krtek said.

Others who could theoretically benefit have joined the campaign against the ballot measure.

Jeff McGarry, a 39-year-old Roman Catholic who has been a quadriplegic since a teenage diving accident, said it would be wrong to accept stem cells from an embryo.

"I would be acting very selfishly in doing that," he said, "because it's taking a life of an individual in order to better my existing life."

    Stem Cell Proposal Splits Missouri G.O.P., NYT, 12.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/national/12stemcell.html

Scant Drop Seen in Abortion Rate if Parents Are Told        NYT        6.3.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/national/06abortion.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Scant Drop Seen in Abortion Rate if Parents Are Told

March 6, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDREW LEHREN and JOHN LELAND

For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors to notify their parents or get permission to have an abortion do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for, an analysis by The New York Times shows.

The analysis, which looked at six states that introduced parental involvement laws in the last decade and is believed to be the first study to include data from years after 1999, found instead a scattering of divergent trends.

For instance, in Tennessee, the abortion rate went down when a federal court suspended a parental consent requirement, then rose when the law went back into effect. In Texas, the rate fell after a notification law went into effect, but not as fast as it did in the years before the law. In Virginia, the rate barely moved when the state introduced a notification law in 1998, but fell after the requirement was changed to parental consent in 2003.

Since the United States Supreme Court recognized states' rights to restrict abortion in 1992, parental involvement legislation has been a cornerstone in the effort to reduce abortions. Such laws have been a focus of divisive election campaigns, long court battles and grass-roots activism, and are now in place in 34 states. Most Americans say they favor them.

"It's one of the few areas that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed states to legislate, so it's become a key for lowering the abortion rate," said Mary Spaulding Balch, director of state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee. Ms. Balch said she believed that consent laws were effective.

Yet the Times analysis of the states that enacted laws from 1995 to 2004 — most of which had low abortion rates to begin with — found no evidence that the laws had a significant impact on the number of minors who got pregnant, or, once pregnant, the number who had abortions.

A separate analysis considered whether the existence or absence of a law could be used to predict whether abortions went up or down. It could not. The six states studied are in the South and West: Arizona, Idaho, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. (A seventh state, Oklahoma, also passed a parental notification law in this period, but did not gather abortion data before 2000.)

Supporters of the laws say they promote better decision-making and reduce teenage abortions; opponents say they chip away at abortion rights and endanger young lives by exposing them to potentially violent reaction from some parents.

But some workers and doctors at abortion clinics said that the laws had little connection with the real lives of most teenagers, and that they more often saw parents pressing their daughters to have abortions than trying to stop them. And many teenagers say they never considered hiding their pregnancies or abortion plans from their mothers.

"I would have told my mother anyway," said a 16-year-old named Nicole, who waited recently at a clinic in Allentown, Pa., a state that requires minors to get the permission of just one parent. Nicole's mother and father are divorced, and it was her mother she went to for permission to have an abortion.

"She was the first person I called," Nicole said. "She's like a best friend to me."

Abortion rates have been dropping nationwide since the mid-1980's, most precipitously for teenagers. But in three states — Arizona, Idaho and Tennessee — the percentage of pregnant minors who had abortions rose slightly after the consent laws went into effect.

When the Times study compared the first full year after a state began enforcing a parental law with the last full year before the law, it found that abortions among minors dropped an average of 9 percent. But in the same period, the rates for pregnant 18- and 19-year-olds, who were not affected by the law, dropped by 5 percent, suggesting that most of the drop among minors was associated with other factors that affected minors and adults alike.

"There are ongoing trends that are pushing both birth rates and abortion rates down significantly, and those larger trends are more important than the effect of these laws," said Ted Joyce, an economist at Baruch College in New York who has studied parental involvement laws. He found they had limited effects on small subgroups of minors but little impact over all.

Of the remaining decline in teenage abortion rates in the Times study, Dr. Joyce said that some of it might be attributed to minors going out of state for abortions. The health departments in these states do not track data on such abortions, but in three previous studies of states where such data were available, completed before 1991, two found that any drop in minors' abortions was matched by an increase in minors getting abortions out of state.

Previous research on the effects of parental notification laws has been slender and has produced contradictory conclusions. All were hampered by inconsistencies in the ways states gather and report data.

The Times analysis was limited by its focus on just six states, but it avoided the possible distortions of including states that gather data in inconsistent ways.

Phillip B. Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College, examined nationwide survey results from 1985 to 1996, a time when many parental involvement laws were put in place, and found that the laws were associated with about one-eighth of the total drop in minors' abortions in those states. Much of the drop was associated with other factors, which might include the economy, availability of abortion, changes in mores and other trends. "It's not surprising it's not popping out," Dr. Levine said of the small drop found in the Times analysis. "There is nothing overwhelmingly staggering" in the change associated with the laws.

Supporters of parental involvement laws say they allow parents to help their children make an important health care decision, as parents would on any other surgical procedure.

For Cathi Harrod, interim president of the Center for Arizona Policy, who lobbied for 15 years for her state's parental consent law, getting minors to involve their parents in their medical decisions was reason enough for the laws, whatever the impact on overall abortion rates. Arizona's law went into effect in 2003.

Ms. Harrod said she believed that there was a groundswell of women who have had regrets about their own abortions and that as they made their feelings known, "we think the numbers will go down as minors learn more about their options." Either way, she said, her organization will push for stricter standards and more public accountability for judicial bypass through access to judges' records.

But providers interviewed in 10 states with parental involvement laws all said that of the minors who came into their clinics, parents were more often the ones pushing for an abortion, even against the wishes of their daughters.

"I see far more parents trying to pressure their daughters to have one," said Jane Bovard, owner of the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo, N.D., a state where a minor needs consent from both parents. "As a parent myself, I can understand. But I say to parents, 'You force her to have this abortion, and I can tell you that within the next six months she's going to be pregnant again.' "

Renee Chelian, director of Northland Family Planning Centers in the Detroit area, said she had had to call the police on parents who wanted their daughters to have abortions, "because they threaten physical violence on the kids."

Ms. Chelian added that the laws might have unseen effects, including driving some teenagers to try to abort their pregnancies on their own.

"Kids talk among themselves," she said. "When we tell them they need to go to court or tell their parents, that's when they tell us there's a Web site" for chemicals or herbal remedies that claims to induce abortions.

Nearly all state parental involvement laws allow for minors to bypass their parents by going through a judge. Providers interviewed in 10 states all said that the process was generally not cumbersome, but that some girls would be afraid to go to court.

For Nicole, the 16-year-old in the Allentown clinic, the hard part was telling her estranged father.

"It was my choice to tell him," she said. "It hurt him, but he understands and is there for me. So in a way it brought us closer together."

    Scant Drop Seen in Abortion Rate if Parents Are Told, NYT, 6.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/national/06abortion.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Rob Rogers        The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pennsylvania        Cagle        10.3.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/rogers.asp

South Dakota Governor Signs Abortion Ban

March 6, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

The governor of South Dakota, Mike Rounds, signed today a bill intended to ban most abortions in the state and to set up a challenge to the United States Supreme Court decision, handed down in 1973, that legalized abortion in all states.

The law would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the woman's life, with no exception for cases of rape or incest. Planned Parenthood, which operates the state's only abortion clinic, has pledged to challenge the law in court.

Acknowledging that the law is a direct challenge to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling known as Roe V. Wade, Mr. Rounds said the law's effective date in July was likely to be delayed by a court challenge.

"That challenge will likely take years to be settled and it may ultimately be decided by the United States Supreme Court," Governor Rounds said in a statement posted on the state's Web site. "Our existing laws regulating abortions will remain in effect."

Governor Rounds, a Republican, noted that the bill was approved by the Legislature "with bi-partisan sponsorship and strong support in both houses."

"Its purpose is to eliminate most abortions in South Dakota," Governor Rounds said. "It does allow doctors to perform abortions in order to save the life of the mother. It does not prohibit the taking of contraceptive drugs before a pregnancy is determined, such as in the case of rape or incest."

The South Dakota law is in the forefront of an effort by abortion opponents to test whether a more conservative Supreme Court will reconsider, and possibly reverse, the Roe decision.

In his message, Governor Rounds noted that the Supreme Court has reversed decisions before. He cited the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that said states could require racial segregation in public facilities if the facilities were "separate, but equal." That ruling was reversed in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 school desegregation case.

"The 1954 court realized that the earlier interpretation of our Constitution was wrong," Governor Rounds said.

    South Dakota Governor Signs Abortion Ban, NYT, 6.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/politics/06cnd-abort.html?hp&ex=1141707600&en=9adf3f202e50e12b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

March 4, 2006

 To Democrats Hungry for Senate, a Pennsylvania Seat Looks Ripe        NYT        5.3.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/washington/05penn.html?ex=1145937600&en=33c0bd8c6956a6d0&ei=5070

Big Race

To Democrats Hungry for Senate, a Pennsylvania Seat Looks Ripe                Part I

March 5, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBIN TONER

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate leadership, sums up his race for re-election this year with a paradoxical pride: "The other side of the aisle wants to beat me more than anything you can possibly imagine," he told the Greater Lehigh Valley Auto Dealers Association not long ago.

Mr. Santorum is almost certainly right. No other race in the nation has so focused the Democratic Party's energy, resources or raw hunger to return to power on Capitol Hill. No other race so captures the Republican Party's vulnerabilities this year, with some public opinion polls consistently showing Mr. Santorum trailing his Democratic opponent, State Treasurer Bob Casey Jr.

Mr. Santorum, 47, has been a brash symbol of the conservative ascendancy since his election to the Senate in 1994, leading the charge on issues like the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act and the partial privatization of Social Security — enraging liberals all the while. He says he relishes a come-from-behind fight against Mr. Casey, but acknowledges that "it's not easy being me" in the current political climate, with a president whose approval ratings are stuck in the 30's.

Mr. Casey, 45, is an experienced statewide candidate, the son of a popular former governor, and in some ways the symbol of a new pragmatism in the Democratic Party. National party leaders heavily recruited Mr. Casey to enter this race, despite his long opposition to abortion rights, because, quite simply, they thought he could win.

In this demographically older, economically anxious state, Mr. Casey is casting Mr. Santorum as a "rubber stamp" for Bush administration policies, citing budget cuts on education and Medicare, tax breaks for the rich and substantial budget deficits. "We're on the wrong road," he said.

This is a big race — expected to cost more than $50 million and to attract strategists and advocacy groups from around the country. It is also expected to join the likes of marquee Senate campaigns like Jim Hunt vs. Jesse Helms in North Carolina in 1984, or, more recently, John Thune vs. Tom Daschle, then the Democratic leader, in South Dakota in 2004.

Mr. Santorum, in fact, tells his audiences that Democrats consider this "the revenge of Tom Daschle race."

The Democrats need a net gain of six seats to recapture the Senate, and this is one of their best shots at a pickup.

When the race is over, Pennsylvania, a quintessential swing state in national politics, could also help answer some important questions about the parties as they head into the 2008 presidential election: Can the Democratic Party hold an energized liberal base while reaching out to social conservatives? Can the Republican Party win a war of ideas — on economics, health care, tax cuts — among middle-class and working-class voters when the social and cultural issues are neutralized?

The stage was set for this campaign after the 2004 election, when Democrats were still reeling from their losses in the House, the Senate and the White House. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the new chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was busily recruiting candidates for 2006, and quickly settled on Mr. Casey, a former state auditor general who had just won election as the state treasurer with a record-setting statewide vote.

Mr. Schumer said he "got some real flak, particularly in the pro-choice community," when he began advancing the Casey candidacy.

(Even now, Kate Michelman, the former president of Naral Pro-Choice America, angered over Mr. Casey's support for the confirmation of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., has indicated that she is pondering an independent candidacy for the seat.)

But Mr. Schumer, himself a stalwart supporter of abortion rights, argued, "Democrats have learned that when you have a good candidate, good in so many ways, that because he or she doesn't agree with the general Democratic Party position on every issue doesn't mean they should be kept outside the tent."

There is a novelistic twist here: Mr. Casey's father, Gov. Robert P. Casey, was also an outspoken opponent of abortion and was very much kept outside the tent 14 years ago at the Democratic National Convention — seated near the rafters, denied an opportunity to speak.

In his book, "Fighting for Life," the former governor recalled saying to his wife, "Let's remember this moment. One day, it's all going to come back around."

Mr. Casey died in 2000. His son, when asked if he felt any sense of family vindication, replied, "I obviously wish he were here to see this race for a lot of reasons, and that's one."

G. Terry Madonna, director of the Keystone Poll and a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., said that Mr. Casey was a threat to Mr. Santorum because he cut into Mr. Santorum's strength among traditional blue-collar voters in Western Pennsylvania and the more socially moderate voters of the Philadelphia suburbs.

"Those suburban voters are more upset with Santorum than they are 'for' Casey," Mr. Madonna said.

He attributed the suburban disaffection, in large part, to Mr. Santorum's high profile on hot-button cultural issues, including abortion, gay marriage and the intervention of Republican Congressional leaders in the right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo.

Mr. Santorum also made headlines last year with his book, "It Takes a Family," which includes a defense of stay-at-home mothers. And Democrats are working hard to tie Mr. Santorum to his party's ethical difficulties.

For all of that, nobody is counting Mr. Santorum out. A strong campaigner, he is expected to draw heavy national Republican support, has raised more money than Mr. Casey and plans to mount a state-of-the-art political effort with at least 40,000 volunteers.

"We have people making phone calls right now, every night," he told the auto dealers.

Mr. Santorum and his campaign say the polls simply reflect an unhappy national mood. Once he gets the chance to make his case, he said, and remind voters of his leadership on such popular causes as the 1996 welfare overhaul and tax cuts, Mr. Casey's lead will disappear.

"I get a chance to do that once every six years, and then I let The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Morning Call, and everybody else beat my brains in for five years," he said.

He is also keeping a certain distance from the president, in contrast to his full-throated efforts last year on behalf of Mr. Bush's plan to create private investment accounts in Social Security.

Mr. Santorum raised questions early on about the deal allowing a Dubai company to take over terminal operations at six American ports, which the Bush administration had cleared.

Eight months before Election Day, the race is already harsh, with accusations flying about issues like whether Mr. Santorum got a special deal on his home mortgage and whether Mr. Casey is spending enough time on the job in Harrisburg.

E-mail traffic from the national campaign committees is heavy, and political blogs are paying close attention.

Mr. Santorum is scornful of his opponent, arguing that Mr. Casey is "just hiding behind the name."

Once the race is fully engaged, he said, "You have to get on TV, you have to put sentences together."

"He'll have to tell people what he's for," he added, "and at that time, I feel very good."

He said that Mr. Casey had a strong lead in 2002, in the Democratic primary governor's race against Edward G. Rendell, only to see it disappear in the final stretch of the campaign.

Mr. Casey says Mr. Santorum is simply trying to change the subject.

"You're hearing now the desperate charges of someone who voted with President Bush 98 percent of the time," he said, "and no matter how far he runs, no matter what he says, he can't hide from that."

    To Democrats Hungry for Senate, a Pennsylvania Seat Looks Ripe, NYT, 5.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/washington/05penn.html?ex=1145937600&en=33c0bd8c6956a6d0&ei=5070


 

Dwayne Booth        Mr. Fish        Cagle        9.3.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/booth.asp

Battle brews as S. Dakota abortion law nears

Fri Mar 3, 2006 4:25 PM ET
Reuters
By Carey Gillam

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - U.S. abortion-rights defenders and opponents are preparing for battle as South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds considers whether to sign a state abortion ban that advocates hope will lead to a national Supreme Court showdown.

The Republican governor has until March 15 to sign or veto a bill passed by the state legislature on February 24 which would ban abortions in all circumstances. Amid wide expectations he will sign it, abortion-rights supporters are preparing lawsuits and warning legislators of repercussions come mid-term elections in November.

"There are consequences to this type of absolutely outrageous legislation," said NARAL Pro-Choice America president Nancy Keenan.

Abortion opponents agreed that the South Dakota bill could have a broad impact, but said it would favor their effort.

"We think it is very significant," said American Life League vice president Jim Sedlak. "We celebrate the fact that a state has put forth legislation that has no exception. We believe when it gets to the Supreme Court... the court could use (the law) to declare personhood for the unborn baby in the womb."

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision established a woman's right to abortion, but activists on both sides of the issue believe the court may restrict abortion rights following President George W. Bush's two appointments.

The South Dakota legislation would ban abortion in all cases and at all stages of pregnancy, even within the first few weeks. Doctors who perform an abortion could be punished with a $5,000 fine and five years in prison.

In cases where a woman's life is in jeopardy, doctors who take medical action to try to save the pregnant woman must also "make reasonable medical effort" to save the life of the fetus under the law. If the fetus suffers "accidental or unintentional injury or death" the law states it will not be considered a violation.

The bill's passage follows a report by the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion that concluded that "life begins at the time of conception...including the fact that each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization."

It is that language, coupled with the abortion ban, that abortion opponents say could help overturn the Roe vs. Wade decision.

Planned Parenthood, NARAL and other groups pledged to fight the law in the courts and at the ballot box. "You are going to see a backlash to keep them from overstepping both freedom and privacy in this country," Keenan said.

Other states are also moving to pass sweeping anti-abortion laws, including Mississippi, which on Thursday passed a bill that would ban all abortions except when the life of the mother is in jeopardy or in cases of rape and incest. Republican Gov. Haley Barbour has indicated he probably will sign the bill.

    Battle brews as S. Dakota abortion law nears, R, 3.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-03-03T212500Z_01_N03232468_RTRUKOC_0_US-ABORTION.xml

Albany Is Split Over a Plan to Pick Judges

February 28, 2006
The New York Times
By JENNIFER MEDINA

ALBANY, Feb. 27 — An old saying being repeated in some legal circles these days warns that "judicial reform is no sport for the short-winded or for lawyers who are afraid of temporary defeat."

Few people would accuse legislators in Albany of being short-winded, but as they begin to debate how to change the way judges are selected, their ideas vary widely across political and ideological lines.

The issue gained new immediacy after a federal court in Brooklyn found last month that the current system of picking State Supreme Court justices was unconstitutional because party bosses wield far too much power in deciding who gets to run in general elections. That forced the Legislature to grapple with replacing the current system.

But finding a fair way to select judges, who are among the most powerful but least known of elected officials, is anything but easy. Calls for more democratic judicial elections are countered by concerns that big-money politics could corrupt the system. Calls for judicial appointments are countered by concerns that cronyism could taint the bench.

The Republican-controlled State Senate joined the battle last week, passing legislation that would require judicial candidates to run in direct primaries, in the same way that other elected officials run for office. But Democrats who control the State Assembly say such a system would force candidates into expensive races — either favoring wealthy candidates or forcing judges to raise money from contributors — and say they are unlikely to support the legislation unless the campaigns are publicly financed.

The standoff between the two houses, combined with an appeal of the court ruling by party leaders, has some court-reform advocates worried that the lawmakers will miss a chance to radically change the court system before this year's elections, when 25 seats on the bench come up. More than half of the races will include incumbents seeking re-election.

"We don't want to see them rush to reform the system with what amounts to tinkering," said Jeremy M. Creelan, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, which filed the federal lawsuit. "Both parties have a strong interest in protecting patronage. The true test is not whether there is a bill. The question is whether there is a movement for real reform."

The ruling, by Judge John Gleeson, called for the State Board of Elections and the Republican and Democratic Parties to immediately halt the nominating conventions. Until the Legislature approves a new system, the court ruled that judges must be picked through direct primaries.

"This may be a case where the cure is worse than disease," said Assemblywoman Helene E. Weinstein, a Democrat from Brooklyn and the chairwoman of the Judiciary Committee. "We are potentially talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for a race, so that party insiders would just be traded for big-money guys."

The debate of how to change judicial elections comes after recent scandals rocked the judiciary. A Brooklyn judge who was arrested on corruption charges said the going rate for a Democratic nomination was about $50,000. Last year, Clarence Norman Jr., a former Assemblyman and chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, was convicted on charges that originated with an inquiry into his role in judicial nominations.

Once elected, Supreme Court justices serve for 14 years. Such a long term should require judges to campaign directly to voters, said John A. DeFrancisco, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the sponsor of the legislation calling for primaries.

Many upstate judicial districts include several counties, so candidates would likely have to campaign in more than one media market.

The Assembly has passed legislation calling for publicly financed campaigns in the past, but the Senate has opposed such a measure.

Some officials also worry that a primary would put sitting judges at an unfair disadvantage. Under the current system, judges cannot begin fund-raising until nine months before the elections.

An ideal system would set up publicly financed direct primaries, said Rachel Leon, the executive director of Common Cause New York, an advocacy group that was one of the plaintiffs in the federal suit.

But there is little to suggest that the Senate and Assembly would reach such a compromise.

Earlier this month, a commission appointed by the state's chief judge, Judith S. Kaye, released the last of several reports recommending ways to change the judicial selection process. Prof. John D. Feerick, a former dean of Fordham University School of Law, who led the commission, said its research showed that primaries would do little to improve public confidence in judges. The report recommended changing the current judicial nominating conventions, including simplifying the way delegates are selected and reducing the number of signatures required by nominees.

"There was no enthusiasm for a primary without public financing and there is no political reality for a vast public financing system," Professor Feerick said.

Some advocates for reform, like the Fund for Modern Courts, have called for merit selection of all judges, which could rely on recommendations from a panel of lawyers and political appointees from both major political parties. But both Ms. Weinstein and Mr. DeFrancisco are opposed to such a system, which would take years to create.

Still, Professor Feerick said, the Legislature should now begin to consider major overhauls. "It raises the question," he said. "If we were starting our democracy over again, should we have some whole other system of selecting judges?"

    Albany Is Split Over a Plan to Pick Judges, NYT, 28.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/nyregion/28judges.html

Anti-Darwin Bill Fails in Utah

February 28, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

In a defeat for critics of Darwin, the Utah House of Representatives on Monday voted down a bill intended to challenge the theory of evolution in high school science classes.

The bill had been viewed nationally, by people on each side of the science education debate, as an important proposal because Utah is such a conservative state, with a Legislature dominated by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But the bill died on a 46-to-28 vote in the Republican-controlled House after being amended by the majority whip, Stephen H. Urquhart, a Mormon who said he thought God did not have an argument with science. The amendment stripped out most of the bill's language, leaving only that the state board of education "shall establish curriculum requirements relating to scientific instruction."

Legislative officials said the bill was not likely to be revived before the scheduled adjournment of the Legislature on Wednesday. The Origins of Life bill, in its initial form, would have required teachers to issue a disclaimer to their students saying that not all scientists agree about evolution and the origin of species. It did not mention any alternative theory to Darwinism, but was viewed by some supporters and opponents as part of the drive to encourage the teaching of intelligent design, which says that life is too complicated to have evolved without an architect.

Some Mormon legislators opposed the bill because they agreed with Mr. Urquhart that science and religion should remain separate, others because they thought intelligent design was not in keeping with traditional Mormon belief.

Casey Luskin, a spokesman for the Discovery Institute, a research group based in Seattle that has promoted the ideas of intelligent design, called the vote "a loss for scientific education," but said it was a purely local Utah matter.

A spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Joe Conn, said Utah's vote would resonate.

"If the creationists can't win in a state as conservative as Utah, they've got an uphill battle," Mr. Conn said.

    Anti-Darwin Bill Fails in Utah, NYT, 28.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/national/28utah.html

Abortion measure could mean big legal battle

Sun Feb 26, 2006 8:51 AM ET
Reuters
By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Restrictions on abortion that would be the most severe since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the practice 33 years ago are likely to turn South Dakota into an expensive legal battleground should they become law.

Legislation on Republican Gov. Mike Rounds' desk would ban abortion in virtually all cases, punishing doctors who perform one with a $5,000 fine and five years in prison, and directly challenging what is currently the law of the land.

The measure would ban abortion if a woman was pregnant as a result of rape or incest, or if giving birth would damage the health of the mother. It would allow an abortion to save a woman's life.

Rounds indicated he would sign the proposal into law after scrutinizing it. He vetoed a similar provision two years ago on a technicality, although he favored it on merit.

"If the bill is correctly written, then I will seriously consider signing the bill. It would be a direct frontal assault on Roe vs. Wade," the Republican governor said on ABC News' "Good Morning America" on Saturday.

Even before he acts, there is money on the table. An anonymous donor has pledged $1 million to help the state fight the inevitable legal battle for the measure, backers of the provision say. Abortion foes also are urging those in their camp to mail in donations of $10 each to Rounds for the same purpose.

Those who oppose restrictions on abortion are drumming up support and money to challenge the law.

The proposal comes from a grass-roots state-by-state campaign by abortion rights opponents to find a vehicle by which to challenge the high court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. They believe an increasingly conservative court will be more disposed to dismantling the earlier decision should something like the South Dakota measure ever reach the justices.

South Dakota, which with 770,000 people is the 46th-largest state in terms of population, finds itself the center of the debate partly because of a calendar quirk, those on both sides of the issue say.

The Legislature, controlled by Republicans by wide margins in both houses, only meets in January, February and early March -- unlike some states where the sessions go all year.

"If they want to get something done, they have to get it done fast," said Troy Newman, president of Kansas-based Operation Rescue, which opposes abortions.

Beyond that, he said, the South Dakota lawmakers were "some of the most courageous and brave pioneers in the pro-life movement."

'MOMENTUM'

Newman said "this is the beginning of a momentum that is sweeping across the country" and one that picked up steam after President George W. Bush's appointment of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court added to its perceived conservative tilt.

"The pro-life community in South Dakota is very strong," said Jim Sedlak, vice president of the Virginia-based American Life League, who called the state "fertile ground" for a test case.

Kate Looby, director of Planned Parenthood in South Dakota, said the short legislative session was a factor but in general "the South Dakota legislative body is far more conservative than the average citizen of South Dakota, particularly on issues like abortion."

In the 2004 presidential election, South Dakota backed Bush over John Kerry 59 percent to 38 percent -- a far wider margin than the 50 percent to 48 percent difference by which Bush won nationally.

Looby said her group was prepared to challenge the bill if Rounds signed it, although a decision on whether to start in state or federal court had not been reached.

Planned Parenthood operates the sole clinic in South Dakota that provides abortions. About 800 are performed there each year by doctors from neighboring Minnesota, according to Looby.

Two years ago, Rounds vetoed a similar bill, saying it would wipe out existing restrictions on abortion while it was fought in the courts. A rewritten bill lost narrowly in the state Senate at that time.

Legislatures in Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Indiana all have measures before them that would heavily restrict abortions.

    Abortion measure could mean big legal battle, R, 26.2.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-02-26T135139Z_01_N24329444_RTRUKOC_0_US-RIGHTS-ABORTION.xml

South Dakota's Governor Says He Favors Abortion Ban Bill

February 25, 2006
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

Gov. Mike Rounds said yesterday that he was inclined to sign a bill that would ban nearly all abortions in South Dakota, the broadest measure to outlaw abortion anywhere in the country.

"I've indicated I'm pro-life, and I do believe abortion is wrong and that we should do everything we can to save lives," Governor Rounds, a Republican, said in a news conference from the Capitol in Pierre, where the measure that would make performing an abortion a felony passed the state House and Senate this week. "If this bill accomplishes that, then I am inclined to sign the bill into law."

Mr. Rounds said he believed that a more gradual approach, with measures like parental and spousal notification laws and waiting periods, would probably be more successful at preventing abortions. But he said that he also understood that there were others in the "pro-life camp" who believe that a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, was the wisest strategy.

"Many people will never believe that this will not work unless it is tried," he said.

If the governor signs the bill in the coming 15 days, it will be scheduled to take effect on July 1. But leaders at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which operates the only abortion clinic in the state, serving about 800 women a year, have pledged to file suit immediately. They said they would seek an injunction to block the law from coming into effect until the court battle, which could last years, is over.

Some opponents of abortion rights praised the governor and pointed to South Dakota as a pioneer in a crucial battle; it is the first state in at least 14 years to pass such a blanket ban. Abortion rights advocates said they were disappointed though not surprised by Mr. Rounds's indication of support for the measure, which allows exceptions only for cases in which a pregnant woman's life is in jeopardy.

"Part of the antichoice movement wanted this always to be below the radar screen, to basically eviscerate and piece by piece erode the protections of Roe," said Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America. "Now you have a political climate where people feel emboldened."

Two years ago, the South Dakota House and Senate passed a similar abortion prohibition. Mr. Rounds issued a "style-and-form" veto, sending that bill back to the Legislature for what he considered a technical flaw. The language of the ban, he said, could have led a court to block all other state restrictions on abortion while South Dakota fought the larger issue in court. When the governor sent a rewritten bill back in 2004, though, the Senate narrowly rejected it.

This time, Mr. Rounds said he had been told by the bill's sponsors that no such flaw existed. During his news conference, he said that he and his aides must now study the wording of the bill and be certain of that, before he made a final decision.

    South Dakota's Governor Says He Favors Abortion Ban Bill, NYT, 25.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/25/national/25abortion.html

S. Dakota approves bill to restrict abortions

Fri Feb 24, 2006 5:52 PM ET
Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The South Dakota Legislature on Friday approved a bill that would ban almost all abortions in a move that could set up a challenge to the national abortion standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade ruling.

The legislation, which calls for $5,000 fines and five-year prison sentences for doctors who carry out abortions, now goes to Republican Gov. Mike Rounds, who has said he is inclined to sign it.

Backers and opponents of the bill have said it is the most restrictive measure on abortion to pass a state legislature since the Supreme Court legalized abortion with the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973.

Supporters hope the conflict it sets up with Roe vs. Wade will provide a vehicle to bring the issue before the Supreme Court, whose newly appointed conservative members, they hope, will be more disposed dismantle the 1973 decision.

The proposed law concludes that life begins at conception based on medical advances in the past three decades. It would ban abortions in almost all cases, including pregnancies that endanger the mother or that resulted from incest or rape. It makes an exception in cases that involve saving the mother's life.

Both the state House and Senate previously passed the bill but it did not take final form until the House agreed to a minor language change.

Rounds indicated he would sign the measure if the fine print stood up to scrutiny, as the bill's sponsors have told him it would. He vetoed a similar measure two years ago not because of its intent but because of a technicality.

The South Dakota law is part of a grass-roots, state-by-state effort to challenge abortion. Legislatures in Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Indiana also have measures before them that would heavily restrict abortions.

It could take years for a challenge based on the South Dakota law or some other one to reach the high court.

    S. Dakota approves bill to restrict abortions, R, 24.2.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-02-24T225028Z_01_N24329444_RTRUKOC_0_US-RIGHTS-ABORTION.xml

South Dakota passes abortion ban

Wed Feb 22, 2006 10:05 PM ET
Reuters

SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota (Reuters) - South Dakota became the first U.S. state to pass a law banning abortion in virtually all cases, with the intention of forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider its 1973 decision legalizing the procedure.

The law, which would punish doctors who perform the operation with a five-year prison term and a $5,000 fine, awaits the signature of Republican Gov. Michael Rounds and people on both sides of the issue say he is unlikely to veto it.

"My understanding is we are the first state to truly defy Roe v. Wade," the 1973 high court ruling that granted a constitutional right to abortion, said Kate Looby of Planned Parenthood's South Dakota chapter.

State legislatures in Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky also have introduced similar measures this year, but South Dakota's legislative calendar means its law is likely to be enacted first.

"We hope (Rounds) recognizes this for what it is: a political tool and not about the health and safety of the women of South Dakota," Looby said.

"If he chooses to sign it, we will be filing a lawsuit in short order to block it," she said after attending the afternoon debate at the state capital in Pierre.

Proponents have said the law was designed for just such a court challenge.

The timing is right, supporters say, given the recent appointments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito to the high court. The two conservatives could pave the way to a decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

The high court said on Tuesday it will rule on whether the federal government can ban some abortion procedures, a case that could reveal whether the court reshaped by President George W. Bush will restrict abortion rights.

In 1992, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the right to abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the last direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.

The South Dakota law concludes that life begins at conception based on medical advances over the past three decades.

Proposed amendments to the law to create exceptions to specifically protect the health of the mother, or in cases of rape or incest, were voted down. Also defeated was an amendment to put the proposal in the hands of voters.

The bill as written does make an exception if the fetus dies during a doctor's attempt to save the mother's life.

Planned Parenthood operates the sole clinic in South Dakota where roughly 800 abortions are performed each year by doctors from neighboring Minnesota, Looby said.

Two years ago, Rounds vetoed a similar bill, saying it would wipe out existing restrictions on abortion while it was fought in the courts. A rewritten bill lost narrowly in the state Senate.

Some legislators opposed to abortion rights questioned whether it was premature to challenge Roe v. Wade, and said litigation would prove expensive for the sparsely populated state. An anonymous donor has offered $1 million to the state to defray the costs of litigation.

    South Dakota passes abortion ban, R, 23.2.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-02-23T030541Z_01_N22531791_RTRUKOC_0_US-RIGHTS-ABORTION.xml

A State Ban

South Dakota Lawmakers Set to Vote on a Bill Banning Nearly All Abortions

February 22, 2006
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

PIERRE, S.D., Feb. 21 — Lawmakers here are preparing to vote on a bill that would outlaw nearly all abortions in South Dakota, a measure that could become the most sweeping ban approved by any state in more than a decade, those on both sides of the abortion debate say.

If the bill passes a narrowly divided Senate in a vote expected on Wednesday, and is signed by Gov. Michael Rounds, a Republican who opposes abortion, advocates of abortion rights have pledged to challenge it in court immediately — and that is precisely what the bill's supporters have in mind.

Optimistic about the recent changes on the United States Supreme Court, some abortion opponents say they have new hope that a court fight over a ban here could lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal around the country.

"I'm convinced that the timing is right for this," said State Representative Roger Hunt, a Republican who has sponsored the bill, noting the appointments of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the court.

"The strong possibility of a third appointee sometime soon makes this all very real and very viable," Mr. Hunt added, a reference to conjecture that Justice John Paul Stevens, 85, might soon retire. "I think it will all culminate at the right time."

Supporters of the bill, which has already passed the House and a Senate committee, said they sensed encouraging signs from the Supreme Court, including Tuesday's announcement that the justices will hear a challenge to a federal law prohibiting one abortion procedure.

Not since before 1992, when the Supreme Court reaffirmed a core right to abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, has a state legislature adopted a direct challenge to Roe, said Eve C. Gartner, a senior staff lawyer for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Since 2005, bans similar to the bill have been proposed in at least five states, but those on both sides of the abortion debate say this effort has the strongest chance of succeeding. That possibility has brought a flurry of forces from both sides to this small state capital in recent days.

"While they are making political maneuvers, we're trying to fight for the women of South Dakota," said Kate Looby, the state director of Planned Parenthood in South Dakota.

Ms. Looby said she had spent hundreds of hours meeting with lawmakers and others as a vote drew near. "I hate to envision the day when the women of South Dakota are treated differently than the women elsewhere when it comes to safe and legal health care," she said.

The timing of all of this, though, has divided abortion opponents. Some, who argue that a failed Supreme Court challenge now may damage their efforts, have opposed the ban, placing them, somewhat awkwardly, on the same side as abortion rights advocates.

"I don't think it's the most prudent thing to do at this time," said Daniel McConchie, vice president for Americans United for Life, a group that opposes abortion rights. "It's really a long-shot type of situation."

For the moment, Mr. McConchie said he believed that those who oppose abortion should focus on measures to restrict and reduce abortions. Last year, state legislatures adopted more than 50 such restrictions — parental notification rules, waiting periods before abortions, requirements for clinics — and scores are pending again this year, abortion rights advocates said.

Suggestions by Mr. Hunt and others that Justice Stevens might also soon step down, creating an appointment that could shift the balance of the court, were mere speculation, Mr. McConchie said.

State Senator Brock L. Greenfield, a Clark Republican who is also director of the South Dakota Right to Life chapter, said he, too, was concerned about the bill.

"Is this the right time to proceed with legislation when we still have five justices who have suggested they will vote to uphold Roe?" Mr. Greenfield asked.

Nonetheless, Mr. Greenfield and Senator Jay Duenwald, a Hoven Republican who said he was a member of the board of the National Right to Life Committee, said they each had decided, despite their reservations, to support the ban when it came to a vote.

The proposed legislation, which states that "life begins at the time of conception," would prohibit abortion except in cases where the pregnant woman's life was at risk. Felony charges could be placed against doctors, but not against those seeking abortions, the measure says.

Some states have similarly broad abortion bans, but they either pre-date Roe or are "trigger laws," which would only take effect if Roe were overturned.

In South Dakota, advocates on both sides of the ban, which passed the House earlier this month on a 47-to-22 vote, said they were uncertain Tuesday about its fate in the Senate, which has 25 Republicans and 10 Democrats. Most observers were willing only to predict a close margin and probably some surprises.

In 2004, the House and Senate here passed a similar abortion prohibition. That year, though, Governor Rounds issued a "style-and-form" veto, sending the bill back to the Legislature for what he said was a technical problem. As written, he said, the law might have led a court to prohibit the state's restrictions on abortion as they awaited a decision on the larger question. When the governor sent a reworded bill back, the Senate defeated it, 18 to 17.

On Tuesday, Mr. Rounds declined to say in an interview whether he would sign the bill. He never answers such questions until he sees a finished bill, he said.

Personally, he said, he believes that continuing to press for more restrictions may be more successful and "save more lives" than instigating a "full frontal attack on Roe."

But Mr. Rounds added that blocking a full ban seemed likely to create a harmful rift with the forces who oppose abortion rights. Both approaches — a ban here and more rules to restrict abortions — might work all at once, he said. That way, he said, "I think we bring perhaps a united front among the pro-life groups."

In this state of some 770,000 people, about 800 abortions are performed each year, nearly all at one clinic in Sioux Falls. Several years ago, the political atmosphere in South Dakota became such that no local doctors felt comfortable performing abortions, Ms. Looby said, so doctors are now flown in from Minnesota.

"When you see a state in the heartland willing to make these kinds of really drastic moves, it doesn't bode well," she said.

Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.

    South Dakota Lawmakers Set to Vote on a Bill Banning Nearly All Abortions, NYT, 22.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/national/22dakota.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

States Curbing Right to Seize Private Homes

February 21, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

In a rare display of unanimity that cuts across partisan and geographic lines, lawmakers in virtually every statehouse across the country are advancing bills and constitutional amendments to limit use of the government's power of eminent domain to seize private property for economic development purposes.

The measures are in direct response to the United States Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision last June in a landmark property rights case from Connecticut, upholding the authority of the City of New London to condemn homes in an aging neighborhood to make way for a private development of offices, condominiums and a hotel. It was a decision that one justice, who had written for the majority, later all but apologized for.

The reaction from the states was swift and heated. Within weeks of the court's decision, Texas, Alabama and Delaware passed bills by overwhelming bipartisan margins limiting the right of local governments to seize property and turn it over to private developers. Since then, lawmakers in three dozen other states have proposed similar restrictions and more are on the way, according to experts who track the issue.

The National League of Cities, which supports the use of eminent domain as what it calls a necessary tool of urban development, has identified the issue as the most critical facing local governments this year. The league has called upon mayors and other local officials to lobby Congress and state legislators to try to stop the avalanche of bills to limit the power of government to take private property for presumed public good.

The issue is not whether governments can condemn private property to build a public amenity like a road, a school or a sewage treatment plant. That power is explicit in the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, provided that "just compensation" is paid. The conflict arises over government actions to seize private homes or businesses as part of a redevelopment project that at least partly benefits a private party like a retail store, an apartment complex or a football stadium.

"It's open season on eminent domain," said Larry Morandi, a land-use specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "Bills are being pushed by Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and they're passing by huge margins."

Seldom has a Supreme Court decision sparked such an immediate legislative reaction, and one that scrambles the usual partisan lines. Condemnation of the ruling came from black lawmakers representing distressed urban districts, from suburbanites and from Western property-rights absolutists who rarely see eye to eye on anything. Lawmakers from Maine to California have introduced dozens of bills in reaction to the ruling, most of them saying that government should never seize private homes or businesses solely to benefit a private developer, no matter what compensation is paid.

The Supreme Court seemed to invite such a response in its narrowly written ruling in the case, Kelo v. City of New London. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, expressed sympathy for the displaced homeowners and said that the "necessity and wisdom" of the use of eminent domain were issues of legitimate debate. And, he added, "We emphasize that nothing in our opinion precludes any state from placing further restrictions on its exercise of the takings power."

Two months after the ruling, addressing a bar association meeting, Justice Stevens called it "unwise" and said he would have opposed it had he been a legislator and not a federal judge bound by precedent.

Plenty of legislators took the hint.

The issue was one of the first raised when Connecticut lawmakers returned to session early this month. There are bills pending in the Legislature to impose new restrictions on the use of eminent domain by local governments and to assure that displaced businesses and homeowners receive fair compensation.

(The New London project is essentially delayed, even after the Supreme Court go-ahead, because of contractual disputes and an unwillingness to forcibly remove the homeowners who sued to save their properties.)

In the New Jersey Legislature, Senator Nia H. Gill, a Democrat from Montclair who is chairwoman of the Commerce Committee, proposed a bill to outlaw the use of eminent domain to condemn residential property that is not completely run down to make room for a redevelopment project. The bill, which is pending, would require public hearings before any taking of private property to benefit a private development project.

State Senator John A. DeFrancisco of New York has proposed a measure similar to one in several other states that would remove the right to exercise condemnation power from unelected bodies like an urban redevelopment authority or an industrial development agency. Mr. DeFrancisco, a Republican from Syracuse, cited the case of a development agency in his hometown that has used its power to take valuable leases from existing mall tenants to allow a private developer to expand.

Texas was one of the first states to act after the Kelo ruling, taking up the issue in a special legislative session that was supposed to focus solely on education. Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, signed a bill on Sept. 1 that prohibits use of eminent domain to benefit a private party, with certain exceptions. Among those exceptions is the condemnation of homes to make way for a new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys.

The sponsor of the Texas measure, Senator Kyle Janek, Republican of Houston, said the state was weighing a constitutional amendment to cement the eminent domain restrictions, but that process can take years. He sponsored his bill, he said, because "We wanted something in place quickly that the governor could sign and would take immediate effect."

The bill could affect a huge highway project now in the planning stages known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private toll road and rail project that would require the taking of large swaths of privately owned land.

There are six proposed laws and five constitutional amendments before the California Legislature, as well as several proposed citizen initiatives to curb the eminent domain power. The bills are supported by, among others, the California Farm Bureau Federation, which fears that the Kelo ruling will empower cities to gobble up more farmland to build subdivisions and strip malls.

The lobbyist for California's local economic development agencies said the ruling and the resultant legislation had been a nightmare.

"My life hasn't been the same since June 23, 2005," said the lobbyist, John F. Shirey, executive director of the California Redevelopment Association, referring to the date the Supreme Court handed down the ruling. The group represents 350 local redevelopment authorities around California and believes such agencies need the eminent domain power to rebuild distressed cities.

"I've had to spend practically full time dealing with this issue and trying to get people to understand the Supreme Court decision didn't change anything in California law," Mr. Shirey said.

Ohio's legislature, acting swiftly and unanimously after the Kelo decision, declared a moratorium on all government takings until the end of 2006. The state has created a 25-member bipartisan panel to study the issue and make recommendations for changes, if necessary, in Ohio's eminent domain statutes. The sponsor of the moratorium measure, Senator Timothy J. Grendell, a Republican lawyer who specializes in property rights cases, noted that the Ohio Supreme Court was now weighing a potentially critical eminent domain case involving the city of Norwood, a suburb of Cincinnati.

In that case, city officials have approved a plan to condemn about 60 private homes to make way for an upscale office and retail complex. The homeowners are represented by lawyers from the Institute of Justice, a public interest law firm that litigates against what it calls eminent domain abuse and that represented the plaintiffs in the New London case.

Scott G. Bullock of the Institute for Justice described the Norwood case as an important test of property rights law in the post-Kelo era, but would not predict how the Ohio court would rule. He said he hoped to take another case before the Supreme Court in the next few years to determine whether the courts can curb eminent domain power further, even as state legislatures act on their own.

Mr. Bullock said he expected municipal officials and redevelopment authorities to try to fight the wave of eminent domain legislation by offering cosmetic changes to existing law, for example by requiring an extra hearing or an economic impact statement. But he said that major changes were coming in how the takings power of government is used.

"Our opposition to eminent domain is not across the board," he said. "It has an important but limited role in government planning and the building of roads, parks and public buildings. What we oppose is eminent domain abuse for private development, and we are encouraging legislators to curtail it."

More neutral observers expressed concern that state officials, in their zeal to protect homeowners and small businesses, would handcuff local governments that are trying to revitalize dying cities and fill in blighted areas with projects that produce tax revenues and jobs.

"It's fair to say that many states are on the verge of seriously overreacting to the Kelo decision," said John D. Echeverria, executive director of the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute and an authority on land-use policy. "The danger is that some legislators are going to attempt to destroy what is a significant and sometimes painful but essential government power. The extremist position is a prescription for economic decline for many metropolitan areas around the county."

    States Curbing Right to Seize Private Homes, NYT, 21.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/national/21domain.html?hp&ex=1140498000&en=8e0bbbd8c507afab&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Drives to ban gay adoption heat up in 16 states

Posted 2/20/2006 8:20 PM Updated 2/20/2006 11:08 PM
USA TODAY
By Andrea Stone

Efforts to ban gays and lesbians from adopting children are emerging across the USA as a second front in the culture wars that began during the 2004 elections over same-sex marriage.

Steps to pass laws or secure November ballot initiatives are underway in at least 16 states, adoption, gay rights and conservative groups say. Some — such as Ohio, Georgia and Kentucky — approved constitutional amendments in 2004 banning gay marriage. (Related story: Both sides cite concern for children)

"Now that we've defined what marriage is, we need to take that further and say children deserve to be in that relationship," says Greg Quinlan of Ohio's Pro-Family Network, a conservative Christian group.

Florida has banned all gays and lesbians from adopting since 1977, although they can be foster parents. State court challenges and a campaign by entertainer Rosie O'Donnell to overturn the law have failed. A pending bill would allow judges to grant exceptions.

Mississippi bans adoption by gay couples, but gay singles can adopt. Utah prohibits all unmarried couples from adoption.

Kent Markus of the National Center for Adoption Law & Policy in Ohio says he hasn't seen this much activity in 15 years as a researcher.

Richard Carlson, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston, says adoption laws based on judgments of morality offer "a weak argument" and will face legal challenges. He cites U.S. Supreme Court rulings striking down bans on interracial marriage and sodomy, which reflected prevailing views when enacted. The high court has not taken up a state ban on gay adoption. (Vote: What do you think about gay adoption?)

Religious groups and state courts are grappling with the issue. Roman Catholic bishops in Massachusetts are seeking an exemption from state anti-bias laws to allow the church to bar gays from adopting through its social service agencies. Meanwhile, a judge in Missouri ruled last week that the state could not deny a foster care license to a lesbian.

Fueling the political activity:

• Ballot victories. Social conservatives view family makeup as the next battleground after passing marriage amendments in 11 states in 2004. They welcomed a bill introduced this month in Ohio that would ban gays and lesbians from adopting or raising foster children. They vow to put it on the ballot if the bill fails.

Patrick Guerriero of Log Cabin Republicans, a gay political group opposed to marriage and adoption limits, calls the strategy the next step by conservatives.

• Election-year politics. Republicans battered by questions over ethics and Iraq "might well" use the adoption issue to deflect attention and draw out conservatives in close Senate and governor races in states such as Missouri and Ohio, says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, University of Southern California political scientist.

The aim is to replicate 2004, says Julie Brueggemann of the gay rights group PROMO: Personal Rights of Missourians. She says marriage initiatives mobilized conservative voters in 2004 and helped President Bush win in closely contested states such as Ohio. Republicans "see this as a get-out-the-vote tactic."

Republican pollster Whit Ayres is skeptical. Adoption, he says, "doesn't have the emotional power of the gay marriage issue because there is no such thing as the phrase 'the sanctity of adoption.' "

    Drives to ban gay adoption heat up in 16 states, UT, 20.2.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-20-gay-adoption_x.htm

Evolution Measure Splits State Legislators in Utah

February 5, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 3 — Faith's domain is evident everywhere at the Utah Legislature, where about 90 percent of the elected officials are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prayers are commonplace, and lawmakers speak of their relationship with God in ordinary conversation.

So it might be tempting to assume that legislation relating to the divisive national debate about the teaching of evolution in public schools would have a predictable outcome here.

Senate Bill 96 is proving that assumption wrong. The bill, which would require science teachers to offer a disclaimer when introducing lessons on evolution — namely, that not all scientists agree on the origins of life — has deeply divided lawmakers. Some leaders in both parties have announced their opposition to the bill, and most lawmakers say that with less than a month left in the legislative session, its fate remains a tossup.

One of the reasons why is State Representative Stephen H. Urquhart, a Republican from southern Utah whose job as majority whip is to line up votes in his party. Mr. Urquhart announced last week that he would vote against the bill.

"I don't think God has an argument with science," said Mr. Urquhart, who was a biology major in college and now practices law.

Mr. Urquhart says he objects to the bill in part because it raises questions about the validity of evolution, and in part because the measure threatens traditional religious belief by blurring the lines between faith and science.

Supporters of the bill, which passed the Senate on a 16-to-12 vote one day before Mr. Urquhart's announcement, still predict that it will pass in the House. They say the bill is not about religion, but science. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., a Republican and former Mormon missionary, has not said what he will do if the bill reaches his desk.

"I don't have to talk about religion — it's of no meaning and it's not part of this discussion," said State Representative James A. Ferrin, a Republican and the sponsor of the bill in the House. "It's not about belief, it's about not overstepping what we know."

Opponents of the bill, including State Senator Peter C. Knudson, the Republican majority leader, openly laugh at talk like that.

"Of course it's about religion," Mr. Knudson said.

He and other lawmakers say that part of the debate here is in fact over what kind of religion would be buttressed by the legislation. Although the Origins of Life bill, as it is formally known, does not mention an alternative theory to evolution, some legislators say they think that voting yes could be tantamount to supporting intelligent design, which posits an undefined intelligence lurking behind the miracles of life and which differs greatly from the Mormon creation story.

"There are people who say, 'That's not my religion,' or that it will only confuse our children," said State Representative Brad King, a Democrat and the minority whip in the House, who also plans to vote against the bill. "For me, it's sort of that way," added Mr. King, whose father, a Mormon bishop, taught evolution at the College of Eastern Utah.

Others say that Mormonism, with its emphasis that all beings can progress toward higher planes of existence, before and after death, has an almost built-in receptivity toward evolutionary thought that other religions might lack. Still others oppose the state's inserting itself in matters of curriculum, which are mostly under the control of local school districts.

Advocacy groups who follow the battle over the teaching of evolution nationally say that what happens here could be important far beyond state borders.

"It's being watched very closely because of the very conservative nature of the state," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, based in Washington. "If the legislation is rejected in Utah, it would be a very strong signal that the issue should be avoided elsewhere."

Missouri's legislature is considering a bill requiring "critical analysis" in teaching evolution. An Indiana lawmaker has called evolution a type of religion and proposed a bill banning textbooks that contain "fraudulent information."

Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky, a Republican, pointed out in his State of the State address earlier this month that alternative explanations for the origins of species can already be taught in Kentucky schools. A spokesman for Mr. Fletcher said he was not advocating alternatives to evolution, but merely pointing out the options.

The Utah bill's main sponsor, State Senator D. Chris Buttars, a Republican from the Salt Lake City suburbs, said he was not surprised by the debate it had inspired. He said ordinary voters were deeply concerned about the teaching of evolution.

"I got tired of people calling me and saying, 'Why is my kid coming home from high school and saying his biology teacher told him he evolved from a chimpanzee?' " Mr. Buttars said.

Evolutionary theory does not say that humans evolved from chimpanzees or from any existing species, but rather that common ancestors gave rise to multiple species and that natural selection — in which the creatures best adapted to an environment pass their genes to the next generation — was the means by which divergence occurred over time. All modern biology is based on the theory, and within the scientific community, at least, there is no controversy about it.

Even so, one important supporter of the bill, State Representative Margaret Dayton, a Republican and chairwoman of the House Education Committee, said her convictions had been underlined in recent days. "A number of scientists have been in touch with me, and I can verify that not all scientists agree," Ms. Dayton said.

Utah's predominant faith has also made its stance less predictable on other issues touching on religion in school — notably school prayer. Enthusiasm for the idea has been muted or ambivalent, said Kirk Jowers, a professor of political science and director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. Professor Jowers pointed to the awareness among Mormons of their religion's minority status in the nation and world.

"It was kind of a realization that if you push to have prayer in school, then outside of Utah, the prayer would not typically be a Mormon's prayer, so is that road you want go down?" Professor Jowers said.

Katie Kelley contributed reporting from Denver for this article.

    Evolution Measure Splits State Legislators in Utah, NYT, 5.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/national/05evolution.html

N.A.A.C.P. Is Bush Ally in Connecticut School Case

February 1, 2006
The New York Times
By AVI SALZMAN

NEW HAVEN, Jan. 31 — N.A.A.C.P. officials said on Tuesday that they were trying to intervene in a lawsuit over the No Child Left Behind Law on the side of the Bush administration and against the State of Connecticut because of a core principle: that states do not have the right to ignore federal legislation that aims to help minorities.

"The issue goes beyond the specifics of No Child Left Behind to potentially affect other federal statutes designed to protect civil rights," said Victor L. Goode, assistant general counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "One can't help but remember back in the Dixiecrat period when certain Southern states asserted that they were not required to comply with certain federal civil rights laws designed to protect people's rights."

The Connecticut State N.A.A.C.P. filed a motion on Monday to intervene in a lawsuit filed by the State of Connecticut against Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education. The state contends that the federal government came up about $50 million short in funding for education and testing required under No Child Left Behind, and that Connecticut should not be asked to spend its own money to comply with the law.

Connecticut especially objects to the United States Department of Education's repeated denials of its requests for waivers that would allow it to test students every other grade, instead of each grade, and to give modified tests to special education students and students learning basic English.

Federal officials contend that the state must test every year from third through eighth grade and that state officials were aware of that when they accepted federal money to create those tests.

On Tuesday, Judge Mark R. Kravitz heard arguments in the case in United States District Court in New Haven, and decided to give the state more time to hone its arguments about why its lawsuit should not be dismissed. The judge did not address the N.A.A.C.P.'s motions.

At the same time, N.A.A.C.P. representatives held a news conference outside the courthouse announcing the organization's decision to intervene. Scot X. Esdaile, the president of the Connecticut branches of the N.A.A.C.P., said the organization was aligning itself with the Bush administration "on this particular issue and only this particular issue."

Mr. Esdaile said he had received approval to intervene from the N.A.A.C.P.'s national leadership.

Connecticut consistently scores near the top on national assessments of student achievement, but it has been plagued for decades by gaps between minority and white students and poor and wealthy students.

Those discrepancies became fodder for a series of bitter exchanges between state and federal officials last year, with Ms. Spellings lashing out at the State of Connecticut for its failure to address the gaps.

"And you know, I think it's un-American, I would call it," she said in an interview broadcast on PBS in April, "for us to take the attitude that African-American children in Connecticut living in inner cities are not going to be able to compete, are not going to be prepared to compete in this world and are not going to be educated to high levels.

"That's the notion," she said, "the soft bigotry of low expectations, as the president calls it, that No Child Left Behind rejects."

The comment drew an angry response from Betty J. Sternberg, the state's education commissioner, who likened the "un-American" remark to a return to the McCarthy era.

At that time, Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's attorney general, began pressing to file suit against the federal government over the rules and the funding for No Child Left Behind, and in August, he received support from state officials. With the case still in limbo, Connecticut will begin testing students in March in every grade from third through eighth using state money to cover shortfalls, Dr. Sternberg said.

The N.A.A.C.P. said in its filing that "Connecticut is failing its most disempowered children," and included three minority students in the motion to intervene.

Civil rights lawyers are concerned about the precedent that a Connecticut victory would set.

"We would not want states or other entities to not enforce laws like the 1964 Civil Rights Act or the 1968 Civil Rights Act on some notion that they don't have enough money to enforce it," said Mr. Goode, the N.A.A.C.P. lawyer. "We don't want the door to be opened to this sort of thing."

    N.A.A.C.P. Is Bush Ally in Connecticut School Case, NYT, 1.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/nyregion/01connecticut.html

Trial Opens in Challenge to Law Over Teenage Sex

January 31, 2006
By JODI RUDOREN
The New York Times

WICHITA, Kan., Jan. 30 — A federal trial opened here Monday over whether a Kansas law prohibiting virtually all sexual activity by people under age 16 means health care professionals and educators must report such behavior to state authorities, which some say would stop many teenagers from seeking contraception or treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

The class-action lawsuit stems from a 2003 opinion by the Kansas attorney general, Phill Kline, a conservative Republican who has developed a national reputation for fighting abortion and whose pursuit of abortion clinic records is also being challenged in court.

Mr. Kline's interpretation of the law focused mainly on the reporting duty of abortion providers, arguing that any pregnant, unmarried minor had by definition been the victim of rape or abuse. But it included a broad mandate for reporting whenever "compelling evidence of sexual interaction is present."

Bonnie Scott Jones, a lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, which is representing the plaintiffs, said in her opening statement that Mr. Kline's "dragnet approach" to amassing information on under-age sex violated minors' privacy rights and the Constitution's equal protection clause, and that it "seriously endangers the health and well-being of adolescents."

"Sexual abuse is not synonymous with consensual sexual activity," Ms. Jones said to the judge deciding the case, J. Thomas Marten of Federal District Court. "Consensual sexual activity is not inherently injurious. It is a normal part of adolescent development."

Steve Alexander, an assistant attorney general defending the suit, said the Kansas statute meant that those younger than 16 could not consent to sex, and that those violating the law forfeited any privacy rights.

"Illegal sexual activity by minors can lead to S.T.D.'s, unwanted pregnancies, abortion, depression, mental illness," Mr. Alexander said. "To pretend otherwise is foolish." He said the case was in essence a challenge to the law barring consensual sex between young people of a similar age, which he called "a policy argument that plaintiffs would be better served making in the Legislature."

Kansas is one of 12 states where sex under a certain age — 16, 17 or 18 — is illegal regardless of the age difference between partners, according to a 2004 report prepared by the Lewin Group, a consulting firm, for the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Laws on reporting child sexual abuse also vary, but a third of states require reporting only when statutory rape involves a parent or guardian, the report found.

Dr. Robert W. Blum, a Johns Hopkins University professor and an expert in pediatrics and adolescent medicine, who was the plaintiffs' lead witness, testified Monday that only one state, California, had previously tried to require reporting of all under-age sex, and that it reversed course after a year in the early 1990's because the authorities were flooded with "irrelevant and obstructive" reports.

Among the plaintiffs' arguments is that blanket reporting of sexual activity would be futile because the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services has a policy against investigating cases of consensual teenage sex.

Pressed on cross-examination, Dr. Blum said he did consider all sex by children 12 or younger to be "problematic" and worthy of reporting, but he said, "That's distinctly different than a 14-, 15- or 16-year-old in a romantic relationship."

Nationally, studies suggest that about 30 percent of teenagers under 16 have had intercourse, and an additional 20 percent have experimented with oral sex or genital fondling.

A federal appeals court on Friday overturned a temporary injunction blocking enactment of Mr. Kline's ruling but provided a two-week window, approximately the expected length of the trial, before the reporting would be required.

Among the issues debated Monday was the very definition of sexual activity. Anal and vaginal intercourse and oral sex are mentioned in the law, as is "lewd fondling or touching" done with "the intent to arouse," which Ms. Jones said could cover even intense French kissing.

Mr. Kline, who is expected to testify Friday, declined to discuss the case. In an e-mail statement, he avoided the central controversy over consensual sex between teenagers of a similar age.

"Plaintiffs are arguing that the constitution does not allow the state to require people to report child rape," the statement said. "We differ. Prosecuting and investigating child rapists depends on such laws, and if the plaintiffs believe that adult-child sex should be legal they need to take that debate to the Legislature rather than initiate litigation."

Similarly, Mr. Kline said last year that prosecuting rapists was his goal in seeking access to the medical files of women and girls who had had late-term abortions, which led to a separate lawsuit awaiting a decision by the State Supreme Court.

Mr. Kline, elected in 2002, also serves as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association and has fought against abortion throughout his career. He filed a lawsuit, recently dismissed, to challenge the state's use of Medicaid funds for abortions, and he submitted a brief in a federal case arguing that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

Last year, Mr. Kline successfully lobbied the Legislature to require that abortion providers collect fetal tissue from patients younger than 14 and turn it over to law enforcement.

"He's certainly on a crusade to limit or eliminate abortion in Kansas," said Peter Brownlie, chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. "That's been a clear agenda for a long time." Mr. Brownlie said Mr. Kline had helped make Kansas a national battlefront in the abortion debate.

But the doctors, nurses, counselors and educators suing over Mr. Kline's interpretation of the reporting law say it goes far beyond abortion to include every teenager who requests birth control pills or H.I.V. testing, or who in a group therapy session even discusses "heavy petting" with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

"If they know what they tell me is reported, they simply won't talk," said Beth McGilley, a Wichita therapist who is among the plaintiffs, referring to both teenage clients and adults who often consult her about their children's sexual exploration.

"To me, it's violating what, quite essentially, therapy is couched in: confidentiality," Ms. McGilley said. "You have two 15-year-olds mashing in the back seat of the car — who's the criminal here? Do we really need Big Brother to decide whether or not that needs to be judiciously pursued?"

Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.

    Trial Opens in Challenge to Law Over Teenage Sex, NYT, 31.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/national/31sex.html

Albany's Oft-Skirted Rule on Gifts Is Just the Beginning, Filings Show

January 30, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER

ALBANY, Jan. 27 — One day last August, Richard Alteri, a lobbyist for the cable industry, took four people, including staff members from the State Senate, golfing at the Albany Country Club, and paid $61.25 a person, according to lobbying records. That same day, he paid for lunch at the club, spending $22.50 on each of them.

All told, the lobbyist spent $83.75 on each staff member, despite a state law that is supposed to limit gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers and staffers to $75. But apparently his gift was legal because until recently the state has interpreted the $75 limit to apply to each event — so a round of golf could be counted separately from the lunch served afterward at the same club.

Now the state is considering closing that loophole as it reacts to the furor over the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal in Washington. Even if it does, though, that may do little to stem the flow of largess from lobbyists to state officials. That is because the state's famously porous campaign finance laws allow special interest groups to contribute large amounts of money to candidates, and allow the candidates to then use their campaign accounts to pay for everything from meals to car payments to trips.

The State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican, used his campaign donations to pay for more than $10,000 in restaurant meals during the past six months, campaign finance filings show. He also used $8,000 in campaign donations to pay for a top Senate aide to accompany him on a 10-day trip in the fall to Venice, Florence and Rome during which Mr. Alteri, the cable industry lobbyist, acted as their guide.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, used his campaign donations to pay for trips to give speeches and attend conferences in Hawaii, Seattle, Puerto Rico and at the Mohegan Sun hotel in Connecticut during the past six months, records show.

Neither Mr. Bruno nor Mr. Silver have faced significant opposition at the ballot booth in years, and their next elections are nearly a year away. But both men, who control all legislation that is voted on in New York and must sign off on the state budget each year, continue to raise campaign money from lobbyists, businesses, unions and other special interests. And they have broad discretion in spending the donations.

Such behavior has become so common that Assemblyman Bob Reilly, a Democrat from just outside Albany, introduced a bill last year with the idea that campaign contributions should be spent only on campaigns. He said it had not exactly been embraced.

"A lobbyist cannot take me to dinner for $80," Mr. Reilly said, "but he can give me $3,000 that I put in my campaign coffers and then take people to dinner myself."

So far, proposals to tighten the gift limit have attracted more attention in Albany this year than proposals to tighten the campaign finance laws. Most of the activity to reform campaign finance so far this year has centered on the gift limit.

The state's Lobbying Commission recently moved to reinterpret the $75 gift limit as a limit of $75 per year, not per event. But some commissioners are divided over whether the new interpretation is binding; they are scheduled to vote on it in February.

Tracing gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers can be difficult, because while lobbyists are required to file itemized expenses with the state, they are not required to say whom they spend the money on. Four-figure "legislative dinners" are not uncommon in the filings of lobbyists, but the filings rarely say who, or even how many, attended. Other forms of entertainment crop up, too, as with a $450 entry the Empire State Restaurant and Tavern Association listed for a "concert" for lawmakers.

"If the question is, 'Are lobbyists and clients giving gifts to legislators?' the answer is unequivocally yes," said David M. Grandeau, executive director of the Lobbying Commission, who said it had been working to close loopholes in the law.

But the Legislature may take action on its own. Gov. George E. Pataki called for a total gift ban this year, as did Mr. Bruno. Several years ago, the State Senate imposed its own internal ban on senators' accepting meals from lobbyists, and Senate officials say they expect to pass a bill as early as this week banning gifts from lobbyists.

"It isn't a matter of legislators being for sale," Senator Bruno said recently. "I really don't think that is the question at all. The real question is perception. The perception is that when people who have a vested interest are wining or dining or entertaining legislators, that they're getting something for it. I don't believe that they do, but the perception is bad. So we just ought to stop it."

Mr. Silver, the Assembly speaker, has been noncommittal about his plans. But Charles Carrier, a spokesman for the speaker, said that Assembly members were considering different approaches to gifts. "The expectation is to put forward a proposal," he said.

The issue is already surfacing in the race for governor. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic front-runner, has long proposed a total ban on gifts from lobbyists. William F. Weld, the former Massachusetts governor who is running as a Republican, recently proposed limiting campaign spending, denying state contracts to campaign contributors and requiring that campaign donations be spent on campaigns.

Some lawmakers take an expansive view of what a campaign expense is.

Senator Bruno ran unopposed in his last election, but continues to be a prodigious fund-raiser. A review of his most recent filings shows that he spent $277,000 in the last six months, much of it on donations to candidates and political party committees; on meals around Albany and events at the Saratoga racetrack, which is in his district; and to pay for a staff member's trip with him to Italy.

Aides to Mr. Bruno say that he paid his own way for the trip. But his campaign filings show that he spent nearly $8,000 in donations so that John E. McArdle, his communications director, could accompany him. The campaign paid for meals, lodging at expensive hotels, camera supplies and even a tour of the Vatican.

Mr. McArdle said he went to Italy because Mr. Bruno was meeting with Italian officials. Also on the trip were Mr. Bruno's son Kenneth, who was then a lobbyist but has since started a law practice, and Mr. Alteri, the cable industry lobbyist.

Mr. Alteri said in an interview that he, not his industry, paid his way, and that he went because he knew Italy well and had offered to show Mr. Bruno around. "It's a trip that we had talked about for six or seven years," he said. "He is in his 70's and had never been to the old country."

In his last election, Mr. Silver, the Assembly speaker, won 94 percent of the vote. But he, too, continues to maintain a robust campaign account. A review of his spending shows that he spent $31,000 in the last six months.

He spent about $1,000 in campaign donations on a trip to Hawaii, where he addressed a meeting of the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, and also made donations while attending a meeting with lawmakers in Puerto Rico.

"In both cases, he was there because of the office that he holds," said Mr. Carrier, the spokesman. "But in neither case did he think it was appropriate to bill the state."

Some lawmakers use their campaign accounts to pay what appear to be personal expenses even after they leave office. Patricia L. Acampora, who resigned from the Assembly in June to take a position on the Public Service Commission, has continued to use her campaign account to pay a monthly $44.95 cable bill, as well as to cover cellphone bills and several restaurant meals.

By e-mail, she described the payments as "residual expenses from holding office" and said that her next campaign filing "will show that all those items have been discontinued."

Blair Horner, the legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, has been pushing for years for the state to tighten the loophole that allowed lawmakers to receive numerous gifts that fell just under the $75 limit. But he said that he hoped the state would also tighten its campaign finance laws to avoid situations where lobbyists are able to make large contributions that are spent on items that appear to be unrelated to campaigns.

"The main sources of campaign money are people with business interests before government," Mr. Horner said. "Essentially, special interest groups, who provide the bulk of the money, are subsidizing the lifestyles of public officials. And that should be banned."

Mr. Alteri said he could not recall which Senate staff members he took golfing last summer. But he said that the new proposals to change the gift rules did not bother him "as long as the rules are clear, and everybody knows what the rules are."

Jennifer Medina contributed reporting for this article.

    Albany's Oft-Skirted Rule on Gifts Is Just the Beginning, Filings Show, NYT, 30.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/nyregion/30gifts.html

Amid Scandals, States Overhaul Lobbying Laws

January 24, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

Stung by their own scandals, lawmakers in many states have outpaced Washington in enacting new laws intended to curb the cozy and at times corrupt relationships between lobbyists and politicians.

Measures are under consideration in state legislatures from New England to California, designed to eliminate privately financed junkets, require the disclosure of spending on lobbying, ban gift-giving by private interests and curb the hiring of lawmakers' relatives as an under-the-table kickback scheme.

Tennessee lawmakers, still reeling from an F.B.I. investigation that snared four of them with bribery and corruption charges last year, are in special session to consider tough new restrictions on lobbying and campaign finance.

State officials and lawmakers in Georgia began operating this month under new ethics guidelines signed into law last year by Gov. Sonny Perdue. The governor, a Republican, said the measures were needed because of the relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers that had developed over 130 years of Democratic control of the statehouse.

In Florida, there are new laws banning gifts from lobbyists and requiring extensive reports on lobbyists' spending, rules the Legislature enacted after revelations that three lawmakers flew to a golf outing on a corporate jet owned by a company seeking slot machine licenses.

"Unfortunately, it takes scandal to get reform," said Robert M. Stern, who directs the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. "People don't want to change. It's human nature, particularly if they're being asked to change themselves."

The Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan group in Washington that studies ethics in politics, said rules for federal lobbyists were weaker than those in all but a handful of states. For example, 37 states require some detailed information on each lobbyist's expenses, while the federal government does not. More important, the center said, 24 states have independent ethics commissions, some including members of the public or retired judges, to investigate and enforce lobbying rules. Congress writes and enforces its own code of conduct.

While much of the recent focus has been on Washington, which is embroiled in one of the biggest lobbying scandals in years, lobbying is a huge business in state capitals, where multimillion-dollar decisions are made every day on issues like drug prices, utility regulation and road-building contracts. Lobbyists and their allied interests spent nearly $1 billion in 2004 in the 42 states that required detailed reporting, according to figures compiled by the Center for Public Integrity, which has been examining such spending at the state level for the past eight years.

California and Washington have been among the nation's trailblazers in the disclosure and monitoring of lobbyists' activities. Their ethics laws, which date from the mid-1970's, were created through citizen initiatives placed on the ballot, not by the action of the legislatures. But most often, it is scandal that has stirred lawmakers into action.

"States are doing this for two reasons," said Peggy Kerns, director of the ethics center at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "They want to be ethical institutions, and they want the skeptical public to view them as ethical institutions."

That seems to be the case in Tennessee, where Gov. Phil Bredesen, a first-term Democrat seeking re-election this year, convened a special session to address what he called a culture of corruption in Nashville. Mr. Bredesen is asking for a ban on most gifts by lobbyists to government employees and elected officials, disclosure of spending by lobbyists, new limits on cash campaign contributions and the creation of an independent ethics commission with broad enforcement power. The package is similar to what many are calling for in Washington in reaction to the Jack Abramoff scandal.

"What's happening in Washington is adding momentum to what we're trying to do here," Mr. Bredesen said. "I'm telling the Legislature this is going to be front-page news for a year, so let's get out in front of the curve and be actively addressing these issues."

Even in states where strict ethics rules are in place, the laws of human nature have not been repealed, and temptation and corruption still exist. But bans on gifts from lobbyists and full disclosure of spending put many states light years ahead of Washington, said Jon Goldin-Dubois, a vice president of Common Cause, a group that advocates government openness and campaign finance reform.

The local efforts have made a difference, Mr. Goldin-Dubois said, "in the states that have aggressive ethics laws; truly independent commissions that have the powers they need to investigate, subpoena and set penalties; in states with strict reporting requirements; in states where they have banned gifts and travel."

He added, "We need to see the federal government take on some of these strong provisions to eliminate what we now know is not only the appearance of corruption but the reality of corruption."

The rush to reform at the state level is bipartisan, with some members of both the Republican and Democratic Parties concerned about corruption or any perception of it.

Last year Florida enacted one of the strictest set of lobbying rules in the country, including an outright ban on gifts and travel from lobbyists or their employers and a new system of reporting lobbying expenditures. Part of the impetus was the publicity surrounding the golfing trip by the three lawmakers. Money for the trip - which was ultimately ruled legal by the Florida Senate counsel - was funneled through the state's Republican Party to avoid disclosure laws, according to state officials.

Tom Lee, the Republican who is president of the Florida Senate, pushed the reform package through last year with the help of Gov. Jeb Bush, also a Republican. Mr. Lee said his decade in state government taught him that lobbyists often wielded more power than elected officials because they had access to unlimited money and had greater knowledge on matters of public policy than most public officials. That, he said, and the naked greed of some lawmakers.

"It became clear to me just how intertwined the special interests are in the maintenance of elected officials' lifestyles," Mr. Lee said.

In most capitals, lobbyists outnumber lawmakers by an average of five to one, the Center for Public Integrity found. Albany leads the nation, with 3,842 registered lobbyists, or 18 for every elected legislator. In Colorado, Florida, Illinois and Ohio, there are at least 10 lobbyists for each lawmaker. In only two states, Maine and New Hampshire, are there more elected officials than lobbyists.

Lobbying is an old, legal and often useful profession, particularly in the many state capitals where legislators are part-timers whose tenure is restricted by term limits and where permanent professional legislative staffs are small. Under such circumstances, lobbyists can provide historical information and context in policy debates.

Paul A. Miller, president of the American League of Lobbyists, said he was tired of the attacks on his profession, which he considers honorable.

"We all have our bad apples, and Jack Abramoff is ours," Mr. Miller said. "But it takes two to dance. He didn't put a gun to anybody's head and say you have to take a ticket or a meal or a contribution. You can't just point the finger at us."

Mr. Miller said his association was open to changes in lobbying rules at the state or federal level, particularly those that would strengthen the enforcement of existing regulations. "Unless you deal with that," he said, "everything else is meaningless."

In New York and New Jersey, officials are taking steps to revamp relatively weak ethics laws, which have allowed periodic lobbying, campaign finance and contracting scandals. Jon Corzine, the new Democratic governor of New Jersey, highlighted ethics reform in his inaugural address last week, saying the state government had lost the public's confidence. His first executive order required 625 members of state boards and commissions to file financial disclosure forms.

Mr. Corzine also promised to work to create an elected post of state comptroller to enforce public ethics laws.

New York, in an effort to curb the power of Albany's influential lobbying corps, is taking modest steps toward requiring more reporting of lobbyists' activities. An opinion by the state's Lobbying Commission last year interpreted the existing $75 limit on gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers to apply to an entire year's spending, not per meal or per ballgame.

The state also closed a loophole that exempted lobbyists seeking state contracts - rather than legislation - from registering with the commission. But the new rule is not yet being enforced, and it is not clear when it will be.

Some state officials are not waiting for scandal before proposing stricter rules on lobbying in their state capitals. Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana, a Democrat, said that in 2005, his first year in office, nearly every bill he supported was approved. "But I didn't get to first base with lobbyist reform," he said. "I asked them to close the revolving door, put cement in it and bolt it tight. I got nowhere."

Montana does not have a "cooling off" period before a legislator or government official can become a lobbyist, as the federal government and 22 states do. Mr. Schweitzer, pointing out that the former director of the state's Natural Resources and Conservation Department now works as a coal lobbyist and the chief of staff for a former governor now lobbies for the State Chamber of Commerce, is seeking a two-year ban on lobbying one's former colleagues. He also wants lobbyists to report every expenditure on a public official, "right down to a cup of coffee."

Mr. Schweitzer said he had no hope that the legislature would pass the measures, so he was planning to put them on the November ballot.

"I'm not following any scandal," he said. "I'm attempting to head it off at the pass because I don't like the smell of it."

    Amid Scandals, States Overhaul Lobbying Laws, NYT, 24.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/politics/24states.html?hp&ex=1138165200&en=cfd03cfd50bbf428&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Washington House passes gay civil rights bill

Posted 1/21/2006 12:33 AM
USA Today

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The state House on Friday passed a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, sending the measure to the Senate, where it failed last year by a single vote.

Sen. Bill Finkbeiner, left, said he would reverse himself and vote for a gay civil rights bill in April.
By John Froschauer, AP

The measure would add sexual orientation to a state law that bans discrimination in housing, employment and insurance. Businesses with fewer than eight employees would be exempt.

Lawmakers voted 60-37 to approve the bill. Sixteen states have similar laws.

"This legislation is about more than just changing the law, it is about sending a message," said Rep. Ed Murray, a Seattle Democrat who has sponsored the measure for 11 years. "A message that the United States and Washington state is a place of tolerance."

The measure was first introduced in 1976. The state's first openly gay lawmaker, Democrat Cal Anderson of Seattle, sponsored it for eight years before he died of AIDS in 1995.

Gov. Chris Gregoire, also a Democrat, has said she will sign the bill if it reaches her desk.

The proposal failed in the Senate last year by one vote, but Republican Sen. Bill Finkbeiner announced earlier this month that he would switch his vote to yes, all but assuring its passage.

Republican Rep. Don Cox said some lawmakers were concerned the measure could result in lawsuits against people who do not realize the person they failed to hire, or fired, was gay.

"This bill doesn't lead to love tolerance and understanding," he said, saying the bill "overreaches" in several ways.

    Washington House passes gay civil rights bill, UT, 21.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-21-wash-bill_x.htm

Maryland Judge Voids Ban on Same-Sex Marriage; State Quickly Appeals

January 21, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

A Maryland judge yesterday struck down a state law banning same-sex marriage, saying the measure violated a state constitutional amendment prohibiting sex discrimination.

The judge, M. Brooke Murdock of Baltimore City Circuit Court, stayed her ruling to allow Maryland officials time to appeal, and they immediately did so.

The equal rights amendment to the State Constitution was ratified by Maryland voters in 1972. Judge Murdock ruled that a state law enacted the following year that says "only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid" could not be reconciled with the amendment.

Same-sex marriage is available in the United States only in Massachusetts, though courts in California, New Jersey, New York and Washington State are also considering the issue.

Courts have generally been unreceptive to the argument that the prohibition on gay marriage is a form of sex discrimination.

But Ken Choe, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, which represented the plaintiffs in the Maryland case, said men and women were indeed treated differently under the law Judge Murdock struck down.

"A man can marry a woman, but a woman can't marry a woman," Mr. Choe said.

Judge Murdock relied on a 1967 decision by the United States Supreme Court, Loving v. Virginia, which struck down bans on interracial marriages. The State of Virginia had argued that its ban was not discriminatory, because it affected blacks and whites equally. Maryland made much the same argument with regard to the marriage law's effect on men and women.

William B. Rubenstein, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of "Sexual Orientation and the Law," said Judge Murdock's analysis of the Loving decision could be viewed in two ways.

"On a formal level it makes sense," Professor Rubenstein said. "But it hasn't had as much of an intuitive appeal."

Mr. Choe said the equal rights amendment provided a sound basis for Judge Murdock's ruling even if the people who had voted for it did not know they were endorsing same-sex marriage.

"The voters of Maryland in the early 70's enacted a broad prohibition on sex discrimination," Mr. Choe said. "The test is not whether a voter thought of every conceivable fact pattern that could have come up."

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a first-term Republican, issued a statement saying the state would "begin a vigorous appeals process."

"I firmly believe the institution of marriage is for one man and one woman only," Mr. Ehrlich said.

Judge Murdock wrote that "the court is not unaware of the dramatic impact of its ruling." But she rejected all the arguments offered in favor of the law, among them that children are best served by one male parent and one female parent.

"Prevention of same-sex marriage," she wrote, "is not rationally related to the state's interests in promoting stable families and protecting the best interests of children."

"Tradition and social values alone cannot support adequately a discriminatory statutory classification," she added. "When tradition is the guise under which prejudice or animosity hides, it is not a legitimate state interest."

The plaintiffs - nine gay or lesbian couples and one individual - sued court clerks in five Maryland counties who had denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Their inability to marry, they said, had caused them legal, financial and emotional harm.

One plaintiff, John Lestitian, the chief code compliance officer in Hagerstown, Md., said Judge Murdock's decision "is a step in a very long process."

"As a 40-year-old man," Mr. Lestitian said, "I should be able to decide who my family is."

    Maryland Judge Voids Ban on Same-Sex Marriage; State Quickly Appeals, NYT, 21.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/21/national/21marriage.html

California Assembly Sidelines a Moratorium on Executions

January 20, 2006
The New York Times
By CAROLYN MARSHALL

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 19 - California lawmakers dashed the hopes of death penalty opponents on Thursday by not acting on legislation that would have imposed a two-year moratorium on executions in the state.

The Assembly Appropriations Committee placed the bill on hold, essentially killing it for the remainder of this legislative session, several lawmakers said. The author of the bill, Assemblyman Paul Koretz, a Democrat from West Hollywood, said he would probably introduce another version of the bill after the June primary election, but Republican opponents of a moratorium said they would fight that effort as well.

Mr. Koretz accused the Republicans of playing politics with his proposal.

"Unfortunately, the Republicans in California have turned this issue into a political wedge," Mr. Koretz said. "And they did not give the bill a fair hearing."

Mr. Koretz said Democrats, who control both houses of the Legislature, did not want to push the matter further until after the election.

"It has the potential to be used and misused in elections where state Democrats are running this year," he said.

Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, a Republican from Orange County, said the bill's demise had "nothing to do with politics."

"It has everything to do with a factual argument," Mr. Spitzer said, "that the death penalty is not abused or unfairly carried out in California."

California is one of several states reviewing its use of the death penalty, which is legal in 38 states. New Jersey, Illinois and Maryland have imposed moratoriums, while in 2004 capital punishment in New York and Kansas was declared unconstitutional.

The debate in California has picked up in recent months as the state prepares to quicken the pace of executions and a blue-ribbon commission studies, among other things, the state's prison system and the effectiveness, accuracy and fairness of capital punishment.

Mr. Koretz's measure, Assembly Bill 1121, would have imposed a 24-month moratorium beginning next January so that the Legislature could review the recommendations of the blue-ribbon panel.

In the meantime, executions move forward. The state executed Clarence Ray Allen, 76, on Tuesday. In 1980, while serving a life sentence for a 1974 killing, Mr. Allen ordered the killing of three people.

A judge on Wednesday set Feb. 21 as the execution date for Michael Morales, 45, who would become the third death row inmate to die in three months. Mr. Morales was sentenced to death for the rape and killing in 1981 of a 17-year-old woman.

    California Assembly Sidelines a Moratorium on Executions, NYT, 20.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/national/20execute.html

News Analysis

Fraught Issue, but Narrow Ruling in Oregon Suicide Case

January 18, 2006
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY EGAN and ADAM LIPTAK

PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 17 - Just 30 terminally ill people exercise a right each year that is unique in America to the state of Oregon, hastening their deaths with a lethal dose of drugs prescribed by doctors.

The Supreme Court decision on Tuesday rejecting the Justice Department's effort to block the state's Death With Dignity Act will allow such suicides to continue, but it may not have the broad impact people on both sides of the debate are predicting.

There is no reason to think that the pace of physician-assisted suicides will quicken in Oregon. And the decision lends little support, one way or the other, to the efforts to enact similar laws around the country that have stalled since the Oregon law was enacted in 1994.

The Supreme Court's ruling was, in fact, notably focused and technical. It did not address whether there is a constitutional right to die. It did not say that Congress was powerless to override state laws that allow doctors to help their patients end their lives.

It said only that a particular federal law, the Controlled Substances Act, which is mainly concerned with drug abuse and illegal drug trafficking, had not given John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, the authority to punish Oregon doctors who complied with requests under the state's law. The law allows mentally competent, terminally ill patients to ask their doctors for lethal drugs.

"What the court decision means is simply that you won't have federal agents trying to put an end to this in the state of Oregon," said Dr. Timothy E. Quill, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of Rochester, who is a prominent supporter of physician-assisted suicide. "We were very fearful of what might have happened had the ruling gone the other way."

Here in Oregon, the issue was initially contentious, passed by a bare margin in 1994. But the more that people outside the state criticized the law, the more support it gained here. When it came up for a second referendum in 1997, it was upheld 60 to 40.

"I would not expect to see an increase in doctor-assisted suicides here," said Mary Williams, Oregon's solicitor general. "But I do expect more states will at least have discussion now."

But states have been free to enact such laws, and they have not followed Oregon's example. Mr. Ashcroft did not issue his interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act until 2001, and it was soon enjoined. The federal government lost in the courts every step of the way.

One question now is whether the debate will move from the court to Congress. Peg Sandeen, executive director of the Death With Dignity National Center in Portland, said her group would move to push legislation or voter initiatives in several states.

But Ms. Sandeen said the organization was concerned that "a Congress that would intervene in the death of Terri Schiavo" might be galvanized into action by this decision.

Still, Tuesday's decision may prompt lawmakers in some states to give the matter a fresh look.

"This decision gives the green light to the rest of the nation to move forward with assisted-suicide laws," said Mathew D. Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, which filed a brief supporting the federal government in the Oregon case. "This particular case was either going to close the door or to open it, and it opened it."

In the handful of states where a similar measure has been under consideration, supporters said they hoped the decision would help.

"This will be a tremendous momentum builder for Vermont and other states who want to bring compassionate care to end-of-life issues," said Dr. David Babbott, a board member of Death With Dignity Vermont.

Opponents of assisted suicide said Tuesday's decision was a narrow and technical one that did not endorse any particular approach to these issues.

"I don't think its impact will be great," Dr. Robert D. Orr, the president of the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare, said of the decision. "Some have misunderstood the Oregon case as a challenge to the Oregon statute itself."

The Oregon law was initially held up by an injunction, and not fully put into effect until 1998. Since then, through 2004, a total of 208 people have taken their lives by lethal injection with a physician-prescribed drug, usually a barbiturate.

Critics had said Oregon would become a suicide center, with people flying in to end their lives. They also predicted that the law would be unfairly used against uneducated people or those without health insurance or adequate medical choices.

In the seven full years since the law has been in effect and records have been kept, more than 60 percent of those who have killed themselves have had some college education, the state reported.

Nora Miller, whose husband, Rick, took his life here in Portland in 1999 after he was given less than six months to live with a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer, said the Oregon law allowed for a peaceful and relatively pain-free end to his life.

"He was worried about being unconscious and completely out of it," said Ms. Miller, whose husband was 52. "But it was as good a death as he could have hoped for."

She praised the court decision as a backing of individual liberty.

"This country was founded on the idea that you should be able to make these kinds of decisions without government interference," Ms. Miller said.

But the leader of a group of Oregon physicians who have long opposed the measure, Dr. Kenneth Stevens, said the medical community had long had ways to help people deal with pain at the end of their lives.

"I've been taking care of cancer patients for more than 30 years," Dr. Stevens said, "and I feel helping people kill themselves is not something doctors should be doing."

Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski of Oregon said one effect of the decision would be to allow innovative states like Oregon to continue to be laboratories for new ideas.

"The U.S. Supreme Court recognized the delicate balance between our federal system and the right of the states to be the crucibles for new ideas and new ways to meet the changing needs of their citizens," Mr. Kulongoski said.

Timothy Egan reported from Portland for this article, and Adam Liptak from New York.

    Fraught Issue, but Narrow Ruling in Oregon Suicide Case, NYT, 18.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/national/18oregon.html?hp&ex=1137560400&en=a2afb392365fd843&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Boston Court Approves Ending Life Support for Girl in Coma

January 18, 2006
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, Jan. 17 - Massachusetts's highest court ruled Tuesday that the state can withdraw life support from Haleigh Poutre, an 11-year-old girl who has been in a coma since September, and whose adoptive mother and stepfather are accused of abusing her.

Haleigh, of Westfield, Mass., was hospitalized on Sept. 11 with a brain injury and multiple bruises, burns and cuts. Her aunt Holli Strickland, who adopted her, and Ms. Strickland's husband, Jason Strickland, were charged with assault, but Ms. Strickland died in an apparent murder-suicide after charges were filed.

The state Department of Social Services, which was granted custody of Haleigh, successfully petitioned a juvenile court for permission to remove life support. Mr. Strickland challenged the state in court, asking to be considered Haleigh's de facto parent and to be allowed to argue for keeping her alive.

The Supreme Judicial Court rejected Mr. Strickland's petition on Tuesday, saying he did not provide enough of her daily care to be a de facto parent. The court added that Mr. Strickland "stands charged with criminal assault in connection with injuries inflicted on" Haleigh. "To recognize the petitioner as a de facto parent, in order that he may participate in a medical end-of-life decision for the child, is unthinkable."

The opinion also upheld the state's right to remove life support, saying that Haleigh "is in an irreversible and permanent coma, with the least amount of brain function that a person can have and still be considered alive."

Mr. Strickland's lawyer, John J. Egan, said he was "disappointed they chose to decide it on the most narrow ground possible and not address the more substantive issues." Mr. Strickland might be able to pursue the case in federal court, but Mr. Egan said no decision had been made.

Denise Monteiro, a spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services, said that Haleigh's doctors would re-evaluate her and that family members would be consulted before life support would be removed.

One relative being consulted is Allison Avrett, Haleigh's biological mother, who lost custody of her when she was 4 because of accusations that her boyfriend had sexually abused Haleigh. Ms. Avrett said Tuesday that the ruling made her feel "good and bad" and that she supported removing both the ventilator and the feeding tube.

The court's opinion noted a raft of complaints about abuse and neglect of Haleigh to the Department of Social Services since September 2002 and indicated that the department had been talking to Ms. Strickland about placing Haleigh in a residential treatment facility. Since 2004, the state had arranged regular counseling for Haleigh and was making monthly inspection visits to the home. The state is investigating why it did not catch the extent of Haleigh's abuse.

"Some describe this as a case about death," the opinion said. "It should more correctly be described as a case about a young girl who has suffered tremendously from acts of violence and cruelty and who now will be permitted to pass away with dignity."

The opinion added that Haleigh's "memory will remind us, time and again, that we, as a society, need to do more to aid children who are neglected and abused, and thereby denied the care and nurturing they so desperately want and need."

    Boston Court Approves Ending Life Support for Girl in Coma, NYT, 18.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/national/18child.html

Maryland Sets a Health Cost for Wal-Mart

January 13, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL BARBARO

ANNAPOLIS, Md., Jan. 12 - The Maryland legislature passed a law Thursday that would require Wal-Mart Stores to increase spending on employee health insurance, a measure that is expected to be a model for other states.

The legislature's move, which overrode a veto by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, was a response to growing criticism that Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, has skimped on benefits and shifted health costs to state governments.

The vote came after a furious lobbying battle by Wal-Mart and by labor and liberal groups, and is likely to encourage lawmakers in dozens of other states who are considering similar legislation.

Many state legislatures have looked to Maryland as a test case, as they face fast-rising Medicaid costs, and Wal-Mart's critics say that too many of its employees have been forced to turn to Medicaid.

Under the Maryland law, employers with 10,000 or more workers in the state must spend at least 8 percent of their payrolls on health insurance, or else pay the difference into a state Medicaid fund.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the company was "weighing its options," including a lawsuit to challenge the law because it is close to that 8 percent threshold already.

It is unclear how much the new law will cost Wal-Mart in Maryland - or around the country, if similar laws are adopted, because Wal-Mart has not publicly divulged what it spends on health care.

But it was concerned enough about the bill to hire four firms to lobby the legislature intensely over the last two months, and contributed at least $4,000 to the re-election campaign of Governor Ehrlich.

A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, Mia Masten, said that "everyone should have access to affordable health insurance, but this legislation does nothing to accomplish this goal."

"This is about partisan politics," she said, "and this is poor public policy driven by special-interest groups."

There are four employers in Maryland with more than 10,000 workers - among them, Johns Hopkins University, the grocery chain Giant Food and the military contractor Northrop Grumman, but only Wal-Mart falls below the 8 percent threshold on health care spending.

A Democratic lawmaker who sponsored the legislation, State Senator Gloria G. Lawlah , maintained: "This is not a Wal-Mart bill, it's a Medicaid bill." This bill says to the conglomerates, 'Don't dump the employees that you refuse to insure into our Medicaid systems.' "

Opponents said the law would open the door for broader state regulation of health care spending by private companies and would send the message that Maryland is antibusiness.

"The message is, 'Don't come here,' " said Senator E. J. Pipkin, a Republican. "This is an anti-jobs bill."

Several lawmakers said that in the end, the law would require Wal-Mart to spend only slightly more than it does now on health insurance. But with Wal-Mart refusing to disclose what it pays for health costs, it was unclear how much more it would be required to pay.

This is the second time that the Maryland legislature, which is dominated by Democrats, has passed the Wal-Mart bill. Governor Ehrlich vetoed it late last year, inviting a senior Wal-Mart executive to sit by his side as he did so.

Indeed, the bill is shaping up as an issue in the fall campaign, with Republicans and their business allies lining up against it, and Democrats and their labor union supporters backing it. Wal-Mart has 53 stores and employs about 17,000 people in Maryland.

Debate was particularly emotional among representatives from Maryland's Eastern Shore, where Wal-Mart recently announced plans to build a distribution center that would employ up to 1,000.

Wal-Mart executives have strongly suggested that they might build the center elsewhere if lawmakers passed the health care bill.

In a passionate speech in the State Senate, J. Lowell Stoltzfus, a Republican, warned that the bill "jeopardizes good employment for my people."

"It's going to hurt us very bad," he added,

The bill's passage underscored the success of the union campaign to turn Wal-Mart into a symbol of what is wrong in the American health care system.

Wal-Mart has come under severe criticism because it insures less than half its United States work force and because its employees routinely show up, in larger numbers than employees of other retailers, on state Medicaid rolls.

In response to the complaints, the company introduced a new health care plan late last year, with premiums as low as $11 a month.

Consumer advocates specializing in health care are hoping that the Maryland law will be the first of many.

"You're going to see similar legislation being introduced," said Ronald Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a nonprofit health advocacy organization, "and debated in at least three dozen more states, and at least some of those states will end up also requiring large employers to provide health care coverage."

Mr. Pollack suggested that he did not expect any groundswell of opposition from corporate America. Most companies, he said, provide insurance and know that the costs of medical treatment for uninsured people are reflected in their insurance premiums. Mr. Pollack said that, by his organization's calculations, the cost of such treatment drove up employer premiums by $922 a family last year. In 2006, he said, the added cost could reach $1,000 a family.

"Those employers should welcome the fact that the companies that do not offer coverage now will be forced to step up to the plate," he said.

State lawmakers here in Annapolis took repeated swipes at Wal-Mart during debate over the bill on Thursday. It appeared that the company's intensive lobbying campaign in Maryland, including advertisements arguing that the requirement would hurt small businesses, might have soured some lawmakers.

Senator Lawlah called the lobbying "horrendous" and adding, "I have never seen anything like it."

Frank D. Boston III, the chief lobbyist for Wal-Mart on the health care bill, stood in the main corridor of the Capitol building on Thursday wearing a look of resignation. Referring to unions in the state, he said, "They have a power we can't match, and we worked this bill extremely hard."

Class-Action Case in Pennsylvania

By Bloomberg News

A Pennsylvania judge granted class-action status yesterday to a lawsuit contending that Wal-Mart employees had been pressed to work through breaks and after hours.

The suit could include as many as 150,000 current or former employees in Pennsylvania who have worked at a Wal-Mart store or at the company's Sam's Club warehouse chain since March 1998, Michael Donovan, the lead plaintiff's lawyer, said.

The latest class-action filing against Wal-Mart came after a California jury last month awarded workers $172.3 million in another off-the-clock case.

Wal-Mart is appealing. The company settled a similar case in Colorado for $50 million.

Wal-Mart has given "every indication" that it will go to trial rather than settle, Mr. Donovan said. A Wal-Mart spokesman, Kevin Thornton, said the company was considering appealing the decision.

Claudia H. Deutsch contributed reporting from New York for this article.

    Maryland Sets a Health Cost for Wal-Mart, NYT, 13.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/business/13walmart.html?hp&ex=1137214800&en=21d0fec926319b31&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Tennessee Takes Up an Overhaul of Ethics Rules

January 11, 2006
The New York Times
By THEO EMERY

NASHVILLE, Jan. 10 - Last May, F.B.I. agents ran a bribery sting operation called Tennessee Waltz that ensnared four state lawmakers, including a member of a Memphis political dynasty.

On Tuesday, as the legislature met in a special session to take up a proposed overhaul of the state's ethics laws, Gov. Phil Bredesen urged swift action, saying the scandal had cast a pall over state government.

"I know you feel this shadow as I do," Mr. Bredesen, a Democrat, told legislators. "Some problems are best left to the passage of time. Others require bold action up front. On the subject of ethics, it is time for bold action."

Government watchdogs have long criticized Tennessee as having weak ethics and financial disclosure laws. Jon Goldin-Dubois, a vice president of Common Cause, said the state's ethics laws were "in the bottom tier" nationally.

Mr. Bredesen requested the special session last year to spur action on the ethics legislation. Under the rules of the session, the legislature cannot move on to other business until the ethics laws are overhauled.

The ethics bill would set up an independent ethics commission, create new reporting requirements for campaign donations and lobbyist spending, and establish conflict-of-interest rules.

The most prominent target of the sting was State Senator John N. Ford, a member of a Democratic political dynasty from Memphis. Mr. Ford is the uncle of United States Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., a rising star in the Democratic Party.

Lawmakers are accused of accepting cash from a fake company the F.B.I. set up with the understanding that they would support legislation that would increase profits for the company, E-Cycle Management.

Mr. Ford resigned from the legislature but has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Seven other people have been indicted, including three other lawmakers. One lawmaker, State Representative J. Chris Newton, Republican of Cleveland, resigned and pleaded guilty. The two others, State Senator Kathryn I. Bowers, a Memphis Democrat, and State Senator Ward Crutchfield, Democrat of Chattanooga, have pleaded not guilty and were at the special session.

Even as the session began, there were new tremors from the federal investigation. State Senator Jeff Miller, Republican of Cleveland, who took $1,000 from a lobbyist indicted in the sting but has not been charged, said Tuesday that he would not seek re-election and resigned as chairman of the Senate majority caucus.

    Tennessee Takes Up an Overhaul of Ethics Rules, NYT, 11.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/11/national/11ethics.html

New Jersey lawmakers pass two gay rights bills

Tue Jan 10, 2006 9:36 AM ET
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey lawmakers voted to give same-sex couples the same rights as married couples regarding inheritance and funeral arrangements and to extend gay couples' access to health benefits in the public sector.

The two bills were passed overwhelmingly in the state legislature on Monday and will now be sent to Gov. Richard Codey, who is expected to sign both.

New Jersey is one of several U.S. states that already offer same-sex couples some legal rights as partners, though it stops short of allowing gay marriage, which became a socially divisive issue across America during the 2004 presidential election campaign.

One of the bills passed on Monday sets out same-sex couples' rights to inheritance and funeral arrangements while the other deals with health benefits for partners of employees of county and municipal governments, school boards and county colleges.

Voters in 13 states have approved constitutional amendments in the past year-and-a-half declaring their laws would recognize marriage only between a man and woman.

Vermont and Connecticut recognize same-sex civil unions while Massachusetts has legalized gay marriage.

    New Jersey lawmakers pass two gay rights bills, R, 10.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-01-10T143555Z_01_DIT051343_RTRUKOC_0_US-RIGHTS-NEWJERSEY.xml

Legislators Pass Smoking Ban in New Jersey

January 10, 2006
The New York Times
By RICHARD LEZIN JONES and JOSH BENSON

TRENTON, Jan. 9 - New Jersey lawmakers approved a far-reaching ban Monday on smoking in indoor public places that includes virtually all of the state's bars and restaurants but not the gambling areas of Atlantic City's 12 casinos.

The measure passed in the Assembly 64 to 12 with two abstentions after Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey, a strong supporter of the ban, beat back an 11th-hour effort to kill it. The Senate passed the bill last month, and Mr. Codey had said he would sign the bill before he leaves office next week.

New Jersey would become the 11th state with so broad a prohibition; among states in the region, New York and Connecticut passed similar laws in 2003. Four other states restrict smoking in either workplaces or restaurants but do not ban it in all indoor public places.

The Assembly's vote ended a yearlong battle that pitted batteries of lobbyists for some of the state's most powerful business interests - including the tobacco industry and groups representing casinos, restaurants and taverns - against public-health advocacy groups.

As recently as last spring, the measure had stalled, but then Mr. Codey made the issue a key objective of his final months in office and overcame a major obstacle by negotiating the exemption for casinos. Until Mr. Codey's concession, South Jersey legislators and their allies were poised to block the bill because of the effect it was expected to have on casino business.

Over the weekend, Mr. Codey managed to deter a final effort to defeat the ban by making telephone calls to several lawmakers who opposed it. "The way to do things in life is with the personal touch," he said, adding that the bill would be a hallmark of his 17 months in office.

One by one, supporters of the ban stood in the Assembly on Monday and dismissed concerns about the casino exemption as disingenuous.

Assemblyman Bill Baroni, a Republican from Mercer County, said, "This is the day New Jersey takes on and defeats Joe Camel," a reference to the cartoon character that was formerly used in Camel cigarette ads. "It's about time."

Other supporters acknowledged that they were unhappy about the casino exemption but said the concerns about public health in the state demanded action. "I could stand here and say, 'It's half a loaf, it's three-quarters of a loaf,' but it's a start," said Assemblyman David W. Wolfe, a Republican from Ocean County.

In addition to restricting where cigarettes can be smoked, the Assembly approved a second measure to raise the minimum age to buy them to 19 from 18. The two measures were the highlights of a busy final day of the legislative session.

Measures expanding the rights of domestic partners and imposing a yearlong moratorium on the death penalty were also approved and sent to Mr. Codey, who has promised to sign them. The Assembly declined to take up another of Mr. Codey's priorities, a bill that would have provided $230 million for a stem cell research facility.

Senator Shirley K. Turner, a Democrat from Mercer County, said she would sponsor legislation in the next session to overturn the casino exemption.

Many businesses owners, particularly those in Atlantic City, have said they are concerned about losing customers because of the ban. Some opponents of the ban sought to weaken its chances by arguing that it should apply to the casinos.

Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, a Democrat who represents Union County and whose family owns Cryan's Pub in South Orange, was one of those leading an effort to weaken the bill's chances by making it stronger. He had said he was considering offering an amendment that would have subjected casinos to the smoking ban, but it never materialized on Monday when the ban was presented for a vote in the Assembly.

Instead, Mr. Cryan took the floor to say why he would not support the measure. "It sticks to my craw to no end that the casino exemption is there," he said.

Mr. Cryan said imposing the ban would eliminate more than 20,000 cigarette sales locations in bars and restaurants, costing the state some of the $540 million generated by the cigarette tax.

He also said that New Jersey was giving up a competitive edge it had held among smokers since similar bans had been enacted in New York. "It's just good business sense, something we should be encouraging, not discouraging," Mr. Cryan said.

Tom Schmierer, vice chairman of the New Jersey Restaurant Association, said that because nearly two-thirds of the state's restaurants were already smoke-free, a ban was largely unnecessary.

"So this has already been dealt with for years by us, and it's been fixed to an extent," he said, adding that the ban was "a solution in search of a problem."

The exemption for casinos was inherently unfair, Mr. Schmierer said, because it leaves smaller businesses vulnerable to losing customers. Supporters of the proposal said studies in New York and elsewhere showed that business had not been seriously affected by the imposition of a smoking ban.

"This does not cause serious economic damage," said Peter Slocum, a vice president for advocacy at the American Cancer Society, citing studies of similar bans in places like California and Delaware. "Yes, some bars go out of business. Some flourish. In Buffalo, one guy said, 'I give up, I can't get a waiver. I'm closing down.' Somebody else bought the bar and they're flourishing."

Mr. Slocum attributed the bill's passage to the support of Mr. Codey and increased scientific evidence about the dangers of second-hand smoke, which supporters of the ban said leads to as many as 1,000 deaths in New Jersey each year.

"The science is undisputed," he said. "I think everybody is settled that the exposure is hazardous. The question is how to reduce it. In this case we have a chance to take an effective action. It's one of those examples where government can actually take a step that does pretty dramatically improve people's health."

    Legislators Pass Smoking Ban in New Jersey, NYT, 10.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/nyregion/10smoking.html