Kautzman's AP GO PO Blog

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
September 27, 2009

(NATE BEELER)

A bridesmaid in 2008, he’s laying the groundwork for a successful bid by raising money for GOP candidates, courting party activists, writing a book and getting plenty of face time on TV

Mitt Romney has the look of a man who’s running for president. And if you’re running for president, three years before your party’s nominating convention, it’s absolutely essential to say that it’s way too early to think about running for president. So the former Massachusetts governor demurs when asked his intentions.

“It’s way too early to make that consideration,” Romney says. “Who knows what the future holds?”

Romney is sitting in a suite in Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel, where the next day he will address the annual Values Voter Summit, a gathering of conservative activists sponsored by the Family Research Council. In the suite, across from a credenza stacked with catered sandwiches, Romney’s staff has set up a teleprompter — monitors, those glass panels on high stands, the whole thing — for him to practice the speech.

This stop in Washington is part of Romney’s extensive work on behalf of Republican candidates around the country. On the day we spoke, he appeared at a fundraising breakfast for Virginia Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, and that evening attended a fundraiser for GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell. After the Values Voter Summit, he was off to New Jersey to help out Chris Christie, the Republican currently leading in the governor’s race.

“What’s on my horizon right now is trying to help pick up some seats in 2010, and of course some key races in 2009,” Romney says.

Romney is doing all this work through his political action committee, the Free and Strong America PAC, which he formed in May 2008, not long after conceding to Sen. John McCain in the Republican primary race. The PAC has raised more than $2.3 million and given out about $1.8 million — far more than any other Republican contender’s PAC. In 2008 alone, Free and Strong America endorsed 83 candidates for the House and Senate; Romney attended 34 events for those candidates, in addition to 37 events for the McCain campaign.

Romney is also working on a book, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,” which will be out next March. He makes clear that he’s writing every word himself. “I didn’t have a writer who interviewed me twice and is now writing the book,” he says. In addition, Romney appears on television to discuss issues of particular concern to him — the stimulus, the takeovers of the auto companies, health care.

So if you list the things politicians do when they’re in the early stages of a presidential run — well, Romney qualifies.

Political action committee? Check.

Fundraising for GOP candidates? Check.

Courting party activists? Check.

Profile-raising book? Check.

TV appearances? Check.

Since he had hoped to be in the White House now, I ask what the first eight months of a Romney administration would have looked like, as opposed to what President Obama has done. “First of all, I would have followed through on his commitment to work on a bipartisan basis,” Romney says. Next, Romney says his stimulus proposal — he does believe we needed one — would have been “far more carefully crafted to create jobs immediately.” Romney would have put stimulus dollars into buying much-needed equipment for the U.S. military, as well as infrastructure projects, and he would also have made tax policy more business-friendly.

What else? “Cap and trade — I wouldn’t even touch that,” Romney says. “It’s the wrong course.” But he would have made health care a major part of his presidential agenda.

“I like what we did in Massachusetts,” Romney says, referring to the universal coverage program he and the Democratic state legislature crafted in 2006. “I think it works in Massachusetts.” Pay close attention to that last part: Romney defends the system in his overwhelmingly Democratic home state, but he’s careful to say that as president, he would give all the states greater flexibility to come up with their own fixes, which might be different from what exists in Massachusetts. The ultimate goal, he says, is “getting government less involved in the health care market.”

If Romney runs, his health care record will likely be a big target for primary opponents. The Wall Street Journal editorial page hates it, and other critics — and rivals — point to its rising costs and potential for abuse. “You want to see what government-run health care looks like?” Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential candidate, asked the crowd at the Values Voter Summit. “A couple of states have tried it, Tennessee and Massachusetts. It bankrupted both states.”

“Not every feature of our plan was perfect,” Romney answers in his own speech to the group, “but it does teach this important lesson: You can get everyone insured without breaking the bank and without a government option.” The plan’s costs, Romney says, have stayed within original projections.

At the end of the Values Voter gathering, when participants voted in a straw poll of possible 2012 contenders, Huckabee took first place, with 28.5 percent of the vote, while Romney took second, with 12.4 percent, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who also appeared in person, took third with 12.2 percent. Huckabee’s win was no surprise; the former preacher has always been able to connect with the heavily evangelical crowd. The fact that Romney, after running hard and spending a reported $42 million of his own money in 2008, and then working assiduously this year, barely nipped Pawlenty, who is exploring a first-time run, was not something that will build confidence among Romney supporters. (By the way, Sarah Palin, who did not speak to the convention, was fourth, with 12 percent.)

It’s hard to predict Romney’s chances in a wide-open Republican primary race. The party has a habit of nominating the candidate who finished second the time before, but for the GOP in 2012 that will be a tricky question. By the end of the ‘08 primary season, Romney and Huckabee had virtually the same number of delegates, and neither man was the clear No. 2. And with his own books, speeches, PAC and TV show, Huckabee will likely be in the mix again.

Romney might benefit from buyer’s remorse on the part of some Republican primary voters. McCain was respected but never well-liked among the Republican base, and when the economy collapsed in the months before the election, some in the GOP regretted not having Romney, the former chief executive officer of Bain Capital and a man who knows business, on the ticket. But it was too late to do anything about it.

There’s also no way to know whether the Mormon factor will again come into play. In 2008, some evangelicals rejected Romney on the basis of his religion, even after he gave a much-publicized speech on the role of faith in his life and in politics. That might still be an issue next time around.

Then there’s the age factor. On Inauguration Day 2013, Barack Obama will be barely into his 50s, while Romney will be nearly 66 years old, placing him in the historical upper reaches of presidential newcomers. But after a life of exercise, no alcohol, no tobacco, no caffeine and a happy marriage, Romney looks exceedingly fit and far younger than his years. None of us knows how long we have on this Earth, but if Mitt Romney keels over any time soon, it will be a major surprise.

Back in the suite at the Omni Shoreham, Romney dodges questions on 2012 but lights up when asked about his 2008 run. “It’s hard work,” he says, “but you get to know the American people in a way I never would have imagined.” Running was an “expanding” experience, Romney says, introducing him to new friends all around the country.

“Let me tell you,” Romney adds with a broad smile, “if you get the chance to run for president, do it.”

Byron York can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His political column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blog posts appears on www.ExaminerPolitics.com ExaminerPolitics.com.

Judy Cavnar, a cousin of executed prison inmate Cameron Todd Willingham, displays a picture of him during a news conference in Austin, Texas, on May 2, 2006.

CORSICANA, Texas – More than five years after his final act from the Texas death chamber gurney was a profanity-filled tirade, the murder case of executed inmate Cameron Todd Willingham refuses to die.

Willingham was executed in February 2004 – proclaiming his innocence and hoping aloud that his wife would “rot in hell” – for the deaths of his three young daughters in a fire at their Corsicana home on Dec. 23, 1991.

An arson finding by investigators was key to his conviction in the circumstantial case.

The Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that investigates possible wrongful convictions, questioned Willingham’s guilt. Now the Texas Forensic Science Commission will review a report Friday from an expert it hired who concluded the original arson determination was faulty.

The prosecutor in the case still believes Willingham is guilty, but acknowledges it would have been hard to win a death sentence without the arson finding.

Yet Barry Scheck, co-director of the New York-based Innocence Project, sees it differently: “There can no longer be any doubt that an innocent person has been executed.”

In 2006, Scheck’s group gave its review of the case to the state commission, which later hired Baltimore-based arson expert Craig Beyler to study. Beyler concluded the arson finding was scientifically unsupported and investigators at the scene had “poor understandings of fire science.”

John Jackson, the prosecutor in Navarro County, about 50 miles south of Dallas, says the original fire investigation was “undeniably flawed,” based on subsequent reviews, but remains confident Willingham was guilty of killing Amber, 2, and 1-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron.

“What people missed is that even though the arson report may be flawed, it certainly doesn’t mean it arrived at a faulty conclusion,” Jackson said.

Douglas Fogg stands by his conclusions as the former assistant fire chief who helped investigate the deadly blaze.

“The bleeding hearts that are against the death penalty are trying to stir everything up again,” he told the Dallas Morning News last month. “They finally got someone who would say what they wanted to hear.”

At talks scheduled for Thursday in Geneva with Iran, the United States and five other major powers will demand immediate and unfettered access to the newly exposed nuclear facility in Iran, including access to people and documents involved in its construction, and they will insist that Tehran abide by international rules to reveal such projects before construction begins, Obama administration officials said Saturday.

Diplomats will also insist that Iran undertake confidence-building measures, including answering questions about suspected efforts to develop nuclear weapons and accepting a timetable for serious negotiations. Officials said there is no stated deadline, but that if Iran fails to respond seriously by year’s end, the United States and its partners could begin to push for crippling sanctions targeting Iran’s economic and financial links to the world.

In the wake of the discovery of the facility near the holy city of Qom, “it is now a choice for Iran, and the choice became starker,” said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. As an inducement for cooperation, the United States and other powers have offered economic and diplomatic incentives if Iran reins in its nuclear ambitions.

Iranian officials declared Saturday that they notified the International Atomic Energy Agency about the facility in a timely fashion and that IAEA inspectors are welcome to visit it, though they did not say when, or whether they will be able to set up monitoring equipment. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, denounced the reaction from the United States and other Western powers. “Their embarrassing reaction and their unbalanced response has shocked us,” he told state television.

In his weekly radio address, President Barack Obama emphasized the importance of the showdown at Geneva’s historic Hotel de Ville, which will also include diplomats from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China – and will mark the first diplomatic encounter between Iran and the Obama administration.

“This is a serious challenge to the global nonproliferation regime and continues a disturbing pattern of Iranian evasion,” Obama said. “That is why international negotiations with Iran scheduled for Oct. 1 now take on added urgency.”

“We are hopeful that, in preparing for the meeting on Oct. 1, Iran comes and shares with all of us what they are willing to do and gives us a timetable on which they are willing to proceed,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters Saturday after meeting with Arab foreign ministers on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

Iran, which as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has a right to enrich uranium, has already signaled that it intends to dismiss questions about the Qom facility as a legalistic dispute of little importance. Salehi said that it was hidden to protect it from possible attacks and that Iran had actually been overly cautious within the framework of the IAEA rules. “We have to inform the agency of the building of nuclear facilities 180 days before insertion of nuclear fuel, but we informed them even sooner,” he said.

For President Barack Obama, last week was rather like a major exam on his skills as a diplomat and architect of foreign policy. He can count on being tested again and again by unexpected events. But in his debut at the United Nations and as host to the G-20 economic powers in Pittsburgh, Obama was given more scrutiny by foreign leaders and domestic constituencies than at any other time in his first year in office.

There were no historic breakthroughs but, as far as we know, there were also no gaffes – at least in part because of his ability to find the right words to make his points without offending others.

Official Washington is starting to realize that in addition to his personal skills, Obama has assembled a highly professional and effective national security team that serves him and the nation very well.

There was no guarantee that this would be the case. Before he was elected, Obama had never faced the challenge of recruiting, assigning and organizing an administration. His exposure to national security issues consisted of four years of hardly notable service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the insights gleaned from his youthful years in Indonesia.

His first – and in some ways most important – decision was to ask Robert Gates, George Bush’s secretary of defense, to remain in charge of the Pentagon. Gates was anything but an obvious choice. Obama had campaigned as a sharp critic of Bush policy in Iraq and had clearly signaled that he would insist on a new approach to Afghanistan. Keeping the boss of the old policies was counterintuitive – and offensive to some of Obama’s Democratic allies.

But Obama recognized Gates’ strengths. And he bolstered the team when he picked retired Marine general Jim Jones as his national security adviser, another widely respected veteran of past administrations and a man of great self-discipline and few ego needs.

The choice of Hillary Clinton was the most dramatic, given their history as rivals in a protracted battle for the nomination. The full story has not been told of why he wanted her and why she wanted to be secretary of state. But so far, it is working better than almost anyone could have imagined.

Clinton has applied her famous work ethic to the challenges of Foggy Bottom but seems very comfortable to define her role as the chief executor of Obama’s foreign policy, not an independent power center. When she and Gates were chosen, the journalistic cliché was “the team of rivals,” echoing Lincoln. But they are a team – period.

In Vice President Biden, Obama picked a vivid personality with more years of experience in foreign policy than almost anyone else in Congress.

Biden, as is his wont, has at times strayed from the Obama line – but the president clearly trusts him and has given him major responsibilities.

What got me thinking about the skill with which this team has functioned was the announcement Sept. 17 that the United States was abandoning its plans for anti-missile installations in Poland and the Czech Republic and, instead of targeting long-range Iranian missiles, would use seaborne weapons to combat Iran’s short-range missiles.

The decision was explained on the basis of fresh intelligence showing that the Iranians had shifted their program to emphasize the short-range weapons, and this will allow countermeasures to be in place much earlier than the original plan.

I’m told by the White House that the president asked for a review of the missile defense plans back in March, that the Pentagon held some 120 internal meetings on the issue, that the National Security Council staff conferred 15 to 18 times, culminating in four sessions of the NSC deputies in August and September and two meetings of the principals – the Cabinet officers and the other statutory members, preparing for a presidential decision. All this without a single leak. The inclusiveness of the process was affirmed by the immediate public endorsements by the Pentagon, the State Department and the intelligence agencies.

In the end, Gates, who had signed off on the original Bush plan in 2006, emerged as one of the most forceful advocates for redoing it – another example of his intellectual and political courage.

Tougher tests undoubtedly await, but so far this team looks really good.

Editor’s note: Because of vacation schedules, this commentary from Thursday’s Los Angeles Times is presented in place of the customary Spokesman-Review editorial.

This spring, President Barack Obama reversed himself and decided to block the release of photographs showing the abuse of detainees by the U.S. military. Now, having lost in two lower federal courts, the administration is seeking review by the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices should decline the invitation.

The high court ordinarily agrees to hear cases that raise difficult questions on which lower courts have disagreed. But two courts found the legal issue in this case straightforward. The Freedom of Information Act allows for the non-disclosure of information that “could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual.” The obvious purpose of that language is to protect individuals who might be identified and placed in harm’s way.

The administration is offering a different argument. In her petition to the Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan quoted Obama’s warning that releasing the photos would “further inflame anti-American opinion and put our troops in greater danger.”

No doubt these and other photos would feed anti-American propaganda, as did the stomach-turning images of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. It’s doubtful, however, that they would provide much additional traction for enemies who already portray the United States as a nation of torturers. If anything, releasing the photos – with alterations to protect the identities of individuals – would underscore Obama’s determination not to repeat the egregious violations of human rights that occurred during the Bush administration.

As we have argued before, suppressing images of atrocities – whether of Nazi concentration camps, lynchings in the American South or “tiger cages” in Vietnam – is an attempt to blot out the historical record. Besides, the attempt is likely to be unsuccessful, given the history of efforts to block the unauthorized release of embarrassing information.

Ignoring those realities, the Senate has approved legislation that would allow the secretary of defense to block release of photos of detainees captured abroad after 9/11. The House fortunately has not approved it.

Meanwhile, judges are charged with weighing the legality, not the wisdom, of withholding such photos. If the Supreme Court were to reverse or weaken the decisions of lower courts, the impact would extend far beyond this case. A dilution of the exemption in the FOIA for materials that would threaten individuals would be a license for future administrations to suppress all sorts of information on the grounds that it might exacerbate anti-Americanism.

Obama was wrong to try to block the release of these photos. Neither the court nor Congress should compound his error.

You lie? No. Barack Obama doesn’t lie. He’s too subtle for that. He … well, you judge.

Herewith three examples within a single speech – the now-famous Obama-Wilson “you lie” address to Congress on health care – of Obama’s relationship with truth.

(1) “I will not sign (a plan),” he solemnly pledged, “if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future. Period.”

Wonderful. The president seems serious, veto-ready, determined to hold the line. Until, notes Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, you get to Obama’s very next sentence: “And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”

This apparent strengthening of the pledge brilliantly and deceptively undermines it. What Obama suggests is that his plan will require mandatory spending cuts if the current rosy projections prove false. But there’s absolutely nothing automatic about such cuts. Every Congress is sovereign.

Nothing enacted today will force a future Congress or a future president to make any cuts in any spending, mandatory or not.

Just look at the supposedly automatic Medicare cuts contained in the Sustainable Growth Rate formula enacted to constrain out-of-control Medicare spending. Every year since 2003, Congress has waived the cuts.

Mankiw puts the Obama bait-and-switch in plain language. “Translation: I promise to fix the problem. And if I do not fix the problem now, I will fix it later, or some future president will, after I am long gone. I promise he will. Absolutely, positively, I am committed to that future president fixing the problem. You can count on it. Would I lie to you?”

(2) And then there’s the famous contretemps about health insurance for illegal immigrants. Obama said they would not be insured. Well, all four committee-passed bills in Congress allow illegal immigrants to take part in the proposed Health Insurance Exchange.

But more importantly, the problem is that laws are not self-enforcing.

If they were, we’d have no illegal immigrants because, as I understand it, it’s illegal to enter the United States illegally. We have laws against burglary, too. But we also provide for cops and jails on the assumption that most burglars don’t voluntarily turn themselves in.

When Republicans proposed requiring proof of citizenship, the Democrats twice voted that down in committee. Indeed, after Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” shout-out, the Senate Finance Committee revisited the language of its bill to prevent illegal immigrants from getting any federal benefits. Why would the Finance Committee fix a nonexistent problem?

(3) Obama said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of Obamacare by eliminating “hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud” from Medicare.

That’s not a lie. That’s not even deception. That’s just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse – Meg Greenfield once called this phrase “the dread big three” – as the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977.

Moreover, if half a trillion is waiting to be squeezed painlessly out of Medicare, why wait for health care reform? If, as Obama repeatedly insists, Medicare overspending is breaking the budget, why hasn’t he gotten started on the painless billions in “waste and fraud” savings?

Obama doesn’t lie. He merely elides, gliding from one dubious assertion to another. This has been the story throughout his whole health care crusade. Its original premise was that our current financial crisis was rooted in neglect of three things: energy, education and health care.

That transparent attempt to exploit Emanuel’s Law – a crisis is a terrible thing to waste – failed for health care because no one is stupid enough to believe that the 2008 financial collapse was caused by a lack of universal health care.

So on to the next gambit: selling health care reform as a cure for the deficit. When that was exploded by the Congressional Budget Office’s demonstration of staggering Obamacare deficits, Obama tried a new tack: selling his plan as revenue-neutral insurance reform – until the revenue neutrality is exposed as phony future cuts and chimerical waste and fraud.

Obama doesn’t lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads – so fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere slickness.

Slickness wasn’t fatal to “Slick Willie” Clinton because he possessed a winning, near irresistible charm. Obama’s persona is more cool, distant, imperial. The charming scoundrel can get away with endless deception; the righteous redeemer cannot.

Thursday marked the 222nd anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution. Sept. 17, 1787, is a day worth celebrating, and remembering, as one of the most important moments in American history.

The drama surrounding our country’s birth was anything but peaceful. Waging and winning the Revolutionary War in 1783 and forming a new government amounted to a “David and Goliath” moment – intense, courageous and consequential. The fledgling American colonists took on the massive British Empire, declaring independence – fighting for it – and then achieving victory. Winning independence and securing the peace required foresight and planning, for the colonists were unsure about the longevity of their young nation. After all, settling a vast new land, with no fully developed economy, trade relations or stature throughout the world, was a monumental task for the Founders.

A first order of business was creating a lasting governing document. Having operated under the authority of the Articles of Confederation after 1776, national independence required something more. The Constitutional Convention that convened in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia was largely held for one important purpose – to devise a new charter in the postwar environment. Delegates from all 13 original states met throughout the humid Philadelphia summer to debate and discuss what kind of government America would have. Delegates’ frustration with the dominance of England, from which the colonists had declared independence, and recognition that the new nation must have cohesion and common purpose, led to lengthy debates that magnified regional differences and political distinctions. What emerged was a compromise document providing for some government, but not too much; recognizing the importance of states’ rights and individual freedoms, but establishing a national system of law, checks and balances, and separation of powers. That model resulted in the longest surviving national constitution in history.

Many of those who helped draft the Constitution emerged, and remain, as some of America’s finest leaders in history – George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison. Washington is “summoned” to the presidency by the people – and serves two terms with distinction and honor, declaring the importance of the “great constitutional charter” in his first inaugural address, delivered from the steps of Federal Hall in New York.

Inaugural addresses delivered by 35 of 44 presidents over the following two centuries mention the importance of the U.S. Constitution, but modern presidents give little attention to its significance in the conduct of the nation’s affairs. As a consequence, studies show that students today – and Americans generally – are not schooled in the basics of American constitutional history or principles.

Until the late 1960s, some public schools presented graduates with a copy of the Constitution. For years, W. H. Cowles, publisher of The Spokesman-Review, gave each graduating high school senior a complimentary book on the Constitution by Thomas James Norton, noting inside the front cover the following inscription:

This book, “The Constitution of the United States – Its Sources and Its Application,” is presented to you, in the hope that it will give you a better understanding and appreciation of your great heritage as a citizen of the United States of America.

In the initial pages of the book, first published in 1941, the signatures of prominent national leaders, such as Herbert C. Hoover and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, appear below the following message:

“Menaced by collectivist trends, we must seek revival of our strength in the spiritual foundations which are the bedrock of our republic. Democracy is the outgrowth of the religious conviction of the sacredness of every human life. On the religious side, its highest embodiment is the Bible; on the political, the Constitution. As has been said so well, ‘The Constitution is the civil bible of Americans.’ Next to the Bible, the best book on the Constitution should be in every home, school, library and parish hall.”

Now is an appropriate starting point for dedicated constitutional study by all Americans, particularly students, who are our country’s future leaders. Knowing about our Constitution and its principles makes us more discerning voters and more discriminating citizens concerning public policy issues. Appreciating the exciting story of the United States and the noble sacrifices of Americans who died defending the Constitution over generations will help perpetuate the precious liberties we hold so dear.

Read the U.S. Constitution as you reflect on its creation. There is no more honorable way to pay tribute to the Founders who gathered in Philadelphia 222 years ago to build the magnificent legacy of the most successful government known to mankind.

By Evan Thomas | NEWSWEEK

Published Sep 12, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Sep 21, 2009

Marcus Donner, photographing on behalf of Seattle University, uses the dining table to take a group photograph of Seattle University law students and faculty with retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Monday on SU’s campus. O’Connor was the featured speaker in a daylong seminar at the school. Seattle Times

SEATTLE – The first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court says there’s a serious problem with the government in Washington and many other states: They elect their judges.

Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor spoke Monday at a Seattle University Law School conference. She told a sold-out audience that threats to judicial independence are rising exponentially as more and more money pours into judicial races around the country.

“It’s the flood of money coming into our courtrooms,” O’Connor said. “You haven’t suffered too much of this in Washington – but you will, if you don’t think about this and change it.”

Washington is one of about two dozen states that have elections for at least some judges, from trial courts to state supreme courts. Many judges in Washington are initially appointed to vacancies on the bench, and many run for re-election unopposed. But judges on the state Supreme Court frequently face challengers.

The conference focused largely on questions surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Caperton v. Massey Coal, which held that elected judges must step aside from cases when large campaign contributions from interested parties create the appearance of bias.

Since 1934, a number of state panels have recommended that Washington do away with judicial elections in favor of a merit-based appointment system.

O’Connor said she advocates a system by which nonpartisan commissions select judges based on their merit. At the end of a judge’s term, voters could decide whether to retain them.

Multimillion-dollar judicial campaigns make it difficult to know whether a judge is deciding a case based on the merits or on concerns about re-election, she said.

She noted that the founders of the country believed it crucially important that federal judges have the freedom to make unpopular decisions without worrying about poll numbers.

Referring to cases such as Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed school segregation, O’Connor said, “Consider whether those hugely unpopular decisions would have come to pass if judges had to stand for upcoming elections.”

O’Connor was a state judge in Arizona before being appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. She retired in 2006 and said she has devoted her retirement to trying to abolish judicial elections and to push for a new emphasis on civics education in public schools.

She was joined on a panel by Washington state Chief Justice Gerry Alexander, Texas Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson and other judges and lawyers. Alexander said that even though he was almost defeated in an expensive election in 2006, he supports the current system because it’s worked well in the past.

“It’s not perfect and it does need to address the problem of large amounts of money coming into the system without skewing it,” he said.

Serving in a black robe and being addressed as “your honor” can “go to your head. It can be a humbling experience to go through elections,” he said.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Your blues, author BeBe Moore Campbell famously wrote, ain’t like mine.

I’ve occasionally borrowed that phrase to explain how bigotry as experienced by majority and minority is not the same: The one has access to levers of power enabling it to express its hatred in public policy; the other has access only to fists and words. But there are times that observation is simultaneously true, and irrelevant. This is one of them.

There is, after all, a certain egalitarian outrageousness in what happened to 18-year-old Brian Milligan. Getting hit in the back of the head with a chunk of concrete is getting hit in the back of the head with a chunk of concrete, whether you are Jew or Muslim, gay or straight, black or white.

That’s reportedly what happened to Milligan the night of Aug. 18, after he walked his girlfriend to her home in their gritty Buffalo, N.Y., neighborhood. Milligan had headphones on, so he didn’t even hear it coming. A mob of 10 to 12 black males then stomped and kicked him and hit him with more concrete – all in the head and face, says his father, Brian Sr., 41.

As they struck him, they taunted him. “You white (expletive), we told you stay away from here. These are ‘our’ streets. We told you stay away from our women.”

Brian, you see, is white. His girlfriend, Nicola Fletcher, 18, is African-American. That difference in melanin has, they say, been a source of daily friction with a gang of black men in their neighborhood for months. She’s been shot with paintballs; they’ve both been repeatedly cursed and taunted. “They would hit on her right in front of me,” says Milligan. “They would call her baby and all that.”

Now there’s this. Brian Sr. says when he got to the hospital, he didn’t even recognize his son. “I seen a mess. I seen somebody laying there dead.”

Not quite, but close. Brian Jr. had a gash on his head that required seven staples to close. He had bleeding and swelling in his brain. His jaw and one tooth were broken. His sense of smell is gone. He has no memory of the beating.

According to media reports, blacks in the neighborhood have been conspicuous in their refusal to cooperate with investigators. While a black anti-crime group has been trying to help bring the criminals to justice, Brian Sr. says other blacks have chosen silence. “I don’t know if it’s that they’re scared or they don’t care. That’s a coin I just don’t want to toss up in the air.”

Nor do I. So let me just say this: Assuming the facts are as we have been told, this demands prosecution as a hate crime. What happened to Brian Milligan is an offense against civil society. We should “all” be outraged.

I loathe bigotry in all its forms, but I have a special problem with bigotry as practiced by those who, by dint of their own history, should know better. When Jews hate Muslims for their religion, when gays scorn straights for their sexual orientation, when blacks beat a white teenager for the color of his skin, it suggests people too dense to understand the moral of their own story, the meaning of their own passages. The minority is no more righteous in its hate than the majority is.

Brian Sr., an unemployed construction worker facing a mountain of medical bills, is asking for help. A special savings account has been set up for Brian.

And yes, Brian and Nicola are still together. He credits her with nudging him to get his GED. “She loves me. And I love her. That’s more than anything. That sums it all up.”

Somebody thought they had a right to tell this kid where he could go and who he could see. They kicked his head in because of who he is.

And that’s a sadly familiar song. It is a blues we’ve heard too many times before.

By Dahlia Lithwick | NEWSWEEK     Published Sep 3, 2009

So Van Jones, the defenestrated White House green-jobs czar, once used an expletive to describe Republicans. Big deal. I’ve said worse about Democrats. I’ve said worse about Republicans. I’ve said worse about members of my family (you know who you are).

How prissy have we become? Are we allowed no salt in our linguistic diets?

Having once written a column praising Vice President Cheney’s pithy deployment of the F-word – on the floor of the Senate, no less – I rise in defense of Jones. True, Jones’ particular choice of epithet had none of the one-syllable concision, the onomatopoeic suggestiveness, the explosive charm of Cheney’s. But you don’t fire a guy for style.

Another charge was that Jones was a self-proclaimed communist. I can’t get too excited about this either. In today’s America, to be a communist is a pose, not a conviction.

After the Soviet collapse, Marxism is a relic, a pathetic anachronism reduced to its last redoubts: North Korea, Cuba and the English departments of the more expensive American universities.

In any case, every administration is allowed a couple of wing nuts among its 8,000 appointees. As long as they’re not in charge of foreign policy or the Fed, who cares?

Other critics are scandalized that Jones once accused “white environmentalists” of “essentially steering poison into the people of colored communities.”

In fact, from a global perspective, Jones is right. Environmentalists – overwhelmingly white and middle/upper class – have blocked drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

From where do you think the world gets the missing oil? From the poor, exploited, poisoned people of the Niger Delta, the Amazon Basin and other infinitely less-regulated and infinitely dirtier regions of the Third World.

Affluent enviros are all for wind farms, until one is proposed that might mar the serenity of a sail from the crew-necked precincts near Nantucket Sound. Then it’s clean energy for thee, not for me.

Jones’ genius as an ideological entrepreneur was to mine white liberal anxiety – they are quite aware of their own NIMBY hypocrisy – by selling them the “green jobs” shtick to reconcile class/racial guilt with environmental enthusiasm, thus making them feel better about themselves.

That’s why Jones rose so far. That’s why he was such a “progressive” star. That’s why, as top Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett put it, “we’ve been watching him” and were so eager to recruit him to the White House.

In the White House no more. Why? He’s gone for one reason and one reason only. You can’t sign a petition demanding not one but four investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11 – i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil – and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House.

Unlike the other stuff (see above), this is no trivial matter. It’s beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It’s dangerous. In America, movements and parties are required to police their extremes. Bill Buckley did that with Birchers. Liberals need to do that with “truthers.”

You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier – a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.

But reality doesn’t daunt Jones’ defenders. One Obama administration source told ABC that Jones hadn’t read the 2004 petition carefully enough, an excuse echoed by Howard Dean.

Carefully enough? It demanded the investigation of charges “that people within the current (Bush) administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

Where is the confusing fine print? Where is the syntactical complexity? Where is the perplexing ambiguity? An eighth-grader could tell you exactly what it means. A Yale Law School graduate could not?

No need to worry about Jones, however. Great career move. He’s gone from marginal loon to liberal martyr. His speaking fees have just doubled. It’s only a matter of time before he gets his own show on MSNBC.

But eight years after Sept. 11 – a day when there were no truthers among us, just Americans struck dumb by the savagery of what had been perpetrated on their innocent fellow citizens – a decent respect for the memory of that day requires that truthers, who derangedly desecrate it, be asked politely to leave. By everyone.

In their tireless efforts to kill health care reform, right-wingers have fanned fears that it would attract illegal aliens. This sideshow is rather twisted because, actually, the reforms would do the opposite. They would help curb illegal immigration.

Start with Canada to see how this works. Canadians have universal coverage, a big immigration program and almost no undocumented workers. These things are not unrelated. Government-guaranteed medical care is a big reason why Canada doesn’t tolerate illegal immigration. No country can long afford a large subclass of poor workers that pays little in taxes and collects full benefits.

To quote conservative economist Milton Friedman, “It’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”

Here in the United States, the House health-reform bill has an entire section titled, “No Federal Payment for Undocumented Aliens.” Furthermore, it requires every worker to have coverage, while denying subsidies to illegal immigrants, whatever their income. In other words, illegal immigrants would have to obtain health insurance and pay full freight for it. That doesn’t sound like a five-course free lunch to me.

Aha, say Republican foes of the legislation. The illegals will get around it. “Without the verification, you can’t frankly believe it is serious,” says Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas. Fair point. Let’s address it.

As a practical matter, undocumented workers shy away from government programs that could expose their illegal status. A law passed in 2005 requires applicants to Medicaid, which insures poor people, to prove their citizenship. Two years later, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform studied Medicaid enrollments in six states (Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin). It found only eight illegal immigrants on the rolls.

But, says Georgia Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey, “a lot of their kids are in the school system.” That’s true. The schools don’t check for immigration status. Medicaid does. And so would the health care system now envisioned by Congress.

It’s worth noting that President Obama’s is the first administration to seriously crack down on illegal immigration in decades. Under its orders, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency has stepped up audits of companies suspected of using illegal labor. Hundreds of offenders have been slapped with stiff fines and warnings to mend their ways.

The administration has just started requiring any company seeking sizable federal contracts to use the E-Verify system, a database containing Social Security and other records, to ensure that its workers are legal. (First it had to fight off a suit by the Chamber of Commerce and industry groups that use undocumented labor.)

Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who heads the Senate immigration subcommittee, is promoting biometric tools to replace the use of documents that can be counterfeited or stolen. Biometrics rely on such unique identifiers as fingerprints and the iris of the eye.

We should examine what’s really behind the right’s argument that universal health coverage would draw more illegal immigrants. It’s an assumption that if you keep America’s low-wage workers miserable enough, undocumented foreigners won’t want to join them.

That’s neither nice nor good for the country. The dirty truth is that the uninsured are not people on welfare or very poor workers. Those groups get covered by Medicaid. The uninsured are mainly struggling families who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford the coverage – or those rejected by private insurers because of pre-existing medical conditions.

To sum it up, the Democrats’ policies are already reining in illegal immigration, and the proposed health care reform would, if anything, contain it further. Those trying to stop reform should look elsewhere for scare tactics.

In recent health care debates people proclaim they don’t want the government standing between them and their physician. Some have adamantly opposed a “single-payer” health plan while demanding, “Don’t touch my Medicare.” As a physician practicing in Spokane for the past 26 years, I would like to share my experiences.

I am a urologist, providing medical and surgical care to my patients with diseases of the urinary tract. Over 75 percent of my patients are on Medicare.

Medicare allows me the freedom to provide quality health care with the interests of my patients as first priority. Medicare is a single-payer, government-sponsored health insurance plan and yet imposes no restrictions or arbitrary rules between my patients and me. The health care decisions are only between my patients, their loved ones and me. Yes, there are guidelines for best practice, which I honor and embrace.

Americans support the Medicare system by paying into the program their entire working lives. At age 65, all citizens are eligible for this program and enjoy the security of knowing their health care is covered. Younger patients in special categories (end stage kidney disease, permanent physical or mental disabilities) are also covered by Medicare. I am appreciative Medicare is the force that allows people to come to my office for urologic care. Without coverage, they stay away, suffer with their usually treatable ailments, or die in pain. All American citizens deserve comprehensive health coverage and Medicare fulfills this right. My vote is “Medicare for all.”

In contrast, private insurance plans are heavy-handed and defiantly stand between patients and their health care providers. These plans ration care irrationally. Confirming coverage, obtaining prior approval for procedures, collecting money and billing these insurance companies over and over because of denials ranging in the 25 percent to 40 percent range are huge obstructions. Private “insurance” policies are cumbersome, denying and frustrating. Documented claims filed electronically with Medicare are quickly resolved.

Medicare eases my patients’ minds. Every week, I see patients without insurance, delaying treatment for fear of bankruptcy, emptying their savings, selling their houses, etc. These people are sometimes one illness away from complete financial disaster. No wonder they delay doctor visits and live with symptoms – sometimes too long – and their disease (cancer, infection obstruction) progresses to a point of uncontrollability or even mortality. I am not willing to accept this as democracy or compassion. This is wrong.

President Barack Obama and some members of Congress have earnestly tried to reform this mess we call our “health care system.” The president has consistently supported increased reimbursement to primary care physicians, while encouraging medical students to choose primary care as a specialty. He also advocates for absorption of student loans in exchange for primary care doctors practicing in underserved urban and rural areas.

That nearly 50 million citizens in our country are uninsured is a travesty and, frankly, embarrassing. Every year, more than $400 billion of private health insurance money (paid for by subscribers of the insurance company like you and me) go to profits, marketing, executives, buildings, etc. The president of United Health Care makes $102,000 an hour. Of the money flowing into for-profit private insurance, only 65 percent is used for actual health care services. This is in contrast to Medicare, where more than 95 percent is directly used to provide health services to our seniors.

These issues are complex – financially and ethically. Standing by and listening to the verbiage by the profit-seeking, fear-mongering insurance and pharmaceutical industries is no longer an option for me. What makes this country great is our willingness to sacrifice our excesses for the general greatness of the whole.

Personally, I became a medical doctor to serve with compassion and love – to relieve pain and suffering. At the end of the day, I do not ruminate about money. Rather, I hope I’ve contributed to my patients’ journey toward a greater understanding of the wonder and blessings of life.

The Canadian physician William Osler stated this simply, “We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.”

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any stupider, schools across the nation decided to censor President Barack Obama’s speech urging kids to work hard because “being successful is hard.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the terribly scary bit of propaganda that prompted certain Americans to cry “socialism” and “indoctrination” and force some schools to opt out of hearing the president’s message Tuesday.

When and how did we become so ridiculous?

As it turns out, we’ve been this way for a while now. Such protests aren’t new, a review of which follows shortly. The difference is that now, the masses are technologically enabled, amplified by a twillion tweets.

Everybody’s got a megaphone, bless democracy’s heart.

But when a protest of one (or a few) can instantly morph into a babble of thousands, rabble-rousing becomes a hobby – and rational debate becomes an oxymoron.

Granting a supersized benefit of the doubt to protesters, Obama’s speech originally included classroom instructional materials from the Department of Education that asked students to express how they were inspired by the president and how they might help him.

Too political, critics said. Indoctrination, charged Florida Republican Chairman Jim Greer.

“As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology,” Greer said.

Some conservative radio and television hosts latched onto the specter of youth camps past and encouraged parents to keep their children home from school in protest.

OK, benefit- of-doubt rescinded. Even asking kids to help the president improve the nation doesn’t justify charges of socialist indoctrination.

John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” is hardly considered a bugle call to summer camp in the Urals.

Essentially, Obama’s speech, which aired live, focused on encouraging students to evaluate how they might contribute to making America better.

“What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make?”

Anyone who heard or read the address will have found little to criticize, except perhaps that it was a tad boring, too long – and certifiably schmaltzy. Then again, he was talking to kids, some of them as young as 5. Even former first lady Laura Bush and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich approved of the president’s talk.

Presidential speeches to students aren’t a new development. The St. Petersburg Times’ indispensable PolitiFact.com “Truth-O-Meter” notes that both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush gave such addresses.

And, yes, Democrats protested. Reagan’s speech was, in fact, political, as he went beyond stressing the importance of education to discussing nuclear disarmament, defense funding and even taxes. Talk about a snooze.

Gingrich, who at the time of Bush’s address was House Republican whip, defended the president’s right to speak directly to students. But Richard Gephardt, then the House Democratic leader, said the Education Department shouldn’t be producing “paid political advertising for the president. … And the president should be doing more about education than saying, ‘Lights, camera, action.’ ”

And round and round we go. The hysterics, it would seem, have reached a detente. Or, one hopes, canceled each other out. Compared to previous presidential addresses, Obama’s was strictly apolitical. It was also quintessential Obama – aimed at healing, at soothing the afflicted and making things all better. The speech was so brimming with pathos, it seemed to have been concocted around a campfire where kids recalled their worst day in school.

Addressing all ages of students, from kindergartners to 12th-graders, presents clear challenges, but Obama managed to hit every group’s vulnerabilities and insecurities – from being bullied, to not fitting in, to having a divided family. Hey, he’s been there!

And now he’s president. You can be, too, was the subtext. What’s so wrong with that?

One might have wished Obama’s remarks cut by half. It also would have been nice if he had thrown in an Ashley or a Jonah among the students he featured – Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell. But overall, the president’s message was a conservative hymn, a GOP platform for kiddies: Take personal responsibility, don’t blame others for your failures, listen to your parents and your teachers, work hard. “Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.”

The only thing missing from this orgy of conservative orthodoxy was … a Republican president. And that is the lesson of the day.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court’s conservative bloc sounded poised Wednesday to strike down on free speech grounds a 100-year-old ban against corporations spending large amounts of money to elect or defeat congressional and presidential candidates.

If the justices were to issue such a ruling in the next few months, it could reshape American politics, beginning with the congressional campaign in 2010. Big companies and industries – and possibly unions as well – could fund campaign ads to support or defeat members of Congress.

Since 1907, federal law has prohibited corporations from giving money to candidates. And since 1947, corporations and unions have been barred from spending money on their own to urge voters to elect or defeat federal candidates. Corporate executives, as individuals, can contribute money to a corporate political action committee or PAC, but these amounts are relatively modest compared to the funds available to the corporate treasury.

At least 24 states have similar bans on corporate spending in state races.

All those spending limits have come under growing legal attack from conservatives and libertarians who say the government should not be allowed to set limits on campaign spending and electioneering, even when corporate or union money is in play.

Three justices – Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas – have already said they would overrule past decisions that had upheld federal and state restrictions on corporate election spending. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito also have said they favor free speech over the campaign funding limits. But they have not yet said whether they would go along and give corporations a free speech right to spend on campaign ads.

That was the issue before the court Wednesday. It was a rare re-argument in a seemingly narrow case of a small nonprofit group called Citizens United. It had produced a video called “Hillary: The Movie,” which was designed to undercut Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the presidency. However, it got tied up in a legal battle with the Federal Election Commission.

Because Citizens United is incorporated and received a small amount of corporate money, the group and its movie came under FEC regulation. Any amount of corporate money can trigger regulatory action under the election laws.

In March, the justices debated whether the law should apply to a nonprofit group that produced a campaign-related video. But rather than decide that narrow question, the justices said in June they would focus instead on whether to say that all corporations, like individuals, have a right to spend freely to elect or defeat candidates.

Washington lawyer Ted Olson, the former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, pressed the justices to rule broadly. “Corporations are persons entitled to protection under the First Amendment,” said Olson, who represented Citizens United.

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., co-sponsors of the 2002 campaign funding law, were in the courtroom and listened intently to the 90-minute argument. The ruling could strike down part of the McCain-Feingold Act that restricted corporate and union-funded election ads in the months before the election.

The court will meet behind closed doors later this week to vote on the case. A decision could come within a few months.

OLYMPIA – A judge on Tuesday refused to block a public vote on expanded domestic partnership benefits for gay couples in Washington state.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Thomas McPhee rejected the arguments of Washington Families Standing Together, a gay-rights group that claimed Secretary of State Sam Reed improperly accepted thousands of petition signatures that supported putting Referendum 71 on the ballot.

The referendum would put the Legislature’s latest expansion of domestic partnership rights for gay couples on the November ballot.

Washington Families Standing Together chairwoman Anne Levinson said her group hasn’t decided whether to appeal.

“We would only appeal if we could do so swiftly and if we determined that’s the most helpful way to support these families under attack by these groups right now,” she said.

State elections officials have said that all legal challenges need to be completed by Thursday because they need to begin printing materials for the Nov. 3 general election.

“Time is short,” said state elections director Nick Handy. “It’s really time to let the voters make a decision about this issue.”

Referendum 71, sponsored by a conservative political group called Protect Marriage Washington, would ask voters to approve or reject the “everything but marriage” domestic partnership law that state lawmakers passed earlier this year.

The new law would add more legal rights to the state’s established domestic partnerships for gay couples, putting registered partners on par with married couples under state law. Some unmarried heterosexual couples also could register as domestic partners.

A “yes” vote on R-71 would put the newest law into place, and a “no” vote would reject it. The underlying laws laying out domestic partnerships – enacted in 2007 and broadened once already in 2008 – would not be affected.

Levinson’s group argued that tens of thousands of signatures may have been invalid, pointing specifically to the way signature-gatherers filled out their petitions.

By law, the petitions must include a statement that professes all of the voter signatures were gathered properly.

In some cases, those declarations were not signed, or simply rubber-stamped with a sponsor’s signature moments before they were turned in to the state.

Reed has accepted petitions without signed declarations since 2006, under legal guidance from the state attorney general. McPhee sided with the state, noting that while state law makes clear the declaration must appear on the petition, it “does not require that the declaration be completed or signed by a signature gatherer.”

He also rejected an argument that Reed improperly counted signatures from people who weren’t registered voters when they signed the petitions.

McPhee said a time lag between sending in a voter registration card and the receipt of the petitions makes it impossible to know when the 43 people in question were actually registered.

“All this does is illustrate the uncertainty by which our present system tracks the date of petition signing compared to the date of registration,” he said.

Despite their control of all three branches of government, this has not been a good summer for liberal Democrats. Their health care “reform” bill, which has yet to be fully written, much less fully funded, has been exposed at town hall meetings as a power grab over life and death with the strong possibility that “do no harm” will be replaced by a utilitarian approach to treatment.

The cap-and-trade measure (dubbed “cap and tax” by the Wall Street Journal) appears in trouble. Closer scrutiny has revealed it as one more reach into our pockets by politicians who never have enough of our money.

As the first elections since President Barack Obama’s presidential victory approach, liberals are getting nervous that all this exposure is leaving them naked before an increasingly skeptical and angry public. The latest Rasmussen poll shows President Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 46 percent, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, “demonstrates a substantial drop in presidential approval relative to other elected presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries.”

The Washington Post is trying to provide life support for at least one Democrat who is in trouble. In a gift for the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia, Creigh Deeds, the Post ran a front-page story above the fold last Sunday trumpeting its “discovery” of a 20-year-old thesis written by the Republican candidate, Bob McDonnell. In that thesis, McDonnell was critical of fornicators, those who have abortions and parents – especially employed women – who don’t spend enough time with their children.

So that late-summer vacationers might get the point, the Post ran a follow-up story Tuesday – again on the front page – about the “uproar” created (by the Post) over the thesis. It was accompanied by an editorial critical of McDonnell’s views. But on June 11, a Post editorial said, “Democrats … will try to depict former attorney general Robert F. McDonnell … as a right-wing zealot and Pat Robertson protégé. In fact, both candidates are serious public servants with long records that deserve more careful examination. … Mr. McDonnell’s tenure as attorney general, by most accounts, has been professional and not overtly ideological.”

McDonnell now says that while remaining conservative on most issues, he has changed some of his views over the past two decades.

If the Post is so concerned about the fitness of McDonnell for governor because of what he wrote in a single thesis, why hasn’t it been similarly aggressive in rooting out Barack Obama’s records from Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard? And does anyone – especially McDonnell’s opponent – want to run on a pro-fornication platform? Even President Obama has said he wants to reduce the number of abortions in America. And who thinks parents spend too much time with their children?

Here is the way I believe it works at liberal universities. Some professors require their students to repeat back to them on test papers and in theses what the professors believe. Unless students hate Republicans, revile George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, renounce God, support abortion and gay rights, they can sometimes expect a lower, even failing, grade. When my wife studied for her master’s degree in counseling, she felt pressured to repeat her professors’ beliefs instead of stating her own. A friend with a doctorate told her, “Write what they want and get the degree. Then you can counsel the way you like.” This is academic freedom? It sounds like indoctrination. Why is it OK at liberal universities to tell professors what they want to hear, but not OK at conservative ones to do the same?

The Left is worried not only about the Virginia governor’s race, but also the contest in New Jersey, where incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine is 10 points behind Republican challenger Chris Christie, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid isn’t up for re-election until next year, but he already trails his likely opponent, Danny Tarkanian, by 11 points.

For growing numbers of people, the elections in Virginia and New Jersey can’t come quickly enough and November 2010 is a date being circled in red on many calendars.

“Very active.” That’s what White House aides say Barack Obama is going to be this month. That’s probably an understatement. Obama faces September deadlines on three issues, on each of which he could get himself in political trouble, not only with those on the right and center but also those on the political left.

Only one of those issues is domestic: health care. Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress, scheduled rather hastily for Wednesday night, gives him a chance to turn around public opinion, which has been going against his policies, and to generate something like the enthusiasm his candidacy created last year.

But he faces a binary choice: The president must either insist on a “government option” insurance plan or must let it be known that he will sign a bill without one. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House won’t pass a bill without the government option, and leftist Progressive Caucus members threaten to withhold their votes from any such bill. But Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad says a government option bill can’t pass the Senate.

Sooner or later the old politician’s dodge — “some of my friends are for the bill and some of my friends are against the bill, and I’m always with my friends” – won’t wash. As a practical matter, Obama will surely sign a bill without the government option, and the Progressive Caucus most likely can be whipped into line by Pelosi. But the always angry left will become even more angry at their leader when these realities are acknowledged.

Obama may also face a binary choice on Afghanistan. Reading between the lines of stories on Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations, it seems likely that the White House has been pressuring him not to ask for more troops and that he will do so anyway, and with the approval of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Obama, having already dispatched more troops there, will be asked to double down on a policy that public opinion polls show is unpopular with Democratic voters — and with some conservatives, like columnist George Will, as well.

Obama is averse to using the V-word (victory) and the American left since the Vietnam years has not wanted to see America victorious in war. They think it makes us look chauvinistic and proud about our nation when we should be, as Obama often has been, apologetic for its sins. But accepting a recommendation for more troops would set him on a course where victory is the only acceptable result, which will make the angry left angry at him.

The third issue on which Obama will need to choose is Iran. Earlier this year he set a deadline of September for the beginning of talks with Iran. Presumably he thought the mullahs would become convinced of his good will by now and that the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York would be a venue for talks.

But the popular opposition to the rigged Iranian elections in June and the internal turmoil within the mullah regime make it unlikely that Obama will have any reliable negotiating partner. And as George Perkovich of the dovish Carnegie Endowment says, “The Iranians show no sign that they’re going to be genuinely prepared to negotiate.” They’re more interested in getting nukes than in getting to yes, even with a president with an Arabic middle name.

A failure to engage the Iranians will probably not enrage the American left, which tends to see the United States as a bad actor in need of behavior adjustment, rather than a rogue regime like Iran’s. But it does raise the awful question, which George W. Bush passed on to Obama, of how to prevent this murderous regime from obtaining and using nuclear weapons.

Septembers often present difficult challenges for leaders. Sept. 11, 2001, transformed and defined George W. Bush’s presidency. September 2008 gave us the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the near-collapse of the financial system and the beginning of a deep economic recession. Obama met that challenge better than his rival candidate John McCain by remaining calm, sounding reasonable and cooperating as a minor player with those who were making the difficult decisions.

That won’t be enough this September. “To govern is to choose,” John Kennedy said, and Barack Obama is going to have to make some tough choices this month — choices that could antagonize his left-wing base.

Copyright 2009, Creators Syndicate Inc.

I am a primary care physician, board-certified in family practice. I am a self-employed solo practitioner with a physician’s assistant. I have been practicing medicine in Spokane for 30 years. For the first time I will not renew my contract with Medicare when it expires on Oct. 1. In this time of discussion about health care reform, I feel the public should know how this government system impacts physicians.

The primary problem with Medicare is simply this: Medicare doesn’t pay. Reimbursement for care is 35 to 50 cents on the dollar of charges submitted. This doesn’t cover overhead. It costs more to provide care for a Medicare patient than the reimbursement schedule pays.

Medicare constitutes 20 percent of my schedule, but since Medicare patients are, generally speaking, more complex, it often requires 30 percent of my time.

Medicare payments represent 5 percent of my income, so that means 25 percent of my day I am working for free. This busyness does not mean business is good. My practice population is aging and matriculating into Medicare coverage, threatening the viability of my practice.

I have worked with Medicare for 30 years, feeling I was doing my part. If ever there was such an obligation, it was paid back years ago.

In not renewing my Medicare contract, I am rejecting a faulty insurance system, not the patient. My patients are invited to stay on with the understanding that they will be responsible for their bill, and many have elected to do so. I do understand that many on Medicare do not have an alternative.

Each year I have to decide which insurance companies with whom to participate. Unfortunately, Medicare is no longer a responsible choice.

I have a responsibility to remain viable as a business. I have a responsibility to my family and myself, my staff and their families, my other patients, the owner of the building from whom I rent, the bank from whom I borrow to keep my practice up to date, other health care providers to whom I refer, to laboratories and imaging businesses which I use, and the list goes on. If I fail, many will feel the ripple effect.

There are other problems with Medicare besides their reimbursement schedule.

Medicare is out of touch: Clerks operating from models established by committees who have not seen the patient decide what is covered, how much is covered and for whom it is covered. The physician, who actually sees the patient, is trained to diagnose and prescribe, may be and often is overruled by a clerk.

Medicare is irresponsible and not held accountable: About two years ago Medicare prematurely launched a new computer program that was not ready to handle its own billing requirements. The consequence to my practice was that over $60,000 in charges was not paid for over six months.

Medicare is restrictive: Medicare will not allow patients to submit a bill from a non-contracted physician. This would allow patients to stay with a non-contracted physician and give them a greater choice of physicians.

Medicare is unprofitable: Contracted physicians must accept what Medicare pays as payment in full and cannot bill the patient or a secondary insurance for additional charges that would make it profitable to care for Medicare patients.

Medicare interferes with the doctor-patient relationship: Medicare instructs patients to report physicians they feel may be overbilling. This is an unfair burden on the patient.

Medicare is unfriendly: Medicare threatens fines of $25,000 per incident for any billing infraction as defined by Medicare clerks.

Medicare is arbitrary: Office visits are routinely downgraded to pay less.

Medicare is bureaucratic: I am now required to sign an “opt-out” contract stating that I am not going to sign a contract. I need to repeat this every two years.

I know of no other industry that is as mistreated as the health care industry. Government and military contract winners expect a profit, sometimes even large profits. Only the health care industry, charged with the health of the nation, is expected to subsidize the government.

Most of the physicians I know are generous and serving; that is why they are in health care. The Medicare system has taken advantage of the generosity of the physician for far too long. The current administration claims that physicians are paid too much and proposes to pay even less. This does not inspire confidence that the current administration understands the business of health care. As the business goes so goes the health care. In Spokane, for instance, more physicians are leaving the area than are coming in.

It is time to stop enabling a fundamentally flawed model by participating in it. Like giving alcohol to an alcoholic, it is time to say no – enough is enough.

What happened to President Barack Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership. But the idea of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pulling Obama left is quite ridiculous. Where do you think he came from, this friend of Chavista ex-terrorist William Ayers, of PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, of racialist inciter Jeremiah Wright?

But forget the character witnesses. Just look at Obama’s behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can’t get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field.

In a center-right country, that was problem enough. Obama then compounded it by vastly misreading his mandate. He assumed it was personal. This, after winning by a mere seven points in a year of true economic catastrophe, of an extraordinarily unpopular Republican incumbent, and of a politically weak and unsteady opponent. Nonetheless, Obama imagined that, as Fouad Ajami so brilliantly observed, he had won the kind of banana-republic plebiscite that grants caudillo-like authority to remake everything in one’s own image.

Accordingly, Obama unveiled his plans for a grand makeover of the American system, animating that vision by enacting measure after measure that greatly enlarged state power, government spending and national debt. Not surprisingly, these measures engendered powerful popular skepticism that burst into tea-party town-hall resistance.

Obama’s reaction to that resistance made things worse. Obama fancies himself tribune of the people, spokesman for the grass roots, harbinger of a new kind of politics from below that would upset the established lobbyist special-interest order of Washington. Yet faced with protests from a real grass-roots movement, his party and his supporters called it a mob – misinformed, misled, irrational, angry, unhinged, bordering on racist. All this while the administration was cutting backroom deals with every manner of special interest – from drug companies to auto unions to doctors – in which favors worth billions were quietly and opaquely exchanged.

“Get out of the way” and “don’t do a lot of talking,” the great bipartisan scolded opponents whom he blamed for creating the “mess” from which he is merely trying to save us. If only they could see. So with boundless confidence in his own persuasiveness, Obama undertook a summer campaign to enlighten the masses by addressing substantive objections to his reforms.

Things got worse still. With answers so slippery and implausible and, well, fishy, he began jeopardizing the most fundamental asset of any new president – trust. You can’t say that the system is totally broken and in need of radical reconstruction, but nothing will change for you; that Medicare is bankrupting the country, but $500 billion in cuts will have no effect on care; that you will expand coverage while reducing deficits – and not inspire incredulity and mistrust. When ordinary citizens understand they are being played for fools, they bristle.

After a disastrous summer – mistaking his mandate, believing his press, centralizing power, governing left, disdaining citizens for (of all things) organizing – Obama is in trouble.

Let’s be clear: This is a fall, not a collapse. He’s not been repudiated or even defeated. He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore some of his clout and popularity.

But what has occurred – irreversibly – is this: He’s become ordinary. The spell is broken. The charismatic conjurer of 2008 has shed his magic. He’s regressed to the mean, tellingly expressed in poll numbers hovering at 50 percent.

For a man who only recently bred a cult, ordinariness is a great burden, and for his acolytes, a crushing disappointment. Obama has become a politician like others. And like other flailing presidents, he will try to salvage a cherished reform – and his own standing – with yet another prime-time speech.

But for the first time since election night in Grant Park, he will appear in the most unfamiliar of guises: mere mortal, a treacherous transformation to which a man of Obama’s supreme self-regard may never adapt.

Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft talks to the media in 2006.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft violated the rights of U.S. citizens in the fevered wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when he ordered arrests on material witness warrants when the government lacked probable cause, a federal appeals court said in a scathing opinion Friday.

In a ruling that said Ashcroft could be sued for prosecutorial abuses, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the former attorney general immunity from liability for his misuse of the material witness warrants in national security investigations.

The panel, all appointees of Republican presidents, said they found the detention policy Ashcroft authorized “repugnant to the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.”

Rights advocates cheered the ruling in the case brought by Kansas-born Muslim convert Abdullah Al-Kidd, saying it spotlighted excesses committed by the Bush administration in the post-9/11 scramble to thwart terrorist plots.

The ruling could allow Al-Kidd’s suit for damages to proceed to trial, if the government doesn’t appeal to a larger 9th Circuit panel or seek Supreme Court review.

Al-Kidd, a former University of Idaho running back whose birth name was Lavoni T. Kidd, sued Ashcroft after he was arrested at Dulles International Airport en route to a Saudi scholarship program in March 2003. He was handcuffed, strip-searched and shuttled among interrogations in Virginia, Oklahoma and Idaho, before being released 16 days later and ordered to surrender his passport and live with his wife and in-laws in Nevada.

The arrest led to Al-Kidd’s being denied a security clearance and losing his job with a government contractor.

In his 2005 complaint, Al-Kidd noted that then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, in an appearance before a congressional subcommittee during Al-Kidd’s detention, had pointed to his arrest and that of confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as evidence of government progress in reining in terrorists.

“To this day, the government has never explained why the director of the FBI would tell the United States Congress that the arrest of Mr. Al-Kidd – supposedly a witness – represented one of the government’s noteworthy recent successes in the war on terrorism,” the complaint stated.

WASHINGTON – Looking to break the logjam on health care legislation, the White House and Democrats in the Senate are increasingly placing their hopes on the idea of a “trigger” that, if set off, would allow the government to offer health insurance to many Americans.

Advocates believe the “trigger” idea could win over several moderate Republican and wavering Democratic senators, who do not want to give the government blanket authorization to enter the insurance market and compete with private companies.

“This is the best shot we’ve got for getting a public option,” said one House Democratic adviser. “It’s better than nothing.”

Under a trigger, private insurance companies would be told to meet benchmarks for improving the health system, such as insuring more Americans and reducing health care costs. If they failed to do so by a certain deadline, a government-run program would begin offering health insurance.

The proposal has long been part of the health care discussions in Congress. But it has drawn new attention, because it has become a central focus of negotiations between President Barack Obama’s staff and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, a moderate Republican.

If Snowe supported a health care overhaul bill, she potentially could bring a patina of bipartisanship to the measure, providing political cover to other moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats who have thus far withheld their support.

Suggestions that Obama might support a trigger were welcomed by the influential, 52-member coalition of “Blue Dog” House Democrats – conservatives who generally are not sold on Obama’s health care plans.

“The trigger is something the Blue Dogs have supported from the beginning,” said Brad Howard, spokesman for Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., who heads the Blue Dogs’ health care task force. “We’ve been talking about this for a while as a compromise, as a middle-of-the-road and moderate alternative.”

By supporting a trigger, Obama could still make the argument to liberal Democrats that he has not abandoned the prospect of a government-run plan, also called a “public option,” which labor unions and much of the House Democratic leadership have said must be part of any health care legislation.

They argue that a government-run plan is needed to inject competition into the insurance industry, which might lead to lower costs and give the public more choices among insurance plans.

Talks between the White House and Snowe have focused on what developments would set off the trigger and begin the government’s entry into the insurance market. Private insurers could keep the government out of the market if they met benchmarks in several areas. Those might include expanding the number of Americans who have health insurance coverage and reducing health care costs.

If the White House manages to come up with numbers that satisfy both moderate Republicans and liberal Democrats, the Snowe proposal could end the stalemate.

The White House declined comment on the negotiations with Snowe.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry responds to a question in his Capitol office on Thursday about President Obama’s school-time speech next week.

DALLAS – President Barack Obama’s back-to-school address next week was supposed to be a feel-good story for an administration battered over its health care agenda. Now Republican critics are calling it an effort to foist a political agenda on children, creating yet another confrontation with the White House.

Obama plans to speak directly to students Tuesday about the need to work hard and stay in school. His address will be shown live on the White House Web site and on C-SPAN at noon EDT, a time when classrooms across the country will be able to tune in.

Schools don’t have to show it. But districts across the country have been inundated with phone calls from parents and are struggling to address the controversy that broke out after Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent a letter to principals urging schools to watch.

Districts in states including Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin have decided not to show the speech to students. Others are still thinking it over or are letting parents have their kids opt out.

Some conservatives, driven by radio pundits and bloggers, are urging schools and parents to boycott the address. They say Obama is using the opportunity to promote a political agenda and is overstepping the boundaries of federal involvement in schools.

“As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education – it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality,” said Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell. “This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”

Arizona state schools superintendent Tom Horne, a Republican, said lesson plans for teachers created by Obama’s Education Department “call for a worshipful rather than critical approach.”

The White House plans to release the speech online Monday so parents can read it. He will deliver the speech at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va.

“I think it’s really unfortunate that politics has been brought into this,” White House deputy policy director Heather Higginbottom said in an interview.

“It’s simply a plea to students to really take their learning seriously. Find out what they’re good at. Set goals. And take the school year seriously.”

She noted that President George H.W. Bush made a similar address to schools in 1991. Like Obama, Bush drew criticism, with Democrats accusing the Republican president of making the event into a campaign commercial.

Critics are particularly upset about lesson plans the administration created to accompany the speech. The lesson plans, available online, originally recommended having students “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.”

The White House revised the plans Wednesday to say students could “write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals.”

“That was inartfully worded, and we corrected it,” Higginbottom said.

In the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, the 54,000-student school district is not showing the 15- to 20-minute address but will make the video available later.

PTA council President Cara Mendelsohn said Obama is “cutting out the parent” by speaking to kids during school hours.

“Why can’t a parent be watching this with their kid in the evening?” Mendelsohn said. “Because that’s what makes a powerful statement, when a parent is sitting there saying, ‘This is what I dream for you. This is what I want you to achieve.’ ”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, said in an interview that he’s “certainly not going to advise anybody not to send their kids to school that day.”

“Hearing the president speak is always a memorable moment,” he said.

But he also said he understood where the criticism was coming from.

“Nobody seems to know what he’s going to be talking about,” Perry said. “Why didn’t he spend more time talking to the local districts and superintendents, at least give them a heads-up about it?”

One school superintendent, Murray Dalgleish of Council, in west-central Idaho, urged people not to rush to judgment.

“Is the president dictating to these kids? I don’t think so,” Dalgleish said. “He’s trying to get out the same message we’re trying to get out, which is, ‘You are in charge of your education.’ ”

COLUMBIA, S.C. – When people think of South Carolina, they think of … I know, Comedy Central. Really, shouldn’t Jon Stewart send South Carolinians a cut of his pay?

What people do not typically think of is black Republicans, a perception that could change soon if a young man named Marvin Rogers has his way. This 33-year-old, Spanish-speaking former aide to South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis has a plan for the GOP: He wants to change its complexion.

Until 2008 when he ran unsuccessfully for the state House of Representatives, Rogers may have been better known in Latin America, where he was an itinerant preacher for several years, than in North America. “Unsuccessfully” in this case should be qualified. Rogers won 32 percent of the vote in a blue stronghold, running as a black Republican in the year of Obama.

All things considered, not bad.

Rogers’ story is, shall we say, unorthodox. Born in the tiny town of Boiling Springs, S.C., he was raised by working-class parents with values rather than ideology. “So I was largely removed from the acrimony between the African-American race and the Republican Party.”

Without preconceptions about where his race placed him politically, Rogers began examining issues on paper and recognized that he was philosophically more aligned with Republicans than Democrats. But then a funny thing happened. When he began attending political meetings, he noticed, “Oh, my, I’m the only black guy here. What’s up with that?”

That question led Rogers on a quest that has resulted in a book nearing completion, “Silence Is The Loudest Sound,” in which he attempts to explain how the party of Lincoln lost its black soul.

Through five years of study and interviews, Rogers reached the conclusion that the chasm between the black community and the Republican Party is more emotional than philosophical. And, he says, that chasm is more a media template than reflective of reality.

The best explanation for what’s gone wrong, he says, was articulated by Jack Kemp, who told him during an interview: “The Republican Party has had a great history with African-Americans and they turned away from it. The Democratic Party has had a terrible history, but they overcame it.”

Part of the turning away followed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” that tried to harness votes by cultivating white resentment toward blacks. Rogers is no Pollyanna and recognizes this period for what it was – a “bruise” on the GOP. But he insists that Democrats use the Southern strategy when it suits them.

The biggest problem for today’s Republican Party, he says, is tone-deafness, as manifested by conservative talk radio and TV. Rogers says he and most blacks can’t listen to Rush Limbaugh because all they hear is anger.

“They might agree with Rush on the issues, but they can’t hear him because he sounds mad. People don’t follow fussers. People don’t follow angry men. They follow articulators.”

What about Michael Steele, the Republican Party chairman? Is he changing the perception of the GOP as a party of whites?

Rogers takes a moment to consider and answers carefully.

“Let’s say I think that when he ran for the Maryland Senate seat, and when he was lieutenant governor, that was when he was most effective in changing this perception.”

Another reason the GOP limits itself among African-Americans, says Rogers, is because Republicans don’t talk about issues that have currency in the black community – poverty, the challenges of single-parent homes, social justice, recidivism, black capitalism and crime. Studying Republican speeches through the decades was how Rogers came up with his book title.

The way for Republicans to attract black voters is pretty simple, says Rogers: Show up and solve problems.

When he moved to Rock Hill, where he currently lives, Rogers made his home in the inner city rather than the suburbs. When a local basketball team needed money for jerseys, Rogers helped them. Thus, when this inner-city team hit the court, their jerseys said, “York County GOP.”

“People don’t care what (political affiliation) comes after your name,” says Rogers. “They just want the jersey.”

With Rogers on the hustings, Democrats have cause for concern. Among other things, he’s telling African-Americans that they have rendered themselves politically impotent by voting monolithically. “If one party can count on our vote, then they can take us for granted. Predictability is suicidal.”

Predictability would seem not to be a problem for a Spanish-speaking, black Republican wonk who just might make South Carolina less of a joke.

OLYMPIA – Expanded domestic partnerships for same-sex couples could face a public vote after Washington officials ruled that referendum sponsors have enough voter support to force a referendum on the November ballot.

The new partnership law, nicknamed “everything but marriage” by its supporters, would broaden domestic partnerships by granting gay and lesbian couples all the remaining state-provided benefits that presently apply only to married heterosexual couples.

After a month of counting petition signatures, the secretary of state’s office said Monday that Referendum 71 had 121,617 valid voter signatures – more than a thousand more than needed to advance to the general election.

The tally could increase as rejected signatures are double-checked, but that won’t be the final word. Supporters of expanded domestic partnerships asked a King County Superior Court judge on Monday to at least temporarily block the referendum from the ballot, arguing that election officials have accepted thousands of invalid petition signatures. Judge Julie Spector said she would rule early Wednesday, the same day Secretary of State Sam Reed said he’ll certify the referendum to the ballot.

State Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, who has spearheaded domestic partnership efforts in the state, called it a “tragic day for the state, where we will put the rights of a group of our citizens up for a vote.”

Nevertheless, Murray predicted victory: “We’re going to fight and I believe we’re going to win, but it’s going to be very difficult,” he said.

The new law was supposed to take effect July 26. But the referendum campaign put it on hold, and the law can now take effect only if approved by state voters Nov. 3.

Gov. Chris Gregoire said that while she respected the referendum process she was “very disappointed that this message will be debated once again.”

“I signed the original bill and believe it should be and will be the law of our great state,” she said in a written statement.

Rights granted under the latest phase of domestic partnerships range from adoption and child support to public employment benefits – although any benefits that cost the state money, such as pensions, are delayed until 2014 because of the state’s recession-fueled budget problems.

The underlying domestic partnership law, which the Legislature passed in 2007, provided hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and inheritance rights when there is no will.

Last year, lawmakers expanded that law to give domestic partners standing under laws covering probate and trusts, community property and guardianship. Opposite-gender seniors also can register as domestic partners.

If rejected at the polls, R-71 wouldn’t overturn those first two phases of domestic partnerships. But a failure in November would roll back the additional rights approved earlier this year under the “everything but marriage” law, which puts domestic partners on par with married couples in all areas of state law that deal with marriage rights.

Opponents of the law say overturning it will help stop full-fledged gay marriage from gaining a foothold in the state.

“We’re not trying to keep anyone from having anything, we’re simply trying to keep marriage from being redefined,” said Gary Randall, of Protect Washington Families, which pushed to get the referendum on the ballot. “The wrong side of the issue is to redefine marriage.”

As of this week, more than 5,800 domestic partnership registrations had been filed in Washington since the first law took effect in July 2007.

A political group called WhoSigned.Org has said it will publish online the names of people who signed petitions to get the referendum on the ballot. The petition-listing effort is not supported by the official campaign that had tried to keep R-71 off the ballot.

A federal judge has granted a temporary restraining order to bar the release of signatures on R-71 petitions, and a hearing on that case will be held in Tacoma on Thursday.