Tom DeLay Criticizes Supreme Court for Internet Research

I don't have an opinion on Tom DeLay's legal and ethical troubles, because I am not in a position to know the full facts in the case. I don't like to pass judgment on things I don't know about.

But I can comment on the House Majority Leader's increasingly shrill verbal attacks on those members of the judiciary with whom he disagrees.

DeLay's latest target is Justice Anthony Kennedy, one of President Ronald Reagan's appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. Actually, Kennedy has been a frequent target of DeLay's criticisms, but the one that was unearthed today simply verges on the absurd.

According to the Associated Press, after citing Kennedy's decision in the case that ended the death penalty for those who were under 18 years of age when they committed their crimes, DeLay told Fox News Radio:

"And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous."

That comment is so bizarre, it simply deserves no response.

Except this: Tom DeLay is increasingly becoming a political liability to the Republican Party. He should do the honorable thing and step down from his leadership post. When Newt Gingrich failed to lead his party as well as expected in the 1998 elections, he did the right thing and resigned both as Speaker of the House and as a Member of Congress. DeLay should follow Gingrich's noble example.

Hat tip to both SW Virginia Law Blog and Professor Bainbridge.

Pope Benedict XVI and His Namesake Predecessors

While there is no substitute for looking at the actual record of a new pope – his work as a pastor, his writings as a theologian or philosopher, his sermons, his interviews with the news media – it is also useful to divine some insight from his choice of a pontifical name.

When Albino Cardinal Luciano of Venice was elected pope in 1978, he took as his name John Paul I – the first compound name in papal history – as homage to his two immediate predecessors. After he died just 34 days later, his successor, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, the first non-Italian pope in 450 years, took the name John Paul II to signify continuity.

With the death of the pope many are calling John Paul the Great, it was probably too much to expect that his successor, whomever it might be, would take the same name. Some might view such a choice as hubris, since John Paul II, over 26 years of his pontificate, had raised expectations of what a pope should be and do.

Now comes the election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who has taken the name Pope Benedict XVI. What meaning can we glean from this choice of name? Who is the new pope trying to emulate? What might the name Benedict say about the church’s immediate future?

The first significant Benedict of church history (a monk who lived circa 480-547) was not a pope or even a priest, but the Rule of St. Benedict laid the foundations for what we have come to know as religious orders – the Benedictines, of course, but also the Dominicans and Jesuits and Franciscans and all the rest. Summarized by the Latin motto, “Orare est laborare, laborare est orare” (“To pray is to work, to work is to pray”), St. Benedict’s rule prescribed “common sense, a life of moderate asceticism, prayer, study, and work, and community life under one superior,” according to John Delaney in his Dictionary of Saints. The rule, Delaney continues, also “stressed obedience, stability, zeal, and had the Divine Office as the center of monastic life; it was to affect spiritual and monastic life in the West for centuries to come.”

So there we see one model for the new pope. How about some Benedicts who are anything but role models?

Benedict VIII (reigned 1012-24) has been described as a “ruthless soldier” while the “depraved” Pope Benedict IX (1033-45), according to William J. La Due in The Chair of St. Peter, “obtained the papal office through overt acts of bribery and treachery.” As Hans Küng notes in On Being a Christian, Benedict VIII also inserted the “filioque” clause into the Nicene Creed, which says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. This belief conflicts with Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which holds that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. To our contemporary ears, this may seem like a minor semantic point, but the theological dispute ended in a schism between East and West that has continued for more than 1,000 years.

There were two popes known as Benedict XIII. One ruled from Avignon in France and was deposed in 1417. Historian Thomas Bokenkotter calls him “a formidable prelate of incredible tenacity and guile,” who by breaking an oath to resign after his election delayed the healing of the rupture between Avignon and Rome – a virtual schism in the Western Church – for nearly two decades.

The other Benedict XIII reigned for six years, 1724-30, and delegated the administration of the church to a corrupt underling who sold ecclesiastical offices (a practice known as “simony”) and engaged in endeavors both avaricious and bungling. This Pope Benedict focused on his pastoral responsibilities as Bishop of Rome – visiting parishes, celebrating Mass, teaching the catechism – but despite this was widely despised by his episcopal flock.

Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58) was, according to La Due, “without a doubt the most capable and successful pontiff in the eighteenth century. He was open to the scientific advances occurring at that time, enjoyed a correspondence with Voltaire, did not play favorites, and avoided any tendency to nepotism.” (It says something about the quality of 18th century popes that Benedict must be praised for lacking negative characteristics.)

Benedict XIV permitted the first translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into vernacular languages. He promulgated reforms in regard to the liturgy, marriage, and the censorship of books. La Due writes that “even during his last years as pontiff, Benedict continued to radiate energy and vitality.”

Perhaps it was Pope Benedict XV (1914-22) who was closest to mind when the new pope chose his name on April 19. In an interview with Robert Siegel on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Thomas Groome, a professor of religious education at Boston College, said that he thought it “significant that he chose the title of Benedict XVI because Benedict XV was indeed a bridge-building pope. He came into the pontificate in 1914 and inherited a church terribly divided around theological issues between the conservatives and the 'Modernists' as they were called at the time. Benedict XV managed to bring the sides together and to be a real reconciler. Hopefully, in choosing this name, Cardinal Ratzinger now intends to do something likewise.”

In his book A Concise History of the Catholic Church, Thomas Bokenkotter agrees with this portrait of Benedict XV. The cardinals who elected him, Bokenkotter writes, “were looking for a peacemaker, and Benedict did not disappoint their hopes. Peace and conciliation were the objectives he unswervingly pursued from the first moment of his pontificate. Peace – first in the Church, which was bitterly divided by the anti-Modernist zealots who had been allowed to run riot during the previous administration. And one of his first acts was to call a halt to the witchhunt after ‘Modernists.’” (The Modernists, I might add, were well-represented among American church leaders.)

This Benedict also helped bring the church into the modern world with his encyclical, Maximum Illud, which established, as Bokenkotter explains, three “fundamental principles” of the Church’s missionary project: “promotion of a native clergy, renunciation of all nationalistic attitudes, and respect for the civilization of the mission country.” In other words: no cultural imperialism. While it took a long time for the church to absorb this lesson, the irrepressible growth of Catholicism in Africa, Latin America, and Asia over the past several decades proves Benedict XV’s prescience as well as his sensitivity.

What qualities will Pope Benedict XVI inherit from his namesake predecessors? Only time will tell. After all, the shoes of the fisherman are hard for any man to fill.

Biographical note: The beneficiary of 16 years of Catholic education, Rick Sincere has contributed articles to such publications as Homiletic and Pastoral Review and America, as well as to several diocesan newspapers, such as the Arlington Catholic Herald, the Catholic Standard (Washington, D.C.), and Church World (Brunswick, Maine).

Diverse Coalition Brings PATRIOT Act Concerns to Congress

As the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence prepares to hold hearings on the sunsetting of the most egregious clauses in the USA PATRIOT Act -- passed quickly and without much deliberation in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 -- a diverse coalition of citizen groups has sent a letter to Committee members outlining the concerns of many Americans.

This letter certainly shows how politics makes strange bedfellows. In what room would you find, together, the conservative Rutherford Institute, the libertarian Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and American Muslim Voice? Or the Japanese American Citizens League hand-in-hand with the Korean American Coalition and the Organization of Chinese Americans?

I should note that I have written about the USA PATRIOT Act in the past, notably on April 5 and on January 1.

The letter below was coordinated by the Rights Working Group, which describes itself as "a coalition of civil rights, civil liberties, human rights and immigrant rights advocates who seek to develop a coordinated response to policies and attitudes leading to the deterioration of civil and human rights in the aftermath of 9/11."

The debate continues. Here is the letter in full:

April 18, 2005

Dear Members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:

While we applaud Congress’ promise to hold oversight hearings concerning the USA Patriot Act, we are concerned that Congress will focus too narrowly on that Act and ignore the broader civil rights, human rights and civil liberties issues that are of concern to our organizations and all Americans. Congress must recognize that widespread opposition to the USA Patriot Act reflects a more general discomfort over the government’s actions. It should note that the “anti-Patriot Act” resolutions passed by more than 360 communities and four states in fact deal with a wide array of issues outside the scope of the USA Patriot Act.

We urge the Congress to examine the many rights and liberties issues that have arisen since 9/ll, including the following:

*Mass secret arrests of Arabs and Muslims followed by detention for extended periods without charges, denials of access to counsel, secret hearings and, in some cases, abuse by prison guards;

*Abuse of the material witness authority to detain citizens and others without charges;

*Discriminatory enforcement of the immigration laws, leading to arbitrary detentions and deportations;

*Detentions of Americans incommunicado as “enemy combatants” without access to lawyers or the courts;

*Expanded use of secret wiretaps and secret searches of Americans’ homes and offices;

*Massive growth in surveillance technologies and authority (including the authority under the USA Patriot Act to seize library and medical records and all commercial databases) with inadequate legal protections against abuse;

*Spying on lawful political and religious activity; and

*Eavesdropping on attorney-client communications without judicial approval or oversight.

Taken together, these issues reflect a steady assault on fundamental rights and liberties that has served only to make us less free, and not more secure. With few exceptions, Congress has failed to address these issues. To the contrary, it is continuing to consider legislation, such as the REAL ID Act, that targets immigrants and asylum seekers unfairly without enhancing security. For Congress now to focus only on the concerns raised by the USA Patriot Act would be inappropriate.

Signed Organizations:

NATIONAL GROUPS:

American Civil Liberties Union
American Friends Service Committee - Washington State Office
American Immigration Lawyers Association
American Muslim Voice
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Amnesty International USA
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Center for American Progress
Center for Democracy and Technology
Center for National Security Studies
Constitutional Rights Coalition
Council of Ethics-Based Organizations associated with the Department of Public
Information, United Nations
First Amendment Foundation
Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quaker)
Human Rights First
Human Rights Watch
Japanese American Citizens League
Korean American Coalition
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
Mennonite Central Committee Washington State Office
Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund
National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression
National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development
National Committee Against Repressive Legislation
National Council of La Raza
National Federation of Filipino American Associations
National Immigrant Solidarity Network
National Immigration Forum
Immigration Law Center
National Korean American Service & Education
National Lawyers Guild
National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement
National Organization for Women
Open Society Policy Center
Organization of Chinese Americans
People For the American Way
Progressive Librarians Guild
Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund
South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow
The Interfaith Alliance
The Multiracial Activist
The Rutherford Institute
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

LOCAL GROUPS:

Albany Bill of Rights Restoration Committee (Albany, NY)
American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado
Asian Law Caucus (San Francisco, CA)
Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
Atlanta Bill of Rights Defense Campaign (Atlanta, GA)
Bangor Area Bill of Rights Defense Committee (Bangor, ME)
Bloomington Bill of Rights Defense Committee (Bloomington, IN)
Carolina Peace Resource Center (Columbia, SC)
Chico Bill of Rights Defense Committee (Chico, CA)
Citizens for an Informed Community (Bridgewater, MA)
Citizens for Peace and Justice (Jackson County, OR)
Clatsop County Bill of Rights Defense Committee (Clatsop County, OR)
coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles
Coalition to Prevent the Erosion of Human Rights (Las Vegas, Nevada)
Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights (Chicago, IL)
Concord Civil Liberties Committee (Concord, MA)
Constitutional Justice Society, Inc. (MO)
DuPage Against War Now (DuPage County, IL)
East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (Oakland, CA)
Fort Collins Bill of Rights Supporters of Fort Collins (CO)
Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (Charlottesville, VA)
Green Party of Clallam County (Clallam County, WA)
Idaho Green Party (Boise, Idaho)
Idaho Patriots (Boise, ID)
Jersey City Peace Movement (Jersey City, NJ)
Lake County Peace Action (Lake County, CA)
Lane County Bill of Rights Defense Committee (Lane County, Oregon)
Las Vegas Peace & Justice Center (Las Vegas, NV)
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights (San Francisco, CA)
Missouri Voters Action Team (MO)
Montana Women for Peace (Livingston, MT)
New Hampshire Faithful Democracy (Peterborough, and Concord, NH)
New Hampshire Faithful Democracy (Peterborough, NH)
New Hampshire Unitarian Universalist Social Responsibility Department (Concord, and Littleton, NH)
New Hampshire Unitarian Universalist Social Responsibility Department (Peterborough, NH)
Nicaragua Center for Community Action (Berkeley, CA)
NYC Bill of Rights Defense Campaign (New York City, NY)
Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (Huntington, WV)
Organization of Chinese Americans-South Florida Chapter (Miami, FL)
PA for Democracy (PA)
Peace Action WI (Milwaukee, WI )
Philly for Change (Philadelphia, PA)
Pittsburgh Bill of Rights Defense Campaign (Pittsburgh, PA)
Port Orford Bill of Rights Defense Committee (Port Orford, OR)
Potters for Peace (Berkeley, CA)
PRIME-Ecumenical Commitment to Refugees (Clifton Heights, PA)
Prince George Bill of Rights Defense Coalition (Prince George, MD)
Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (Boulder, CO)
SAGE (Amherst, MA)
South Asian Network
Statesmanship National Activism Project (MO)
Statesmanship Party, Inc. (MO)
SW Colorado Peace & Justice Coalition (Durango, CO)
Tacoma Bill of Rights Defense Committee (Tacoma, WA)
Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (Nashville, TN)
The Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (Dearborn, MI)
The Bozeman Peace Seekers (Bozeman, Montana)
The New York Immigration Coalition (New York, NY)
The Reform Party of Missouri, Inc. (MO)
Thomas Merton Center (Pittsburgh, PA )
Watertown (MA) Citizens for Environmental Safety (Watertown, MA)
Westchester Bill of Rights Defense Campaign (Westchester, NY)
Women For: Orange County (Orange County, CA)
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (Cape Cod, MA)
Worldview, Ltd. (Peterborough, NH)

Rob Schilling on the Charlottesville Budget Process

Last week, after the Charlottesville City Council voted 4 to 1 to approve the new city budget, the lone dissenter, released an account of the reasons for his vote. No mainstream media reported Councilor Rob Schilling's full remarks, although the local television stations gave him some air time to put across his main points.

In the interests of robust debate about the budget process in my hometown, I publish Councilor Schilling's full statement:

Rob Schilling’s Comments on the Charlottesville Budget and
Necessary Areas of Improved Fiscal Management For Future Years
(April 12, 2004)

Easy Money
A review of Charlottesville’s budget history reveals a disturbing trend of budget growth, fueled by the “easy” money this city has obtained through rising assessments of real property.

In 1995, just 10 years ago, the city’s budget was roughly $58 million dollars. This year, City Council has approved a general fund budget of nearly $106 million dollars. The question many taxpayers are asking is “Why has our city’s budget increased 83% in just ten short years?”

Since our school and city populations have remained level or have slightly declined during this time, the answer appears to be: we’ve spent a good portion of this $48 million dollar increase of taxpayer’s money because it has fallen into the laps of councils, past and present, through the benefit of rising assessments. Simply put, as a locality, we have spent the money because it was there and in doing so, we have burdened our residents with excessive and compounded “hidden” tax increases.

Had past and present councils encountered assessments that more closely mirrored inflation, I believe our budget this year would be significantly lower than $105 million. A review of recent history shows that councils operating prior to the recent assessment “boom”, for the most part, lived within the means dictated to them by slower-paced assessment increases.

No council has raised the tax rate over the past 20 years, but most have accepted, and spent, the windfalls received from skyrocketing assessments. Politically, it is much more difficult to raise taxes directly than to hide behind the cloak of increasing assessments.

This Year
In December of 2004, four members of City Council voted to ask the City Manager to bring us a budget with a $1.09, or at best, a $1.07 tax rate. I did not support that vote because a status-quo tax rate was not respectful of the taxpayer; I had discussed at that same meeting that, at minimum, a four-cent property tax reduction was required. At some undetermined point, and without another vote of council, the City Manager decided to compose a budget that called for a $1.05 tax rate. Although I do not understand or support a government process wherein the City Manager autonomously disregards the council’s voted upon guidelines, I do support the resulting $1.05 tax rate because it is a step in the right direction. But we must do more to mitigate the crushing burden borne by Charlottesville taxpayers.

The Future
More than one high-level City Hall staffer has said, off the record, that Charlottesville cannot continue on its present fiscal path. I concur. And, I believe we are on the road to reversion if we do not dramatically change our budgeting process. The budget manager’s own projections show a cumulative $15-to-$25 million deficit in five years. How can we possibly close that gap without drastically increasing citizens’ already high per capita tax burden?

Since being elected to Council, I have called for prioritization in the city budget process—a process wherein Council clearly separates our wants from our needs. Prioritization is a time-honored budgeting strategy practiced in both the private and public sectors, however; this council is not utilizing it. My ongoing call to systematically prioritize expenditures has fallen on seemingly deaf ears apparently because it requires Councilors to publicly say “no” to friends and political allies seeking government money. Granted, prioritization of funds is not an easy task, but it is necessary for the fiscal survival of our city.

The city’s budgeting process also must be changed in other important ways. In our current form of government, it is critical to realize that the City Manager, as the author of the budget, holds the knowledge and the expertise to control spending. This is evidenced by our current budget, wherein after receiving direction by council, the Manager was able to bring the budget in at more that $5 million below his initial projections. This is in contrast to last year, when council made a half-hearted, last minute attempt to trim the City Manager’s proposed budget by $1 or $2 million—an effort which justifiably failed.

As I have said every year since I was elected, I call on City Council to direct the City Manager, in advance, to bring forth a budget with any desired reductions in growth. Curtailing growth on the front end has proven to be the only method that is effective in enabling council to moderate government spending.

It is important to recognize that there are many services that the City must provide, and many services which the city chooses to provide. Over the years, I have asked us to provide better services for less money. It can be done, but it requires a new way of thinking. We took a first step this year by turning over commercial trash pickup to the private sector. In doing so, we saved city taxpayers about $300,000 dollars. I call on the City Council and City Manager to thoughtfully consider any and all cost-cutting ideas, no matter the source, and to continue to seek innovative and efficient methods of service delivery, so that we can provide better service for less money.

Aside from Council’s seeming inability to exercise fiscal discipline, one of the greatest “drivers” of our skyrocketing budget has been the explosive growth of city government. In his March 7 “white paper,” Councilor Lynch states that: “The City has increased the number of employees by about 11 percent since 1997.” While some would argue that the increase is closer to 20 percent, the point is that maintaining more employees costs the city a great deal of additional money, both in the short run for increased salaries, benefits and insurance, and in the long run for increased retirement and health costs. (The City Manager’s proposed budget acknowledges this fact by recommending that 14 city government positions be eliminated.) The councilor then goes on to say that we should expect our employees to become more efficient, as private sector employees have.

Yes, as I have said— many times—in order to maintain long-term viability, the city must look for ways to increase efficiencies. I’m bothered that we spent nearly two entire budget work sessions on budget items totaling less than $100,000 dollars, while we spent no dedicated time in reviewing individual department budgets, the very place where the vast majority of taxpayer dollars are spent. In future years, I call upon the council to make an annual zero-based review of each department. We could do this either internally or externally. In one scenario, councilors will conduct work sessions in order to interview each department head, learn of the specific initiatives that they propose, and have the opportunity to question proposed projects, staffing and expenditures. This process will help to ensure that each city department justifies its expenditures as thoroughly as the City Council reviews the disposition of the so-called “council reserve,” and as thoroughly as the Agency Budget Review Team scrutinizes the proposed contributions of taxpayer dollars to the various private agencies that request money each year.

If this internal review process does not yield substantive results after two years of greater council involvement, then I suggest that the city hire an independent auditor to perform a comprehensive, top-down audit of city finances and department expenditures. I believe that the council and the community would be quite surprised at what information such an audit might reveal. And perhaps, that’s why no one has recommended this approach.

Finally, we must live by the rules we set for ourselves. While the City Manager does not directly acknowledge that he primarily uses the Council budget guidelines, which he solicits, as the principal basis for his budget-making decisions, the council, who sets such guidelines by an annual vote, should ourselves insist that the City Manager use the guidelines we set. In addition, if we as a council decide to stray from our approved guidelines, we should publicly vote on the matter, and if change is desired, at least the public will be informed as to the process. As it stands, City Council violated at least two adopted budget guidelines this year, without any acknowledgement or public discussion of having done so. These seemingly secretive and back-door actions, harm the council’s credibility in our stated intent to provide “open and transparent government.” In addition, when non-public decisions are made, many members of the public (and at least one City Councilor) wonder: who actually is making policy in Charlottesville?

Conclusions
In closing, I’d like to thank our new councilors, Mayor Brown and Councilor Hamilton, for their openness in evaluation of the existing system of budgeting, and for their willingness to make some necessary changes in this year’s budget process. I look forward to working with them in the months ahead to implement the proposals I’ve outlined in this document and at several public meetings of council.

I encourage those who personally wish to pay higher taxes to please do so. This is your choice. Friends of Charlottesville, a program I helped to establish, will gladly accept any excess tax dollars you wish to give to the city for general or specific causes. The city looks forward to your donations.

The budget process, while improving, is still fundamentally flawed, which is why I will not be voting in support of the overall budget, although I will be voting to approve the reduced real estate tax rate.

I’d like to encourage the many taxpayers with whom I spoke during this season: from Mrs. Amiss of Watson Street to Ms. Levering of Grove Avenue, and all of the others. Your voices are important; keep speaking out.

It is no coincidence that since my election, in 2002, we’ve seen a six-cent decrease in the tax rate. While this is not enough, it is more than has been seen in the prior twenty years, and probably much longer. Working together, across party lines, this is what we have accomplished.

Change is often slow to arrive, and almost always is incremental, but it will come. The economic survival of our city, as we know it, is a worthy cause, and I join with you in carrying forward the banner of fiscal responsibility.

GMU Students Plan Terrorist Strike in Northern Virginia

Richard Morrison (aka "Virginia Patriot") spotted a news report on CNN that describes how students at George Mason University are making plans for a terrorist attack on a soft target in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Don't fret, however. It's all an exercise for a class taught by a former State Department counter-terrorism analyst, Dennis Pluchinsky. Pluchinsky is the co-author of Europe's Red Terrorists: The Fighting Communist Organizations and co-editor of European Terrorism Today and Tomorrow. He collaborated on both books with the well-known terrorism expert, Yonah Alexander.

The description of his terrorism class in the course catalogue is as bland as a toaster:

475 Theory and Politics of Terrorism (3:3:0). Explores the origins of terrorism and traces its development from early states to a modern mode of conflict. National, regional, and global perspectives are presented.

The money quote in the CNN report? "It's scary how much is on the Internet. One thing I've learned through this class is there's nothing you can't find on the Internet."

Indeed.

Vermont Mulls Drinking Age Reform

Loyal readers of this blog will recall that, back on March 8, I posted an article with arguments for returning to the 18-year drinking age.

I refuse to take credit, but now there is a robust debate in the state of Vermont on this issue. A Republican state legislator has introduced a bill that would reduce the drinking age in Vermont from 21 to 18.

According to this morning's New York Times:

[Richard C.] Marron, a four-term legislator who is vice chairman of the appropriations committee, decided that the law needed changing, and he has introduced a bill to lower the drinking age to 18, setting off a debate about public safety, age discrimination and the rights of young people as well as whether it is possible to teach teenagers to drink responsibly.

"Now we have a legal age of 18 to do everything else, but you can't drink until you're 21," Mr. Marron said. "I'm not pushing it to the level of it being unconstitutional, but I do think it's a form of age discrimination. If we did something else, like said you couldn't use a public campsite until you're 21, we would have an equal-protection-of-laws issue."

Although the bill is considered unlikely to pass, because Vermont would lose millions of dollars in federal highway funding, the Times notes that

17 lawmakers have signed on as co-sponsors, and other legislators said they might be willing to consider such a bill if not for the loss of federal money. Even Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, might see some logic in the proposal if the federal highway money was not involved, said his spokesman, Jason Gibbs.

"Philosophically, it's difficult to reconcile the notion that you can enlist in the military, serve your country, go to war, but not go into your local pub and get a draft beer," Mr. Gibbs said.

There used to be an expression about presidential politics: "As Maine goes, so goes the nation." That was changed in 1936, when Maine was one of only two states to vote for Alf Landon instead of Franklin D. Roosevelt: "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont."

Now it seems that the roles may be reversed: "As Vermont goes, so goes Maine." At least, that is what is implied by the headline of an opinion piece in Monday's Kennebec Journal, "Maine should lower drinking age to 18." Unfortunately, it turns out to be a response by Alex Koroknay-Palicz of the National Youth Rights Associationto a pro-prohibitionist editorial published in the newspaper on April 2. Koroknay-Palicz writes:

As the newspaper wrote, it is "impossible to count the number of lives that have been saved as a result" of the 21 drinking age -- impossible because it has not saved anyone's life. In the three years after Vermont raised the drinking age, alcohol-related traffic fatalities in the state increased an average of 20 percent. Nationally, studies prove that raising the drinking age to 21 had no effect on reducing drunken driving. All it did was transfer the lives lost from 18-to-20-year-olds to 21-to-24-year-olds.

This proposal is not a reckless or dangerous idea done with no regard for the health and safety of the nation. It is reckless to pretend our law is working and ignore the facts that show otherwise.

The truth is that a drinking age of 21 is bad for health and safety and bad for the civil rights of our young adults. It is bad for Vermont and for Maine.

The debate is reaching beyond New England. In Indiana, a columnist for the Ball State Daily News recalls a conversation with a parent:

My mother shares stories with me about her college days. She tells me about the parties that she would go to and the sit-ins and the activism and protests. We then get into a discussion about drinking now.

"You should be able to drink alcohol legally," she tells me, and of course, I agree.

Why shouldn't people under 21 drink? Why is the drinking age so high? Why am I, and others like me, unable to enjoy all of the rights of a citizen in the United States? Isn't this supposed to be the "land of the free"?

The writer, Jessica Kerman, concludes:

The drinking age needs to be lowered. Eighteen-year-olds should be considered complete citizens of the United States and not a lower class of individuals who must pay taxes and still not receive full rights from the government.

In Virginia, a number of readers of the Radford Tartan at Radford University weighed in on the topic, sparked by an opinion article by freshman Catherine Maurakis, who wrote:

Not being able to drink until I am 21 is an insult to my integrity. The youth of America is not all hooligans and crazies. We are working to be the future of this country. Many of us can handle theorems and processes and do calculations, in not just math class, but any other science related courses. And if those of us don’t know something, we will spend hours in the library learning it, so we don’t fail. Plus after all of that, we all have to go back to our dorm rooms and apartments and clean, do laundry, cook and put up with our annoying roommate. Yet we cannot be trusted to have a drink. We spend our days living as adults, and if we don’t we are chided for it. But when it comes nighttime, we are still treated as children.

I for one am getting tired of the black “NO’s” on my hands when I go to a bar and reveal my age. I think it is time for the government to shape up a little bit. Maybe they should start looking at the young adults of this country as young adults and instead of lecturing us about how we will hurt ourselves, they could show a little trust and really make us feel like adults.

Of course, this whole debate could be moot, since underage drinking will occur regardless of laws against it. You could lower the drinking age to 16 (as it is set in Germany and other countries) and 15-year-olds would drink or you could raise it to 25 (as is being discussed in Massachusetts) and 24-year-olds would drink. As noted in C-Ville, a weekly tabloid published in Charlottesville, in its April 12-18 issue, "Underage drinking is a prominent issue in Virginia, where 76 percent of high school seniors and 66 percent of 10th graders said in a 2001 survey that they drank."

Happy Birthday, Mr. Jefferson!

Today is April 13, celebrated as a holiday in Charlottesville (Founder's Day). City offices are closed; the heavy hand of local government is on hiatus.

If Thomas Jefferson were still alive, today would be his 262nd birthday. Were he still alive, he could not be pilloried as a DWEM (Dead White European Male) because he would not be dead. As to the rest, he would be guilty. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

At Mr. Jefferson's home at Monticello (the "little mountain" overlooking the City of Charlottesville), there will be, as might be expected, a celebration:

Representatives of local, state, and national institutions will present wreaths in honor of the nation’s third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, who was born April 13, 1743, at Shadwell, his father’s estate on the Rivanna River about two miles east of Monticello. (On the Julian calendar in use at the time, Jefferson was born April 2. The Gregorian calendar used today was adopted in 1752, and 11 days were added to “old style” dates.)

The commemorative address will be delivered by Daniel J. Meador, emeritus professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. The author of numerous books and the recipient of many awards, Meador first joined the UVa law faculty in 1957. He was a Fulbright Lecturer in England in 1965-66 and then served as dean of the University of Alabama Law School. He returned to UVa in 1970 as James Monroe Professor of Law. He was an assistant U.S. attorney general in 1977-79, then director of UVa’s Graduate Program for Judges from 1979 to 1995. He retired in 1997.

Linked to the birthday celebration is the launch, on the Monticello website, of a new feature that allows web visitors to take a virtual tour of the house and the grounds. A news release explains:

Monticello Explorer, which was developed by Monticello staff members with Second Story Interactive Studios of Portland, Ore., offers an array of new ways to experience Monticello, from 3-D models that allow virtual visitors to tour the house room by room to an interactive map that shows the buildings, roads, gardens, and fields of Monticello mountain over the decades. Computer animations, panoramic views, still images, text, and video contribute to a distinctive online experience.

I wanted to end this entry with a single, representative, profound quotation from Mr. Jefferson. A hard choice indeed. But, given the newness of the blogosphere and my neophyte status in that new world, this one seemed particularly apropos:

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions." -- Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804.

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying..." -- if that doesn't describe blogging, I don't know what does.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Jefferson!

2005 Jefferson Muzzle Awards Announced

Each year since 1992, the Charlottesville-based Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has presented the "Jefferson Muzzle" awards in order to draw attention to abridgments of freedom of speech and expression that disregard "Mr. Jefferson's admonition that freedom of speech 'cannot be limited without being lost.'"

Some of this year's Muzzle recipients are too obvious to ignore: the Federal Communications Commission, for instance, for its hysterical overreaction to Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl. As humorous that bit of Mrs-Grundyism was, however, it was simply a symptom of a deeper fear of freedom of expression on the part of the FCC. The Jefferson Center explains:

The FCC's sharply heightened scrutiny of possibly "indecent" material seems to have opened the door for a host of private interest groups - American Family, Parents Television Council and others - that have not only brought intense pressure back upon the FCC, but have also raised the stakes substantially in Congress. Although both houses have not yet taken final action, it seems almost certain that the array of possible sanctions for "indecency" will be expanded markedly, and the ceiling on permissible fines will be increased many fold.

Yet, despite the steeply mounting dollar levels and number of sanctions, the FCC has done little to prospectively inform broadcasters as to what constitutes "indecency." In fact, its actions of the past year have led to more uncertainty than ever with the result that broadcasters are engaging more and more in the same kind of self-censorship exhibited with the Saving Private Ryan broadcast. In February 2005, PBS advised member stations to air a sanitized version of a Frontline documentary on the war in Iraq because the uncut version had soldiers cursing. Prior to that, the producers of Masterpiece Theater for the first time edited the content of the critically acclaimed British series "Prime Suspect" before sending it to PBS member stations, an Indianapolis radio station pre-empted words like "urinate," "damn" and "orgy" during a broadcast of Rush Limbaugh's talk show, several classic rock radio stations have struck numerous songs from their play lists including Elton John's "The Bitch is Back" and the Rolling Stones' "Bitch," and a number of radio stations will no longer feature any live broadcasts.

Some patterns in this year's crop of Muzzles emerge. Carlos Santos points out in today's Richmond Times-Dispatch that one-third of the awards are presented to high schools around the country:

Five of the 15 awards were given to high school administrators who, almost invariably, come down too hard on students' free expression, at least in the center's judgment.

"Schools are the first place that education and understanding of free expression should be enhanced," said [Center president Robert] O'Neil. "They're sending a message that students aren't able to tolerate controversial views. . . . They are definitely sending the wrong message."

The high school muzzles went to:

* Principal Kendall Johnson of Berkmar High School in Georgia for censoring point/counterpoint editorials in the school newspaper debating whether a new club, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Society, should meet on school grounds.

* School officials at Russell High School in Kentucky for barring a female student from the prom because her red dress was styled as a Confederate battle flag. The student wanted to show her pride in her Southern heritage. The school deemed the dress too controversial.

* The school administration at Poway High School in California for giving a daylong detention to a student for wearing a T-shirt proclaiming "Homosexuality is Shameful."

* Shirley Moberg, the superintendent of Climax-Shelly School District in Minnesota, for banning the wearing of the city of Climax's official centennial T-shirt because of its sexual innuendo. The T-shirts read: "Climax - More than a Feeling."

* The school administration at the High School of Legal Studies in New York City's Brooklyn, for denying valedictorian Tiffany Schley her diploma after her graduation speech in which she cited the school's turnover in principals and what she called a lack of textbooks and overcrowded classrooms. The school wanted an apology.

Writing in the Daily Progress in Charlottesville, political beat reporter Bob Gibson notes that three of the Muzzle awards deal with gay issues -- though not, in each case, an attempt from the right to muzzle pro-gay sentiments:

Individuals in Alabama and Georgia, along with a California school district administration, won awards for vastly different stances on gay rights.

One was an attempt to suppress speech supporting gay rights while another was a bid to prohibit expression of the belief that homosexuality is immoral. A third was a high school principal’s censorship of a school newspaper’s editorials debating whether a student group should meet on school grounds.

In the last case, the Muzzle went to Berkmar High School Principal Kendall Johnson in Georgia for censoring the point/counterpoint editorials debating whether the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Society should be allowed to meet at the high school. Johnson did not let the newspaper, the Liberty, run a “censored” stamp on the page where the editorials would have appeared, O’Neil said.

Alabama state Rep. Gerald Allen won for proposing a bill to prohibit the use of state funds for any purchase of “textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.”

A Muzzle was awarded to the school administration at Poway High School in California for a day-long detention given to a Christian student wearing a T-shirt that said, “Homosexuality is Shameful.”

“It was not a happy day for him,” O’Neil said of the detained student, Tyler Chase Harper, who has since filed a federal lawsuit claiming free speech and religious liberty violations. The suit is pending.

It should come as no surprise that at least one of the Muzzles is staying close to home. The Virginia House of Delegates is singled out for two bills that failed once the more deliberative and sane state Senate got hold of them -- one of which, the infamous "droopy drawers" bill, drew national and international ridicule.

Let the Jefferson Center explain in full:

Although they deal with entirely different subjects, two bills recently passed by one chamber of the Virginia General Assembly share a common trait: a belief that government could and should legislate matters of personal taste and expression. Discussed in 2004, presented by four Republican patrons in 2005, and passed by a 78 to 16 vote in the House of Delegates, House Bill No. 2797 would require public libraries to install content filtering software on every library computer with Internet access or lose all state funding. Filtering software is designed to block access to certain kinds of material. Among the categories of content to which House Bill 2797 would prevent access was material "deemed harmful to juveniles." Public statements by many of the bill's supporters claimed the measure was simply a state version of a federal law passed by Congress and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In fact, the proposed Virginia bill differed in constitutionally significant ways from its federal counterpart. The federal law, for example, only concerned federal funding specifically designated to finance Internet access. Thus, it was essentially an example of government placing a condition on funding for a particular program. Virginia Bill No. 2797, by contrast, was punitive in nature, threatening to cut off all state funding to any library that failed to install Internet filters. In addition, the Virginia bill was at best ambiguous on whether library officials had the authority to disable the filters when requested by an adult library patron. This aspect of the federal law was key in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold the law. Implicit in that decision was the recognition that Internet filters are far from perfect and often do not distinguish constitutionally protected material from that which is not. Under the Virginia law, however, an adult library patron is not only prevented from accessing information that is constitutionally protected, but may only view material that is deemed appropriate for minors.

In a second bill proposed by Delegate Algie T. Howell, Jr., a Democrat from Norfolk, the House of Delegates attempted to limit what adults and minors alike could see outside the context of public libraries; House Bill No. 1981 sought to criminalize a current fashion trend among many young people today -- the wearing of low riding pants that expose their underwear. An assistant attorney general advised a House committee that the bill could not be enforced without violating the free expression and due process clauses of the Constitution. Delegate Lionell Spruill opposed the bill asking his colleagues to remember their own youthful fashion follies, but to no avail -- the measure passed the House by a 60-34 vote. The bill quickly became the subject of ridicule across the country, even inspiring a joke by Tonight Show host Jay Leno that it was vehemently opposed by the Plumbers' Union.

Fortunately, neither of the two bills discussed above became law. Both failed to make it out of committee in the Virginia Senate. This outcome in the Senate, especially when compared to the wide majorities by which both bills passed the House, serves to illustrate that principles of free speech played little part in the lower chamber's deliberations over these two measures and thereby earns the Virginia House of Delegates a 2005 Jefferson Muzzle.

Other Jefferson Muzzle recipients this year include the Republican and Democratic parties, for their attempts to use the state's police power to suppress dissenting voices during their political conventions in 2004, and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings board, for its insistence that sex scenes performed by puppets in the satirical film, Team America: World Police, had to be toned down in order to earn an R rating (while ignoring bloody violence that included the decapitation of Janeane Garofalo).

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression performs a great service each year by drawing our attention to these egregious violations of human rights. While not every case involves a government using its heavy hand to keep citizens down, even those awards to private entities (such as the political parties or the MPAA) help us to realize how ridiculous and unjustified such actions are.

Nominations for the 2006 Jefferson Muzzles are already being collected. We can't wait.

Sir Charles on Justice Thomas

Guesting on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on NBC-TV last evening, former professional basketball player Charles Barkley plugged his new book, Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?.

The book is an exploration of racism in 21st century America. To write it, Barkley interviewed people like Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, comedian George Lopez, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Noting that he had never met Thomas, host Jay Leno asked Barkley's impressions of the much-maligned jurist. Barkley replied that Thomas gets "a bad rap." He added that "we should be able to disagree with each other without calling each other names" and that black Americans should be proud that Justice Thomas serves on the Supreme Court.

Barkley has often been rumored to be a potential candidate for public office, including governor of his home state of Alabama. Interesting thought.

Augusta Free Press on Virginia Bloggers

Chris Graham has an article at the Augusta Free Press entitled "What role will the bloggers play in the '05 elections?," in which he interviews a number of Virginia-based bloggers and asks them about what influence they might have in this year's contests for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and the General Assembly.

He interviews Lowell Feld of Raising Kaine, John Behan of Commonwealth Conservative, Waldo Jaquith, Matt Smyth of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, and myself.

A few weeks ago, the Augusta Free Press published my article, "Blogging's impact on politics," which was based in part on my March 14 posting, "Metablogging 101." The op-ed version also appeared on The Free Liberal on March 17. (That gives me an excuse to draw attention to Paul Jacob's article on government regulation of bloggers, which was published in The Free Liberal on March 24. I understand that Paul's article and mine are both in the print edition of The Free Liberal, which is now on newsstands at George Mason University and around Northern Virginia.)

Take Mr. Jefferson to Best Buy

This story is a month old, but it just came to my attention today.

Reported in the Baltimore Sun on March 8 and on WorldNetDaily yesterday, this is either a tale of the ignorance of retail cashiers or of the hysteria of post-9/11 America. Or both. Most likely both.

The gist is this, from WorldNetDaily:

A man trying to pay a fee using $2 bills was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail after clerks at a Best Buy store questioned the currency's legitimacy and called police.

Baltimore Sun columnist Michael Olesker provided a few more details when he broke the story last month. It seems that Best Buy customer Mike Bolesta was told that the installation fee for his son's new car stereo had been waived because of a mix-up at the store. But soon afterward, he was threatened with legal action if he did not pay the fee. A bit miffed, Bolesta decided to pay the whole invoice with two-dollar bills -- you know, the ones with Thomas Jefferson's portrait on the front and, in the Bicentennial version, an engraving of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the back.

These bills might be rare in Baltimore, but in Charlottesville they are readily recognizable. Mr. Jefferson's home at Monticello routinely gives them out in change to the tourists who visit there.

Bolesta uses the $2 bills in his business. Olesker continues the story:

With his Capital City Student Tours, he arranges class trips for school kids around the country traveling to large East Coast cities, including Baltimore. He's been doing this for the last 18 years. He makes all the arrangements: hotels, meals, entertainment. And it's part of his schtick that, when Bolesta hands out meal money to students, he does it in $2 bills, which he picks up from his regular bank, Sun Trust.

"The kids don't see that many $2 bills, so they think this is the greatest thing in the world," Bolesta says. "They don't want to spend 'em. They want to save 'em. I've been doing this since I started the company. So I'm thinking, 'I'll stage my little comic protest. I'll pay the $114 with $2 bills.'"

At Best Buy, however, the Jefferson dollars might as well have been euros or rupees -- or Monopoly money. The staff thought they were fake, and brought in the feds to settle the matter.

Olesker continues:

He remembers the cashier marking each bill with a pen. Then other store personnel began to gather, a few of them asking, "Are these real?"

"Of course they are," Bolesta said. "They're legal tender."

A Best Buy manager refused comment last week. But, according to a Baltimore County police arrest report, suspicions were roused when an employee noticed some smearing of ink. So the cops were called in. One officer noticed the bills ran in sequential order.

* * *

Bolesta was then taken to the county police lockup in Cockeysville, where he sat handcuffed to a pole and in leg irons while the Secret Service was called in.

"At this point," he says, "I'm a mass murderer."

Finally, Secret Service agent Leigh Turner arrived, examined the bills and said they were legitimate, adding, according to the police report, "Sometimes ink on money can smear."

This will be important news to all concerned.

For Baltimore County police, said spokesman Bill Toohey, "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world."

I like Best Buy. I've bought lots of electronic equipment there, and lots of DVDs and CDs. Despite the stupidity of their Baltimore branch, I expect I will continue to shop at Best Buy. (The new one here in Charlottesville is an amazing beacon of free enterprise, especially when you see it at night while traveling west on the 250 Bypass.)

Still, I think the next time I plan to buy something at Best Buy, I'm going to fill my wallet with two dollar bills and pay in cash.

I urge all Best Buy customers to do the same. Take Mr. Jefferson with you on your next trip.

Gay-Baiting Jerry Kilgore

There are early indications that Democrats and other Tim Kaine supporters are going to use innuendo, loaded questions, and sometimes outright accusations to raise doubt in voters' minds about GOP gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore's sexual orientation. (Kilgore faces Warrenton Mayor George Fitch, who took the famous Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Olympic Games, in the June 14 Republican primary.)

As far back as November 2004, Waldo Jaquith wrote:

Few who recall hearing Kilgore speak (and not many people in the state have) will forget the single most notable aspect of his speaking style. He sounds…well…gay. Perhaps a less controversial word to use would be “effeminate.” His speech pattern is stereotypically that of an effeminate gay man, and there’s really no getting around it.

Tweaking the issue just a bit, he added:

Perhaps the good news for Kilgore is that he may get a few progressive votes. While being perceived as effeminate (and, by extension, being perceived as possibly gay) might be a drawback among radical Republicans, some of my fellow progressives just eat that stuff up.

Then in February, Waldo again brought up the issue of Kilgore's high-pitched, nasal, "effeminate" voice. (To be fair, contemporary accounts of Abraham Lincoln's voice used similar adjectives.) Waldo wrote:

I’ve long been interested in the topic of Jerry Kilgore’s voice. Late last year, some media expressed a great reluctance to acknowledge the elephant in the Kilgore campaign’s living room — the man has a stereotypically effeminate voice. Now to be fair, there’s not a thing that he can do about it, no more than if he was born without a nose or had turned blue. Nor is there, I imagine, any reason why having a high-pitched, soft, nasal voice should keep him from serving as governor effectively. That said, it’s going to have an impact on who votes for him, because many voters will hear him speak and perceive him to be weak, unfairly or not.

Following up with a clarification, Waldo noted in a comment a couple of days later:

Of course, I’ve got no idea of the man’s sexuality (what with the wife and kids, there’s every reason to assume that he’s straight [ObSchrockLink]), but, that said, yes, he sounds like a parody of a stereotypical gay man.

Now the blog "Raising Kaine" raises the point less obliquely in an entry dated April 3:

Second, Jerry Kilgore may or may not be gay, but I have heard from numerous sources, including at least one gay male, that almost every homosexual’s “gaydar” goes off BIG TIME when they see and hear Jerry walk and talk. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the general consensus among the Virginia gay community about Jerry Kilgore is this: they have no proof he’s gay, but, as one said to me, “if he isn’t a closet case, there are no closet cases left.”

What puzzles me is why Virginia Democrats think they can succeed where the Kerry-Edwards campaign failed. In the presidential and vice presidential debates, both John Kerry and John Edwards used every available opportunity to remind voters -- and especially those on the religious right -- that Dick Cheney has a lesbian daughter.

As readers will recall, in the vice presidential debate on October 5, PBS correspondent Gwen Ifill asked a question about same-sex marriage. In his reply, candidate John Edwards said in part:

Now, as to this question, let me say first that I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, want their children to be happy.

And I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and so does John Kerry.

Dick Cheney, looking a bit peeved and prodded by Ifill to respond to Edwards' comments, said civilly:

IFILL: Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds.

CHENEY: Well, Gwen, let me simply thank the senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much.

IFILL: That's it?

CHENEY: That's it.

On October 13, during the third Bush-Kerry debate, CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer asked both candidates, "Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?" Kerry opened his reply by saying:

We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.

As the Des Moines Register pointed out,

Kerry's comments also drew a backlash from interest groups in Iowa on both sides of the issue.

"It was a cheap shot," said state Sen. Neal Schuerer, an Amana Republican who earlier this year led a debate calling on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Bill Musser, 46, of Decorah, who in 2002 was joined in a Vermont civil union with Otter Dreaming, 47, said Kerry's reference to Mary Cheney "felt just a little bit uncomfortable to me."

If the Kerry-Edwards strategy was to drive a wedge through the Bush-Cheney base, it failed. One reason was that to many voters, it was unseemly to bring in an unwilling participant -- Mary Cheney -- who was not a candidate herself (and a public figure only by association with her more famous parents).

Will the Democrats in Virginia succeed when the target of their gay-baiting is the candidate himself? Tim Kaine is a favorite of openly gay Democrats. (At a January 2004 Virginia Partisans event -- Virginia Partisans being the counterpart to Log Cabin Republicans -- Kaine received "a rousing ovation.") How do they feel about their fellow Democrats and fellow Kaine supporters using unvarnished gay baiting as a tactic to win election this November?

P.S.: Don't feel too bad for Mary Cheney. She's writing a book . According to recent press reports, she has "signed with Bush strategist Mary Matalin's conservative imprint at Simon & Schuster to pen a book on being 'a political target for the other side":

Besides sharing memories of working on her dad's campaigns since age 8, the former Coors executive finally will respond to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, who raised the issue of her homosexuality.

"She never wanted to be the poster girl . . . for gay issues," Matalin said. "She doesn't exist to be the lesbian daughter of the vice president."

But her sexual identity will be a major topic of the tome, which will try to appeal to conservatives, liberals and gays, Matalin said.

The publisher said Cheney will take a shot at "buffoonish" Republican Alan Keyes, who labeled her a "selfish hedonist."

I can't wait to see it. Will it have steamy lesbian love scenes like those in her mother's novel, Sisters, published in 1981? Or will it be a dull and wonkish book about working behind the scenes of a presidential campaign? I suspect it will be somewhere in between.

And I'll try to get an autographed copy of Mary's book to present to Jerry Kilgore -- just to hear his reaction.

Daily Progress: Letter on New Taxpayers Group

Media General's newspaper in Charlottesville, The Daily Progress, published a good letter to the editor today regarding the new Charlottesville Taxpayers Association. (See my posting of March 9.)

Here is the letter, as transcribed from the paper's print edition (since The Daily Progress does not post letters or most opinion pieces in its on line edition):

The Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Va.)
Wednesday, April 6, 2005, p. A10

Taxpayers group is welcomed

The establishment of the new Charlottesville Taxpayers Association is good news (“New city group seeks tax relief,” The Daily Progress, March 12). This development is long overdue.

For too long, Charlottesville taxpayers have lacked an organized voice to address budget and tax issues.

Year after year, when City Council holds hearings on the budget, individuals have spoken up on one or another specific line item. While their opinions have been welcome, they have also been toothless.

Nobody, up till now, has taken the time and the energy to bore through the opaque, Byzantine structure of the city budget in order to address the matters at its core.

A glance at the new organization’s web site, www.cvilletaxpayers.org, demonstrates that this group is taking up that tedious task.

All Charlottesville taxpayers owe a debt of gratitude to fellow citizens who are willing to do the hard work to scrutinize the budget and develop alternatives to what the city powers-that-be have to offer us.

Richard B. Morrison
Charlottesville

Historical Charlottesville Election Results Now On Line

Results of elections held in the City of Charlottesville going back more than 40 years are now available for easy examination on line at the city's web site.

City Council election results from 1960 to 2004 are posted in PDF format and general election results from 1977 to 2003 are posted in HTML.

Other information about city elections can be obtained through the Office of Voter Registration. Remember, May 16 is the voter registration deadline in Virginia in order to be eligible to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary on June 14.

PATRIOT Act Violates Civil Liberties, DOJ Says

In an op-ed piece in yesterday's Washington Times, cleverly designed to persuade Americans to support extension and expansion of the USA PATRIOT Act, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) writes:

A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing tomorrow morning will commence a new round of discussions about the Patriot Act. I welcome that hearing, because the American people deserve an honest, responsible and fair discussion to ensure that we are indeed fulfilling our dual responsibilities to protect national security and civil liberties alike. Unfortunately, the debate about the Patriot Act has not always met that standard.

While Cornyn tries to lay the blame for sub-par debate on the opponents of the PATRIOT Act -- by accusing them of distributing false information about the Act's provisions and constitutionality -- the fault really lies with Congress. As Steve Lilienthal of the conservative Free Congress Foundation noted in an essay published on Independence Day, 2003:

Paul M. Weyrich, Free Congress Foundation Chairman and CEO, has emphasized that the problem with the USA PATRIOT Act is not likely to be what the Bush Administration will do with its powers, but what will be done when future administrations come to power. After all, the USA PATRIOT Act seeks to centralize more power with the Federal government, even handing its law enforcement agencies great power to crack down on political dissent. Who dissents against centralized governmental power? Conservatives, who adhere to the philosophy that recognizes the desirability of a federal government with limited power.

The House and Senate passed the USA PATRIOT Act so swiftly that many congressmen and senators had not read the bill nor had a full understanding of its measures. But the more conservatives know about the USA PATRIOT Act, the less they should like it.

One measure of the Act is called "sneak and peek" which permits searches to be conducted without informing the subject in advance that it will be taking place. This measure upends the Fourth Amendment. (emphasis added)

Now the Department of Justice has itself admitted the extent of abuse of the "sneak and peek" provision. Declan McCullagh writes in CNET News today:

Police invoked the Patriot Act when surreptitiously entering and searching a home or office without notifying the owner 108 times during a 22-month period, according to a one-page summary released by the Justice Department late Monday. On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate that police have employed secret court orders to obtain records 35 times so far.

In his Washington Times piece, Senator Cornyn cites a Democrat to claim that the PATRIOT Act has not led to abuse of civil liberties:

As Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, noted at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing during the last Congress, "I have never had a single abuse of the PATRIOT Act reported to me. My staff emailed the ACLU and asked them for instances of actual abuses. They emailed back and said they had none."

McCullagh provides an answer to that -- from another Democrat:

"We have heard over and over again that there have been no abuses as a result of the Patriot Act," Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, said during a hearing Tuesday. "But it is difficult, if not impossible, to verify that claim when some of the most controversial surveillance powers in the Patriot Act operate under a cloak of secrecy."

He goes on to note that

Increased calls for openness come as the Bush administration has taken unprecedented steps to limit public scrutiny of the executive branch. The number of classified documents has jumped since 2001, Freedom of Information Act disclosures have been curbed, and the wall of secrecy surrounding the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has drawn international condemnation. Open-government watchdog OMB Watch has said that Bush has "vastly expanded the zone of secrecy that surrounds the White House and most of the federal government."

I wrote early this year about how Democrats and Republicans in Charlottesville came together to express reservations about the PATRIOT Act -- even drawing the attention of Swedish television. A truly "honest debate" (the kind Senator Cornyn says he desires) will include the strong objections to the PATRIOT Act articulated by such conservative heavyweights as former Representatives Bob Barr (R-Georgia) and Dick Armey (R-Texas) and current members of Congress Butch Otter (R-Idaho) and Ron Paul (R-Texas).

For more information on the USA PATRIOT Act, visit the web site of the Charlottesville-based public interest law firm, the Rutherford Institute. I recommend Rutherford's blog, "Operation Eroding Freedom" for up-to-date information on the PATRIOT Act and efforts by the Bush administration and Congress to expand it.

Another Candidate for District 57

I have commented on the 57th District race to succeed retiring Delegate Mitch Van Yahres on several occasions -- as recently as this morning, and earlier on March 14 and March 11.

It's only natural, since this is the most exciting political story in the Charlottesville area in the pre-primary season.

Now we have another candidate ready to announce. According to WINA radio,

A local contractor will join two fellow Democrats in the contest for an open seat in the House of Delegates. Clement "Kim" Tingley will formally declare he's a candidate at 10 a.m. Wednesday outside Burley Middle School at 901 Rose Hill Drive. Kingley's entry will make this a three-man race for the 57th District House seat which Charlottesville Delegate Mitch Van Yahres is vacating. The other two candidates in a June 14th Democratic primary are former Mayor David Toscano and retiring University of Virginia Professor Rich Collins.

The leading candidate in the race, former Charlottesville Mayor David Toscano, reveals his political philosophy in an interview with C-VILLE Weekly. He tells reporter John Borgmeyer:

Values make a difference. Any elected official who doesn’t have a strong sense of right and wrong will ultimately fail, because they aren’t centered enough to weather the storms of public reaction to what they do.

Fairness and opportunity is a value I developed a long time ago when I was young. The notion that people ought to have a chance to succeed in life and we ought to reward people for working hard stems from growing up in a household where my father worked six or seven days a week, and I worked with him. I learned how to run a business, and how important it was to be honest and treat people fairly. That has to spill over in your public life.

* * *

Overall, I think Democrats need to speak to the values we think are important—economic justice, opportunity, fairness and compassion. I’m willing to work with business and UVA to create jobs that pay a living wage. I don’t think the public sector alone is going to be able to create those kinds of jobs.

I think people believe that the government’s proper role isn’t to solve every problem, nor is it leaving people to fend for themselves, but to empower people with the tools they can use to solve their own problems.

And Toscano reveals one of his top legislative priorities, should he be elected to the General Assembly come November:

[P]arents ought to be able to get release time from work to go to parent-teacher conferences. It’s a little thing, but it can make a huge difference in the life of a child.

Two names are mentioned as possible Republican candidates: Tom McCrystal and Sharon Jones. That nomination will be made at a mass meeting scheduled for June 6.

57th District Gets Competition

Former Charlottesville City Councilor David Toscano, who once ran for Congress on the far-left Citizens' Party (Barry Commoner) ticket, now faces competition in his race to succeed retiring Delegate Mitch Van Yahres in the 57th House of Delegates District.

According to WINA radio,

A retiring member of the University of Virginia faculty hopes to succeed fellow Democrat Mitch Van Yahres in the House of Delegates. Rich Collins officially launched his campaign Monday on the downtown mall. Collins believes he can represent Charlottesville & Albemarle in the tradition of Van Yahres, and the late State Senator Emily Couric. He's stressing his credentials as an educator and an environmentalist.

The Daily Progress adds:

At an early evening rally on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, Collins announced his candidacy while proposing a plan to freeze rising real estate assessments, or what he calls the "growth tax."

"The way I see it, when your property assessment goes through the roof, that extra money being charged is, in effect, a raise in taxes," Collins said.

The 70-year-old said he wants localities to choose if assessments should rise and, if so, how revenue from those assessments should be spent.

That sounds like a sensible position. But it seems anomalous when one considers Collins' background as a no-growth environmental activist -- unless one looks at tax caps as a means to prevent economic growth (a perverse position, but one that might be argued).

In an email to friends and colleagues inviting them to attend Collins' campaign launch, one of Collins' early supporters wrote:

Rich is a UVa professor and a founder of the Institute for Environmental Negotiation and Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population. He has served as chair of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, and the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority. He's a husband, father, grandfather, veteran and a helluva guy.

So it looks like the choice Democrats will face on June 14 is between the left and the far left. Mr. Hobson, call your office.

Two Candidates Who Oppose Taxes

Two challengers in this year's Republican primary are setting themselves apart as "the" anti-tax candidates in their races.

George Fitch, the mayor of Warrenton who is mounting a maverick campaign against party-favorite Jerry Kilgore for the GOP nomination for governor, issued a news release on April 5 stating that "he will veto any tax increases enacted by the Virginia General Assembly."

According to the news release distributed by his campaign:

In comments to the media at a rally sponsored by the Fairfax Taxpayers Alliance, Fitch said he has signed the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” written by Americans for Tax Reform and questioned why his Republican opponent, Jerry Kilgore, hasn’t also signed the pledge "to oppose any and all efforts to increase taxes."

"This is a perfect example of how Jerry Kilgore hasn’t been honest with voters on the issue of taxes. He claims he is for tax relief, but he sat silent while the General Assembly was socking Virginia’s taxpayers with the largest tax increase in history; his proposal for real estate tax relief is a sham; and he won’t sign a pledge to oppose new tax increases on Virginia taxpayers," Fitch said.

Noting his success in cutting Warrenton's real estate taxes by 77 percent during his tenure as the town's mayor, Fitch promised to finish the car tax cut that began during the Gilmore Administration and to reduce state spending by as much as $2.5 billion. "There’s an enormous amount of waste in the Virginia budget," Fitch said.

Taking a shot at his opponent, Fitch suggested that Kilgore will be a wimp when it comes to tax increases if he is elected governor:

"Politicians, like Jerry Kilgore, have been dancing around on the issue of taxes for far too long, promising the voters one thing but doing something else. No wonder Jerry Kilgore told The Washington Post on [February] 28th: 'I’m more like Mark Warner than Tim Kaine will ever be.'"

"Let’s cut to the chase. If Virginians want a Governor who will bring some fiscal common sense to Virginia state government so that we can reduce taxes, eliminate unnecessary and wasteful spending then they shouldn’t have voted for Mark Warner and they shouldn’t vote for Jerry Kilgore. I’m the only candidate with a track record of really cutting taxes and reducing spending," Fitch said.

In the meantime, Chris Oprison is challenging incumbent Delegate Joe May, who recently abandoned a race for lieutenant governor, in the 33rd district in Leesburg and vicinity (Clarke and Loudoun counties). In a March 31 news release, Oprison revealed his plan "to combat skyrocketing property tax increases on Virginia homeowners."

Oprison bases his plan on that popularized by VOTORS (Virginians Over-Taxed On Residences). As explained by Oprison, this plan would have three major facets:

(1) rollback recent hikes in the property assessment values and reset them to the level on record two years prior to passage of the amendment;

(2) impose a prospective 2% limit on the increase in property value assessments annually from the reset value until the property is sold, at which time the property value is adjusted to the selling price;

(3) impose a 1% cap on property tax rates.

Oprison's news release quotes VOTORS chairman Al Aitken expressing his appreciation for the candidate's open support for his organization's position:

"[It] is refreshing to see a true fiscal conservative like Chris understanding what those in government for years have been unable or unwilling to acknowledge. In addition to a revenue component to budget issues, there is also a spending component that must be addressed and brought into check. I firmly believe we need more fresh and ambitious young leaders like Chris at the helm who understand these issues and are not afraid to address them head on."

Both VOTORS and Oprison face an uphill battle in attempting to pass such an ambitious program of property-tax reform. There are a lot of interests opposed to it -- not least the Virginia Municipal League and the Virginia Association of Counties.

In reaction to much milder proposals from gubernatorial candidates Kilgore and Tim Kaine, R. Michael Amyx, executive director of the Virginia Municipal League told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "A proposal that cuts or restricts the property tax will give local government official real pause." He quoted a scary report from his organization's Texas counterpart, which said in part:

Appraisal caps and other property tax limits have created substantial problems in providing adequate revenues in states where they have been implemented, resulting in major disparities among taxpayers, increases in other taxes and significant increases in state transfers to local government.

In the meantime, the Roanoke Times reported that the Kilgore and Kaine proposals, as weak as they are,

have been greeted with apprehension by some city and county government officials, who are wary of the state government tampering with the taxing authority of localities. "My number-one concern is that the statewide candidates are running on promises of lowering local taxes," said Jim Campbell, the executive director of the Virginia Association of Counties.

Let's face it, however: It takes bold proposals like those promoted by Fitch and Oprison (and VOTORS) to make palatable the mild tax reform proposals of conventional politicians like Kaine and Kilgore. Anything that gets more radical ideas into the public debate is worthwhile.

Your Sports Dollars at Work

On Monday's All Things Considered, a report on the student-athletes by correspondent Uri Berliner was introduced like this:

Illinois and North Carolina face off Monday night in St. Louis for the NCAA championship. Along with all the excitement of arriving at the pinnacle at college basketball, many players are coping with school deadlines as well.

Berliner began by noting that "just before North Carolina's locker room was opened to the media yesterday, reserve guard Wes Miller was sweating it out. Not on the basketball court, but in a study hall." Said Miller:

"I've got a paper due on Thursday, so I've been working on that a little bit. So yeah, we've missed so much class in the past three weeks it's tough to keep up with the academics. But you've got to try somehow."

Berliner asked Miller what his paper was about. "It's on political theory," replied Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and John Locke" -- an answer that just about had me salivating as I listened while driving in my car. What a meaty topic! What fun it would be to write. But then Miller deflated those thoughts as he continued: "So it wasn't too exciting."

Not exciting? Hobbes and Locke? He must just be preoccupied with the basketball tournament and unable to appreciate the evolution of English political theory during the 16th and 17th centuries. Berliner tried to draw Miller out a bit by asking what he had to read to prepare his paper:

"I had to read Thomas Hobbes [laughs] and John Locke. Like John Locke Treaties [sic] of Government or something like that. I don't know. It was awful."

Somewhere at the University of North Carolina is a student who knows that Hobbes wrote Leviathan and Locke wrote Two Treatises of Government. That student does not, however, play reserve guard for UNC's basketball team.

I'm glad I won't be grading Wes Miller's paper -- the one due on Thursday.

Warner Signs Virginia Property-Rights Laws

On January 25, I reported with some foreboding, "Two bills under consideration by the Virginia General Assembly, designed to protect the rights of property owners against aggressive eminent domain practices by state and local government, are in danger of defeat at the committee level."

I am now happy to report that the bills not only passed the General Assembly, they have now been signed into law by Governor Mark Warner.

According to a message from the Virginia Property Rights Coalition:

We have just received the wonderful news that HB1820 and HB 1821 have been signed by Governor Warner. Attendance at Committee Meetings, all of the grassroots calls, letters, and e-mails, lobbying by Susan Rubin of the Virginia Farm Bureau and the hard work of Delegate Bob McDonald made the difference this year.

As you know all previous efforts to pass this type of legislation have been stopped in Committee never reaching the floor of the General Assembly.

Below is a copy of both bills.

HB 1820
Eminent domain; regulations for condemnor's right of entry.
Terrie L. Suit


Summary as passed:
Eminent domain; right of entry to inspect. Modifies the provisions associated with a condemnor's entry onto property by (i) expanding the information provided in the initial request for permission to inspect and strengthening delivery requirements; (ii) requiring that the notice of intent to enter be posted or otherwise delivered to the owner in person, in addition to being sent by certified mail; and (iii) providing that if the owner files an action to recover damages caused by entry and is awarded judgment in an amount 30 percent or more than the condemnor's final written offer, or if the court finds that the condemnor maliciously, willfully or recklessly damaged the owner's property, the court may award the owner reasonable court costs, attorney fees, and fees for up to three expert witnesses testifying at trial.



HB 1821
Eminent domain; procedure for acquisition of property by State.
Terrie L. Suit


Summary as passed:
Eminent domain; acquisition of property. Modifies the provisions associated with acquisitions under eminent domain by (i) requiring that a state agency's acquisition of real property be conducted in accordance with provisions that are only precatory under current law, including that the state agency establish an initial amount that is no less than the agency's approved appraisal of the fair market value of the property and that no owner can be required to surrender possession until the state agency pays the agreed purchase price or deposits funds with the court, and (ii) providing that if an owner is awarded at trial as compensation for the taking of or damage to property an amount that is 30 percent or more greater than the amount of the petitioner's written offer, the court may award the owner reasonable appraisal and engineering fees, and reasonable fees and travel costs for up to three expert witnesses testifying at trial. The cost award provisions do not apply to cases involving easements valued at less than $10,000 or to cases in which a petition in condemnation or certificate of take or deposit was filed prior to July 1, 2005.

These bills are a great victory and though there is still much to do next year, lets just take a while and really enjoy this monentous step toward an eminent domain system that treats Virginia property owners fairly.

These bills do not address all of the issues of eminent domain abuse that should concern property owners and taxpayers. They do not rise to meet the questions at play in the Kelo case now under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court, for instance. Yet they add something of a cushion to Virginia law to give property owners more protection today than they had yesterday.