star-telegram.com: Linda Campbell

Campbell: McCain's half-truths about judges

Fri, 09 May 2008 10:27 CDT

By LINDA P. CAMPBELL

John McCain ought to be ashamed of himself.

In his most pandering performance since speaking at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University to prove that he could schmooze even with agents of intolerance as long as they bring along Republican votes, McCain whacked away this week at that threadbare straw man, the "activist judge."

Speaking at Wake Forest University, he harrumphed about "the common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power."

"For decades now," he claimed, "some federal judges have taken it upon themselves to pronounce and rule on matters that were never intended to be heard in courts or decided by judges."

And then he complained about lifetime-tenured judges who "show little regard for the authority of the president, the Congress, and the states. They display even less interest in the will of the people."

Well, here are some inconvenient details.

For decades now, Republican appointees have dominated the federal courts: 57 percent of the current judges were named by Republicans, including 386 by Bush father and son (326 are Clinton appointees), according to the Alliance for Justice.

If federal judges were obliged only to follow the "will of the people," we might still have Southern schools segregated by law, and Al Gore would have been declared president in 2000 after winning the popular vote.

Were it not for the Supreme Court, President George W. Bush would have arrogated even more power than he has from Congress in waging war. It was the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a friend of McCain's, who led a bold federalism movement fond of striking down acts of Congress in favor of the states.

But why let a few facts get in the way of an appeal to the political base?

"One justice of the court remarked in a recent opinion that he was basing a conclusion on 'my own experience,' even though that conclusion found no support in the Constitution, or in applicable statutes, or in the record of the case in front of him," McCain said.

Well, not quite. Justice John Paul Stevens (a Gerald Ford appointee) did write a concurrence on lethal injection saying that he had relied "on my own experience" of reviewing capital cases for almost 33 years on the court to conclude that the death penalty "represents the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes."

But he also voted to uphold Kentucky's death penalty because his own position "does not, however, justify a refusal to respect precedents that remain a part of our law."

Stevens also wrote the court's 2005 Kelo decision, which McCain cited because of the property-rights storm it caused. But McCain didn't explain that the decision relied on years of precedent to conclude that an economic development project could be considered "public use" supporting the exercise of eminent domain.

Besides that, Stevens said nothing prevented state legislatures from limiting cities' ability to take private homes -- leaving power with the will of the people. Isn't that what McCain wants?

And then he brought up Michael Newdow, who tried to remove the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

"With an air of finality," the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared reference to the Almighty "impermissible," McCain said.

What he left out, however, was that a Nixon appointee wrote the 9th Circuit ruling, accurately pointing out that Congress added "under God" to the pledge to make a religious statement. What McCain left out was that the Supreme Court -- Stevens again -- said Newdow didn't have legal standing to raise the First Amendment issue.

I could go on about McCain's moaning over "activist lawyers and activist judges" who "seek to shut down debates by order of the court" instead of winning arguments on the merits.

Does he object to "conservative" groups systematically trying to dismantle affirmative action efforts by suing universities? Does he object that the challenge to the District of Columbia's handgun ban was a carefully orchestrated effort to have the Supreme Court define the scope of the Second Amendment?

Within the brain of Miley Cyrus

Thu, 01 May 2008 04:39 CDT

By LINDA P. CAMPBELL

OMG!

IDK what is the big deal!

First, I'm posing for some artsy pics by, like, the most famous photog around.

So, I look like I'm about 20, but it's really sexy -- not skanky or anything like those cheap-o online photos.

How awesome is that!

And next thing I know, all these tweeners' moms and uptight biddies are dissing me for not, like, being all Hannah all the time.

Then everyone starts quoting this statement like I'm all embarrassed. "And I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about," it says.

Are you kidding me? Like, who talks like that?

And then these bloggers are like, "How to talk to your teen or tween about Miley's racy Vanity Fair photos."

I'm like, don't these people know that Hannah Montana is a character on a TV show?

I mean, it's awesome to be famous and all from playing her. Like, how hard is it to pretend you're a regular girl who's secretly a rock star? And it's so awesome to get treated like a celebrity, you know, going to parties and being in Seventeen and having gobs of money.

But, geez, all those screaming girls in fakey blond Hannah wigs -- like, that can get kind of freaky.

And what's with my parents? They're like, we had nooooo idea this was going to happen. Yeah, right. It's not like you couldn't see the pictures right there on the camera, if you wanted to.

My dad even posed, looking like a biker dude with me draped across his lap. I mean, that one was kinda creepy, but who's making a stink about it?

They're all, like, oh, you can see her back and it looks like she's naked under that sheet. But I wasn't really naked -- or pregnant as a blimp, even, like in that ancient pic that Annie took of Demi Moore. That would be embarrassing, to be that fat and showing it off. Gross!

Wasn't the whole reason for doing Vanity Fair, like, to sort of start to branch out from Disney? It's not like any of my friends read Vanity Fair, for geez sake. Hot guys don't go there to see girls they want to date. LOL!

It's not like I really am Hannah Montana, you know.

I'm Miley Cyrus.

And I'm not just Billy Ray Cyrus' daughter, either. No offense, but I'm more famous than he ever got as a country singer. Now he's hitched to my star, ha-ha.

It's not like I'm, like, 12, anymore, you know.

Making a leap of faith on the presidency

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:39 CDT

By LINDA P. CAMPBELL

Don't take a leap of faith in choosing the next president, Hillary Clinton tells us.

Take out the guesswork. Take no chances.

If only.

Clinton's ad designers thought it clever to punctuate her latest doomsday message with President Harry Truman's famous quip about getting out of a hot kitchen.

Better that they should have revisited his earliest days as commander in chief for some schooling in just what a leap of faith the American people take with every new "world's most powerful leader."

Sworn in as president on April 12, 1945, on a Gideon Bible found in a drawer, Truman hadn't been intimately involved in Franklin D. Roosevelt's foreign policy formulation, according to exhibits at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo.

But by May 2, Berlin had fallen. Six days later, Germany surrendered, ending World War II in Europe.

That June, nations from across the world approved the U.N. Charter.

In July, Truman met with Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill and Clement Atlee to discuss postwar treatment of Germany.

By August, Truman was deciding to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan's surrender.

He followed up in November by proposing a national healthcare program that the American Medical Association attacked as "socialized medicine." (See www.trumanlibrary.org/anniversaries/healthprogram.htm.)

Granted, Truman was thrust into the presidency by Roosevelt's sudden death. But the point is, who knew? How were voters to know when they confidently elected Roosevelt to a fourth term that they weren't choosing his running mate just as an also-ran?

Who knew that the nation was getting a leader who would authorize the use of devastating weapons that would abruptly end WWII and shape the peace that followed?

When the American people consciously took a leap with Truman in 1948, they got a president who sent troops to Korea and tried to seize the railroads and steel mills to avoid strikes.

They've similarly voted their hopes as much as their intellect almost every election since: an untested senator, a supposedly washed-up onetime vice president, a couple of lesser-known governors, a former B-movie actor, an ex-president's son.

And for all their claims to wisdom, experience and well-laid plans, the men who have won the job have gone into office with only tenuous control over their destinies and ours.

When he was running, did John F. Kennedy imagine facing down Nikita Khrushchev over nuclear warheads in Cuba?

Did Jimmy Carter prepare for oil shortages or a hostage crisis in Iran?

Should voters have expected that Bill Clinton's personal misbehavior would nearly implode his administration?

Even if George W. Bush had been a more capable, seasoned leader, could he have guessed that terrorists would strike the heart of our country just eight months into his term?

Freedom of Information: Mushrooms may like the dark; democracy doesn't need it (Audio)

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:17 CDT

By Linda P. Campbell

Download the mp3 of the speech

Tom Blanton wasn't nuts when he told a room full of open-government fans to act squirrely.

Scientists have found, he informed us last Friday, that "squirrels have no idea where they've dug that hole and put that nut." They survive the winter by planting enough nuts that "wherever they go, they're likely to uncover a couple of buried items," he explained. "But if not enough squirrels plant not enough nuts, they're all going to starve."

Then he drove the point home: "As news gatherers, as news publishers and as citizens, we're going to starve -- our democracy, our accountable government, our information flows ... -- unless we get out there and plant some FOIA requests, write some stories and get the story out." Blanton and the research organization he heads, the National Security Archive, have made it their mission to plant Freedom of Information Act requests all across the federal government to shed light on what agencies are doing in our name. FOIA is the 1966 federal law that requires agencies to give people records they ask for (with certain exceptions), supposedly in timely fashion and without regard to why the information is being sought.

Through FOIA, the archive has uncovered fascinating nuggets of history as well as documentary treasure troves of insight into how government operates.

Right now, the archive's Web page, www.nsarchive.org, links to:

Declassified histories compiled by the Air Force that show CIA involvement in combat air attacks during the Vietnam War.

Stories about the archive's ongoing lawsuit seeking to force the Bush White House to preserve and restore thousands of missing e-mails.

An analysis of open records practices in Mexico.

The CIA's "family jewels" -- a 693-page file detailing years of domestic spying and other improper practices by the CIA.

And there's "Nixon meets Elvis." It turned out, archive staffers discovered, that the document that people most wanted to see at the National Archives -- home of our nation's founding documents and other precious papers -- was a photo of President Nixon hosting Elvis Presley at the White House on Dec. 21, 1970.

National Security Archive staff filed a FOIA request for all related documents and received a file that included Elvis' letter on American Airlines stationery seeking a meeting with Nixon; talking points recommending that the president ask the singer to create a TV special about getting high on life, not drugs; and a photo of Nixon inspecting Elvis' cufflinks. (You can see these on the group's site.)

During its history, the privately funded group has filed more than 35,000 open records requests and collected 8 million to10 million documents, Blanton told an audience at the First Amendment Awards banquet sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists' Fort Worth chapter last Friday.

Release of the "family jewels" last year came about after the archive had asked a range of federal agencies for their 10 oldest pending FOIA requests. Though the law sets specific deadlines for turning over information requested by the public, they often aren't met -- sometimes for years. A request for the "family jewels" had sat unfilled for 15 years, Blanton said.

Because of a 2005 executive order signed by President Bush and because of FOIA changes pushed into law last year by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, many agencies are reducing their backlogs of old open-records requests. But the two senators are continuing to try to strengthen FOIA.

The law never has been really popular with those who must comply with it, Blanton said. President Lyndon Johnson signed it grudgingly.

In 1974, President Ford vetoed a bill designed to put teeth into it, on the advice of two key aides and a Justice Department lawyer: Dick Cheney (now vice president), Donald Rumsfeld (later defense secretary) and Antonin Scalia (now a Supreme Court justice).

Congress overrode Ford -- to the enduring public benefit.

There's no doubt that the U.S. government is among the world's most open. But it helps that nosy reporters ask questions and that courageous government employees are willing to blow the whistle when they see questionable practices and wrongdoing.

"The good news is that when you shine a light on things, they get fixed," Blanton said.

Round 2 of Texas delegate selction 'was a huge mess'

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:11 CDT

By Linda P. Campbell

Frank Colosi got it exactly right when I asked him what led to the excruciatingly long registration process at the Democrats' District 10 convention March 29.

"You have to start with the realization that this is a process that only works when it doesn't matter," he said.

When little's at stake, thousands of voters aren't newly impassioned and only party insiders gather when the polls close, the flaws in the convoluted procedures for Democratic caucusing and delegate choosing are easily overlooked.

But this year ... well, it was a spectacle worse than the making of legislation.

"It's just not designed to handle anything of this magnitude," said Colosi, a civil rights lawyer and state convention at-large delegate for Hillary Clinton.

That has become painfully obvious to the throngs of eager, excited supporters of Clinton and Barack Obama who've now devoted more hours of their lives than they probably imagined it would take to make sure their candidate carries as many Texas delegates as possible all the way to the party nomination.Chaotic caucuses, convoluted conventions -- how do you hold people's enthusiasm after making them fume all day just to check in and make their voices heard?

Surely there's a better way to choose Texas' 193 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention, said exhausted and frustrated precinct delegates to the March 29 senatorial district conventions. Delays happened across Tarrant County and the state. Could it have been avoided? Let's take a look at what happened in District 10.

Some delegates' perception

Delegates who arrived at the District 10 convention at Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth by 8 a.m. wondered why sign-in didn't start for some three hours and credentials packets weren't handed out until late afternoon. (The convention lasted into the wee hours because after precincts chose their state delegates, resolutions had to be considered and at-large delegates allocated.)

Bloggers for "DonkeyTales08" on the Star-Telegram Web site heard that a plan for check-in using bar-code scanning was scrapped at the last minute.

Precinct 4230 captain Bronson Davis, a former Texas Christian University vice chancellor, attributed the interminable waiting to confusion, poor communication and generally "the ineptitude of conference organizers."

Davis blogged that Linda Cozzen, temporary convention chairwoman, had come up with a bar-code system for enrolling delegates alphabetically and lined up volunteers, only to have the plan nixed by Tarrant County Party Chairman Art Brender because of flaws in the system.

The local party leader's response

Not so, Brender said.

"This was a huge mess," he said in a telephone interview.

Delegate lists had to be prepared from minutes of the precinct caucuses, but the minutes "were a mess," he said. Among other things, many precinct caucuses had elected too many delegates, and all couldn't vote at the district convention.

Tarrant County had sent its caucus information to the state party office, which had prepared a delegate list that turned out to be missing precincts and to have reversed some delegates' presidential preferences. "The names were hopelessly scrambled," he said.

Cozzen's bar-code system was based on incorrect data, Brender said, and the credentials committee decided that it couldn't be used.

"You can't possibly organize this on no money," Brender said.

The view from inside

'I don't know that I've ever felt more like a real citizen'

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:40 CDT

By LINDA P. CAMPBELL

Did you hear that the sound system the Democrats used during the District 12 convention at the Gaylord Texan was so atrocious that one man took the microphone and told folks they could hear better by sticking their fingers in their ears -- and sometimes it actually worked?

Did you hear how somewhere between Hour 10 and Hour 17 of the District 10 convention at Will Rogers Coliseum, delegates were doing the Chicken Dance to relieve the interminable waiting?

Did you hear how Precinct 4020, which went 10-3 for Hillary Clinton during the March 4 caucus, elected only a Barack Obama representative to the state convention because three delegates for each candidate showed up at the senatorial district event, and a Clinton delegate left before the final voting?

All those inside details came from delegates who've been sharing their ground-level observations on DonkeyTales08, an online blog we've started at www.star-telegram.com/opinion. They're your friends and neighbors, telling the kinds of stories and offering the opinions you might hear at the back-yard fence, the grocery aisle or the church fellowship hall.

But now acquaintances and strangers can listen in through the instantaneousness of technology.

We opened this online forum after Keller resident Tim Sledge e-mailed me to describe his first stab at political activism: the March 4 precinct caucuses. His words overflowed with excitement:

"Whatever else Senator Obama accomplished in Fort Worth that week, I know one thing he did. He inspired an Anglo couple in their fifties and a twenty-something African-American man hungry to learn the basics about the political process to volunteer for the first time, to work together, and to give meaning to the slogan, 'Yes We Can.'"

Maybe it was coincidence -- or serendipity -- but I had spent primary night in Los Angeles, where I was attending a seminar about expanding avenues for online commentary. Speakers urged us to provide places where people could connect and converse about what matters to them and how we can improve our communities.

That's what Democratic delegates have been doing as they chronicle their perspectives on a presidential race that has inspired and energized veterans and newbies alike.

"I thought it was just my family who had gotten on this crazy politics kick, but I am learning that this election has changed the community," wrote Karen Anderson, a young black woman who lives near Texas Christian University.

Our bloggers conveyed their irritation with conventions that one described as "clear as mud and slow as molasses."

They talked about using the seemingly endless downtime to make new friends and chat about common concerns.

They offered suggestions for improving the "Texas two-step" that this year seems to have the dancers tripping all over each other because so many have taken the floor.

They've helped explain why a white feminist Clinton supporter might switch to Obama; why an independent with Republican friends, family and co-workers might believe that the country needs a Democrat in the White House; and why thousands of Tarrant County residents would abandon all competing demands to spend 10 hours in uncomfortable seats so their voices would be heard.

"In spite of all the frustrations and tension involved," Sledge wrote, "I think that ultimately both sides played fairly, and I don't know that I've ever felt more like a real citizen in my entire life."

They've even found humor in it all.

When it looked like the vote in Precinct 4020 would tie 3-3, wrote Aaron Mullens, a software engineer from White Settlement, the delegates learned that the tie breaker would be a coin flip.

"This is great! I have been here all day for a coin flip and I search my pockets to find a quarter. I start thinking about the historical significance this quarter may have in helping select the Democratic presidential nominee which could [be] the first black or female president. This quarter has a date with destiny. I must insist we use it, keep it, frame it, and even pass it down to the kids. Maybe I could sell it on E-bay and make a fortune."

In the end, Mullens' quarter didn't make history, he reported. Instead, the vote went 3-2 for an Obama delegate to the state convention.

WHY ARE DEMS HAVING ALL THE FUN?

Need a defense attorney? It's not necessarily that easy...

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 04:40 CDT

By LINDA P. CAMPBELL

The Supreme Court heard two firearms-related cases this week, but it was the obscure one from Fredericksburg that produced the more surprising arguments.

Under the government's version of events in Walter Rothgery v. Gillespie County, Rothgery was masquerading as a security guard in an RV park when he was arrested for being a felon with a firearm in 2002.

But Rothgery's lawyers say he was wrongly arrested based on faulty computer data. Then he was denied an appointed lawyer who could have set authorities straight, saved him months of reputational damage and prevented the county from wasting time and money unnecessarily indicting him, rearresting him and housing him in jail for three weeks before the charge was dropped.

During Monday's arguments, the justices kept trying to get their heads around Texas' criminal procedures, looking for that magic point at which the constitutional right to a lawyer should kick in.

You'd think it was simple: You're accused of a crime, you're poor, you get an attorney to help navigate the system.

Not so fast.

Rothgery lawyer Danielle Spinelli argued that her client should have been appointed a lawyer once he had spent a night in jail then appeared before a magistrate who read him his rights and told him the accusation against him. Instead, he posted bail and went free temporarily. But he couldn't find work because everyone thought he was a criminal, and he couldn't clear his name. (He wasn't a felon: A drug charge in California had been dismissed after he completed a diversion program. The gun he was arrested with was a gift from his father.)

The county wouldn't appoint him a lawyer until months later, after he was indicted.

Texas' Fair Defense Act requires that indigent defendants get appointed lawyers between one and three days after they've been taken into custody on formal criminal charges. But Texas law doesn't require lawyers for those who are released on bond before indictment.

It was Justice Antonin Scalia, that ardent conservative, who sounded most like an ardent civil libertarian.

"I think it's a very strong point in your favor that he was required to make bail, because I don't think you can hold somebody without charging him," Scalia told Spinelli, according to the argument transcript.

He and his colleagues then pummeled Gregory Coleman, who argued for the county.

What if Rothgery couldn't make bail, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked. Would he be entitled to a lawyer if he'd been held for weeks or months?

"No," Coleman said.

"What authority do you have to hold somebody who's not been charged?" Scalia jumped in. "You say he hasn't been charged, but we're going to hold you in jail. That's very strange."

Coleman essentially argued that Rothgery picked the wrong amendment to rely on: He said Sixth (fair trial); should have tried Fourth (no unreasonable seizure) instead.

"What you're saying, ... [is] that an individual can be brought into court, held in jail for three weeks without charge, and no right to counsel applies?" Justice David Souter marveled. "I'll be candid to say I'm surprised."

To Scalia, holding people without charge posed a problem even if they got a lawyer.

"It happens all the time, Justice Scalia, where people are appointed counsel but, for whatever reason, do not make bail... ," Coleman started to explain.

"Without charges filed?" Souter cut in. "In other words, if the lawyer comes in and says, you know, my client is sitting in jail, you've had him there for three days now, and no complaint has been filed against him, we don't know why he is being held ... it's a constitutional answer to say, well, you know, that's for us to know and you to find out?"

A clash of less than titanic import?

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:39 CDT

By LINDA P. CAMPBELL

The Justice Department still hasn't found the anthrax messenger who killed five people and sickened 17 others with poison-laced letters in 2001.

Former government researcher Steven J. Hatfill still hasn't found out which federal investigators gave reporters details about him even though he never was charged.

So why should former USA Today reporter Toni Locy have to pay thousands of dollars in fines for not revealing her unnamed sources?

A federal appeals court in Washington gave her a reprieve Tuesday, but it's probably only temporary.

An army of news organizations warns that this is the latest cold wind threatening to chill reporters' ability to expose government wrongdoing or bring whistleblowers' insider revelations to light for the public good. But I wonder whether this isn't instead another fight with bad facts likely to lead to more bad precedent.

The anthrax letters that circulated shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks understandably caused panic. In August 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft identified Hatfill, who had worked at the Army Medical Research Institute in Maryland, as a "person of interest" in the investigation. Various journalists received and reported personal details about him, citing unnamed sources.

Locy wrote one long piece in 2003 about the FBI dogging Hatfill 24/7 and about the circumstantial evidence against him, citing at least five government sources. A shorter piece briefly mentioned him.

Hatfill never was charged, and in 2003 he sued the Justice Department for violating the Privacy Act, which is designed to prevent government agents from discussing individuals' records without authorization.

Unable to pinpoint who had fed information about Hatfill to the media, his lawyers subpoenaed an array of reporters. Eventually, several got their sources to waive anonymity and provided identities. But Locy and James Stewart of CBS refused to name names.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton has held Locy in contempt, and last week he ordered her to pay fines escalating from $500 a day to $5,000 a day out of her own pocket. He concluded that the identities go to the heart of Hatfill's ability to make his case and that because she's the only one who could provide them, she should bear the brunt of refusing to talk.

It sounds harsh and sweeping -- and has been put on hold, at least until the appeals court decides whether Walton was right.

The problem for Locy (who now teaches journalism at West Virginia University) is that the law is not on her side.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment doesn't protect reporters from having to answer court subpoenas just as other citizens must. Most states have laws that shield reporters' sources under some circumstances, but they vary, and there's no such federal statute, though a bill is pending in Congress.

Such disputes come down to competing public interests: the value of having the best possible information by which to do justice in court cases versus the value of providing the public with insight that it might not otherwise get if sources were afraid to come forward.

Viewed from Hatfill's perspective, is it more important that he get compensated for the damage to his reputation or that flouters of privacy law get to retain their cloak of invisibility?

Viewed from Locy's, is it more vital to give Hatfill a financial bonanza or to reassure future sources that they won't be hung out to dry?

But Locy's stories arguably were unremarkable in the grand scheme. So why the big fight?

She has said that she can't remember who gave her details about Hatfill, and she doesn't want to reveal all her anthrax investigation sources, even though Walton said he would give them only to Hatfill and his lawyers. She can't refer to her notes because she tossed them.

This brouhaha strikes me as less like the case of two reporters held in contempt for using grand jury transcripts to reveal details of pro athletes' steroids use and more like the ruckus over Judith Miller, who went to jail for 85 days before admitting that Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, Scooter Libby, told her the identify of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

Libby wasn't valiantly helping to uncover administration misdeeds -- not intentionally, anyway. He was gossiping, it seems, to undermine a critic. No public interest in free speech or good government was advanced by protecting his ... um, identity.

'Clearly surprised by the turnout'

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:37 CST

By LINDA P. CAMPBELL

The line snaked 50 people deep and kept growing Friday afternoon on the lower level of the Tarrant County Plaza Building just north of the downtown Fort Worth library.

When I finally moved near the door to the early voting room, a stocky, bandana-ed black man who might have been 45 or even 65 made his way straight toward the front of the line, clutching his orange voter registration card.

"I've never voted before in my life," he told the election worker monitoring the door to the voting room. "I'm supposed to vote for Obama, and that's what I'm going to do."

The worker patiently pointed this newcomer to the most fundamental democratic process to the end of the line, where he could wait his turn: "Then you'll be able to vote for whoever you want."

I voted early because I would be in Los Angeles on Tuesday. But doing so gave me an unexpected window on the cross section of citizens drawn out by this year's presidential contests: twentysomethings and retirees; downtown workers in suits, casual wear and uniforms; blacks, whites and browns.

Some no doubt were faithful, experienced voters. At least a couple of fortysomething women had been motivated this year to cast their maiden ballots.

On Tuesday night, CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin called Texas Democrats' "primacaucus" system a passle of ugly names.

Messy and head-scratching the system might be. But when almost 2.9 million people turn out to help choose a presidential nominee, as happened in the Democratic primary, and thousands give up an evening to make their way back to the polls, it demonstrates that Americans care about who leads our country and are willing to participate if they believe their voices matter.

The Democratic primary attracted 22.4 percent of Texas' 12.8 million registered voters; another 10.8 percent voted GOP.

Sure, it was late in the primary game when it became clear that Texas, which had been expected to be an also-ran, would matter after all. But should the overwhelming enthusiasm have been so surprising?

Officials and poll volunteers need to take some lessons from this round of voting and prepare for a November tidal wave.

It took me almost 30 minutes to get to the early-voting check-in table, only to find that most of the 12 electronic machines were available. It seemed that the four workers were overwhelmed just verifying voters' IDs and signing them in.

News reports from the caucuses painted a picture of inexperienced and hastily trained volunteers unprepared for the masses.

"The precinct captains were full of energy and clearly surprised by the turnout because they had no microphones to use while speaking and only a few lists of primary voters," Texas Christian University student Jenighi Powell told me in an e-mail.

Powell, a political science major who's taking the media law class I teach at TCU, caucused at Paschal High School and saw about 20 college students. "I was surprised to see that so many families showed up together. There were several small children running around in pajamas or standing in line with their parents," she wrote.

"As a political science major, I've learned that statistically speaking, my individual vote doesn't really matter in determining the outcome of the election. However, I'm still glad I went and voted in the primary and caucused because, if either Democratic candidate ends up in the White House, then I will always know and be able to say that I was a part of making history for the first black or first female president."

There's plenty of time between now and November to ensure that we don't have another Florida 2000 fiasco. This election is a tremendous opportunity to bring young people into the political process with hope for its possibilities and to help older Americans to shake their skepticism and cynical disengagement.

This won't be a choice between uninspiring and infuriating. Regardless whether it's Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton who spends the summer and fall wrestling with John McCain for Americans' hearts and minds, we'll get to choose between candidates of intelligence, substance and appeal.

It's entirely possible that Democratic voters whose favorite doesn't make the top of the ticket won't come back in November. But it's better to prepare for long lines.

Connecting those dots

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 04:39 CST

By LINDA P. CAMPBELL

You'd think they were getting ready to confiscate the guns of every Texan -- those who have them, anyway.

Not only did Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott assign a posse of lawyers to a friend-of-the-court brief arguing against the District of Columbia's handgun ban, but his office asked to take part in the Supreme Court arguments set for March 18.

That's in a case that doesn't directly implicate any Texas law and whose immediate impact on gun-owning Texans would be "none whatsoever," according to Ted Cruz, the state's solicitor general.

No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, it's worth questioning whether this is the best use of taxpayer dollars.

There's no question that the case of District of Columbia v. Heller could yield a blockbuster: the Supreme Court's first ruling in almost 70 years on whether the Second Amendment protects individual gun rights or collective rights for members of state militias.

And there's no question that the district's gun laws are the most restrictive in the nation. They effectively make unauthorized handguns illegal even in private homes, though residents can keep disassembled long guns.

Whatever the court rules will reverberate nationally, even if it doesn't immediately change existing regulations in any of the states.

But typically, when states jump in as amici in a dispute before the Supreme Court, it's to argue against federal interference with state authority or to give voice to potential ramifications that the parties in the case haven't made clear.

That's why Abbott and Cruz filed a brief for 20 states in a Kentucky case that will decide the constitutionality of execution by the three-drug method that Texas has used 405 times since 1982 -- more than any other state. That intervention (with five Texas AG's lawyers, including Abbott, named on the brief) made sense, even if the brief offered flawed reasoning.

In contrast, Texas' brief in the D.C. gun case (with six AG's lawyers named) makes virtually no argument on behalf of state authority. Instead, it advocates at length for individual Second Amendment rights -- the same argument already ably made by lawyers for Dick Heller, the Washington resident who won a federal appeals court ruling striking down the laws.

Texas actually got involved in the gun case a while back, and Cruz argued in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of a coalition of states, he said.

In a phone interview, he said that Abbott "wanted Texas to take the lead in defending an individual right to keep and bear arms."

Could be because many Texans value their gun rights: There are 291,380 concealed handgun license holders in the state, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife sold more than 1 million hunting licenses in 2006-07.

Could be that Abbott, now in his second term as AG, is an astute politician with higher ambitions and a deft feel for his core constituencies, though I suppose only a cynic would see anything but the best interests of our state at play here.

The Bush administration argues that the Second Amendment protects individual gun rights but that the appeals court should reconsider whether the D.C. law might be a reasonable restriction. On Monday, the justices let the U.S. solicitor general take part in the arguments; they turned down Texas' request for argument time.

When I pressed Cruz on the need for Texas to promote the same argument as Heller, he pointed out that even some scholars "on the left" question a narrow reading of the Second Amendment. That might make a compelling legal argument -- but it's hardly a compelling reason for the Texas AG's office to pursue a gun-rights crusade at taxpayer expense.

Despite all the emotion attached to this case, even a Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right would not immediately alter gun owners' lives. States still could allow, protect and defend individual gun ownership -- and continue enforcing reasonable regulations.

It would mean that individuals couldn't arm themselves with the U.S. Constitution to challenge gun restrictions that they didn't like. And it would mean relying on state legislatures to uphold what gun owners consider a fundamental right.

"Constitutional rights aren't meant to be protected just on the grace or generosity of legislatures," Cruz said.

With that broad principle, I respectfully agree.