Column/Legend
1 - Prefix  - L-Life,  H-Homosexual Behavior/Perversion, R-Religion/Legal Persecution/ACLU, E-Education, M-Media Bias, O-Other
2-7 - Yr, Mo, Dy
8 - L -Letter to Editor, C-Commentary, O-Op-Ed, M-Metro

Hotlink Index of this weeks's family values related news:  [Life]   [Homosexual Behavior/Perversion]   [Religion/Religious Persecution]   [Education]   [Media]   [Other]

LIFE
L041105     Bush begins mulling Cabinet reshuffle
L041105E   All eyes on Sen. Specter
L041106     Judiciary chairmanship looms as abortion issue

HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR/PERVERSION
H041104    Electorate took control of defining marriage
H041105    Gays take fight on marriage to court
H041105E  Mass. justices cost Kerry
H041106L  Protecting traditional marriage
H041107    New marriage laws facing court tests
RELIGION/RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
R041101     Pagan rituals on Web site rile Episcopalians
R041101     SOUTH DAKOTA  Teacher resumes leading religious club
R041102     Rehnquist reveals chemotherapy treatment
R041103     Churchgoers, white men strongly support Bush
R041105     Bigger GOP caucus hopes to break Senate impasse
R041105     GOP tells of success wooing Catholic vote
R041106L   Future judicial appointments
R041107     Rectors repent of druid 'error'
R041107C  A narrow escape
R041107E  Bush and the high court

EDUCATION
E041102    Charter schools make bid in Anne Arundel
E041106    Texas school panel forces changes to books on health

MEDIA
M041101    Study finds press pro-Kerry
M041101E  Kerry's dishonorable response
M041102    Networks vow strict new standards in vote projections
M041103    Networks struggle for restraint
M041104    Republicans complain exit polls were erroneous
M041104    Sackcloth and ashes
M041105E  Americans not fooled by media
M041105E  Media missteps
M041107C  Among the losers

OTHER
O031103     Mikulski easily defeats Pipkin
O041101     'Ghost' voters slip through cracks
O041101     Group demands probe of Soros
O041101     Voters angered by observers
O041101L   Sign vandalism and civilized behavior
O041102     Absentee voting surges this year
O041102     Judges bar challengers at polling places in Ohio
O041102     Norman stormin'
O041103     Bush wins re-election
O041103     GOP majorities grow in Senate and House
O041103     Minor problems, record turnout reported at polls
O041103     Voters endure long lines at polls
O041104     Decisive battle
O041104     Focus on moral values tipped vote for Bush
O041104C  Slouching toward Canada
O041104E   A question of values
O041105     Conservatives urge Bush to go his own way
O041105     'Proud' Bush declares mandate
O041105     Bush pushes new agenda
O041105C  Virtuous victory . . .
O041105C  'Partisan' is what IRS says it is
O041105E   Eulogizing the left
O041105E   Why Bush won
O041105L   Moral standards are necessary
O041105L  ' Wake up and listen'
O041105L   Why John Kerry lost
O041107     Pelosi conciliatory, but firm on issues
O041107C  Opportunities ahead

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O041105   Conservatives urge Bush to go his own way
 

By Ralph Z. Hallow and James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Conservative activists say President Bush should push forward with his second-term mandate ratified by 59 million voters on Election Day, including a constitutional amendment banning same-sex "marriage."
    On issues ranging from tax cuts to Social Security to abortion, Republican stalwarts yesterday said the president should stick to his winning campaign agenda, rejecting calls to "reach out" to the Democratic minority in Congress.
    "Democrats still don't get it," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "What they want Bush to do — change the goals he told voters he'd get done if they gave him a second term — isn't going to happen. Why? Because even more than Reagan, Bush is an agenda president."
    Pat Buchanan yesterday declared Mr. Bush's re-election — with 22 percent of voters naming moral issues as most important — a victory in the "culture war" that was the subject of Mr. Buchanan's famous 1992 Republican convention speech.
    "George W. Bush was re-elected president because he turned this election into a triumphal, epic battle of the cultural war as his father refused to do in 1992," said Mr. Buchanan, who challenged the first President Bush in the 1992 Republican primaries. "The son stuck by his party's platform and themes as his father did not."
    The surprising emphasis on moral issues found in exit polls heartened social conservatives, as did the results from 11 states, including the battleground of Ohio, where bans on same-sex "marriage" were approved by voters.
    Robert Knight of the Culture and Family Institute called the success of the marriage amendments a reaction to the Massachusetts court ruling that legalized such unions in Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry's home state.
    "What Bush should do first," Mr. Knight said, "is to send a bouquet of flowers to Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, whose clinically insane ruling against marriage ... set the tone for the showdown that occurred [Tuesday]."
    A wide array of conservative groups, including the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), declared Tuesday's election a ratification of their positions.
    The NRA said 95 percent of the candidates it backed, including 14 of 18 Senate candidates, were elected. The NRLC cited a poll showing that of the 42 percent of voters who said abortion affected their vote, 56 percent voted for Mr. Bush.
    Steven Moore, president of the Club for Growth, cited victories for 14 candidates backed by his group — including six winning Senate candidates who got $2.3 million from Club for Growth members — as proof that "on Capitol Hill, tax cutting is in, big government is out."
    Democrats, however, denied that the election provided the president with any kind of mandate. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said Wednesday that Mr. Bush "didn't have a case to make on the issues" in his campaign and won by exploiting "wedge issues" that have little relevance to setting a domestic agenda for the country.
    But a spokesman for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican, said Tuesday's Republican gains in both houses of Congress were an outright rejection of the Democratic agenda.
    "Republicans gaining seats in the House and Senate for the second cycle in a row and winning the White House for the second presidential election in a row is clear evidence that the voters trust the Republican Party as the governing party of choice," said DeLay spokesman Jonathan Grella. "Democrats would be foolish to insist that Republicans can't get the job done without them."
    In the wake of Mr. Bush's re-election, several pundits, commentators and editorials called for the president to seek compromise with congressional Democrats. Gary Bauer, president of the conservative advocacy group American Values, sees a double standard behind such calls for moderation.
    "If Senator Kerry had won by 3.5 million votes and had taken five Republican Senate seats with him, no one in the chattering class of Washington, D.C., would be saying anything other than he had a mandate and that conservatives have lost the country," said Mr. Bauer, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.
    Cooperating with Democrats should not impede the president's agenda, Mr. Bauer added: "There's nothing wrong with sitting down and working out details on issues. But the president would be very wise to move ahead on the things he cares about. That's what the people voted for him to do."
    A senior Republican congressional aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Democrats would be deluding themselves if they think their strong opposition to Mr. Bush — including filibustering his judicial nominees — is going to work any better the next four years.
    "They are sending the wrong signal to the president and voters by saying that right after the Republicans win, it's time to trim their sails and the mandate they sailed in on," the aide said. "Does anyone believe it feasible that we would embrace a Democratic agenda after we just won all over the country with ours?"
    Describing Democrats' opposition during Mr. Bush's first term as an "extended temper tantrum," the aide warned that Democrats could render themselves "politically irrelevant" if they repeat that performance in the president's second term.
    "They lost," the aide said. "They have to come to grips with that."
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H041105   Gays take fight on marriage to court
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Homosexual rights groups said yesterday that they will head back to the courtrooms to achieve legalization of same-sex "marriages," which voters in 11 states barred Tuesday, as two lesbian couples filed a federal lawsuit challenging Oklahoma's new marriage law.
    This week's election results "ended nothing," said Matt Coles, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project.
    In a federal court in Tulsa, Okla., yesterday, the lesbian couples challenged the amendment passed Tuesday, which defines marriage as only between one man and one woman and says same-sex "marriages" from other states will not be recognized there.
    The couples claim that the state amendment violates their due-process and equal-protection rights under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. No state constitution can abridge federally guaranteed rights.
    Lawsuits seeking same-sex "marriage" rights "will go forward in New York, California, Washington, Maryland and New Jersey," Mr. Coles said. Legal challenges to amendments also are expected in Georgia, Ohio, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon and Mississippi.
    Exit polls showed significant public support for legal protections for homosexual couples — including 35 percent support for marriagelike civil unions — and these issues must be kept in the forefront of conversations, said Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest homosexual rights advocacy group.
    "No elected official can reverse the American people's support for equality," she said. "To win at the ballot box, we must also keep winning at the water cooler."
    Privately, though, homosexual rights activists were reeling over the re-election of President Bush, who supports amending the U.S. Constitution to allow only traditional marriage, and the passage of the 11 state marriage amendments, all of which define marriage as being between one man and one woman.
    Homosexual rights activists talked on e-mail lists and blogs about moving to friendlier places such as Canada or Europe. Some felt personally attacked by the votes; others worried about whether their domestic-partnership benefits were in jeopardy.
    "There is no sugar coating that will help make yesterday's election results easier to take," said Ron Schlittler, executive director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. "Given the impact on our families and friends, it is very personal."
    Still, homosexual rights leaders worked to lift the spirits of their friends and allies.
    "Painful as these discriminatory measures will be ... they will not stop our advance toward marriage equality," said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry.
    "If we can move even George Bush to profess support for civil unions — something that didn't exist five years ago — we can surely continue to move the middle toward fairness," said Mr. Wolfson, referring to Mr. Bush's televised statement in October that he didn't think "we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do."
    Mr. Bush's comment widely was interpreted to mean that he supported states' rights to enact civil unions, even though that is out of step with traditional-values groups, who oppose civil unions as well as same-sex "marriages."
    Homosexual rights activists saw other bright spots in the Tuesday elections.
    An analysis by the Williams Project, a group at the School of Law at the University of California at Los Angeles, showed that homosexual, bisexual and transgender voters made up 4 percent of the vote, essentially the same as before.
    Ironically, support for Mr. Bush also held steady: In 2000, he received 25 percent of the homosexual vote; on Tuesday, he received 21 percent, "not a statistically significant difference," the Williams Project said.
    But, despite passage of the 11 marriage amendments, "openly gay elected officials had a better day," the project said. "All openly gay members running for Congress and the California Legislature were elected or re-elected."
    Similar cheers were sounded in Massachusetts, where homosexual rights groups are planning to sink the constitutional marriage amendment that passed this year. Lawmakers must approve the amendment a second time before it can go to voters.
    But all 50 incumbent lawmakers who voted against the amendment have been re-elected, and at least nine new amendment opponents have been elected, said Arline Isaacson and Gary Daffin, leaders of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.
    In addition, they noted, Ron Crews, the former leader of a traditional-values group in Massachusetts, was "trounced" in his bid to unseat Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern.
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R041105   Bigger GOP caucus hopes to break Senate impasse
 

By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Republican gain of four Senate seats on Tuesday and defeat of Democratic Leader Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota has bolstered Republican hopes of ending the gridlock that plagued much of the administration's legislative program and judicial appointments, party leaders say.
    On Tuesday, Republicans took six Democratic seats, while losing two of their own, giving them a 55-44 edge with one Democratic-leaning independent.
    "The sheer numbers will help. There's not as much concern about losing two or three Republicans on a given issue, including judicial nominations," said Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican and chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee.
    "We can pass a budget, which we couldn't do this year. The Democrats still have the ability to filibuster, but these numbers also give us more options with respect to how we handle the confirmation of judges," he said.
    Nine new senators will be sworn in next January — seven Republicans and two Democrats. In addition to the eight seats that changed parties, former Rep. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, won the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Don Nickles, who has a 100 percent favorable vote rating from the American Conservative Union (ACU) and zero from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA).
    "In terms of the Republicans, with the exception of Don Nickles, every one of them is more conservative than the person they replaced," Mr. Kyl said. "It is both a conservative and experienced group."
    Former Rep. John Thune of South Dakota, the victor over Mr. Daschle, received a 92 percent favorable ACU rating and a 5 percent ADA rating in his last year in the House. Mr. Daschle was rated 22 percent by the ACU and 85 percent by ADA in 2002.
    Similarly, retiring Democratic Sen. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina got 15 percent conservative and 85 percent liberal ratings, while three-term Rep. Jim DeMint, his Republican successor, got a 100 percent ACU score and zero from ADA.
    The pattern is the same for all Republican Senate pickups in the South.
    •Rep. Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, with a 96 percent ACU rating, succeeds defeated Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards with a 30 percent score.
    •Three-term Rep. David Vitter of Louisiana, with a 100 percent ACU score, succeeds retiring Democratic Sen. John B. Breaux with a 42 percent conservative rating and 65 percent ADA score.
    •Three-term Rep. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, with a 96 percent ACU score, succeeds retiring Democratic Sen. Zell Miller, keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention, who has 47 percent ACU and 30 percent ADA scores.
    •Mel Martinez, Mr. Bush's former Housing and Urban Development secretary, also is more conservative than Florida's retiring Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, who scored 20 percent ACU and 75 percent ADA ratings.
    But potential snags lie ahead.
    Republicans have four liberals who often join Democrats — Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine; Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island; and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
    Mr. Specter, who is expected to head the Senate Judiciary Committee, fired a shot across President Bush's bow on Wednesday, saying, "I would expect the president to be mindful of ... what happened, when a number of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster.
    "When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely," Mr. Specter said, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion a legal right.
    The prospect of Mr. Specter as Judiciary Committee chairman has prompted protests to Senate Republican leaders from citizens nationwide, using e-mail lists and conservative Web sites and blogs.
    "We have to let our senators know that the long-suffering conservatives who finally won their chance at turning this country around are not going to let Specter or anyone else get in the way," Dan Arnold of Manassas wrote to one large national e-mail list, saying that Mr. Specter was "effectively telling pro-family conservatives to stuff it."
    Mr. Specter backed off a little yesterday, saying he "did not warn the president about anything" and pointing to his support for all of Mr. Bush's judicial nominations and for the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
    And from the other side of the aisle, Democrats warned that the filibuster option was not foreclosed to them.
    "We will not flinch from using the tools available to us to protect and advance our party's views and values on behalf of the American people," said Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, chairman of the Democratic State Campaign Committee.
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L041105   Bush begins mulling Cabinet reshuffle
 

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush yesterday said he has not made any decisions about his Cabinet's status, although some members are rumored to be ready to leave, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, the target of left-wing activists, civil rights groups and some members of Congress.
    "There will be some changes. I don't know who they will be," Mr. Bush said at his first press conference since his re-election Tuesday. "But let me just help you out with the speculation right now. I haven't thought about it. ...
    "I'm going to Camp David this afternoon with Laura, and I'll begin the process of thinking about the Cabinet and the White House staff."
    Mr. Ashcroft, who underwent emergency surgery in March to remove his gallbladder because of a stress-related illness, reportedly has told colleagues he is exhausted after four years leading the Justice Department's war on terrorism.
    But a high-ranking department official yesterday said Mr. Ashcroft was "energized" by the Bush re-election and probably would not make any decision until after talking with the president.
    Mr. Ashcroft has been under constant attack for his staunch enforcement efforts in the war on terrorism, and for his defiant public defense of the USA Patriot Act, which has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
    Civil rights and other activist groups berated him as an enemy of blacks, women and "working people," saying he would ignore hate crimes, restrict abortion rights and even allow rat poison in drinking water — a reference to his vote as a U.S. senator to weaken the Clean Water Act.
    Speculation and conflicting reports have swirled around the status of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. If Mr. Powell does leave, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is considered a potential replacement.
    The State Department, however, noted yesterday that Mr. Powell has embarked on several foreign policy issues that will require his personal attention through the coming months.
    Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Mr. Powell had not talked about his future with top aides since Mr. Bush's re-election and was spending his time and energy on a foreign policy agenda that extends through Iraq's planned elections in January.
    "Ultimately, as the secretary always says, he serves at the pleasure of the president and that's the only thing that matters," Mr. Boucher said.
    Miss Rice also has been cited as a potential successor to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in the event of his departure. Another potential contender for that position is Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
    Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge also are widely expected to step down.
    Mr. Ashcroft was one of Mr. Bush's first Cabinet picks in 2000, described as someone who would "perform his duties guided by principle, not by politics" and as a man of "deep convictions and strong principles."
    His high visibility, however, often clouded the Bush message, department insiders said, although he stood firm in his commitment to defend the nation, noting the United States was at war with terror and that "thanks to the vigilance of law enforcement ... we have not suffered another major terrorist attack."
    Justice Department spokes-man Mark Corallo told reporters yesterday that the attorney general had not officially informed his staff of his plans.
    A short list of potential replacements for Mr. Ashcroft include Marc Racicot, former Montana governor and the 2004 Bush campaign chairman, White House General Counsel Alberto Gonzalez, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty in Virginia and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
    Others mentioned as nominees are former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, although he also has been identified as a top candidate to replace Mr. Ridge, and former Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, who recently was hired as vice president and general counsel at Pepsico Inc. in New York.
    Asked by reporters in New York whether he was interested in a Cabinet position, Mr. Giuliani insisted he was not, but added, "You never say no to the president of the United States, absolutely not." A Pepsico spokesman, Mark Dollings, said Mr. Thompson was "excited about his opportunities" at the company and was "fully committed to that effort."
    Mr. Racicot, now in private legal practice in Washington, did not return calls yesterday to his office. He reportedly has told colleagues he would consider accepting the nomination if offered.
    • Bill Sammon contributed to this article.
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R041105   GOP tells of success wooing Catholic vote
 

By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Northern Virginia architects of the Republican Party's wildly successful plan to add a winning clump of Catholic votes to President Bush's evangelical base in the 2004 election are talking about how they did it.
    State Sen. Kenneth Thomas Cuccinelli II, Centreville Republican, said a massive leafletting of cars in church parking lots in 11 battleground states by thousands of volunteers on the Sunday before the election helped sway the vote.
    "It totally overwhelmed the Kerry folks," said Mr. Cuccinelli, adding that he thinks Mr. Bush's 2.5 percentage-point margin of victory in Ohio was largely achieved by wooing Catholics, who are 25 percent of that state's electorate.
    Mr. Bush carried Ohio Catholics by 10 percentage points — 55 percent to 45 percent — over Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat.
    Nationwide, the Catholic vote swung eight points from 2000, when 50 percent backed Al Gore to 47 percent for Mr. Bush. This year, it was 52 percent for the president and 47 percent for Mr. Kerry, a Catholic.
    "The change in the Catholic vote was crucial to the margin of victory," Mr. Cuccinelli said.
    "We began recruiting field operatives for this special task. Many of our ultimate recruits had never performed jobs like this before, but they overwhelmingly did a spectacular job."
    The apex of the plan was an Oct. 31 placement of 5 million voter guides on the windshields of cars in parking lots of Catholic churches on the Sunday morning before the election. The teams of volunteers were able to distribute their leaflets in 80 percent of the targeted churches.
    "We did 5 million pieces of literature in six hours," Mr. Cuccinelli said. "Evangelicals were doing the same thing in other states."
    The Catholic voter guides, which were paid for by state Republican committees, "was a straight issue comparison" on where the two candidates differed, Mr. Cuccinelli said. "We had to cut to the chase, hook our audience, convince this was important and worth acting on two days later. And we did it."
    Mr. Bush obliquely referred to the role Catholics and Protestant evangelicals played in his victory when he noted at a press conference yesterday that, "I am glad people of faith voted in this election."
    What helped the Republican National Committee's Catholic outreach was Sunday's balmy fall weather nationwide.
    "We got lucky on Sunday," Mr. Cuccinelli said. "God was shining down on us — who knows? All the battleground states on Sunday had weather good enough to flier churches. You put a flier on someone's windshield in the rain and you'll lose their vote because you wallpaper their car."
    Mr. Cuccinelli said he and a fellow Northern Virginia Catholic activist, Terry Wear, approached the RNC earlier this year to brainstorm how to "bring relevant Catholic issues to people in the pews without turning them off."
    Mr. Wear had helped the state senator form networks in Catholic parishes that lured large numbers of parishioners into voting for the Republican Party. This strategy helped Mr. Cuccinelli, 36, win two uphill races in 2002 and 2003 in his western Fairfax County district.
    "The RNC has not done this before for Catholics and they relied on outsiders to do this for evangelicals," Mr. Cuccinelli said. The two men persuaded Martin Gillespie, deputy director for Catholic outreach for the RNC, to hire several dozen field operatives to work the Catholic vote in several states.
    "They appreciated what Karl Rove said about getting out your base. It's a party that's never been known in my lifetime for doing grass-roots efforts," Mr. Cuccinelli said.
    "A lot of people [who] never engaged in politics before really sank their teeth into this. Many people were shy about expressing their views but not about dropping literature on cars."
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O041105   'Proud' Bush declares mandate
 

By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush clinched a second term yesterday after Sen. John Kerry decided against forcing a dramatic political standoff, clearing the way for the Bush team to declare a mandate for four more years.
    "America has spoken, and I'm humbled by the trust and the confidence of my fellow citizens," the president told supporters at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington. "I'm proud to lead such an amazing country, and I am proud to lead it forward."
    Mr. Bush also issued an appeal to "every person who voted for my opponent."
    "To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it," he said. "A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation."
    The speech was delivered shortly after 3 p.m., one hour after Mr. Kerry publicly acknowledged the futility of legal challenges aimed at reversing his loss in the pivotal state of Ohio, where Mr. Bush bested him by 136,483 votes.
    "In America, it is vital that every vote count, and that every vote be counted," Mr. Kerry told supporters in Boston. "But the outcome should be decided by voters, not a protracted legal process.
    "I would not give up this fight if there was a chance that we would prevail," he added, after being introduced by his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
    Mr. Kerry came to this conclusion late yesterday morning and telephoned the president at 11:02 a.m. to convey his congratulations. Mr. Bush took the three-minute call in the Oval Office and praised his foe as "very gracious."
    "I think you were an admirable, worthy opponent," Mr. Bush said, according to an aide. "You waged one tough campaign."
    He added: "I hope you are proud of the effort you put in. You should be."
    On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, traders cheered news of the president's victory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 101 points, and the Nasdaq closed above 2,000 for the first time in four months.
    Mr. Bush's win was welcomed by world leaders such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who telephoned Mr. Kerry with condolences, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who openly had pulled for the president.
    Leaders of France and Germany, who opposed the president's liberation of Iraq from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, vowed to make the best of the situation by trying to work with Mr. Bush.
    The decision by Mr. Kerry ended any possible challenge to Mr. Bush's margin in Ohio. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Bush had 2,796,147 votes to Mr. Kerry's 2,659,664 — a 51 percent to 49 percent victory.
    Yesterday's victory, although delayed, differed dramatically from the president's razor-close electoral win in 2000, when he lost the popular vote to Vice President Al Gore by more than 500,000 ballots. This time around, Mr. Bush garnered about 3.6 million more votes than Mr. Kerry.
    With 99 percent of precincts reporting nationwide, Mr. Bush garnered a record 59,017,382 votes, to Mr. Kerry's 55,435,808 — a 51 percent to 48 percent margin.
    "President George W. Bush won the greatest number of popular votes of any presidential candidate in history," marveled Vice President Dick Cheney while introducing his boss. "President Bush ran forthrightly on a clear agenda for this nation's future, and the nation responded by giving him a mandate."
    Mr. Bush plans to use that mandate to enact an ambitious second-term agenda that includes an energy bill and the partial privatization of Social Security for younger workers. He also views his victory as validation of his aggressive prosecution of the war on terror.
    "Because we have done the hard work, we are entering a season of hope," he said. "We'll help the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan, so they can grow in strength and defend their freedom."
    The president's victory speech ended hours of political deadlock that began late on election night, when both sides seemed within reach of garnering the 270 electoral votes necessary for victory.
    When the pivotal state of Ohio broke for the president, Mr. Kerry pinned his hopes on the provisional ballots that might somehow eradicate Mr. Bush's advantage.
    "We can wait another night," a defiant Mr. Edwards told supporters early yesterday.
    But as dawn broke and the morning wore on, it became obvious that Mr. Bush's six-digit lead in Ohio could not be surmounted, even if virtually all the provisional ballots were accepted as legitimate and went to Mr. Kerry. Provisional ballots are filled out by voters whose legitimacy has been called into question, with the understanding that they will be counted 11 days after the election if no clear winner emerges.
    By acknowledging the mathematical impossibility of his predicament, Mr. Kerry spared the nation a repeat of the postelection recount wars that raged through Florida for 36 days in 2000.
    "We worked hard and we fought hard, and I wish that things had turned out a little differently," Mr. Kerry said in Boston. "I'm sorry that we got here a little bit late and a little bit short."
    Ohio election officials said yesterday that they will start determining the legitimacy of the more than 150,000 provisional ballots cast in their state, despite Mr. Kerry's concession.
    The process of verifying residence and age and citizenship requirements will take 10 days
    "The pressure is off in the eyes of the media," Jeff La Rue, spokesman for the Franklin County Board of Elections, told reporters. "The pressure to count every vote and validate every vote that is a valid vote — that pressure is never off."
    Mr. Bush initially had considered declaring victory before sunrise yesterday, even if Mr. Kerry refused to concede defeat. But he decided to give his opponent more time to accept defeat.
    When the time finally came for concession, Mr. Edwards introduced Mr. Kerry with remarks tinged with disappointment and a trace of defiance. Some regarded his speech as the beginning of a new bid for the White House in 2008.
    "In this campaign, we worked hard, and we hoped that the results would be different," the North Carolina Democrat said. "You can be disappointed, but you cannot walk away.
    "This fight has just begun," he added. "Together we will carry on, and we will be with you every step of the way."
    Although Mr. Edwards gave up his Senate seat in his bid for the White House, Mr. Kerry remains in the Senate with a public profile that has been raised dramatically. Still, there was no talk of a second Kerry bid for the presidency.
    "Don't lose faith," he told his supporters. "What you did made a difference.
    "I promise you," he added. "The time will come, the election will come, when your work and your ballots will change the world. And it's worth fighting for."
    Mr. Bush was bracing for a variety of fights in his second term, beginning with his next budget proposal to Congress and continuing through several expected appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. With Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist suffering from cancer, the president was expected to face a bruising battle over his replacement, especially if the nominee is pro-life.
    But the president's prospects for success were helped by his coattails in the Senate, where Republicans increased their control from 51 seats to 55.
    But there was no talk of pitched battles from the president, who instead singled out his fellow Texans for special thanks at the close of the campaign.
    "On the open plains of Texas, I first learned the character of our country: sturdy and honest, and as hopeful as the break of day," said Mr. Bush, who was joined onstage by his family.
    "I will always be grateful to the good people of my state," he concluded. "And whatever the road that lies ahead, that road will take me home."
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O041104   Focus on moral values tipped vote for Bush
 

By Joseph Curl and Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Moral values topped the list of issues voters were most concerned about when they went to the polls on Election Day, with Catholics, evangelicals, blacks and Hispanics joining an ad hoc coalition that re-elected President Bush by 3.5 million votes.
    A national exit poll of 13,531 voters found 22 percent cited moral values as the "most important issue," with the economy and jobs second at 20 percent and terrorism at 19 percent, according to a joint survey by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. Iraq came in fourth at 15 percent.
    Moral issues were highlighted by ballot measures in 11 states to effectively prohibit same-sex "marriage." Voters approved all the measures by solid majorities, ranging from 57 percent in Oregon to 86 percent in Mississippi — and 62 percent in the key state of Ohio.
    "The overwhelming support that Americans gave to marriage and family issues and the candidates who supported them showed that this is the 'year of the values voter,'" said Gary Bauer, president of American Values and a former presidential candidate.
    "For too long, liberal political pundits have been telling us that issues like marriage and life divide us as a people. But it's clear that while those issues may be controversial, they are not divisive because people reach across such boundaries as party, economic status and ethnic group to join together to support and protect the American family," Mr. Bauer said.
    For months on the campaign trail, the president drew the most enthusiastic applause from supporters when he talked about moral values: The "culture of life," a phrase borrowed from Pope John Paul II; the sanctity of marriage; the importance of family; and especially his signing of the partial-birth-abortion ban.
     At each stop, he delivered a variation of the lines he said in Dallas during his final campaign stop on Monday: "Over the next four years, I'll continue to stand for the values that are important to our nation. I stand for marriage and family, which are the foundations of our society. I stand for a culture of life in which every person matters and every being counts," the president said.
    Mr. Bush also highlighted the perception in Middle America that Democrats represent the values of the Hollywood elite by referring to a July fund-raiser in New York City, where celebrities who called the president a "liar" and a "thug" were praised by Sen. John Kerry as "the heart and soul of our country."
    "Most of our families don't look to Hollywood as a source of values," Mr. Bush told audiences during his final campaign swing.
    The Christian Defense Coalition yesterday pointed to a strong evangelical and pro-life voter turnout as a key to the president's victory.
    "It is clear one of the major factors in this presidential race was the strong turnout of the faith and pro-life communities," said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the coalition. "Moral issues played a major role across the country as witnessed by the fact that all 11 traditional-marriage voter initiatives passed," he said, referring to homosexual "marriage" bans in states from the Deep South to North Dakota.
    A surprisingly strong bloc of Catholics helped Mr. Bush defeat the first Catholic presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy. According to exit polls, Catholics were 27 percent of the electorate and 51 percent went for the Methodist president — a four percentage point increase in Mr. Bush's Catholic support compared with 2000. The most observant Catholics — those who attend church weekly — supported the president 55 percent to 44 percent.
    Roman Catholic leaders and lay activists had criticized Mr. Kerry for his pro-choice stance and his vote against the partial-birth-abortion ban.
    On Sunday, Northern Virginia Catholics received in their church bulletins an insert from Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde that declared: "No Catholic can claim to be a faithful member of the Church while advocating for, or actively supporting, direct attacks on innocent human life."
    Austin Ruse, president of the Culture of Life Foundation and a Roman Catholic, called Mr. Kerry "a gift of God to the Catholic Church in 2004."
    The election "drew lines, it energized Catholics, it made distinctions of what is important and what is less important, and it energized faithful pew-sitters and emboldened a number of bishops," Mr. Ruse said.
    Evangelical Christians handed the White House an overwhelming mandate against abortion, same-sex "marriage" and other issues in the culture wars.
    "This election demonstrates that Democratic Party leaders have moved far away from the moral consensus in America," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council. "If they are to reclaim political relevancy, they will need to re-examine their positions on all the major moral issues including the sanctity of human life, the sanctity of marriage and the public acknowledgment of God."
    Conservatives credited moral issues with boosting Mr. Bush's tally among black and Hispanic voters. The president's share of the Hispanic vote increased from 31 percent in 2000 to 44 percent this year. The shift in the black vote was smaller — from 9 percent four years ago to 11 percent in 2004 — but may have proved decisive in Ohio, the state that ultimately tipped the election to Mr. Bush.
    Sixteen percent of Ohio blacks — about 90,000 voters — cast their ballots for Mr. Bush, said Matt Daniels, president of Alliance For Marriage, which supported that state's ballot referendum to prohibit same-sex "marriage." If Mr. Bush's black supporters had instead voted for Mr. Kerry, the Democrat would have won Ohio by 40,000, Mr. Daniels said.
    "While the same-sex marriage issue was not the sole reason Bush won these 90,000 votes, there is strong evidence to suggest that it played a major role in Bush's increased appeal with African-American voters in Ohio — and elsewhere," he said.
    •Cheryl Wetzstein contributed to this report.
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H041104   Electorate took control of defining marriage
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The passage of all 11 marriage amendments on Election Day, plus two more earlier this year, shows that Americans don't want radical changes in marriage and are unwilling to wait for activist judges to make sweeping social changes, traditional values groups said yesterday.
    "The courts gave us abortion on demand in 1973," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "The American people stated today that they are not going to allow the courts to do the same by imposing same-sex marriage on the people of this country."
    On Tuesday, nearly one-fifth of the electorate voted on amendments to define traditional marriage in their state constitutions and to outlaw other kinds of marriagelike unions for couples, including same-sex couples.
    Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah approved their amendments by 2-to-1 or greater margins.
    Michigan voters passed their amendment 59 percent to 41 percent, and Oregon voters passed theirs 57 percent to 43 percent.
    Oregon was the one state that homosexual-rights activists had hoped would reject the marriage amendment, and they poured almost $3 million into the effort to defeat it. The result was the largest opposition — 43 percent — to any of the amendments.
    "We are incredibly proud of the fact that Oregonians made this such a close race when other states are passing these amendments by very wide margins," said Aisling Coghlan, campaign manager for the No on Constitutional Amendment 36 campaign. "That alone is a victory."
    The Oregon amendment now becomes an instant test case.
    A major purpose of these amendments is to clarify to the courts that they cannot redefine marriage, as the high court in Massachusetts did last year when it legalized same-sex "marriage" in that state.
    The Oregon Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case seeking to legalize same-sex "marriage" in that state.
    Now that "the people have spoken, the case must be dismissed because the constitution itself has been changed to protect marriage," said Mat Staver, leader of Liberty Counsel in Orlando, Fla., which is defending traditional marriage laws in several states, including Oregon. "It's over."
    Early analyses showed that the amendments were supported by many groups, including social conservatives and evangelical Christians.
    In Arkansas, where the marriage amendment garnered 75 percent approval, Republicans voted for it 9-1 and Democrats voted for it 7-3. Married voters in Arkansas favored the amendment by a margin of 4-1.
    In Ohio, the amendment received equal support from men and women and blacks and whites. There also is evidence from exit polls that a substantial number of black voters pulled the lever for both the marriage amendment and President Bush, said Matt Daniels, president of the Alliance for Marriage.
    It's not clear, however, that Americans who voted for the marriage amendments automatically voted for Mr. Bush. Both Michigan and Oregon went for Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry, and in Georgia, black churchgoers supported the marriage amendment but voted for liberal Democratic candidates, such as former Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney, who reclaimed her House seat, said Robert Knight, who studies family issues at Concerned Women for America.
    Homosexual-rights groups said they would keep pressing for equality.
    Michigan's amendment battle "advanced recognition of the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in ways that no other opportunity has afforded in the last decade," said Jeffrey Montgomery, executive director of the Triangle Foundation, a homosexual-rights group in Michigan.
    The next step is to "harness the great energy and commitment to equality" that exists in Michigan, he said.
    Homosexual-rights groups say they will challenge the amendments passed in Georgia, Ohio, Arkansas and Mississippi.
    Earlier this year, Missouri and Louisiana voters passed marriage amendments by 71 percent and 78 percent, respectively. The Louisiana amendment since has been overturned in state court as overly broad, but proponents are appealing that ruling.
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O041105   Bush pushes new agenda
 

By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush yesterday said his re-election proved that Americans have "embraced" his conservative worldview, which he plans to enact through an ambitious second-term agenda.
    "I earned capital in the campaign — political capital. And now I intend to spend it," an expansive Mr. Bush said at a press conference that doubled as a political victory lap. "I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals."
    He specifically reached out to evangelical Christians, who were crucial in his victory over Democratic Sen. John Kerry.
    "I am glad people of faith voted in this election," he told reporters at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House.
    The remarks came one day after Vice President Dick Cheney proclaimed that his boss had earned a "mandate" by beating Mr. Kerry by 3.6 million votes. Mr. Bush agreed, saying he will not be shy about pushing through a long list of policy initiatives over the next four years.
    "Something refreshing about coming off an election," he observed. "When you win, there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view.
    "And that's what I intend to tell the Congress — that I made it clear what I intend to do as the president," he added. "And the people made it clear what they wanted. Now let's work together."
    In the arena of domestic policy, Mr. Bush wants to simplify the tax code, pass tort reform and partially privatize Social Security for younger workers. Although he said he planned to work with Democrats, he acknowledged that will not be easy.
    "I've been wisened to the ways of Washington," he said. "I've watched what can happen during certain parts of the cycle, where politics gets in the way of good policy."
    The president promised to push through his agenda anyway.
    "Results really do matter, as far as I'm concerned," he said. "I really didn't come here to hold the office just to say, 'Gosh, it was fun to serve.' I came here to get some things done."
    Mr. Bush said he was equally determined to work with American allies in the global war on terrorism, although he emphasized he was not about to change his principles to curry international favor.
    "I've made some very hard decisions — decisions to protect ourselves, decisions to spread peace and freedom," he said. "And I understand in certain capitals and certain countries, those decisions were not popular."
    He was referring to France and Germany, which opposed the U.S.-led overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
    "The Iraq issue is one that people disagreed with," the president said. "But I believe that when the American president speaks, he'd better mean what he says in order to keep the world peaceful."
    He added: "Whatever our past disagreements, we share a common enemy."
    Mr. Bush was particularly adamant about pressing forward with his policy of democratization in the Middle East.
    "There is a certain attitude in the world, by some, that says that it's a waste of time to try to promote free societies in parts of the world," he said. "I fully understand that that might rankle some, and be viewed by some as folly. I just strongly disagree."
    But with Saddam and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan overthrown and the president loath to extend his doctrine of military "pre-emption" to nations like Iran and North Korea, he seemed more focused on wrestling with thorny domestic initiatives during his second term.
    "I readily concede I've laid out some very difficult issues for people to deal with — reforming the Social Security system for generations to come is a difficult issue," he said.
    "I'm not sure we can get it done without Democratic participation," he said. "But it is necessary to confront it."
    Mr. Bush was asked whether Democrats have an obligation to meet him halfway on his agenda.
    "One of the disappointments of being here in Washington is how bitter this town can become and how divisive," he said.
    He said the divisiveness was "sometimes exacerbated" by the press "because it's great sport."
    "It's entertaining for some," he added. "It also makes it difficult to govern at times."
    But Mr. Bush pointed out that he is "more seasoned" after his first term in office.
    "I've cut my political eyeteeth — at least the ones I've recently grown here in Washington — and so I'm aware of what can happen in this town," he said. "Nevertheless, having said that, I am fully prepared to work with both Republican and Democrat leadership."
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M041104   Republicans complain exit polls were erroneous
 

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Republicans are fuming again over erroneous exit polls that showed President Bush losing re-election and over television networks quickly calling some states for Sen. John Kerry while withholding such predictions for solid Bush states.
    Although the Associated Press-led polling consortium was eventually proven wrong by actual hard tallies, the widely distributed exit polls prompted a number of TV pundits to talk on election night of how Mr. Bush likely had lost.
    The Associated Press and TV networks do not publicly release the spreads, but the numbers leaked out to numerous Internet sites.
    The polls initially showed Mr. Bush losing Ohio and Florida, virtually assuring the president would not achieve the 270 electoral votes he needed.
    "There were a couple of the initial tranches that were way out of line with the final results," said Michael Barone, a columnist for U.S. News & World Report who manned the Fox News Channel "decision desk" Tuesday night.
    Asked whether the polls should be scrapped, as some Republicans have urged, Mr. Barone said the out-of-line polling "does raise that question."
    Barbara Levin, an NBC spokeswoman, defended the polling. "There were instances in which both President Bush and Senator Kerry had leads in early exit polling that everyone knew wouldn't hold up," she said in an e-mail message.
    One problem with initial numbers was that women were overrepresented. Ms. Levin said, "Men and women often vote during different times of the day, but the voting samples do even out through the day."
    In the end, it was the Bush campaign that appeared to have the most accurate polling on the two make-or-break states. Bush operatives, including campaign manager Ken Mehlman, took to the airways to correct the network reporting. They showed, precinct-by-precinct, how the president would pull out a victory, contrary to exit poll projections.
    For Republicans, it was all too reminiscent of 2000, when the TV networks wrongly called Florida for Al Gore at 7:45 p.m. — even while the state's conservative panhandle region was still voting.
    To this day, Republicans say this decision cost Mr. Bush thousands of west Florida votes and votes in the rest of the nation, as discouraged Republicans decided the election was lost and did not vote. The exit poll errors continued in 2002, when they showed Republicans losing key Senate seats, including Republican Wayne Allard in Colorado.
    The second debacle prompted the networks to scrap the old Voter News Service and form a new group, National Election Pool. Like VNS, it is a consortium of AP and the TV networks ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and CNN. The actual polling is done by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. Voters are interviewed as they leave a polling place.
    Each network used its own statisticians to analyze NEP's results, and then make their own calls after polls closed, but before all the hard voting tallies came in.
    Mr. Barone was one of the first network analysts to notice that actual tallies did not agree with exit polls. In Florida, for example, counties around Tampa that normally vote big for Republicans only gave the president a 51 percent edge
     "I thought, 'these don't make any sense,' " Mr. Barone recalled.
    Republicans also perceive that the networks called states for the Democrats faster than for Republicans. On Tuesday night, for example, the networks called New Jersey for Mr. Kerry at the moment its polls closed. But reliable Republican states such as Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, which Mr. Bush easily carried, stayed "too close to call" for more than an hour.
    The refusal to declare them Bush states spawned further speculation by TV political commentators that the president may be in trouble in the South, as well as Ohio and Florida.
    Mr. Barone said the problem with North Carolina and Virginia was that initial returns were too heavily Democratic, so National Election Pool waited for more vote totals.
    Ms. Levin said the networks called 29 states at closing, 16 for Mr. Bush and 13 for Mr. Kerry.
    The same trend developed in 2000. Voter News Service left Georgia uncalled for 43 minutes and North Carolina for 30, though Mr. Bush carried each state by 13 points. Mr. Gore won Delaware by 13 points and CNN waited only three minutes.
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O041104   Decisive battle
    "We're witnessing the political equivalent of Gettysburg," Robert Moran writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).
    "The Democrats needed to win this election to turn their prospects around. They needed the White House to win back the Supreme Court. They needed a pliable Senate to water down or halt the House Republicans. They failed, utterly," said Mr. Moran, a vice president at the Republican polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates.
    "The Democrats and all of their institutions (the media, academia, unions, Hollywood, etc.) threw everything they had into this election. Their 527s outspent the Right. They knocked Nader off a vast number of ballots. They juiced turnout to unprecedented levels. They created documentaries. The lied about the draft. They lied about their candidate. They lied about stolen munitions. They fabricated memos. They even got an assist from the now completely discredited exit polls.
    "And they lost."
 
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M041104   Sackcloth and ashes
    Laura Ingraham, the conservative radio talk-show host, said she felt certain that Katie Couric's choice of a black dress yesterday morning on NBC's "Today" was no coincidence.
     "We noticed, Katie," said Miss Ingraham, whose nationally syndicated program is heard locally on WTNT-570. Miss Ingraham said that she herself had reacted to President Bush's re-election by doing a dance of celebration.
    A colleague on Miss Ingraham's show cited the "ashen look" on the face of MSNBC's Chris Matthews as election night wore o
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O041103   Bush wins re-election
 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Bush won four more years in the White House on Wednesday and pledged to "fight this war on terror with every resource of our national power." John Kerry conceded defeat rather than back an election challenge in make-or-break Ohio.
    "I will need your support and I will work to earn it," the president said in an appeal to the 55 million Americans who voted for his Democratic rival. "We are entering a season of hope," he said.
    The president spoke before thousands of cheering supporters less than an hour after his vanquished rival conceded defeat. "We cannot win this election," the Massachusetts senator said in an emotional campaign farewell in Boston.
    The re-election triumph gave the president a new term to pursue the war in Iraq and a conservative, tax-cutting agenda at home - and probably the chance to name one or more justices to an aging Supreme Court.
    He also will preside alongside expanded Republican majorities in Congress. The GOP gained four Senate seats and bolstered its majority in the House by at least two.
    Vice President Dick Cheney told the Republican victory rally that the results of Tuesday's elections translated into a mandate for the president's policies. He did not elaborate.
    Bush sketched only the barest outline of a second term agenda, talking of reforming an "outdated tax code," overhauling Social Security and upholding the "deepest values of family and faith."
    The two public appearances signaled the end of a campaign waged over the anti-terror war and the economy.
    Hours earlier, Kerry had telephoned Bush to offer a private concession. Aides to both men stressed they had agreed on a need to heal the nation after a long and frequently bitter campaign.
    Ohio's 20 electoral votes gave Bush 274 in the Associated Press count, four more than the 270 needed for victory. Kerry had 252 electoral votes, with Iowa (7) and New Mexico (5) unsettled.
    Bush was winning 51 percent of the popular vote to 48 percent for his rival. He led by more than 3 million ballots.
    Officials in both camps described the telephone conversation between two campaign warriors.
    A Democratic source said Bush called Kerry a worthy, tough and honorable opponent. Kerry told Bush the country was too divided, and Bush agreed, the source said.
    Yet Kerry's public remarks contained an element of challenge to the Republican president. "America is in need of unity and longing for a larger measure of compassion," he said. "I hope President Bush will advance those values in the coming years."
    Kerry placed his call after weighing unattractive options overnight. With Bush holding fast to a six-figure lead, Kerry could give up or trigger a struggle that would have stirred memories of the bitter recount in Florida that propelled Bush to the White House in 2000.
    Kerry's call was the last bit of drama in a campaign full of it. While Bush remains in the White House, Kerry returns to the Senate, part of the shrunken Democratic minority.
    He acted, hours after White House chief of staff Andy Card declared Bush the winner and White House aides said the president was giving Kerry time to consider his next step.
    One senior Democrat familiar with the discussions in Boston said Kerry's running mate, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, was suggesting that he shouldn't concede.
    The official said Edwards, a trial lawyer, wanted to make sure all options were explored and that Democrats pursued them as thoroughly as Republicans would if the positions were reversed.
    Advisers said the campaign just wanted one last look for uncounted ballots that might close the 136,000-vote advantage Bush held in Ohio.
    An Associated Press survey of the state's 88 counties found there were about 150,000 uncounted provisional ballots and an unspecified number of absentee votes still to be counted.
    Ohio aside, New Mexico and Iowa remained too close to call in a race for the White House framed by a worldwide war against terror and economic worries at home.
    But those two states were for the record - Ohio alone had the electoral votes to swing the election to the man in the White House or his Democratic challenger. A GOP legal and political team was dispatched overnight to Ohio in case Kerry made a fight of it.
    Republicans already were celebrating election gains in Congress. They picked up four seats in the Senate, and they drove Democratic leader Tom Daschle from office.
    That will be the state of play on Capitol Hill for the next two years, with the chance of a Supreme Court nomination fight looming along with legislative battles.
    Republicans also re-enforced their majority in the House.
    Glitches galore cropped up in overwhelmed polling places as Americans voted in high numbers, fired up by unprecedented registration drives, the excruciatingly close contest and the sense that these were unusually consequential times.
    "The mood of the voter in this election is different than any election I've ever seen," said Sangamon County, Ill., clerk Joseph Aiello. "There's more passion. They seem to be very emotional. They're asking lots of questions, double-checking things."
    The country exposed its rifts on matters of great import in Tuesday's voting. Exit polls found the electorate split down the middle or very close to it on whether the nation is moving in the right direction, on what to do in Iraq, on whom they trust with their security.
    Bush built a solid foundation by hanging on to almost all the battleground states he got last time. Facing the cruel arithmetic of attrition, Kerry needed to do more than go one state better than Al Gore four years ago; redistricting since then had left those 2000 Democratic prizes 10 electoral votes short of the total needed to win the presidency.
    Florida fell to Bush again, close but no argument about it.
    Bush's relentless effort to wrest Pennsylvania from the Democratic column fell short. He had visited the state 44 times, more than any other. Kerry picked up New Hampshire in perhaps the election's only turnover.
    In Ohio, Kerry won among young adults, but lost in every other age group. One-fourth of Ohio voters identified themselves as born-again Christians and they backed Bush by a 3-to-1 margin.
    A sideline issue in the national presidential campaign, gay civil unions may have been a sleeper that hurt Kerry - who strongly supports that right - in Ohio and elsewhere. Ohioans expanded their law banning gay marriage, already considered the toughest in the country, with an even broader constitutional amendment against civil unions.
    In all, voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments limiting marriage to one man and one woman.
    In Florida, Kerry again won only among voters under age 30. Six in 10 voters said Florida's economy was in good shape, and they voted heavily for Bush. Voters also gave the edge to Bush's handling of terrorism.
    In Senate contests, Rep. John Thune's victory over Daschle represented the first defeat of a Senate party leader in a re-election race in more than a half century.
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O041103   GOP majorities grow in Senate and House
 

By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Republicans swept the five Democratic Southern Senate seats up for election, expanding their majority by at least three seats in the U.S. Senate, and appeared to have scored a major upset by knocking off Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.
    In the House, Republicans seemed to have increased their decade-long majority by several seats as well, thanks in large part to a new congressional district map in Texas that helped oust four Democratic incumbents.
    "We had some great pickups this election. We had some tough races, some tight races," House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, said on CNN last night. "We're holding the seats we had to hold. We lost a couple, but that was to be expected."
    Returns as of early this morning showed that Democrats lost all five Southern seats in which they had members retire this year: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana. They also turned back challenges to incumbents in Missouri and Kentucky, and defended their open seat in Oklahoma.
    Democratic state Sen. Barack Obama captured the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Peter G. Fitzgerald of Illinois. And Democratic candidate Ken Salazar was leading Republican Pete Coors in Colorado.
    But Republicans also were poised to claim victory in South Dakota, where former Rep. John Thune was leading Mr. Daschle, 51 percent or 168,297 votes to 49 percent or 161,079 votes, with 90 percent of precincts reporting.
    It has been more than 50 years since a party leader lost a bid for re-election to his seat. In 1952, Sen. Ernest McFarland, Arizona Democrat, lost to Republican Barry Goldwater, who won his party's nomination for president a dozen years later.
    Mr. Daschle's loss could produce a power struggle among Senate Democrats, though Minority Whip Harry Reid of Nevada has said he thinks he has the votes to secure the leader's post.
    In Alaska, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was leading former Gov. Tony Knowles in early returns.
    Overall, Republicans were thrilled with their performance, attributing it to good campaigning and to having President Bush at the top of the ticket.
    "We're looking to pick up a couple seats here tonight," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, said on Fox News last night.
    With the expanded majority, and particularly with Mr. Daschle's apparent loss, Republicans were talking about the chances to get through some of the judges Democrats are filibustering, as well as push through Mr. Bush's energy bill and medical malpractice legislation, which have been stalled.
    Republicans hold a 51-48 edge over Democrats in the Senate, with one Democrat-leaning independent. Just a third of the Senate is up for election every two years. This year, 36 Republicans, 29 Democrats and the lone independent were not up for re-election.
    In races to fill the seats of the three retiring Southern Democrats, Rep. Jim DeMint defeated Inez Tenenbaum in South Carolina, Rep. Richard M. Burr topped former Clinton administration Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles in North Carolina and Rep. Johnny Isakson beat Rep. Denise L. Majette to win Georgia's seat.
    Former Bush Cabinet official Mel Martinez also topped Democrat Betty Castor in Florida by more than 70,000 votes out of about 7 million cast, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. And, in Louisiana, Republican Rep. David Vitter garnered more than 50 percent of the vote, the threshold to avoid a runoff in that state next month.
 
    Meanwhile, a new congressional map in Texas, which Republicans won only after outlasting Democratic legislators who fled the state to avoid voting on the new district lines, delivered a handful of House seats to Republicans.
    Democratic Texas Reps. Martin Frost, Max Sandlin, Nick Lampson and Charles W. Stenholm lost their bids for re-election last night as a result of the map.
    "The American people have spoken tonight, and all indications are that they have hired a Republican House of Representatives for the sixth straight election," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican and a key author of the map. "That means it's time for our national majority [to] start thinking about the future."
    Republicans also held on to contested House seats in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Kentucky and won another seat from Democrats in Kentucky.
    But Democrats defeated Republican incumbents in Georgia and Illinois, and one endangered Texas Democrat, Chet Edwards, appeared to have survived a tough new district as of early this morning.
    Still, Republicans appeared ready to expand their lead by at least three seats. The current breakdown is 227 Republicans, 205 Democrats, one independent and two vacancies in Republican-leaning districts.
    The closest Senate race of the early evening was in Kentucky, between Sen. Jim Bunning and state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo, the Democratic challenger. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee siphoned money into the state in the waning days of the election after Mr. Bunning's support seemed to collapse as recent statements appeared to catch up with him. He recently said the terrorist attacks against the nation occurred Nov. 11, rather than September 11.
    But Mr. Bunning held Mr. Mongiardo to win 50.54 percent, or 861,424 votes, to 49.46 percent, or 843,011 votes, with 99 percent of precincts reporting.
    In Missouri, Sen. Christopher S. Bond fended off a challenge from State Treasurer Nancy Farmer, another candidate Democrats had touted but who failed to gain traction as Mr. Bond became the first Republican to win a fourth term from Missouri.
    And, in Oklahoma, Tom Coburn defeated Rep. Brad Carson, a Democrat, in the race for the seat left open by retiring Sen. Don Nickles, a Republican.
    Republicans and Democrats traded open seats in Georgia and Illinois where incumbents didn't seek re-election.
    Mr. Obama has become the Democrats' newest star, based largely on his address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston this year. He is the first black senator since Carol Moseley Braun, also from Illinois, who was elected in 1992 and lost to Mr. Fitzgerald in 1998.
    Mr. Keyes, a Maryland resident and two-time long-shot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, was a last-minute addition as the Republican candidate after Jack Ryan dropped out when salacious details of his personal life were unsealed from his divorce records.
    In the House, Rep. Anne M. Northup, Kentucky Republican and a perennial target for Democrats in her Louisville district, easily survived to claim her fifth term.
    In a neighboring district, Republicans won the seat of retiring Rep. Ken Lucas, a Democrat. Geoff Davis, the Republican candidate, defeated actor George Clooney's father, Nick Clooney, who Democrats had hoped could hold on to the seat.
    Democrats managed to defeat Republican Rep. Max Burns in Georgia, which canceled out Republicans' net in Kentucky.
    Democrats also defended a Republican-leaning contested seat in Kansas, the seat left open by Mr. Carson in Oklahoma and the seat left open by Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel, who lost in his bid to unseat Republican Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania.
    The strong performance by Republicans follows their history-making showing when they won House and Senate seats in 2002 — a rarity for a party that held the White House.
    They netted two seats in the Senate that year, defeating incumbents in Georgia and Missouri, and picked up a half-dozen seats in the House, thanks in large part to redistricting efforts in Florida and Pennsylvania, which they controlled, and Democrats' failure in Georgia, where they controlled the state house and governorship, to create a favorable map.
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R041103   Churchgoers, white men strongly support Bush
 

By Donald Lambro
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush won a majority of white men, churchgoers and white, born-again Christians, while John Kerry drew his strongest backing from blacks and led among Hispanics, according to voter exit polls yesterday.
    Bush voters said moral values and the war on terrorism were what mattered most to them, but roughly half of those polled said the economy in their communities is worse now than it was four years ago, and they went overwhelmingly for Mr. Kerry.
    Three-fourths of those who filled out polling questionnaires at voting places around the country said they worried about another terrorist attack. About half of them voted for Mr. Bush and half for Mr. Kerry. Young voters favored Mr. Kerry over Mr. Bush by 15 points.
    Notably, the poll found that the president was the major motivating factor behind Mr. Kerry's overall vote. Seventy-four percent of the senator's supporters said their dislike of Mr. Bush was the primary reason for backing the Massachusetts Democrat.
    Despite Mr. Kerry's heavy emphasis on his wartime experiences in Vietnam, military veterans went strongly for Mr. Bush, as did independents and rural voters.
    The exit polls, conducted for the Associated Press, generally reflected voter surveys that preceded the election and painted a picture of an electorate split down the middle about the state of the economy and the situation in Iraq. As earlier polls showed, voters who liked Mr. Bush's policies in both these areas supported him and those who didn't sided strongly with Mr. Kerry.
    Bush voters named strong leadership and taking a clear, unambiguous stand on the issues as the qualities they most admired in the president. About half of all voters interviewed said that most of the time Mr. Kerry says what he thinks people want to hear.
    Half the voters polled said the president paid too much attention to the interests of big business and not enough to the needs of ordinary Americans, and that they voted for Mr. Kerry because "he will bring about needed change."
    The chief issue for Kerry voters was the economy and jobs, an issue the Massachusetts Democrat chose not to emphasize in the closing weeks of his campaign, which focused far more on Iraq than economic concerns.
    About four of 10 voters who said their financial well-being went largely unchanged over the last four years strongly supported Mr. Kerry. The rest were evenly split between being better off and worse off.
    Notably, voters were about evenly divided about whether they approved or disapproved of the postwar situation in Iraq, but those who said things were going badly there strongly backed Mr. Kerry.
    Long lines of voters showed up at polling places around the country in a fiercely fought election that analysts predicted could bring out as many as 125 million people, many of them first-time voters who were drawn into the electoral process by massive registration drives by both campaigns.
    More than 105.4 million Americans turned out to vote four years ago, 51.2 percent of the voting-age population. But election forecasters were predicting that voter turnout could sharply boost that number to 58 percent or more, once all the votes are cast and counted.
    In an election where the mood of the electorate has been volatile, both candidates ended the race in what most of the independent election surveys said was a virtual tie. In its last pre-election survey, the Gallup Poll had President Bush barely leading Sen. John Kerry 49 percent to 47 percent among likely voters. Gallup said the race would be a dead heat if the remaining undecided vote went to the Massachusetts Democrat.
    In the first national election since the September 11 terrorist attacks, voters went to the polls with deeply divided, sometimes contradictory opinions about the direction of the country, the war on terrorism, Iraq and the economy.
    When Gallup asked likely voters the weekend before Tuesday's election if they were "satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time" 52 percent said dissatisfied versus 46 percent who said satisfied.
    But when Gallup rephrased the question, asking, "How well are things going in the country today — very well, fairly well, pretty badly or very badly? " 59 percent said very or fairly well, while only 40 percent said pretty badly or very badly.
    Those numbers in part reflected an economy that has turned around for Mr. Bush in the past year, creating more than 1.8 million jobs since August 2003, pushing unemployment down to 5.4 percent and increasing annual economic growth to nearly 4 percent.
    Mr. Kerry has tried to make the economy a major issue in his campaign, but as the economic numbers improved, he turned increasingly to foreign-policy issues, especially the war in Iraq, a strategy some Democratic pollsters and state party chairmen said turned off some in their party's base, who were more interested in domestic issues such as jobs and health care.
    There was some polling evidence going into Election Day that Democrats were not pulling the level of support they have traditionally received from some of their party's most-loyal voting blocs — blacks and Hispanics.
    A Washington Post poll released Monday showed that 59 percent of Hispanic likely voters were backing Mr. Kerry, a sharp decline from previous Democratic nominees, while Republican campaign strategists were forecasting that Mr. Bush would exceed the 34 percent of Hispanic voters he won in 2000 — possibly by an additional 4 to 6 points.
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M041103   Networks struggle for restraint
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Broadcasters gravely promised not to delve into incomplete exit polls and make erroneous predictions about election night winners and losers, but that promise did not include early flirtations with those polls and a tidal wave of partisan personal opinion.
    Some seemed reluctant to state the obvious, however.
    Though President Bush led in Florida by 300,000 votes with 92 percent of the vote counted by about 10:30 p.m., CNN did not call the race for Mr. Bush until 12:10 this morning — with commentary by a noticeably mournful Judy Woodruff.
    NBC waited until 12:20 a.m. to call the state for Mr. Bush.
    The network initially seemed eager, though: NBC's Brian Williams announced with some urgency at 6:04 p.m.: "We're getting the first real data from our exit polls now."
    "If George Bush can control Ohio, then he may well end up president" again, predicted a fearless Tim Russert less than hour later.
    CNN began making projections of early victories for Mr. Bush in such solidly red states as Georgia and Kentucky at 7 p.m., although anchorman Wolf Blitzer said, "It's still extremely, extremely early."
    But many of the big guns displayed their newfound caution.
    "When are you smart guys going to start predicting?" asked a waggish Ted Koppel on ABC midway through the evening.
    "They'll be no predictions yet from this anchor chair," replied anchorman Peter Jennings.
    Although sporadic — and unconfirmed — early poll numbers favoring Sen. John Kerry began circulating on the Internet in early afternoon, some bloggers were at the ready to police their online peers.
    "There is a ridiculous rumor on the Web that Kerry is ahead on exit polls. There is no evidence of this," wrote Scott Johnson of Powerline, the Web site that first took CBS' Dan Rather to task over his bogus memos on Mr. Bush's National Guard service last month.
    "This untrue rumor was started on the Web by two Internet gossip columnists, and one of them now admits that her source is 'not exactly trustworthy.' No one knows who is winning right now," Mr. Johnson cautioned.
    The role of the bloggers — anxious scribes poised over computer keyboards — was not always seen in a positive light, though.
    "If you want to be the first kid on the block to know who's winning, check out the blogs. With inside sources and a willingness to pass along rumors, Webloggers are likely to be the first place you'll see confidential information about polling, lawsuits and vote counts," noted Frank Bamako of CBS News Market Watch.
    Meanwhile, some were fixated on the idea that big voter turnout was a sure sign of an absolute victory for Mr. Kerry.
    "I haven't seen anything to shake the idea," Time magazine writer Karen Tumulty told CNN as the network played a clip of a huge crowd of Florida voters waiting outside a polling place.
    "If you want change, you get out and vote. This all favors John Kerry," U.S. News & World Report's Roger Simon agreed.
    "Some of these people may be standing in line for more of same," said CNN analyst Paul Begala. "But I really doubt it."
    Some still had a little habitual Bush-bashing to do.
    "Was he or was he not exhausted this morning?" asked Mr. Jennings, referring to the president.
    "He did look tired. He did look weary," ABC correspondent Terry Moran agreed.
    At the same time, all the networks designated "oversight teams" to control the urges of anchormen and correspondents to make early calls and to sign off on them when the magic moment actually arrived.
    ABC and NBC each had three-member teams, Fox News a quartet of guardians. CBS and CNN had 12- and 30-member teams, respectively.
    •Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.
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O041103   Minor problems, record turnout reported at polls
 

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

State election officials and watchdog groups yesterday reported scattered but minor problems at polls nationwide and said they expected turnout, which caused long waits in several jurisdictions, to break records.
    Demos, a nonpartisan, public-policy organization, last night predicted that turnout could exceed an "unprecedented" 120 million, about 15 million more than the 105.5 million in 2000, which was 51 percent of the electorate.
    The modern record for voter turnout was set in 1960, when 65 percent of those eligible cast votes. In that election, Democrat John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Republican Richard M. Nixon.
    "The extremely high voter turnout [in] this election reverses 30 years of declining voter participation. This is wonderful news for our democracy, and we applaud voters for braving long lines to make sure their voice is heard," said Miles Rapoport, president of Demos.
    Precincts across the state of Pennsylvania and Ohio stayed open past the scheduled closing time of 8 p.m. because of huge lines.
    Doug Chapin, director of the Election Reform Information Project, a research group, said voting-machine breakdowns, missing poll workers and incorrect names on ballots were reported at several polling places, including in New York City, Richmond and New Orleans.
    "There have been no big [problems] but lots of little ones," Mr. Chapin said.
    In New York City, where voters still pull levers on old-fashioned machines, some more than 40 years old, there were several reports of breakdowns.
    An official of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said New Orleans should win an award as the "worst place" to vote in the country because of its dismal handling of electronic voting yesterday. Precinct workers were forced to tell some voters to come back to the polls because of problems including new electronic voting machines, which replaced lever machines, that did not boot up properly.
    Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for the Florida Secretary of State's Office, said turnout throughout that battleground state seemed likely to break the state record of 70 percent set in 2000.
    Ms. Nash said there were some glitches with the state's new touch-screen voting machines, but no votes were lost.
    "There have been very minor problems statewide," she said, offering examples: "A handful of precincts opened 15 minutes late, and one county had a poll watcher who became disruptive."
    Florida was mired in voter problems in the last presidential election, and that chaos resulted in an overhaul of voting technology there and in many other states. Fifteen counties replaced the so-called pre-scored punch-card voting machines — with the hanging, pregnant and dimpled chads that wreaked havoc in those jurisdictions in the 2000 elections.
    "Florida is redeemed," said Marty Rogol, spokesman for the Palm Beach County Board of Elections, which, he said, experienced only "minimal problems" with its new touch-screen voting machines. In 2000, many voters in that county were confused by the so-called "butterfly ballot" used with punch cards.
    In Minnesota, a state where the race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, was considered especially close, election spokesman Kevin Kaiser said voter turnout probably would exceed 70 percent, up several points from 2000.
    "There were some lines a couple of blocks long in St. Paul," he noted.
    Several state election officials, including ones in the battleground states of Ohio, Michigan and Arizona, last night were not certain that they would be able to declare a winner immediately, saying it will depend on the number of provisional voters who show up at the polls.
    "We'll have final statewide results by midmorning Wednesday," said Ramon de la Cruz, director of the Division of Elections for New Jersey.
    Despite concerns about punch-card voting machines, more than 12 percent of voters nationwide used them.
    Punch cards were used in most counties in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the race between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry was seen as a virtual dead heat. No electronic voting machines were deployed in Ohio.
    "Electronic machines do not allow voters to overvote, but punch cards do," said James Lee, spokesman for the Ohio Secretary of State's Office.
    But Aviel Rubin, a computer-sciences professor at Johns Hopkins University, who is a specialist in touch-screen electronic voting machines, has predicted that this election "could be a disaster" if it's close, given that 30 percent of voters will rely on touch-screen machines.
    They "can give results, but no one knows if they are accurate, because they can't produce a recount," Mr. Rubin has said.
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O041102   Judges bar challengers at polling places in Ohio
 

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Two federal judges yesterday blocked the posting of political challengers at polling precincts throughout Ohio's 88 counties in today's presidential election, but Republicans and Democrats continued preparations to send an army of poll watchers into the field.
    Meanwhile, in Florida, Democrats yesterday accused Republicans of preparing to challenge the eligibility of black voters, while dozens of lawyers hired by both parties prepared for potential litigation surrounding the election.
    Florida Democrats also accused Republicans of planning to use Creole speakers at the polling precincts as "friendly helpers" to encourage Haitian voters to back President Bush — an accusation denied by the Republican Party, which said Democrats had lined up the Creole speakers to urge votes for Sen. John Kerry.
    In Ohio, Republicans have assigned hundreds of challengers to look out for voter fraud, while Democrats vowed yesterday to watch the Republican challengers, whom they accused of being ready to intimidate minority voters.
    Bob Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, says the state is key to "the most important presidential election in our lifetime" and that Ohio has been the target of "widespread, systematic voter registration fraud this election year involving groups working on behalf of the Democratic Party."
    Mr. Bennett said Ohio's voter rolls contain more than 122,000 apparent duplicates, that at least four counties have higher voter registration totals this election year than voting-age population, and 10 counties have reported voter registration fraud cases to local authorities.
    "These ongoing investigations exclusively involve Democratic Party front groups that were created to bypass campaign-finance limits," he said. "The Democrats outsourced their voter registration efforts to these groups, which, in turn, engaged in illegal tactics that have produced widespread, systematic fraud."
    The anticipated clash, which may have to be decided in a federal appeals court, is expected to spread to other battleground states.
    Democrats yesterday warned that poll watchers in other swing states who prove too aggressive face legal sanctions if they intimidate minority voters.
    "When we have Americans of every background fighting to spread freedom around the world, it is un-American to harass or intimidate people who are exercising those freedoms here at home," said Rep. Chaka Fattah, Pennsylvania Democrat. "If we need personal legal liability to drive that point home, we will have it."
    Mr. Fattah has assembled a multistate coalition of lawyers, known as the Voter Protection Network, who are set to file lawsuits individually on behalf of voters who say poll watchers harassed, intimidated or interfered while they were trying to cast a ballot.
    U.S. District Judge Susan Diott in Cincinnati said the application of Ohio's statute allowing challengers at polling places was unconstitutional, while U.S. District Judge John Adams in Akron said poll workers already were in place to determine the eligibility of voters.
    Judge Adams said in his ruling that persons named as challengers cannot be at the polls for the sole purpose of challenging voters' qualifications.
    Judge Diott, appointed in 1995 by President Clinton, said there was no evidence to support accusations by Republicans that "the presence of additional challengers would serve Ohio's interest in preventing voter fraud better than would the system of election judges."
    Her ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a black couple in Cincinnati who said Republicans planned to deploy challengers to largely black precincts in Hamilton County, Ohio, to intimidate and block black voters. The lawsuit sought an emergency restraining order barring partisan challengers from polling stations in all counties in Ohio.
    Mark Weaver, chief counsel for the Ohio Republican Party, said the party would ask the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to overturn the decisions.
    But Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's office sent a memo to county election boards yesterday advising them to prohibit all challengers from Ohio's polling places.
    In Florida's Miami-Dade County, officials rejected a request by Republicans that uniformed police officers be dispatched to polling precincts today to ensure a peaceful voting process. County officials said the presence of police officers at the polls could intimidate some voters.
    Also in Florida, a sheriff's deputy in Miami punched and arrested a freelance journalist for taking pictures of people waiting in line to cast early ballots in West Palm Beach. A spokesman for the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Department said the deputy had been enforcing a county rule prohibiting reporters from interviewing or photographing voters outside the polls.
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M041102   Networks vow strict new standards in vote projections
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The networks have vowed caution tonight, adhering to a strict new set of standards meant to discourage eager broadcasters from dramatically declaring early winners to garner high ratings and big audiences.
    No one wants a repeat of the 2000 presidential race.
    Two years in the making, the National Election Pool (NEP) has arrived, boasting overhauled computer systems, stringent vote-counting and polling techniques, multiple safeguards and assurances that no victors will be projected in any race until the last polling precinct is shut up tight.

    The NEP replaces the Voter News Service, the old consortium consisting of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, the Associated Press and pollsters. It foundered four years ago when four of the networks prematurely announced Al Gore had become president, based on erroneous and incomplete voting results.
    The new pool has promised fact-based methodology. The onus, however, is on the networks.
    "A dose of humility is not a bad thing. We learned a lot in 2000 and again in 2002, when we realized the system was not foolproof. Maybe we won't make the call first — but I don't really care," said David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief. "We've simply got a lot of faith in the new organization."
    Still, the network will provide a dozen of their own statistical analysts and a legal team, plus a snappy delivery of all those numbers: CNN will flash real-time voting data on a 96-screen video wall behind celebrity news anchors in a studio above New York's Times Square.
    "If we're not comfortable with the data we get, we won't make the calls. The most important thing of all is to get the information right. Being fast and first is nice, but being correct is best," said Thom Bird, executive producer at Fox News.
    It is a far cry from days of yore: Few will forget CBS anchorman Dan Rather's brassy guarantee on the night of Nov. 7, 2000: "If we say somebody's carried a state, you can pretty much take it to the bank."
    This year, CBS News election analyst Linda Mason said her network will get the voter data right in an "exciting night, and a very long one."
    Meanwhile, NBC has promised an "abundance of caution before calling any race" and "much more detailed information."
    The newfangled NEP actually consists of the same old VNS consortium. It is a chastened one, however, with a cast of thousands.
    The very earliest "guess estimate" for the winner of the presidential race will not be issued until sometime between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. according to the Associated Press, which will be responsible for actually tabulating votes.
    According to new guidelines, the AP will employ 5,000 "stringers" to report from regional election centers, phoning in the raw vote to 16 collection centers once the first polls close tonight at 6 p.m. in Indiana and Kentucky. Some 450 "vote-entry clerks" will then feed the numbers into state and national election tables — the main resource for newspapers and networks alike.
    The count will "taper down" at 4 a.m. tomorrow, then at 9 a.m. "to chase down the final results and obtain 100 percent of the votes." The count will also be continually compared with historical data and existing voting patterns to detect discrepancies or inconsistencies.
    Even the best-laid plans can go awry, and the consortium knows it.
    "There is no way to guarantee that a mistake in identifying a winner will not happen again," the NEP said. "If it does, the public can be assured that the mistake will be publicly acknowledged and corrected as soon as possible."
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O041102   Norman stormin'
    Retired Army Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf yesterday demanded that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) stop telling voters that he endorsed Sen. John Kerry for president, United Press International reports.
    "The Democratic National Committee is making fraudulent phone calls claiming that I have endorsed Senator Kerry," Gen. Schwarzkopf said. "Nothing could be further from the truth, and I demand that they stop immediately."
    The phone call, which says it was "paid for by the Democratic National Committee," has a voice identifying itself as Gen. Schwarzkopf say: "In 2000, I voted for George W. Bush, but this year I'm voting for John Kerry. ... John Kerry has a real plan to make our military stronger and to go after terrorists wherever they hide. We need a vote for change. Vote for John Kerry."
    Gen. Schwarzkopf's statement cites the Democratic presidential nominee's opposition to President Reagan's defense buildup and to the removal of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf war and his support for proposed billions of dollars in intelligence cuts after the first bombing of the World Trade Center.
    "His attempt to make up for these deficiencies by falsifying my endorsement only confirms my impression that he is not the man we need to lead our nation," Gen. Schwarzkopf said.
    According to the Associated Press, DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera accused Republicans of splicing an ad by Gen. Merrill McPeak, a Kerry supporter, to make it sound as if Gen. Schwarzkopf was speaking so they could accuse Democrats of dirty tricks.
    Republicans denied being involved.
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R041102   Rehnquist reveals chemotherapy treatment
 

By Gina Holland
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist revealed yesterday that he is undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for thyroid cancer, signs that he has a grave form of the disease and probably will not return to the bench soon.
    The election-eve disclosure by the 80-year-old underscores the near certainty that the next president will make at least one appointment to the Supreme Court, and probably more.
    Chief Justice Rehnquist had planned to join his colleagues when they returned to hear arguments yesterday after a two-week break. Instead, he issued a statement from home about the treatment he's receiving. The statement said he plans to work from home, but does not mention leaving the court.
    Chief Justice Rehnquist did not disclose which type of thyroid cancer he has, how far it has progressed, or his prognosis.
    Dr. Ann M. Gillenwater of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston said the combination of chemotherapy and radiation is the usual treatment for anaplastic thyroid cancer, a fast-growing form that can kill quickly.
    About 80 percent of people with that type of cancer die within a year, even with treatment, according to the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy.
    "Unfortunately, it rarely responds very well, and this is just a holding action for most patients," said Dr. Herman Kattlove of the American Cancer Society.
    Chief Justice Rehnquist's statement was a more somber announcement than the one a week ago, when he first made public that he had been hospitalized for cancer treatment but said he planned to be back at work in a week.
    "According to my doctors, my plan to return to the office today [Monday] was too optimistic," said Chief Justice Rehnquist, who spent a week in the hospital. "While at home, I am working on court matters, including opinions for cases already argued. I am, and will, continue to be in close contact with my colleagues, my law clerks and members of the Supreme Court staff."
    News of Chief Justice Rehnquist's cancer has energized conservative and liberal groups, which have tried to draw voters' attention to the court's delicate balance on issues such as abortion, affirmative action and the death penalty.
    The spotlight would have been heightened in the final week of the campaign if Chief Justice Rehnquist had been more forthcoming about his condition, said Dennis Hutchinson, a Supreme Court expert at the University of Chicago Law School.
    "He doesn't want to be a factor" in the election, Mr. Hutchinson said. "The one thing all members of the court hate is the assumption that they are partisan or sensitive to partisan politics."
    Dave Rohde, a political science professor at Michigan State University, said Chief Justice Rehnquist's illness probably will not sway many last-minute, undecided voters.
    "This is not in the top tier of issues for voters. They're concerned about Iraq and terrorism and the economy and much less about this," he said.
    Chief Justice Rehnquist, a Republican, has been the court's conservative leader for a generation. He voted with the other four conservative justices in the 5-4 Bush v. Gore ruling that decided the last presidential election. He has said he would be more likely to retire with a Republican in the White House.
    In his absence yesterday, Justice John Paul Stevens, 84, presided over the court. The court's oldest member said Chief Justice Rehnquist still could vote in cases being argued this week, after reviewing transcripts and briefs.
    No one has left the court since 1994, a modern record. Justice Stevens and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 74, are considered those most likely to step aside after Chief Justice Rehnquist.
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O041101   Group demands probe of Soros
 

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A Virginia-based watchdog organization has asked the Federal Election Commission whether billionaire currency trader George Soros, who has spent millions in a bid to prevent President Bush's re-election, failed to fully disclose expenses during an anti-Bush speaking tour in several battleground states.
    The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), in a formal complaint, said Mr. Soros reported expenditures for two-page newspaper ads he bought in swing states and for mailings with a similar theme in several other states, but did not — as required by law — report expenses for travel, public relations and the other related tour costs.

    "Soros is a hypocrite," said NLPC President Peter Flaherty. "First, he bankrolled the groups that lobbied for passage of McCain-Feingold, but now he's pouring millions through the law's loopholes. And he has apparently violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by not disclosing the substantial sums he is spending on this speaking tour.
    "We expect a complete, expeditious and fair investigation of our complaint," Mr. Flaherty said.
    The NLPC also named in the complaint two nonprofit organizations that hosted Mr. Soros' anti-Bush speeches, the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia and the Metropolitan Club of Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Soros spoke before other nonprofit organizations in other cities.
    The NLPC, which promotes ethics in public life through research, education and legal action, organized the "Soros Truth Squad," led by NLPC Policy Director John Carlisle, which followed Mr. Soros on his one-month speaking tour to inform the public about Mr. Soros' background and motivation.
    Mr. Soros, who has spent millions on advertising and voter-registration drives to defeat Mr. Bush, announced his speaking tour in September, saying he would visit a dozen U.S. cities. He also said he would mail at least 2 million brochures in an effort to persuade recipients to vote against Mr. Bush and would establish a Web page to answer questions from undecided voters.
    The Hungarian native, now a U.S. citizen, also ran two-page centerfold ads in the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, targeting Republicans and influential business leaders in an effort to intensify his attacks on Mr. Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.
    "The situation in Iraq is dire because we are damned if we stay and we are even more damned if we pull out," Mr. Soros said during a press conference in Washington to announce the tour. "We have got to find an orderly exit. And I think [Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry] is much better situated than President Bush, and his approach, which is that you have to find a political solution and you can't do it only by military means, is the right answer."
    Mr. Soros has contributed heavily to liberal-leaning "527" organizations, which are tax-exempt groups that engage in political activities, often through unlimited soft-money contributions. They are not regulated by the FEC unless they have a political action committee, creating a soft-money loophole.
    FEC regulation limits campaign contributions to $2,000 per candidate from a person annually and political action committees to a maximum of $5,000 from a person annually. A number of 527 groups have poured tens of millions of unregulated dollars into efforts to defeat Mr. Bush.
    Mr. Soros' 12-city speaking tour began in Pennsylvania and ended last week in Washington, with a speech at the National Press Club, during which he accused Mr. Bush of making the country less safe by the "colossal blunder" of invading Iraq. He accused the president of being "incapable of recognizing mistakes."
    Earlier this year, the NLPC was successful in getting a $21,000 fine levied against two leadership political action committees associated with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat. In another NLPC complaint, the FEC said Sen. Maria Cantwell, Washington Democrat, illegally failed to disclose large loans to her campaign just prior to her 2000 Senate election.
    Last year, a complaint filed by the NLPC resulted in a conciliation agreement under which the Rev. Al Sharpton had to pay a $5,500 fine for filing disclosure documents late. The FEC also ruled in a separate NLPC complaint that Mr. Sharpton had to return the $100,000 he received in federal matching funds.
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O041101   'Ghost' voters slip through cracks

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — In what would be her last conscious act, 90-year-old Trixie Porter gripped a pen in her weak, trembling hand, checked the candidates of her choice and scrawled a squiggled signature on her absentee ballot.
    Within an hour, the petite woman who had been suffering from heart problems lay back in her hospital bed, closed her eyes and never woke up. Her ballot arrived at her local elections board two days later, Oct. 5 — the day she died.
    "We commented that day that it probably won't count," daughter Cheryl McConnell said. "But she went to her grave not knowing any different. It counted with her."
    An untold number of ballots like Mrs. Porter's indeed will be counted in many states because of the haphazard and cumbersome process of enforcing laws to weed out the absentee votes of those who die by Election Day.
    With millions of voters taking advantage of early voting in at least 30 states this year, it is even more certain that such "ghost" votes will be counted because, in most cases, those ballots are impossible to retrieve.
    Considering that an average of 455 voting-age persons die in Florida every day, and that the 2000 presidential election was decided by a mere 537 votes, dead voters who slip through the cracks could matter.
    The problem has arisen as an unintended consequence of laws meant to prevent a repeat of the 2000 election furor. Unlike traditional mail-in absentee ballots that are stored in labeled envelopes and can be pulled if someone dies, most of the new "in-person" early voting is being done on machines with no paper ballot to tell how those people voted.
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R041101   Pagan rituals on Web site rile Episcopalians
 

By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A druidic "women's eucharist" and a "divorce rite," both posted on the Episcopal Church's official Web site, have outraged Episcopal conservatives.
    The "eucharist," subtitled "A Celebration of the Divine Feminine," was posted Oct. 8 on the denomination's Office of Women's Ministries page at www.dfms.org. It invoked "Mother God" and used a lighted candle, a vase of flowers, a chalice of sweet red wine, a cup of milk and money and a plate of raisin cakes to invoke images of sexuality, fertility and birth.

    The rite was attributed to the Rev. Glyn Lorraine Ruppe Melnyk, the pastor of St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church in Malvern, Pa.
    She and her husband, Bill Melnyk, rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Downingtown, Pa., posted several ceremonies, which invoked pagan gods and goddesses, on www.tuathadebrighid.org.
    One, an "erotic ritual" for the spring festival of Beltane, used Christian phrases for the rite, including an opening "litany" and an "invocation" of the "Earth Mother." The ceremony, which culminates with the lead couple engaging in sex in front of the other participants, ends with a "chant of Communion and Praise" to the tune of the Irish hymn "St. Patrick's Breastplate." The Babylonian god "Bel" honored in the rite has been linked to the Canaanite god Baal, whose worship was condemned in the Old Testament.
    A "Eucharist to our Mother Goddess" ritual on the site — which since has been removed — is the same "women's eucharist" that was posted on the Episcopal Church's Web site. Starting last Tuesday, this and the "divorce rite," which includes a Lord's Prayer that refers to God as "You who are Mother and Father to us all," were denounced on several Episcopalian Web sites.
    Christianity Today declared that the Episcopal Church is "promoting pagan rites to pagan deities."
    "And not just any new pagan deities," wrote Ted Olsen, the magazines' online managing editor. "The Episcopal Church ... is actually promoting the worship of idols specifically condemned in Scripture."
    The Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania on Friday released a statement promising to investigate "extremely serious" charges that Mr. and Mrs. Melnyk are practicing Druids and have violated their ordination vows.
    But Bishop Charles Bennison Jr. said the two priests have "contributed positively" to the diocese for four years, adding, "I will not allow this situation to turn into a witch hunt of any sort."
    The "eucharist" was one of nine resources listed on the women's ministries page as part of a "Women's Liturgy Project" touted Oct. 25 by Episcopal News Service as a way of "honoring a woman's life passages and experiences" including "menstruation, menopause, conception, pregnancy, any form of pregnancy loss, childbirth, forms of leave taking, and many others."
    The release invited Episcopalians to download the "worship resources" for use either on Sunday mornings or "any other appropriate setting where the honoring of a woman's life passages and experiences beckons a liturgical response."
    However, the divorce and eucharist rites were removed from the church's Web site after church headquarters began receiving complaints.
    The Rev. Margaret Rose, director of the denomination's Women's Ministries office, issued a statement on Thursday saying divorce and women's eucharist rites were not approved Episcopal liturgies, but were listed only "to spark dialogue, study and conversation and ponderings around women and our liturgical tradition."
    The "women's eucharist," she said in an interview was written by Mrs. Melnyk for a parish study group of women.
    "It was written in response to their alienation," she said. "It was not claiming to be a Christian eucharist, but it was a way to look at their own religious traditions and explore them. We don't desire to replace the Sunday liturgy in any way. They wrote it to see what it would feel like to have specifically feminine images."
    Mrs. Melnyk also is known on Druid Web sites as "Glispa" or "Raven." Mr. Melnyk, who goes by several druidic names, including "Oakwyse" and "Druis," had posted messages and rituals at www.druidnetwork.org, www.druidry.org and other sites. \
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M041101   Study finds press pro-Kerry
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Sen. John Kerry has gotten the white-glove treatment from the press, garnering more praise from journalists than any other presidential candidate in the last quarter-century, according to a new analysis of almost 500 news stories released today by the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
    "It's not just that John Kerry has gotten better press than President Bush before this election, he's gotten better press than anyone else since 1980. That's significant," said Bob Lichter, director of the D.C.-based nonpartisan research group.
    "Kerry also got better press than anyone else in the days before the primaries as well," Mr. Lichter added.
    In October alone, Mr. Kerry had a "record-breaking 77 percent positive press evaluations," compared with 34 percent positive for Mr. Bush, the study states.
    Unprecedented, untrammeled accolades for Mr. Kerry were more than debate-related bounce, however. Since Labor Day, he also had a total of 58 percent positive stories, with just 36 percent for Mr. Bush.
    Journalists seem particularly transfixed by the Democratic challenger this year: In the 2000 election, Mr. Bush and challenger Al Gore got equally lousy press, with each receiving evaluations that were about 2-to-1 negative.
    But Mr. Bush didn't get the absolute worst press on record. With only 9 percent positive stories in 1984, President Reagan got the most negative treatment by news outlets on record, the study says.
    Until this year, the record-holder for journalistic praise went to Walter Mondale, who accrued 56 percent positive press evaluations, also in 1984.
    "Democrats get the breaks," the study states. "In the past seven elections since 1980, the Democratic candidate has gotten significantly better press in four of those elections."
    Republicans fared better in the press than Democrats in only one race — George H.W. Bush over Michael Dukakis in 1988. The two parties shared an equal amount of press condemnation in two elections — Bush vs. Gore in 2000 and Jimmy Carter vs. Mr. Reagan in 1980.
    The study examined 491 press evaluations of the two candidates in print and broadcast reports that appeared between Oct. 1 and Oct. 22. The group compared them with news stories in comparable time periods since 1980, gleaned from their own records and those maintained by George Washington University.
    Others have similar findings. A separate study of more than 800 news stories released by the District-based Project for Excellence in Journalism last week found that Mr. Bush has been "battered" by the press this October, with 59 percent of his evaluations "clearly negative in nature."
     Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.
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R041101   SOUTH DAKOTA  Teacher resumes leading religious club
    SIOUX FALLS — Third-grade teacher Barbara Wigg was back leading a weekly religious club last week after a federal appeals court upheld her right to do so.
    Miss Wigg sued the Sioux Falls School District last year after she was told she couldn't help the Child Evangelism Fellowship's local Good News Club, which meets at her elementary school after classes.
    "What a privilege to be here," she said after the hourlong session of stories, games and prayers.
    A panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that barring Miss Wigg's participation violated her First Amendment religious rights.
    The school board wants the full appeals court to review the case, and could take it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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O041107   Pelosi conciliatory, but firm on issues

ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Days after her party lost congressional seats and the White House race, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi struck a conciliatory tone during yesterday's Democratic radio address, saying House Democrats "stand ready to work with" President Bush, who, in his own address, vowed to fight hard for his political agenda while reaching across the aisle.
    The message from Mrs. Pelosi was in stark contrast to the pre-election combativeness of late September when she used the same forum to call the president's Iraq war a "grotesque mistake."
    Now in the immediate aftermath of a bitterly fought election, Mrs. Pelosi summoned Republican cooperation on initiatives she said both parties should support — better jobs, health care and education. She called for "more discourse and less discord" in the Congress, but still pledged to not budge on issues where the two parties diverge.
    "There are places where we differ, as well, and Democrats will stand our ground," the California Democrat said.
    Tuesday's election resulted in Republican gains of four seats in the Senate and at least three in the House.
    Mr. Bush offered some words of conciliation, saying that Republicans and Democrats can agree to aggressively pursue the war on terror, with every citizen having a stake in the outcome.
    "Americans are expecting bipartisan effort and results," he said. "My administration will work with both parties in Congress to achieve those results, and to meet the responsibility we share."
    The challenge to working together, Mr. Bush suggested, will come on the domestic front.
    "We must confront the junk and frivolous lawsuits that are driving up the cost of health care and hurting doctors and patients," the president said. "We must continue to work on education reform to bring high standards and accountability, not just to elementary schools, but to the high schools as well."
    Mr. Bush's proposed education reforms may meet the same criticism that he faced in his first term with the No Child Left Behind Act: a good idea that was insufficiently funded by the administration and Congress.
    The president stressed another issue that has generated skepticism at home and abroad, promoting freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Those goals are "the alternatives to tyranny and terror," he said.
    Mr. Bush also promised to take on the special interest-clogged issue of reforming the tax code, a step he said the nation must take to get rid of needless paperwork and to make the economy more competitive.
    Describing the country as one divided along partisan lines, Mrs. Pelosi said the split, "rather than being an excuse for inaction, must be a call to compromise and common sense. ... I hope that in this term President Bush will fulfill his renewed promise to be a uniter, not a divider."
    "A new term is indeed a new opportunity to bring America together," she said. "House Democrats stand ready to work with the president."
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H041107   New marriage laws facing court tests
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Legal wrangling over new state constitutional amendments on marriage is already under way in Oregon, Louisiana and Oklahoma, and expected within a few weeks in Georgia.
    The most explosive case is likely to be in Oregon, where plaintiffs representing 3,000 same-sex couples are suing to have their "marriages" recognized.
    Oral arguments before the Oregon Supreme Court had been scheduled for Nov. 17, but now that voters have passed Oregon's constitutional marriage amendment, the high court has rescheduled arguments for Dec. 15.
    Conservative lawyers are expected to ask the high court to dismiss most or all of the same-sex "marriage" lawsuit.
    "The fact is that Ballot Measure 36 [the marriage amendment] conclusively establishes that, as a matter of the Oregon Constitution, marriage remains between one man and one woman," said Kelly Clark, a Portland attorney representing the Defense of Marriage Coalition.
    However, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oregon said passage of the marriage amendment doesn't end the debate over same-sex "marriage" in the state.
    The new amendment doesn't explicitly forbid same-sex "marriage" or civil unions, said David Fidanque, executive director of the ACLU state office. "It is way too early" to predict how the high court will react to the new marriage amendment, he added.
    Oregon's amendment says that "only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or legally recognized as a marriage."
    The amendment "does not outlaw civil unions," Mr. Clark said. "I would argue that it absolutely bans same-sex marriage."
    State officials last week also said the high court must rule on the legality of the 3,000 "marriage" licenses issued in March to same-sex couples by officials in Multnomah County, which includes Portland.
    In April, Multnomah County Circuit Judge Frank Bearden stopped the "marriages," but ordered the state to recognize the ones already issued. He also ordered the legislature to enact a law to "balance the substantive rights" of same-sex domestic partners with those of opposite-sex married couples.
    The appeal of the Bearden decision is the subject of the high court's Dec. 15 hearing.
    On Dec. 1, the Louisiana Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on a lower court ruling that overturns that state's marriage amendment, which passed in September with 78 percent of the vote.
    The lower court judge agreed with homosexual-rights lawyers that the amendment covered too many subjects. Lawyers for conservative groups and the lawmakers who wrote the Louisiana amendment say it was written properly.
    A challenge to the new Oklahoma marriage amendment was filed last week in U.S. District Court in Tulsa.
    Two lesbian couples said the state measure violates their constitutional right to marry. They are also suing to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act because it denies them federal marriage benefits and allows states to disregard out-of-state "marriages" and civil unions.
    The plaintiffs are Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin of Broken Arrow, Okla., who had a commitment ceremony several years ago, and Susan G. Barton and Gay E. Phillips of Tulsa, who had a civil union in Vermont in 2001.
    Finally, in Georgia, lawyers with Lambda Legal, the ACLU of Georgia and the Atlanta law firm of Alston & Bird say they will challenge that state's new marriage amendment once votes are certified. The group, which tried in vain to remove the amendment from the ballot last month, will argue again that it covers too many issues and was confusing to voters.
    The Georgia amendment, which passed 76 percent to 24 percent, says that "marriage is only the union of man and woman," that "no union between persons of the same sex shall be recognized by this state as entitled to the benefits of marriage," and that Georgia will not "give effect" to same-sex marital unions from out of state.
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R041107   Rectors repent of druid 'error'
 

By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

An Episcopal clergy couple from the Philadelphia area whose leadership in a druid circle caused a scandal in the Episcopal Church say they have "recanted" their actions.
    In a letter dated Nov. 4 to Bishop Charles E. Bennison of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, the Rev. W. William Melnyk, rector of St. James' Episcopal Church in Downingtown, Pa., said he was resigning his membership in the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids "as a sign of my repentance."
    He added: "It was never my intention to engage in such error, but only to help others who had lost connection to that church to find a way to reconnect," including educating Episcopalians on Celtic spirituality.
    "I was wrong," he wrote. "I repent of and recant without qualification anything and everything I may have said or done which is found to be in conflict" with church doctrine. He ended his letter by saying, "I ask for the mercy of the church and of our Lord Jesus Christ."
    A diocesan spokesman Friday affirmed the veracity of the letter, which Mr. Melnyk sent to the District-based Institute on Religion and Democracy. It was posted on the group's Web site, www.ird-renew.org.
    The spokesman said Mr. Melnyk's wife, the Rev. Glyn Ruppe Melnyk, wrote a similar statement.
    The bishop is still discussing the situation "with many parties," the spokesman said, and has not decided on whether or how to discipline the clergy couple.
    The letter was the latest development in a monthlong controversy that began Oct. 8, when the Episcopal Church headquarters in New York posted a "women's eucharist" on its official Web site. It was written by Mrs. Melnyk, rector of St. Francis-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Malvern, Pa.
    The "eucharist," which promoted pagan practices and referred to a "Mother God," was listed alongside a liturgy for divorce for use by parishes. Neither are official church rites.
    A network of Episcopal Web logs, along with Christianity Today magazine, discovered the two late last month and began a campaign to remove both ceremonies.
    Although the Episcopal Church quickly removed both ceremonies from its women's ministries page, a spokeswoman defended the rituals as experimental. However, Bishop Bennison began an investigation of the couple, who were summoned to a meeting.
    During that encounter, the bishop "pointed out to me that it is the opinion of the church that my involvement, writings and activities go beyond the bounds expected of a Christian and a Christian priest," Mr. Melnyk wrote.
    Meanwhile, word of the ceremonies had spread to Anglican officials around the world, causing the Anglican archbishop of the West Indies, Drexel Gomez, to say the rites prove the American church "is on the path of destruction."
    U.S. Episcopalians "will have to decide whether they wish to remain with us or not, but we will not countenance that kind of behavior and we will say so very strongly," he said.
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L041106   Judiciary chairmanship looms as abortion issue
 

By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Senate Republicans are speculating behind the scenes on ways to prevent one of their own — Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — from becoming the next chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
    Long a thorn in the side of conservatives, Mr. Specter further outraged many Republicans this week when he told reporters that President Bush should be "mindful" not to send pro-life judicial nominees to the Judiciary Committee for confirmation when he takes control of the committee in January.
    "We are looking at a variety of ways to keep the gavel from going to Arlen Specter," said one Republican Judiciary Committee staffer.
    Though they disagreed widely on the likelihood of success, numerous Republican Senate aides contacted by The Washington Times yesterday concurred that efforts are under way to bar Mr. Specter from becoming chairman when term limits force Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, to surrender the gavel at the end of the current Congress.
    One scenario that seems to be gaining momentum among Senate Republicans would be to give the chairmanship to Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, who has seniority over Mr. Specter on the Judiciary Committee. But doing that would require Mr. Grassley to give up control of the Finance Committee, where he wields a great deal of power.
    "There is an enormous amount of pressure on Senator Grassley to do this for the base," said one Republican. "The idea would be for Senator Grassley to take one for the team for at least two years to send Specter a message that this is not what Americans voted for on Tuesday."
    Several Republicans said it was highly unlikely that Mr. Grassley would give up his committee for Judiciary. But others said the stakes are so high after Tuesday's election when conservatives — who care passionately about judiciary matters — voted in unexpected droves.
    Grassley spokeswoman Jill Kozeny said simply: "Senator Grassley will be serving four more years as chairman of Finance."
    In another scenario, committee Republicans would defy tradition and skip Mr. Specter in seniority.
    "Under the rules, the committee members could simply vote for someone else," said a third Republican aide familiar with the efforts.
    If that happened, the chairmanship likely would go to Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, who is next in line in seniority. Mr. Kyl could not be reached for comment yesterday.
    While senators and staffers refused to discuss the efforts publicly, Mr. Specter is aware of the speculation and has issued two statements denying press accounts that he had warned Mr. Bush not to send pro-life nominees.
    "Contrary to press accounts, I did not warn the president about anything and was very respectful of his constitutional authority on the appointment of federal judges," Mr. Specter said. "As the record shows, I have supported every one of President Bush's nominees in the Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor. I have never and would never apply any litmus test on the abortion issue."
    The latest imbroglio began during a press conference Wednesday when Mr. Specter said the pro-choice rights guaranteed with the Roe v. Wade decision are "inviolate." He also compared the judicial supremacy of Roe v. Wade to that of Brown v. Board of Education, a decision that rendered racial segregation illegal.
    Noting the Democratic-led filibusters against some of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees, some who were opposed to abortion rights, Mr. Specter said, "The president is well aware of what happened when a number of his nominees were sent up.... I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations that I mentioned."
    Conservatives in the Senate resumed discussions about ways to block Mr. Specter from controlling the committee, according to aides.
    It didn't help Mr. Specter's case that incoming Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said yesterday that he agreed with his Republican colleague's comments.
    "I think Senator Specter is right and the fact that there was a negative reaction to his remarks is not a good omen," he told reporters yesterday.
    Several Republican Senate offices reported being inundated by phone calls and e-mail from outside groups enraged over Mr. Specter's comments.
    "We just got handed the opportunity of a lifetime and they don't want us to screw it up," said one Republican staffer.
    "Arlen Specter must be removed from the Senate Judiciary Committee," said Mathew D. Staver, president of the conservative group Liberty Counsel. "We need an advocate who can weather the battle over the next appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. We certainly don't want a muted neutral party, and we won't accept an adversary."
    The controversy spawned an anti-Specter Web site, NotSpecter.com, which includes articles and Web postings criticizing Mr. Specter and arguing for his removal.
    Republicans are particularly upset that Mr. Specter's comments came the day after he was re-elected in a close race and on the very day Mr. Bush declared victory in his own re-election campaign. Republicans considered the remarks disloyal because Mr. Bush had worked to help Mr. Specter overcome a tough primary challenge. Also, they said, Mr. Specter did little to return the favor as Mr. Bush struggled — and eventually lost — the fight to win Pennsylvania.
    Several other comments Mr. Specter made during his press conference also rubbed some conservatives the wrong way, such as when he suggested that Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the conservative icon being treated for thyroid cancer, lied about his medical prognosis last week.
    "The chief justice is gravely ill," Mr. Specter told reporters. "I had known more about that than had appeared in the media. When he said he was going to be back on Monday, it was known inside that he was not going to be back on Monday."
    Mr. Specter also was accused of insulting the entire high court by saying there are no legal giants on the bench. "With all due respect to the U.S. Supreme Court, we don't have one," he said.
    "Yeah, there's nobody of the caliber of, say, Robert Bork," scoffed one Republican Judiciary staffer in reference to the revered Reagan nominee who was rejected in the Senate with crucial help from Mr. Specter. "I mean, all we've got on there are people like [Bork replacement] Anthony Kennedy. Gee, I wonder how that happened."
    • Stephen Dinan and Cheryl Wetzstein contributed to this report.
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E041106   Texas school panel forces changes to books on health
 

By Natalie Gott
ASSOCIATED PRESS

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Board of Education approved new health textbooks for the state's high school and middle school students yesterday after the publishers agreed to change the wording to depict marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
    The decision involves two of the biggest textbook publishers and represents another example of Texas exerting its market clout as the nation's second-largest buyer of textbooks. Officials say the decision could affect hundreds of thousands of books in Texas alone.
    On Thursday, a board member charged that proposed new books ran counter to a Texas law banning the recognition of homosexual civil unions because the texts used terms like "married partners" instead of "husband and wife."
    After hearing the debate, one publisher, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, agreed to include a definition of marriage as a "lifelong union between a husband and a wife." The definition, which was added to middle school textbooks, already was in Holt's high school editions, Holt spokesman Rick Blake said.
    The other publisher, Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, changed phrases such as "when two people marry" and "partners" to "when a man and a woman marry" and "husbands and wives."
    "The board expressed an interest in having us make the change," Mr. Blake said. "We thought it was a reasonable thing to do."
    But Mr. Blake said the publisher does not plan on adding its definition of marriage in books that will be sold outside Texas. A spokeswoman for Glencoe/McGraw-Hill did not immediately respond to questions.
    A list of the books that were approved by the board, as well as those that were not, is sent to school districts for guidance when they choose books.
    Board member Mary Helen Berlanga, a Democrat, asked the panel to approve the books without the changes, but her proposal was rejected by a 10-4 vote of the board consisting of 10 Republicans and five Democrats.
    "We're not supposed to make changes at somebody's whim," Miss Berlanga said. "It's a political agenda, and we're not here to follow a political agenda."
    Board member Terri Leo, a Republican, said she was pleased with the publishers' changes. She had led the effort to get the publishers to change the texts, objecting to what she called "asexual stealth phrases" such as "individuals who marry."
    "Marriage has been defined in Texas, so it should also be defined in our health textbooks that we use as marriage between a man and a woman," Miss Leo said.
    Texas lawmakers last year passed a law that prohibits the state from recognizing same-sex civil unions. The state already had a ban on homosexual "marriage."
    Neither publisher added all the changes Miss Leo initially proposed. For instance, one passage in the teacher's editions read: "Opinions vary on why homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals as a group are more prone to self-destructive behaviors like depression, illegal drug use, and suicide."
    Randall Ellis, the executive director of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas, said the board overstepped its bounds in suggesting and adopting the new wording.
    "Their job is to review for factual information and instead what we see is the insertion of someone's ideology and agenda into the textbook of middle schoolers," Mr. Ellis said.
    The board's approval caps months of debate over health textbooks. Much of the debate had centered on how much sex education should be included in high school books.
    A controversy arose last year in Texas when the board approved new biology textbooks that contained Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, brushing aside opposition from religious groups.
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O041101   Voters angered by observers
 

By Jon Ward
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Precincts in Virginia and Maryland will allow international observers to monitor the election process tomorrow, despite concerns from local voters who say such a presence undermines U.S. sovereignty.
    Observers from the Warsaw-based Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) will monitor selected polling places in Fairfax, Warren and Clarke counties and the cities of Manassas and Winchester in Virginia and Montgomery County and Baltimore in Maryland.
    The Virginia State Board of Elections already has received numerous angry telephone calls and e-mails about the observers, said Barbara Cockrell, assistant secretary for elections and training at the state elections board.
    "There's been a lot of fear and a lot of concern about this," Miss Cockrell said. "For one thing, [voters] are afraid that there are people coming from other countries to supervise our elections or to supervise the counting of our ballots or to somehow interfere with our election, and they see this as an insult to our country and to our sovereignty."
    The Maryland State Board of Elections last week rejected requests to allow observers into the polling places. But election boards in Montgomery County and Baltimore city voted to allow the observers into their polling places.
    "The election is going to be extremely busy with a high turnout, and they didn't want to overburden the election judges with anything more," said Linda H. Lamone, administrator at the Maryland State Board of Elections. "I agree with what the state board did. It's just going to be very, very busy at the polling places."
    Mrs. Lamone said there is no real need for outside observers.
    "We have a whole system set up with watchers and challengers in the polling places which has been in place for years," she said.
    The ODIHR is part of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an international body initially founded for monitoring elections in emerging post-communist democracies. OSCE also is sending observers. U.S. officials invited the groups to observe tomorrow's elections.
    In addition to the international observers, TrueVoteMD, a multiparty group critical of the new touch-screen voting machines, plans to post observers at about 100 precincts in Maryland to watch for any problems with those machines.
    Yesterday, about 120 Maryland residents attended the group's final day of poll-watcher training.
    "We're prepared to document any problem anyone has," said Linda Schade of TrueVoteMD, which opposes touch-screen machines because the equipment doesn't offer a paper voting record. "The most frightening problems, in terms of tampering, cannot be observed by the naked eye. That's one of the problems with this technology — that transparency is completely removed from the naked eye. Our poll-watching effort is limited to observable problems."
    Electronic or touch-screen voting is one of the primary concerns of the international observers who will visit the precincts. The observers also are concerned about voter disenfranchisement and intimidation.
    In addition to Virginia and Maryland, the ODIHR observers will visit selected precincts in Florida, Nevada, California and Illinois. Ohio and New Mexico did not allow the ODIHR observers into their polling places because state law prohibits the practice, officials said.
    "Everything about this observation is unique," said Urdur Gunnarsdottir, a spokeswoman for OSCE. "The whole system here, how decentralized everything is, and how everything is on a state and even county level is unique. It creates some difficulty in planning the observation."
    The OSCE does not have binding authority over U.S. election law or procedure and cannot interfere with the voting process.
    "If [the observers] become argumentative and slow down the process, they can be asked to leave," said Jean Jensen, secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections.
    The United States has invited ODIHR to observe elections since 1998, but did so reluctantly this year. After the U.S. Supreme Court decided the 2000 presidential election, the OSCE sent a team to observe the 2002 midterm elections and the 2003 gubernatorial recall in California.
    The OSCE will issue a postelection report several days after tomorrow's elections.
    "They have the power of opinion," said Steve Pike, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of State. "They can say something afterwards. Most of the time they say, 'Well, that went rather well.' "
    The observers represent a broad range of political philosophies, from the far left to the far right.
    The group includes communists from France and Russia, a Turkish women's rights advocate and a counterterrorism expert from Belgium. Professor Rita Sussmuth, former president of the German parliament, will lead the ODIHR observers.
    • Betsy Pisik contributed to this report.
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O041102   Absentee voting surges this year
 

By Christina Bellantoni and Jim McElhatton
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A record number of voters in Virginia, Maryland and the District have cast absentee ballots this year to avoid long lines and potential problems when the polls officially open today.
    In Virginia, more than 240,000 voters have requested absentee ballots, particularly from areas where many military personnel reside. More than 175,000 have returned their ballots. In the 2000 presidential election, about 150,000 Virginians voted by absentee ballot.
    In Maryland, more than 130,000 voters have requested absentee ballots. Elections officials have not counted how many ballots they have received from voters. In 2000, 96,366 Maryland residents cast their votes by absentee ballot.
    Election officials in the District didn't have absentee ballot figures available yesterday, but D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics spokesman Bill O'Field estimated the numbers are up from 2000.
    Barbara Cockrell, assistant secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections, said Virginia Beach, which has a heavy military population, has had a "very high" number of absentee ballots.
    Miss Cockrell said a high percentage of absentee ballots also are being cast in Northern Virginia, another area where many military families reside.
    Alexandria easily eclipsed its previous record of about 4,200 absentee voters in 2000 with more than 7,000 who voted early for today's election, said Tom Parkins, the city's registrar of voters. "We have a lot more interest," he said.
    Virginia does not track the demographics of absentee voters. No exit polling in Virginia, Maryland or the District was available yesterday.
    Some officials attribute the rise in absentee voters to the overall increase in registration. All three jurisdictions reported record new voters this year.
    Since 1980, absentee voting has accounted for an average of 5.4 percent of the total votes cast in presidential elections, according to figures analyzed by the Associated Press.
    By contrast, absentees have comprised an average of 3 percent of the total vote in nonpresidential elections in the past 10 years.
    Both presidential candidates this year have encouraged their supporters nationwide to vote early. Volunteer groups in the region have handed out absentee voter applications and in some cases helped voters get to the polls so they could cast absentee ballots in person.
    In Virginia and the District, absentee voting is available at most precincts or by mail, as long as criteria are met. In Maryland, absentee voters can cast ballots only by mail.
    The guidelines differ slightly among the three jurisdictions, but voters in general are allowed to cast absentee ballots if they will be absent from their county on Election Day because of school or military service, or because of an illness or death in the family.
    Virginia localities will count absentee ballots tonight. Local election officials must have the absentee ballots by the time polls close at 7 p.m. for the ballots to be counted.
    Election officials in Maryland will count the absentee ballots on Thursday. They will conduct a second count Nov. 12 to accommodate late ballots sent from troops overseas.
    Donna Duncan, director of Maryland's election-management division at the State Board of Elections, said, "It certainly is possible" absentee ballots could change the outcome of an election.
    D.C. election officials will count absentee ballots and provisional ballots Nov. 12. "It allows for absentee ballots to reach us from around the world," Mr. O'Field said.
    In most jurisdictions, early absentee voting ended Saturday, but residents unable to vote today had until 2 p.m. yesterday to fill out their absentee ballots.
    Mr. Parkins said he received a request yesterday from a woman who would be in Baltimore today for medical treatment. But, he said, he denied her request for an absentee ballot after learning that she would be in Alexandria for part of the day today. "It's got to be an emergency situation or a death in the family," he said.
    Several voters in Arlington yesterday cast early ballots because work commitments would keep them from the polls today.
    Anne Slabinski, 29, an Arlington County firefighter who voted for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, said she has to work a 24-hour shift today. "It was just easier this way," she said.
    Mr. O'Field said voters should be prepared to stand in line at the polling places throughout the city. "We're asking voters to be patient because it's going to be a big day," he said.
    Chris Smith, 25, an employee with the Department of Homeland Security who lives in Northeast, said he voted early because election officials had wrong information on his voter registration. But once he showed up, he said, he could vote without any delays.
    "I just wanted my opinion to count," said Mr. Smith, who voted for the first time. "I feel proud."
    • Gary Emerling contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
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E041102   Charter schools make bid in Anne Arundel
 

By Robert Redding Jr.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The school board for Anne Arundel County, Md., has received two of three expected proposals for the county's first charter schools, which could open as soon as next fall, a school official said.
    The Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School in Glen Burnie and the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) Harbor Academy in Annapolis have officially requested to open facilities, said Kathy Lane, county director of alternative education.
    "The applications will now be reviewed for technical completion and then the board will review it for approval or disapproval," Mrs. Lane said.
    The LITE (Looking Inward Toward Education) Public Charter School in Annapolis also is expected to apply, she said.
    Maryland currently has only one charter school — the publicly funded but independently operated Monocacy Valley Montessori Public Charter School in Frederick.
    KIPP spokesman Steve Mancini said the Harbor Academy school would feature a college-preparatory middle school program for low-income families. Based in San Francisco, KIPP operates in 38 locations in 15 states and the District.
    The Annapolis site would be one of 10 schools KIPP plans to open next year, Mr. Mancini said.
    "Through great teaching and an extended school day, we hope to open doors of opportunity for college education" for the children of Annapolis, he said.
    Chesapeake Science Point aims to serve middle school students in its first year and eventually include high school students, officials said. The school has been proposed by the Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation, a nonprofit educational group.
    The LITE school has been proposed by the Restoration Community Development Corp., a nonprofit group that supports shelters and food banks, to serve low-income students from kindergarten through high school, officials said.
    The state last year passed charter school legislation that requires applications to be reviewed and approved by local school boards.
    In June, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, received a $3.8 million federal grant to further his commitment to building more charter schools.
    The money, the first installment on more than $13 million over the next three years, awards a maximum of $200,000 in grant money to each eligible school — 95 percent of which must be used for a school's building, not its staff.
    The $13 million could help open about 20 charter schools in Maryland.
    • This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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O031103   Mikulski easily defeats Pipkin
 

By Robert Redding Jr.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski was declared the winner last night against Republican challenger E.J. Pipkin in the Maryland Senate race.
    Miss Mikulski, a Democrat, won 64 percent of the vote with 33 percent of 1,787 precincts reporting.
    "I want to thank the voters. Two years ago, they said Maryland was going in another direction," Miss Mikulski said. "Well, Maryland has come back home to the Democratic Party. And it is going to stay there."
    The victory was expected since Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 in Maryland, which has about 3 million registered voters. Miss Mikulski, 68, will return to the Senate for a fourth term. Much of the challenge by Mr. Pipkin, 47, came from a big advertising campaign paid for with the millions he made as a Wall Street bond trader.
    U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, was declared the winner in the 8th District against challenger Chuck Floyd, a Republican.
    With 52 percent of 175 precincts reporting, Mr. Van Hollen had won 75 percent of the vote.
    "I think ... that folks knew it was going to be a win for the congressman, but I think everyone is stunned by the margin. He definitely exceeded expectations," said Mr. Van Hollen's campaign manager Chuck Westover.
    Mr. Van Hollen, 45, will serve a second term.
    Mr. Floyd, 54, is a retired military officer.
    The race was among the most personal, with Mr. Van Hollen accusing the Floyd campaign of buying Internet domains based on Mr. Van Hollen's name, then using the sites to attack him.
    Rep. Albert R. Wynn, a Democrat, was the declared the winner against John McKinnis in the 4th District.
    Mr. Wynn, a Democrat, won 74 percent of the vote with 50 percent of 171 precincts reporting.
    "I am certainly very excited and very appreciative of the support I have received, and I am looking forward to dealing with the unfinished business," said Mr. Wynn, who was elected to Congress in 1992 and will be serving a seventh term.
    In the 5th District, incumbent Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, a Democrat, was declared the winner against challenger Brad Jewitt, a Republican and former mayor of Berwyn Heights.
    Mr. Hoyer won 70 percent of the vote over Mr. Jewitt, with 58 percent of 193 precincts reporting. Mr. Hoyer will serve his 12th term.
    Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, a Republican, was declared the winner against Democratic challenger Kostas Alexakis in the 1st District, the state's largest geographically.
    Mr. Gilchrest won 77 percent of the vote with 54 percent of 272 precincts reporting.
    Mr. Gilchrest, 58, is a former teacher who served as a U.S. Marine in the Vietnam War. He won his first term in 1991 and is best know for his interest in preserving the environment, which has earned him strong bipartisan support along the Eastern Shore.
    Mr. Alexakis, 50, replaced Democratic nominee Ann Tamlyn who withdrew because of illness.
    In the 2nd District, Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat, was declared the winner over Republican challenger Jane Brooks. Mr. Ruppersberger, 58, will be serving his second term. He won 61 percent of the votes with 30 percent of 208 precincts reporting. declared the winner against leading challenger Republican Tony Salazar, a bank attorney from Ellicott City and Virginia T. Rodino, a Green Party candidate.
    Mr. Cummings, who is seeking his seeking fifth term, won 65 percent of the votes with 29 percent of 279 precincts reporting.
    In Prince George's County, Democrat Will Campos defeated Tommy Priestly in a special election for the District 2 seat on the County Council. Mr. Campos replaces Peter A. Shapiro, who resigned in July.
    Residents voted roughly 71 percent-to-29 percent against adding two at-large members to the County Council, which would have increased the number from nine to 11.
    Montgomery County residents elected three members to the Board of Education.
    Board President Sharon W. Cox defeated Tomme Le for the at-large seat. Miss Cox won roughly 70 percent of the vote. Board member Walter Lange was defeated by Stephen Abrams in District 2. Mr. Abrams won roughly 53 percent of the vote.
    Valerie Ervin defeated Sheldon Fishman in District 4. Miss Ervin won 59 percent of the vote.
    Residents also voted 52 percent to 48 percent against term limits for the county executive and County Council.
    • This article is based in part on wire service reports
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O041103   Voters endure long lines at polls
 

By Jon Ward and Arlo Wagner
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Metropolitan-area voters yesterday endured longer-than-usual lines at polling places, but mostly escaped the widespread election-machine failures, voter intimidation and registration challenges that some had feared.
    Minor problems around the region prompted a few accusations of voting abuses, longer waits in line and requests for police.
    In Fairfax County, Republican lawyers fielded several complaints that elections officials were allowing some voters to leave polling places without voting after receiving their blue permit slips.
    The voters said they were leaving because they wanted to come back when the lines were shorter, but Republicans said that voters who left with the slips could tear them in two and allow an unauthorized person to vote with the second half.
    "It's a ballot-security problem," Republican lawyer Chris Barnakov said.
    Eric Lundgard, chairman of the Fairfax County Republican Committee, called for the resignation of county Board of Elections' Secretary Margaret Lucas.
    Mrs. Lucas said precinct officials must reconcile their poll books with the counts from machines, and that they pay close attention to the condition of the blue slips.
    "It's a pretty good chance we can reconcile that," she said.
    Democrats said the only calls they received were mundane Election Day questions.
    "It seems like everything's running pretty smoothly. It's just the typical Election Day questions," said Laura Bland, spokeswoman for the Virginia Democratic Party.
    Democrats also stationed 700 lawyers at precincts around Virginia, many of whom were in Fairfax County, in case there were any problems with voter intimidation or suppression.
    "We're prepared in case there is a problem," said Seth Stark, a real estate and corporate lawyer for 20 years in the metro area who was stationed at Braddock Elementary School in Annandale.
    Meanwhile, international observers who monitored precincts in several Virginia and Maryland counties and cities declined to comment on the progress of their inspections.
    "We don't want to make any comments until this is all over and we've seen everything we need to," said Urdur Gunnarsdottir, spokeswoman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which will issue a report on Friday.
    Elections officials said the high turnout was unprecedented.
    "Everybody I've talked to who's been in this business for a long time, they say they've never seen anything like it," said Virginia Board of Elections Secretary Jean Jensen, adding that she expected the state to surpass its 2000 voter turnout of 68.5 percent.
    At Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, a crush of more than 1,000 voters by noon overwhelmed the precinct, forcing waits up of to two hours in a line that snaked out the gymnasium door.
    "We've got a lot of development around here, and they haven't divided the precinct," said Greenbelt Mayor Judith Davis, who went to the school to help organize the line.
    Area voters showed up early at the polls.
    Elections officials at Capitol Heights Elementary School and the Hyattsville Public Library said several hundred voters lined up when the polls opened at 7 a.m.
    "You don't have to go far to find someone who says they had to wait for a couple of hours," said elections official Joe Hinton.
    At Braddock Elementary, voters arrived at 4:30 a.m. to wait for the 6 a.m. opening, assistant precinct captain Marvin Jensen said. By midmorning, Mr. Jensen's green polo shirt was soaked with sweat as he raced around the packed school gymnasium assisting voters.
    Steven Carpenter, 29, a graphic designer for the Salvation Army, waited an hour in line at Braddock Elementary before voting for Sen. John Kerry for president because, he said, he thought President Bush was "incompetent."
    He said the long line did not bother him because he had expected it, and he passed the time by thinking about an old episode of TV's "The Simpsons."
    In the District, there was some confusion over voting procedures, and turnout was low in some places.
    At Choice Academy at Taft in Northeast, the expected evening rush did not materialize. Precinct officials noted there was no local council race on the ballot and speculated that some voters were confused that the polling place had moved from a nearby church.
    At Bancroft Elementary School in Northwest, voters staked out the polls early.
    "The polls opened at 7 a.m., but lines had formed and people were here at 6:15 a.m. We've had very heavy voter turnout," precinct captain Mary Davis said.
    Regina Waiters of Northeast said she voted at Ruth K. Webb Elementary School after she was told by election officials at her usual location — Browne Junior High School — that she couldn't vote there.
    "I did a lot of [traveling] to vote. It's frustrating to see people coming out of their houses, right up the street from me, being able to vote at Browne. And some people coming here are in wheelchairs. It's a shame if they couldn't just go to the one nearest to them," she said.
    Miss Waiters, a school bus driver, said her exasperation nearly kept her from voting. "I said if I wasn't able to vote [at Webb], I was going to leave. And I'm coming down here during work."
    •  Denise Barnes, Tarron Lively, Judith Person, Amy Doolittle, Gary Emerling, Sarah Hoffman, Subodh Mishra, Joseph Bacchus and Rachel Jackson contributed to this report.
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M041101E   Kerry's dishonorable response

With his shameful effort to exploit Friday's videotape message from Osama bin Laden, John Kerry has illustrated once again that he lacks the judgement necessary to be president. Bin Laden, addressing the American people, gloated over the September 11 attacks, called President Bush a liar and a supporter of despotism, and said al Qaeda is targeting the United States because this country opposes "freedom." The terrorist leader said that America would only "remain safe" if it refrained from doing things that bother radical Islamists like bin Laden.
    Mr. Kerry got it right with his initial reaction: "Let me make it clear, crystal clear: As Americans, we are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorists." Unfortunately, Mr. Kerry's scripted commitment to unity only lasted a few minutes. Shortly after the initial broadcast of the tape by Al Jazeera, Mr. Kerry attempted to use the bin Laden propaganda missive to score some political points against the president and prop up his own campaign.
    "As I have said for two years now, when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords," Mr. Kerry said on Saturday. "It was wrong to divert our forces from Afghanistan so we could rush to war with Iraq without a plan to win the peace." Mr. Kerry hasn't always been so disdainful toward Mr. Bush's conduct of the very successful military campaign in Afghanistan, an effort which achieved what many pundits said could never be done — the overthrow of the Taliban dictatorship in two months. Back in December 2001, he praised the Bush administration's conduct of military operations in Afghanistan. Gen. Tommy Franks, who was responsible for the operation in Tora Bora — where many terrorists were killed or captured — says Mr. Kerry doesn't know what he is talking about when he asserts that bin Laden "escaped." It is entirely possible that he may have been nowhere near Tora Bora at that time.
    With his latest broadside, Mr. Kerry has shown once again that there is nothing he won't do or say to try to become president — including the exploitation of a bin Laden propaganda statement. He has shown once again why he is ill-suited to become America's new commander in chief.
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O041101L   Sign vandalism and civilized behavior
    Recently I decided that I was tired of seeing the political signs on a major road near my house in Northern Virginia torn up ("Voters furious at sign thefts," Metro, Thursday), so I decided to go and replace those torn down and duct-tape them so it would be harder to tear them down. Our free-speech rights under the First Amendment are what motivated me. I am not affiliated with a campaign this election season. (Personally, I am a supporter of President Bush.)
    I saw that the John Kerry signs had been taken down, so I righted and straightened them so that Kerry supporters would have a voice on the median strip. No one paid attention while I was putting up Kerry signs. Until today, they had been left alone. The Bush signs have been ripped up daily for the last three weeks, and someone has faithfully replaced them.
    Then, I found torn Bush signs and duct-taped them back together. While I was doing this, I was honked at, given the finger and booed.
    This cements something I learned many years ago as a home-school activist in the Utah State Legislature: Liberals are tolerant until you disagree with them. Liberals believe in free speech as long as you agree with them. Once you disagree, they try to silence you.
    Given a choice between civilized, conservative behavior and liberal activism, I will take civilized behavior. I am glad to call myself a conservative. I am glad to support a president who does what he believes is right rather than being a political opportunist. I am glad that I still have the right to express my opinion in this country.
 
    BARBARA STACEY
    Burke
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O041104E   A question of values

It stunned the Democrats and many in the media, but it shouldn't have. Voters who care about moral values delivered the election to President Bush. Even with an uncertain economy and problems in Iraq, Mr. Bush rode social conservatism to victory. In a Wednesday-morning chin-pulling session, CNN anchor Bill Hemmer turned to his ex-politico colleague Carlos Watson and asked earnestly, "Why has the country gone so far in the conservative direction?" The truth is that the country was already there. It's just that the liberal media elites never realized it.
    The exit polls couldn't have been clearer. They showed that more voters think moral values — that is, the vaunted "God, guns and gays" questions — are the most important question facing the nation than think the same about the state of the economy, the terrorist threat or the Iraq war. Regaining competitiveness with this group will be the Democrats' great generational challenge in the years to come. But it's far from clear that the Democrats even understand their problem, much less how to fix it.
    They can start with the exit polls, which showed that when it comes to moral values, the Democrats find themselves in terra incognita. Given values as a choice in polling prompts — the exit polls listed taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, the economy/jobs, moral values and health care as the options — a full 22 percent chose moral values. The economy and terrorism came close, but moral values were supreme. Mr. Bush took 79 percent of such voters, John Kerry only 18 percent.
    That spelled disaster for Mr. Kerry, whose campaign hammered Mr. Bush on the Iraq war and the economy, but barely touched the moral issues. The postmortem here won't ignore the glaring Democratic blind spot on the issue. It will tick off John Edwards rallying at the last minute in Pompano Beach, Fla., with Jimmy Buffett. It will note that Mr. Kerry stumped in vain with Bruce Springsteen to get the youth vote out. Mr. Kerry all but abandoned the moral questions in the hope that the material ones could energize swing voters and deliver him the election. It didn't work.
    The problem doesn't belong exclusively to the Democrats, of course; the media owns it, too. It's telling that in the weeks before the election, pollsters didn't even include "moral values" as an option when questioning likely voters. The ABC News/Washington Post poll listed the economy, terrorism, Iraq, health care, education, and "other" as the options. Under that formula, 10 percent chose "other." A plurality of the "other" contingent listed abortion, stem cell research, gay "marriage," religion or moral issues as the supreme concern.
    The question now becomes whether the Democrats can re-assimilate into the mainstream. A party can reinvent positions on health care and defense, but can it reverse course on moral issues?
    This is a difficult time for Democrats. Soul-searching is in order. We hope they succeed, because it's better for America when both major parties compete to gain the moral respect of the electorate.
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O041104C   Slouching toward Canada
 

By Suzanne Fields

That enormous cloud of dust on the horizon is being kicked up by the long line of celebrity limousines slouching toward Canada. The Canadian government yesterday felt it necessary to warn unhappy Democrats that if they emigrate to Canada they must get in line for about a year, just like everyone else. Alec Baldwin, whose plane has been idling on the runway for four years, can take off for Europe now, as he threatened to do if George W. Bush defeated Al Gore four years ago. This time there's no ambiguity to take refuge in, and he is at last free to leave.
    Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, Bette Midler and lots of others who sang for their supper at Kerry rallies in hopes of invitations to dinner at the White House can go back now to doing what they do best, actually entertaining us.
    The Europeans, who took their tutelage in American politics from Michael Moore and Jon Stewart, might even think about being nice to the man they derided as a moron with the IQ of a carrot. The war against terror is serious business.
    Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, watching the tide turn on election night, called the result, as incredible as it is, an opportunity to work again with Washington: "We have many things to do, both on the current crises — in Iraq, the Middle East, Iran, the fate of the African continent — and to renovate the transatlantic relationship." Let's all hope.
    The biggest losers of all are the wise guys of the media, who turned their front pages and cameras over to the task of ridding the world of George W. They forgot that their readers and viewers could, and would, find alternative sources of news. The elephants in their own parlors were "the guys in pajamas," the Internet bloggers who exposed the "fake but accurate" (in the famous New York Times formulation) Rather papers about the president's long ago service in the Texas Air National Guard. The pollsters who snookered themselves, all but calling the election for the senator at midafternoon on Election Day, will be trying to get the egg out of their beards for weeks.
    The bicoastal intellectual elites are miserable, too. The New Yorker, which published its first presidential endorsement, can go back now to the culture. The Nation magazine, speaking of the culture wars, tried to make the election campaign a class war, reprising the words of Joe Hill, the labor organizer, who, before being executed by a Utah firing squad in 1915, cried out: "Don't mourn, organize!"
     Evangelical Christians, once described by The Washington Post as "poor, uneducated and easily led," can celebrate being smart enough to lead the way to victory, which is pretty rich. Mr. Bush won three-fourths of the white, born-again Christians who are now one of every five American voters. More than half of the Bush voters said "moral issues" were most important to them. The Massachusetts Supreme Court galvanized these evangelical Christians with its endorsement of same-sex marriage, which led to 11 states across the breadth of the country amending their state constitutions to define marriage as exclusively a rite binding man to woman.
    Many pundits define the culture wars as a war between religious people vs. secularists. This misses the point. The culture wars are about the values of common sense that underwrite traditions that have undergirded Judeo-Christian moral codes for centuries. The culture wars are about how we raise our children, what the schools teach them, how we teach them what's right and what's wrong. The marriage amendments, after all, merely attempt to protect the tried and true status quo. The culture wars are about how the political culture reinforces, or contradicts, the popular culture. The voters understood that this week and the elites didn't.
    Pundits are puzzled that the president could win such a ringing vote against all their advice. The voters were not puzzled at all. Voters told the exit pollsters that the president says what he believes and believes what he says, and John Kerry says what he thinks the voters in front of him want to hear. They determined that this is no time to choose a commander in chief who can't make up his mind about the war in Iraq, nor the time (if there ever is such a time) to ask an American soldier to die for "a mistake."
    The senator was gracious in defeat and the president was generous in victory. In the end the choice voters made was not difficult at all, and the result, as always, reflected the judgment in that vast reservoir of American common sense.
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L041105E   All eyes on Sen. Specter

Sen. Arlen Specter had better watch out. The day after President Bush's election triumph, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter — who is expected to be chosen chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee — fired a warning shot across the bow of the ship of state: "The president is well aware of what happened, when a bunch of his nominees were sent up, with the filibusters. And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning."
    As one of the few Republicans who opposed President Reagan nominee Robert Bork for the Supreme Court, and President George W. Bush's nominee for the federal bench (and now senator) Jeff Sessions, Mr. Specter's words are quite easy to decode. He is warning the president that he will block or oppose conservative nominations, no matter how qualified, for the high benches.
    The senior senator from Pennsylvania will not need a magic decoder ring to understand the next sentence. If he tries to block the will of the conservative electorate that just re-elected the president, he should expect a remorseless multimillion dollar campaign by virtually every conservative organization (and their millions of members) to compel his fellow Republican senators to strip him of his impending committee chairmanship.
    A more conservative federal judiciary — and the traditional American values that would be strengthened thereby — is at the heart of the surge of voters from Florida to Ohio that re-elected President Bush. We have no intention of losing through the back door what we just brought through the front door.
    The senator's arrogance is compounded by his ingratitude. It was only earlier this year that his campaign to regain the Republican nomination for Senate was on life support, as he was being opposed by a particularly able younger conservative Republican candidate. His losing effort was saved only by the all-out effort of his conservative junior Sen. Rick Santorum and by a similar effort by a guy named George W. Bush.
    Arlen Specter is only in the Senate because he is a member of a team. He will only have the power of Judiciary Committee chairman if he is given it by his teammates. If he stabs his team in the back, he will be taken off the roster.
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M041105E   Media missteps

Here's a thought for downcast Democrats trying to figure out why things went so right for President Bush: Stop listening to your own press. For the past two years every major organ of national communication except talk radio — network TV, New York publishing, major dailies, Hollywood and the music industry — ran with a single, anti-Bush theme. Cloistered in their opulent, heavily liberal urban centers, these outlets provided the Democrats with ready-made talking points from which to attack the president for his "failures," "lies" and faith.
    In an unprecedented campaign to bring down a sitting president, the media long known for its liberal slant outdid itself in the ferocity and magnitude of its intentional partisan assault. The rule of thumb was to give every Bush-basher his due. Discredited partisans, like Richard Clarke and Joseph Wilson earned top billing on the New York Times bestseller list, while their own lies went unreported. Tabloid biographer Kitty Kelley was given a three-day interview on NBC's "The Today Show" for a book even most newspapers refused to review, while swift-boat veteran John O'Neill was slandered on a nightly basis.
    The media awarded special attention to its celebrity clientele, of which no Hollywood temporary celebrity was too ignorant to point a camera at. They rolled out the red carpet for propagandist Michael Moore. They invited Bush-bashing tag-team Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins to join their talk shows, while Sean Penn was given column space in major daily newspapers. The anti-Bush teen-idols of MTV's "Rock the Vote" and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs' "Vote or Die" were dignified as the answer to the younger generation's low voter turnout. HBO gave Bill Maher an hour for Bush bashing, and Comedy Central gave Jon Stewart a half-hour. Like groupies, reporters followed Moveon.org's "Vote for Change" tour, which headlined such rock 'n' roll legends as Bruce Springsteen.
    In their coverage, the elite media pumped stories that would get laughed out of any honest newsroom: The New York Times' front-page spread of the "web of connections" between the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Republicans; Dan Rather's unapologetic use of forged memos; and the al Qaqaa cache of missing explosives that the NYT dropped one week before the election, and which CBS News planned to air 48 hours before voters went to the polls. And so it goes.
    The problem for the Democrats is that none of this, as much as it is, worked — not even on the margin. The president stands astride the biggest electoral victory since 1988, earning more votes than any president in history. Meanwhile, the elite media executives no doubt are as shocked as the Democrats who trusted them. Months before the election, Newsweek's Evan Thomas had one of the worst predictions in presidential politics: "The media wants [John] Kerry to win ... There's going to be this glow about them that is going to be worth ... maybe 15 points."
    By any standard, the elite media's performance has been shocking. With Mr. Bush back in office, will it now learn from its mistakes? Probably not, but the Democrats should.
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O041105L   Why John Kerry lost
    Cutting through the underbrush of political rhetoric, it is becoming clear that Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, lost and that President Bush won the election because of voter perceptions about their character rather than about the specifics of the policy issues they advocated ("Four more years," Page 1, yesterday).
    Of course, the great bulk of traditional Democrats and Republicans voted their party, but the "undecided" who gave Mr. Bush the decisive margin of 3.5 million votes were swayed more by their assessment of the candidates' character than by issues.
    These "undecided" voters didn't live in New York City or Hollywood, but in neighborhoods and small towns across America. They rejected the shibboleths of the politically correct. They saw in Mr. Bush a reflection of their own virtues — the centrality of the traditional family, integrity, steadfastness and courage.
    They felt that Mr. Kerry — the sometime soldier and longtime senator — was wanting in these virtues. Instead of steadfastness, they sensed vacillation and opportunism. They were repelled by frivolous Kerry supporters from the entertainment world, and backers like Michael Moore whose movie, "Fahrenheit 911" gave aid and comfort to the terrorists. They were also disgusted by the anti-America raging of billionaire George Soros, who gave millions to the Kerry campaign. They saw in George W. Bush and his family a reflection of themselves.
 
    ERNEST W. LEFEVER
    Chevy Chase.
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O041105L   'Wake up and listen'
    With all due respect to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, she misstates the soul of the Democrat Party ("Stoic losers disdain change," Page 1, yesterday). The soul of that party is, as we have heard from Democrats talking to other Democrats, about changing America. Changing America means changing the people of America, in our habits, our expressed attitudes, in how we live and how well we live.
    To liberal Democrat elites, the people are a liability. We're dumb. We consume too much of needed resources. We are irresponsible. We are mindlessly violent. We believe in fairy tales like God. We pollute simply by existing. There should be fewer of us.
    A trend can be seen of Democrats capable of reason now becoming Republicans or independents. The residual Democrats can't change, can't adapt, can't love, can't be befriended and can't be reached out to. They can only resent those who deny them power because to them power is life.
 
    CHRISTOPHER J. HOLLINS
    Charlotte, N.C.
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O041105L   Moral standards are necessary
    Susan Hamburger made some interesting remarks about the election, but I'm not sure she would want to stick with them consistently (Letters, yesterday).
    She would prefer to "accept people as they are and let them live the lifestyle they choose." Sounds fair. Does she mean to include sex offenders, too? How about junkies and thieves? Or should we, as a society, have some legal means by which their lifestyles should be controlled?
    Observing that not all believe the Bible's teachings, she gripes that "the religious ideas of others" would constrain them just the same. Funny, but it seems it was just such "religious ideas" which brought the modern civil- rights movement to the fore in this country and informed segregationists that their chosen "lifestyle" of "whites only" was no longer acceptable in decent society. Would she have complained, in 1963, that Martin Luther King was a religious zealot and was forcing others to submit to biblical fanaticism?
    Mrs. Hamburger says she wants stem cell research, which is her right to advocate. But to force others who don't share her moral view of the universe to pay for it contradicts her stance that we are all entitled to live free from the convictions of others. Would she like to pay for my slaves if I could legally have some?
    There are two opposite extremes here: Either everyone is free to pursue his desires at his own expense or we impose standards at everyone's expense.
    There are problems with both, but a society with no boundaries cannot exist for long. We have been shedding boundaries for decades now, and a cursory check of the TV lineup tells us we've fallen a long way.
    That's why there's so much red in the election map. The NASCAR values are prevailing over those of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
 
    JACK WEBB
    Springfield
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M041105E   Americans not fooled by media
 

By Diana West
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Sometime in those roughly 12 post-election hours between John Edwards' early-morning threat of a promise to open up Ohio to the lawyer-legions, and John Kerry's concession speech in the afternoon, I went back to the books, back to the 1960 election when Richard Nixon was very, very narrowly defeated by John F. Kennedy.
    What a difference 44 years makes. "I eased the tension of the wait [for election returns] by driving south on the Pacific Coast Highway," Nixon wrote in his memoirs. On that Election Day roadtrip, this sitting vice president and Republican presidential candidate was accompanied only by two aides and a Los Angeles police driver. One aide "remarked that he had never been to Tijuana, so we continued all the way to Mexico," Mr. Nixon wrote. "We were back in Los Angeles by the time the results were coming in."
    Such whimsy belongs to a pre-satellite age. But Mr. Nixon sensed a new day was dawning with "the substantial and influential power that the emergence of television as the primary news medium gave reporters, commentators, and producers." He continued: "It was largely they who decided what the public would hear and see of the campaign." And you can say that again — at least until lately. The advent of talk radio, Fox News and the Internet has finally begun to bust up that old info-nopoly.
    Mr. Nixon went on to describe a whiplashing election night, trending, but barely, toward Mr. Kennedy. Only 113,000 votes — including thousands of demonstrably fraudulent ones — would ultimately separate the two candidates in the popular vote. That's 22,000 votes fewer than the margin separating George W. Bush and Mr. Kerry in Ohio alone; it's less than 5 percent of the 3.5 million votes separating Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry nationally. Too close to call? Not according to the media, circa 1960. As Mr. Nixon wrote, they had already predicted a substantial Kennedy victory. Which, in light of the erroneous reports of a Kerry landslide this week, reminds us that some things really never change.
    Describing "tremendous pressure" to concede from reporters and pundits, Mr. Nixon made a brief statement after midnight to acknowledge the sliver of a Kennedy edge. Contrast that with the tremendous reluctance of the Kerry-cheering main stream media (MSM) even to call Ohio for President Bush — probably out of fear of validating his re-election and, quite inadvertently, forcing some sort of a midnight concession from Mr. Kerry.
    The 1960 morning brought a shrinking margin and reports of massive Democratic fraud in Texas and Illinois. But Mr. Nixon went statesman on his political allies and refused to demand a recount. "The effect could be devastating to America's foreign relations," he wrote patriotically, "and I could not subject the country to such a situation." He also didn't want to be known as a "sore loser." Given the early machinations of the Kerry campaign, I doubt either reason moved Mr. Kerry. He simply realized the futility of his situation and conceded the election — to the quite obvious distress of the MSM.
    NBC's Katie Couric donned black. "It looks more and more like the president has won," Miss Couric said — after the president had won. "You take my breath away," ABC's Peter Jennings told an election law expert on hearing that Ohio was out of Mr. Kerry's reach. Radio talkster Don Imus said NBC's Tom Brokaw greeted him around dawn, saying, "What a nightmare."
    What is most extraordinary is that the president did win, despite the shameful affinity of the MSM and the Kerry campaign. The American people managed to hear and see through the fuzz and the junk, through "60 Minutes" and "Nightline," through the New York Times and the, well, New York Times. They also managed to see through Mr. Springsteen and Miss Streisand, through the millions of George Soros and the mouth, Michael Moore.
    There is something close to poetic justice in the creaky monolith of Old Media showing its advanced age and crochety bias in a campaign that now ends in the defeat of Mr. Kerry. That is, in important ways, the MSM and Mr. Kerry are kindred creatures of the faraway 1960s, both setting their anti-establishment ways during both the Vietnam War and, stateside, the anti-Vietnam War. You might even say that together they helped create and perpetuate the poisonous myth of the Vietnam veteran as enemy of humanity — touchstone of the self-hating American.
    And now, with the re-election of George W. Bush, they have been defeated. More important — and massive thanks to the e-scribes of the blogosphere and John O'Neill and his Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — they have been exposed in ways once unimaginable. Which could presage a truly new era.
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O041105E   Why Bush won
 

By Frank Luntz

So how does a president with a national job approval rating below 50 percent, an economy that lost more than a million jobs over his four years in office, a war that has cost more than a thousand American lives and counting, and a national mood that is downright sour still secure more than enough votes to win re-election?
    The answer? Credibility. The president had it. John Kerry did not.
    The components of the Bush victory and Kerry defeat all boil down to a single candidate attribute that the president had in abundance but was AWOL from the Kerry campaign: "says what he means and means what he says." In every state and national survey we conducted in 2004, no desired presidential attribute ever scored higher, and nowhere was Mr. Bush stronger and Mr. Kerry weaker. In every focus group I moderated, voters would plead for candidates who spoke from the heart and not from some speechwriter's notes.

    And nowhere does the image of straight talk matter more than on national security. John Kerry had had two full years to articulate a concise position on Iraq and a clear alternative strategy that offered a successful and more immediate resolution to the war. He couldn't do it.
    Even during the three presidential debates, the senator gave answers that left uncommitted voters in my focus groups both confused and mystified. His critique of the current administration's failures clearly did political damage, but the electorate could not define exactly what he would do differently. What Mr. Kerry did not realize was that referencing "a plan" roughly two dozen times over 90 minutes is different than actually having one. In a post-September 11 world, voters simply could not elect a president whose position on the nation's most salient issue was unknown, even to himself.
    Mr. Bush won on Tuesday because September 11 has truly changed America and because he accurately reflected America's resolve that the war on terror has to be won. Not waged. Won. Voters concluded that while Mr. Kerry could adequately manage a terrorist attack, it was Mr. Bush who was more likely to prevent one.
    Two key campaign events enhanced Mr. Bush's role as America's defender and Mr. Kerry as weak and/or indecisive. The first was the swift boat ads. In my focus groups, Mr. Kerry's convention performance was effective enough to change a few minds. But the blizzard of TV ads unleashed by the group of Vietnam vets blanketed the airwaves in swing states and undid whatever benefit the convention provided. True, the swift boat veterans never fully convinced voters that Mr. Kerry "betrayed" his country in wartime, but they did raise nagging and unresolved doubts about Mr. Kerry's character and judgment at the very moment that voters had begun to make up their minds.
    The second key event was the Republican convention itself. Swing voters swung to Mr. Bush because of a powerfully delivered convention speech that was the right balance of domestic agenda and national security, and because he effectively communicated that he was truly a man on an unyielding mission. They heard a president who heard them, understood their concerns, addressed their fears, and made them feel safer and more secure in their homes and in their country.
    The president stormed out of New York with a double-digit lead that helped him survive the first debate and sustained him through Election Day. It also helped that he had the best one-two consulting punch of this era in Karl Rove and Karen Hughes by his side.
    Some will claim that Mr. Bush won on Tuesday because he waged a campaign of fear. The exact opposite was the case. Americans turned to him precisely because they saw him as the antidote to that fear.
    Polling over the past few months and the results on Election Day itself illustrated an essential principle of electoral success: It is no longer enough to say no. Voters need someone who will say yes. Mr. Kerry became a symbol for voters opposed to the president's policies and procedures, but not much else. Conversely, Mr. Bush became the vehicle for those who wanted an affirmative, proactive, preventative approach to homeland security. Americans will tell you that it was Mr. Bush, not Mr. Kerry, who offered the hope that personal security could be restored. And in this election, hope won.
    When it came to the war on terror, Americans knew where their president stood and exactly what he believed. They simply did not share the same level of confidence in Mr. Kerry. The events and aftermath of September 11 may not have changed everything, but they certainly changed the outcome of the 2004 presidential race.
    In the end, principle trumped polish.
 
    Frank Luntz is president of Luntz Research Cos. in Alexandria, Virginia.
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H041105E   Mass. justices cost Kerry
 

By Joel Mowbray

In a state where only 29 percent believe their family's finances have improved in the past four years and nearly 60 percent rate the local economy as "not so good" or "poor," the obvious question is: How did President Bush manage to win Ohio, the Democrats' top red- state target?
    Poring over the Ohio exit polling data — which, for obvious reasons, must be taken with heaping grains of salt — almost every standard indicator would suggest doom for the incumbent.
    The overwhelming majority of late-deciders broke for John Kerry (contrary to much of the rest of the country), moderates split for the Democrat decisively, 59 percent to 41 percent, and polling leading up to the election asking the famous "right direction/wrong direction" question found folks answering roughly 35 percent to 65 percent.
    This in a state that Al Gore essentially conceded — and then only lost by 3.6 percent . Throw in a slumping local economy, and Mr. Bush's goose should have been cooked.
    Though identifying what put a candidate in a close contest "over the top" is sort of like crediting the final basket scored with winning the basketball game, it appears that a ballot initiative, known as Issue 1, banning gay "marriage" provided Mr. Bush with the winning margin in Ohio — and thus, the electoral college.
    In the state's three largest counties — Cuyahoga (home to Cleveland), Franklin (Columbus) and Hamilton (Cincinnati) — Mr. Gore scored a 130,000-vote margin out of 1.36 million cast. Mr. Gore won big in Cuyahoga (169,000), and pulled a surprise upset in once-Republican Franklin (5,000). Mr. Bush was saved by Hamilton, where he won by 43,000.
    With the Democratic National Committee and George Soros-funded Moveon.org and America Coming Together focused on getting Kerry supporters to the polls in those three counties (and a handful of others), Mr. Kerry improved on Mr. Gore's showing dramatically.
    Mr. Kerry cleaned Mr. Bush's clock in Cuyahoga by a stunning 218,000 and shocked almost everyone with a 31,000-vote victory in Franklin. Compounding matters, Mr. Bush barely carried Hamilton, with a net gain of less than 25,000. All told, Mr. Kerry beat Mr. Bush in those three counties by 225,000 votes.
    In almost any other election, such big margins in the three biggest counties would mean certain victory.
    Turnout in rural, exurban and outlying areas tells the real tale in Ohio. Mr. Bush blunted Mr. Kerry's gains in traditionally Democratic, culturally conservative counties (think Reagan Democrats), and racked up huge numbers in rural and exurban counties.
    With the energies of both the Democratic and GOP machinery focused on Ohio, many more voters turned up at the polls. According to Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's office, there have been nearly 900,000 new registrations this year — and the number of ballots cast was up over 2000 by almost the same amount.
    But while the national media cared only about the Bush-Kerry horse race, hundreds of thousands of Ohioans were most passionate about Issue 1. Some 550,000 signed the petition to get it on the ballot, and 62 percent of voters supported the ban on gay "marriages."
    Although Mr. Bush famously backed a proposed sonstitutional amendment to ban gay "marriage," most of the Ohio Republican establishment (including the governor and both senators) opposed Issue 1, largely because it would also ban civil unions. Without help from the party, the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage executed an impressive get-out-the-vote effort.
    More than 17,000 churches participated in the effort to pass Issue 1, and more than 850,000 calls were made. National groups, such as Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and American Family Association, e-mailed their entire lists in Ohio, which, combined, reached well north of half a million potential voters.
    The turnout numbers in many counties are eye-popping. Vote totals in the three largest counties increased roughly 15 percent, less than the statewide figure of 16.5 percent. In many of the Republican strongholds, however, the increase was more than 20 percent .
    In the three counties surrounding in the southwest corner of the state (Cincinnati's exurbs), Mr. Bush rolled. In Butler County, turnout was up 18 percent, and Mr. Bush's 40,000-vote margin there in 2000 swelled to 52,000. Clermont County counted a 28 percent surge in ballots cast, and Warren County doubled the statewide increase, with 34 percent more voters than in 2000.
    The most remarkable figures are in Delaware County. Turnout was up over 40 percent — a staggering figure for a county that already had an above-average portion of registered voters come to the polls in 2000. There were so many new voters in the county that the number of ballots cast was almost as high as the number who were registered four years ago.
    The net result: Mr. Bush got almost as many votes (52,237) as he and Mr. Gore got combined (53,773), doubling the number of ballots cast for Mr. Kerry.
    Ohio-based Republican strategists contacted by this columnist all agree that Issue 1 turned out large numbers of Bush backers across Ohio — many of them first-time voters. And all agree that Issue 1 never would have been on the ballot had the Massachusetts Supreme Court not legalized gay "marriage."
    In other words, the irony is that four justices from Mr. Kerry's home state may have cost him Ohio — and with that, his ticket to the White House.
 
    Joel Mowbray writes occasionally for The Washington Times.
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H041106L   Protecting traditional marriage
    The Nov. 4 editorial "Marking the divide" states: "In an election decided as much by moral values as by security and economic issues, voters resoundingly approved preserving the sanctity of marriage." It is incomprehensible that any discussion of the "sanctity of marriage" can occur without mentioning the ever-worsening problems of divorce, abortion and adultery.
    The destruction of traditional marriage began 30 years ago with the sexual revolution, no-fault divorce and Roe v. Wade. It is obtuse to think that banning same-sex "marriage" is a panacea for all of the ills that have befallen traditional marriage and the family. The national debate over same-sex "marriage" is valid; ignoring the myriad issues already destroying traditional marriage is hypocrisy at its worst.
 
    BEN BERRY
    Washington
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R041106L   Future judicial appointments
    Widespread dissatisfaction with our liberal judiciary, along with total confidence in President Bush's ability to appoint the right kind of federal judges, are among the major reasons for the president's 58 million-plus vote mandate this week ("Marking the divide," Editorial, yesterday). To remove any doubt, the electorate also strengthened the Republican majority in the Senate in order to help confirm those conservative appointees.
    No possible reading of Tuesday's results could support the idea that the American people want a Republican Senate Judiciary Committee to fight the president on judicial appointments — but that's exactly what Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, promised this week.
     Less than 24 hours after the election, the presumptive incoming Judiciary Committee chairman fired a broadside at the White House, warning the president against appointing the kind of judges that the American public elected him to select. It's an outrage.
     Mr. Specter is a man of many talents, and he would probably be a fine chairman of some other committee or subcommittee. But he proved Wednesday that he is simply not the right man to chair the Judiciary Committee at this time.
    If Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist wants Mr. Bush's second term to be successful and if he wants to be remembered as an effective leader himself, he must persuade other Republican senators to select another lawmaker to be Judiciary Committee chairman.
 
    JOHN F. DI LEO
    Palatine, Ill.
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O041105E   Eulogizing the left
 

By Deborah Simmons

Donna Brazile gave the Democratic Party her best shot in 2000. Mary Beth Cahill did the same this presidential election year. In the end, their candidates wound up with the short sticks. Will the 2008 Democratic nominee hire a woman to run his presidential campaign? Or is the question this: Will the 2008 Democratic nominee hire a woman to run her presidential campaign?
    John Kerry pulled out all the predictable stops after he discovered Howard Dean's loco motives were losing steam. He said all the right things to keep Democrats happy, and, in a true redux of 2000, hired a woman (the inexhaustibly thorough Ms. Cahill) to head up Team Kerry. Mr. Kerry stumbled at crossroads of his own choosing, even thinking he was making the right last-ditch efforts by selecting Jesse Jackson and Bruce Springsteen as he ran arm-in-arm with them toward the White House.
    But Mr. Kerry's colorful gestures backfired, proving he is not only out of touch with Democrats, but that he failed to win over the heart and soul of America — mainstream voters.
    If you are among those who thought the Babe had actually cursed the Boston Red Sox, then what about the Kennedy dynasty? Not since John F. Kennedy has America chosen a man from Massachusetts as president. The ghosts of Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas and JFK's baby brother — Edward, the senior senator from Massachusetts — continue to haunt the Democrats.
    American voters did on Wednesday what they always have done: They went into the booth, touched their wallets and then voted their conscience.
    The Kennedy touch is gone. The patriarch of that family leads a lengthy list of prominent liberal folk who lost on Tuesday. The very morals and values they bashed and brushed aside four years ago came back to haunt them.
    The biggest losers of course are the Democratic candidates themselves, but right behind them is Michael Moore. He — and his kind — tried their best to exploit "Fahrenheit 9/11" as the antithesis to "The Passion of the Christ." But Evangelical Christians, Jews and Catholics kept the faith and voted Bush-Cheney.
    And there is George Soros. He's the Hungarian-born billionaire who, two years ago, began letting the world know that his ultimate goal in 2004 was to kick George W. Bush out of the White House, saying it was "a matter of life and death." Mr. Soros even said he was willing to spend himself into the poor house if that "guaranteed" ousting Mr. Bush. Handing out fists full of millions, he bought the Democratic Party — and what they wrought was a candidate who could no more articulate where he stood on critical issues than a colicky baby could explain why she's wailing.
    Money can buy schleps, hacks, even votes. But it didn't buy victory.
    Also on the loser list is Bill Clinton, who rolled out of his sickbed to solicit black folk in Philly and downhome votes in Arkansas.
    In line behind America's first "black" president are the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whose black-church-hopping contingency failed to shame Christians.
    The labor unions are losers, too. Big losers. In Virginia, for instance, union voters in that right-to-work state gave Mr. Kerry a 2-to-1 spread over Mr. Bush, but the Bush-Cheney ticket prevailed.
    Keepers of the faith also made losers of that oxymoron same-sex "marriage," with voters in 11 states delivering a resounding "no" to proponents.
    As for the entertainment folk, whether they live on the Left Coast or align themselves with the East Coast Elite, suffice it to say the whole lot of them bombed — from the anti-Bush rallies manufactured by Ben "Box-office Failure" Affleck and Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen to the anti-Bush rants of Whoopi "Bicoastal" Goldberg and Barbra "Stage Fright" Streisand.
    Indeed, the lefties are in the role cast in 2000: Loser.
    Now they have taken up the same mantra: The Bushes must make nice with the anti-Bushes.
    The Democrats — the nonbelievers — still don't get it. John F. Kerry may indeed be a distant cousin of Britain's Queen Liz and he can lay claim to more blue blood (and blue states) than Mr. Bush. But America is not a monarchy. The dynasty is no more.
    On the immediate horizon for the Democrats, now that Mr. Kerry has conceded, is some serious soul-searching. But not to egg Mr. Bush into bridging the partisan divide, however. But instead to move on their own way toward America's faithful mainstream.
    Already, many of them are trying to conjure up the year of the woman: Hillary Clinton, 2008. If that indeed becomes the case, though, it will be because of divine intervention, not a cloudy crystal ball.
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R041107E   Bush and the high court

In addition to President Bush's resounding electoral triumph, his expansive coattails also will likely have a long-reverberating political impact upon the Senate. That potent combination has understandably generated speculation that the president's second term could include a long-term transformational realignment of the Supreme Court.
    Had Mr. Bush lost the election, he would have become only the second president to serve at least one full term without the opportunity of nominating a Supreme Court justice. (Jimmy Carter was the first.) Now Mr. Bush seems poised to make perhaps three such appointments in his second term, and as many as four — or more.
    Of immediate concern is Chief Justice William Rehnquist's battle with thyroid cancer. Related health problems may lead the 80-year-old jurist, whom Richard Nixon nominated in 1971 and whom Ronald Reagan elevated to chief justice in 1986, to retire earlier than he intended. Justice John Paul Stevens, who has survived prostate cancer, is 84 years old, while Sandra Day O'Connor, a breast-cancer survivor, will celebrate her 75th birthday in March. The average age of the nine justices exceeds 70 years. That's about three years greater than the average age of the nine justices when Mr. Reagan, who eventually appointed a chief justice and filled three associate justice vacancies, was inaugurated in 1981.
    Concerning today's average justice age of 70 years, 7 months: A study by John Yoo (a former Justice Department official under Mr. Bush who is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley) revealed that over the past century Supreme Court justices retired at the average age of 71, following an average tenure of 14 years. The ages and court tenures of Justices Rehnquist, Stevens and O'Connor already significantly exceed those averages. Meanwhile, sometime during Mr. Bush's second term, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (71 and a colon-cancer survivor), Antonin Scalia (68) and Anthony Kennedy (68) will each satisfy these average criteria for retirement. Justice Stephen Breyer will turn 70 during Mr. Bush's second term, while Justice David Souter will be 69 in 2008. Justice Clarence Thomas, 56, qualifies as the court's youngster.
    If Father Time augurs for a spate of Supreme Court nomination opportunities, then the Republicans' vastly improved Senate position — indispensably assisted by the president's extraordinarily long coattails — suggests an easier path toward confirmation. To be sure, there are no guarantees, as long as Democrats persist in pursuing filibusters to block up-or-down votes in the Senate. Nevertheless, with 55 GOP senators in the next Congress, Mr. Bush's party will be four votes closer to the 60 needed to thwart filibusters than it was before Tuesday's election.
    How those gains were achieved is well worth recounting. Mr. Bush's 22-point victory margin in South Dakota, for example, helped Republican John Thune narrowly defeat Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, the three-term Democratic incumbent who played the role of chief obstructionist throughout the president's first term — particularly by leading those filibusters against Mr. Bush's appellate-court nominees. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's impressive victory margins in five Southern states (Georgia, 18 points; South Carolina, 17; Louisiana, 15; North Carolina, 13; and Florida, 5) were instrumental in helping the Republican candidates capture all five of those states' Senate seats, all of which were vacated by retiring Democrats. The president's extraordinary popularity in Kentucky and Alaska, where he racked up respective victory margins of 20 and 27 percentage points, significantly helped GOP Senate incumbents achieve narrow victories of 2 and 4 points, respectively.
    Late in the presidential campaign, the Supreme Court became a major issue. Voters were reminded that Mr. Bush had expressed solid agreement in 2000 with the conservative judicial philosophy of Justices Scalia and Thomas. John Kerry pledged to apply an abortion litmus test to his nominees. So, voters knew the stakes and the candidates' views. Nor was the 2004 election the first in which Mr. Bush attacked Senate Democrats for their tactics preventing up-or-down votes on his judicial nominees. In 2002, the president and Republicans made those tactics an issue in the campaign against the late Paul Wellstone, whose seat following his untimely death was captured that year by the GOP. Incumbent Democratic Sens. Jean Carnahan and Max Cleland lost their seats in 2002 partly due to the judicial-nomination issue.
    During the next Congress, when the Senate will consider dozens of appellate-court nominations and perhaps one or more Supreme Court nominations, Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Jon Corzine of New Jersey would do well to consider the electoral fates of Mr. Daschle, Mr. Cleland and Mrs. Carnahan. All four won their first terms with 50 percent or less of the vote in 2000; all disgracefully voted to filibuster the appellate-court nomination of Miguel Estrada; and all face voters in 2006.
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O041105C    Virtuous victory . . .
 

By Cal Thomas

President George W. Bush beat Ronald Reagan, scoring a higher popular vote than the 40th president. There will be no talk about a "minority" president this time, or of hanging chads, because this is the first presidential election since 1988 in which the winner received a clear majority.
    For conservatives, perhaps the sweetest result was the defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, who consistently thwarted legislation and court nominees he didn't like. By adding four Senate seats, Republicans have improved their chances of reforming Social Security, the indecipherable tax code and health care. The Bush administration may also have the opportunity to outperform Mr. Reagan (and George Bush 41) by naming a number of solid conservatives to the Supreme Court, which would extend this president's influence for decades.
    The Democrats lost more than the election. After spending record amounts of money, their numerous "527" groups, their rock stars, their media friends — particularly CBS News and the New York Times, both of which prostituted themselves for the Kerry-Edwards campaign — Democrats must rethink their embrace of the far-left wing of the party and find someone in the "moderate" mold of Bill Clinton.
    Democrats also lost an important social issue — same-sex "marriage." In 11 states where the issue was on the ballot, it was defeated (even in liberal Oregon) by wide margins, again proving that when the people, and not the courts, decide these things, the people have a different view than unelected federal judges. It appears many of the 4 million Evangelical Christians who sat out the 2000 election turned out for this one and mostly voted for President Bush and against same-sex "marriage."
    The National Rifle Association again demonstrated its ability to turn out voters who care about the right to keep and bear arms. Of the 18 candidates endorsed by the NRA for the Senate, 14 won for a net gain of four pro-gun Senate seats. In the House, the NRA endorsed 251 candidates, of which 241 won. On the other side, gun-control advocates backed Tom Daschle, who lost, and they targeted for defeat Sens. "Kit" Bond and Arlen Specter, both of whom won.
    Exit polls were the scandal of this election. They were wrong. The exit polls were leaked to the media midday Tuesday. Perhaps that's because they "seemed" to favor Mr. Kerry and many in the media gleefully reported them in hopes it might discourage people who had not yet voted.
    The president now will have the power and the responsibility to pursue several objectives, most importantly the war in Iraq, as part of the overall war on terrorism. Look for a major operation to root out insurgents in Fallujah. What will Osama bin Laden's minions do now? If they stage another terror attack in the United States, how will the president respond? Will he find, arrest and deport those among us who are not of us?
    The president has promised to reform the indecipherable tax code and Social Security, positions the Democrats regularly demagogue though they know the programs cannot continue as currently constituted.
    Then there is the Supreme Court. With the lessons of Ronald Reagan (Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy) and the elder George Bush (David Souter) — judges sold as conservatives and turned moderate — will the president nominate genuine conservatives who believe the Constitution is fine as written and does not need to be bent to fit of contemporary cultural trends?
    With Mr. Daschle gone, will nominees more easily get past obstructionist Democrats? Will the Senate write new rules at the start of the next Congress to require only a majority vote to confirm judges, instead of the impossible "supermajority" of 60, which guarantees frustration and thwarting of majority will?
    For conservatives, part of this election's thrill was the long faces it must have given filmmaker Michael Moore, rockers like Bruce Springsteen, billionaire George Soros, MoveOn.org and the rest of the left-wing rabble.
    Democrats should realize the McGovern-Mondale-Dukakis-Kerry wing of the Democrat Party cannot win. Will they finally wake up, or will they give into temptation and nominate Hillary Clinton in 2008?
    The brain trust at the White House, led by Karl Rove, is entitled to celebrate, but they won't gloat, at least in public. This was one of those turning point elections. Now it's up to Mr. Bush to turn things to make his points.
 
    Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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O041105C   'Partisan' is what IRS says it is
 

By Clarence Page

Leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were no more delighted to receive a stern letter from the Internal Revenue Service than anybody else would be, especially a month before Election Day.
    The organization announced last week that the IRS was investigating the group after its chairman, Julian Bond, criticized President Bush at the NAACP's annual convention in Philadelphia in July. An "Information Document Request" from the IRS said Mr. Bond in his remarks "condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush on education, the economy and the war in Iraq."
    Mr. Bond denounced the IRS inquiry as "Nixonian," a reference to President Richard Nixon's ordering IRS audits to harass his "enemies list" of critics, including journalists and liberal civil rights activists.
    Indeed, the resemblance of the current inquiry to those Watergate scandal days is striking. NAACP leaders charge the IRS letter was timed to intimidate the group from carrying out get-out-the-vote activities. IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson, a Bush appointee, calls that charge "repugnant and groundless."
    Nevertheless, his office's explanations raise larger questions. Under IRS rules, tax-exempt groups may be political as long as they are not "partisan." The IRS likes to remain ambiguous on the difference between the two, saying it will only prosecute egregious violations. That leaves it to the rest of us to wonder just how egregious such activities have to be.
    In Mr. Bond's speech, which mentioned George Bush 13 times, he lashed out at the president's judicial appointments, ridiculed his "tax giveaways for the rich" and encouraged black people to vote, saying, "We know that if whites and nonwhites vote in the same percentages as they did in 2000, Bush will be re-defeated by 3 million votes."
    OK, it's no secret Mr. Bush and the NAACP get along about as well as Alcoholics Anonymous and the national liquor lobby. Mr. Bush described his relationship with current NAACP leaders last summer as "basically nonexistent." He criticized "the rhetoric and the names they've called me" and said he would reach out to individual members in other ways.
    Mr. Bond's speech would not have been welcome at this year's Republican National Convention, but a lot of things wouldn't. Does that make the speech partisan? One person's partisanship is simply another person's truth-telling.
    The IRS spent a decade investigating religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. The group later prevailed in a lawsuit, but Mr. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network paid an IRS fine for its involvement in his 1988 presidential campaign.
    On the other hand, President Bush spoke to the National Urban League's convention last summer after rebuffing the NAACP. IRS rules say a political candidate may speak before a nonprofit organization "only in a noncandidate capacity," cannot make "any mention of the fact that the individual is a candidate for public office" and must make sure "no campaign activity occurs in connection with the candidate's attendance."
    Yet, it should come as no surprise Mr. Bush did mention his candidacy. He also proudly declared, "I'm here to ask for your vote." But, only in a strictly nonpartisan way, I am sure.
    In the past, activist preachers and lay people have felt free to criticize or endorse politicians without jeopardizing the tax-exempt status of their churches or houses of worship as long as they did so as individuals, not as spokespersons for their churches or organizations.
    But, an IRS "fact sheet" the agency provided the day after the NAACP announcement raises questions about whether that old standard still holds. "Even activities that encourage people to vote for or against a particular candidate on the basis of nonpartisan criteria violate the political campaign prohibition," it says. That's about as clear as the alphabet soup that usually pours out of government bureaus.
    The IRS also announced it was investigating about 60 charities, churches and other tax-exempt groups for potentially breaking federal rules barring them from partisan political activity.
    What does "partisan" mean? Exactly what the IRS says it does — whatever that is.
 
    Clarence Page is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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O041107C   Opportunities ahead
 

By Oliver North

The American people spoke loud and clear Tuesday and the so-called mainstream media still haven't heard them. With nearly 60 million, President Bush received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history.
    It is a clear mandate for a popular president to continue defending this country from terrorist enemies, strengthen our intelligence operations, continue the progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, reduce the tax burden on families and small businesses, reform Social Security and establish public policies reflecting the moral virtues that value human life and the sanctity of marriage.
    Although nearly 60 percent of registered voters cast their ballots Tuesday, the Kerry team hoped for a higher turnout. With help from their Hollywood friends, they worked hard to energize young voters and college students who they hoped would be the "800-pound gorilla" voting bloc.
    The Kerry team repeated their lie day in and day out that, under a second Bush term, a military draft was imminent and the only way for students to legally dodge the draft was to vote for John Kerry.
    That would do it, Mr. Kerry thought. The way to win this election was to turn John Kennedy's admonition on its head and appeal to the weak and cowardly, who ask only what their country can do for them.
    But the students didn't turn out. Instead, millions of Americans braved rain, snow and blazing sun to vote for their commander in chief, wanting their voice to counter Mr. Kerry's appeal to craven pessimists. In some precincts, voters waited for hours.
    Pundits who provided us with Election Day analysis believed these long lines, coupled with fatally flawed exit polls, would redound to the benefit of John Kerry — the antiwar candidate who would sound the call for retreat.
    But the Americans who waited in line to cast their votes are the quiet patriots who live in small towns and rural communities in the so-called "Red States." For them, standing in line is not the burden the elite media, who prize instant gratification, make it out to be. After all, these are the people who stand in line at Wal Marts for hunting and fishing licenses. They stand in line on Sundays at church to shake hands with the minister or receive Communion. And these are the same people who formed long lines in mid-September 2001 to give blood, donate time and energy, sift through rubble, put out fires, distribute Bibles and blankets and pour coffee.
    The people who formed those long lines at the polling places on Tuesday are the friends, family and neighbors of those young people who formed lines in 2001 out the doors of the Army and Marine Corps recruiting offices.
    On Tuesday, these quiet patriots came to the defense of their commander in chief; they came out to support the troops by casting a vote for the man in whom the troops put their faith.
    So now President Bush will take his 58-million-vote mandate — more than any candidate for president has ever received — and begin working on the opportunities ahead. "I've earned capital in this election and I'm going to spend it," the president said at his first postelection news conference Thursday.
    The president will use that capital to continue working toward peace and stability in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East. While Mr. Bush prepared for his second term in Washington, U.S. forces in Iraq readied an offensive in Fallujah to kill or capture the remaining terrorists in that city and provide stability in anticipation of the next year's national elections.
    With Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat near death, a new opportunity exists in the Middle East to bring peace to the region. President Bush said he will "continue to work for a free Palestinian state that's at peace with Israel."
    Mr. Bush also has many opportunities at home. Conventional wisdom holds that during the next four years as many as three seats could open on the Supreme Court.
    During Mr. Bush's first term, Democrats waged an aggressive, obstructionist campaign against his judicial nominees. If they are serious about wanting a bipartisan spirit of cooperation in Washington, Democrats must welcome jurists who value human life, the sanctity of marriage and our Judeo-Christian heritage.
    Tax relief and tax code simplification are high on the president's agenda and would be much needed improvements. Reform of the Social Security system is an issue no politician has had the courage to undertake seriously. Mr. Bush is about to embark on a historic effort to improve our retirement system and will need the cooperation of Democrats who, even in this latest campaign, tried to use it as a scare tactic and a wedge issue.
    The people have spoken, they've given our president a mandate, and he is ready to go to work on their behalf.
    The only remaining question: Have the Democrats learned their lesson, and are they ready to help President Bush, or will they simply appoint new obstructionists to replace the old ones like Tom Daschle and Terry McAuliffe?
 
    Oliver North is a nationally syndicated columnist and the founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance.
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M041107C    Among the losers
 

By Arnold Beichman

After the East German people's uprising against Soviet occupation on June 17, 1953, the Communist Writers Union distributed leaflets throughout the Soviet zone saying the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could win it back only by redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier in that case, asked the sardonic German communist playwright Berthold Brecht, for the government to dissolve the people and elect another people in their stead?
    I was reminded of that biting Brechtian quip as I read the postmortem election lamentation of Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. His column reflected the bitter disappointment of media elites like Peter Jennings and Dan Rather with the American people. For them, the American voter had once more misbehaved by voting for a president of whom the media elites disapproved. The American voter had elected as president of the United States a man the media elites tried to bring down and, in the case of Dan Blather, with forged documents that revealed nothing except Blather's gullibility and hatred of President Bush.
    How can CBS continue to keep Dan Blather showing his face nightly? The New York Times fired a reporter who sullied its reputation forever and with him fired the paper's top executives. But CBS treats its star reporter, who played fast and loose with the truth, with star billing. Has CBS no shame?
    Mr. Kristof, the New York Times moralist in chief, is aghast that, as he wrote, "millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses... ended up voting — utterly against their own interests — for Republican candidates." Only the Democratic Party, says Mr. Kristof, has the interests of the American people at heart, implying the American people just are too stupid to realize that.
    Even worse are these demagogic words: "One of the Republican Party's major successes over the last few decades has been to persuade many of the working poor to vote for tax breaks for millionaires." In other words, those stupid, honky American workers are so dumb they are unaware of their own electoral stupidity. The arrogance of Mr. Kristof's condemnation is breathtaking.
    If we accept Mr. Kristof's reasoning, those millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses did not think through their decision to vote for Mr. Bush as Mr. Kristof thought through his decision to oppose the president. If you vote for Democrats, you vote your own interests. If you vote Republican, you vote against your own interests but are too dim-witted to realize it.
    So what would Mr. Kristof do with these people who preferred Ronald Reagan for two terms and have now elected — horrors — George W. Bush to a second term? Obviously, follow the formula of Berthold Brecht and elect another people.
 
    Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for The Washington Times. His updated biography "Herman Wouk, the Novelist as Social Historian," has just been published.
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R041107C   A narrow escape
 

By Thomas Sowell

Although more people voted for President Bush than for any other president in American history, it was still a narrow victory — and a narrow escape for this great nation.
    Can you imagine what it would be like with a Massachusetts liberal filling the federal courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, with liberal judges who would turn more criminals loose for decades to come, as well as repeatedly overruling the voting public's right to govern itself on such issues as same-sex "marriage"?
    With so many elderly Supreme Court justices, choosing their successors will be of historic consequence. The consequences could be tragic if the present justices are replaced with more justices who think their place is to impose their own pet notions or — worse yet — to be guided by what is in fashion in other countries rather than what is set forth in the United States Constitution they are sworn to uphold.
    President Bush has made some excellent judicial nominations that have been stymied by Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Perhaps Mr. Daschle's defeat at the polls will send a message to other Senate Democrats that partisan obstruction is not what the voters want.
    This election's implications reach beyond the government. The election demonstrates mainstream media have lost their power to control what the public will and will not know. Without alternative media like talk radio, Fox News and the Internet, the public would have heard only pro-Kerry spin disguised as news.
    Dan Rather's forged documents were the tip of the iceberg. Ted Koppel's contrived "ambush journalism" against John O'Neill of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth was more clever, but no less sleazy. Chris Matthews shouting down and browbeating Michelle Malkin on "Hardball" wasn't his finest hour, either. Other examples abound.
    Double standards in the media have long been applied to everything from reporting unemployment statistics to demanding to see the candidates' military records.
    When unemployment was 5.4 percent during the Clinton administration, it was hailed as a great achievement. But the very same unemployment rate has been treated as a disaster under President Bush.
    Unsubstantiated charges that Republicans tried to suppress voters likely to vote against them have been trumpeted through the media. But the documented facts that Democrats tried to stop the Florida count of absentee ballots of military personnel overseas in 2000, and tried to stop Ralph Nader from getting on the ballot this year, received very little mention.
    Unsubstantiated rumors were enough to keep the media howling after Mr. Bush for months, demanding more information about his military service, even after he signed the official form releasing all his military records to the public. Sen. John Kerry never signed that form but this was passed over in utter silence.
    No one even raised the obvious question as to why Lt. Kerry's honorable discharge from the Navy was issued during the Carter administration, though his service ended earlier. Was his original discharge not honorable but only made "honorable" retroactively under the Democrats?
    We don't know and we will never know, so long as the media think their job is to filter and spin for their own causes and candidates, rather than inform the public and let it decide.
    Some say the Democrats will have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what they are doing wrong, if they want to regain public support. The time is long overdue for the mainstream media to do the same.
    As the aging anchors on network news retire and are replaced by younger people not steeped in the heady sense of power the media acquired during the Vietnam War and Watergate, maybe there will be more emphasis on news in the newsrooms.
    The election results spared us the worst. But it will take some rethinking in a lot of places for us to achieve the best.
 
    Thomas Sowell is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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