The controversial issues or policies are:

1. Affirmative Action
2. Campaign Reform
3. Census 2000 (the use of statistical sampling)
4. Equal Pay for Equal Work (to get women equal pay with men)
5. Sexual Harassment laws under Title IX
6. Rigged Referenda (in states with an Initiative process)
7. Should Hate Crime Laws Include Sexual Orientation

For this reason, we need long-lived articles from magazines or journals, which themselves are linked to other long-lived articles. In short, we need a long-term memory.

With the news-cycle growing shorter and shorter, with fast-breaking news, and with breathless eye-accounts (or images), our minds are bombarded with a mass of impressions during every waking moment. There is important "stuff" in those impressions but the Mainstream Media doesn't seem to be able to sort out the important material from the unimportant. So how do we search out the good reporting that does go on with reference to important topics. The answer is we have to look for it. I might also add that if we don't find it, we may have to write it ourselves.

If our democracy is to prosper, we need a well-informed electorate. We need to identify those topics of current and future importance, and we need to begin accumulating good information on those topics. This portal and the links in this portal are just the beginning. We have to expand the number of topics and we have to expand the amount of good information we have on those topics.

Earlier this year, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court made, what in my judgement were extremely poor decisions. In March, the Fourth Circuit in Virginia, those portions of Title IX having to do with the Violence Against Women Act, were declared unconstitutional. Two months earlier,in January, the Supreme Court held that the people of a state which has the initiative process cannot protect themselves against professional initiative corporations.

In March, 1999, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals declared 7 to 4 that Violence Against Women portions of Title IX were unconstitutional. These were the sections of Title IX that allowed rape victims to sue their attackers because their civil rights were violated. For years rape victims had been given short shrift in state courts. Finally, enough pressure was placed on Congress to incorporate the Violence Against Women Act into the Title IX law. The constitutional basis was the right congress to regulate interstate commerce, hence a national law. The Fourth Circuit ruling would remove the federal protection and move rape cases back to the states. At the present time this ruling is only binding in the states covered by the Fourth Circuit: Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

This was the first case under the Violence Against Women Act that reached the Appeals Court level and followed the May 1996 decision of District Court judge Jackson L. Kiser of the Western District of Virginia to dismiss a case filed under the Act. However, nearly a dozen district courts across the country have taken a broader view of the Congress's ability to regulate interstate commerce. It is expected the Appeals Court decision will be appealed to the Supreme Court. The defendants in this case were represented by the Center for Individual Rights (see WIP03).

In January 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the nullification of a Colorado state law limiting professional initiative companies from paying people to collect signatures opposing or supporting specific state referenda on initiatives before the Colorado voters. This decision had far-reaching effects as twenty-four states, nearly all of them in the Midwest and West provide for referendums, and a number of these initiatives, particularly those in the State of California, have had major impact upon the politics of many other states in the Union.

The battlelines between the states attempting to protect the referendum process in their states and the professional initiative companies was clearly drawn in this case, and the states lost. Before the January decision, the Council of State governments had filed a brief before the Court on behalf of the State of Colorado saying that the

According to an October 1998 article by Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times, the

For some reason or another, the role of professional initiative companies in the support or opposition to a particular referendum in a state has been ignored by the Mainstream Media. Where does the money come from to pay these companies and the workers they have collecting signatures? Have the operations of these companies affected the initiatives proposed in various states, and in the votes on these initiatives in the elections? What sides won and what sides lost? Who and what is the National Voter Outreach, Inc. company? Is is a corporation that has found a valuable niche for itself or does it have a larger agenda?

How did the American Constitutional Law Foundation become involved in the Colorado case? Who funds the Foundation and what kinds of cases is the Foundation involved in? In something so vital to the civil rights of the citizens of twenty-four states, including our largest state, California, shouldn't we know a lot more about this issue than we presently know? Shouldn't we know a lot more about the organizations involved in this issue than we presently know? For example, where is the American Constitutional Law Foundation based and who are its members?