U.S. Rep. Steve King

Reid is facing calls from Republicans to step down for his comments regarding then-candidate Barack Obama revealed in a book chronicling the 2008 campaign. According to the book, Reid said the country “was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’”

Many Republicans point to Reid’s criticism of then Republican Senate Leader Trent Lott in 2002 as reason for Reid to resign. Lott got himself in hot water by telling a crowd that a Strom Thurmond presidency would have prevented “all these problems over all these years.” Thurmond had based his presidential campaign largely on an explicit racial segregation platform.

King said in an interview with The Talk Radio News Service that he has no problem with what Reid said, since it was the truth.

“Did anybody ask the question ‘Did he tell the truth?’ Was what he said objective truth or was it an opinion?” King said. “He essentially said that President Obama is light skinned and doesn’t have an accent unless he wants one. That seems to be true to me, although I’ve never heard him with an accent of any kind.”

His problem is that Reid called on Lott to resign, so that standard should be applied to Reid.

“He should be held accountable for hypocrisy,” King said. “But not for what he said.”

King seemed to take the most offense to statements made in Reid’s defense by the Rev. Al Sharpton, saying the Civil Rights leader was able to defend Reid and not Lott because “Harry Reid has a long record of promoting Civil Rights.”

“So therefore you couldn’t call Harry Reid a racist for making a statement that was a little out of taste,” King said. “But they would argue that Trent Lott has not jumped on all the Affirmative Action agendas apparently that Harry Reid has, so therefore you can label him a racist with a clear conscience. That’s an abhorrent philosophy to me. That you can declare someone to be a racist because somehow Al Sharpton or anyone else can divine within the words spoken or the tone or the inflection or what’s not spoken that someone is a racist.”

But as The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel pointed out, the difference between Reid and Lott’s comments goes much deeper than King suggests.

When Lott made his remarks – unlike Reid, he did it in front of video cameras – he added that a Thurmond presidency would have prevented “all these problems over all these years.” Lott’s office was unable to explain what “all these problems” were. In the following days, two more instances of Lott waxing nostalgiac about Thurmond’s segregationist 1948 presidential bid surfaced. By comparison, Republicans like [RNC Chairman Michael] Steele have not produced more evidence of Reid racial slip-ups, focusing instead on his hypocrisy for criticizing Lott in 2002.

Here is King’s interview with The Talk Radio News Service:

The four mental health institutions that serve Iowa each have specific geographic regions of the state from which they draw general adults in need of care. In addition, each facility has a specialized area of care that serves patients in an even larger area.

DHS Director Charles Krogmeier has recommended the state close the Mental Health Institute (MHI) in Mount Pleasant and shift its responsibility to a facility in Independence, more than 100 miles away in Buchanan County.

“What we have tried to say in our report, and I know the task force hit on this fairly hard in their report, is that this discussion or this decision needs to be made in the context of ‘What should the overall mental health delivery system in Iowa look like? What are the needs? Where are the services? What are the gaps? And, how do the [mental health institutes] fit into that overall discussion?’ I think they are part of it, but how much they are a part of it is the question,” Krogmeier said on a conference call with reporters.

Former Democratic state Rep. Ro Foege served as chairman of a 12-member task force that evaluated, toured and held public meetings in each of the four communities with a mental health facility — Mount Pleasant, Independence, Clarinda and Cherokee. Following deliberations, the task force concluded that none of the facilities should be immediately closed. Instead, the members of the task force have advocated the four should remain open until the state has fully explored the existing system — the people it serves, public safety, total costs and best practices.

“I think the task force took a very sincere and hard look at this and decided that it just couldn’t recommend closing one of these facilities at this point,” Foege said in an interview with The Iowa Independent. “We need to make sure there are services available.

“The part that is very important is that the state, I believe, needs to provide a safety net, and that is what these four mental health institutes have been. We need to make sure that the safety net remains in place.”

Had it not been for the mandate, which was included in the Human Services appropriations bill last year, Krogmeier said closing Mount Pleasant would not be a position he would take. Outside of presenting the plan, he also does not plan to advocate the closing to members of the legislature.

“The cost of any of these services is predominately staff, drugs and feeding and housing the population. If you keep the population the same, and you provide all the same services, your costs are going to be about the same,” he said. “There are some marginal cost savings … but it is not huge.”

If the legislature elects to move forward on closing Mount Pleasant, the cost savings achieved will depend if existing personnel are consolidated into a facility in Independence, due to collective bargaining agreements that provide for relocation reimbursements. The Department of Human Services also shares administrative and support costs with the Iowa Department of Corrections, which operates a medium-security correctional facility on the Mount Pleasant campus. The shared costs associated with the DOC in fiscal year 2011 are estimated to be $1.4 million. Presumably, much of that cost would be reabsorbed by the Department of Corrections.

The department’s recommendation also anticipates that the Department of Corrections would begin to utilize the space vacated in Mount Pleasant following the move. Because the task force found that collaborative efforts and communication should continue between the state departments of Human Services, Corrections and Education and the Judicial Branch, Foege is hopeful that some of the existing personnel at the mental health institute could be utilized within the expanded correctional facilities.

Both men also point to community-based delivery changes that have been made in Minnesota as possible opportunities that Iowa should explore. Switching to smaller facilities would also allow the state to gain federal appropriations for the care it provides.

“[What we were asked to do] is quite different than looking at the overall system and the kinds of care that need to be provided, and how best we provide those,” Krogmeier said. “That’s where we would like to see the policy-makers go. We would like to seriously have that discussion and move the state in that direction. Whether we physically have four or three MHIs in that whole discussion is a relatively small issue — although it is very important to those communities, and very important to our employees at those locations. But when you frame this in terms of what should the mental health system look like, [the MHIs] are just one piece.”

The Mount Pleasant facility is the oldest of the four state-run facilities that serve individuals affected by mental illness. (Photo courtesy of the IAGenWeb Project.)

The legislature mandated that DHS recommend which of Iowa’s four mental health institutes should be closed without loss of services.

A 12-member task force, however, was also tasked with reviewing the four institutes. That report, which recommends that the state not close any facility until existing services can be maintained, isn’t expected to be released until late Monday.

“The quality of service at the [Mental Health Institute] in Mount Pleasant is beyond question and I want everyone to know that this recommendation is no reflection whatsoever on the dedication and expertise of our staff, which is outstanding,” said Charles Krogmeier, director of the Department of Human Services.

The department’s recommendation to close the Mount Pleasant facility, which shares its grounds with the medium-security Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility, appears to be primarily steeped in economic reasoning.

Krogmeier said he decided to recommend the closure that would cause the least economic fallout for staff and the community, the least disruption for families of patients, and the most opportunities for improving the mental health system. The exact impact on the state budget will depend on how legislators decide to close the facility, as well as how existing services are continued.

Ro Foege, who served as chairman of the task force, remains hopeful that some of the employees current in Mount Pleasant could continue their work within the correctional facility, which is not slated for closure. Mental health professionals in Mount Pleasant provide the only dual-diagnosis program — psychiatric and substance abuse — run by the state. Although substance abuse patients throughout the state come to Mount Pleasant for treatment, it’s primary service area is limited to 15 counties in southeast Iowa.

Krogmeier has indicated that such services could be moved to the mental health institute in Independence. Since the Mount Pleasant facility takes a wealth of cases from Polk and Linn counties, primarily through the correctional system, it remains unclear how much cost savings can be achieved in the realm of travel and time if such cases are moved to Independence in Buchanan County.

Both the DHS recommendation on closure and the task force were mandated by the legislature in May 2009.

“I’m sad to see that our Republican colleagues have resorted to fear tactics in a desperate attempt to preserve the dysfunctional, costly medical system that we have in this country today by claiming that our health reform bill will make cuts to Medicare and hurt seniors,” Harkin said in remarks on the Senate floor. “If that were true, why would the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, AARP and the Alliance for Retired Americans – groups that represent tens of millions of seniors – all support our bill? The truth is, our proposal will strengthen and preserve Medicare.”

Harkin was responding to U. S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who said proposed Medicare cuts in the health-care reform package would lead to quicker deaths for America’s senior citizens. The comment outraged Democrats, and even drew rebuke from Republican lawmakers. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Coburn’s statement was untrue but that he had every right to say it.

According to Politifact, the Pulitzer-Prize winning site run by the staff of the St. Petersburg Times, a House version of the bill does not directly trim Medicare benefits but instead proposes ways to slow or eliminate some Medicare spending. They concluded that it is likely that changes could lead to reduced benefits, particularly for people in the Advantage program, which is a portion of Medicare run by private insurers.

After admitting on live television that he has “lived off the public tit” for decades as a member of congress, he attracted the attention of several satirical Web sites.

The Onion ‘reports’ that comments from Iowa’s senior senator are hurting Republican congressmen’s chances of attracting women at bars:

“Historically, Republicans have faced little opposition from willing and easily impressed single females, but Sen. Grassley’s untoward behavior poses a significant threat to the status quo,” Republican strategist Stanley Schilling said. “Whether because of his inappropriate remarks on the [dance] floor, or his stubborn unwillingness to take no for an answer, Sen. Grassley, frankly, has few real allies in either party at this point.”

Meanwhile, the blog Wonkette said, “This man was born to use the expression ‘living off the public tit’ on television at least once in his desperate, confusing life. Now he should rest in his corn fields for a bit, while we wait for the day.”

Roxanne Conlin, one of the Democrats hoping to unseat him next year, also jumped into the fray, writing on the Huffington Post that it’s “time to wean Grassley.”

The video of Grassley’s comment is below.

The four mental health institutions that serve Iowa each have specific geographic regions of the state from which they draw general adults in need of care. In addition, each facility has a specialized area of care that serves patients in an even larger area.

“The people who have been named to this task force: None of them are current legislators,” said Ro Foege, a former state representative from Mt. Vernon with deep roots in social services who has been chosen to serve as the group’s chairman. “They are all just people, and they are all stakeholders in mental health services in Iowa. … I think the make-up of the group was very thoughtfully done.”

Iowa currently has four state-run mental health institutions, one basically in each geographic quadrant of the state in or near the communities of Mount Pleasant, Independence, Clarinda and Cherokee. The task force, which has already begun meeting, will soon tour each of the facilities and accept comment from their neighboring communities.

The task force and the Department of Human Services, as charged by the legislature, is to submit a proposal on closing one of the facilities and consolidating the services provided at other state mental health institutions. Such consolidation, however, must, according to the legislature, provide the same level of services and the same number of beds as currently exists between the four locations.

“My interest is that maybe we need to look at not just the numbers of beds, but the level of service,” Foege said, making clear that he was speaking for himself and not as the chairman of the task force. “We may in fact, eventually, just as been done throughout the history of mental health service, reduce the number of beds, but actually increase availability and access to mental health services.”

As an example, Foege speculated that the dual-diagnosis program, which provides treatment for individuals who are afflicted with both mental illness and substance abuse, might be moved to a more community-based option that would be located in the communities that provide the largest segments of that population at the facility.

Ro Foege was named chairman of the 12-member task force

“Again, this is just speculation, and I don’t know the answers yet,” Foege, who has worked at least two of the state institutions, said. “Is there something or a program that could be implemented on a county level that would provide services to that population rather than having them go to Mount Pleasant and into an institutionalized setting?”

The task is made especially difficult because each of the institutions have developed their own niche specialties within the mental health field. While Mount Pleasant provides the dual-diagnosis program, Clarinda is touted as a leader in providing psychiatric treatment to geriatric patients, and services the entire state in that area. Independence and Cherokee are both known for their work with adolescents and children, with each taking half of the state in terms of service area. In each of the specialty areas potential patients, often those whose illness is too complex and severe for care in-home or in other community-based facilities, are placed on waiting lists due to an already lacking amount of space.

Each facility also provides services to large geographic sections — ranging from 15 to 41 counties — as their specific service area for generalized adult illnesses. And, within those geographic regions, public-private partnerships have been formed, often with staff at the state facilities providing training and outreach to providers, who in turn provide mental health services in underserved communities throughout the state. From that perspective, the closing of any one of the state institutions would have consequences on a much larger scale than the individual communities where the facilities reside.

“We have a very serious responsibility to consumers, to members of the staff at the facilities and to the communities,” Foege said. “I don’t think anyone on the committee is taking this lightly.”

Because of the mix of individuals, many of whom have had direct and personal experiences with persons with mental illnesses, Foege said the task force is not only well positioned to look at the problem from a clinical and economic aspect, but to consider it “with a heart” to those individuals and families who will ultimately be directly impacted by the decisions that will be made.

“Just speaking for myself again,” he said, “I can envision going about its work and then passing on a recommendation not only that closing a facility isn’t appropriate or effective, but recommending the expansion of services.”

With full realization of the state’s economic realities and concern for job losses, however, communities aren’t taking any chances. Coalitions of organizations, ranging from concerned citizens to local chambers of commerce to county officials, are developing strategies to protect and defend their state-run facility.

“Cherokee … admits more patients than any other [mental health institute] facility in Iowa,” wrote Woodbury County supervisors in a letter to Foege and the task force “and the length of stay is less than average.”

The task force, according to Foege, plans to continue to meet from now until mid-November. During that time members will visit each site and speak with local stakeholders. November will be reserved for writing out the evaluation and presenting it to the Department of Human Services. It will be up to the department to select the facility and develop the plan as mandated by lawmakers. That report should be given to the legislature in mid- or late-December, weeks before the 2010 session begins.

A state task force is preparing to tour the facilities and meet with local residents in an attempt to evaluate levels of care and cost effectiveness. Specifically, the task force will need to consider if the state would benefit from closing one of the facilities, a duty steeped as deeply in history as it is in state economics.

Kirkbride, a founding member of the organization that would later become the American Psychiatric Association, promoted standardizing not only care for those with mental health issues, but for the architectural design of the facilities in which such persons would be housed. Kirkbride believed that surroundings played a large role in the treatment of those described at the time to be “insane” or “feeble-minded.”

Kirkbride buildings were often sprawling structures that would allow patients to be segregated first by gender and then by degree and intensity of illness. In particular, the philosophy related to the architecture believed that nature — fresh air, sunlight — was an important element to treating mental illness, and many of the asylums based on his philosophy were constructed well outside of urban areas and on large lots where residents would be required to help not only with facility maintenance, but with ground-keeping, farming and other tasks.

The end result was state purchases of large tracts of rural land and construction of hulking brick and mortar facilities. Some of the structures closely resemble castles of Old Europe.

Mount Pleasant Mental Health Institute

The facility in Mount Pleasant was the first built by the state. (Photo courtesy of the IAGenWeb Project)

The Mount Pleasant facility is the oldest of the four state-run facilities that serve individuals affected by mental illness. The state made its first appropriation for the location and erection of the facility in 1855. Kirkbride himself recommended Boston architect Jonathan Preston to design the structure. The 50,000-square foot building formally opened as “The Iowa Lunatic Asylum, Mount Pleasant” on March 6, 1861.

“This is first permanent building erected in the state,” a reporter for the Burlington Hawkeye wrote at the time. “It is of large size. We have not the exact dimensions before us, but it is sufficient to say that when fully completed it will accommodate between 300 and 400 patients and will compare creditably with similar structures in other states…

“Before diminishing the subject, we think simple justice to the Directors and builder, and to all parties concerned, under the circumstances, renders it proper for us to say something further in regard to this building and the manner in which the public have been expended upon it. When we look at its extent, at its massive walls and firm foundations that nothing short of an earthquake could move, at its innumerable rooms and dormitories, all the partition walls being of brick — at its miles of iron pipe for heating purposes, hot and cold water and gas — at is pipes and flues in every part of the building for purposes of ventilation — at its engine and boilers, kitchen and laundry, et cetera, et cetera, our wonder was that so much had been done for the sums appropriated by the State. … We hope, now that it is open and receiving patients, that all citizens of the State who can make it convenient to do so, will visit the Asylum. They will find it a very pleasant place to spend an hour or two, and, notwithstanding its grated windows, and unfortunate inmates, having a cheerful, orderly and happy look.”

Within a year, however, The Hawkeye, began to publish articles on the overcrowded conditions within the asylum, violence and skyrocketing expenses. (According to the American Medical Association, the facility had 11 miles of iron pipes, 425 rooms above the basement, 900 doors, 1,100 windows, a 2,100-foot Artesian well and cost the state $600,000 to construct.) The facility had treated nearly 1,100 people, many of them from other states, during its first 21 months of operation.

In those early years, all of Iowa’s facilities were used for long-term care. Many patients who entered the wards likely never again lived outside an asylum.

According to the Department of Human Services, peak capacity was reached in 1946 at more than 1,500 patients. Since that time, however, and with the invention of better medications and different therapies, most patients’ stays are between 30 and 120 days.

For some time the grounds have been shared by the Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison designed to provide treatment to male offenders with character disorders and substance abuse issues. In 1999, a separate facility opened for women offenders who also had such specialized needs.

The Mount Pleasant facility currently provides inpatient treatment to adults, and it is the only dual-diagnosis program — psychiatric and substance abuse — run by the state. Although substance abuse patients throughout the state come to Mount Pleasant for treatment, it’s primary service area is limited to 15 counties in southeast Iowa.

Independence Mental Health Institute

The facility in Independence was Iowa's second asylum, and the structure continues to be used for the same purpose today. (Photo courtesy of KirkbrideBuildings.com)

The second of Iowa’s facilities began in 1868 with a state allocation for land and structure in Independence. The state hired S. Shipman of Madison, Wis., to serve as the architect and the building was given an Italian flair, complete with a mansard roof. It was built from limestone quarries in Epworth, Farley and Anamosa, which was considered to be quite an extravagance despite its local availability, and contained several fire-prevention amenities.

Construction began in 1869, and a portion of the building was opened in 1873, although the entire structure was not opened until 1884. Full cost for the structure, which contained 24 wards and could hold 600 patients, neared $1 million — nearly twice the cost of the Mount Pleasant facility.

Originally known as the “Iowa Hospital for the Insane, Independence,” it is now called the Independence Mental Health Institute, and, according to the Department of Human Services, it provides inpatient psychiatric treatment for adults, adolescents and children. The facility’s specialty, however, is its work with children and adolescents.

This facility currently serves 28 counties in eastern and northeastern Iowa, and children and adolescents from 43 counties primarily to the east of I-35.

Clarinda Mental Health Institute

The Clarinda facility was built by the state in the late 1800s to help alleviate crowded conditions in the other two state hospitals. (Photo courtesy of KirkbrideBuildings.com)

The facility in Clarinda, originally named the “Clarinda Asylum for the Insane,” was began with state appropriations (of $50,000, although many more appropriations followed) in 1884 primarily to relieve over-crowding at the other two facilities. Construction began in July 1885 with plans from Des Moines architects William Foster and Henry F. Liebbe, and patients were accepted beginning in 1888. In the beginning, Clarinda was a male-only facility that sat on 513 acres. By 1933, according to the Clarinda Chamber of Commerce, the complex occupied 1.055 acres.

Clarinda, just like all four of Iowa’s facilities, has also been mentioned in conjunction with American eugenics, which was comprised primarily of compulsory sterilization laws for those deemed “mentally deficient” or criminal. Roughly 1,900 people were sterilized in Iowa, and, although the law allowing the procedure was passed in 1911, most of those occurred between 1941 and 1953, after the 1929 creation of a State Eugenics Board. The 1929 legislation called on the superintendents of state institutions to submit quarterly reports to the eugenics board that listed viable candidates for sterilization, which included members of the general public who were provided free legal counsel, according to author Nancy Ordover.

In 1980 the Clarinda Correctional Facility, a medium-security, all-male prison serving primarily chemically dependent, mentally retarded and socially inadequate offenders, was established on the grounds.

Today, the facility at Clarinda offers a wide range of diagnostic and treatment services through is Acute Psychiatric Program. It is also well-known for its geropsychiatric work, providing nursing home beds for individuals with mental illnesses such as Alzheimer’s. The acute program serves 15 counties in southwestern Iowa. The geriatric program serves the entire state and is the only one of its kind at the state-run facilities.

Cherokee Mental Health Institute

During the mid-1940s the Cherokee facility housed about 1,700 patients. (Photo courtesy KirkbrideBuildings.com)

Just six years after Clarinda opened, the state asked architect Liebbe to plan another hospital in western Iowa. The “Cherokee State Hospital for the Insane” opened in 1902 and was the last of Iowa’s large state-run mental hospitals. Similar to the Mount Pleasant facility, the hospital in Cherokee had a peak population of roughly 1,700 patients in the mid-1940s.

The Cherokee facility, like nearly all state hospitals at that time, was host mid-century to infamous lobotomist Walter Freeman. The man had perfected the technique of completing a lobotomy with a device similar to an ice pick that could be pushed through the thin bone in an individual’s eye sockets and into the brain. Freeman felt that this type of procedure could be especially helpful in the state-run asylums because it did not require drilling holes into the skull or a surgeon.

Freeman, who enjoyed the attention of the media and often invited reporters to watch his surgeries, was performing one such lobotomy at the Cherokee facility when he stepped back to have his photo taken. As a result of Freeman’s camera mugging the patient died, the instrument plunging too far into the brain.

Today, the facility provides both inpatient and outpatient care to adults, adolescents and children. It serves adults in 41 northwestern Iowa counties, as well as children and teens in 55 counties primarily west of I-35. The vast majority of the patients admitted to Cherokee are there by order of the court. A correctional facility is also on the site.

Photo by: SMN, Flickr Creative Commons

The threats started in 1995. It was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the American Coalition of Life Activists decided to create a poster for their annual meeting listing the names and address of a group of doctors who performed abortions. They called them “the Deadly Dozen,” and declared each guilty of “crimes against humanity.” They offered $5,000 for information leading to their arrest, conviction, or revocation of their medical licenses. ACLA members distributed the poster at the group’s events and published it in an affiliated magazine.

Then later that year, ACLA unveiled a second poster, this time targeting Dr. Robert Crist, an abortion provider in Kansas City. The poster listed his home and work addresses and featured his photograph. It offered $500 to “any ACLA organization that successfully persuades Crist to turn from his child killing through activities within ACLA guidelines,” which prohibited violence.

The following January, ACLA created the “Nuremberg Files” — a series of dossiers it had compiled on doctors, clinic employees, politicians, judges and other abortion rights supporters. Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kans., who was killed Sunday, was among them. They would be prosecuted, ACLA wrote, “once the tide of this nation’s opinion turns against the wanton slaughter of God’s children.” ACLA sent copies of the dossiers to an anti-abortion activist who posted the information on a website. There, the names of those who had been attacked by “anti-abortion terrorists” — as the court called them — were listed, with a strike through the names of those who had been murdered. The names of those wounded were grayed.

Although neither the posters nor the Website contained explicit threats against the doctors, similar posters had previously been made of other doctors shortly before they were violently attacked; one was murdered. Abortion providers soon took to wearing bulletproof vests, drew the curtains of their home windows and received protection from U.S. Marshals. The strategy had worked.

Eventually, some of the doctors, represented by Planned Parenthood, sued ACLA, twelve activists and an affiliated organization, claiming that their actions violated the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE act, among other laws. At trial, a jury found that the statements were “true threats” and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. The doctors won $107 million in damages and an injunction barring the anti-abortion activists from distributing similar information in the future.

Although the anti-abortion protesters appealed, a majority of judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict. Such “WANTED”- style posters, the court ruled, in the context of previous similar threats and subsequent violence, and the lines drawn through the names of doctors who’d been murdered, were not protected by the First Amendment: “ACLA’s conduct amounted to a true threat and is not protected speech.” The Supreme Court declined to review the case, and it remains good law.

Much of the discussion in the wake of Tiller’s slaying has been about criminal prosecution of those who murder abortion doctors. But there’s a growing concern about the anti-abortion extremists — some call them domestic terrorists — who enable and encourage such murders by labeling abortion providers “mass murderers”, Nazis and worse, and implying that violent attacks against them are not only justified, but honorable.

As Rachel Maddow revealed in chilling detail in her MSNBC news show on Monday night, groups such as Rescue America, Prayer and Action News, Army of God and Operation Rescue Founder Randall Terry all appeared to be celebrating Tiller’s murder on Monday. And while extremists who promote violence against abortion providers could be prosecuted under state and federal law — and particularly under the federal FACE Act — the federal government in recent years has hardly prosecuted any such cases.

According to statistics provided by the Department of Justice, the Bush administration brought only about two criminal prosecutions per year in the entire country under the FACE Act , and never more than four in any single year. The Clinton administration, in contrast, prosecuted 17 defendants for violations of the FACE Act in 1997 alone, and an average of about 10 per year since the law was enacted in 1994. Those cases included one against a woman in 1996 who yelled through a bullhorn to a doctor, “Robert, remember Dr. Gunn. This could happen to you …”, referring to Dr. David Gunn, the first abortion doctor ever murdered, in 1993. In another case, a man who parked a Ryder truck outside a clinic shortly after the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, where a Ryder truck had been used to carry explosives, was found to have threatened force. Stalking, arson and bomb threats are also illegal.

Whether the dropoff in prosecutions is because the FACE Act successfully deterred crimes after its enactment or because the Bush administration wasn’t interested in prosecuting them is not clear. “The amount of activity really did drop a lot after FACE was enacted and it was beginning to be enforced,” said Cathleen Mahoney, Executive Vice President of the National Abortion Federation who was an attorney in the Justice Department until 2006. “Certainly the political will wasn’t there.”

That’s disappointed Janet Crepps, deputy director of the legal program at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “I don’t think that the government has done enough,” she said, noting that while the Clinton administration had created a task force in the Department of Justice to coordinate responses to clinic threats and violence, during the Bush years, “we’ve heard that providers during that time would call DOJ for help and get no response.”

Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar said Tuesday that the task force still exists, and in a statement released after the fatal shooting of Dr. Tiller, Attorney General Eric Holder said that “[f]ederal law enforcement is coordinating with local law enforcement officials in Kansas on the investigation of this crime.” It remains to be seen, however, whether the government will also investigate the anti-abortion activists who threaten abortion providers and may have worked with the actual murderer.

But as the Planned Parenthood case illustrates, the doctors and clinic workers who are targets of violent threats don’t have to wait for the government to act. The FACE act allows doctors or clinic workers to privately sue the individuals and groups making the threat. And although that’s been challenged on First Amendment grounds, its use has been upheld by the courts in cases where the intent to threaten or intimidate was clear.

The lawyer who represented Planned Parenthood in that case declined to be interviewed for this article, citing the sensitivity surrounding the issues, lack of knowledge of the circumstances of Dr. Tiller’s death and respect for his family. But several lawyers confirmed that the case, last litigated in 2006 when the anti-abortion groups tried to appeal to the Supreme Court, could serve as a model for others.

“It’s very fact-intensive,” said Mahoney, from the National Abortion Foundation. “It really depends on the particular circumstances. We would say that people should not be allowed to threaten anyone for providing legal medical services.” In addition to a private right to sue, state attorneys general can also enforce the law within their states.

Some civil libertarians, however, have concerns. On “The Rachel Maddow Show” Monday, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley cautioned against prosecution or lawsuits against even those who promote violence. “We have this difficult line to walk between free speech and preventative law enforcement,” he said. “The Supreme Court has said that violent speech is protected … and it is in fact protected to say all abortion doctors should be killed.”

That’s not necessarily true under the FACE Act, however. The law specifically targets whoever “by force or threat of force … intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with …” anyone who is a provider of abortion services or a patient trying to access them.

That’s not to say that FACE is sufficient or its enforcement is easy. “It’s penalties are significantly lower than many other federal criminal statutes,” said Mahoney, who was involved in criminal prosecutions under FACE in the justice department. The other difficulty, she acknowledged, is the “delicate balance” between protected speech and incitement to violence. While the law does make it a crime to “intimidate or interfere” with provision of abortion services, “there’s a lot of law about what’s a criminally actionable threat” that makes intimidating statements difficult to prosecute. “It’s not so much FACE as that whole body of law that’s the difficulty,” said Mahoney.

Avoiding such politically charged difficulties may be why the federal government appears in recent years to have avoided enforcing the law altogether. The murder of George Tiller, apparently by a known anti-abortion zealot, may begin to change the political equation.

Daphne Eviatar covers legal affairs for The Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site.

Justice Mark S. Cady wrote the court’s decision in the landmark case Varnum v. Brien, in which six same-sex couples sued Polk County Recorder Timothy Brien for not issuing them marriage licenses. Polk County Judge Robert Hanson found for the plaintiffs, but he delayed his ruling pending a decision from the Supreme Court.

“On our review, we hold the Iowa marriage statute violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution,” the Supreme Court’s decision said, upholding Hanson’s initial ruling from more than a year ago.

To determine whether Iowa’s marriage law violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution, the court chose to apply the “intermediate scrutiny” test, which is most often applied in gender discrimination cases.

Statute not ’substantially related’ to ‘important governmental interest’

“To survive intermediate scrutiny, the law must not only further an important governmental interest and be substantially related to that interest,” says the Iowa Supreme Court’s opinion, “but the justification for the classification must be genuine and must not depend on broad generalizations.”

In the end, justices found that Iowa’s definition of marriage did not pass intermediate scrutiny.

Polk County had argued that Iowa’s ban on same-sex marriage served several important governmental interests, but the court disagreed. They rejected the notion that “maintaining traditional marriage” was “important.”

The court agreed with Polk County’s argument that government has an important interest in promoting an “optimal environment to raise children,” but they concluded that Iowa’s definition of marriage was both “under-inclusive” and “over-inclusive” as it relates to that goal, because the statute disqualifies couples who would be good parents, and it allows two people who would be bad parents to marry, so long as they are not of the same sex. The Iowa law is therefore not “substantially related” to the government’s interest in raising children, the court determined.

The court also rejected Polk County’s claim that excluding same-sex couples from marriage serves the important governmental interest in procreation. “Even if possibly true, the link between exclusion of gay and lesbian people from marriage and increased procreation is far too tenuous to withstand heightened scrutiny,” the court held.

The court also rejected several more “important governmental objectives” presented by Polk County, concluding that “the sexual-orientation-based classification under the marriage statute does not substantially further any of the objectives” that the county presented.

Perhaps most interestingly, the court spent time in its decision addressing religious concerns with same-sex marriage, even though Polk County did not make it an issue in its case. Ultimately, they offered this conclusion:

As a result, civil marriage must be judged under our constitutional standards of equal protection and not under religious doctrines or the religious views of individuals. This approach does not disrespect or denigrate the religious views of many Iowans who may strongly believe in marriage as a dual-gender union, but considers, as we must, only the constitutional rights of all people, as expressed by the promise of equal protection for all. We are not permitted to do less and would damage our constitution immeasurably by trying to do more.

Civil unions likely unconstutional

After deeming Iowa’s civil marriage statute violates individuals’ constitutional rights, the court turned its attention to the appropriate remedy. Justices considered the possibility of a separate classification of civil marriage specifically for same-sex couples — e.g., a “civil union” provision — and rejected it:

A new distinction based on sexual orientation would be equally suspect and difficult to square with the fundamental principles of equal protection embodied in our constitution. This record, our independent research, and the appropriate equal protection analysis do not suggest the existence of a justification for such a legislative classification that substantially furthers any governmental objective. Consequently, the language in Iowa Code section 595.2 limiting civil marriage to a man and a woman must be stricken from the statute, and the remaining statutory language must be interpreted and applied in a manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil marriage.

Rather than throw the issue back to the state legislature to craft a new definition of marriage, the court’s decision requires no additional steps before it is scheduled to take effect, in 21 days.

Leaders from both parties in the Iowa legislature have said they do not expect legislators to act on the ruling before this year’s session ends. Reversing the opinion would likely require a constitutional amendment, which must pass two consecutive general assemblies before it is placed on the ballot as a referendum in a general election year. The soonest that process could be completed is November 2012.

Only 17 counties saw an overall increase in public school certified enrollment during the past year. The vast majority of growth was in central Iowa. (Iowa Independent Graphic)

It’s an alarming but consistent trend. Nearly 70 percent of Iowa school districts have seen another year of enrollment decreases.

Of the state’s 362 districts, 249 reported a decrease in certified enrollment last fall, according to a report released Monday by the Iowa Department of Education. Since the 2003-04 school year, over three-quarters of all Iowa school districts have reported a decrease.

Certified enrollment, used in the formula that determines state funding for public school districts, has declined significantly over the past five years in Iowa’s rural school districts.

Districts showing the highest percentage of decreasing enrollment are Seymour (32.7 percent), Riceville (30.9 percent), Olin Consolidated (30.1 percent), Orient-Macksburg (29.7 percent) and South Page (28.8 percent).

Districts the with the largest decrease in number of students are, of course, districts with larger student populations. Leading the list for the largest decrease of number of students during the past five yeas is Des Moines with a loss of 1,356 students. Davenport is a distant second with 768 lost. Sioux City (670 students), Council Bluffs (608 students) and Mason City (349 students) round out the top five.

Of the 31 percent of Iowa districts with an overall increase in certified enrollment during the past five years, the largest percentage was seen by Waukee, which had an amazing 67.5 percent increase. Johnston, Bondurant-Farrar, North Polk and Ankeny rounded out this set of five, each having between 23 and 26 percent increases.

Waukee also led the list for the district with highest increase in students. It was followed by Ankeny, Johnston, Southeast Polk and Linn-Mar.

The strides made by the 112 districts that saw enrollment increases, however, wasn’t enough to offset a statewide decline. The total certified enrollment count for Iowa’s public school districts this year is 477,019 — a decline of 3,590 students, or about 0.75 percent when compared to last year. Because of changes made in enrollment reporting by the 2008 Legislature, this figure is slightly inflated. Without the reporting changes, however, the state still marked a 0.4 percent decline in overall certified enrollment. This marks the 11th consecutive year that there has been a statewide decrease in certified enrollment.

Certified enrollment counts are taken on the first day of October each year. Official numbers, once reported, are confirmed by the Iowa Department of Education. Historic certified enrollment reports can be found on the Iowa Department of Education Web site.