The XX Factor: What women really think.

Choose Life, Choose Ultrasounds

Hanna, I can't get too hot and bothered about the Choose Life license plates in Virginia either. There's a confusing legal fight over whether these plates like these violate the First Amendment right to free speech, which as Dahlia explained way back in 2003, comes down to this:

To understand the free speech issue, it's important to clarify whether specialty license plates represent government speech or private citizens' speech. Why? Because there is no question that the government may speak in a partisan manner without violating the Constitution. The First Amendment applies only to government efforts to restrict private speech; it doesn't apply back to the state itself. This is why the state is perfectly free to tell you to stay in school, or drive sober, without having to broadcast the opposing viewpoint. States may have preferences for all sorts of messages. But if, on the other hand, the government opens a forum for private speakers—if it creates a park or builds a street where you and I are free to talk—it cannot be in the business of censoring some viewpoints while permitting others. This is the core of the First Amendment.

Lesson: If you don't like the Choose Life message, come up with a pro-choice one of your own to propose to Gov. Kaine and the Virginia legislature. If they nix it, then maybe you have grounds to sue. There's something odd about a government-issued Choose Life plate, but then there's something odd about zipping around with OPNWDE on the back of your car too, as the guys on You Look Nice Today have pointed out.

About the Kansas ultrasound law: It sounds like this one merely requires abortion providers to give women the option of seeing an ultrasound before the procedure. If so, ok. Most clinics do ultrasounds before an abortion anyway, to make sure they know how many weeks along the pregnancy is. Ten other states, by my count, have laws like this one in Kansas, and as Will Saletan has argued in Slate, why should women be shielded from accurate scientific information, which is what an ultrasound is?

But there's another kind of ultrasound law that's quite different in my mind. Under this sort of statute, which is the law in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, the state requires women to review the results of an ultrasound even when the patients expressly say they do not want to. This is creepy and invasive paternalism. The Oklahoma statute went so far as to provide that a woman could avert her eyes from the image on the screen. A law that has to grant such permission doth protest too much. More here.

Gov. Tim Kaine Really Does Choose Life

10 Bad Ads

Hmmm, the top 10 worst political campaign ads ever? The bottom 10, I guess you'd say? Rachael, yer on:

10) OK, in the spirit of comity, let's start with an attack ad against a Republican, Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave. I know you'd agree she's kinda out there, what with her famous charge that the number-one threat facing America is gay marriage. Still, this '04 ad featuring a Musgrave impersonator picking the pocket of an American soldier in the middle of a firefight is beyondo. (I also much enjoyed a ridiculous '06 radio ad against Musgrave that I can't find a link to, blasting her for leaving the scene of a fender bender: "Hit and run, cut and run; that's Marilyn Musgrave.'' Whatever.)

9) One classic of the genre is the Willie Horton ad—murdering black inmate turned loose!—that George W.'s daddy ran against Michael Dukakis in '88. Thanks to Al Gore, who raised Horton's early release from prison as an issue during the Democratic primary.

8) And Gore knew from negative campaigning, too, because that's how his dad got taken out. Richard Nixon ordered a political hit job on Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Sr. over his opposition to the Vietnam War. So in 1970, his opponent used the racist shout-out "Bill Brock Believes the Things We Believe'' on highway billboards, referring to Gore's refusal to sign the segregationist Southern Manifesto.

7) In that same vein, can't exclude this lovely George Wallace ad from '68.

6) Or the attack on Vietnam vet Max Cleland's patriotism by Saxby Chambliss, who looks like he's going down on Tuesday.

5) The Swift boat lies about John Kerry still make me bananas.

4) But the ads Jerry Kilgore ran against death penalty opponent Tim Kaine in their '05 Virginia gubernatorial race backfired, just like Dole's "Godless'' ad has. Particularly offensive was the Kilgore ad claiming that Kaine would keep even Hitler from paying the ultimate price. Oh, and Kilgore gave the whole thing an extra kick by first airing it on Yom Kippur.

3) Republican Doug Forrester's '05 ad against Jon Corzine in the New Jersey gubernatorial race used a quote from the ex-Mrs. Corzine that the louse had "let his family down, and he'll probably let New Jersey down, too."

2) Will Hillary's 3 a.m. ad stand the test of time? I think so.

1) But still the champ: The "Daisy'' ad LBJ ran in '64 against Goldwater, who in light of his daughter's revelation that he helped her get an abortion a few months before her wedding might now be considered too socially liberal to be nominated by his party.

So is my list skewed by partisanship, or have there been equally appalling attacks by more Democrats than are leaping to mind? I would have included the "John McCain has a black love child' push-polling ahead of the 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina, but technically those weren't ads—and aren't some of the guys who masterminded that smear working for him now? I am thinking I should have found room for the one with the blonde babe telling Tennessee's Harold Ford to call her, but if I go beyond 10, I'll be at this 'til Election Day.

Given how many of these doozies played to racial fears, maybe the fact that McCain's ads haven't been even as overt as Hillary's 3 a.m. ad in that regard means his advisers didn't think they would work, so that's a hopeful sign. And while five of these 10 lulus hit their mark, most of the recent ones did not, so let's pray this turns into an honest-to-God trend.