
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 8, 1995                   TAG: 9507100140
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BRIEFLY PUT ...

IT'S NOT unreasonable to conclude that TV commercials claiming that Bill Clinton favors job quotas for homosexuals and Al Gore is for marriages by gay couples were intended as a call to electoral action - especially so, considering the ads ran during the 1992 presidential campaign.

Nevertheless, U.S. District Judge James Turk of Roanoke was correctly careful last week in ruling that the Lynchburg-based Christian Action Network does not fall under federal election statutes because the commercials didn't "expressly advocate" Clinton's defeat. To have decided otherwise would have been to insert the court into a place where it has little if any business: the regulation of political speech.

Perhaps it was a close call. If so, the judge is still correct. Close calls ought to go to the First Amendment.

IN VIRGINIA on July 1, the fine for getting caught the third time for selling cigarettes to minors rose from $100 to $250. Not a big step, but one in the right direction.

Meanwhile in Washington, congressional budgeteers call for spending cuts for Medicaid, Head Start and other health and education programs - but tobacco-state representatives defeated an amendment in the House Appropriations Committee to end a 50-year-old federal subsidy for tobacco growers. A step in the wrong direction.

by CNB