For years conservatives had a corner on ballot initiatives. Think of California's infamous Proposition 13, and the anti-tax blitzkrieg that swept after it through 43 states. Think of the anti-choice, anti-gay and anti-environment ballot measures of the last two decades. But 2002 seems to mark a turnaround. "This year it's the liberals' turn," says M. Dane Waters, head of the Initiative and Referendum Institute, a nonpartisan resource group with conservative roots. Liberal observers agree. It's impossible to label every measure of the 47 that have qualified so far for this year's ballots as either "liberal" or "conservative," but of those that can be labeled, progressive measures outweigh conservative ones nearly 2-to-1.

In his latest Washington Post column, George Will strives to discount the common-sense notion that special-interest money corrupts legislative action. In the process, he finds himself falling back on this classic canard, often repeated by the opponents of campaign-finance reform: "abundant scholarship demonstrates that most legislative behavior -- and most campaign giving -- is explainable by the legislators' political philosophies, party affiliations or constituents' desires."