Midterm Elections Unlikely to Alter Party Balance

Well, get used to the combination of a Republican House with a Democratic Senate and White House. It’s likely to remain that way for the next four years, not just two.

And oddly enough, that might just help Washington lower the partisan temperature and strike a few compromises for a change.

The campaign for midterm elections in 2014 has begun. Late Wednesday, President Obama travels to California to raise cash for the Democratic National Committee and his party’s House campaign arm.

But chances that Democrats can gain the 17 seats needed to recapture control of the House appear remote. Republicans have better prospects of picking up the six seats they need to regain the Senate – but not drastically better.

After midterm “wave elections” in 2006 and 2010, the calmer outlook this time reduces the stakes of electoral competition next year. That, in turn, may expand opportunities for bipartisan action on such issues as immigration, modest gun control measures and deficit reduction.

“We’re going to maintain our majority,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in an interview. But with Mr. Obama not going anywhere either, he added, “I’m committed to seeing ways we can work with this White House, knowing full well we have big differences.”

“I think what you’re seeing emerge now is an appetite for achievement,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, who is a solid favorite to win re-election next year. “We want to do some things – or at least try – on a bipartisan basis.”

The ideological and political gap between the parties remains wide in any event. But the lure of seizing control of the House or Senate, and winning the presidency, has widened that gap in recent years by injecting all-or-nothing electoral drama into virtually every high-profile dispute.

In 2006, Democrats used unhappiness over the Iraq war, the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and other Republican setbacks to recapture House and Senate majorities. When the financial crisis hit two years later, they captured the presidency.

In 2010, House Republicans used continued economic weakness and a backlash against Obama administration policies to create their own comeback wave. Last year Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, set his sights on winning control of the Senate and ensuring Mr. Obama’s defeat.

As it turned out, voters last November preserved the existing balance of power. Odds favor their doing the same next time.

As this week’s fund-raising jaunt suggests, Mr. Obama is lending his energies to Congressional Democrats now that he no longer has to campaign for himself. But history and circumstance argue strongly against Democrats retaking the House.

Since voters tend to blame the White House incumbent for their discontents, the president’s party has lost House seats in all but three midterm elections in the past century. The number of times the president’s party has gained 17 seats in a midterm election: zero.

Democratic campaign operatives say they will defy history and gain at least a few seats. Among other factors, they point to strong fund-raising and the Republican Party’s national image problems.

But district lines drawn after the 2010 census circumscribe their opportunities. Charlie Cook, a political handicapper, estimates that fewer than 30 Republican-held seats are even at risk, and Democrats themselves have slightly more in jeopardy.

The midterm electorate tends to be heavier than in presidential years with older voters and whites – both important Republican constituencies. In Senate races, Republicans once again boast an auspicious map of possibilities.

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Obama Must Walk Fine Line as Congress Takes Up Agenda

WASHINGTON — The days ahead could be decisive ones for the main pieces of President Obama’s second-term agenda: long-range deficit reduction, gun safety and changes to immigration law.

With Congress back this week from a recess, bipartisan groups of senators who have been negotiating about immigration and gun violence are due to unveil their agreements, though prospects for a gun deal are in question as the emotional impact of the massacre in Newtown, Conn., has faded and the National Rifle Association has marshaled opposition. And on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will send his annual budget to Capitol Hill intended as a compromise offer, though early signs suggest that Republican leaders have little interest in reviving talks.

Members of both parties say Mr. Obama faces a conundrum with his legislative approach to a deeply polarized Congress. In the past, when he has stayed aloof from legislative action, Republicans and others have accused him of a lack of leadership; when he has gotten involved, they have complained that they could not support any bill so closely identified with Mr. Obama without risking the contempt of conservative voters.

Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, called this predicament Mr. Obama’s “Catch-22.” And Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said he had often seen it at work since 2010 while negotiating with Republican lawmakers to reach a long-term budget agreement.

At times, Mr. Warner said, Republicans would urge him to get Mr. Obama more involved, saying, “Gosh, Warner, we’ve got to have the president.” Other times, he said, the same lawmakers would plead otherwise, saying, “If the president comes out for this, you know it is going to kill us in the House.”

“Everybody wants him involved to the right degree at the right moment,” Mr. Warner said, “but not anytime before or after.”

The challenge for Mr. Obama became evident as soon as he took office, when Republicans almost unanimously opposed his economic stimulus package even as the recession was erasing nearly 800,000 jobs a month. The author Robert Draper opened his recent book about the House, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do,” with an account from Republican leaders who dined together on the night of Mr. Obama’s 2009 inauguration and agreed that the way to regain power was to oppose whatever he proposed.

Though Mr. Obama was able to prevail over Republican opposition in his first two years as president because Democrats had majorities in the House and the Senate, that changed when Republicans won control of the House in 2010, giving them a brake to apply to the president’s agenda.

Other than the stimulus experience in early 2009, the moment that most captured that polarization for the White House occurred a year later. In early 2010 Republican senators, including the minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, demanded that Mr. Obama endorse bipartisan legislation to create a deficit-reduction commission. But when he finally did so, they voted against the bill, killing it.

Now the president’s three pending priorities are shaping up as test cases for how he and Republicans will work together — or not — in his second term.

Each measure — on the budget, guns and immigration — in its own way illustrates the fine line that Mr. Obama must walk to succeed even with national opinion on his side. Privately, the White House is optimistic only about the prospects for an immigration bill, which would create a path to citizenship for about 11 million people in the country illegally.

That is because an immigration compromise is the only one that Republicans see as being in their own interests, given their party’s unpopularity with the fast-growing Latino electorate. In contrast, most Republicans see little advantage in backing gun legislation, given hostility toward it in their states or in districts throughout the South and the West and in rural areas. A budget compromise would require agreeing to higher taxes, which are anathema to conservative voters, in exchange for Mr. Obama’s support for the reductions in Medicare and Social Security that they want.

Yet even on immigration, many Republicans are weighing their party’s long-term interests in supporting a compromise against their own short-term arguments for opposing one: antipathy remains deep in conservative districts to any proposal that would grant citizenship. That calculation also holds for Republicans planning to seek the 2016 presidential nomination.

Against this backdrop, Mr. Obama early on outlined elements that he wanted in the immigration and gun measures. Then he purposely left the drafting to Congress. Senior aides, mainly the chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, and the deputy chief of staff, Rob Nabors, check in daily with senators. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stays in touch with his former Senate colleagues about the gun bill talks.

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Reagan’s Daughter Says He’d Have Backed Gay Marriage

Patti Davis, a Los Angeles writer and the onetime rebellious daughter of Reagan and his second wife, Nancy, said in a telephone interview that she never discussed same-sex marriage with the former president, who died in 2004 just as it was emerging as a political issue.

But Ms. Davis, now 60, offered several reasons her father, who would have been 102 this year, would have bucked his party on the issue: his distaste for government intrusion into private lives, his Hollywood acting career and close friendship with a lesbian couple who once cared for Ms. Davis and her younger brother Ron while their parents were on a Hawaiian vacation — and slept in the Reagans’ king-size bed.

“I grew up in this era where your parents’ friends were all called aunt and uncle,” Ms. Davis said. “And then I had an aunt and an aunt. We saw them on holidays and other times.” She added, “We never talked about it, but I just understood that they were a couple.”

Once when she and her father were watching a Rock Hudson movie, Ms. Davis said, she remarked that the actor “looked weird” kissing his female co-star. She said her father explained that Mr. Hudson “would rather be kissing a man,” and conveyed, without using the words homosexual or gay, the idea that “some men are born wanting to love another man.” Years later, in 1985, Mr. Hudson died of AIDS.

Ms. Davis, a former actress who has made news over the years by posing nude in Playboy and, more recently, the magazine More, has just self-published a novel, “Till Human Voices Wake Us,” about sisters-in-law who fall in love and leave their husbands. (She said it was not autobiographical.)

She first shared her views about her father with a friend, Howard Bragman, who has a YouTube show devoted to gay issues and interviewed her about her book.

Ms. Davis is not the only Reagan child speaking out on same-sex marriage. Michael E. Reagan, a conservative commentator and son of the former president and his first wife, Jane Wyman, recently wrote an opinion piece accusing churches of “wimping out” by not fighting harder to block same-sex marriage.

But the younger Mr. Reagan did not address his father’s views, and Ms. Davis said she would not “get into a family feud” with her half-brother.

Mr. Reagan had a mixed record on gay rights. As president, he infuriated many gay people with his slow response to the AIDS epidemic, but as a former governor of California he joined a number of Democrats, including President Jimmy Carter, in opposing a ballot measure that would have barred gays and lesbians from working in public schools.

Ms. Davis said her father “did not believe that gayness was a choice,” although “as a straight man and an old-fashioned man, it’s not like he understood it.”

Ms. Davis’s comments are certain to inflame conservative admirers of her father.

Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist and gay rights opponent, said in an interview that Mr. Reagan — who as governor signed the nation’s first “no-fault” divorce law and later told his son Michael it was his “greatest regret” — would never have stood for same-sex marriage.

“Of course, Reagan did associate with all the Hollywood crowd, and chances are he probably knew a number of gays,” Ms. Schlafly said. “I could understand that he might not have wanted to bar them from a job but that would not mean he would want them to get a marriage license.”

Ms. Davis said she expects conservative discontent with her, adding, “All I know is the heart of the man who raised me as my father.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 8, 2013

An article on Thursday about Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald Reagan and his second wife, Nancy, and her view that Mr. Reagan would have supported same-sex marriage, referred incorrectly to Mr. Reagan’s political position at the time he opposed a ballot measure that would have barred gays and lesbians from working in public schools. He was a former governor of California at the time, not the governor.

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Survey Finds Most Republicans Seek Action on Climate Change

It’s time for that national “listening tour” on energy and climate, President Obama. Some evidence comes in a new survey from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University (seen via Tom Yulsman on Facebook). Here’s an excerpt from the news release:

In a recent survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents conducted by the Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) at George Mason University, a majority of respondents (62 percent) said they feel America should take steps to address climate change. More than three out of four survey respondents (77 percent) said the United States should use more renewable energy sources, and of those, most believe that this change should begin immediately.

The national survey, conducted in January 2013, asked more than 700 people who self-identified as Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents about energy and climate change.

“Over the past few years, our surveys have shown that a growing number of Republicans want to see Congress do more to address climate change,” said Mason professor Edward Maibach, director of 4C. “In this survey, we asked a broader set of questions to see if we could better understand how Republicans, and Independents who have a tendency to vote Republican, think about America’s energy and climate change situation.”

The reason a listening tour is the next step, and not a pre-packaged batch of legislation or other steps, is to build on the common ground across a wide range of Americans on energy thrift, innovation and fair play (meaning policies that distort the playing field, with mandated corn ethanol production and tax breaks for fossil fuel companies prime examples).

This might even lead to a new sense of mission in this country, something that’s been lacking since the cold war and space race.

In Mother Jones, Chris Mooney has an interesting spin on the survey, noting that the way global warming was framed probably had an impact on the level of buy-in on the questions.

It’s been clear for years that there are ways around the familiar partisan roadblocks on climate-smart energy policies. In 2009, the “Six Americas” survey by the same George Mason researchers and counterparts at Yale revealed this clearly. I distilled those findings into three slides here.

Here’s a bit more on the survey from the George Mason Web site:

This short report is based on a January 2013 national survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents. We found that they prefer clean energy as the basis of America’s energy future and say the benefits of clean energy, such as energy independence (66%) saving resources for our children and grandchildren (57%), and providing a better life for our children and grandchildren (56%) outweigh the costs, such as more government regulation (42%) or higher energy prices (31%).

By a margin of 2 to 1, respondents say America should take action to reduce our fossil fuel use. Also, only one third of respondents agree with the Republican Party’s position on climate change, while about half agree with the party’s position on how to meet America’s energy needs.

You can download the report here: A National Survey of Republicans and Republican-Leaning Independents on Energy and Climate Change.

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Poll says half favor Medicaid expansion

As both sides of the political debate dig in for weeks, or perhaps months, of tough negotiations over Gov. Jan Brewer's proposal to expand Medicaid in Arizona, a statewide poll indicates that nearly half of likely voters support the plan but that more than a third have never heard of it.

The poll, paid for by pro- expansion forces, also said that almost half of Republicans surveyed back the idea of broadening health-care coverage to low-income and disabled Arizonans under federal health reform.

Those who identified themselves as "tea party" members, however, oppose the move by a 2-1 ratio, 45percent to 22percent.

The survey of 500 voters was conducted March19-21 by the national polling firm Public Opinion Strategies. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4percentage points.

The results were shown to The Arizona Republic this week as House GOP leaders finished a series of small meetings with the rank and file, showcasing a preliminary state budget plan that doesn't include Brewer's Medicaid proposal. The governor also has been meeting privately with GOP members who support her plan.

She wants to expand the state-federal program, which insures about 1.2million Arizonans, to provide health insurance to an additional 400,000 and bring in about $1.6billion in federal funding in fiscal 2015, the first full year of expansion. The state's additional matching funds would be raised through a tax on hospitals that treat Medicaid patients.

The Arizona Business Coalition, led by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and the health-care industry, commissioned the poll and released portions of the survey, which lobbyist Jaime Molera said also included questions about Brewer's popularity.

Molera said results showed that the more voters know about the governor's Medicaid plan, the better they like it. He said the poll did not include "push" questions designed to lead respondents.

"It tells me exactly where we're at and what we need to do. … It tells me we're going in the right direction," he said.

Brewer's proposal has sharply divided her own Republican Party, and while most observers believe there are enough votes in the Legislature to win a simple majority, the politics are dicey enough that GOP backers want cover from more members before they vote for it.

Republican opponents, including the House and Senate leaders, are concerned that cost estimates of expansion are way off and that the federal government can't afford it and will eventually renege, leaving Arizona to pay or toss people off the rolls.

"My proposal is, you don't expand Medicaid," said Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert. "There are a million and one reasons I think this is a bad idea."

Among those surveyed, 47percent said they supported Brewer's expansion plan, 17percent opposed it, and 36percent had not heard of it.

The poll also indicated that support for expansion grows among people who say they've heard a lot about the plan.

Nearly three-fourths of those who say they're somewhat familiar with Brewer's plan are supportive.

And it also hinted at strong support for Brewer and her conservative credentials, which supporters say should comfort GOP lawmakers whom local party officials are threatening to unseat in the next election.

"Republicans are getting threatened that they're going to lose their seats," Molera said. "If Governor Brewer is behind something, and certainly behind them … having her behind you is going to be tremendously powerful."

In a separate question, survey respondents were given three choices: Restoring the voter-approved childless-adult program at a cost to the state of $450million; expanding Medicaid to cover more people at a state cost of $150million; and doing nothing to restore or expand the program. Fifty-two percent chose expansion, 21percent wanted to restore coverage for childless adults and 21percent wanted to do nothing.

Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, said she remains concerned about the costs of expanding Medicaid and the accuracy of the state's estimates of how many people will qualify. And she questions why states or the federal government would want to expand Medicaid to people earning 133percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,000 a year, instead of providing subsidies to help people find their own insurance on newly created online health exchanges.

"I still have some huge reservations because of the cost going forward," Barto said. "I just think we're not doing people any favors by pushing them onto a Medicaid system."

Rep. Heather Carter, R-Cave Creek, who is leading efforts to get expansion through the House, said she believes that the more lawmakers and their constituents learn about Medicaid expansion, the more supportive they will become.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Free shotguns in Tucson? Idea might not be as wild as it sounds

(PNI) A guy in Tucson plans to hand out free shotguns to people living in crime-heavy neighborhoods, and I'm having trouble knocking his plan.

This is NOT an April Fools' joke.

Seriously, it's not.

I mean it.

Shaun McClusky, an in-your-face former mayoral candidate from Tucson, has teamed up with a Houston-based organization called the Armed Citizen Project.

The group was started in Houston by a man named Kyle Coplen. Its mission, as described on its website (armedcitizenproject.org) is "training and arming residents in mid-high crime areas with defensive shotguns, for free ? and measuring the effect that a heavily armed society has on crime rates."

McClusky told me, "Kyle really thought the program out well. I called him up about 10 days ago and said, 'Can we start it here in Tucson?' I speak with two of the council members here on a regular basis. I sent them an e-mail saying, 'If you guys continue to fail to fund public safety, I am going to do this program whether you like it or not.' So, this is on the City Council for failing the public by not funding public safety."

McClusky said that three neighborhoods already have been selected, and he hopes to have the program up and running within a few months. The first step is to hand out leaflets and post fliers asking residents of the neighborhoods to sign up.

Those who volunteer must agree to go through a background check and to take an all-day gun-safety course before they can get a weapon.

"I don't want to arm criminals," McClusky said. "I want to arm honest citizens who want to protect their families. That's the bottom line. And they will go through a full day of training. They will go through a weapons-handling class, a weapons-safety class and also a range-training class. It's better than your average person walking into a store and saying, 'I want a gun to protect my family and walking out with a weapon.' I want to make sure they understand the rules and regulations as well as all aspects of this gun so they can safely protect their families."

The weapon selected will either be a single-shot, break-action shotgun or a pump-action shotgun, depending on availability, McClusky told me.

"These guns are good for personal protection, but gangbangers don't want this weapon," McClusky said. "It's not their weapon of choice. It uses buckshot. It's enough to stop a bad guy, but it will not be like a 9mm bullet that goes through the first person and keeps on going."

The cost per participant is estimated at about $400, perhaps more, depending on the weapon. McClusky said he already has roughly $12,000. The program is funded with donations.

Tucson Councilman Steve Kozachik vehemently opposes the project.

He told the Arizona Daily Star, "To suggest that giving away ? loaded shotguns in high-crime areas will make anybody safer is pure idiocy. This is coming from a purported leader in the local Republican Party, the same group who last year auctioned off a Glock and a rifle as fundraisers. Now they're giving them away in our community? They're totally out of touch with the values of this city."

I sympathize, to a degree. I get the argument that says putting more guns on the streets could compound the problem and there is no guarantee they won't wind up in the hands of bad guys. I get that there could be accidents. Or instances of domestic violence. Or suicides.

I get as well that McClusky is a political provocateur whose motives aren't exactly pure.

But, honestly, isn't the Armed Citizen Project giving gun-control advocates exactly what they've been asking for?

Background checks. Required training. And defensive guns that aren't "assault weapons."

"I won't say how many weapons we hand out in a neighborhood," McClusky said. "I may put three shotguns in a neighborhood. I might put 30. Afterwards, we will put yard signs in several of the entry streets saying this neighborhood is protected by the Armed Citizen Project. If you're a bad guy, are you going to go in there, or are you looking for an easier target?"

You have to admit it's an interesting question.

Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Medicaid expansion debated in House

The first public airing of Gov. Jan Brewer's proposal to expand Medicaid was a four-hour, wide-ranging, sometimes- vitriolic debate Wednesday that offered a preview into how nasty this year's biggest legislative battle could become.

The informational hearing before the House Appropriations Committee didn't yield new information or formal action, but dozens of people testified about the perceived benefits and evils of expanding the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state's Medicaid program, under the federal health-care overhaul.

An overflow crowd jammed the hearing room and another room down the hall, lawmakers talked over each other and exchanged snide remarks, and a Republican Party official likened the governor to Judas.

Patients, health-care professionals, business owners and people who work with the poor and the mentally ill said broadening eligibility for Medicaid and uncapping a program that insures childless adults would be a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of Arizonans, a huge relief to hospitals across the state treating a growing number of uninsured and ultimately bring savings for taxpayers.

But opponents of expansion, including committee Chairman John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, and GOP officials, said adding 400,000 people to the state-federal program for the poor and disabled, taxing hospitals to help pay for it and accepting billions in new federal funding would only add to the country's dangerously high debt without solving the problem of skyrocketing health-care costs.

The debate among committee members frequently devolved into partisan bickering, but people who waited hours to testify were testament to the issue's significance.

"AHCCCS has been my lifeline, and it is the reason I can see all of you right now," said Chantal Duquette, 25, an Arizona State University senior who has an autoimmune disorder that could blind her without proper treatment. "By supporting AHCCCS, we are contributing to the future of Arizona."

Duquette's health coverage will end Dec. 31, along with an estimated 50,000 other Arizonans insured under a voter-approved program for childless adults that legislators capped to help balance the budget in 2011 and which is due to expire. Under Medicaid expansion, those earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or just under $15,000 a year, would be eligible for AHCCCS.

The governor's plan is backed by a coalition led by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and the health-care industry, but her harshest critics are conservative Republicans, particularly precinct committeemen.

GOP groups in three counties and numerous legislative districts have passed resolutions calling for lawmakers to reject expansion, and testimony from Maricopa County GOP Chairman A.J. LaFaro showed how ugly the issue has become.

"Jesus had Judas. Republicans have Governor Brewer," LaFaro said before walking away from the podium.

Though there were some groans in the audience, committee members did not rebuke him. Brewer chief of staff Scott Smith, however, had words with LaFaro outside the House, and House Speaker Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, sent a tweet calling for LaFaro to apologize and resign.

"Obviously, his statement was irrational and unhinged," Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson said. "But if that's who opponents of the governor's plan want to have as their spokesperson, I say, 'Fantastic.'"

Brewer's proposal would bring in nearly $1.6 billion in additional federal funding in 2015, the first full year of expansion, and pay for the state's share with an assessment on hospitals. The so-called bed tax is expected to raise $256 million in 2015 by pulling in additional federal matching funds.

In addition to objections over federal debt and government-run health care, many Republican lawmakers believe the hospital tax should be subject to a two-thirds majority under a 1992 ballot measure, Proposition 108, designed to make it more difficult for the Legislature to raise taxes and fees. The GOP governor has enough votes to get a simple majority in the Senate, and likely in the House, but a supermajority would be far more difficult to muster.

"I think we need to take Prop. 108 very seriously," said Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa, and be prepared for the state to be sued if the measure passes without a two-thirds majority.

Legislators also argued over whether there was another option available: asking federal health officials to continue the childless-adult program and the 66 percent funding match that comes with it. If Arizona agreed to expand Medicaid, federal funds would pay for 85 percent to 100 percent of the cost.

Kavanagh said growing the program is not the way to get hold of health-care costs.

"When people have insurance, they use it," Kavanagh said. "There is going to be a tsunami of new people seeking medical treatment."

Dozens testified that insuring more Arizonans would save the state money by preventing unnecessary hospitalizations and emergency-room visits.

Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk said she has seen more people with mental illness wind up in jail as Arizona has reduced funding for AHCCCS and mental-health treatment.

"Incarceration is an expensive way to provide mental-health care," Polk said. "And, of course, it's not the appropriate or humane way to treat those with mental illness."

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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