Under the False Claims Act (FCA), a private person (the relator) may bring a qui tam civil action "in the name of the [Federal] Government," 31 U. S. C. § 3730(b)(1), against "[a]ny person" who, inter alia, "knowingly presents ... to ... the ... Government ... a false or fraudulent claim for payment," § 3729(a). The relator receives a share of any proceeds from the action. §§ 3730(d)(1)-(2). Respondent Stevens brought such an action against petitioner state agency, alleging that it had submitted false claims to the Environmental Protection Agency in connection with federal grant programs the EPA administered. Petitioner moved to dismiss, arguing that a State (or state agency) is not a "person" subject to FCA liability and that a qui tam action in federal court against a State is barred by the Eleventh Amendment. The District Court denied the motion, and petitioner filed an interlocutory appeal. Respondent United States intervened in the appeal in support of respondent Stevens. The Second Circuit affirmed.
Held: A private individual may not bring suit in federal court on behalf of the United States against a State (or state agency) under the FCA. Pp. 771-788.
ing a partial assignment of the Government's damages claim, the United States' injury in fact suffices to confer standing on Stevens. This conclusion is confirmed by the long tradition of qui tam actions in England and the American Colonies, which conclusively demonstrates that such actions were "cases and controversies of the sort traditionally amenable to, and resolved by, the judicial process." Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 102. pp. 771-778.
(b) The FCA does not subject a State (or state agency) to liability in a federal-court suit by a private individual on behalf of the United States. Such a State or agency is not a "person" subject to qui tam liability under § 3729(a). The Court's longstanding interpretive presumption that "person" does not include the sovereign applies to the text of § 3729(a). Although not a hard and fast rule of exclusion, the presumption may be disregarded only upon some affirmative showing of statutory intent to the contrary. As the historical context makes clear, various features of the FCA, both as originally enacted and as amended, far from providing the requisite affirmative indications that the term "person" included States for purposes of qui tam liability, indicate quite the contrary. This conclusion is buttressed by the ordinary rule of statutory construction that if Congress intends to alter the usual constitutional balance between States and the Federal Government, it must make its intention to do so unmistakably clear in the statute's language, and by the doctrine that statutes should be construed so as to avoid difficult constitutional questions. The Court expresses no view as to whether an action in federal court by a qui tam relator against a State would run afoul of the Eleventh Amendment, but notes that there is "a serious doubt" on that score. Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 348. Pp.778-787.
SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and O'CONNOR, KENNEDY, THOMAS, and BREYER, JJ., joined. BREYER, J., filed a concurring statement, post, p. 788. GINSBURG, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which BREYER, J., joined, post, p. 788. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOUTER, J., joined, post, p. 789.
Attorneys General, David M. Rocchio, Special Assistant Attorney General, Ronald A. Shems, and Carter G. Phillips.
This case presents the question whether a private individual may bring suit in federal court on behalf of the United States against a State (or state agency) under the False Claims Act, 31 U. S. C. §§ 3729-3733.
R. Bierig, Paul E. Kalb, Michael L. Ile, Anne M. Murphy, and Leonard A. Nelson; for the American Petroleum Institute by Donald B. Craven, Clarence T. Kipps, Jr., Alan I. Horowitz, and Peter B. Hutt II; for FMC Corporation by Donald B. Ayer, Gregory G. Katsas, and John B. Kennedy; for the National Governors' Association et al. by Richard Ruda and James I. Crowley; for the Orleans Parish School Board et al. by Sam A. LeBlanc III and Robert Markle; for the Regents of the University of Minnesota et al. by Mark B. Rotenberg and Mark A. Bohnhorst.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the National Whistle Blower Center by Stephen M. Kohn, Michael D. Kohn, and David K. Colapinto; and for Taxpayers Against Fraud by Evan H. Caminker and Jonathan S. Massey.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed for the Aerospace Industries Association of America, Inc., by Charles G. Cole, Jerald S. Howe, Jr., and Shannen W Coffin; for the American Clinical Laboratory Association by Hope S. Foster; for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America et al. by Herbert L. Fenster, Stephen A. Bokat, and Robin S. Conrad; for the Federation of American Health Systems by Walter E. Dellinger and Charles R. Work; for Friends of the Earth et al. by James S. Chandler, Jr., Bruce J. Terris, and Carolyn Smith Pravlik; for the National Employment Lawyers Association by Frederick M. Morgan, Jr., James B. Helmer, Jr., and Paula A. Brantner; for the Project on Government Oversight by Charles Tiefer and Jonathan W Cuneo; and for Taxpayers Against Fraud by Evan H. Caminker and Vicki C. Jackson.
1 Qui tam is short for the Latin phrase qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur, which means "who pursues this action on our Lord the King's behalf as well as his own." The phrase dates from at least the time of Blackstone. See 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *160.
FCA imposes civil liability upon "[a]ny person" who, inter alia, "knowingly presents, or causes to be presented, to an officer or employee of the United States Government ... a false or fraudulent claim for payment or approval." 31 U. S. C. § 3729(a). The defendant is liable for up to treble damages and a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per claim. Ibid. An FCA action may be commenced in one of two ways. First, the Government itself may bring a civil action against the alleged false claimant. § 3730(a). Second, as is relevant here, a private person (the relator) may bring a qui tam civil action "for the person and for the United States Government" against the alleged false claimant, "in the name of the Government." § 3730(b)(1).
share of recovery against a person contracting with Indians in an unlawful manner); §201 (providing cause of action and share of recovery against a person violating Indian protection laws); 35 U. S. C. § 292(b) (providing cause of action and share of recovery against a person falsely marking patented articles); cf. 18 U. S. C. § 962 (providing for forfeiture to informer of share of vessels privately armed against friendly nations, but not expressly authorizing suit by informer); 46 U. S. C. § 723 (providing for forfeiture to informer of share of vessels removing undersea treasure from the Florida coast to foreign nations, but not expressly authorizing suit by informer).
to 25 percent if the Government intervenes (depending upon the relator's contribution to the prosecution), and from 25 to 30 percent if it does not (depending upon the court's assessment of what is reasonable)-plus attorney's fees and costs. §§ 3730(d)(1)-(2).
Respondent Jonathan Stevens brought this qui tam action in the United States District Court for the District of Vermont against petitioner Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, his former employer, alleging that it had submitted false claims to the Environmental Protection Agency (EP A) in connection with various federal grant programs administered by the EP A. Specifically, he claimed that petitioner had overstated the amount of time spent by its employees on the federally funded projects, thereby inducing the Government to disburse more grant money than petitioner was entitled to receive. The United States declined to intervene in the action. Petitioner then moved to dismiss, arguing that a State (or state agency) is not a "person" subject to liability under the FCA and that a qui tam action in federal court against a State is barred by the Eleventh Amendment. The District Court denied the motion in an unpublished order. App. to Pet. for Cert. 86-87. Petitioner then filed an interlocutory appeal,2 and the District Court stayed proceedings pending its outcome. Respondent United States intervened in the appeal in support of respondent Stevens. A divided panel of the Second Circuit affirmed, 162 F.3d 195 (1998), and we granted certiorari, 527 U. S. 1034 (1999).
2 The denial of a motion to dismiss based on a claim of Eleventh Amendment immunity is immediately appealable. See Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority v. Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 506 U. S. 139 (1993). The Second Circuit exercised pendent appellate jurisdiction over the statutory question. See Swint v. Chambers County Comm'n, 514 U. S. 35, 50-51 (1995).
We first address the jurisdictional question whether respondent Stevens has standing under Article III of the Constitution to maintain this suit. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 93-102 (1998).
As we have frequently explained, a plaintiff must meet three requirements in order to establish Article III standing. See, e. g., Friends of Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U. S. 167, 180-181 (2000). First, he must demonstrate "injury in fact"-a harm that is both "concrete" and "actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical." Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U. S. 149, 155 (1990) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Second, he must establish causation-a "fairly ... trace[able]" connection between the alleged injury in fact and the alleged conduct of the defendant. Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 41 (1976). And third, he must demonstrate redressability-a "substantial likelihood" that the requested relief will remedy the alleged injury in fact. Id., at 45. These requirements together constitute the "irreducible constitutional minimum" of standing, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560 (1992), which is an "essential and unchanging part" of Article Ill's case-orcontroversy requirement, ibid., and a key factor in dividing the power of government between the courts and the two political branches, see id., at 559-560.
499 (1975) (emphasis added); see also Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 734-735 (1972). It would perhaps suffice to say that the relator here is simply the statutorily designated agent of the United States, in whose name (as the statute provides, see 31 U. S. C. § 3730(b)) the suit is brought-and that the relator's bounty is simply the fee he receives out of the United States' recovery for filing and/or prosecuting a successful action on behalf of the Government. This analysis is precluded, however, by the fact that the statute gives the relator himself an interest in the lawsuit, and not merely the right to retain a fee out of the recovery. Thus, it provides that "[a] person may bring a civil action for a violation of section 3729 for the person and for the United States Government," § 3730(b) (emphasis added); gives the relator "the right to continue as a party to the action" even when the Government itself has assumed "primary responsibility" for prosecuting it, § 3730(c)(1); entitles the relator to a hearing before the Government's voluntary dismissal of the suit, § 3730(c)(2)(A); and prohibits the Government from settling the suit over the relator's objection without a judicial determination of "fair[ness], adequa[cy] and reasonable[ness]," § 3730(c)(2)(B). For the portion of the recovery retained by the relator, therefore, some explanation of standing other than agency for the Government must be identified.
tected right. See Lujan, supra, at 560-561. A qui tam relator has suffered no such invasion-indeed, the "right" he seeks to vindicate does not even fully materialize until the litigation is completed and the relator prevails.3 This is not to suggest that Congress cannot define new legal rights, which in turn will confer standing to vindicate an injury caused to the claimant. See Warth, supra, at 500. As we have held in another context, however, an interest that is merely a "byproduct" of the suit itself cannot give rise to a cognizable injury in fact for Article III standing purposes. See Steel Co., supra, at 107 ("[A] plaintiff cannot achieve standing to litigate a substantive issue by bringing suit for the cost of bringing suit"); see also Diamond v. Charles, 476 U. S. 54, 69-71 (1986) (holding that assessment of attorney's fees against a party does not confer standing to pursue the action on appeal).
3 Blackstone noted, with regard to English qui tam actions, that "no particular person, A or B, has any right, claim or demand, in or upon [the bounty], till after action brought," and that the bounty constituted an "inchoate imperfect degree of property ... [which] is not consummated till judgment." 2 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *437.
4 In addressing the Eleventh Amendment issue that we leave open today, the dissent suggests that we are asserting that a qui tam relator "is, in effect, suing as an assignee of the United States." Post, at 802 (opinion of STEVENS, J.); see also post, at 796 (same). More precisely, we are asserting that a qui tam relator is, in effect, suing as a partial assignee of the United States.
Poller v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 368 U. S. 464, 465 (1962); Automatic Radio Mfg. Co. v. Hazeltine Research, Inc., 339 U. S. 827, 829 (1950); Hubbard v. Tod, 171 U. S. 474, 475 (1898)-and also suits by subrogees, who have been described as "equitable assign[ees]," L. Simpson, Law of Suretyship 205 (1950); see, e. g., Vimar Seguros y Reaseguros, S. A. v. M/V Sky Reefer, 515 U. S. 528, 531 (1995); Musick, Peeler & Garrett v. Employers Ins. of Wausau, 508 U. S. 286, 288 (1993). We conclude, therefore, that the United States' injury in fact suffices to confer standing on respondent Stevens.
We are confirmed in this conclusion by the long tradition of qui tam actions in England and the American Colonies. That history is particularly relevant to the constitutional standing inquiry since, as we have said elsewhere, Article Ill's restriction of the judicial power to "Cases" and "Controversies" is properly understood to mean "cases and controversies of the sort traditionally amenable to, and resolved by, the judicial process." Steel Co., 523 U. S., at 102; see also Coleman v. Miller, 307 U. S. 433, 460 (1939) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.) (the Constitution established that "[j]udicial power could come into play only in matters that were the traditional concern of the courts at Westminster and only if they arose in ways that to the expert feel of lawyers constituted 'Cases' or 'Controversies' ").
74 L. Q. Rev. 561, 585 (1958). Starting in the 14th century, as the royal courts began to extend jurisdiction to suits involving wholly private wrongs, the common-law qui tam action gradually fell into disuse, although it seems to have remained technically available for several centuries. See 2 W. Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown 369 (8th ed. 1824).
At about the same time, however, Parliament began enacting statutes that explicitly provided for qui tam suits. These were of two types: those that allowed injured parties to sue in vindication of their own interests (as well as the Crown's), see, e. g., Statute Providing a Remedy for Him Who Is Wrongfully Pursued in the Court of Admiralty, 2 Hen. IV; ch. 11 (1400), and-more relevant here-those that allowed informers to obtain a portion of the penalty as a bounty for their information, even if they had not suffered an injury themselves, see, e. g., Statute Prohibiting the Sale of Wares After the Close of Fair, 5 Edw. III, ch. 5 (1331); see generally Common Informers Act, 14 & 15 Geo. VI, ch. 39, sched. (1951) (listing informer statutes). Most, though not all, of the informer statutes expressly gave the informer a cause of action, typically by bill, plaint, information, or action of debt. See, e. g., Bill for Leases of Hospitals, Colleges, and Other Corporations, 33 Hen. VIII, ch. 27 (1541); Act to Avoid Horse-Stealing, 31 Eliz. I, ch. 12, § 2 (1589); Act to Prevent the Over-Charge of the People by Stewards of Court- Leets and Court-Barons, 2 Jac. I, ch. 5 (1604).
(1623), and statutes were passed deterring and penalizing vexatious informers, limiting the locations in which informer suits could be brought, and subjecting such suits to relatively short statutes of limitation, see Act to Redress Disorders in Common Informers, 18 Eliz. I, ch. 5 (1576); Act Concerning Informers, 31 Eliz. I, ch. 5 (1589); see generally Davies, supra, at 63-76. Nevertheless, laws allowing qui tam suits by informers continued to exist in England until 1951, when all of the remaining ones were repealed. See Note, The History and Development of Qui Tam, 1972 Wash. U. L. Q. 81, 88, and n. 44 (citing Common Informers Act, 14 & 15 Geo. VI, ch. 39 (1951)).
5 In addition, the First Congress passed one statute allowing injured parties to sue for damages on both their own and the United States' behalf. See Act of May 31, 1790, ch. 15, §2, 1 Stat. 124-125 (allowing author or proprietor to sue for and receive half of penalty for violation of copyright); cf. Act of Mar. 1, 1790, ch. 2, § 6, 1 Stat. 103 (allowing census taker to sue for and receive half of penalty for failure to cooperate in census); Act of July 5, 1790, ch. 25, § 1, 1 Stat. 129 (extending same to Rhode Island).
6 See Act of Mar. 1, 1790, ch. 2, § 3, 1 Stat. 102 (allowing informer to sue for, and receive half of fine for, failure to file census return); Act of July 5, 1790, ch. 25, § 1, 1 Stat. 129 (extending same to Rhode Island); Act of July 20, 1790, ch. 29, §§ 1, 4, 1 Stat. 131, 133 (allowing private individual to sue for, and receive half of fine for, carriage of seamen without contract or illegal harboring of runaway seamen); Act of July 22, 1790, ch. 33, § 3, 1 Stat. 137-138 (allowing private individual to sue for, and receive half of goods forfeited for, unlicensed trading with Indian tribes); Act of Mar. 3, 1791, ch. 15, § 44, 1 Stat. 209 (allowing person who discovers violation of spirits duties, or officer who seizes contraband spirits, to sue for and receive half of penalty and forfeiture, along with costs, in action of debt); cf. Act of Apr. 30, 1790, ch. 9, §§ 16, 17, 1 Stat. 116 (allowing informer to conduct prosecution, and receive half of fine, for criminal larceny or receipt of stolen goods).
7 See Act of July 31, 1789, ch. 5, § 29, 1 Stat. 44-45 (giving informer full penalty paid by customs official for failing to post fee schedule); Act of Aug. 4, 1790, ch. 35, §55, 1 Stat. 173 (same); Act of July 31,1789, ch. 5, § 38, 1 Stat. 48 (giving informer quarter of penalties, fines, and forfeitures authorized under a customs law); Act of Sept. 1, 1789, ch. 11, § 21, 1 Stat. 60 (same under a maritime law); Act of Aug. 4, 1790, ch. 35, § 69, 1 Stat. 177 (same under another customs law); Act of Sept. 2, 1789, ch. 12, § 8, 1 Stat. 67 (providing informer half of penalty upon conviction for violation of conflict-of-interest and bribery provisions in Act establishing Treasury Department); Act of Mar. 3, 1791, ch. 8, § 1, 1 Stat. 215 (extending same to additional Treasury employees); Act ofFeb. 25,1791, ch. 10, §§8, 9,1 Stat. 195-196 (providing informer half or fifth of fines resulting from improper trading or lending by agents of Bank of United States); cf. Act of Aug. 4, 1790, ch. 35, § 4, 1 Stat. 153 (apportioning half of penalty for failing to deposit ship manifest to official who should have received manifest, and half to collector in port of destination).
We have suggested, in dictum, that "[sJtatutes providing for a reward to informers which do not specifically either authorize or forbid the informer to institute the action are construed to authorize him to sue." United States ex rel. Marcus v. Hess, 317 U. S. 537,541, n. 4 (1943).
u. S., at 102. When combined with the theoretical justification for relator standing discussed earlier, it leaves no room for doubt that a qui tam relator under the FCA has Article III standing.8 We turn, then, to the merits.
Petitioner makes two contentions: (1) that a State (or state agency) is not a "person" subject to qui tam liability under the FCA; and (2) that if it is, the Eleventh Amendment bars such a suit. The Courts of Appeals have disagreed as to the order in which these statutory and Eleventh Amendment immunity questions should be addressed. Compare United States ex rel. Long v. SCS Business & Technical Institute, Inc., 173 F.3d 890, 893-898 (CADC 1999) (statutory question first), with United States ex rel. Foulds v. Texas Tech Univ., 171 F.3d 279, 285-288 (CAS 1999) (Eleventh Amendment immunity question first).
8 In so concluding, we express no view on the question whether qui tam suits violate Article II, in particular the Appointments Clause of § 2 and the "take Care" Clause of § 3. Petitioner does not challenge the qui tam mechanism under either of those provisions, nor is the validity of qui tam suits under those provisions a jurisdictional issue that we must resolve here. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 102, n. 4 (1998) ("[O]ur standing jurisprudence, ... though it may sometimes have an impact on Presidential powers, derives from Article III and not Article II"); see also Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 576578 (1992).
The dissent implicitly attacks us for "introduc[ing] [this question] sua sponte." Post, at 801. We raise the question, however, only to make clear that it is not at issue in this case. It is only the dissent that proceeds to volunteer an answer. See post, at 801-802.
cause." Ex parte McCardle, 7 Wall. 506, 514 (1869). Even jurisdiction over the person (as opposed to subject-matter jurisdiction) "is 'an essential element of the jurisdiction of a district ... court,' without which the court is 'powerless to proceed to an adjudication.''' Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U. S. 574, 584 (1999) (quoting Employers Reinsurance Corp. v. Bryant, 299 U. S. 374, 382 (1937)).
and virtual coincidence of scope makes it possible, and indeed appropriate, to decide the statutory issue first. We therefore begin (and will end) with the statutory question.
9 The dissent claims that, "[a]lthough general statutory references to 'persons' are not normally construed to apply to the enacting sovereign, when Congress uses that word in federal statutes enforceable by the Federal Government or by a federal agency, it applies to States and state agencies as well as to private individuals and corporations." Post, at 790 (citation omitted). The dissent cites three cases in support of this assertion. None of them, however, involved a statutory provision authorizing private suit against a State. California v. United States, 320 U. S. 577 (1944), disregarded the presumption in a case brought against a State by the Federal Government (and under a statutory provision authorizing suit only by the Federal Government). See id., at 585-586. United States v. California, 297 U. S. 175 (1936), found the presumption overcome in similar circumstances-and with regard to a statute that used not the word "person," but rather the phrase "common carrier." See id., at 186-187. And Georgia v. Evans, 316 U. S. 159 (1942), held that the presumption was overcome when, if a State were not regarded as a "person" for purposes of bringing an action under § 7 of the Sherman Act, it would be left "without any redress for injuries resulting from practices outlawed by that Act." Id., at 162.
presumption is "particularly applicable where it is claimed that Congress has subjected the States to liability to which they had not been subject before." Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U. S. 58, 64 (1989); Wilson v. Omaha Tribe, 442 U. S. 653, 667 (1979). The presumption is, of course, not a "hard and fast rule of exclusion," Cooper Corp., supra, at 604-605, but it may be disregarded only upon some affirmative showing of statutory intent to the contrary. See International Primate Protection League v. Administrators of Tulane Ed. Fund, 500 U. S. 72, 83 (1991).
10 The dissent contends that the FCA was "intended to cover the full range of fraudulent acts, including those perpetrated by States." Post, at 793, and n. 4 (quoting United States v. Neifert-White Co., 390 U. S. 228, 232 (1968); Rainwater v. United States, 356 U. S. 590, 592 (1958); H. R. Rep. No. 99-660, p. 18 (1985)). The sources the dissent quotes, however, support its contention only as far as the comma. They stand for the unobjectionable proposition (codified in § 3729(c)) that the FCA was intended to cover all types offraud, not for the additional proposition that the FCA was intended to cover all types of fraudsters, including States.
liability provision-the precursor to to day's § 3729(a)-bore no indication that States were subject to its penalties. Indeed, far from indicating that States were covered, it did not even make clear that private corporations were, since it applied only to "any person not in the military or naval forces of the United States, nor in the militia called into or actually employed in the service of the United States," and imposed criminal penalties that included imprisonment.ll Act of Mar. 2, 1863, ch. 67, § 3, 12 Stat. 698. We do not suggest that these features directed only at natural persons cast doubt upon the courts' assumption that § 3729(a) extends to corporations, see, e. g., United States ex rel. Woodard v. Country View Care Center, Inc., 797 F.2d 888, 890 (CAlO 1986)-but that is because the presumption with regard to corporations is just the opposite of the one governing here: they are presumptively covered by the term "person," see 1 U. S. C. § 1. But the text of the original statute does less than nothing to overcome the presumption that States are not covered.
11 The criminal provision remains on the books and is currently codified separately, as amended, at 18 U. S. C. § 287.
12 The dissent claims that "[t]he term 'person' in § 3729(a) that we are interpreting today was enacted by the 1986 Congress, not by the 1863 Congress." Post, at 794, n. 5. But the term "person" has remained in the statute unchanged since 1863; the 1986 amendment merely changed the modifier "[a]" to "[a]ny." This no more caused the word "person" to include States than did the replacement of the word "any" with "[a]" four years earlier. The dissent's sole basis for giving the change from "[a]" to "[a]ny" this precise and unusual consequence is a single sentence of legislative history from the 1986 Congress. That would be unequal to the task in any event, but as it happens the sentence was not even describing the consequence of the proposed revision, but was setting forth a Senate Committee's (erroneous) understanding of the meaning of the statutory term enacted some 123 years earlier. The paragraph in which the sentence appears discusses the FCA "[i]n its present," i. e., pre-1986, "form."
The dissent contradicts its contention that the "intent" of the 1986 Congress, rather than that of the 1863 Congress, controls here, by relying heavily on a House Committee Report from 1862. Post, at 791-792 (citing H. R. Rep. No.2, 37th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. ii-a, pp. XXXVIII-XXXIX (1862)). Even for those disposed to allow the meaning of a statute to be determined by a single committee, that Report is utterly irrelevant, since it was not prepared in connection with the 1863 Act, or indeed in connection with any proposed false claims legislation. In repeating the Second Circuit's unsupported assertion that Congress must have had this Report in mind a year later when it enacted the FCA, the dissent asks us to indulge even a greater suspension of disbelief than legislative history normally requires. And finally, this irrelevant committee Report does not provide the promised support for the view that "[t]he False Claims Act is ... as capable of being violated by state as by individual action," post, at 791. The cited portion details a single incident of fraud by a state official against a State, not an incident of fraud by a State against the Federal Government.
13 The dissent points out that the definition of "person" in § 3733(l)( 4) also applies to § 3733(l)(2), a definitional provision which defines the phrase "false claims law investigation" as "any inquiry conducted by any false claims law investigator for the purpose of ascertaining whether any person is or has been engaged in any violation of a false claims law." See post, at 789, 795. But the effect of assuming a State to be a "person" for purposes of that definitional section is not to embrace investigations of States within the definition. A "false claims investigation" will still not include an investigation of a State, since whether a "person" (however broadly defined) "is or has been engaged in any violation of a false claims law" depends on whether that person is subject to the "false claims law," which refers us back to § 3729, to which § 3733(l)(4)'s definition of "person" is explicitly made inapplicable. What the application of § 3733(l)(4) to § 3733(l)(2) does achieve is to subject States, not to qui tam liability, but to civil investigative demands. That is entirely appropriate, since States will often be able to provide useful evidence in investigations of private contractors.
14 The dissent contends that our argument "prove[s] too much," since the definition of "person" in § 3733(l)(4) includes not just States, but also "any natural person, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity"; under our reasoning, it contends, all of those entities would also be excluded from the definition of "person" under § 3729. Post, at 799. That is not so. Unlike States, all of those entities are presumptively covered by the term "person." See 1 U. S. C. § 1. The addition of States to 31 U. S. C. § 3733, and the failure to add States to § 3729, suggests that States are not subject to qui tam liability under § 3729.
The dissent attempts to explain the absence of a definitional provision in § 3729 by suggesting that Congress "simply saw no need to add a definition of 'person' in § 3729 because ... the meaning of the term 'person' was already well understood." Post, at 799. If that were so, and if the "understanding" included States, there would have been no need to include a definition of "person" in § 3733.
15 The dissent attempts to distinguish Newport on the basis of a single sentence in that opinion stating that "courts vie[w] punitive damages [against governmental bodies] as contrary to sound public policy, because such awards would burden the very taxpayers and citizens for whose benefit the wrongdoer was being chastised." Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc., 453 U. S., at 263. The dissent contends that Newport is inapplicable where, as here, "[t]he taxpaying 'citizens for whose benefit' the [statute] is designed are the citizens of the United States, not the citizens of any individual State that might violate the [statute]." Post, at 801. The problem with this is that Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983-the statute at issue in Newport-is, like the FCA, a federal law designed to benefit "the citizens of the United States, not the citizens of any individual State that might violate the [statute]." A better reading of Newport is that we were concerned with imposing punitive damages on taxpayers under any circumstances. "'[Punitive damages], being evidently vindictive, cannot, in our opinion, be sanctioned by this court, as they are to be borne by widows, orphans, aged men and women, and strangers, who, admitting that they must repair the injury inflicted by the Mayor on the plaintiff, cannot be bound beyond that amount, which will be sufficient for her indemnification.''' Newport, supra, at 261 (quoting McGary v. President & Council of City of Lafayette, 12 Rob. 668, 677 (La. 1846)).
16 As the dissent correctly points out, see post, at 801, n. 11, treble damages may be reduced to double damages in certain cases, see § 3729(a). This exception, however, applies only in some of those (presumably few) cases involving defendants who provide information concerning the violation before they have knowledge that an investigation is underway. See ibid.
original FCA were not punitive, but suggesting that treble damages, such as those in the antitrust laws, would have been). "The very idea of treble damages reveals an intent to punish past, and to deter future, unlawful conduct, not to ameliorate the liability of wrongdoers." Texas Industries, Inc. v. Radcliff Materials, Inc., 451 U. S. 630, 639 (1981).
at 585, and Evans, 316 U. S., at 160. In addition to being inapposite because they did not authorize suits against States by private parties, see n. 9, supra, the definitions of "person" in the statutes at issue in those cases were not as detailed as that of the PFCRA, and set forth what the term "person" included, rather than, as the PFCRA does, what the term "person" "means," see 31 U. S. C. §3801(a)(6) (emphasis added).
18 Although the dissent concludes that States can be "persons" for purposes of commencing an FCA qui tam action under § 3730(b), see post, at 794-795, we need not resolve that question here, and therefore leave it open.
False Claims Act does not subject a State (or state agency) to liability in such actions. The judgment of the Second Circuit is reversed.
I join the opinion of the Court in full. I also join the opinion of JUSTICE GINSBURG.
I join the Court's judgment and here state the extent to which I subscribe to the Court's opinion.
I agree with the Court that the qui tam relator is properly regarded as an assignee of a portion of the Government's claim for damages. See ante, at 773. And I agree, most vitally, that "Article Ill's restriction of the judicial power to 'Cases' and 'Controversies' is properly understood to mean 'cases and controversies of the sort traditionally amenable to, and resolved by, the judicial process.'" Ante, at 774. On that key matter, I again agree that history's pages place the qui tam suit safely within the "case" or "controversy" category. See ante, at 774-778.
Did Congress authorize qui tam suits against the States. Concluding that Congress did not authorize such suits, the Court has no cause to engage in an Eleventh Amendment inquiry, and appropriately leaves that issue open.
parties, and therefore concur in the Court's resolution of the statutory question. See ante, at 787-788. I note, however, that the clear statement rule applied to private suits against a State has not been applied when the United States is the plaintiff. See, e. g., Sims v. United States, 359 U. S. 108, 112 (1959) (state agency ranks as a "person" subject to suit by the United States under federal tax levy provision); United States v. California, 297 U. S. 175, 186-187 (1936) (stateowned railway ranks as a "common carrier" under Federal Safety Appliance Act subject suit for penalties by the United States). I read the Court's decision to leave open the question whether the word "person" encompasses States when the United States itself sues under the False Claims Act.
In 1986, Congress amended the False Claims Act (FCA or Act) to create a new procedure known as a "civil investigative demand," which allows the Attorney General to obtain documentary evidence "for the purpose of ascertaining whether any person is or has been engaged in" a violation of the Act-including a violation of 31 U. S. C. § 3729. The 1986 amendments also declare that a "person" who could engage in a violation of § 3729-thereby triggering the civil investigative demand provision-includes "any State or political subdivision of a State." See § 6(a), 100 Stat. 3168 (codified at 31 U. S. C. §§ 3733(l)(1)(A), (2), (4)). In my view, this statutory text makes it perfectly clear that Congress intended the term "person" in § 3729 to include States. This understanding is supported by the legislative history of the 1986 amendments, and is fully consistent with this Court's construction of federal statutes in cases decided before those amendments were enacted.
liability for violating federal laws. It is through the lens of those post-1986 cases that the Court has chosen to construe the statute at issue in this case. To explain my disagreement with the Court, I shall comment on pre-1986 cases, the legislative history of the 1986 amendments, and the statutory text of the FCA-all of which support the view that Congress understood States to be included within the meaning of the word "person" in § 3729. I shall then briefly explain why the State's constitutional defenses fail, even under the Court's post-1986 construction of the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
IThe difference between the post-1986 lens through which the Court views sovereign immunity issues, on the one hand, and the actual intent of Congress in statutes like the one before us today, on the other hand, is well illustrated by the congressional rejection of the holdings in Hoffman v. Connecticut Dept. of Income Maintenance, 492 U. S. 96 (1989), and United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U. S. 30 (1992). In those cases, the Court refused to find the necessary unequivocal waiver of sovereign immunity against both the States and the Federal Government in § 106(c) of the Bankruptcy Code.
Congress, however, thought differently: "In enacting section 106(c), Congress intended ... to make the States subject to a money judgment. But the Supreme Court in Hoffman v. Connecticut Department of Income Maintenance, 492 U. S. 96 (1989), held [otherwise.] In using such a narrow construction, the Court ... did not find in the text of the statute an 'unmistakenly clear' intent of Congress to waive sovereign immunity .... The Court applied this reasoning in United States v. Nordic Village, Inc." See 140 Congo Rec. 27693 (1994). Congress therefore overruled both of those decisions by enacting the current version of 11 U. S. C. § 106.
2 It is thus at the opposite pole from the statute construed in Wilson V.
Omaha Tribe, 442 U. S. 653 (1979), which held that the term "white person" did not include the State of Iowa because "it is apparent that in adopting § 22 Congress had in mind only disputes arising in Indian country, disputes that would not arise in or involve any of the States." Id., at 668.
had decried the "fraud and peculation" by state officials in connection with the procurement of military supplies and Government contracts-specifically mentioning the purchases of supplies by the States of Illinois, Indiana, New York, and Ohio. See H. R. Rep. No.2, 37th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. ii-a, pp. XXXVIII-XXXIX (1862). Although the FCA was not enacted until the following year, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit correctly observed that "it is difficult to suppose that when Congress considered the bills leading to the 1863 Act a year later it either meant to exclude the States from the 'persons' who were to be liable for presentation of false claims to the federal government or had forgotten the results of this extensive investigation." 162 F.3d 195, 206 (1998). That observation is faithful to the broad construction of the Act that this Court consistently endorsed in cases decided before 1986 (and hardly requires any "suspension of disbelief" as the majority supposes, ante, at 783, n. 12).
3 Title 31 U. S. C. § 3729(c) reads: "For purposes of this section, 'claim' includes any request or demand, whether under a contract or otherwise, for money or property which is made to a contractor, grantee, or other recipient if the United States Government provides any portion of the money or property which is requested or demanded, or if the Government will reimburse such contractor, grantee, or other recipient for any portion of the money or property which is requested or demanded."
4 When Congress amended the FCA in 1986, it noted that "[e]vidence of fraud in Government programs and procurement is on a steady rise." H. R. Rep. No. 99-660, at 18. And at that time, federal grants to state and local governments had totaled over $108 billion. See U. S. Dept. of Commerce National Data Book and Guide to Sources, Statistical Abstract of the United States 301 (108th ed. 1988) (compiling data from 1986). It is therefore difficult to believe, as the Court contends, that Congress intended "to cover all types of fraud, [but not] all types of fraudsters," ante, at 781, n. 10, a conclusion that would exclude from coverage such a large share of potential fraud.
that the Senate's understanding was based on an analogy rather than on controlling precedent.
Petitioner further argues that the text of the FCA as it was originally enacted in 1863 could not have included States as "persons," and therefore the Senate's understanding of the pre-1986 Act was erroneous. See also ante, at 778. Assuming for argument's sake that the Senate incorrectly ascertained what Congress meant in 1863, petitioner's argument is beside the point. The term "person" in § 3729(a) that we are interpreting today was enacted by the 1986 Congress, not by the 1863 Congress. See 100 Stat. 3153 (deleting entirely the previously existing introductory clause in § 3729, including the phrase "[a] person not a member of an armed force of the United States" and replacing it with the new phrase "[a]ny person"). Therefore, even if the 1986 Congress were mistaken about what a previous Legislature had meant by the word "person," it clearly expressed its own view that when the 1986 Congress itself enacted the word "person" (and not merely the word "any" as the Court insists, ante, at 783, n. 12), it meant the reference to include States. There is not the least bit of contradiction (as the Court suggests, ibid.) in one Congress informing itself of the general understanding of a statutory term it enacts based on its own (perhaps erroneous) understanding of what a past Congress thought the term meant.
of the word "person," the National Association of Attorneys General adopted a resolution urging Congress to make it easier for States to be relators.6 When Congress amended the FCA in 1986-and enacted the word "person" in § 3729 at issue here-it had all of this information before it, i. e., that federal judges had accepted States as relators (and hence as "persons"); that the States considered themselves to be statutory "persons" and wanted greater freedom to be "persons" who could sue under the Act; and that the United States had taken a like position. See S. Rep. No. 99-345, at 12-13.
In sum, it is quite clear that when the 1986 amendments were adopted, there was a general understanding that States and state agencies were "persons" within the meaning of the Act.
The text of the 1986 amendments confirms the pre-existing understanding. The most significant part of the amendments is the enactment of a new § 3733 granting authority to the Attorney General to issue a civil investigative demand (CID) before commencing a civil proceeding on behalf of the United States. A series of interwoven definitions in § 3733 unambiguously demonstrates that a State is a "person" who can violate § 3729.
6 Congress adopted the suggestion of the Attorneys General in § 3730(e)(4)(A).
gaged in a violation of § 3729. Finally, a "person" is defined to include "any State or political subdivision of a State." § 3733(l)(4). Hence, the CID provisions clearly state that a "person" who may be "engaged in any violation of a false claims law," including § 3729, includes a "State or a political subdivision of a State." 7 These CID provisions thus unmistakably express Congress' understanding that a State may be a "person" who can violate § 3729.
Elsewhere in the False Claims Act the term "person" includes States as well. For example, § 3730 of the Actboth before and after the 1986 amendments-uses the word "person" twice. First, subsection (a) of § 3730 directs the Attorney General to investigate violations of § 3729, and provides that if she "finds that a person has violated or is violating" that section, she may bring a civil action "under this section against the person." (Emphases added.) Second, subsection (b) of § 3730 also uses the word "person," though for a different purpose; in that subsection the word is used to describe the plaintiffs who may bring qui tam actions on behalf of themselves and the United States.
7 Because this concatenation of definitions expressly references and incorporates § 3729, it is no answer that the definitions listed in § 3733 apply, by their terms, "[f]or the purposes of" § 3733.
8JUSTICE GINSBURG, who joins in the Court's judgment, is careful to point out that the Court does not disagree with this reading of § 3730(a). Ante, at 789.
that § 3730(a) does not make any distinction between possible defendants against whom the Attorney General may bring an action, the most normal inference to draw is that qui tam actions may be brought by relators against the same category of "persons" that may be sued by the Attorney General.
To recapitulate, it is undisputed that (under the CID provision) a State is a "person" who may violate § 3729; that a State is a "person" who may be named as a defendant in an action brought by the Attorney General; and that a State is a "person" who may bring a qui tam action on behalf of the United States. It therefore seems most natural to read the adjacent uses of the term "person" in §§ 3729, 3730(a), 3730(b), and 3733 to cover the same category of defendants. See United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S., at 606 ("It is hardly credible that Congress used the term 'person' in different senses in the same sentence"). And it seems even more natural to read the single word "person" (describing who may commit a violation under § 3729) to have one consistent meaning regardless of whether the action against that violator is brought under § 3730(a) or under § 3730(b). See Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U. S. 135, 143 (1994) ("A term appearing in several places in a statutory text is generally read the same way each time it appears. We have even stronger cause to construe a single formulation ... the same way each time it is called into play" (citation omitted)). Absent powerful arguments to the contrary, it should follow that a State may be named as a defendant in an action brought by an assignee of the United States. Rather than pointing to any such powerful arguments, however, the Court comes to a contrary conclusion on the basis of an inapplicable presumption and rather strained inferences drawn from three different statutory provisions.
"presumption" does not quite do the heavy lifting the Court would like it to do. What's more, the doctrinal origins of that "presumption" meant only that the enacting sovereign was not normally thought to be a statutory "person." See, e. g., United States v. California, 297 U. S., at 186 ("[T]he canon of construction that a sovereign is presumptively not intended to be bound by its own statute unless named in it ... has its historical basis in the English doctrine that the Crown is unaffected by acts of Parliament not specifically directed against it. The presumption is an aid to consistent construction of statutes of the enacting sovereign when their purpose is in doubt" (emphasis added)); see also United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S., at 275; United States v. Fox, 94 U. S. 315, 321 (1877); Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U. S. 58, 73 (1989) (Brennan, J., dissenting). The reason for presuming that an enacting sovereign does not intend to authorize litigation against itself simply does not apply to federal statutes that apply equally to state agencies and private entities. Finally, the "affirmative showing" the Court would require to demonstrate that the word "person" includes States, ante, at 781, is plainly found in the statutory text discussed above.
clude any definition of "person" at all. The negative inference drawn by the Court, if taken seriously, would therefore prove too much. The definition of "person" in § 3733 includes not only States, but also "any natural person, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity." § 3733(l)(4). If the premise of the Court's argument were correct-that the inclusion of certain items as a "person" in § 3733 implies their exclusion as a "person" in § 3729-then there would be absolutely no one left to be a "person" under § 3729.9 It is far more reasonable to assume that Congress simply saw no need to add a definition of "person" in § 3729 because (as both the legislative history, see supra, at 791795, and the definitions in the CID provisions demonstrate) the meaning of the term "person" was already well understood. Congress likely thought it unnecessary to include a definition in § 3729 itself.
9 Not so, the Court says, because natural persons and other entities, unlike States, are presumed to be included within the term "person." Ante, at 784, n. 14. In other words, this supposedly independent textual argument does nothing on its own without relying entirely on the presumption already discussed. See supra, at 797-798; ante, at 780784. The negative inference adds nothing on its own.
about the PFCRA rests entirely on the premise that its definition of "person" does not include States. That premise, in turn, relies upon the fact that § 3801(a)(6) in the PFCRA defines a "person" to include "any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or private organization," but does not mention States. We have, however, interpreted similar definitions of "person," which included corporations, partnerships, and associations, to include States as well, even though States were not expressly mentioned in the statutory definition. See California v. United States, 320 U. S., at 585; Georgia v. Evans, 316 U. S., at 160. (I draw no definitive conclusions as to whether States are subject to suit under the PFCRA; I only mean to suggest that the Court's premise is not as obvious as it presumes it to be.) In any event, the ultimate relevant question is whether the text and legislative history of the FCA make it clear that § 3729's use of the word "person" includes States. Because they do, nothing in any other piece of legislation narrows the meaning of that term.
"person" would be the meaning adopted by the 1863 Congress, not the 1986 Congress. And on that premise, why should it matter what a different Congress, in a different century, did in a separate statute? Of course, as described earlier, see n. 5, supra, I believe it is the 1986 Congress' understanding of the word "person" that controls, because it is that word as enacted by the 1986 Congress that we are interpreting in this case. But on the Court's premise, it is the 1863 Congress' understanding that controls and the PFCRA should be irrelevant.
Each of the constitutional issues identified in the Court's opinion requires only a brief comment. The historical evidence summarized by the Court, ante, at 774-778, is obviously sufficient to demonstrate that qui tam actions are "cases" or "controversies" within the meaning of Article III. That evidence, together with the evidence that private prosecutions were commonplace in the 19th century, see Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 127-128, and nn. 24-25 (1998) (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment), is also sufficient to resolve the Article II question that the Court has introduced sua sponte, ante, at 778, n. 8.
11 It is also worth mentioning that treble damages may be reduced to double damages if the court makes the requisite findings under §§ 3729(a)(7)(A)-(C).
sufficient to abrogate any common-law defense of sovereign immunity. Moreover, even if one accepts Seminole Tribe as controlling, the State's immunity claim would still fail. Given the facts that (1) respondent is, in effect, suing as an assignee of the United States, ante, at 773; (2) the Eleventh Amendment does not provide the States with a defense to claims asserted by the United States, see, e. g., United States v. Mississippi, 380 U. S. 128, 140 (1965) ("[N]othing in [the Eleventh Amendment] or any other provision of the Constitution prevents or has ever been seriously supposed to prevent a State's being sued by the United States"); and (3) the Attorney General retains significant control over a relator's action, see 162 F. 3d, at 199-201 (case below), the Court of Appeals correctly affirmed the District Court's order denying petitioner's motion to dismiss. Compare New Hampshire v. Louisiana, 108 U. S. 76 (1883), with South Dakota v. North Carolina, 192 U. S. 286 (1904).12 I would, accordingly, affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
12 The agency argues that this is essentially an "end run" around the Eleventh Amendment. Brief for Petitioner 33. It is not at all clear to me, though, why a qui tam action would be considered an "end run" around that Amendment, yet precisely the same form of action is not an "end run" around Articles II and III.


text:
Locals participate in historic Farallon Islands…
Locals participate in historic Farallon Islands swim
By Jean Bartlett |
PUBLISHED: August 11, 2015 at 5:08 pm | UPDATED: April 21, 2018 at 1:26 am
Just before midnight, the last Wednesday in July, Pacifican Amy Appelhans Gubser entered the water. Gubser was swimming with Team Nadadores Locos, a 6-person relay team based out of San Francisco, which took on the challenge to swim from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Farallon Islands and then back again – a 59.4- mile swim (straight line distance). The team successfully completed the swim in 34 hours, 54 minutes and 15 seconds on July 31, 2015. While there have been two successful relays, they were one-way completions only. Team Nadadores Locos is the first team to successfully complete the two-way crossing of the Farallon Islands.
Independent observer Scott Tapley wrote, "To complete a swim of this magnitude, there are many elements that must exist simultaneously. First and foremost, you must have a well-trained team of swimmers who are properly acclimated to sea water ranging from the low to mid 50s (Fahrenheit). They must have both the physical and mental toughness to swim for 30 plus hours with the constant threat of changing weather, large ships, toxic jellyfish and lurking predators."
The team rotated swimmers every 60 minutes until the swim was completed. Crew Chief Joe Butler strictly enforced the timing of each shift and crew member Glenn Green kept the swimmers hydrated, fed and re-warmed after each swim. The swimmers in rotation order were: Pacifican Amy Gubser, Pacifican Kirk McKinney, Les Mangold, John Sims, Jeff Everett and Andrew McLaughlin. All six swimmers are members of the South End Rowing Club in San Francisco. Gubser noted the swimmer's distance varied each time depending on the current. Swimming was "freestyle."
"At one point we were pushed back one mile because of the strong currents," Gubser said, "and did not make any headway for five hours."
Gubser, with one year in as a Nadadores Locos, is the newest member of the team. The 17-year Pacifica resident, who co-owns Surf Camp Pacifica with her husband Greg Gubser, is a certified ocean lifeguard and a working RN.
"The water was cold," Gubser emphasized. "51 degrees at the Islands and the temperature at the Bridge was 63 degrees. The water was surprisingly calm. The Farallon Islands are known for their rough conditions. We were lucky."
A one-half version of this trek, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Farallons, recently stopped marathon swimmer Simon Dominguez just 3 and a half miles from his goal.
"Simon is a friend of ours," Gubser said. "Marathon swimming is a small group and we all train together at times and are very supportive of each other. There was a great white shark circling him. For safety reasons, they pulled him out of the water."
Challenging herself and subsequently sharing that feeling with others, that people can face fears with courage and determination, was an important part of the lesson of the swim for Gubser. Team member John Sims concurred.
"The Farallons are arguably the most dangerous water to swim in the world," Sims said. "Temperature and predators are the main factors. It's the ultimate challenge for one's personnal goals."
Sims said that "water" is home for him. He has played water polo, is a scuba diver, has sailed, waterskied and owned boats his entire life. Sims also pointed out that the cumulative age of the team was 306.
"Our youngest is 42 and our oldest is 65," Sims laughed. "Old people rule."
Sims found the water "beautiful."
"Water visibility was incredible," Sims said, "marine life abundant, seals following swimmers, jellyfish, jellyfish and more jellyfish – lots of stings. Bioluminescent was blue at night. As you stroked through the water your bubbles were blue. One of our swimmers and observers saw 12-15 foot silhouettes below Andrew during a swim. They watched him carefully and it was not an issue. Chances are 1 in 700 million for a California swimmer to be bitten; most likely less in the waters we swam in but still better than the everyday risks we take living our normal non swimming lives."
Escort Pilots Captain Brent McLain and Captain Marino Cacciotti had the overall responsibility for the swim and the safety of the team and crew. Those responsibilities included: precise course navigation to prevent extra distance for the swimmers, communication with the swimmers and communication with VTS (vessel traffic service).
Two independent observers, Kim Rutherford and Scott Tapley, kept a mandatory log to meet the requirements of the Channel's sanctioning bodies, the Farallon Island Swimming Federation and the Marathon Swimmers Federation.
"Our crew worked together for the first time and worked like a professional pit crew which has trained for years," Sims said. "The synergy and teamwork was amazing. I trust everyone with my life which is something you have to do when swimming in the dark at night. My bags are packed by the door for the next call."
Pacifica Tribune correspondent Jean Bartlett can be reached at editor@jeansmagazines.org.
Jean Bartlett
'Bioneers' conferences benefit CHAT

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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A Society or a Country with Parochial Political Culture is usually characterised with amusing features and inexplicable bizzare conduct.It is only in such Countries or Societies you can find mindless and shameless people in Public Administration.
These group of Public Servants,Elected Political Office Holders or Appointed survive in such an enviroment because you have a population that is always ready to justify the actions of any sitting government,no matter how wrong.
1.Invitation of a President of a country that was elected on the expectation of bringing about positive Change in Public Service to commission a "Five Star Hospital"in Benin City, Edo state.And the cardinal principle of the president is to fight corruption in Nigeria.
The President commissioned the hospital for public use,and in his speech advised Nigerians not to seek medical attention abroad,but to come to Benin because of the facilities of the hospital.
He did not ask at what cost the hospital was built.
He did not bother to know whether the hospital had staff and necessary medical equipment.
2.The "heroic"governor Adams Oshiomhole who celebrated the completion of his "special project" with Edo state money,refused,as usual will always refuse to disclose the amount of any project he executed.
Up till now,he did not tell us the whereabout of the medical equipment meant or purchased for the hospital.
I met one university teacher who told me that it does not matter if their are no medical equipment or medical staff in the hospital.Can you really say a building is a hospital when such building lacks both medical staff and medical equipment?
1.Have you come to Edo state to fight corruption or to polish corruption?If you are interested in fighting corruption,the first thing to do before the proposed sale is to tell Edo people how much did the hospital cost Edo state tax payers.
2.Are you aware that health is a social service not a commercial venture of government? If your intetest is to commercialise,you MUST disclose the total amount Edo state government invested in the hospital,and then you can sell to make profit. As a investment banker,you know that is the right thing to do.With the profit from the sales,you can build another one to sell,or use the profit to build basic accessible and affordable hospitals across the eighteen local government areas of Edo state.
Anything outside this will have no other definition,but a fraud,and it can only happen in a Country with Parochial Political Culture.
NEWSPAPER REVIEW FOR FRIDAY, AUGUST 04, 2017.


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text:
Q: Why this pointer captured by lambda is corrupted while other variable is not I have compiled (g++ -std=c++11 a.cpp) and run following code:
#include <iostream>
#include <functional>

using namespace std;

class A {
    std::function<void(void)> f;
public:
    A(std::function<void(void)> pf) : f(pf) {}
    void callf() { f(); }
};

class B {
    A *a;
public:
    void test() {
        B *that = this;
        auto f = [this, that]() {
            cout << "this: " << this << " that: " << that << endl;
            delete this->a;
            cout << "this: " << this << " that: " << that << endl;
        };

        a = new A(f);
        a->callf();
    }
};

int main()
{
    B().test();
}

Its output was:
this: 0x7fff158c88f0 that: 0x7fff158c88f0
this: 0x1ea3000 that: 0x7fff158c88f0

I do not understand why captured this changed its value while identical pointer with different name was not corrupted.
Edit:
I understand that lambda is destroyed and I am producing UB but what I do not understand is why one variable is corrupted while other not. I do not understand low level details behind this behaviour which is by the way very consistent. I want to understand gcc implementation details that cause this kind of behaviour.
My further investigation showed that changing auto f = [this, that] to auto f = [that, this] caused that to be corrupted.

A: Undefined behaviour, innit. You just destroyed the lambda you're executing.

A: You are calling delete this->a; and this->a is what holds f, leading to UB.

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text:
Can Anyone Stop Ken Cuccinelli? Here's how Virginia's pro-life, pro-gun attorney general could take over the Governor's Mansion.
By Hook Contributor | contributor@readthehook.com
Published online 10:42am Thursday Apr 11th, 2013
and in print issue #1215 dated Thursday Apr 11th, 2013
At his swearing-in ceremony, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli begins his hard-right odyssey meeting and greeting supporters at the state Capitol.
Scott Elmquist
Ken Cuccinelli, holding a "don't tread on me" flag on inauguration night, was "tea party before the tea party was tea party," says longtime political analyst Bob Holsworth.
The attorney general helps cut the ribbon at the grand opening of Colonial Shooting Academy in the West End in April, 2012.
Calmer days at the state Capitol, during Cuccinelli's swearing-in as attorney general. The arrests of 30 women's rights protestors on the same Capitol steps two years later could potentially derail his gubernatorial bid.
Cuccinelli addresses Mitt Romney supporters during a campaign stop at Meadow Event Park in Doswell the week before the presidential election.
by Peter Galuszka
It is a wintry afternoon on Saturday, Jan. 11, 2014. Strutting against a cobalt blue sky, a fife and drum corps dressed in resplendent red and blue colonial garb plays martial airs in front of the steps of Virginia's stately Capitol. The governor is about to take his oath of office administered by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia:
I, Kenneth Thomas Cuccinelli II, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and I will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties incumbent upon me as Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia to the best of my ability. So help me God.
It's a surreal, if not bizarre, moment. Cuccinelli, a hard right-wing maverick, has managed to get to this position in a once-solidly conservative state where gradual changes are making it more centrist, if not progressive.
Didn't Virginians vote twice for Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, and choose Democrats for two of their last four governors? Didn't voters blunt the tea party movement that reared its rattlesnake head three years before? Aren't huge demographic shifts led by an influx of more diverse newcomers resetting Virginia's politics from red to purple to blue?
During these inauguration festivities, social conservatives and libertarians may be cheering, but others find it absolutely apocalyptic. Gay rights activists, artists, and social workers are stunned at the ascension of the former attorney general, who won fame for bashing homosexuals in state government and for staging a long and expensive campaign against former UVA professor Michael Mann, who maintains, like most climatologists around the world, that humans are responsible for global warming.
For women's rights activists, the scene is especially bitter. On these very steps nearly two years before, 30 of them and their supporters were manhandled and arrested by flak-jacketed state troopers and Capitol Police officers for protesting a bill that mandated women to submit to transvaginal ultrasound exams prior to undergoing legal abortions.
Cuccinelli, a staunch pro-lifer, didn't publicly support the transvaginal bill, but became a central figure in the dust-up over a new state law requiring abortion clinics be regulated as "hospitals." Pro-choice advocates say the law is a disguised attempt to shut down the clinics with cumbersome regulations. In another move seen as anti-gay, Cuccinelli has petitioned to keep Virginia's law making sodomy a crime. On March 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down Virginia's law criminalizing oral and anal sex as unconstitutional, based on a a 2003 Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case. Years ago, such laws were used to target homosexuals. Cuccinelli has said he's appealing the court decision because the Virginia case involved underage sex.
Also scratching their heads are the state's Main Street Republicans, led by outgoing Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, whose carefully crafted succession plans were laid to waste by Cuccinelli's brash independence and clever moves. Watching intensely on the sidelines are national news media, which see Cuccinelli's campaign as a litmus test of how conservatives can come back after their drubbing in the 2012 elections.
How did Cuccinelli get here?
The simple, but wrong answer is that Cuccinelli merely tacked left of the center after Virginia painted itself blue and went for Obama in 2012. To be sure, the 45-year-old took some turns, such as siding with environmentalists against powerful state utilities for getting renewable energy ratepayer charges for dams they built nearly 100 years ago.
But this view diminishes Cuccinelli's talent as a political tactician.
"Cuccinelli is not going to move to the center on anything," says political analyst Bob Holsworth. "He's just outside the corporatist structure."
Indeed, Cuccinelli, who declined to be interviewed through a spokesman for this story, seems impervious to traditional Old Dominion politics. He has his own social code, of sorts, and his own strident outsider's view, which, reviewing his history, is hardly a surprise. With Cuccinelli, what you see is what you get. Just about every move he makes can be traced back to a similar one he made years before.
Bucking tradition, he has refused to step down as the state's top legal officer. The stance has proven problematic. Cuccinelli finally agreed to recuse the attorney general's office in a tax case involving Star Scientific, a Henrico County-based maker of dietary supplements. He did so after The Washington Post reported on March 31 that Cuccinelli holds stock in the firm and initially failed to disclose his holdings. Cuccinelli has said he has corrected the error. The Post also reported that Cuccinelli and two aides have used the expensive Goochland house owned by Jonnie R. Williams, the chief executive of Star Scientific, which has also given gifts to members of the family of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell.
Still, Cuccinelli is not to be sold short in politics. "Democrats are underestimating his potential vote-getting appeal," says Paul Goldman, longtime Democratic strategist and former state Democratic chairman. "Look at Ronald Reagan– no one thought he would win because he was too conservative."
Cuccinelli has already shown his mastery of tactics. One of the reasons he was able to finesse his candidacy within the Republican Party was a palace coup he helped stage in June. The central committee of the Republican Party, taken over by a band of arch-conservatives, voted 47-31 to nominate the party's gubernatorial candidate in 2013 in a closed convention rather than the open primary that was agreed upon in 2011.
It was a big win for Cuccinelli, and it set him up for the gubernatorial candidacy, because selection by closed convention is open to less meddling by outsiders. Primaries tend to be big-money deals with lots of political advertising, some of which is paid for by taxpayers. Primaries are also open to all voters, regardless of party. Shifting from a primary to a convention in 2013 was a major loss for the Republican establishment, including McDonnell and U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, who's played an enormous role in the fiscal cliff debates.
Going with a convention was the death knell for two-term Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, first elected to the post in 2005, when Democrat Tim Kaine won the Governor's Mansion. Bolling, a mainstream Republican, agreed to step aside and not challenge McDonnell when McDonnell ran for governor in 2009, with the somewhat presumptuous understanding that his turn would come in 2013.
For a while, all looked well for the McDonnell camp. He had an approval rating of better than 60 percent, televised well, and was able to recast himself from his social conservative views on gays and women from the 1990s to something more acceptably moderate. The grand plan was for McDonnell to be selected as Mitt Romney's vice presidential candidate in 2012. Bolling, a get-along, go-along guy from Hanover County, would smoothly step right in and serve the remainder of McDonnell's term, and assume the power of incumbency in the 2013 election.
It didn't turn out that way. Romney didn't pick McDonnell, in part because of ugly national fallout over the trans-vaginal abortion exam requirement that brought the state derision during the 2012 General Assembly. Romney's campaign proved a disaster and Obama easily beat him, shoving national and state Republican parties, including the Old Dominion's, into a swamp of soul searching.
With Cuccinelli seemingly firmly entrenched as the GOP's gubernatorial nominee, Bolling quit the race. He melodramatically dissed Cuccinelli on Newsradio 1140 WRVA, stating: "I question his electability in a statewide campaign for governor." Bolling eventually declined to run as an independent, citing cash and family concerns.
For their part, the state's Democrats are only now becoming organized, and the best they've come up with is Terry McAuliffe, a Washington insider, environmental investor, schmoozer and former head of the Democratic National Committee. Well-regarded U.S. Sen. Mark Warner chose not to run again for governor, a job he held from 2002 to 2006, clearing the path for the charismatic Cuccinelli. Polls put the race at 50-50.
Most of the recent events are presaged in Cuccinelli's playbook, which fits his unyielding anti-government philosophy, except where it interferes with his views on sex, gays, and marriage. As a state senator from 2002 to 2010, for example, he backed strict conservatives and opposed allowing voters to participate in political primaries regardless of their party affiliation. Doing so would allow more moderates to participate and dilute conservative power.
He's been true to form on any number of other issues, such as his hands-off policy on guns, arming school personnel after the Sandy Hook massacre, forbidding children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States to automatically become citizens, keeping state funding for sex education focused on "abstinence only," and being the first attorney general in all 50 states to legally challenge Obamacare.
He's pushed for state Medicaid fraud investigators to carry firearms in their jobs that aren't exactly fraught with danger. Declaring "homosexuality is wrong," he's fought gay marriage and refused to support resolutions stating that gays shouldn't be discriminated against in state jobs, including those at public universities.
The same suspicion of government carries through on other issues, but with a twist. Cuccinelli fought vigorously to free convict Thomas Haynesworth after DNA testing found that Haynesworth was innocent of the rapes for which he'd served 27 years in prison. Cuccinelli later helped Haynesworth find a job. Other revealing and countervailing acts include declaring that high-school students shouldn't be required to pay $75 to take Advanced Placement tests, and a crackdown on payday lenders.
Cuccinelli is sensitive to the plight of the mentally ill. While he appeals to the anti-government conservative base, he's also pressed to restrict the mentally ill from legally obtaining guns, and has called for more communication between doctors and the courts in mental health cases. After Sandy Hook, he called for more mental-health funding.
He also handed $100,000 from his surplus inauguration donations to the Daily Planet, a downtown Richmond medical clinic that offers free health care to the homeless.
"Inauguration events," Cuccinelli said when he made the donation, "are certainly a celebration of the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy, but they can also stand as a time to bring to light the needs of some of society's most vulnerable, underserved citizens."
So what drives Cuccinelli's worldview? His background offers clues. Born in New Jersey, he moved to Northern Virginia when he was 2 after his father, a chemical engineer, changed jobs. According to a lengthy 2010 profile in The Washington Post Magazine, Cuccinelli dominated his two younger brothers in a bossy, perfectionist way.
Devout Roman Catholics of Italian and Irish descent, his middle-income parents found the money to send Cuccinelli to Gonzaga College High School, an expensive private school on North Capitol Street in Washington. Gonzaga is run by the Jesuits, a Catholic order known for strict academic discipline and strong belief in social justice.
It rubbed off. As a mechanical engineering major at the University of Virginia, Cuccinelli shunned his preppie Wahoo demeanor to help run a group supporting female students against sexual assault by male students crazed by booze and machismo.
After law school at George Mason University, practicing business law, and a stint as a state senator, he and his wife, Tiero, moved to a 10-acre property in Prince William County, from which he has commuted to his job in Richmond as the state's top lawyer. Their seven children are and have been home-schooled into the seventh grade. Tiero told the Post: "His priorities are God, me, the children and everything else."
Cuccinelli was once an intern for L. Douglas Wilder, the country's first black elected governor who shares remarkably similar ideas on government spending. Like Rep. Eric Cantor, a rival conservative with whom he doesn't get along, Cuccinelli shares a fondness for rap music. He also likes paintball and holds an annual private camouflage-and-splatter competition among friends in Loudoun County to raise political funds.
Mix together Cuccinelli's extreme social views with his in-your-face provocations against the state's traditional political and business establishment and you have a political race that the national media is dying to cover.
In a piece headlined "Virginia embodies GOP's woes," Politico recently noted the irony that Cuccinelli is such a powerhouse in an off-year election just after the GOP got an electoral drubbing, which many people blame on the party's social agenda: "What gnaws at Virginia campaign veterans is the degree to which Cuccinelli is already defined as a polarizing culture warrior at a moment when Republicans seem to be clamoring for kinder and gentler candidates."
"Cuccinelli will be a test of the internal Republican argument of how they can win," analyst Holsworth says. "They can say we need to moderate our message or our message is already moderated the right way."
While Holsworth insists that Cuccinelli won't budge on his core views, there's some evidence of him shifting away from issues such as immigration, which is now a political nonstarter, to issues that may have broader appeal.
In late November, for example, Cuccinelli issued a scathing report on a voluntary state environmental program called the "Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)," which allows utilities Dominion Virginia Power and Appalachian Power Co. to charge customers extra for supposedly using renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric, solar, or wind.
But the utilities aren't developing much in the way of new and alternative energy sources, Cuccinelli's report says. Instead, they're using out-of-state dams, some 80 years old, to get the credits amounting to $15 million during the past two years for Appalachian Power and possibly $76 million for Dominion for that period.
The report got attention, especially because it came from an attorney general notorious for his attacks on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the climate-change lobby. Green groups have given their quick, if skeptical, approval.
Dawone Robinson, Virginia policy coordinator for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, praises the report but notes that the law setting up the standards remains unchanged. "The timing of Ken Cuccinelli's report is very interesting," Robinson says. "He did a five-year-review and he didn't have to. He did it, coincidentally, just as he's running for governor."
Pundits already expect money to flow during the 2013 gubernatorial race in Virginia, which has no limits on spending. The race "figures to be one of the most expensive in state history," wrote The Washington Times. Indeed, records from the Virginia Public Access Project show that campaign contributions to "Cuccinelli for Governor" are already coming in. As of December 31, Cuccinelli had $1,178,624, with McAuliffe totaling $1,039740. The figures are certain to change with mid-April reporting. McAuliffe, for instance, has picked up about $2 million more thanks to out-of-state fund-raisers helped by Democratic big wigs such as Bill Clinton, James Carville and Dee Dee Myers, Politico reports.
In Virginia, some of the biggest contributors are Richmond specialty chemical mavens Floyd D. and Bruce C. Gottwald, who contribute regularly to conservative causes, Smithfield Foods and Richmond law firms McGuire Woods and Williams Mullen. In Charlottesville, contributors include John R. Quinn ($1,100), Management Services Corp. ($1,000) and Old Dominion Highway Contractor Association ($1,000)
One out-of-state name stands out: Koch Industries Inc. The Wichita, Kansas-based company is the second-largest privately held entity in the country, run by Charles and David Koch, staunchly conservative billionaires who have bankrolled the libertarian think tank Cato Institute. David Koch donated $50,000 and coal giant Consol Energy of Pittsburgh gave $25,000. Other out-of-state funds for Cuccinelli are coming from Texas, Wyoming, and North Carolina.
Despite such powerful backing, Cuccinelli's campaign appears to have had its teething pains. Politico reports that the attorney general seemed to ramble at a recent Alexandria fundraiser. He also kept using the word "illegals" when asked about immigration policy, a complex issue involving documented as well as undocumented foreign nationals.
He has fierce opposition in some corners, including the women's rights activists who emerged after last year's General Assembly session. The grass-roots, pro-choice activists– including those behind "Cooch Watch," a blog that chronicles the attorney general's comings and goings– have become adept at reframing Cuccinelli's pro-life advocacy as an attack on women.
Still, Cuccinelli seems in a strong position given his colorful nature. McAuliffe is working to overcome his outsider image that helped him lose his 2009 gubernatorial bid in the Democratic primary to state Sen. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath County).
While Republican strategist Chris LaCivita, says that Cuccinelli will be "continuing some of the things that McDonnell has done," he did not specify exactly what, and Cuccinelli has opposed McDonnell on some major issues. He has come out strongly against McDonnell's major victory on his signature transportation plan that will define his legacy. The plan is the first major reform of highway funding since 1986 and would replace the gasoline tax with hikes on the sales tax and through other methods. It will eventually raise $6 billion for roads and other forms of transit. Cuccinelli has said that Virginians don't need more taxes and has questioned the plan's constitutionality.
For now, Cuccinelli has an obvious advantage as the ultimate contrarian candidate. His association with the now-diminished tea party movement shouldn't be a factor. As Holsworth says, "He was tea party before the tea party was tea party." If Cuccinelli plays his iconoclastic advantage as skillfully as he has outmaneuvered McDonnell and the rest of the Republican establishment so far, his inauguration could very well become a reality.
Peter Galuszka is a contributing editor to Style Weekly in Richmond, where a version this article and the photos by Scott Elmquist first appeared.
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Angel Eyes April 11th, 2013 | 10:59am
Let's just hope this article's narrative fiction never becomes reality....
Marco Esquandolas April 11th, 2013 | 11:13am
Let's hope someone can stop him...
Bob April 11th, 2013 | 11:22am
Against my better judgment, I read this article. It becomes a cliche to reference "bias in the media", but there is no pretense of objectivity here. It is easy to understand why "journalists" rank below used care salesman in favorability. I'm not even sure I would vote for Cuccinelli, but I am disgusted with the spin here. The writer makes Rush Limbaugh look like Walter Cronkite.
Crawdad April 11th, 2013 | 12:16pm
Once again it appears the media has made up our minds for us. Call it a hunch, but I'd be willing to bet that the Hook wouldn't ever publish such a scathing commentary on McAuliffe. It's truly shameful what passes for journalism these days.
GarGal April 11th, 2013 | 12:20pm
Can any one person stop Ken Cuccinelli? Yes.... Ken Cuccinelli! Just let him keep talking and let reasonable citizens know what he truly stands for. We don't want to go back to the 1850s.
Dawg April 11th, 2013 | 12:44pm
@Crawdad, no one would publish such scathing commentary on McAuliffe because he is not an insane religious wingnut like Cuccinelli.
jimi "big name" hendrix April 11th, 2013 | 1:27pm
Dont need those wing nuts religious types preaching these days....eh Jeremiah Wright? Or the guy that played the race card to Obama on Easter. Oh wait, they are only wing nuts when the left sez it is so. That tolerant left who are, well so very not tolerant. Actually, they attack more than anyone...
Does anyone that favors abortion ask the pregnant mother who is keeping her child, "How is the fetus doing?" NO they ask "how is the baby doing?" Is it a war on women, or people who value life trying to keep babies alive? Perhaps it is the ladies using abortion as birth control, and please someone else need to pay, who need to be brought a little closer to the reality.
But yeah, another partizan puff piece masquerading as news. How shocking!
And dawg, you do know that Mac is Roman Catholic?
Crawdad April 11th, 2013 | 1:35pm
@ Dawg: i see, so it's justifiable to write a smear piece and pass it off as a cover story so long as you can label that person an "insane religious wingnut". gotcha.
J Ferrell April 11th, 2013 | 2:06pm
Of my goodness! Yet another vile, vulgar, God hating, rag head loving, humanist spilling his posion on a clueless population. Over half of what is written in this article is nothing short of biased fiction!!!
Bob... I'm thinking your journalist ranking didn't go quite low enough. How about we start at the scum level and work our way down.
Dawg April 11th, 2013 | 3:03pm
I don't know why you people think the article is a smear. There really isn't anything good to say about the guy unless you are a know-nothing religious zealot.
Dan Andrews April 11th, 2013 | 3:22pm
"Yet another vile, vulgar, God hating, rag head loving, humanist spilling his posion on a clueless population. "
Says the guy who just spilled his racist stereotypical narrow-minded ignorant fear-based poisonous view about a good-sized proportion of the human race by referring to them as "rag heads". Compared to that nasty peek into the bigoted part of his mind, Ferrell's faulty assumptions and strawman attack are hardly even noticeable.
jeezlouise April 11th, 2013 | 3:48pm
I love the sound of screeching libs in the afternoon. Darn I miss Cheney.
Desertphile April 11th, 2013 | 6:41pm
"Pro-life, pro-gun." So, which is it?
amigo1 April 11th, 2013 | 9:18pm
I believe something called NORTHERN VIRGINIA will stop the kooch.
Praise the lawd for NOVA and the fact that Charlottesville is a secure settlement established in the "South Bank".
Liberalace April 12th, 2013 | 7:46am
Let the bedwetting begin. Libs crying because this principled guy actually has a chance to win. Libs fawning over the criminal punk carpetbagger who will oppose him on the Dem side.
The lefties use "religious nut" in the same way racists use the term "ni**er." Go into many inner city churches (the ones Obama attends when it is expedient) and you will hear far-left wingnuts as crazy--or loonier--than the rightest of preachers. And while lefties will chastise right-wing religious hypocrisy (i.e., cheaters like Swaggart and Bakker), they forget Jackson, Jackson Jr., Sharpton and the many other lefty religious freaks.
This article paints Cooch in a good light...unless you are already of the "if it feels good, do it" and "make the rich pay their fair share" persuasion.
My lifemate and I will be pulling Cooch's lever this election!
R.I.P.: Irv Homer
Bushie April 12th, 2013 | 12:40pm
I'm no "lib," but I do regret that Cuccinelli so easily outflanked Bolling to get the GOP nomination. I fear it will cost Republicans the statehouse, either in this election cycle (if Ken loses) or the next one (if he wins and governs as unprofessionally as he has managed the AG's office). I was raised in the GOP of level-headed grownups, which in my view included both George H.W. Bush and both of his sons, George W. and Jeb, none of whom could win now in most GOP nominee fights. I blame the newer breed of movement-conservative radicals for the fact that the GOP is losing so badly on the national level. It is painfully ironic that, just as being taken over by radicalism cost the Democrats so dearly from 1968 onwards until Bill Clinton dragged them back to the center in 1992, GOP radicalization since 2010 risks confining Republicans to the back bench for several presidential election cycles to come. We really should be listening more carefully to Karl Rove, and stop letting people wearing silly hats direct our strategies.
Blair Hawkins April 12th, 2013 | 7:19pm
The Hook's latest cover editorial: "Can anyone stop Ken Cuccinelli?" Why would you want to? A better title might be – "Why Democrats cannot stop Cuccinelli?" How is it possible that an extreme far right wing radical Republican keeps getting elected in a liberal district? Who are these heretic liberals looking beyond party label to the issues? …Oh, I like that idea. It's a Republican idea. I hate it…. All the Democrats have is party label just as Mitt Romney lost on party label. But Republicans, who speak to the issues like Ronald Reagan did, win every time. Cuccinelli isn't the only Republican Democrats are voting for. Corey Stewart is running for Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor in a field of 7 candidates. Stewart has explained his success comes from talking directly to the issues and to the voters over the long term. Now the new establishment Republican strategy is to target liberal urban areas by doing what successful Republicans have been doing for years. The Republican convention is May 18. I'll be a Rob Bell delegate for Attorney General based on his 2012 Property Amendment addressing some abuses of eminent domain. Four years ago I was a Cuccinelli delegate based on his efforts to push back the abuse as soon as he was elected in the late '90s. Hello! That's a bipartisan issue where Republicans stand with the majority on the side of civil rights. Why is Democrat for Governor Terry McAuliffe so afraid of Ken Cuccinelli? Terry has only party label and personal attacks.
Cvillian April 12th, 2013 | 8:21pm
Blair's been drinkin' the tea again!
I will, however, vote for Rob Bell if he gets his party's nomination even though he's a Teapublican because he had the good sense to ask for Chris Dumler to resign before most of the others, including Albemarle's own Democratic Party and the Republicans. He also got the anti dog fighting bill passed after Vick did all those bad things to those poor dogs. I will suspend my party sympathies for a candidate that does the right thing. I hope everyone is vetting these candidates. You can see what happened in the Dumler case when the Democrats didn't vet him carefully enough and the GOPpers did no opposition research.
Walter April 13th, 2013 | 5:31am
I think it is easier to get 47 people to have an extreme opinion vs. 47000. What seems telling to me is that extremes on both sides ( let's drop liberal and conservative labels for a moment) have nominated candidates that represent their viewpoints, not the majority. Frankly they could care less what a majority thinks simply because they don't have to appeal to them.
Maybe the solution is the elimination of the open primary. Make people in their voter registrations declare themselves as registered Democrat, Republican, any other official party, or independant. Then only the registered member can vote in the primary (or convention). I know some other states do this. That way if a party is truly extreme, then it can easily be identified as such.
Sadly, the extremes are not interested in ANY solution that diminishes their power, so I think we are going to continue that status quo.
C'ville Native April 13th, 2013 | 9:06am
And from the comments the phrase "You can't fix stupid" comes to mind.
Look at his record of threats, lawsuits and petitions brought forward which were dismissed or lost and the fact that his "convictions" shouldn't enter in to his service for "the people" at all. How much of our tax dollars were spent on his failed attempts? He is an impotent AG. I would never hire him as an attorney for his record alone.
He, along with many others are not the best choice for the people, by the people.
Angel Eyes April 13th, 2013 | 1:26pm
This guy should be running for mayor of Colorado City.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_City,_Arizona
With his 7 homeschooled kids, Elmer Gantry simpleton religion, and stay-at-home wife, he'd fit right in like Bill on "Big Love". But for this corn pone nazi to be governor? I shudder to think about it, but we can always hope that someone out there may already have the video whose release will hit his campaign like that torpedo into the Lusitania.
All derisive comments aside, I do think the right wing wave that propelled this revanchist into power along with the current governor sort of crested in 2010 and I don't think his views will play well with the changing demographics of Virginia, notably the increasing NOVA population.
a55hatery April 13th, 2013 | 5:12pm
NoVa and Cville: pulling RoVa kicking and screaming into the 21st century
Blue Ridge April 14th, 2013 | 9:51am
This coming election is not a referendum on whether Ken Cuccinelli would make a perfect Governor. It is a choice between two candidates. And while Cuccinelli has his weak points, he is far superior to Terry McAuliffe, the "crony capitalist" Democratic nominee who could not answer basic questions about our state government in one of his first interviews. At least Cuccinelli has government experience and a solid understanding of the challenges Virginia faces.
Bushie April 15th, 2013 | 10:41am
It is improbable that if Cuccinelli wins he would govern as far to the right as he has performed as AG -- doing that would kill his political future, and given Virginia's term limit for sitting governors he has to be looking beyond this one shot. McDonnell, too, was feared as being too far right when he first took over, and then shifted to the center, although Bob has always been much better at the use of political charm than Ken ever can hope to be -- the men are just not of similar natures, class, or style. Like Bob before him, Ken would soon learn that he would have to deftly master the art of compromise, is he hopes to have any legacy come from the General Assembly, and if he fails to work effectively with the more liberal and centrist northern Virginia and tidewater-based legislators and power brokers, he would quickly become a lame duck.
Seannie O' The Hills April 16th, 2013 | 12:31pm
"I will maintain the utmost respect for human life, from the time of its conception; even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity; I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity"
Hippocratic Oath
Declaration of Geneva
Following the Nazi Doctors Trial at Nuremberg
dave manley April 17th, 2013 | 7:05am
Virginia needs Cucinelli now more than ever. What a breathof fresh air he would be compared to the utter foulness that is Virginia's current plight.
ruminator April 18th, 2013 | 3:05pm
This article brought to you by another vacuous and sanctimonious dork who thinks theft, envy, infanticide, cowardice, contempt for the rule of law, group think, hispanic slavery and biblephobia constitute "progress."
Bobby April 20th, 2013 | 5:46am
This article is an editorial, not a news story, so yes it's biased but what do you expect?
McAuliffe has nothing to recommend him, nothing at all, except that he is not the Cooch. Sadly, this year, I think that will be enough.
Dawg April 20th, 2013 | 11:01am
@Angel Eyes, you have a way with words.
The Cruncher April 21st, 2013 | 1:41pm
"Most of the recent events are presaged in Cuccinelli's playbook, which fits his unyielding anti-government philosophy, except where it interferes with his views on sex, gays, and marriage."
What a coincidence, that's what most Virginians and any who aren't complete degenerates want. Despite the overall Republican sellout of the middle class, Cuccinelli is one of the few I will be voting for.
I also love the way elitist libs consider this a negative, more proof that they are hellbent on destroying the nation because of their daddy issues.