THIRTEEN NAMES TO GO

Washington Post: In less than a week before the August recess, House supporters of campaign finance reform were able to collect an impressive 205 of the 218 members' signatures they need to force a clean vote on the issue when Congress returns next month. If members adhere to past positions on the measure, the remaining 13 should not be hard to find.
The signatures are on a discharge petition, an extraordinary device whereby a disaffected majority of the House can in effect seize temporary control of the floor when the leadership refuses to permit a vote it wants. In this case, the Republican leadership agreed to schedule a vote on the bill, but refused to let the supporters make some last-minute changes to maximize support. The supporters objected, a test vote was held on procedure, and the leadership lost, whereupon it pulled back the bill. The petition, whose principal sponsors are conservative Blue Dog Democrats led by Rep. Jim Turner of Texas, would compel the bill's consideration on the supporters' fair terms.
Black caucus: All but 21 Democrats have signed the petition. All but six of the 21 supported the bill in the past, most recently in 1999, when an almost-identical version passed the House, 252 to 177. Then, too, a discharge petition was necessary to force the Republican leadership to put the bill on the floor. Thirteen of the 21 Democrats signed that petition. That year it was understood that the bill had no chance of enactment; it was blocked by Republican filibuster in the Senate. This year the Senate has passed it. Do these Democrats want it understood that they vote for reform only when they are sure it won't happen? One who signed in the past but hasn't yet is Rick Boucher of southwestern Virginia. Another is Albert Wynn of suburban Maryland, one of several black caucus members who are balking on grounds that they need for get-out-the-vote and other such purposes the money the bill would prohibit.
There are also 31 Republicans who haven't signed but who professed support for the bill in the safer past. They include a number of self-styled moderates who are under party pressure not to sign but ought to do so.
There is no more important business before the Congress than this bill. The House owes a clean vote on it.
WISHES AREN'T EVIDENCE
Los Angeles Times: Americans devoted much debate and discussion recently to President Bush's historic decision to permit limited federal funding of research on embryonic stem cells, formed at the beginning of life. With much less prominence, the same day the California Supreme Court issued an important ruling on the end of life. The ruling prohibits families from removing nutrition tubes from severely brain-damaged but conscious members without clear, convincing evidence that the patients would want that. Such evidence isn't required for those in irreversible comas. The patient in the case before the Supreme Court, Robert Wendland, had already died of other causes, but the judicial precedent will live on in California.
We're uncomfortable with government dictating to families what they can and can't do in such excruciatingly personal, painful times. One family's cherished life, even vacant of mental response, is another's living hell in suspended animation. Doctors well know that emotions and guilt surrounding the impending death of one member can sunder the most loving family.
However, this unanimous court decision seems a reasonable, cautious half-step as our inattentive society drifts through the slow, arduous process of consensus-building while medical advances race ahead.
Financial concerns: Requiring such patient directives can also provide valuable patient protection in an era of cost controls, when medical decisions could easily be swayed by financial concerns. The ruling disappoints doctors, who predict unnecessary, futile care, and right-to-die advocates, who note that it ignored Wendland's presumably devoted wife's insights and wishes. But wishes are for falling stars. In real life and death, courts require evidence. And they must protect the unprotected. Wendland, like most Americans, left himself unprotected -- no signed, dated evidence, not even a videotape stating his preferred or disdained treatments. Who anticipates a car crash?
There is an alternative. Anyone can formally designate a friend or relative to make medical decisions in the event of incapacitation.