Citizen Cartwright

Those secret campaign donations

Officials from states including California, New York, Alaska and Maine are talking about ways to "force tax-exempt advocacy organizations and trade associations out of the shadows," says the Los Angeles Times.

Legislation has been proposed in more than a dozen states to require the groups to disclose their donors.

The states are motivated by the lack of progress at the federal level in pushing those groups to disclose their contributors if they engage in campaigns, as candidates and political action committees are required to do, the Times says.

Meanwhile, at the federal level, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., plans to use his post as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to press for greater oversight of the groups.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a rule to require publicly traded corporations to reveal their political donations.

And Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, last month unveiled a disclosure bill.

Opponents say making donors public would infringe on their privacy and could intimidate some, keeping them from participating in politics.

New science education guidelines include climate change

The guidelines, known as the Next Generation Science Standards, were put together by a consortium of 26 state governments and several groups representing scientists and teachers.

The guidelines — the first broad national recommendations for science instruction since 1996 — include for the first time a recommendation that climate change be taught as early as middle school.

And the guidelines "take a firm stand" that children must learn about evolution, says The New York Times.

More states easing gun rules than upping them

This year, five states have passed seven laws that strengthen gun restrictions, while 10 states have passed 17 laws that weaken them, says The Wall Street Journal, citing data from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which tracks and promotes gun control laws.

Kristin Goss, a Duke University professor of public policy who supports gun control legislation, says measures in New York, Colorado — and, as of Thursday, in Connecticut — are more sweeping than the gun rights expansions in other states, which she calls "technical and incremental."

Nevertheless, the pattern shows the power of the gun lobby in state legislatures, particularly compared with gun control groups, which typically have focused on federal legislation, says the WSJ.

The National Rifle Association and other gun advocacy groups spent $2.3 million on state legislative debates from 2007 through 2012, compared with $55,000 by gun control groups over the same period, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.

Backers of many of the bills since Newtown say arming school staff could prevent similar tragedies. Gun opponents disagree, and a report released Wednesday by the liberal Center for American Progress says it found "a clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws."

Economist John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime," says state laws allowing people to carry concealed weapons have reduced violent crime. The National Research Council has disputed his findings, the WSJ says.

Helping the pro-gun-rights cause is Republican control of 30 governorships and full control of most state legislatures, easing the path for gun rights measures, says the WSJ. Of the 15 legislatures that have sent pro-gun-rights bills to the governor, 13 are controlled by Republicans.

Gun control advocates are now largely focusing on seven states where they say there is a chance for significant gun control legislation, the WSJ says: California, Oregon, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Illinois.

Now North Dakota has the country's strictest abortion law

Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed three anti-abortion bills into law Tuesday, including a measure barring abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detectable — as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

Most legal scholars have said the law would violate the Supreme Court’s finding in Roe vs. Wade that abortions were permitted until the fetus was viable outside the womb, generally about 24 weeks.

Three weeks ago, Arkansas lawmakers adopted what then was the nation's most stringent limit, also linked to detection of a fetal heartbeat and banning the procedure at 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The Arkansas and North Dakota laws are the first victories for "an emerging faction of the anti-abortion movement that is frustrated by the limited progress in curbing abortions and hopes that the Supreme Court might be ready for a radical rethinking," says The New York Times.

Farewell, Golden Gate Bridge toll takers

The iconic span will become on Wednesday the first major toll bridge in the nation to go all electronic.

In its small way, this raises the increasingly asked question of whether the age of mass human labor is "about to permanently end," as an Atlantic article puts it.

South Dakota is first state to back pistol-packing teachers

The measure signed into law Friday by Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard makes South Dakota the only known state with a law specifically authorizing teachers to possess a firearm in a K-12 school, says Lauren Heintz, a research analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Rep. Scott Craig, a freshman Republican in the South Dakota House who sponsored the bill, says, “Given the national attention to safety in schools, specifically in response to tragedies like in Connecticut, this is huge.”

Craig says that hopefully “dominoes will start to fall, people will see it’s reasonable, it’s safer than they think, it’s proactive and it’s preventive.”

Is Detroit on its way to bankruptcy?

An expert panel concluded on Tuesday that the Motor City faces a fiscal emergency as a result of "operational dysfunction," leaving GOP Gov. Rick Snyder with a controversial decision of whether to declare a financial takeover by the state.

State inactivity in implementing health care law

Thirty-nine states have yet to pass laws or issue regulations on seven aspects of the overhaul, including coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, a ban on coverage waiting periods and limits for out-of-pocket consumer costs, according to a report by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.

It's 11 months until the changes are scheduled to take effect under President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is opposed by many states with Republican leadership.

Kansas a model for eliminating income tax?

The state's Republican governor, Sam Brownback, and GOP lawmakers are moving a bill to inch the state closer to eliminating income taxes — part of what many Republicans there hope will be a model of conservative governance for other states and possibly the country, says The New York Times.

GOP eyes changing election laws in states Obama won

Some Republican officials who control legislatures in states that supported President Obama are considering changing state laws to make it easier for GOP presidential candidates to win, The Associated Press reports.

Instead of giving the winner of a state’s popular vote all of its Electoral College votes, the electoral votes would be divided proportionally.

“It’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at,” says Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.

Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s office in at least seven states: Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and North Carolina.

Democrats are expressing outrage at the idea.