The Orphan

POT FIGHT UNITES CLINTON NEMESIS WITH THE MAN WHO DIDN'T INHALE

WASHINGTON -- Republican politicians may blame impeachment hawks like Rep.
Bob Barr for disappointing results in the 1998 elections. But residents of
the nation's capital have a different problem: Thanks to Mr. Barr, they
still can't count some of last November's returns.

Specifically, the District of Columbia is barred by law from figuring out
whether city voters want to let ailing neighbors smoke marijuana to ease
their pain, an idea gaining favor elsewhere in the U.S. Mr. Barr didn't
approve of a ballot initiative on medical use of the outlaw weed. So the
combative, conservative Georgia lawmaker prodded Congress, which oversees
and subsidizes the District of Columbia's government, to prohibit city
officials from using federal funds to count the votes.

Three months later, the city and Congress are locked in a bizarre legal
battle costing far more than the $500 Mr. Barr complained would be "wasted"
to tabulate the ballots. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the
city elections board to force a count on behalf of local AIDS activist
Wayne Turner, the initiative's sponsor. Instead of contesting the suit, the
city has taken the side of the ACLU.

And the Clinton administration -- which doesn't agree with Mr. Barr on much
of anything -- has stepped in to defend the handiwork of a man who was
laboring to get the president impeached even before Monica Lewinsky hit the
headlines.

It is a "longstanding policy of the Justice Department to defend all laws
passed by Congress," department spokesman Brian Steel says. Three Justice
Department employees -- as well as six employees at the district's
corporation counsel's office -- are working on the case.

Mr. Barr's vote-counting ban lasts only until Sept. 30, the end of the
fiscal year. After that, the city will be able to use fiscal 2000 funds to
execute the simple computer keystrokes needed to count the
medical-marijuana ballots. If exit polls conducted on Election Day last
November are any guide, the initiative passed handily.

Of course, Congress could approve an extension of Mr. Barr's ban. If the
initiative passes, federal lawmakers could also veto it.

Meantime, the initiative's sponsor, Mr. Turner, endures what he calls an
"agonizing" wait to find out how his initiative did at the polls. But he
must first find out from Arthur Spitzer, his lawyer at the ACLU, whether he
has won his court fight, and there is no date for a decision. Every time
the phone rings, he says, "I feel like that '60s song: 'Let it please be
him.' "