DOING FOR CALIFORNIA HEALTH WHAT THEY DID FOR CALIFORNIA CARS: Advocate Harvey Rosenfeld, author of 1988's Prop. 103 initiative on car insurance, and his organization, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumers Rights, is putting together an initiative on health care that aimed for the 2010, Capitol Weekly reports. It's a complicated measure and not yet fully cooked. But the insurance commissioner -- a post that has been heavily politicized (and a source of scandal in California in recent decades) -- would get new powers to oversee HMOs and regulate insurance and co-pays. It also would be easier to sue, which shouldn't surprise anyone. Rosenfeld is close to the trial lawyers. 

TOO BIG A CONSTITUTION: One characteristic of states that have the initiative and use it often -- California, Oregon, Colorado -- is that they have very long constitutions. The people have the right to add to and change the constitution and so they do. (It goes with the territory; Switzerland, birthplace of direct democracy, has one of the longest constitutions in the world.) In Colorado, a special legislative committee is studying the state constitution to see if it can be cleaned up a bit. Face the State, a Colorado news and opinon web site, takes a look at the clean-up effort, and is skeptical.

WILL ONE INITIATIVE KILL OFF ANOTHER? The Chronicle web site has a piece asking if one eminent domain initiative on the June 3 ballot in California will kill off the other. The answer is likely yes. It's a time-honored tactic. If you oppose an initiative, qualify one of your own and confuse voters. Those confused voters often vote no on both. The pharmaceutical industry did this expertly to fight off a drug discount initiative on the special election ballot in 2005. (The industry also spent nearly $90 million on its effort--folks in Sacramento had a good Christmas that year).

ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE OUTLOOK: Paul Karr at GLAAD has a reliable overview of the various ballot measures opposing same-sex marriage and/or civil unions heading to the ballot in Oregon, Arizona, California, Arkansas and Florida.