The Week

■ Fifty-three per cent of smokers, according to polls, voted for Bill Clinton. It’s a helluva way to quit.

■ Results from ballot initiatives around the country confirm the electorate’s anti-government tilt. In nine states, voters approved congressional term limits; in two more the vote was too close to call at press time. Florida voters approved the toughest anti-tax initiative in the land, requiring a two-thirds vote of the people for any new tax. Nevada and South Dakota passed only slightly less stringent measures. (In Arizona, where such a super-majority law already exists, the legislature doesn’t even bother to request new taxes.) Meanwhile, most of the Left’s initiatives went down in flames. The trial lawyers lost their bid in California to overturn the federal law barring frivolous shareholder suits. Two separate initiatives to take over the California health-care system lost by 2 to 1. Big Green took a pounding too: a sugar tax to pay for Everglades clean-up, a ban on clear-cutting in Maine, and a bottle-tax proposal in Oregon all went down. One hopes the elected show as much common sense as the voters.

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Martin Luther King Jr

The New York Times

■ Fifty-three per cent of smokers, according to polls, voted for Bill Clinton. It’s a helluva way to quit.

■ Results from ballot initiatives around the country confirm the electorate’s anti-government tilt. In nine states, voters approved congressional term limits; in two more the vote was too close to call at press time. Florida voters approved the toughest anti-tax initiative in the land, requiring a two-thirds vote of the people for any new tax. Nevada and South Dakota passed only slightly less stringent measures. (In Arizona, where such a super-majority law already exists, the legislature doesn’t even bother to request new taxes.) Meanwhile, most of the Left’s initiatives went down in flames. The trial lawyers lost their bid in California to overturn the federal law barring frivolous shareholder suits. Two separate initiatives to take over the California health-care system lost by 2 to 1. Big Green took a pounding too: a sugar tax to pay for Everglades clean-up, a ban on clear-cutting in Maine, and a bottle-tax proposal in Oregon all went down. One hopes the elected show as much common sense as the voters.