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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says television has profoundly changed confirmation hearings but declined to say whether she’d oppose televising arguments.

Ginsburg told a Colorado judicial conference Friday that TV has made Supreme Court confirmation hearings much longer because senators posture for cameras.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Rebukes Senate Posturing For The Cameras During Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

GILBERT, Ariz. — The cast of “Survivor” has nothing on Sen. John McCain.

Once labeled a vulnerable incumbent, the four-term Arizona Republican is the clear front-runner against challenger J.D. Hayworth after spending some $20 million and casting his GOP opponent as a late-night infomercial huckster in a series of devastating ads. The primary is Tuesday.

McCain, who turns 74 on Aug. 29, has survived the deadly 1967 explosion on the USS Forrestal, 5 1/2 years in a Vietnam POW camp after being shot down near Hanoi and skin cancer. Politically, he has persisted through the Keating Five savings and loan scandal, and two failed bids for the White House.

“I have stood up and led the fight as a fiscal conservative and a leader on national defense and a strong supporter of the men and women who are fighting and sacrificing for this nation,” McCain told a woman who questioned his record at a town-hall meeting last Thursday.

Long unpopular with some home-state conservatives, McCain immediately recognized the threat posed by Hayworth, a talk-radio host and former six-term congressman from Scottsdale. And he set out to neutralize it.

He tossed aside his self-described “maverick” label and adopted a hard-line stand on immigration just a few years after working with Democrats on a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally. “Complete the danged fence,” he says in a campaign ad, three years after dismissing the effectiveness of building a fence on the U.S.-Mexico border.

A series of McCain ads called Hayworth a “huckster,” showing clips of him in an infomercial telling viewers they can get free government money. It was an embarrassment for a candidate running as a fiscal conservative, and it caught Hayworth flat-footed. At first he defended it, then apologized as the story lived on for weeks.

“I think McCain’s truthful. J.D. Hayworth sure isn’t. He’s a liar,” said Martha Moloney, a 72-year-old church worker from Mesa.

One poll last month showed McCain with a lead of as much as 45 percentage points.

“J.D. Hayworth is deader than Elvis,” said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.

Hayworth is undaunted. He has had an exhausting series of campaign events throughout Arizona, mostly in rural areas away from Phoenix. On a remote stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, he criticized McCain for not supporting a change in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to eliminate the automatic grant of citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

“In the final analysis, it ain’t me, it’s John McCain and his record that will be held to account,” Hayworth told The Associated Press.

Hayworth aides argue that McCain is vulnerable on immigration in a state that has adopted the nation’s toughest law cracking down on illegal immigrants. A Hayworth ad accused the incumbent of lying about his stand on the issue – a charge the McCain campaign denies, but which resonates with voters supporting the challenger.

“We need someone in the Senate who’s going to think about Arizona. McCain just doesn’t care about the constituents. He doesn’t care about Arizona,” said Judy Howard, a 51-year-old retired federal probation official who said she’ll probably vote for Hayworth.

Hayworth has an enthusiastic crowd of supporters, but his challenge grows larger every day as the number of potential voters dwindles. In Maricopa County, where a majority of Arizonans live, more than half of 350,000 Republican early ballots had already been returned by Friday.

Jim Deakin, a contractor and Navy veteran, is pursuing the same tea party activists Hayworth is courting. Deakin’s throw-the-bums-out message combined with an everyman charm and no elective office experience could siphon anti-McCain votes from Hayworth.

Despite polls showing a likely win, McCain isn’t letting up. He spent $3.5 million on the race in July, most of it from the legal fund of his 2008 presidential campaign. By Aug. 4, McCain had spent $19.6 million to Hayworth’s $2.6 million – a “lie and buy” strategy, Hayworth says.

But Hayworth hasn’t helped his cause. He incorrectly said the United State never declared war on Nazi Germany in World War II, and suggested that a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage might allow a man to marry his horse.

“I don’t think J.D.’s got the analytical ability to come up with the decisions that need to be made in this environment,” said Al Sondergaard, a 79-year-old retired Caterpillar manufacturing supervisor.

The winner of the GOP primary will face one of four Democrats: retired investigative journalist John Dougherty, former state administrator Cathy Eden, former Tucson City Councilman Rodney Glassman or political activist Randy Parraz. Glassman, who has loaned his campaign $500,000 and raised as much from others, is the front-runner who would face a tough time trying to beat McCain.

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John McCain Campaign Spokesman: ‘J.D. Hayworth Is Deader Than Elvis’

By DANIEL BURKE
Religion News Service

(RNS) By some accounts, the heated opposition to the so-called Ground Zero mosque has been drummed up by a telegenic blogger with a strong New York accent and even stronger opinions.

Pamela Geller, a Long Island native who writes the blog “AtlasvShrugs,” said she was the “quintessential New York City career girl” before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Since then, she has co-founded groups dedicated to fighting the “Islamization” of America, sponsored anti-Muslim ads in several cities, and, more recently, become a near daily presence on television news programs.

Some even suggest that Geller deserves credit — or blame — for turning a local zoning decision about whether to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque blocks from Ground Zero into a national political spectacle.

“She’s been instrumental,” said Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog group. “She has whipped up hatred in the right-wing blogosphere and now that’s spilled out into the wider community.”

Articles in The Washington Post and Salon.com this week have reported that the mainstream media picked up on angst about Park51, the planned cultural center and mosque in lower Manhattan, only after Geller began blogging about it. In recent weeks, Geller has become a chief spokeswoman against the project, appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CNN, NBC Nightly News, and Fox.

According to a recent Time magazine poll, 61 percent of Americans now oppose building Park51. Geller says the notion that she has single-handedly instigated the opposition is absurd.

“I think it’s grossly unfair and condescending to the American people, as if they are lemmings and can’t think and feel for themselves,” she said in an interview. “I don’t have that kind of influence.”

Before she got into blogging and advocacy, Geller spent nearly a decade at the New York Daily News, starting as a financial analyst and making stops in the advertising and marketing departments. Later, Geller was associate publisher of The New York Observer for five years, she said.

Now, even Muslim groups reluctantly acknowledge Geller is front and
center in the mosque debate. “People say don’t give her too much credit, she’s a fringe character,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “But she is a fringe character who every day is on CNN, Fox, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She is the driving force behind the Islamic center campaign.”

Some media experts doubt Geller’s influence, though, and question why reporters have given her controversial views a platform. Postings on “Atlas Shrugs” have included a video suggesting Muslims have sex with goats, a doctored picture showing President Obama urinating on an American flag, and a fake image of new Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan in Nazi garb.

Geller has also accused Obama of anti-Semitism, said that he does the bidding of “Islamic overlords,” and posted an essay suggesting that the president is the love child of Malcolm X.

Geller said not everything on her website should be taken seriously. She jokingly called CNN the “Crescent News Network,” after it criticized her views, and her author photo shows Geller’s head on Superman’s body. “The blog is my living room, my kitchen, when I’m talking to my friends,” Geller said.

Muslims, however, are not amused.

“I would say that she is the queen of the Muslim bashers,” said Hooper. “I see her rise and the rise of these anti-Islam hate groups going hand in hand.”

Diane Winston, an expert on religion and the media at the University of Southern California, said a perfect storm of circumstances has fueled opposition to Park51 — but the media have settled for the simplistic narrative that one woman is behind it all.

“Pamela Geller is an attractive woman and she speaks simply and you
can follow her and she gives good sound bites,” Winston said. “She hasdefinitely had an impact, but her perspective wouldn’t be widely know if the mainstream media hadn’t picked up on it.”

Thirty years ago, before the advent of the Internet and cable news, it’s doubtful the mainstream media would have given Geller any attention, Winston said. “Now, in its rush to be relevant and get an audience, the mainstream media basically whores itself out to the right wing.”

Geller’s groups, Stop the Islamization of America, and the Freedom Defense Initiative, have bought ads critical of Islam on public buses in New York, Miami, and San Francisco. After transit officials in Detroit refused to post the ads, Geller sued, and the litigation continues.
Geller says the ads, which carry messages like, “Fatwa on Your Head?” and “Leaving Islam?” are not intended to be anti-Muslim, but offer safe haven for people considering conversion. Geller would not say how many people have asked for the resources offered in the ads.

Geller’s latest ad, which will run on buses and trains in New York, shows a plane about to crash into the World Trade Center and a rendering of the proposed Islamic cultural center.

“I have nothing against Muslims. I love people,” she said. “But I am opposed to ideology that inspires violence.”

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Pamela Geller, ‘Queen Of Muslim Bashers,’ At Center Of N.Y. ‘Mosque’ Debate

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Supreme Court says furloughs of state workers can resume while it reviews whether governors have the authority to mandate unpaid days off.

The announcement Wednesday was a victory for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has sought to save the state money by imposing another round of furloughs.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear says furloughs for about 150,000 state workers will begin Friday.

The Republican governor recently ordered workers to be furloughed three days a month, following a previous round that ended in June. McLear says the furloughs are estimated to save the state $150 million a month.

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California Furloughs Approved By State Supreme Court

RALEIGH, N.C. — Analysts at North Carolina’s crime lab omitted, overstated or falsely reported blood evidence in dozens of cases, including three that ended in executions and another where two men were convicted of killing Michael Jordan’s father, according to a scathing independent review to be released Wednesday.

The government-ordered inquest by two former FBI officials found that agents of the State Bureau of Investigation repeatedly aided prosecutors in obtaining convictions over a 16-year period, mostly by misrepresenting blood evidence and keeping critical notes from defense attorneys. The Associated Press obtained the review of blood evidence in cases from 1987 to 2003 in advance of the report’s release.

It calls for a thorough examination of 190 criminal cases, stating that, at times, “information that may have been material and even favorable to the defense of an accused defendant was withheld or misrepresented.”

The report does not conclude that any innocent people were convicted, noting the evidence wasn’t always used at trials and defendants may have admitted to crimes. But it states prosecutors and defense lawyers need to check whether tainted lab reports helped lead to confessions or pleas.

Attorney General Roy Cooper ordered the review in March after an SBI agent testified the crime lab once had a policy of excluding complete blood test results from reports offered to defense lawyers before trials. The existence of the policy was later confirmed by a former SBI director. Agent Duane Deaver’s testimony led to the exoneration of a murder convict imprisoned nearly 17 years.

The review by Chris Swecker and Mike Wolf, two former assistant directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, found 230 cases in which eight SBI analysts filed reports that, at best, were incomplete. Of those, 190 resulted in criminal charges and should be reviewed.

The report says the lab may have violated federal and state laws mandating that evidence favorable to defendants be shared with their lawyers. It also bolsters a long-held skepticism by defense attorneys, who have alleged the ostensibly neutral lab is in the pocket of law enforcement.

Besides the executions, the report urged a closer look at the cases of four people on death row and one whose death sentence was commuted to life.

The cases also include the 1993 murder of James Jordan, father of the NBA star, who was sleeping in his car along a highway when he was killed. Two men were sentenced to life in prison. The review states an SBI analyst reported that an examination of the scene indicated the presence of blood, but didn’t say that four subsequent tests were inconclusive.

The problems detailed in the report follow similar story lines: Lab results that contradict preliminary tests indicating blood at a scene were routinely kept from defense lawyers. Those secondary results were in analysts’ handwritten notes, but not in evidence presented at court.

The report blames the flaws on “poorly crafted policy, inattention to reporting methods which permitted too much analyst subjectivity; and ineffective management and oversight.”

The review recommends looking at cases that were overstated or falsely reported to determine whether mistakes were deliberate, negligent or the results of typographical errors or confusion over reporting policy.

The lab’s operations have changed substantially since 2003, when it began using more modern blood testing. Prosecutors also now have online access to all lab files, and can make them available to defense attorneys.

Deaver is linked to the five cases the report characterizes as the most egregious violations, and it accuses him of overstating or falsely reporting blood test results, including one in the case against Desmond Keith Carter, who was executed in 2002. In two of the cases, including Carter’s, Deaver’s final report on blood analyses said his tests “revealed the presence of blood” when his notes indicated negative results from follow-up tests. His notes indicate that he got a negative result because he didn’t have enough sample left for the confirmatory test.

In three other cases, the review said Deaver’s reports stated further tests were “inconclusive” or “no result” while his lab notes reflected negative results.

The Attorney General’s Office said Carter confessed to the crime, and the evidence in question wasn’t introduced at trial, the report said.

Deaver still works for the SBI, although no longer in the crime lab.

Swecker and Wolf said they couldn’t determine how Deaver’s mistakes happened, and they leave open the possibility that he didn’t purposely misreport results.

Among the report’s recommendations are: automation of historical lab files; posting of lab policies and other rules on a public website; and the appointment of an ombudsman to review lab issues or mistakes.

In addition to the Deaver cases, the review found 35 cases where a report states there were indications of blood and that no further testing was done. But handwritten lab notes reflect confirmatory tests got negative or inconclusive results.

In a third category, the review found 105 cases in which reports omitted negative or inconclusive results, instead saying there were chemical indications for the presence of blood.

The review found 85 cases in the least serious category, which involved reports that didn’t mention negative or inconclusive confirmatory tests but did ultimately state that the presence of blood wasn’t conclusive. In 80 of the cases, just one agent used the language.

The state Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that lab notes are evidence that should be made available to defendants. But that didn’t happen for several reasons, including a mindset, led by a section chief, that the lab’s “main customer was law enforcement,” the report said.

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Michael Jordan’s Father’s Murder Prosecution Tainted By Flaws: Review

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Supreme Court voted Monday to uphold a Mexico City law allowing adoptions by same-sex couples, drawing jubilant cheers from gay advocacy groups and angry protests from Roman Catholic Church representatives.

The justices voted 9-2 against challenges presented by federal prosecutors and others who had argued the law fails to protect adoptive children against possible ill effects or discrimination, or to guarantee their right to a traditional family.

“Today, institutionalized homophobia has been buried,” said Jaime Lopez Vela, a leader of the group Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transsexual and Transgender Agenda. “We are happy, because now we have the same rights and responsibilities of any other married couple.”

Monday’s decision followed earlier Supreme Court rulings that same-sex marriages performed in Mexico City are constitutional and that other Mexican states must respect them.

Mexico City’s groundbreaking same-sex marriage law, enacted in March, extends to wedded gay couples the right to adopt children, to jointly apply for bank loans, to inherit wealth and to be covered by their spouses’ insurance policies.

Outside the court building, dozens of gay-rights activists erupted in cheers and chanted “Now we’ve won!”, while a similar number of opponents of the Mexico City law chanted “Man plus woman equals marriage,” and “Father, Mother, that’s what children need!”

Justices voting with the majority argued that once same-sex marriages had been approved, it would be discriminatory to consider those couples less capable of parental duties than heterosexual couples.

“There is no reliable evidence that sexual orientation determines, by itself” any other type of behavior, said Justice Arturo Saldivar, adding “the preferences of the parents do not determine (a child’s) sexual orientation … that is a discriminatory argument.”

But church representatives strongly opposed the ruling.

Father Hugo Valdemar, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico, said the court had “treated children as if they were pets, to be adopted by whoever wants one, and that violates their rights.”

Armando Martinez, the leader of the Catholic Lawyers’ Association, said his group will ask for the impeachment of the justices who voted to uphold the Mexico City law, adding “the justices are not God. They make a lot of mistakes.”

Three hundred and thirty-nine gay and lesbian couples have married under the law, but city officials say none of those couples have yet applied to adopt children.

Lopez Vela said his group expects to present the first such application next week, on behalf a lesbian couple.

But the already difficult process of adoption in Mexico – it usually involves years of red tape, and orphans here are usually adopted by a relative anyway – make it unlikely that same-sex adoptions of unrelated children will ever be numerous.

For example, Lopez Vela said the first application would involve the adoption of a girl by the lesbian partner of the child’s biological mother.

Justices who sided with the majority stressed that potential adoptive parents, gay or straight, are checked for suitability as part of the adoption process.

“It is not a question of sexuality that determines whether a person is qualified or not to adopt,” said Justice Margarita Luna.

The Roman Catholic Church heatedly opposed the law, and the court voted unanimously Monday to condemn comments by Cardinal Juan Sandoval, the archbishop of Guadalajara, who suggested over the weekend that justices may have been paid off by the Mexico City government to favor the law.

Mexico City’s law was the first of its type in Latin America when it was enacted.

Argentina became the first country in the region to permit gay marriage in July, when President Cristina Fernandez signed legislation declaring that wedded gay and lesbian couples have all the same legal rights and responsibilities as heterosexual couples, including the right to inheritance and to jointly adopt children.

___

Associated Press Writer Mark Stevenson contributed to this report.

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Mexico Gay Adoption Law Upheld By Supreme Court

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has revoked the government’s approval of genetically altered sugar beets until regulators complete a more thorough review of how the scientifically engineered crops affect other food.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White Friday means sugar beet growers won’t be able to use the modified seeds after harvesting the biotechnology beets already planted on more than 1 million acres spanning 10 states from Michigan to Oregon. All the seed comes from Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

Additional planting won’t be allowed until the U.S. Department of Agriculture submits an environmental impact statement. That sort of extensive examination can take two or three years.

White declined a request to issue an injunction that would have imposed a permanent ban on the biotech beets, which Monsanto Co. developed to resist its popular weed killer, Roundup Ready. Farmers have embraced the technology as a way to lower their costs on labor, fuel and equipment.

The Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance and Sierra Club have been trying to uproot the biotech beets since filing a 2008 lawsuit.

Andrew Kimbrell, the Center for Food Safety’s executive director, hailed Friday’s decision as a major victory in the fight against genetically engineered crops and chided the Agriculture Department for approving the genetically engineered seeds without a full environmental review.

“Hopefully, the agency will learn that their mandate is to protect farmers, consumers and the environment and not the bottom line of corporations such as Monsanto,” Kimbrell said in a statement.

Attempts to reach the Agriculture Department for comment Saturday were unsuccessful. Monsanto, based in St. Louis, referred requests for comment to the America Sugarbeet Growers Association, which pointed to a Saturday statement from the Sugar Industry Biotech Council.

In the statement, the sugar beet council said it intends to help the Agriculture Department come up with “interim measures” that would allow continued production of the genetically altered seeds while regulators conduct their environmental review.

If a temporary solution isn’t found, the planting restrictions are likely to cause major headaches for sugar beet growers and food processors.

The genetically altered sugar beets provide about one-half of the U.S. sugar supply and some farmers have warned there aren’t enough conventional seeds and herbicide to fill the void. The scientific seeds account for about 95 percent of the current sugar beet crop in the U.S.

“The value of sugar beet crops is critically important to rural communities and their economies,” the Sugar Industry Biotech Council said Saturday.

White expressed little sympathy for any disruption his decision might cause. He noted in his 10-page ruling that regulators had time to prepare for the disruption because he had already overturned the deregulation of the genetically altered beets in a decision issued last September.

The Agriculture Department “has already had more than sufficient time to take interim measures, but failed to act expediently,” White wrote.

Organic farmers, food safety advocates and conservation groups contend genetically altered crops such as the sugar beets could share their genes with conventionally grown food, such as chard and table beets.

Those arguments helped persuade another federal judge in San Francisco to stop the planting of genetically altered alfalfa seeds in 2007 pending a full environmental review that still hasn’t been completed.

Monsanto took that case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in June overturned an injunction against the company’s sale of the modified seeds.

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Judge Revokes USDA Approval Of Monsanto’s Genetically Modified Sugar Beets, Orders Review

SAN FRANCISCO — Attorney General Jerry Brown urged a federal appeals court Friday to waste no time in allowing gay marriages to resume in California now that a lower court has overturned the state’s same-sex marriage ban.

The brief legal papers came in response to efforts by same-sex marriage opponents to get the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals to block a lower court judge’s ruling striking down Proposition 8 from taking effect next week.

If the 9th Circuit refuses to intervene, it would clear the way for same-sex couples to marry starting after the close of business Wednesday.

Brown, the Democratic nominee for governor, said there was no reason for the appeals court to stay Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision because the potential inconvenience to state and local agencies pale in comparison to the harm suffered by gay couples whose civil rights are being violated.

“While there is still the potential for limited administrative burdens should future marriages of same-sex couples be later declared invalid, these potential burdens are outweighed by the district court’s conclusion, based on the overwhelming evidence, that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional,” he said.

Theodore Olson and David Boies, the high-profile lawyers representing the two couples who successfully sued to get Proposition 8 invalidated, were scheduled to file a separate motion on the issue later Friday.

Protect Marriage, the coalition of religious and conservative groups that sponsored Proposition 8, has appealed Walker’s Aug. 4 ruling that found the voter-approved law unconstitutional.

After Walker said on Thursday that he planned to finalize his ruling on Wednesday at 5 p.m., the group’s lawyers also asked the 9th Circuit to prevent any gay marriages while the appeal is pending.

They argued the appeals court should grant an emergency stay “to avoid the confusion and irreparable injury that would flow from the creation of a class of purported same-sex marriages.”

Depending on how the 9th Circuit rules, same-sex couples could begin tying the knot in California as early as next week or have to wait while the appeal works its way through the court and potentially the U.S. Supreme Court as well.

Walker, however, has expressed doubts over whether Protect Marriage has the right to challenge his ruling if neither the attorney general nor the governor elect to do so. Both officials refused to defend Proposition 8 in Walker’s court and have since said they see no reason why gay couples should not be able to tie the knot now.

Although he allowed the group to intervene in the trial, the judge said the appellate court would have to make its own determination that same-sex marriage opponents would be injured if gay couples could wed, a claim Walker explicitly dismissed in his decision invalidating Proposition 8.

The ban’s backers addressed the potential for such a roadblock in their emergency stay request, saying California’s strong citizen initiative law permits ballot measure proponents to defend their interests if state officials will not.

“Proponents may directly assert the state’s interest in defending the constitutionality of its laws, an interest that is indisputably sufficient to confer appellate standing,” they said.

Theodore Boutrous, a lawyer with the legal team representing same-sex couples, said that keeping Protect Marriage from moving forward with an appeal was not necessarily the top priority of the plaintiffs.

“We believe that Chief Judge Walker’s ruling last week on the merits provides a powerful record on appeal, and we want the appellate courts to address the merits of Proposition 8,” Boutrous said. “The standing issue that Chief Judge Walker identified provides another potential weapon in our arsenal that will be part of the appellate arguments.”

California voters passed Proposition 8 as a state constitutional amendment in November 2008, five months after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions and an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples already had married.

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Prop 8: Jerry Brown Urges Speedy Return To Gay Marriages

SAN FRANCISCO — The federal judge who overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban says he is ready to rule on whether gay marriages should resume immediately in the state or await an appeals court’s input.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said he would issue his decision Thursday by noon on requests to impose a stay that would keep Proposition 8 in effect while its sponsors appeal his decision.

California voters passed the ban in November 2008, five months after the state Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.

Walker last week struck it down as an unconstitutional violation of gay Californians’ civil rights.

Supporters argued the ban was necessary to safeguard the traditional understanding of marriage and to encourage responsible childbearing.

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Judge Who Struck Down Prop. 8 To Rule On Whether Gay Marriages Can Resume Immediately

WARWICK, R.I. — The Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday approved a power purchase agreement for a proposed wind farm off the coast of Block Island, ruling over the objection of critics who slammed the arrangement as a sweetheart deal meant to benefit one developer.

Attorney General Patrick Lynch vowed to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court, saying in a statement that the deal makes ratepayers buy “grossly overpriced electricity.”

The agreement between Deepwater Wind, LLC, a New Jersey-based developer, and National Grid, the state’s dominant utility, involves a proposed eight-turbine pilot project connected by a transmission cable to the mainland.

The three-member commission, a quasi-judicial body, approved the agreement after weighing economic and environmental benefits and whether the terms were reasonable for ratepayers. The 20-year agreement calls for National Grid to buy the energy generated from the wind farm at 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour.

Deepwater Wind CEO Bill Moore said in a statement that the company was pleased with the decision, which he said solidifies “Rhode Island’s leadership position in offshore wind development.”

The commission unanimously agreed that wind energy could reap an environmental benefit but split 2-1 on other issues. Commissioner Mary Bray repeatedly voiced skepticism, saying the agreement would prove a long-term detriment to the economy by hurting ratepayers and small businesses that are already struggling.

“Would any reasonable person invest a substantial amount of money into something they know will at best cost three times what they will possibly get out of it?” Bray asked. “That is what we have here.”

The commission in March rejected a similar agreement as too costly for ratepayers.

The decision led the General Assembly to come up with new legislation, passed at the end of the legislative session and signed into law by Gov. Don Carcieri, aimed at speeding the regulatory approval process.

The law requires the commission to issue a written decision approving the agreement within 45 days of it being filed, provided that the deal was commercially reasonable for ratepayers, contained economic and environmental benefits and included provisions allowing for a decrease in pricing.

Critics say the bill essentially mandated the approval of the agreement without giving the utility commission enough time to review it.

“I think the commission did exactly what the Legislature dictated it to do,” said Tricia Jedele, a vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation and director of its Rhode Island Advocacy Center.

Lynch said the project was unfair and anti-competitive.

“The dreadful impact that this will have on the state is not something that I will take lying down,” he said in an interview after the vote.

The federal government in April approved plans for the nation’s first offshore wind farm – a 130 turbine project in Nantucket Sound. National Grid has agreed to pay 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour, starting in 2013, for half the power produced by the project.

That deal, which has the backing of Attorney General Martha Coakley, still needs to be approved by Massachusetts regulators.

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Block Island Wind Farm Proposal Approved By Rhode Island Energy Commission