One of the hottest video games this Christmas season features characters that indiscriminately maim each other and have sex with prostitutes. But if Gov. Rod Blagojevich has his way, Illinois will be leading a national movement to outlaw the sale or rental to children of games like "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."

Blagojevich, who has tried to craft a populist image, will ask the legislature Thursday to make it a misdemeanor for retailers to allow anyone younger than 18 to walk out of their stores with violent or sexually explicit video games.

"Right now a 12-year-old can walk into a store and buy a game with graphic violence, nudity, obscene language and they have no problem obtaining those games," said Abby Ottenhoff, Blagojevich's spokeswoman. "For the video game industry, self-regulation isn't working."

The proposal drew immediate fire from retailers, civil libertarians and those who would be the most personally impacted--kids who play the games.

"It's unfair, you should have whatever games you want," Hammad Ahmed, 12, of Villa Park, said Wednesday as he purchased the popular shoot-'em-up "Halo" at EB Games in Oakbrook Terrace.

Hammad also dismissed studies that claim violence in video games desensitizes children like him to real violence. "Kids aren't that stupid," he insisted. "Like me, I wouldn't go and do that."

The new initiative by Blagojevich fits a pattern the politically ambitious Democrat has established of trying to create a national buzz for himself by championing causes with surefire headline appeal.

The most prominent of those causes has been his running battle with the Bush administration over its objections, on safety grounds, to the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs. He also has sought permission to buy flu vaccine overseas and has launched a push to purge Illinois schools of junk food.

Blagojevich is scheduled to formally unveil his video game proposal at a news conference in Naperville, where more than a dozen mothers of children in middle school will serve as a backdrop.

Officials with a Naperville school district said the governor's office asked them to arrange the event for Wednesday but then postponed it for a day, in part to accommodate more national media coverage. The governor's office denies the claim.

In injecting himself into the debate over the content of video games, Blagojevich is following a trail blazed by the man he defeated in the 2002 governor's race, former Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan.

As the state's chief lawyer, Ryan had pressed retailers to impose voluntary curbs on the sale of violent video games to children. Blagojevich's effort goes much further.

A statement from the governor's office said the proposal would define violent games as those that realistically depict human-on-human violence, including images of death, dismemberment, amputation, decapitation, maiming, disfigurement, mutilation of body parts or rape.

Sexually explicit games, the statement said, would be defined as those "realistically depicting male or female genitalia and other nudity exposed in a way that, in accordance with contemporary community standards, predominantly appeals to the prurient interest of the player."

Retailers who sell such games to minors could be charged with a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison or a $5,000 fine.

Attempts to crack down on violent and explicit video game sales and rentals in Washington state, St. Louis and elsewhere have been struck down in the court in recent years. But aides to Blagojevich pledged the Illinois version would be written "very narrowly" and could pass legal muster.

Four years ago, Indianapolis passed a law requiring coin-operated video games featuring graphic violence or strong sexual content to be slapped with warning labels, kept 10 feet from other machines and separated by a curtain or wall so minors couldn't see them. Only adults or minors accompanied by a parent or guardian could play.

That law was declared unconstitutional in an opinion written by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner in Chicago, who found that video games, like books, are protected by the 1st Amendment. He said trying to pass laws to protect children from violent descriptions is wrongheaded, noting fairy tales and classics are often filled with violent images.

"To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming," he wrote. "It would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it."

Sexually explicit images are a different story. Even civil libertarians agree that government does have the right to restrict children from seeing such material. But Harvey Grossman, director of the ACLU's Illinois chapter, said laws that adequately accomplish that are already on the books.

Geoffrey Stone, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, said Blagojevich is trying to have the state police something that should be up to parents. "An apt comparison is the lake," Stone said. "A lake is dangerous, kids can drown in it, but we don't prohibit kids from going to the lake. That responsibility falls to the parents."

But Jim Steyer, a constitutional law professor at Stanford University and head of a group called Common Sense Media, said he believes Blagojevich's proposal could stand up in the courts if narrowly drawn.

Steyer said that video game companies are clearly marketing games to children that are rated for use by mature audiences only. That, Steyer said, is a tactic that Blagojevich could easily exploit to gain support.

Ottenhoff, the governor's spokeswoman, said the state would not rely on the video game industry's self-imposed ratings system because it is too lenient. She said the proposal would contain clear guidelines that would enable retailers themselves to determine if a game could be dispensed to minors.

But David Vite, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, said that would put retailers in the unenviable position of having to make subjective judgments that police and prosecutors could later second guess.

"Is a fistfight between Popeye and Brutus in the old Popeye cartoons too violent? I don't know. Is knocking Humpty Dumpty off the wall too violent? I don't know," Vite said.

At a Blockbuster outlet in Villa Park, Sue Anderson strolled the aisles with two of her sons who were looking for a video game to play.

Anderson acknowledged the appeal of tougher regulations but said threatening store owners with criminal charges might be going overboard.

"I think vocalizing, explaining is enough and then it's up to the adult," she said.