The U.S. Supreme Court has just announced it has decided to accept the appeal in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC and John McCain this term and it has established a briefing schedule. The case involves review of a lower Federal Court case that emasculates regulation of issue-oriented speech during pre-election periods in Federal elections that mentions candidate’s names, but does not contain "express advocacy." If the Supreme Court upholds the lower Federal court decision, the so-called "McCain-Feingold" law regulating Section 527 political committees will largely be gutted.… Read More

According to a survey commissioned by CBS 5 in San Francisco interviewed 500 Bay Area adults,57% of Bay Area adults oppose a ban on spanking; only 23% support a ban. Actually, depending on how many of those asked were in San Francisco, there probably would be more support for the ban if they had only clarified that this is a ban on parents spanking children. Lieber’s bill doesn’t ban adult-on-adult spanking, a popular past-time in parts of San Francisco…… Read More

Yesterday, the governor told the CoCo Times that when he was a child, he was routinely spanked. (The conversation was in response to a bill Assemblywoman Sally Lieber is planning to introduce that would prohibit children under three years from being spanked.)

“I grew up, I got smacked about everything. That was the way worked,” he said. “You know, I think it maybe had something to do with after the war. People were maybe more angry and more frustrated, you know, having lost the war or whatever else. So there was a lot of other things, a lot of drinking when I grew up."

But he does not parent the same way. Instead, he says that he learned from the parenting style of his wife’s family, which was "no physicality at all, just communication."

Humm….let me get this straight…no spanking results in a family full of ultra-left liberals while spanking your… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail, read by business and political leaders around the nation:

Girl’s Talk

It was inevitable that after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger broke his ironclad pledge against tax increases last week by proposing a universal health insurance plan that his old liberal critics would begin to taunt him.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a veteran Arnold adversary, was first out of the gate. "This is a plan Assembly Democrats could have written," he crowed. But even more stinging was the New Republic. In its latest issue, its editors recalled the governor’s… Read More

FR friend Ron Nehring (pictured to the right), the incoming Chairman of the California Republican Party in just a few weeks, is out in Washington, D.C. for the Winter meeting of the Republican National Committee. There, the RNC members are gathered to elect new officers for the 2007-2008 term. Here is Ron’s "live" report, received literally moments ago: California’s Tim Morgan, Republican National Committeeman and CRP Rules Committee Chairman, was moments ago elected Treasurer of the Republican National Committee by acclamation here in Washington, D.C. The RNC is meeting here at the Grand Hyatt for its bi-annual organizational meeting. Among the… Read More

It would appear that the Governor is prepared to draw a line in the sand over whether the payroll and income tax increases that he proposes as part of his government-mandated healthcare proposal are, in fact, taxes!

The plan, in an of itself, is a repudiation of a lot of rhetoric that we have heard from Arnold Schwarzenegger going back to well before his election as Governor, as he has touted himself as a strong advocate of the free-market system. You can ask any of the centers of free-market thought from around the United States — the Cato Institute, the Foundation on Economic Education, the Heritage Foundation, the Reason Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute, the Claremont Foundation, and even our friends at the Wall Street Journal — I have personally spoken with or corresponded with folks from all of these bastions of free-market thought — and they are consistent with their opposition to the Governor’s proposal.

That said, the Governor apparently seems intent to refuse to allow the tax increases that would pull in billions of dollars in coerced revenue into state coffers to actually be called taxes. Governor, we have news for… Read More

It would appear that the Governor is prepared to draw a line in the sand over whether the payroll and income tax increases that he proposes as part of his government-mandated healthcare proposal are, in fact, taxes!

The plan, in an of itself, is a repudiation of a lot of rhetoric that we have heard from Arnold Schwarzenegger going back to well before his election as Governor, as he has touted himself as a strong advocate of the free-market system. You can ask any of the centers of free-market thought from around the United States — the Cato Institute, the Foundation on Economic Education, the Heritage Foundation, the Reason Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute, the Claremont Foundation, and even our friends at the Wall Street Journal — I have personally spoken with or corresponded with folks from all of these bastions of free-market thought — and they are consistent with their opposition to the Governor’s proposal.

That said, the Governor apparently seems intent to refuse to allow the tax increases that would pull in billions of dollars in coerced revenue into state coffers to actually be called taxes. Governor, we have news for… Read More

There’s a lot of hot air being blown around about wind energy in Riverside County lately. More companies are looking to increase their holdings in the windy San Gorgonio Pass area heading into Palm Springs. Since that’s theplace they already have them operating, I say that’s the place to put ’em. That’s how good planning works.

However, groups that don’t want anybody to do anything anywhere are speaking up. Yesterday, the California Energy Commission and the Department of Fish and Gamemet in Riverside to talk about adopting guidelines that they hope will reduce the number of birds that are killed by the turbines, and the number of lawsuits filed on behalf of the birds. I should add that there is much controversy over the accuracy of the bird kill studies themselves.

Members of the wind industry have worked responsibly and diligently to improve their products. The newest generation of wind turbines are quiet anddon’t shake the ground due to the large slow moving blades. Upon observation, an obvious conclusion would be that many less birds are in danger now than before. That’s called… Read More