Today the Congress is preparing to vote on a massive mega-billion dollar "bail out" of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae" – along with billions of other "gifts" to those impacted negatively by the mortgage crisis ("gift" – paid for with our tax dollars). Congressman Ed Royce (R-Orange County) just sent over this well written piece on this ill-advised legislation:

Socializing Risk While Funding the Left By U.S. Represenative Ed Royce Today the House of Representatives passed one of the largest taxpayer bailouts in decades. After advocating for strong GSE reforms for the better part of a… Read More

The Governor continues to stand firm on his demand that any budget must include real spending reform. That is outstanding.

While these days we need to take the Governor’s resolve on a day by day basis, it is heartening to see him continuing to advocate this needed reform of state government, to prevent future overspending.… Read More

The Newport Beach City Council voted 5-0-2 last night to rescind their campaign ordinance that makes failure to register a campaign mailer with the city in the last 14 days of the election a crime. We have called the ordinance a violation of free speech rights. Good for them. The two absentions came from members of the city council running for reelection in November, Councilmembers Curry and Rosansky, who said they did not want to vote on the matter because of thetheir pending election campaigns. The Council will need to take some subsequent actions, but the ordinance appears on its way to oblivion.

… Read More

Yesterday was a crazy day for seven members of the Texas congressional delegation routinely returning from Houston to Washington, D.C. for a vote on–among other things–an aviation safety measure. Reminds me of my friend Sam Dealey’s story in the Weekly Standard in 2002 about a certain member of Congress’ run-in with the same airline. Continental won praise from one Texas rep in response to yesterday’s emergency landing.

Politico has an interesting piece examining the use of the "MRA" a reimbursable program that funds members operating and office expenses. Elsewhere in the paper, Variety’s Ted Johnson pens a piece on the positive work of Hollywood pros in support of our troops. He writes Variety’s "Wilshire and Washington" blog,… Read More

There was quite a bit of chatter going on in the State Capitol when conservative Assemblyman Bob Huff put up the lone GOP vote for SB 974. This legislation would require those shipping goods into California’s ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland to pay an estimated $400 million a year into government coffers to pay for infrastructure investment around those ports.

Since this vote was controversial, we reached out to Assemblyman Huff to ask him why he voted for this bill, that was rejected by his Republican colleagues. In response to our inquiry, Assemblyman Huff penned this piece to explain his position, and his vote…

We’re placing a link to Huff’s piece here on the FR blog in case those reading it would like to publicly comment.… Read More

The following article appeared in Roll Call ($$) yesterday. Since I had a quote in the piece, I’ve highlighted it below.

The Farm Team: Dominoes Fall When Schwarzenegger, DiFi Leave By David M. Drucker Roll Call Staff First in a three-part series Conservative Republicans need not apply. If ever someone was going to write a help-wanted ad seeking Republicans with a realistic chance of winning a Senate race in California, that sentence would most certainly deserve top billing.… Read More

This Governor is in the habit of rolling out Judicial appointments in big batches. Until this week, his last batch of new Judges was announced back in May — twenty of them. I have made no bones about that fact that it is galling to me that the Governor, who was elected with all of the support of the Republican Party, loves to appoint registrants of the party of Barack Obama to the bench. In that May batch, it was 9 Republicans and 8 Democrats. It is a very sad situation for GOP donors and activists that we have to settle with a bare majority of Judicial appointments from our Republican Governor. It truly makes you scratch your head..

Well, actually, we have now set a new low for GOP appointments — less than 50%. Monday the Governor announced 30 new appointees to Judicial posts around Californian. You can see all of them here.

**There is more – click the link**… Read More

This Governor is in the habit of rolling out Judicial appointments in big batches. Until this week, his last batch of new Judges was announced back in May — twenty of them. I have made no bones about that fact that it is galling to me that the Governor, who was elected with all of the support of the Republican Party, loves to appoint registrants of the party of Barack Obama to the bench. In that May batch, it was 9 Republicans and 8 Democrats. It is a very sad situation for GOP donors and activists that we have to settle with a bare majority of Judicial appointments from our Republican Governor. It truly makes you scratch your head..

Well, actually, we have now set a new low for GOP appointments — less than 50%. Monday the Governor announced 30 new appointees to Judicial posts around Californian. You can see all of them here.

We think that it is fair to assume that someone’s party registration is a good way to generalize their beliefs about the proper… Read More