The fact that Sen. Don Perata is under FBI investigation is not news. However, I have had two contacts with folks in Sacramento that are teling methat rumors are swirling that he will be indicted in a week. Just after this week’s session is over.

If true, Perata becomes the main face of the ant-term limits campaign. Time will tell.… Read More

Last weekend, about a thousand members, alternates and guests gathered at the California Republican Party Convention at the Renaissance Esmerelda Hotel in Indian Wells in the Coachella Valley/Palm Springs area. As is typically the case, we’ll be sharing some stories and happenings from this event over the next few days. First and foremost, we’re pleased to announce the return of our highly-acclaimed, caddy and pithy "Winners & Losers of the CRP Convention" column, which we should be featuring at the end of this week. While your trusted FR team had many of our team members on the ground, looking over the convention for nominees, we typically get some of our best suggestions from FR readers. If you have a nomination, you can e-mail us here. As always, we ensure the confidentiality of anyone who contacts us. I’ll start by fast forwarding to a couple of results from the weekend that I want especially emphasize. The first is that convention delegates unanimously put the party on record as opposing… Read More

For those curious – the California Republican Party has just taken positions on state ballots measures: the delegates unanimously opposed the Nunez-Perata Term Limits end-run! Delegates also voted unanimously to support the Jarvis-backed CA Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act. They – equally as important – opposed ACA 8, the legislative attempt to stop real eminent romain (both a legislative attemot and a potential initiative attempt). Also they supported an initiative to allow development of Nuclear Power plants, they supported a measure to allocate California’s Presidential Electors on a Congressional District basis, support for negotiated Indian Gaming Compacts (and opposition to a potential referendum to undo them), and support the Citizens Fair Districts Initiative.

Delegates unanimously opposed a measure to change funding for community colleges.… Read More

FR Publisher Jon Fleischman is at the California Republican Party’s Fall Convention, and so there is no commentary for today, Sunday. But look back in this spot for a new commentary Monday morning.

Care to read comments, or make your own about today’s Daily Commentary?

Just click here to go to the FR Weblog, where this Commentary has its own blog post, and where you can read and make comments.… Read More

It isn’t every day you can save $23 billion. But Republicans in the House, in combination with the President, can do it in the next 60 days, if we stay resolved to hold our ground.

The Democrat majority in the House has passed 11 appropriations bills (I voted for one of them) which together spend $23 billion more than the President requested in his budget. The President’s budget request is $22 billion more than last year’s spending amount so it’s not as though he proposed some draconian cut. I led the effort to obtain 146 signatures on a letter assuring President Bush that Republicans in the House would uphold his veto of any appropriations bill that exceeded his budget request. That is the minimum number of signatures needed to sustain a Presidential veto. We obtained 147 signatures on that letter. The president then issued a statement that he would veto the overspending. The Pelosi-led House Democrats, as has been their pattern, ignored the realities of other meaningful opinions and defiantly passed the bills anyway.

But the Senate has passed only 1 of the 11 bills. However, the well- known “cloture” rule requiring 60… Read More

For all you Capitol watchers out there, soon there will be a lot less to watch. Tomorrow could be our last full day legislatin’ plus a half day Tuesday. That’s the best guess floating around "the building." One bit had us coming back for Friday, which is the drop-dead last day for the ’07 portion of this2 year session, but I doubt it.

And then there is the possibility of the Guv calling for a special session to tackle perhaps health care reform [or, a majority couldjust cram an ultimate reformbillthrough during the last 40 hours from now!] or maybe a session tolook at a solution for water storage/Delta problems.

But then the legislature can just show up for the special session call, convene the applicable committee for a few minutes, adjourn, see you in January…we’ll see.

Then in January, in addition to new bill intro’s, all the 2 year bills will be back on the front burner, including stuff you thought was dead, [bills are like Jason-Friday the 13th, they just keep coming back, even after the end of a 2 year session, even when the author is termed out, they rise up and haunt you… Read More

Bloggers won a court victory here in Orange County on August 24, when OC Superior Court Judge ruled in favor of Mr. Christopher Lotts, a blogger who works in the Santa Ana office of the state Department of Labor Standards Enforcement.

You can read my June 24 post for a more complete backstory, but I’ll cover it quickly here:

Lotts runs a blog called No Labor Standards, in which he exposes what he sees as waste and incompetence in the DLSE. Department management had been hounding Lotts for months, in hopes of shutting down his blog. Specifically, they wanted him to reveal who were his sources and to turn over his private journals.

Lotts hired Garden Grove Councilman Mark Rosen and sought a writ of mandate telling the DLSE to back off trying to get Lotts to couhg up his sources and journals. I had the opportunity to testify as an expert witness on blogging when the trial began back in late June.

On August 24, Judge Sheila Fell handed down her ruling, which I excerpt here:

The

Greetings from the California Republican Party State Convention. As you can see by the timestamp on this commentary that it is very late, indeed, and so this will not be a long one. The State GOP is gathered at the Renaissance Esmerlda Hotel in Indian Wells, out in the Coachella Valley east of Los Angeles. I am not going to spend a lot of time talking about Governor Schwarzenegger’s speech to conventioneers at last night’s dinner banquet. You can pretty much read about what he said in a plethora of articles highlighted on our main page (look for various comments from me in the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, and the San Diego Union Tribune). In short, the Governor came before us, declared that the State GOP was in trouble, and in essence prescribed that the ‘cure’ for our party’s ills is to move to the left on major policy issues in order to capture the political center. Frankly, and to be honest, I couldn’t disagree more. First and foremost, the purpose of a political party is to achieve it’s public policy goals. No where in our goal is a massive and costly government… Read More