"Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican."

This so-called "11th Commandment" was created during the 1966 Gubernatorial campaign of Ronald Reagan. Then California Republican Party Chairman Gaylord Parkinson came up with the idea as Republicans around the country had just watched GOP Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater lose his race after prolonged, vicious attacks from the left within the Republican Party.

How ironic that over the years, this mantra has become something used by liberal Republicans, interested in fending off criticism from conservatives in the Grand Old Party.

Last weekend, United States Senator and Presidential aspirant John McCain invoked Reagan’s "11th Commandment" in a stinging criticism of the Club for Growth (CfG). For those who are not familiar with CfG, they are not a "Republican" organization, but rather a grassroots-based, non-partisan group that is focused on economic issues and whose membership often times focuses funds to help elect candidates for office who will fight to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. In… Read More

"Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican."

This so-called "11th Commandment" was created during the 1966 Gubernatorial campaign of Ronald Reagan. Then California Republican Party Chairman Gaylord Parkinson came up with the idea as Republicans around the country had just watched GOP Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater lose his race after prolonged, vicious attacks from the left within the Republican Party.

How ironic that over the years, this mantra has become something used by liberal Republicans, interested in fending off criticism from conservatives in the Grand Old Party.

Last weekend, United States Senator and Presidential aspirant John McCain invoked Reagan’s "11th Commandment" in a stinging criticism of the Club for Growth (CfG). For those who are not familiar with CfG, they are not a "Republican" organization, but rather a grassroots-based, non-partisan group that is focused on economic issues and whose membership often times focuses funds to help elect candidates for office who will fight to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. In… Read More

I was catching up with my arts & culture reading over the weekend and was interested to see a story in the SF Chronicle about a radio station pulling a book ad off the air that attacked the Christian right after listeners called to complain. It’s not a headline that I would ever expect to see in the Chronicle!

You can read the whole article here, but the gist is that KDFC, a classical music station, pulled an advertisement for the book, "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on ," by Chris Hedges. Hedges is coming to San Francisco and his publisher had purchased some ad time to promote the book.

Given how left-wing San Francisco is, it was hard to imagine what prompted those listeners to call and complain (or there are more of us… Read More

Did anyone else notice that the pro-military counterprotests were actually much larger than the anti-war protests out in Washington DC over the weekend? Hard to find coverage, but the pictures and police reports were pretty clear.… Read More

My friend Lance Izumi, director of the Pacific Research Institute’s California Education Studies, recently was on a locally produced version of "The View" and over the weekend sent me a link to the video.

For anyone who is at all interested in education policy, this is a hysterical video to watch. And it is even funnier if you know Lance, a perpetually polite and well-spoken policy wonk who knows a ton about California‘s education system.

He’s interviewed, in this tape, by Spencer Christian, a local TV personality and host of "View from the Bay," and a guest host, Nancy… Read More

On Friday, I had a chance to take a few minutes with Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts. I found him to be a very engaging and articulate person with whom to speak. Below are some excerpts* from our interview…

Governor Romney was in Orange County where he appeared at two fundraising events — one an exclusive ‘pre-sell’ event at the Irvine home of businessman John Clarey, and the other a reception with hundreds of guests at the posh St. Regis Resort in Dana Point. We took along the "FlashCam" and so you can see all kinds of video — they are on the main page now — and I will try to post them into this Commentary in a bit…

AN INTERVIEW WITH MITT ROMNEY… Read More

On Friday, I had a chance to take a few minutes with Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts. I found him to be a very engaging and articulate person with whom to speak. Below are some excerpts* from our interview…

Governor Romney was in Orange County where he appeared at two fundraising events — one an exclusive ‘pre-sell’ event at the Irvine home of businessman John Clarey, and the other a reception with hundreds of guests at the posh St. Regis Resort in Dana Point. We took along the "FlashCam" and so you can see all kinds of video — they are on the main page now — and I will try to post them into this Commentary in a bit…

AN INTERVIEW WITH MITT ROMNEY… Read More

Fleischman thinks he’s hot stuff because of all the mainpage "FlashCam" posts today on Mitt Romney’s visit. If Jon were hip, he’d cruise over to myspace.com and become a "friend" of any presidential candidate he chooses, all of ’em if he likes.

Check out http://impact.myspace.com/and know that every candidate is an Internet predator when it comes to courting the under-30 crowd. As Paris Hilton would say, "It’s hot."

Jon, let’s make this a feature….State candidates’ videos, right on the FlashReport!

Here’s the AP-HiTech story:

Presidential Hopefuls Make Myspace Pages

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Prospective voters eager to learn more about John McCain or to become an Internet "friend" of Barack Obama now have a new online opportunity. MySpace.com, the popular social networking site, on Sunday launched a section dedicated to the 2008 presidential election.

Called the Impact Channel,… Read More