The John McCain for President Exploratory Committee just dropped a press release into my inbox where they announce the endorsement of McCain’s look at the Presidency by four current and one former California State Legislator…

And they are (the envelope please)…

State Senator Jeff Denham, Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, Assemblyman George Plescia, Assemblyman Van Tran, and retired State Senator Jim Nielsen.

If you want to make the McCain folks feel better for having gone through the trouble of producing an elaborate media release, complete with quotes from all of these GOPers, you can pull up the release via the link immediately below. **Also, with a h/t to FR friend and Roll Call reporter David Drucker, RC has the following California GOP Members of Congress endorsing candidates for President so far:… Read More

Orange County Superior Court Judge Randell Wilkinson "passed" on ordering the emergency relief Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, was seeking today to regain control of the website and other assets of Minuteman Project, Inc. Gilchrist had filed an "emergency" request to bar dissident directors, who have concerns about Gilchrist’s management,from controlling the Minuteman organization. The Judge heard arguments from both competing sides about which directors control the organization and decided rather than making an immediate ruling as requested by Gilchrist, to take the matter "under submission." There is no indication of exactly when the Judge will issue a ruling in the case.

Your author represented the dissident directors in court today.… Read More

I am not even sure how to preface this video of news coverage last Friday of a speech made in Seattle by John McCain.. So I won’t. It’s worth 23 seconds of your time. To be honest, I haven’t really felt like McCain has been pandering to the right (especially with his ‘global-warming-love-fest’ visit with Arnold Schwarzengger last week) — but apparently if he has, it may have been disengenuous? I guess the good news is that his appearance on increasing regulations to fight greenhouse gas emissions may have just been McCain ‘sucking up’ to the left-wing of the GOP?

Can you say, "Open mouth — insert foot?" … Read More

The Empire Strikes Back

Democratic and Republican insiders unveiled their latest attempt to undermine California’s 17-year-old term limits law. Gale Kaufman, who has worked with California teacher unions, and Matthew Dowd, a strategist for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign last year, revealed the initiative in a conference call this month.

To the amusement of reporters, the two strategists insisted their plan, which would have to be approved by voters early next year, actually improves term limits. "We believe it’s a good strengthening of term limits," Ms. Kaufman said, because the proposal would limit legislators to 12 years of total service in the legislature, rather than the 14 years… Read More

Are you getting the most out of the FlashReport? Here is our "Top Ten Ways To Maximize the FlashReport": 1) Sign up for the daily e-mail on the main page. This is great for two reasons. The first is that we send you all of the headlines from each day’s news, so that whether you want to eyeball them on your computer, or scroll through them on your Blackberry, Treo or other PDA, you are "in the know" on the news of the day. The other reason is that it is your way of knowing when the main page has been updated each morning, as we send the e-mail alert right after compiling the days news. The e-mail now links back to the day associated with the headlines in it – a request of many readers. 2) The Main Page will give you a comprehensive look at California politics. Our motto is, "We spend two hours so you can spend two minutes — or twenty." Our team visits over 80 websites each morning to make sure that if there is a story on California politics, anywhere, we find it and link to in on the main page! Hint: If you go to the toggle next to the date in the upper right corner, you can actually choose… Read More

Are you getting the most out of the FlashReport? Here is our "Top Ten Ways To Maximize the FlashReport": 1) Sign up for the daily e-mail on the main page. This is great for two reasons. The first is that we send you all of the headlines from each day’s news, so that whether you want to eyeball them on your computer, or scroll through them on your Blackberry, Treo or other PDA, you are "in the know" on the news of the day. The other reason is that it is your way of knowing when the main page has been updated each morning, as we send the e-mail alert right after compiling the days news. The e-mail now links back to the day associated with the headlines in it – a request of many readers. 2) The Main Page will give you a comprehensive look at California politics. Our motto is, "We spend two hours so you can spend two minutes — or twenty." Our team visits over 80 websites each morning to make sure that if there is a story on California politics, anywhere, we find it and link to in on the main page! Hint: If you go to the toggle next to the date in the upper right corner, you can actually choose… Read More

For something entirely different, the Daily News in New York reported today that geneaologists have determined that the great-grandfather of New York civil rights activitist and former Presidential candidate Al Sharpton was a slave owned by the great-great-grandfather of one-time segregationist South Carolina U.S. Senator and former Presidential candidate Strom Thurmond. Good grief! And the mainstream media criticizes content on the Internet!… Read More

For Californians who follow such things and may be attending the national Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. next weekend (which I had the privilege of co-chairing a few times many years ago while National Chairman of Young Americans for Freedom), Mayor Rudy Guiliani is just reported on Politico to have made the decision to address the CPAC audienceon Friday, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. For info on CPAC, go to www.conservative.org. Senator McCain and Guiliani were previously reported as both taking a pass on the CPAC conference. Guiliani’s appearance now appears to be a further indication of his concerted interest in building bridges to movement conservatives. I predict he will get a great welcome, as he did at the California Republican Party convention in Sacramento earlier this month.… Read More