You are reading the subject line of this post and saying "What?!". But it is true, for one night, the City of Fresno and San Joaquin Valley, best known as the raisin capital of the world, gateway to Yosemite, poverty capital of California and home of a pretty good football team, was for three glorious hours the cultural epicenter of the world. Why you ask? Last night over 20,000 sat in awe as the incomparable tenor Andrea Bocelli, in his only West Coast (not LA, not San Fran, not San Diego, not Seattle, not Portland, not Las Vegas, not Beverly Hills) stop on an eight city North American tour, took center stage at the upscale Save Mart Center in a stunning "Royal Christmas" performance that left every patron incredibly satisfied and wanting much more than Bocelli’s two generous encores could ever provide.

With the Royal Philharmonic Concert… Read More

In Orange County’s 35 State Senate District, there is a Special Election taking place to see who will succeed newly-elected Congressman John Campbell. The race is shaping to be a donnybrook between moderate GOP Assemblyman Tom Harman (moderate is probably generous) and Dana Point City Councilwoman Diane Harkey, who is more conservative in her views.

There will be a lot of coverage of this race, given that one of the FR blog team members, Duane Dichiara, is a lead consultant for Harman’s campaign, and of course there are three OC bloggers – Matt Cunningham, Adam Probolsky, and yours truly.Congressman.

In BREAKING NEWS — newly minted Congressman John Campbell has endorsed Diane Harkey… Here is the release…

Congressman John Campbell Endorses Diane Harkey

… Read More

It’s just been announced – "Tookie" Williams, who brutally murdered several people, and was sentenced to die….will be executed tomorrow morning at 12:01 a.m. Governor Schwarzenegger has denied a request to grant clemency.

While this may have been a deeply-thought out moral decision for the Governor, it also happens to be a decision that will sit well with the vast majority of California voters. Especially with Republicans.

Here is the AP story:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied clemency to Stanley Tookie Williams, the former gang leader whose case stirred debate over capital punishment and the possibility of redemption… Read More

Before the blogging on Tookie Williams revs up, and after several days of the Susan Kennedy firestorm, it’s only fair to give Governor Schwarzenegger credit for three smart personnel decisions he’s made over the last couple of days. Carol Corrigan is not a movement conservative, but she is a strong law-and-order voice and an advocate of judicial restraint. Similarly, Fred Aguiar and Dan Dunmoyer are not ideologues, but both bring legitimate conservative credentials on economic, tax, and public safety issues into the governor’s office.

So in the last ten days, Schwarzenegger has replaced a moderate Republican with a moderate Democrat as chief of staff. He’s replaced a movement conservative with a centrist on the state Supreme Court. And he’s replaced a hard-line environmentalist with two strong pro-business voices on his senior staff. All of which sounds precisely like the Arnold Schwarzenegger who ran for governor two years ago.

My friend Joe Justin lent this discussion just the right amount of perspective in his post yesterday. Concentrating on how Arnold governs in the year ahead, and how this new team impacts his… Read More

First and foremost – thank you for being a part of the FlashReport website. On January 1, it will be three months since we took the site online, and moved away from the e-mail newsletter format. The response from readers, old and new, has been tremendous.

SIGN UP FOR FREE UPDATES I wanted to first encourage you, if you haven’t done so already, to sign up for the free FlashReport updates (sign up to the left). What do you get with this feature? Each morning, when the site is updated, I send out an e-mail. So no more constantly checking, wondering when lazy-bones it done culling through 45+ websites each morning – I’ll tell you! The e-mail also contains the headlines of every story on the main page, for a quick look if you don’t have time to click-through right away. Finally, when there are interesting stories on the blog, or a major piece of breaking news in California politics, I will send out an ‘alert’ to subscribers. Many thousands are signed up already – are you?… Read More

Over the years, one consistent theme of frustration that I have heard out of Republican legislators in Sacramento has been that it is virtually impossible for a good conservative to pass meaningful legislation through the Democrat controlled legislature. If you have a substantive idea for a bill, it either gets sandbagged because the liberals up there felt the bill wasn’t in line with their agenda, or, even if the majority likes the idea in your proposed bill, they have the same idea introduced by a Democrat member, and then you are forced to vote for someone else’s bill that implements your idea!

Every once in a while (make that a long while) a piece of meaningful legislation makes it through this gauntlet. I don’t know if the reason that the ‘Safely Surrendered Baby’ law was succesfully authored and pass by then Republican State Senator Jim Brulte (pictured) because he was the Republican… Read More

Perhaps I am starting to understand the pure genius of Governor Schwarzenegger appointing Democrat activist Susan Kennedy to be his Chief of Staff — it has apparently significantly lowered by expectations on other appointments coming out of the his administration. This is too bad, and it goes to an enthusiasm problem that is not unique to me — it is coursing through the veins of GOP activists throughout the state, demoralized that after the hi-profile recall of Gray Davis, both the Governor and the First lady have tapped two of Gray Davis’ most influential Deputy Chiefs of Staff to be their Chiefs of Staff. The whole thing sounds soludicrous every time I write it down. Well, this is a subject for much more debate, but not right now… … Read More

When you talk about working in the trenches, I can’t think of a more challenging job than being a Republican in Alameda County — except, to be Chairman of the Alameda County Republican Party. That is Richard Spees. Dedicated and hard-working, Richard leads a team of freedom-fighters in promoting the Republican Party in the home county of Jerry Brown, Ron Dellums, Barbara Lee, Don Perata and a cast of left wing socialists (in the case of Dellums, I think I mean that literally.) Oh yes, Richard was a City Councilman in Oakland for 24 years!

Richard and I exchanged some emails, and I thought I would share his opinions on two issues, the appointment of Republican Judge Carol Corrigan to the State Supreme Court and the controversy surrounding the appointment of Democrat Susan Kennedy by the Governor to be his Chief of Staff:

Spees on Corrigan: