Overmy next few posts,in no particular order, will be a bunch of miscellaneous facts or observations from yours truly on various aspects of the state of things in Washington, D.C. today. Unlike some of my ramblings, these will all be short. I’m not sure that this is accurate to say, since this stuff emanates from the seat of the nation’s enormously bloated government, but I’ll say it anyway – Enjoy!

Apparently, Congress will not take up or pass a budget this year. The Budget Act requiring an annual budget was passed in 1974. The House has never failed to produce and pass a budget since then…until this year. The person responsible for producing that budget, Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-SC) famously remarked in 2006 "if you can’t budget, you can’t govern." I guess the Democrat majority can’t govern. Can you say dysfunctional? The so-called Financial Reform Bill has now passed both the House and the Senate. But the versions are quite different from one another,so a conference committee is currently resolving those multiple differences and it will have to pass both chambers again in … Read More

Tuesday night the Valley News in Riverside erroneously reported that County Supervisor Jeff Stone defeated Assemblyman Joel Anderson for the 36th Senate District seat, apparently because the reporter was only looking at the Riverside portion of the results.

A new story has now been posted, without a trace of the incorrect report or a correction.

Here is the first part of the story that was…and wasn’t…and now never existed:

Supervisor Stone declared winner in 36th Senate race Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 Issue 23, Volume 14

MURRIETA –… Read More

As is always the case after a major election, there is much more to write about than there is time to write! Look for more substantive analysis on specific races and such, but for this morning, I will take a stab at some overall analysis – all of which will be too brief in any one, but this is an overview, after all. I am not going to be pouring election numbers into this, you can get plenty of that elsewhere. Before I start my run down, I want to echo the praise extended by FR friend Aaron McLear to the Capitol Press Corps who all stepped up in their blogging and tweeting last night. Outstanding. Also a reminder – I am mostly looking at GOP races – someone else will take a closer look at the Dems…

OK, off to the races…

STATEWIDE RACES

**There is more – click the link**

View Full Commentary… Read More

I was very excited to see that my friend Janice Rutherford, currently Councilwoman in the City of Fontana and an aide to Acting Board of Equalization Member Barbara Alby (a for a looong time for Bill Leonard before that) had an awesome election night. Janice is running for San Bernardino County Supervisor — she’s taking on an incumbent, Paul Biane.

When all was said and done, Biane posted a dismal 34.27% of the vote in his re-election bid — this after spending more money, by far, than Janice or anyone else. Clearly Biane’s strategy was to try and "win it all" in June. Coming in right behind Biane was Janice, with 31.21% of the vote. Four other candidates divided up the rest of the vote.

So in the Fall, Biane and Rutherford will face on in a run-off. Conventional wisdom is that Rutherford is now the front-runner. First and foremost, it is unheard of for an incumbent Supervisor to end up in a run-off, but to perform so poorly is really embarrassing. Second… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…… Read More

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley not only won the Republican nomination for Attorney General, he got his dream match-up in Kamala Harris, the uber-liberal District Attorney of San Francisco, and he will be California’s next Attorney General.

Kamala Harris is simply unelectable as Attorney General. She has the worst criminal conviction rate in the state, having barely won over 50% of her felony trials. She presides over a Sanctuary City and actually provides support and legal comfort for illegal immigrants. She is on the hot seat for failing to disclose massive negligence in the San Francisco crime lab, a failure that could result in the release of thousands of violent criminals. She opposes the death penalty. She was THE most liberal candidate in the Democrat primary, and now she is toast. (PS – How do you feel today, Chris Kelly? $10 million for a 2:1 loss. Ouch.)

Steve Cooley is certainly not a perfect candidate. He’s got big problems with his administration of the Three Strikes law, especially his office policy not to pursue a third strike unless it is a violent felony. He also authored a ballot initiative to weaken the Three Strikes law.… Read More

The "California Top Two Primary Act," known as Proposition 14, passed with surprising margins in counties across the state yesterday. The campaign for the proposition should be congratulating itself; many political observers did not see this big win coming for Prop. 14.

Under Prop. 14, voters can vote in the primary election for what used to be referred to as "partisan elections" for any candidate regardless of party affiliation of either the candidate or the voter. Candidates can even chose to not disclose their party affiliation on the ballot. For example, and admittedly at the extreme, if the Communist Party qualified as a political party in California and had a candidate running for Congress in say, Congressional District #9 (Berkeley), the candidate could chose to not disclose that significant political affiliation on the ballot.

Lawyers for both political parties will now be focusing on a legal challenge to Prop. 14. I think the fact that candidates can chose to remove information from the ballot about their party affiliation is a significant line of legal attack. It emasculates the political parties. Prop.… Read More

Sadly I received my last piece of campaign mail today, Wednesday, the day after the polls closed, at my home in Dana Point. It was a Poizner piece mailed out under an Orange, Ca bulk mail permit. If someone from that campaign wants to contact me, I’ll send you a scan of the piece. The Dana Point post office is notoriously slow in processing and delivering “red tagged” political mail, which is entitled to First Class priority handling. But arriving a day after the election just adds insult to injury.… Read More