As an elected officer of the California Republican Party, my least favorite part of the job (by far) is that under the party’s rules I am obliged to “sit out” contested Republican primaries for partisan office. That having been said, with the election taking place tomorrow, I would not be able to live with myself if I did not take at least a few minutes to talk about a candidate running for State Senate. Let me preface my brief comments by making it clear that this is not a formal endorsement – consider it more of an “informational item” – as it were.

Joel Anderson, who is currently serving in the State Assembly, is seeking the GOP nomination for the State Senate tomorrow – in the 36th District, where Dennis Hollingsworth is retiring due to term limits.

It is has been my good fortune to know Joel Anderson for over twenty years – and to call him a friend. When I think about Joel in terms of his attributes, the thoughts that come to mind are integrity, conservatism, courage, activism,… Read More

They say that anyone who actually visits a sausage-making factory will never eat sausage again. Assembly Republican Leader Martin Garrick and his 43 other fellow Republican legislators have a similar plight – they have to be so close to the process of watching out-of-control liberals pass horrific legislation that it probably makes them ill.

In this video, Garrick lays it out…

… Read More

I’ve not seen much coverage of this issue in the U.S. press, but according to the U.K.’s Guardian, Steve Jobs is committed to keeping pornography off his i-products.

In April, he said at a press conference: "You know, there’s a porn store for Android [phones using Google’s software]. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go – so we’re not going to go there."

In late May, according to The Guardian, he had the following exchange with a writer for Gawker website (a New York news & gossip website):

In an email exchange with Ryan Tate, a writer for the Gawker website, Jobs set out his stall very clearly. Tate, annoyed by an iPad advert calling it a "revolution", challenged Jobs: "If [Bob] Dylan [one of Jobs’s childhood heroes] was 20 today, how

Your "must read" of the day is over at the Fox and Hounds Daily website. It is penned by my colleague, California Republican Party Treasurer Keith Carlson…

It begins… What Really Happens if Prop 14 Passes By Keith Carlson Treasurer of the California Republican Party What they hope will happen versus what we know will happen. There is a difference between the two when it comes to the results of Prop 14 possibly passing. … Read More

In Lewis Carroll’s 1871 book, Through the Looking Glass And What Alice Found There, we have a girl who can step through the parlor-room mirror into an alternative world – a world of fantasy. As someone who spends quite a bit of time reading about political happenings around the country, and especially in California, I can tell you that there is no place that is more peculiar, in terms of enacting the more bizarre and uniquely harmful regulations, or wealth redistribution schemes, than San Francisco. You literally can’t make up the stuff that goes on there. And then there is the fact that just about anything can see the negative consequences of these bizarre ordinances – except the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco – we seem “shocked” when their efforts to create their own bizarre utopia blow up in their faces.

A great example would be the fact that the city is in an uproar about whether to adopt a “sit/lie” policy which says, now get this, that during certain… Read More

I received a number of emails yesterday about the case where Steve Cooley’s District Attorney office refused to charge a criminal under three strikes (which would have put this criminal, whose prior felonies were for rape and residential burglary, away for life), and instead charged him in such a way that he would only serve 32 months in jail. The criminal got, and four days later killed a young girl.

The criminal had sold $5.00 worth of marijuana to an undercover cop. He had previous raped a woman, and broke into someone’s home. Had Cooley pursued three strikes vigorously, he would have been attacked by the left for giving a life sentence a relatively minor crime. But had he pursued three strikes, a homeless girl would be alive today, instead of the victim of a brutal murder by a hardened criminal.

Remember the so-called pizza thief, the guy who got a life sentence for stealing pizza from a ten year old boy? The left screamed about how unfair this was. What they did not tell you was that this thug had been convicted of armed robbery, aggravated assault, mayhem, and a series of other really ugly crimes. He stole the pizza from the boy by… Read More

Tonight on the Rick Amato Show in San Diego — Chuck DeVore and our own Barry Jantz. They are streaming the show, so I thought we’d offer it live… Show begins at 9pm.

… Read More

For many of the same reasons so eloquently noted by Jon Fleischman today in his commentary, I support Joel Anderson for State Senate. That should come as no surprise to anyone. Joel and I have been friends for many years.

Yet, I have many friends in politics that I would not necessarily endorse for office. It takes more than a warm body that happens to vote “correctly” to earn my support, especially at the state legislative level. It takes a fighter who understands just what this state is facing and how to turn it around, as well as someone who has the personal skills and tenacity to try to get it accomplished, instead of just being a “no” vote. That also means having such a philosophy all of the time, not just when it fits the polling or the climate.

I fear — no, I know — that some of those currently running at the highest levels in this state would be no different philosophically than the current governor if the polls said differently. A sad reality.

Joel Anderson is not part of that sad reality. He has a vision for the long-term… Read More