Don Wagner, candidate for the 70th Assembly District, has prevailed in Westphal v. Wagner, a suit filed against Wagner and the South Orange County Community College Board of Trustees, to prevent theoffering of invocations at graduations, awards ceremonies, and other District functions.

The plaintiffs, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, sought an injunction but after months of discovery, including depostions from Wagner and other trustees, and reviewing thousands of pages of documents, the aetheists could not make their case that the District was violating the establishment clause of the Constitution. The court denied the motion and invocations can continue.

However, this case is not necessarily over. The aetheists may force this to trial and there is always a chance that Wagner et al could be defeated.

Bottom line, however, is that Wagner and the Board of Trustees stood against the effort to ban invocations andreligious freedom and the First Amendment prevailed.

* Don Wagner is a client of Revolvis… Read More

Although they still hold a huge advantage in elections, 2010 is certainly the year of anti-incumbency fever among the electorate. With the surprising defeat of Utah Senator Bob Bennett last weekend, those challenging incumbents in primaries are feeling especially energized with just a few weeks to go before the June 8th primary.

Earlier today, congressional candidate Phil Liberatore held a press conference outside Congressman Gary Miller’s office, whom Liberatore is challenging in the primary, to discuss Miller’s campaign tactics. Apparently Miller’s campaign paid for some signs dubbing Liberatore a tax fraud. In his comments to reporters, Liberatore honed in on recent underdog victories fueled by the anti-incumbent attitude of voters.

"After Scott Brown there was Chris Christie, who ran for Governor of New Jersey and won in a state with a liberal majority. Then there was Bob McDonnel in Virginia who trounced his Democratic opponent by 18 points even though they had been evenly matched a few years back. And most recently there was Robert Bennett the Senator from Utah who was… Read More

Curious about California’s broken pension system? Feel free to tip toe around the various solutions, formulas and learn more about the root cause at a new website. Senate GOP leader Dennis Hollingsworth announced the launch of a new web-site designed to become a clearinghouse of useful information that will allow everyone to get perspective on how much government employee unions are fleecing future generations. According to the Senate GOP leader, “Public pension obligations are a ticking time-bomb and many don’t fully understand how devastating these costs are to our state’s fiscal well being.” Agreed. Public employee unions are hurting the future of all Californian’s. That point can not be argued.

According to the press release… “…there are 9,111 retired California government workers who are receiving pensions over $100,000 and according to one recent study, California’s public retirement plans are under funded by more than a half trillion dollars ($536 billion) which equates to a staggering… Read More

This morning blogged about Senate Republican Leader Dennis Hollingsworth launching a government pension reform website — you can scroll further down the blog to read more on that.

I wanted to draw the attention of FR readers to Hollingsworth’s weekly radio address on the subject of needed pension reform. You can listen to it here, and read the transcript below.

TRANSCRIPT You know your family or your business is in serious trouble when your debt is growing faster than your income. Unless you fix the problem, sooner or later you’ll go broke. California’s public employee retirement system is in this fix. … Read More

Late last week the Republican candidates for United States Senate — Tom Campbell, Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina — met face to face at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles for a televised debate. The debate was not aired live, but was broadcast yesterday. But since I assume that most FR readers were focused on celebrating Mothers day, I thought I would give you a chance to watch the debate at your convenience. ABC has it split into three parts, all of which are embedded below! Who won?

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In the heart of Orange County, there is currently a four-way donnybrook taking place in the Republican primary in the 70th Assembly District — the victor of this primary will go on to succeed Chuck DeVore as the representative to the legislature from this district.

Three of the four candidates — Tustin Councilman Jerry Amante, South Orange County Community College District Board President Don Wagner, and the son of the late Assemblyman Gil Ferguson, Jay Ferguson, are all long-time residents of the district. The remaining candidate, Irvine Councilman Steven Choi (pictured), is not. In fact, depending on whose version of reality you choose to believe, he either (according to Choi) carpetbagged from his million dollar plus home outside of the district into a modest apartment inside of the district , just in time to file for office — OR — you can believe what is being asserted in one of the most comprehensive complaints of this nature… Read More

Prop 16 is the statewide version of something I told my city manager and one of city council members I would do back in 2005. At that time I was on the Pleasanton Energy Committee (PEC), and community choice aggregation (CCA) was a new option for communities. It basically allows cities to become the purchasing agents for the electricity used by the residents and businesses within their borders. Some of the strongest supporters of CCA’s were liberal politicos with an ax to grind with PG&E, and I was against it from the get-go. The mayor of Pleasanton and one of her left-leaning cohorts brought in consultants from Navigant to try to convince the PEC to vote to recommend that Pleasanton enter into a joint powers authority (JPA) with Berkeley to become a CCA. Supposedly, this JPA would allow Pleasanton and Berkeley to obtain more green energy than we could get from PG&E (impossible without significant rate hikes), and avoid certain fees that PG&E rate payers had to pay to cover some of the expenses still being paid off from the deregulation/Enron debacle. Imagine our surprise when we found out that the Navigant consultant who was trying … Read More

Meg Whitman has launched a new radio ad… The topic? Immigration. This ad, at the very end, features a testimonial from Governor Pete Wilson…

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