The Sacramento Bee has reported that GOP Assemblyman Mike Duvall has been removed from the Assembly Rules and Utilities and Commerce Committee after the startling revelations about his extra-marital affairs with Capitol lobbyists. Also, the leader of Assembly GOPers, Sam Blakeslee, has dumped Duvall from his leadership post in the Republican Caucus.

In the story are statements from Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Assembly Republican Leader Sam Blakeslee:

OC Weekly’s Scott Moxley has just posted a follow up piece to his breaking story of last night on the ever-growing scandal of Mike Duvall.

In his latest piece, Moxley reports that well respected Orange County Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh, formerly Assembly Republican Leader, has called on Mike Duvall to resign his office.

An excerpt from Moxley’s piece…

My husband and I kept our second grader home today.Not because we thought that President Obama’s speech was going to be filled with partisan vitriol—we knew that it wouldn’t be.But when our son’s teacher sent us an email that she would be showing the “historic speech” I decided to have a conversation with the school principal (the teacher was out for the day) to learn what the motivation was for taking learning time out for this speech. Here’s the upshot of our chat:after a back-and-forth about the importance of telling kids that education is important and how the principal is happy to have anyone tell the kids to stay in school, especially the President of the United States, I asked him if he’d stop class to show a “stay in school and learn” speech by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.His response?“Why he’s no friend of education.”With that response, he made my point.You see, the education establishment’s participation in this Obama PR effort was not about the message, it was about the messenger.And that was why we decided to … Read More

Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and Jon Fleischman, Publisher of the FlashReport Website on California Politics, this morning released the following statement to the State Legislature concerning ongoing discussions to achieve a solution to our state’s water crisis that the legislature would then place before the voters of California…

"As the Governor and state legislators work earnestly with a goal of pulling together a “comprehensive water solution package” to potentially bring before the full legislature this week, we believe that the frame of mind of those… Read More

While the controversy will continue to rage about President Barack Obama’s decision to address school children.

I am stunned not by the obvious attempt to look great or indoctrinate young people. Don’t get me wrong all those things are important and clearly this is his attempt to reach young people and their voting parents with an “important message” of stay in school and work hard. As long as he is mentioning stuff, clean your room should be added to the list.

Yes, it is a waste of instructional time etc…

But what bothers me is trying to figure out this question.

Does Barack Obama believe he has the power to change the culture of students by giving a speech?

There is no doubt that Presidents can be inspirational. John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and others have proved that,.

In some cases I think a half hour from Sponge Bob (my son picked him over Obama) or a song from Adam Lambert (my daughter says he is cooll) would be more effective with dealing with a culture than a speech by a man that had to overcome graduating from such horrible schools like Columbia and Harvard or even the private schools in Hawaii or Indonesia he… Read More

Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and Jon Fleischman, Publisher of the FlashReport Website on California Politics, this morning released the following statement to the State Legislature concerning ongoing discussions to achieve a solution to our state’s water crisis that the legislature would then place before the voters of California…

"As the Governor and state legislators work earnestly with a goal of pulling together a “comprehensive water solution package” to potentially bring before the full legislature this week, we believe that the frame of mind of those… Read More

As we reported last week, today the Committee to Recall Anthony Adams will turn in around 40,000 signatures to registrars of voters in both Los Angeles and San Bernardino County. In order for a recall election to be called against Adams there will ultimately need to be about 36,000 valid signatures of voters from the 59th Assembly District turned in. (The media event will be this afternoon at the Los Angeles County Registrar, headed up by Recall Adams leader and former State Senator Dick Mountjoy.)

The recall against Adams is taking place over his deciding vote to increase state income, sales and car taxes by billions — actually it was the largest tax increase ever at the state level in any state in the history of America. Adams took a pledge not to raise taxes in his critical first primary… Read More

A few weeks ago, the organization California Forward sent a letter to the Governor and members of the State Legislature outlining what they believe to be a series of reforms that, if passed, would improve the condition of government here in California. You can see that letter here (h/t KQED).

Many of the reforms have merit, a few are more questionable — all deserve closer examination.

But for the purposes of this commentary, I am focused on what would be, for me, a "deal killer" when it comes to "reforms" — and that is a proposal to severely weaken California’s legislative term limits, placed into the State Constitution back in 1990. Three times now, most recently with Proposition 93, the political-class have sought to undo in some part what the voters put into place — and all three times their efforts have been rejected.

Under the "reform" proposed by California Forward, while an individual currently is limited, in their lifetime, to serving three terms in the State Assembly and two terms in the State Senate,… Read More