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

We’ve had hardcore left-wing U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer representing California for so long that it is almost startling to hear the common sense that comes from some of the Senators from states not on the "left coast — such as Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Check out this video below from a townhall meeting where Coburn engages a constituent in a dialogue after she asks for a show of hands of how many people in the room support a "public option" for government run healthcare.

Oh yes, of note is that Coburn’s profession — medical doctor. … Read More

What is going on in the Assembly Republican caucus? Have they lost their minds? The Senate passed the Healthy Families bill, a bill with a tax increase in it, with Republican help, which was foolish enough. One Senator said he just couldn’t see "children losing their health care." He couldn’t have articulated the Democrat argument for any tax increase better. But the Assembly caucus voted overwhelmingly for the thing. Are they nuts?

I will start with one observation. I was one of 5 Senators who voted against the Healthy Families bill in 1997. Healthy Families is the California version of the so-called State Child Health Insurance program (S-CHIP) which was passed by the national government (with a Republican majority in Congress) in those days. The reason given for passage at the time was that the federal government had to do something about the uninsured children out there. So-they passed a program where the federal government paid for two-thirds of a subsidized health insurance program (with the state picking up the other one-third) for the so-called working poor, those poor workers whose employers were too cheap to buy health… Read More

<object width="399" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-QFfciwRqaU&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-QFfciwRqaU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="399"></embed></object>

LOVE BOAT

<object width="399" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-QFfciwRqaU&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-QFfciwRqaU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always"… Read More

Just off the transom from the Committee to Recall Anthony Adams…

On Tuesday, September 8th at 3:00PM, The Committee to Recall Anthony Adams along with Recall Proponents will submit over 36,000 signatures to the Registrar of Voters Office, 12400 Imperial Hwy. in Norwalk, Ca. “This is a proud day for the over-burdened taxpayers of the great State of California,” said campaign spokesman, Mike Schroeder. Adams broke his campaign promise to never to raise taxes. Adams relied heavily upon this promise to win election to the Assembly. He then voted to double the… Read More

It must be cool to run for office with the resources to put together a seemingly endless stream of professional quality videos to support your campaign. This one, released today by the Whitman for Governor campaign, is all about Congressman Dan Lungren and State Senator Tony Strickland praising (perhaps in the case of Lungren I might actually say "gushing") Whitman’s support for Republican candidates. Enjoy. … Read More

For this website publisher, a life-long Los Angeles Dodgers fan, it doesn’t get any better than a chance to meet legendary Dodgers radio announcer Vin Scully up in the KABC booth overlooking Dodger Stadium! In this photo I share my "it" moment with Gino DiCaro of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association. Other folks familier to FR readers who were with us, but not in my photo, included FR friends Rob Stutzman and Andrew Breitbart.

A big shout out to Mike McCey and the CBA for hosting us for the photos, the trip to the field to watch batting practice up close, and a cool night in the sky box checking out the Dodgers defeat the Diamondbacks game last Tuesday night!… Read More

During the argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in the pending Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case on whether the documentary film "Hillary: the Movie," (a movie critical of Hillary Clinton’s record and policy positions) should be banned under the Federal Election Campaign Act in election season, a question was asked of one of the government lawyers, namely, whether such a ban would also apply to books that contain references to candidates. The government lawyer said "Yes, books can be banned" under the law in question.

Campaign finance reform advocates likeFred Wertheimer also agree, "books can be banned." But Supreme Court Justice Alito was not so keen on that idea when he heard it in the Citizens United case, and now the Supreme Court is holding a rare second oral argument in the case later this month on the specific subject of book burning, or, eh, I mean film and book banning, couched under the question of whether a corporation’s contributions to a communication that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a candidate can be banned. This goes to… Read More