Born in 1911, in a small town in Illinois, let’s join and remember our 40th President and what he stood for and meant to our country. I was in college at the time he ran for President in 1980, a very difficulttime with Iran and hostages, the Cold Warandthe Soviets,and runaway inflation and interest rates. I remembered the posters up around campus [they actually weren’t torn down back then, especially around the Ag Dept.] of Governor Reagan in the cowboy hat and the optimism in that smile and in his words.

Indeed, he gave us optimism that we could beat the ‘malaise’ we were suffering from. Even the USA Olympic hockey team beat the USSR in the Miracle on ice. That optimism even spilled over into Charlie Daniels hit song at the time "In America"

"…speaking for you and me, and some people from Tennessee, we got a thing or two to tell you all…" "…were gonna put her feet back on the path of… Read More

PLEASE TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION! Please contact your members of the State Legislature and tell them you oppose a budget agreement that includes tax increases of any kind. Click this link to contact them.

WHEN:

Now! A budget with tax increases could be taken up as early as next week, and our taxpayer allies in the Legislature are taking severe abuse from the tax and spend lobby. They need your help and support to stand firm.

WHY:

California has the highest income tax, sales tax and gas tax in the United States, and the highest corporation tax in the Western United States.… Read More

Barack H. Obama has nominated David Ogden, an accomplished lawyer for the "skin-flick" industry, for the important job of Deputy Attorney General of the United States. The Deputy AG serves as the prime manager of the Agency and the Administration’s justice policy. The Deputy AG post is also seen as a stepping stone and has been held bya number of prominent lawyers on their way up in government including William P. Rogers (later Nixon’s Secretary of State), Lawrence Walsh (later Iran-Contra prosecutor), Richard Kleindienst (who went on to be Attorney General), Ramsey Clark (anotherDemocrat mistake), Warren Christopher (later Carter’s Secretary of State), Benjamin Civiletti (whoalso went on to be Attorney General), and Eric Holder, the current Attorney General.

Ogden’s legal skills as a porn lawyer include representation ofthe biggest distributor ofhard-core pornographic films,as well as raunchy Penthouse magazine and tamer Playboy. His cases include opposition to spam filters on computers in public libraries, even where unsupervised children have… Read More

"He really didn’t used to be this bad," I can imagine Congressman Kevin McCarthy telling his fellow Republican Congressman from California at their weekly delegation meeting, as they absorb the fact that despite the fact that every one of them opposed President Obama’s pork-laden "stimulus" boondoggle plan, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger embraced the plan, signing a letter encouraging its passage.

Perhaps the next time that Governor Schwarzenegger is in Washington, D.C., he can stop by a meeting of the California GOPers. Of course, if he did, I would recommend that freshman Representative Duncan D. Hunter stop by the office of his local Assemblyman, Joel Anderson, who can make him some name tags.

It seems remarkably shallow if the only criteria that Governor Schwarzenegger uses on judging this terrible legislation is "how much welfare do we get for California government" — we expect the Governor to apply more sophistication, and reject this kind of redistributive, Keynesian policy… Read More

So FR readers know that a judge ruled against State Controller John "Union Tool" Chiang and so Governor Schwarzenegger’s modest proposal to require all state employees to take off two days a month without pay (now referred to as "Furlough Fridays" apparently). My prediction is that this action foreshadows more extreme decisions by the Governor, such as significant layoffs. Logically, how do you shrink state expenditures down to the level of state income without reducing the state’s work force? I digress…

So all of the State’s Constitution Officers who are not famous movie stars all send whiny letters to Chiang, who packages them all up (see the attachment below) and puts a cover letter on them, and asks Judge Marlette to, in essence, exempt these 15,000 or so state civil servants from the furloughs that effects over 200,000 other state employees. (I would note, by the way, that I never saw these Constitutional Officeholders complain about any raises that were bargained with the Governor for their employees).

Without going… Read More

There is no larger region, geographically, within the California Republican Party than its Northern Region. It takes in vast amounts of the "north state" and includes 19 counties! The current Northern Vice Chairman of the CRP, Jerry Maltby, with whom I have served for almost two years, is term-limited out of his position (you can serve two 2-year terms).

There is a spirited contest to replace Jerry, between Placer County GOP Chairman Tom Hudson, and Lori Ann Cline, a former county chairman herself.

I can tell FR readers that I worked on recruiting Tom Hudson to run for this seat for well over a year, and when he finally jumped into the race, I was the first person to endorse his candidacy. Tom and I have known each other for two decades now, and worked side by side towards countless Republican victories in that time. In fact, going all of the way back to 1990, I played a leadership role in his election as Chairman of the California College Republicans, and Tom reciprocated helping me to be… Read More

Yesterday, my friend Patrick Dorinson penned a column for Fox and Hounds Daily, Inherit the Wind, where he questioned the wisdom and tactics of my decision to introduce a resolution for the upcoming California Republican Party convention that would officially censure any Republican legislator that voted to increase taxes. This resolution is accompanied by another one that praises Republican legislators for holding the line against higher taxes. It is my sincere hope that the first resolution gets tabled as being inapplicable, and that the party faithful will be able to unanimously pass the latter – a well deserved thank you to Republican legislators that have, despite a very high degree of pressure on them from the special interest groups that dominate the State Capitol, and the battering by the political left who occupy their high chairs on many of the editorial boards of major California newspapers.

In Patrick’s piece, he makes this statement: “Political parties exist to win elections. Period. That is… Read More

Senator Sam Aanestad has just released a shocking article about a state government program that is funding surgical abortion training for nurses and midwives. The main problem with this little program is that state law and the medical board prohibit nurses and midwives from performing surgical abortions. There are some stunning revelations in Senator Aanestad’s article: government waiver of legislature-approved laws simply to get more people performing abortions and the racist targeting of poor minority groups.

Regardless of where one stands on the abortion issue, we should all expect the medical profession to abide by the highest standards of conduct, for the safety of their patients. Targeting poor minority groups (by exploiting their financial plight) for this type of experimentation is unconscionable.

The program, the Healthcare Workforce Pilot Program #171, is coming up for renewal in March 2009. The Director of the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, David Carlisle, should stop this program immediately, for the… Read More