When Tony Krvaric immigrated from Sweden in 1992, he was living up to a vow he made as a young man to someday live in the nation of the person who inspired him the most, Ronald Reagan. The thought never crossed his mind that someday he would be chairman of the Republican Party in one of that nation’s largest metropolitan areas, in the very county in which Reagan himself wrapped up two successful presidential campaigns.

Over the next several years, Krvaric built a financial advisory business, got married and started a family. In 2004, he became a citizen of the land of Ronald Reagan, the land of freedom. It took him less than three years as a new voter to become chairman of the San Diego County Republican Party.

Although such a story might jab daggers into the hearts of those claiming the GOP is non-accepting and non-inclusive of immigrants, it does prove a point many have known for some time. The Republican Party is very accepting of anyone that works hard and chooses to pursue citizenship… Read More

A few minutes ago, Tony Krvaric was elected unanimously to succeed Ron Nehring as the chairman of the San Diego County Republican Party.

I’m not at the meeting, but I do have my moles.

More to follow. Congrats Tony!… Read More

My friend Lance Izumi, director of the Pacific Research Institute’s California Education Studies, recently was on a locally produced version of "The View" and over the weekend sent me a link to the video.

For anyone who is at all interested in education policy, this is a hysterical video to watch. And it is even funnier if you know Lance, a perpetually polite and well-spoken policy wonk who knows a ton about California‘s education system.

He’s interviewed, in this tape, by Spencer Christian, a local TV personality and host of "View from the Bay," and a guest host, Nancy… Read More

I was catching up with my arts & culture reading over the weekend and was interested to see a story in the SF Chronicle about a radio station pulling a book ad off the air that attacked the Christian right after listeners called to complain. It’s not a headline that I would ever expect to see in the Chronicle!

You can read the whole article here, but the gist is that KDFC, a classical music station, pulled an advertisement for the book, "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on ," by Chris Hedges. Hedges is coming to San Francisco and his publisher had purchased some ad time to promote the book.

Given how left-wing San Francisco is, it was hard to imagine what prompted those listeners to call and complain (or there are more of us… Read More

Fleischman thinks he’s hot stuff because of all the mainpage "FlashCam" posts today on Mitt Romney’s visit. If Jon were hip, he’d cruise over to myspace.com and become a "friend" of any presidential candidate he chooses, all of ’em if he likes.

Check out http://impact.myspace.com/and know that every candidate is an Internet predator when it comes to courting the under-30 crowd. As Paris Hilton would say, "It’s hot."

Jon, let’s make this a feature….State candidates’ videos, right on the FlashReport!

Here’s the AP-HiTech story:

Presidential Hopefuls Make Myspace Pages

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Prospective voters eager to learn more about John McCain or to become an Internet "friend" of Barack Obama now have a new online opportunity. MySpace.com, the popular social networking site, on Sunday launched a section dedicated to the 2008 presidential election.

Called the Impact Channel,… Read More

The 60th Assembly District stretches From the Diamond Bar/Walnut area of Los Angeles County Down through parts of Northern Orange County to parts of Orange/Anaheim and takes in Chino Hills in San Bernardino County. FR contributor posted his views on the race in the OC blog. See it here. Bob Huff represents the area now. Currently there are three candidates mentioned and all will run as conservatives: Curt Hagman is the first term councilman from Chino Hills. Adam Aleman profiled the first term councilman in FR. Read it here.People in Chino Hills do like him and he … Read More

On Friday, I had a chance to take a few minutes with Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts. I found him to be a very engaging and articulate person with whom to speak. Below are some excerpts* from our interview…

Governor Romney was in Orange County where he appeared at two fundraising events — one an exclusive ‘pre-sell’ event at the Irvine home of businessman John Clarey, and the other a reception with hundreds of guests at the posh St. Regis Resort in Dana Point. We took along the "FlashCam" and so you can see all kinds of video — they are on the main page now — and I will try to post them into this Commentary in a bit…

AN INTERVIEW WITH MITT ROMNEY… Read More

Did anyone else notice that the pro-military counterprotests were actually much larger than the anti-war protests out in Washington DC over the weekend? Hard to find coverage, but the pictures and police reports were pretty clear.… Read More