There are a number of stories today about a likely scenario where a truly bi-partisan agreement* in Sacramento may lead to the California Presidential Primary being moved up to the first Tuesday in February in 2008, clearly increasing the relevance of Californians in influencing the selection of Party nominees for President and Vice President. I’ll be weighing in on this issue later in the week. Unspoken of in these stories, however, is a subtext that I have heard bantered around that by having a statewide Presidential election in February, 2008, separate from legislative elections that would still take place in June, legislators hope to take a crack at loosening California’s term limits laws, passed by the voters, which say that a legislator can serve only three terms in the Assembly, and two terms in the Senate. I can only say that the legislative placing a measure on the ballot to relax their own terms is a fools errand. Term limits are popular with the electorate, and there is simply no practical way voters are not going to see a move such as this to be anything but self serving. I guess language could be placed in the measure that says that relaxed… Read More

There are a number of stories today about a likely scenario where a truly bi-partisan agreement* in Sacramento may lead to the California Presidential Primary being moved up to the first Tuesday in February in 2008, clearly increasing the relevance of Californians in influencing the selection of Party nominees for President and Vice President. I’ll be weighing in on this issue later in the week. Unspoken of in these stories, however, is a subtext that I have heard bantered around that by having a statewide Presidential election in February, 2008, separate from legislative elections that would still take place in June, legislators hope to take a crack at loosening California’s term limits laws, passed by the voters, which say that a legislator can serve only three terms in the Assembly, and two terms in the Senate. I can only say that the legislative placing a measure on the ballot to relax their own terms is a fools errand. Term limits are popular with the electorate, and there is simply no practical way voters are not going to see a move such as this to be anything but self serving. I guess language could be placed in the measure that says that relaxed… Read More

For several years now after each gubernatorial election, the UC Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies hosts a post mortem seminar featuring members of the winning and losing campaign teams. This afternoon, members of the Westly, Angelides and Schwarzenegger campaign teams gathered on the Cal campus to discuss their perspectives on the ’06 primary. While there was nothing earth shattering said, there were some highlights worth sharing:

* The Wesley and Angelides staffers couldn’t make enough jokes about California’s new Democratic governor. Jude Barry, Wesley’s campaign manager, cracked, “This past year proved that it was a good year to be a Democrat. Two people proved that…Phil Angelides and Arnold Schwarzenegger."

* The animosity between the Westly and Angelides campaign teams was apparent, especially between Gary South (Westly) and Paul Maslin and Katie Merrill (Angelides). Gary South… Read More

My friend Grover Norquist passes this on from the White House office of Public Liaison:

Please join a special White House Conference Call on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 4:30 P.M.

We are pleased to announce that Monday’s call will feature Karl Rove who will give a preview of the President’s State of the Union Address. The call-in information is as follows:

Phone Number: 888-552-8613

Participant Code: 7759471

Leader Name: Tim Phelps… Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court has just announced it has decided to accept the appeal in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC and John McCain this term and it has established a briefing schedule. The case involves review of a lower Federal Court case that emasculates regulation of issue-oriented speech during pre-election periods in Federal elections that mentions candidate’s names, but does not contain "express advocacy." If the Supreme Court upholds the lower Federal court decision, the so-called "McCain-Feingold" law regulating Section 527 political committees will largely be gutted.… Read More

According to a survey commissioned by CBS 5 in San Francisco interviewed 500 Bay Area adults,57% of Bay Area adults oppose a ban on spanking; only 23% support a ban. Actually, depending on how many of those asked were in San Francisco, there probably would be more support for the ban if they had only clarified that this is a ban on parents spanking children. Lieber’s bill doesn’t ban adult-on-adult spanking, a popular past-time in parts of San Francisco…… Read More

Yesterday, the governor told the CoCo Times that when he was a child, he was routinely spanked. (The conversation was in response to a bill Assemblywoman Sally Lieber is planning to introduce that would prohibit children under three years from being spanked.)

“I grew up, I got smacked about everything. That was the way worked,” he said. “You know, I think it maybe had something to do with after the war. People were maybe more angry and more frustrated, you know, having lost the war or whatever else. So there was a lot of other things, a lot of drinking when I grew up."

But he does not parent the same way. Instead, he says that he learned from the parenting style of his wife’s family, which was "no physicality at all, just communication."

Humm….let me get this straight…no spanking results in a family full of ultra-left liberals while spanking your… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail, read by business and political leaders around the nation:

Girl’s Talk

It was inevitable that after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger broke his ironclad pledge against tax increases last week by proposing a universal health insurance plan that his old liberal critics would begin to taunt him.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a veteran Arnold adversary, was first out of the gate. "This is a plan Assembly Democrats could have written," he crowed. But even more stinging was the New Republic. In its latest issue, its editors recalled the governor’s… Read More