Before the blogging on Tookie Williams revs up, and after several days of the Susan Kennedy firestorm, it’s only fair to give Governor Schwarzenegger credit for three smart personnel decisions he’s made over the last couple of days. Carol Corrigan is not a movement conservative, but she is a strong law-and-order voice and an advocate of judicial restraint. Similarly, Fred Aguiar and Dan Dunmoyer are not ideologues, but both bring legitimate conservative credentials on economic, tax, and public safety issues into the governor’s office.

So in the last ten days, Schwarzenegger has replaced a moderate Republican with a moderate Democrat as chief of staff. He’s replaced a movement conservative with a centrist on the state Supreme Court. And he’s replaced a hard-line environmentalist with two strong pro-business voices on his senior staff. All of which sounds precisely like the Arnold Schwarzenegger who ran for governor two years ago.

My friend Joe Justin lent this discussion just the right amount of perspective in his post yesterday. Concentrating on how Arnold governs in the year ahead, and how this new team impacts his… Read More

First and foremost – thank you for being a part of the FlashReport website. On January 1, it will be three months since we took the site online, and moved away from the e-mail newsletter format. The response from readers, old and new, has been tremendous.

SIGN UP FOR FREE UPDATES I wanted to first encourage you, if you haven’t done so already, to sign up for the free FlashReport updates (sign up to the left). What do you get with this feature? Each morning, when the site is updated, I send out an e-mail. So no more constantly checking, wondering when lazy-bones it done culling through 45+ websites each morning – I’ll tell you! The e-mail also contains the headlines of every story on the main page, for a quick look if you don’t have time to click-through right away. Finally, when there are interesting stories on the blog, or a major piece of breaking news in California politics, I will send out an ‘alert’ to subscribers. Many thousands are signed up already – are you?… Read More

Over the years, one consistent theme of frustration that I have heard out of Republican legislators in Sacramento has been that it is virtually impossible for a good conservative to pass meaningful legislation through the Democrat controlled legislature. If you have a substantive idea for a bill, it either gets sandbagged because the liberals up there felt the bill wasn’t in line with their agenda, or, even if the majority likes the idea in your proposed bill, they have the same idea introduced by a Democrat member, and then you are forced to vote for someone else’s bill that implements your idea!

Every once in a while (make that a long while) a piece of meaningful legislation makes it through this gauntlet. I don’t know if the reason that the ‘Safely Surrendered Baby’ law was succesfully authored and pass by then Republican State Senator Jim Brulte (pictured) because he was the Republican… Read More

When you talk about working in the trenches, I can’t think of a more challenging job than being a Republican in Alameda County — except, to be Chairman of the Alameda County Republican Party. That is Richard Spees. Dedicated and hard-working, Richard leads a team of freedom-fighters in promoting the Republican Party in the home county of Jerry Brown, Ron Dellums, Barbara Lee, Don Perata and a cast of left wing socialists (in the case of Dellums, I think I mean that literally.) Oh yes, Richard was a City Councilman in Oakland for 24 years!

Richard and I exchanged some emails, and I thought I would share his opinions on two issues, the appointment of Republican Judge Carol Corrigan to the State Supreme Court and the controversy surrounding the appointment of Democrat Susan Kennedy by the Governor to be his Chief of Staff:

Spees on Corrigan:

My torts professor once quipped, "On a clear day, the California Supreme Court can foresee forever." The humor of this comment is probably only directly apparent to lawyers. However, the comment is profound and summarizes the current national debate about the role of judges in this country. The comment also epitomizes the importance of the decision faced by Governor Schwarzenegger in appointing a replacement for former California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers-Brown.

"Foreseeability" is one of the four elements of a tort. For you non-lawyers, a tort is basically a civil wrong such as a personal injury — think slipping and falling on a banana peel on the floor of a supermarket. In order for a person to be liable for damages in tort, the results of negligent conduct must be "foreseeable." For instance, a supermarket owner can reasonably presume that a banana peel left on the floor ofa market can lead to someone slipping and injuring himself. So, the resulting injury is "foreseeable." My former professor’s quote is profound precisely because the California Supreme… Read More

I’ve definitely been quiet on the blog front the last few days…mostly because it’s not my normal behavior to be on stage ….who would have thought Flash would become so real…and what a better time for that to happen with everything that’s going on?

As a private person, it’s been a difficult adjustment to keep up with the constant flow of things and then make my thoughts public. While I’m not shy about my opinions, it’s not normal for me to do so in front of so many eyeballs that this place gets. That’s what all the written disclaimers were about in my most early posts…that simply this is not a forum I’m used to….one of the bloggers on here said my intro post read like a personal ad…another friend said I must have watched too much MST3K. They’re both right. I could never be a professional… Read More

Perhaps I am starting to understand the pure genius of Governor Schwarzenegger appointing Democrat activist Susan Kennedy to be his Chief of Staff — it has apparently significantly lowered by expectations on other appointments coming out of the his administration. This is too bad, and it goes to an enthusiasm problem that is not unique to me — it is coursing through the veins of GOP activists throughout the state, demoralized that after the hi-profile recall of Gray Davis, both the Governor and the First lady have tapped two of Gray Davis’ most influential Deputy Chiefs of Staff to be their Chiefs of Staff. The whole thing sounds soludicrous every time I write it down. Well, this is a subject for much more debate, but not right now… … Read More

Today there were more changes made at the senior-most levels within the Administration. Governor Schwarzenegger, presumably with the advice and sign off of his Chief of Staff, controversial Democrat Susan Kennedy, moved Fred Aguiar (pictured to the right) from his post old post of Secretary of California’s State and Consumer Protection Agency to the position of Cabinet Secretary, displacing Terry Tamminen who will now be a senior advisor (read: still in the Governor’s office, but in a lower-profile role). Also, Dan Dunmoyer (pictured below, to the right) comes onboard as a Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor for Policy Development.

Aguair and Dunmoyer have… Read More