In his book, Parliament of Whores, PJ O’Rourke noted that taxes are extracted from people by force, that is, the threat of imprisonment if you don’t pay. Therefore, he says, a tax should be thought along the lines that “you are putting a gun to your grandma’s head” to get the money. Only those things that you can justify paying for by taking the money from grandma by force should be funded by government. If you cannot say in good conscience, grandma should pay for free stuff for illegal aliens (as an example), then government should not fund it. The money for it was extracted from everyone by force.

The Legislature is set to pass a budget today. They are set to approve all the money they stole from grandma by force. It’s a budget that shows their contempt for the working people of California and their subservience to the government employee unions that control the levers of power in California. The seeds of the destruction that will be caused by this spending spree have been planted, and, while some have mentioned it, no one emphasizes how irresponsible the budget really is.

Let’s start with the headlines… Read More

What if I told you that the legislature is hastily looking at passing a massive de facto tax increase that is going to make every-day living for all Californians more expensive? You might ask why they would do this? Especially right now? Have they seen our gas prices? Our grocery prices? Our everything prices? We are on the verge of sliding into a recession in our country – and legislators are poised to make it worse?

Yep – enter Senate Bill 54. I actually found out on Twitter (which is complete post-Dobbs… Read More

I wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times 22 years ago defining my position on abortion. They ran it because of my positions. I expressed support for first trimester abortions only and being in favor of no government funding. I favor parental notice. Not much has changed since then and I still hold 80% of Americans agree with that position.

The idea of trimesters did not even exist until Justice Harry Blackmun made it up in Roe V. Wade. In 1973 we had medical standards that were much different than today. Are we to believe that the science surrounding abortion and a fetus in the womb has not evolved? It has as well as the diseases that would cause many mothers to abort their unborn child. Since that time, it has become scientifically clearer that late-term abortions rarely if ever are justified and that the babies are viable. “Rare” is not the estimated 13,000 late-term abortions currently performed every year. I have since written that for many on the Left, there are three issues about which they are concerned – abortion, abortion, and abortion. Little has changed.

I also expressed that the argument that exists today was created because the Left does what… Read More

When the Supreme Court, in 1973, raised the issue of abortion from a state to state decision to a Constitutional one, it stained the Constitution and did violence to the concept of federalism. No matter what you may think of abortion as a practice or procedure, there is nothing written in the Constitution close to granting a Constitutional right to an abortion. Indeed, Roe v. Wade even perverted the concept of a “right to privacy,” also not in the Constitution but used to justify the invalidation of a number of state laws on a variety of different issues. Once again, no matter what my opinion of the policy of those laws may be, whether the Constitution bans them or not is a completely separate question.

That being said, today, the Sun is a little brighter, and the air is a little cleaner, as my daughter said to me in a text today. The stain of the federalizing of abortion law is dead, and, God willing, will stay that way. For me, it feels like 40 years of political activity has been vindicated. It was worth the effort to get to this point. Now the real fight begins.

For all of my time in the Legislature, most of my effort on the question of life… Read More

On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag – Germany’s Capitol building – was set on fire. Who was responsible remains in dispute even today. What is undisputed is that the Nazis, barely holding onto power in a coalition government – used the attack to besmirch their political opponents, consolidate their grip on the government, arrest hundreds of political opponents, and ultimately rescind the due process rights and fundamental freedoms of the German people.

It remains a cautionary tale, for obvious reasons.

The January 6th riot at the Capitol has become the centerpiece of the Democrats’ agenda. No other issue facing our country – not the worst inflation in 40 years, not the highest gasoline prices in history, not the fastest increase in homicides ever recorded, not the historically unprecedented illegal mass migration at our southern border – none of these crises has commanded prime time congressional hearings from the Democrats.

What happened here on January 6th was an affront to our Constitution and a national disgrace. Those who entered the Capitol with the intent to disrupt the counting of electoral votes deserve to be denounced by their fellow… Read More

One might think that calling a performer “underrated” for whom 84,000 people have list their profession as “Elvis Impersonator” on tax returns is a crazy statement. Yet, with the upcoming Elvis movie (June 24), he will still not be regarded as the remarkable vocalist he was before he left us.

The idea of calling him “underrated” might immediately be rejected because his career was overwhelmingly successful. But that career never totally veered from the moment he burst on to the scene with his September 9, 1956, tamed-down, hip-swiveling performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. As a rock ‘n’ roller, he was never considered a vocalist especially compared to the era’s greats, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Tony Bennett.

Elvis was a victim of his own success. From the time of his first recordings at Sun Records he changed the face of the music business. Sam Phillips was seeking a white singer who could capture the essence of the black artists he had been recording. When Elvis broke out into a revved-up version of an old blues classic, That’s All Right Mama, Phillips knew he had his man and… Read More

If I had any complaint about conservatives, it is their tendency to abandon fellow conservatives in the midst of a political fight. Democrats play politics for keeps, Republicans just play politics. Democrats seek to end the political careers of their political opponents, Conservatives oftentimes sit on the sidelines and let them do it. That is what is happening to Dr. John Eastman right now.

I first met Dr. Eastman when he was running for Congress in 1990. I was running for State Senate. We were both fighting powerful Democrats. We both lost. However, in the midst of the fight, I found Dr. Eastman to be a true, committed conservative, unafraid of the fight. A good man, whose commitment to conservative causes could not be questioned. Over the years, we did not always agree, but I know our disagreements were not based on a difference of values, but rather a difference in the application of those values. He is a conservative deserving of our support and loyalty.

To set up this discussion, Dr. Eastman came up with a legal theory to challenge the voter outcome in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona based on the voter fraud committed in… Read More

Did you know the Legislature actually passed a budget? If you weren’t paying attention, you would never know. It got very little media coverage.

It was, by and large, a meaningless act, since there is no deal on the budget with the Governor, but hey, the politicans will still get their paychecks. Back in the 2000-2010 decade, the Ds passed, and the voters approved, a budget constitutional amendment that had two major impacts: (1) it reduced the number of votes needed to pass the budget from a two-thirds vote of both houses of the Legislature to a majority vote of both houses. The rationale for the change was that almost every other bill only requires a majority vote (only emergency type bills require two-thirds), so why should it be different for the budget?

The real rationale for the Democrat controlled Legislature was that they were tired of buying off Republican Legislators to get the votes necessary to pass the budget. Not that there were enough Rs to stop out of control spending, there were always two, three or four R legislators in the Senate and six to eight R legislators in the Assembly willing to sell their vote for some local pork. I recall… Read More