From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail… FR friend John Fund recounts his dinner with newly minted MA Republican Senator Scott Brown, but you’ll be most interested in who they saw, but didn’t disturb, after dinner…

Senator Scott Brown and Fred Thompson have a fair bit in common so it’s no surprise they’ve become friends. In 1994, Mr. Thompson won a come-from-behind Senate victory in Tennessee driving an old pickup truck between campaign stops. Mr. Brown drove a 2005 GMC Canyon truck and solidified his "everyman" appeal to score an upset Senate win last month in Massachusetts.

Mr. Thompson, now a successful radio talk show host whose memoirs will come out this spring, was so tickled by Mr. Brown’s victory that he offered to rent him his Washington D.C. apartment, which is a convenient short drive from the… Read More

We are about to do a "pre-spring" cleaning up of our extensive links on this site.

As part of that process, we’ll be revising and updating our links to political and MSM blogs, both on the menu above and on our Blog Scan page. We will be updating our links to websites, resources, columnists and such.

If you have favorite places you go to on the web as a politico, that you would recommend we include, just drop us a note.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Jon Fleischman Publisher… Read More

From FR friend Eric Reslock, about 40 seconds of Assemblyman Chuck DeVore speaking on the floor of the Assembly yesterday, chiding Democrats for pushing legislation that does nothing to solve our state’s imbalanced books… You tell them, Assemblyman! … Read More

Just in from FR friend Sara Catalan, the OC Volunteer Chairman for Meg Whitman for Governor…

This evening I had the opportunity to attend the Whitman for Governor’s OC headquarters grand opening.… Read More

Today, his Imperial Majesty Chief Justice Ron George will convene class for the purpose of orating on the “State of the Judiciary”. Based on recent comments you are sure to hear whining about the initiative process and its harm to the courts. See King George doesn’t like the peasants having an avenue to over rule judges. Judges smart, people stupid. You can also expect a lot of whining about money. Justices like George think that the people are valuable for one thing. Money. In 2008 Ron George’s Judicial Council sold the legislature an additional tax on the little people. They bonded increased fines on parking tickets, speeding tickets etc…. They managed to ignore the million dollar lawsuits that tie up court operations.The purpose of taking more farthings from the people was to remodel and build new … Read More

OK, so the Governor’s office just sent out this photo of him speaking in front of the White House. Let’s have a little "caption contest" — what is Arnold saying?

You can participate by posting up your caption as a comment below or by dropping me a note!

The winning caption and runners up (if worthy) will be shared with all of our readers! If the winner is near where I live or where I travel, I’ll pick up coffee and a doughnut!… Read More

Over the weekend there was an article in the Orange County Register talking about how some legislators have managed to make big bucks by investing their per diem payments (for expenses associated with having to maintain two households) into real estate which then increased in value.

To this I would say… bravo! It seems to me that if we want legislators to be smart with OPM (other people’s money), we need them to be smart with their own.

We can haggle over appropriateness of per diem payments, the amount, and whether or not some of the fine lines that are walked in terms of taking the payments if you really only have one household, in Sacramento, and such.

But it should be obvious on the face of it that making prudent financial decisions with their own money is a good quality for legislators to have — since they are making important decisions about the finances of the state. I’d go back and re-read the article — and congratulate every one of those legislators who has figured… Read More

This morning I read the Governor’s Weekly Address and decided that it needed a conservative response. The whole address was a “celebration” of the one-year anniversary of the federal stimulus plan. It’s hardly an anniversary worth celebrating, but considering California’s recent proclivity to beg the feds for more aid, I guess the influx of cash would excite government bureaucrats.

Throughout the speech the Governor praises the virtues of massive government spending, taking credit for putting “40,000 young people into summer jobs,” and delivering “650,000 warm meals to seniors.” Since when is the government responsible for employing young people and doing the work performed much better by private charities? Sounds a little too much like “cradle to grave” government.

The Governor also touts the $12.8 billion “being put to work in programs to both train and fund jobs,” and $13.8 billion in “programs like MediCal and unemployment.” Again, when government “creates” jobs, it is not really a productive job because it doesn’t produce prosperity, it requires private sector jobs to fund it. And with the growing government bureaucracy,… Read More