Today there was a lunch meeting at what was undoubted a political ‘hot spot’ in Washington, D.C.  At this lunch was none other than Ken Khachigian (pictured to the right, who in his current incarnation is the Chief Strategist for GOP Attorney General candidate Chuck Poochigian, though you could look back and see names like Reagan, Deukmejian, and Herschensohn to see the kinds of candidates Ken has helped in the past).  Joining Ken for lunch were several reporters from Human Events Magazine. 

[Let me shamelessly plug Human Events for a moment.  As you know, I keep an obsessive eye on California politics.  For me, my weekly edition of HE that comes in the main is a Godsend.  I kick up my feet in front of the fireplace at home, in the cushy leather chair, and in 30 minutes I really know what is going on in the nation’s capitol.  Anyways, you can check out HE Online right here.  You can always visit their site via the Websites Menu above.]

Anyways, one of the reporters from HE at the lunch was none other than my very longtime friend, John Gizzi, who is the Political Editor of the newspaper.  John is an amazing guy.  A stalwert conservative, John has a memory that won’t quit, and a prowess for writing with the pen.  So when he talks about a subject, it is 1 part conservative update and 3 parts history lesson!

Because of this lunch, "Gizz" penned a piece that starts like this:

Twenty-four years after he left the governorship of California — spending years as radio talk show host, occasional attorney, 1992 presidential hopeful, and of late mayor of Oakland (Cal.) — Jerry Brown is poised to return to statewide office in the Golden State. The Democrat once dubbed "Governor Moonbeam" for his unpredictable behavior is the overwhelming favorite to be nominated for state attorney general in the June primary (beginning with his father, the late two-term Gov. Edmund "Pat" Brown, Sr., and then Jerry and his sister, former State Treasurer and 1994 gubernatorial nominee Kathleen Brown, no one in the Brown family has ever lost a Democratic primary for anything in California).  

Should he become the top law enforcement official in America’s largest state (a position held by his father before he became governor), the 68-year-old Brown will almost surely become a national political figure again. With the attorney general’s office involved in measures waging from potential lawsuits against oil company executives to deciding whether the Boy Scouts should receive further legal retribution for barring homosexuals as scoutmasters, Brown could make waves simply by filing amicus curiae briefs on these issues or put the full force of his office behind them. As Brown himself put it at a recent Democratic Party candidates’ forum, "I will be an unusual attorney general." (April 22, 2006).

"People see a colorful character, all right, but if they dig deeper, they will find facts that show him to be dangerous — and facts are stubborn things," observed Ken Khachigian, campaign quarterback for certain GOP attorney general nominee and conservative State Sen. Chuck Poochigian, during a lunch today with three HUMAN EVENTS reporters.

Since he was studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood in 1960 and took a leave from the seminary to plead with his governor-father for the life of long-term death row inmate Caryl Chessman, Jerry Brown has been closely identified with opposition to the capital punishment. As governor from 1974-82, Brown consistently vetoed death penalty legislation and named Chief Justice Rose Bird, who overturned every death penalty sentence. Since then, he has used some of the most shrill invective to articulate his opposition to capital punishment — at one point calling the death penalty "part of a larger pattern that is inhuman" and condemning as "Nazi-style" the execution of William Bonin, who sodomized, strangled and murdered 21 teenage boys.

Brown’s rhetoric on using the office of attorney general to pursue business borders on that of the far-left International Workers of the World. As he told students at Boalt School of Law (March 23, 2006), "Hundreds of thousands of working people are currently exploited and as attorney general I could and will go after employers with our lawyers to enforce the law." The former governor’s penchant for invoking images of Hitler conintue, noting that the promise of modernity, the automobile, and the promise of speed "wasn’t just made by Hilter. It was delivered in the United States by Henry Ford, who was an admirer of the fascist operation."

To read the rest of John Gizzi’s post, just go here.

P.S.  Actually, if you click here, you can read about how there would be no FlashReport today if it weren’t for some advice I got from Ken Khachigian!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 8th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.