In advance of tomorrow’s picking up of the Senate Budget dance, State Senator Tom McClintock has posted up a fairly lengthy list of suggested places where the State of California could inhale, and then tighten up the belt a little bit. Below is the Senator’s blog post from his Citizens for the California Republican website (lifted with permission) and at the bottom of his comments is a link over to the CFCR website where he has posted up a letter from McClintock to Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman, with 40 suggested reforms for the California budget.

THE NEXT STEP By Senator Tom McClintock … Read More

Longtime anti-tax leader Joel Fox, who serves as President of the Small Business Action Committee, sent over this column, to consider as part of our coverage of the state budget process…

Lost in the dramatic scene of locked-in Senators and the contentious budget debate in the Senate is the very important acknowledgement by Assembly members, especially amongst the majority, that, yes, it is tough to do business in California. The tax cuts/incentives for California companies approved in the Assembly budget could be a crack in the wall for those who think money that comes to government grows on trees. California is in a tough competitive business climate and the efforts in the Assembly to recognize this fact is a potential bright spot that should not… Read More

Last night I tried to imagine what an urgent communiqué to the Speaker from the lead consultants of Fabian Nunez’ pending measure to extend his term limits, in light of the failure to pass a state budget. So this morning, I took a few minutes to craft one for them. This is a fictional account, and is not a real memo. But it isn’t hard to imagine one similar to this being sent… URGENT MEMORANDUM To: Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez From: Gale Kaufman and Matthew Dowd RE: Consequences of failure to pass budget on Term Limits Extension Measure … Read More

Last night I tried to imagine what an urgent communiqué to the Speaker from the lead consultants of Fabian Nunez’ pending measure to extend his term limits, in light of the failure to pass a state budget. So this morning, I took a few minutes to craft one for them. This is a fictional account, and is not a real memo. But it isn’t hard to imagine one similar to this being sent… URGENT MEMORANDUM To: Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez From: Gale Kaufman and Matthew Dowd RE: Consequences of failure to pass budget on Term Limits Extension Measure … Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary…

Cindy by the Bay

I recently predicted that the independent challenge against San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi by peace activist Cindy Sheehan would cause the House Speaker no end of heartburn between now and the 2008 election. Democrats would themselves regret ever legitimizing the bombastic mother of a U.S. soldier who died in Iraq, once given a ready platform by Democrats as a way to embarrass President Bush.

It looks as if Ms. Sheehan is fulfilling that prediction. In a widely read op-ed published in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, she took a two-by-four not only to Ms. Pelosi for her failure to cut off funding for the Iraq War. Ms. Sheehan used her cudgel to whack the… Read More

We admit that most of the time that we draw attention to an L.A. Times story, it is to point out something we didn’t like about what a reporter or columnist wrote… But I have to give an FR "shout out" to Times reporter Evan Halper, whose state budget update story "GOP members maintain their opposition but agree to offer a plan of their own" which ran yesterday contained a generous amount of "ink" on the FlashReport!

It’s at the end of the story, and excerpted below. You can read Halper’s full Sunday story here.

California’s own Congressman Dana Rohrabacher will investigate claims of abusive prosecutorial misconduct by Johnny Sutton, the US Attorney for the Western District of Texas.Specifically, he wants to know to what extent the Mexican government pressured Sutton to prosecute the two border patrol officers, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Campean.

Rohrabacher (pictured), who chaired the Oversight Committee, when Republicans were in charge, will serve as ranking member. Unfortunately, Sutton has refused to testify at the July 31 hearing of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Sutton has a lot of explaining to do.

Conservatives have long feared the Federal Government propensity for prosecutorial misconduct. There is hardly anything more frightening than the unlimited resources of a belligerent US Attorney.

Sutton, a friend of President Bush, and ambitious US Attorney, is charged… Read More

Assemblyman Rick Keene was one of nine Republicans in the lower house to cast a vote for the budget that passed out last Thursday night (or was that Friday morning)? He has submitted the following commentary to add to the discussion on the state budget: