In today’s in box was the Capitol Alert from the Capitol Resource Institute, a pro-family lobby group in Sacramento. The State Senate passed SCR 46 declaring the second week in November “California Anti-Bullying Week”. One part of the definition given for bullying is"…excluding others on purpose..". The alert goes on to remind folks of Perata’s actions towards fellow Democrats he didn’t like. Remember locking members out of their offices? See the whole thing here.… Read More

It was a slow news day on cablechannels today during my lunch break. My choices were Wolf Blitzer, or 3 other channels of what Savage calls "leg crossers." So, just to see what was new on the floor of the Assembly, I tuned into the California channel 75, and watched a litany of gasbags try to defend another attempt on the part of the State to trample local government. The bill being "discussed" would block a new dairy that the local government worked on for 8 years to ensure its environmental impact to the community was as minimal as possible with current technology, and that the community had more than ample time for input. And just when the community was in agreement, Democrats in the Assembly decided they knew better. Nicole Parra, the Assemblywoman representing the area in question, had 8 years to interject herself in the public process of the dairy’s placement, but waited until the 11th hour to circumvent local government with the help of her Orwellian buddies in Sacramento.

Democrats came at the issue in a two prong attack: first, that the dairy was bad for the environment (which Assemblyman LaMalfa debunked when he spoke knowledgeably… Read More

For the second time in two weeks, venerable Capitol insider and political columnist Bob Novak has penned something in his column about rumors that Congressman Jerry Lewis ("R"-California) is going to be retiring at the end of this term. We can only hope that the "King of Pork" will sail off into the sunset. That said, it is a source of supreme disappointment that he still continues to serve as the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, given that he used the Chairmanship of that Committee to lord (or is that "lard") over the doling out of so many thousands of horrible earmarks, including for the now-infamous multi-million dollar swimming pool in his own district. Minority Leader John Boehner needs to ask himself whether the GOP can really be expected to perform differently in the majority if even the more outstrageous Republican ‘spendaholics’ can’t be demoted after a loss like we suffered last year…

Need some reminders on Lewis? Check… Read More

FR readers will be happy to know that starting last Friday and going through early this week, the programming team over at Cloudspace (the folks who created this outstanding site for me) are working hard to retool every page of the site to significantly increase how quickly the site loads into your browser.

In addition, we’re changing the loading priority so that the site content comes up first, followed by our premium advertisements (across the top) and then our regular advertisers (down the right side of the page).

As I post this, the main page has been finished. Look for the blog, blogscan and the other pages to be ‘sped up’ in the next day or two…… Read More

Brian Jones, Casey Gwinn in CD 52 Fray?… If you missed it, Santee City Councilman Brian Jones has filed committee paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for an open Duncan Hunter seat (see Friday’s post).

Following the Jones news, Red County/San Diego reported that former San Diego City AttorneyCasey Gwinn is also looking at the seat. Casey moved to East County a few years back (having lived in San Carlos, pretty close already, as in a couple of blocks) and some at the time were anticipating he’d be running for Jay La Suer’s termed out 77th AD seat in 2006. That clearly didn’t happen. Has enough time elapsed since his SD days?

I consider Casey a friend and a stand-up guy. I have to urge caution here,in the extreme sense. East County is not the… Read More

From the onset, I always thought Tim Escobar was a front runner for this distirct. Very Popular with GOP folks. Name ID and fundraising experiencefrom taking on Linda Sanchez for Congress. He has great ties to the LA part of the disctrict, but also the OC part. Some tried to recruit him for the Dunn seat.Respected. Conservative. An awesome person and candidate.

I have confrimed he is not running. He recently returned from a 17 month tour of Iraq (he was called up) and places a premium on time withhis family. While I’m not completely shocked, he would have been my personal pick. I hope there isnext time.… Read More

It’s hard to keep up with the barrage of updates from Mike Spence (see the post below this one for the latest) on the GOP primary in Assembly District 60 (this seat straddles LA, San Bernardino and Orange Counties).

North Orange County is the largest piece of real estate in the 60th, and there is no member of Congress more popular in the area than U.S. Reprsentative Ed Royce, who just endorsed conservative candidate Larry Dick, who at this point is locked in battle for endorsements with San Bernardino County’s Curt Hagman.

Congressman Royce (a former employer of this humble website publisher) had this to say about Larry: “These tough times require conservative leaders like Larry Dick committed to lower taxes and to protecting taxpayers. Larry Dick has the courage and the experience to stand up to the liberals. He’s earned my trust, he deserves yours."

Since Mike keeps his updates short, I will close by saying that Royce’s endorsement is a great one to have because he works… Read More

In an effort to emulate my colleague Duane, and post something up on this blog that has nothing to do with politics, I thought I would throw out there my new dilemma.

Recently I picked up a new LG "Chocolate" cell phone. I have only been using it for a few days, and we’ll see if it is an improvement over the RZR or not. I won’t go into any more of that for fearing of being too "Duane-like" in this post.

While monkeying around with the phone, I found out how to download ring tones from the ether — and after spending nearly an hour listening to snipets of cool music, ultimately settled on downloading "What’s Going On?" by the amazing Marvin Gaye (pictured), whom I consider to have been one of the most amazing contributors to the music industry of all time (despite his left-wing politics).

There was also some irony my phone ringing out with "What’s Going On?" when someone… Read More