Jason Roe, formerly the Washington, D.C. "Beltway" Correspondent for this website, has just shared with me that he has taken on a new challenge in life — he is leaving his position of Chief of Staff to Florida Congressman Tom Feeney (one of the most articulate, conservative leaders among House GOPers) to assume new responsibilities as the Deputy Campaign Manager for the Mitt Romney for President campaign.

This is great news for Jason, of course, as it represents yet another opportunity (his career has been full of them) to expand his horizons, and learn new things. It is also great news for Governor Romney. I have known Jason for a lot of years now, and seldom do you meet someone who is able to blend strong moral character, commitment to principle, and political sophistication the way that he does.

The other winner in this process is… California! Jason spent many years out here, and, in fact, is a former Executive Director of the San Diego County Republican Party. He also served, for… Read More

Congressman Kevin McCarthy, who is quoted towards the end of this story from the Politico website, is 100% correct. I’ve bolded his quotes.

Redistricting and Blade Running By David Mark, The Politico In a move aimed at cementing House Democrats’ newly minted majority, California politicians are walking a tightrope on the volatile topic of redistricting. Under pressure from Washington, they are trying to keep their power to draw congressional district lines, while appearing to support good-government efforts to move redistricting out of politics. … Read More

It looks like signing off on the horendous hike in the state wage mandate on California employers (called by the left a "minimum wage increase") bought the Governor about seven and a half months of good will from the unions. Now the honeymoon is over.… Read More

In response to my commentary this morning, Duf Sundheim asked if I would publish a response from him, which appears below. Duf takes issue with the fact that I did not contact him directly to verify the accuracy of the information — a fair point…

I would imagine that Generals fighting wars have to occasionally ‘step back’ from the individual battles they are fighting, to check on the overall progress of the total campaign against the enemy. Of course, for fiscal conservatives, the ‘enemy’ is growth in size and scope of spending of government at every level — or put another way, the goal of the war is to preserve, and in fact ‘win back’ freedom and liberty for the people. When California voters stepped up in 2003 to ceremoniously recall now-disgraced Governor Gray Davis, that effort was led by a strong coalition of people that felt that Davis and his administration were failing the people — the taxpayers. An important part of that effort were fiscal conservatives, such as myself, who were concerned that our State Budget had climbed to a record $78 billion. We were outraged that the annual growth of state spending was at an alarming 7%, and that Californian’s were saddled with a state deficit that was $6.6 billion dollars. As Tom McClintock points out in our "Golden Pen" column today, debt-service costs when Gray Davis was Governor… Read More

I would imagine that Generals fighting wars have to occasionally ‘step back’ from the individual battles they are fighting, to check on the overall progress of the total campaign against the enemy. Of course, for fiscal conservatives, the ‘enemy’ is growth in size and scope of spending of government at every level — or put another way, the goal of the war is to preserve, and in fact ‘win back’ freedom and liberty for the people. When California voters stepped up in 2003 to ceremoniously recall now-disgraced Governor Gray Davis, that effort was led by a strong coalition of people that felt that Davis and his administration were failing the people — the taxpayers. An important part of that effort were fiscal conservatives, such as myself, who were concerned that our State Budget had climbed to a record $78 billion. We were outraged that the annual growth of state spending was at an alarming 7%, and that Californian’s were saddled with a state deficit that was $6.6 billion dollars. As Tom McClintock points out in our "Golden Pen" column today, debt-service costs when Gray Davis was Governor… Read More

Our website development team is working on some upgrades for the main page. In doing so, it has caused some technical issues with the tool that we use behind the scenes to post up the links for news stories. Because of this, look for today’s main page to be updated by 10 a.m. Our apologies for the inconvenience.… Read More

Thanks to our development team over at Cloudspace, we have a new feature for the FR main page — the ability to feature YouTube videos! Check it out now — at the top of the left column, I have inserted a video of a classis Reagan speech, Rondevous with Destiny. Check it out.… Read More