Everyone who paid attention to the race in the 11th congressional district remembers Jerry McNerney’s 55 position changes on his Project Vote Smart questionnaire. That spirit of ethical convenience continues now after Contra Costa Times reporter Lisa Vorderbrueggen reported on her blog that McNerney has said he joined the congressional "Progressive Caucus."

McNerney’s… Read More

Today’s Guest Commentary is penned by Jeff Miller, the Chairman of the Riverside County Republican Party. Miller flew up to Sacramento on Friday and attended the inauguration of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has written this piece, after reflected on the Governor’s remarks…

Remember the Californian Dream that needed so much protecting just three months ago?

That dream where solitary visionaries, like Disney, DeMille, Hewlett and Packard, and Jobs & Wozniak, could work through the night in a garage and create sensational things that could best be summed up by B.C. Forbes who long ago stated, “The purpose of capitalism is not to create a pile of wealth, but a pile of happiness.”… Read More

When a newspaper makes an error that causes you heartburn, your resulting choice is really not much of one,is it? If the reporter or editor concurs that a mistake has indeed been made, and thus agrees to run a printed correction or retraction, you know that it will not get nearly the "play" the original offering did, with only the most avid news readers actually seeing such apologetic tidbits.

Alternatively, you could write a letter-to-the-editor, correcting the mistake in greater detail and noting the actual facts. Other than making you feel better, perhaps, this too has its shortcomings. By appearance anything other than the paper’s admission of error will simply look like your differing opinion. As well, how many readers of the original piece will actually get to the letters section of the editorial page?

You could sue. Uh-huh. Moving on, then…

It’s a catch-22, with the print news media in most cases in a much stronger position than those they cover.

So, it’s nice to see a newspaper, even after a fairly egregious and blatant error, taking action to own up, retract and apologize, while displaying the… Read More

Most of the glowing mainstream media news about California’s Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House, and her Congressional Democrats, is centered on their "100 hour" agenda and reforms they intend to implement, including raising the minimum wage, "ethics" reforms to restrict receipt of gifts of travel, and a new "earmarking" reform that would require indentification of the Member of Congress pushing a last minute earmark to fund that highway to nowhere.

But one item the MSM has missed, is research published by the Capital Research Center, that demonstrates that 70 far-left Democrats in the Congress, members of the "Congressional Progressive Caucus," ("CPC") seven of whom will chair powerful committees in the new Congress, will be using a charitable fundraising arm named the "American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation" to raise funds from lobbyists to help them advance anti-war and far left-oriented public policies in the new Congress. Leaders of this effort include California Congressmembers Lynn Woolsey (Marin and Sonoma Counties) and Barbara Lee (Berkeley and Oakland), who are co-chairs of this… Read More

The group of GOP volunteers that are suing the state to have Jerry Brown’s election overturned because he was officially on "inactive status" as a lawyer for a short time while Mayor of Oakland has had a few developments. According to the Plaintiffs, on January 4 the case was assigned to Sacramento Superior Court Judge Gail Ohanesian in Dept. 11, and apparently the Court has asked the parties to agree to a hearing date on the merits by January 12.

Readers of FlashReport will know I am a critic of this lawsuit and see it as a sure loser and even anembarrassment for the Republican Party. Brown has been a lawyer in California for 40 years, has served as Secretary of State and Governor, and is surely qualified to be the state’s Attorney General. Simply because he changed his statusas a lawyer for a few years while serving as Oakland’s Mayor, to take advantage of the lower cost dues structure for inactive attorneys,shouldnot be a basis to overturn a vote of the people wherebyBrown waselected with an overwhelming majority and received an 18 point lead over his opponent in the race. By the way, I voted for his opponent.

On… Read More

For years I’ve believed that the Union-Tribune does itself and its readers a dis-service by publishing two or more editorials a day. The sheer number of editorials – most of which will hardly be remembered by the second strip of bacon – leads readers to start ignoring them. Then, when the editorial board actually has something important to convey, the impact of the editorial is minimized.

Case in point: on Friday I skipped the editorials…. right when the editorial board was actually writing about something important: the reform movement at San Diego City Hall:

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL Target of scorn Will council perpetuate lack of confidence in city January 5, 2007

Last September Mayor Jerry Sanders asked the City Council to approve a sweeping package of financial reforms designed to restore San Diego’s shattered credibility on Wall Street. Predictably, maverick Councilwoman Donna Frye was the lone vote against the plan, whose key element was the creation of an independent audit committee to oversee the reform process.

Now, just four months later, Frye audaciously proposes that the… Read More

When I hailed a cab this morning to go to the airport, the cabbie asked me why I was in town. I told him that I had spent the evening in a tux at the Governor’s Inaugural Ball.

His response… “Did any Republicans go?”

I followed up and asked him what he meant. He said that he and some other cabbies saw or heard parts of his speech, and decided that Republicans must be upset that in his speech, the Governor “trashed” his own party. He said , “Isn’t he a Republican himself? I just figured if Republicans worked hard to elect him, they might be mad that he has jettisoned his own party in favor of this…what did he call it? The ‘Post Party Era?”

I asked the cabbie if he was a Republican, and he said that he wasn’t – he was a Democrat. He said, “I just feel sorry for you guys…” Sigh.

My local Assemblyman, Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine), had this to say last night as he reflected on the Governor’s Inaugural Address: “I considered his words and wondered: when a conservative who favors smaller government and lower taxes ‘compromises’… Read More

I was just reading the transcript of the Governor’s inaugural address. After wading through the meaningless "Party of California" sophistry and such bromides as "We don’t need Republican health care or Democratic health care. We need health care," I came upon the passage where the governor outlines his big dream for California’s future. And it occured to me I had yet to encounter the words "liberty" or "freedom."

I did a search of the speech text for "freedom" and "liberty." Nothing. Plenty of references to "health care" and the "environment." Other than a reference to a "free-market" in emissions credits, the Governor made no mention of the idea undergirding the reason for our republic.

Then again, what should I expect from a Governor whose professed mission is to expand the size, scope and cost of government?… Read More