Free Republic

Twenty-six energy companies with business before the state donated nearly $10million to Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Democratic Party over the past eight years — donations that often were made within days or weeks of winning favors. That’s the contention of “Brown’s Dirty Hands“ a report released Wednesday by the Santa Monica-based public interest group Consumer Watchdog. [snip]The report alleges that Brown and his operatives have used the California Democratic Party as “a political slush fund” to receive contributions from unpopular energy companies in amounts greater than permitted to his candidate committee. The group has logged its report as...

Gov. Jerry Brown is no longer an Oakland homeowner. The governor and First Lady Anne Gust Brown closed on the sale of their Oakland Hills home last week, completing the journey that began late last year when the first couple moved into the historic governor's mansion in Sacramento. The real estate website Curbed San Francisco reported on Monday that the 4,147-square-foot home closed on July 30 with a sale price of $2.375 million. That's less than the Browns were asking for the home when it went on the market in April, and also slightly less than they reportedly paid for...

Californians who assemble their own weapons from parts they've bought or gathered will have to apply for a state-issued serial number under a law signed Friday by Gov. Jerry Brown. Brown signed Assembly Bill 857, which imposes a new mandate on anyone who buys components that can be made into a fully functional firearm. Those weapons are not currently traceable in the same way as buying a fully operating firearm. Democrats pushed through the bill last month as part of a sweeping package of proposals inspired by recent shootings. Several of those bills, including an effort to impose new rules...

"Bill Clinton will be joined by Mothers of the Movement, which includes the mothers of black men and women who have been killed by gun violence or in police custody. The mothers of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are scheduled to appear at the DNC."

While police officers are getting murdered in Dallas and Baton Rouge, while others are under assault in Missouri, Georgia and Tennessee, while supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement attempt to justify the murders of police officers, the Democratic National Convention, AKA Hillary’s Coronation, will feature the mothers of black men who died in confrontations with police, thereby perpetuating the myth that there is systemic racism in police departments across the nation. One mother who will speak will be Lezley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, the “Gentle Giant” who burgled a convenience store, then attempted to grab the gun...

At a campaign event in Springfield, Illinois Wednesday afternoon presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton warned Donald Trump would use the military and IRS "to go after his critics and opponents."

In response to my open letter to Isaac Archuleta, who describes himself as a bisexual Christian, Richard S. posted a lengthy comment on my personal Facebook page, including this statement: “The logical conclusion to your theology (gays can change and if they don’t it must be because they don’t have faith or are deceived) is extremely damaging to the souls of gay people. That was the point of Isaac’s letter. No amount of nice words will erase the damage. Only honest reconsideration of your theology will bring healing. Please don’t discount/deny the faith of your gay brothers and sisters. They...

Florida Rep. Corrine Brown has been indicted and will be appear in federal court in Jacksonville on Friday, according to First Coast News. The Jacksonville television station, citing "multiple sources," said the indictment remains sealed. It had been known publicly since March that Brown, a Democrat, was facing a Department of Justice Investigation related to "fraudulent activities," and whether or not she improperly solicited charitable donations and misused campaign funds. DOJ officials asked the House Ethics Committee to halt a separate investigation while they conducted their probe. The target of the investigation has not been identified, but Brown does have...

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed new gun control legislation for California, enacting bills that limit magazine capacity to 10 bullets; require a background check for those purchasing ammunition; and restrict the lending of firearms, among other effects. In signing the bills, Brown said he wants "to enhance public safety by tightening our existing laws in a responsible and focused manner, while protecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners." Two of the bills close the "bullet button loophole," as member station KPCC reports: "The loophole refers to the sale of 'California legal' firearms that don't fall under California's ban of guns...

Enthusiasm for Warren is artificially amplified by a sympathetic media echo chamber. This phenomenon is not unlike Huntsman ’12… (SNIP) I know what you’re thinking: Warren beat Brown. Scott Brown out-campaigned Warren in MA Senate ’12– and would have won, were it not for 3 factors out of his control… (SNIP) Despite Obama’s landslide victory (61-38), Warren won by a narrow margin: 53-47, meaning a significant number of Obama voters defected to Brown. (SNIP) That cycle, many Democrat Senate candidates– running in much less favorable territory– won by greater margins: √ Tom Carper 66.4% √ Sheldon Whitehouse 64.8% √ Joe...

The meltdown of California’s cap-and-trade system of reducing carbon emissions has not only thrown its climate change crusade into disarray but caused collateral damage. One victim is Gov. Jerry Brown’s $3.1 billion plan to spend auction proceeds, now on indefinite hold. It not only affects a $500 million allocation for Brown’s bullet train project, but another $500 million for “low carbon transportation and fuels.” The latter is a centerpiece of Brown’s very ambitious drive to reduce petroleum use in auto travel – the largest single source of California’s carbon emissions – by 50 percent by 2030 even though the Legislature...

INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana truck driver was sentenced Friday to more than 13 years in prison for what prosecutors said was a plot to sell U.S. intelligence secrets to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. "I am not a bad man," Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban told U.S. District Court Judge John D. Tinder during his sentencing hearing. "I help this country a lot. ... I came to live in peace." Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Jackson said Shaaban was putting up a front in maintaining his innocence. "This defendant is a man without a conscience. Mr. Shaaban has no allegiance to this...

SACRAMENTO — When Bernie Sanders held a rally at an outdoor stadium here the other night, more than 15,000 people turned out in a display of cheering, chanting, singing and cartwheels. Gov. Jerry Brown, the state’s most prominent Democrat, was not there, but he might as well have been. Mr. Sanders’s speech was replete with the kind of to-the-barricades flourishes that have long been part of Mr. Brown’s campaign language. “The political establishment is getting nervous,” Mr. Sanders said. “The corporate establishment is getting nervous. And they should be nervous. Because real change is coming.” As the Democratic presidential primary...

California Gov. Jerry Brown has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president ahead of next week's California primary, giving the Democratic front-runner a major ally as the race tightens. Brown announced the endorsement Tuesday morning in a letter posted online, in which he called Clinton the only person who could beat presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s solution to California’s affordable housing crisis is to build, build, build, and not let local politics get in the way. Earlier this month, the governor introduced a bill under which proposed urban housing developments that meet local zoning requirements and reserve some portion of their units for low-income residents would be exempted from any additional environmental or local government review. The governor’s theory is that neighborhood opponents and other parochial interests have consistently blocked or downsized badly needed development projects, leading to a housing crisis in which California's major cities are increasingly unaffordable for most of its...

A group called the Asian American Coalition for Education plans to file an official complaint tomorrow with the federal Department of Education and Department of Justice noting that Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth have “unlawfully discriminated” against Asian-Americans in their admissions policies. The Coalition, “which is composed of more than 100 local, state and national organizations,” claims the colleges “have the lowest acceptance rate for Asian Americans,” and maintain quotas for the (racial) group. It also points out that Asian-American enrollment at Yale has declined “despite the number of college-aged Asian-Americans more than doubling since 2011.” This is the first such...

Those who view college as little more than expensive day-care just got some new evidence. "Even some of Brown's coddling administrators had to shake their heads at the student response to a debate between leftist feminist Jessica Valenti and libertarian Wendy McElroy," David French writes in the May 23, 2016 issue of National Review. "A campus debate is usually a tame-enough event, but this debate would deal with the alleged campus-rape crisis, and McElroy was expected to depart from the college orthodoxy and dissent from the myth that women at American universities are uniquely in danger of being raped." "To...

Every May, governors revise their state budget plans and send a final proposal to the Legislature, a process that's designed to ensure that lawmakers use the most current information on the economy and tax revenues. And it's the economy that will likely take center stage in Friday morning's unveiling of Gov. Jerry Brown's new budget. Revenues collected from personal income taxes missed their target in April by about $1 billion, according to one preliminary analysis. At the same time, Democrats in the Legislature have urged Brown to do more to fund programs for struggling California families . How the governor...

Brown University’s Hillel has pulled its sponsorship of a Wednesday event commemorating the 1948 Palestinian Arab exodus from Israel — more commonly referred to as the “Nakba” — following heavy backlash, The Algemeiner has learned. Hillel, along with other pro-Israel and Jewish student organizations, initially agreed to sponsor the campus event set to feature a film screening and discussion of the Nakba, an Arabic word which literally translates as “disaster” or “catastrophe.” Nakba Day is generally observed on May 15, the day after Israel’s Independence Day on the Gregorian calendar, and often sees heavy rioting and violent protest by Palestinians...

Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday enacted California’s most significant new tobacco regulations in decades, signing laws that will place tight restrictions on use of the increasingly popular e-cigarette and make California the second state to raise its smoking age to 21. Brown signed five closely watched bills, which will also expand smoking restrictions in the workplace and on school properties. California now joins jurisdictions like Hawaii, New York City and San Francisco that have bumped the tobacco-buying age to 21 in an effort to block young people’s route to obtaining tobacco. But Brown vetoed one measure that would have allowed...