Free Republic

Our editorial today (wide application to other states): It was a corrupt system that allowed back-room politicking to redraw every 10 years California's boundaries for congressional, legislative and other districts. Legislators redrew lines to ensure reelection and protect their political parties. There is word for it: Gerrymandering. . . . Unfortunately, Californians apparently have traded one form of special-interest pandering for another.

Here's the root of the problem. When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger revealed his revised budget last month, he said he was "making the difficult decisions to slow spending growth ... ." Excuse me? The difficult decisions to slow spending growth? What's so difficult? It must be an irrepressible love of spending other peoples' money that makes it difficult, as the governor confesses it is for him, to merely slow down the annual increase in government spending. Notice that we never hear the governor complain about how difficult it is to spend more. Every year he's been office, Gov. Schwarzenegger has signed...

How can one say that government and morals shouldn't mix? And that "tolerating" homosexuality is compassionate?Editor’s note: Writer Mark Landsbaum responded to libertarian Doug Bandow (a friend of this editor) who wrote a Townhall.com column making the case against sodomy laws. We think it is an excellent response not only to Mr. Bandow, but it dismantles two libertarian errors: the idea that government and morals shouldn’t mix, and that "tolerating" homosexuality is more compassionate than discouraging it. – Robert Knight, director, Culture & Family Institute of CWADear Mr. Bandow, In your column "Assault on Morality?" you prop up straw men...