Free Republic

Jane Fonda compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler at the Women’s Media Awards on Thursday. “If you’ve read anything about the rise of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler, you will see the parallels,” Fonda maintained. “Attacking the media is the first step in the move towards fascism.” Fonda, given her wild misjudgment of the only American to systematically murder scores of his fellow countrymen in an actual concentration camp, strikes as the wrong messenger bearing the wrong message here. Before Jane Fonda saw Donald Trump as Adolf Hitler, she saw Jim Jones as a hero. “We are familiar with...

Mervyn M. Dymally, the Trinidad-born former teacher whose ground-breaking if sometimes-controversial political career spanned more than four decades and included a stint as California's only black lieutenant governor, has died. He was 86.

Members of the two-house legislative committee working on the state budget – especially its dominant Democrats – have spent much of the week lamenting that they don't have enough money to satisfy all demands, including their own. "We're starving our education system," Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, complained during the three days of talking about K-12 and higher education support. "There's just not enough money." Leno's comment, echoed by other budget conferees, didn't prevent the committee from appropriating $8.7 million to Charles Drew University for another year, however – money originally given to the private Southern California medical school to...

SACRAMENTO - Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez on Friday barred lawmakers from handing out badges bearing the chamber's seal after one legislator awarded policelike "Assembly commissioner" badges to friends, relatives and campaign contributors. Nuñez, D-Los Angeles, said badges with the seal should be carried only by lawmakers themselves "for security and identification purposes. Period. This change in policy will prevent any possible misuse in the future." He acted after the Assembly Rules Committee chairman reported that Entenmann-Rovin, the Los Angeles company that makes the badges, had been selling ones carrying the seal without approval of the Assembly's sergeant at arms. The...

SACRAMENTO -- A veteran black lawmaker says an investigation into his practice of giving replica Assembly badges to friends and donors is racially motivated and called the Democrat leading the inquiry "the most racial legislator" he has known. Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, D-Compton, made the statement about Assemblyman Hector De La Torre, D-South Gate, Thursday in an e-mailed response to a capital news service. "Assemblyman De La Torre is the most racial legislator I have encountered in over 40 years," Dymally wrote in the e-mail to CTNS television service. The service sent a transcript of its e-mail interview to its subscribers...

"Let no child be left behind"; ... "It takes a village to raise a child"; ... "Quality time"; ... "Crime Stoppers." Each of the foregoing, unfortunate phrases is supposed by many to be an expression of progress, is as American as Enron and now is at home in - the West Indian Republic of Trinidad and Tobago? During our just-concluded annual visit to my wife's folks in Trinidad, my family was bombarded with warmed-over Americanisms on television. (While prosperous, tiny Tobago with its beautiful beaches is the preferred destination of tourists, 93 percent of the 1.3 million largely hardworking, hard-luck...