Free Republic

A colossal waste of time, money, and the public's attention span is underway in the golden state. Casey Tolan of the Mercury-News reports: For the first time since before the Civil War, voters across California will decide in November on a proposal to split up the Golden State – potentially remaking it into three new states. An initiative dividing California, pushed by Silicon Valley venture capital investor Tim Draper, received enough signatures to qualify it for the November ballot, the Secretary of State's office confirmed Tuesday afternoon. Supporters of the radical plan submitted more than 600,000 signatures, and a random sample projected that...

California gained an embassy in Russia last weekend, at least in the eyes of those who have promised to seek a statewide vote on secession, nicknamed "Calexit," in 2018. Louis Marinelli, a San Diego resident who is the leader of the group promoting an effort to turn the state into an independent country , organized the Moscow event that was publicized on social media. "We want to start laying the groundwork for a dialogue about an independent California joining the United Nations now," he said in an email Monday.

Louis J. Marinelli is a man on a quixotic mission: to help California secede from the United States and become an independent country. Surprisingly, this quest has been going relatively well of late. Marinelli's group, Yes California, is attempting to collect 585,000 signatures necessary to place a secessionist question on the 2018 ballot. Buoyed by California's already tense relationship with President Donald Trump, the campaign has received a large amount of press coverage and support over the past few months. But for the 30-year-old Yes California president, there remains one annoying problem: People keep asking him why he lives in...