Free Republic

The Supreme Court has struck down a federal law that banned sports betting in almost every state across the country, handing former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) a major win to bolster his legacy. New Jersey has been fighting since 2010 to make sports wagering legal at racetracks and casinos in the state, but had repeatedly been blocked by the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992. The Court ruled 7-2 that PASPA’s provisions prohibiting states from authorizing and licensing a sports gabling scheme violates the anti-commandeering rule. In delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Samuel Alito...

DECEMBER 6, 2014 BY JOHN HINDERAKER Did the Kennedy Administration Try to Drive Reagan Off the Air? Ronald Reagan apparently detested Bobby Kennedy, another sign of Reagan’s good judgment since Kennedy was an awful human being. But this is something I hadn’t heard before: Michael Reagan says that Bobby leaned on General Electric to get Reagan off television: [A] few months after [subpoenaing Reagan before a grand jury], Kennedy tried to get him fired from General Electric Theater. Or, at least, that’s what Reagan believed. “Dad told us he had just lost his job with GE,” Reed recalls Reagan son...

A former Democratic senator and presidential candidate is proposing a controversial fix to the nation's economic woes: raise taxes, and not just on millionaires. "No one is saying that right now, and someone has to say it," Bill Bradley said on CNN's "State of the Union." "If we're going to succeed, we have to face our problems squarely. The deficit is one problem, and that requires taxes on a lot of people, not just the wealthy," Mr. Bradley said. The former NBA star, who mounted a 2000 presidential bid but ultimately lost to Al Gore, appeared on CNN on Sunday...

Cornel West, an extremist race-relations instructor at Princeton, addressed the 10th annual Young Democratic Socialists conference earlier this month. The three-day event took place at Norman Thomas High School in Manhattan, named after an American socialist activist. The meeting, entitled "Real change for a change," described itself as a "snap shot of the current socialist movement in the United States."

By now, millions of Americans are familiar with Anita Dunn, who recently resigned her post as Barack Obama’s White House Communications Director after it was learned that she had previously cited Mao Zedong, the late Communist dictator and mass murderer, as one of her “favorite political philosophers.” By contrast, few people know anything substantive about Dunn’s husband, Robert Bauer, who has replaced Gregory Craig as President Obama’s White House Counsel. Craig resigned abruptly on November 13, after having repeatedly denied, for weeks, that he had any plans of stepping down. A 1976 graduate of the University of Virginia School of...

California’s leading public pollsters, Field Poll director Mark di Camillo and Public Policy Institute of California chief Mark Baldassare, did their usual post-election analysis at today’s monthly luncheon of the Sacramento Press Club. It was an indicative event with regard to the current state of state politics. A relative handful of those in attendance were practicing journalists, tracking the fast diminishing state of state political journalism, and most of the questions (or speeches) after the presentations were posed by non-journalists. After a lengthy awards ceremony of scholarships for the journalists of tomorrow (hmm …), the two Marks, as they are...

Not surprisingly, as has been previously discussed on New West Notes, Republican legislators have no intention of voting for fees or taxes or whatever one wants to call them on businesses and medical providers to finance universal health care in California. That was reported first yesterday on New West Notes after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic and Republican legislative leaders held their “Big 5” meeting. Meanwhile, the Census Bureau reports that 20% of Californians have no health insurance. When they get sick and get health care, we nonetheless pay for it through emergency rooms. If there is to be a...

In winning his landslide re-election victory, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger also found most other campaigns going his way. Only the narrow defeat of his appointed secretary of state, Bruce McPherson, could be counted as an actual setback, and not a major one at that. First, of course, was the passage of all the Big Bang Bonds infrastructure initiatives that he supported. Schwarzenegger lays claim to the enactment of California?s biggest public works program since the Pat Brown era of the 1960s The defeat of all the tax measures on the ballot was right in line with the Arnold playbook, as was...

The Republican governor of California was in trouble as he contemplated his chances of winning a second term. Early polls said well over half of the state's voters were inclined to turn him out, and two prominent Democratic officeholders were vying to succeed him. He suffered from defection among Republican voters, stemming from ideological quarrels with conservatives who considered him to be a RINO (Republican In Name Only) who was too liberal on spending, abortion and environmental regulation. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006? It could be, but it also describes the uncomfortable position in which Schwarzenegger's political mentor, Pete Wilson, found...

SEPT. 26 - OCT. 2, 2003 PredatorsArnold survives his coming outby Bill Bradley SACRAMENTO — Now that was a fun, interesting debate. One could sense the drama welling up blocks away from the auditorium at Sacramento State. Competing chants and demonstrators on all sides of the recall, a giant white tent, dozens of satellite-TV trucks, banners festooned everywhere, even a marching band nearby. It all added up to a festive scene that has been missing in California politics for many years. Signing in at the media table, the Weekly encountered a very enthusiastic Los Angeles Times employee. “Can you believe...

ANGELES (Reuters) - Karl Rove, U.S. President George W. Bush's senior political advisor, on Tuesday took the administration's message on immigration reform to Latino leaders, saying the country was approaching a "critical moment" in the debate. >br> Speaking at the annual convention of leading Latino civic group the National Council of La Raza, Rove said Bush would work with Republicans and Democrats in coming weeks to push through reform legislation that has bitterly divided Congress, the Republican Party and the nation. "We face a critical moment in our immigration debate, a moment when our nation will make an important decision...

White House adviser Karl Rove is scheduled to speak tomorrow at the annual conference of the federally funded, left-wing, open-borders-advocacy group, the National Council of La Raza. If he does not want his speech to look like an act of appeasement, he should confront La Raza on its opposition to commonsense policies designed to secure both U.S. borders and U.S. pocketbooks. La Raza, which means “The Race” in Spanish, has denounced as “horrendous” and “appalling” the House immigration bill passed in December, which was sponsored by Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wis.) and supported by the overwhelming majority of House Republicans....

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is moving to shore up an area of vulnerability in his re-election campaign against his trailing Democratic opponent, Phil Angelides. On Tuesday at an event in L.A., he will announce the formation of Hispanic Families for Arnold. When he was elected in the 2003 recall election, Schwarzenegger garnered 34 percent of the Latino vote, a good total given that the replacement Democratic nominee, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, is Mexican-American. But in some recent polls matched up against Angelides, Schwarzenegger is running under 20 percent. Forty to fifty community leaders and their families will join Schwarzenegger at the...

** The "Clean Energy" initiative, Proposition 87, on California's November ballot is looking good. The support level for it in a private poll is over 60 percent. The measure would enact an oil extraction tax at the wellhead to generate some $400 million a year for research and development on alternative fuels. Among the nation's big oil producing states, California is the only one without an oil tax. Voter disdain for oil companies is high.

With all the talk about the former red state, Republican state, California, becoming a blue state -- which is not quite as true as some think -- there is someone talking about it becoming a purple state. That is California Republican Party chairman Duf Sundheim, who talked about his hopes for California during last week’s bus tour kicking off Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign against Democratic challenger Phil Angelides. The Silicon Valley lawyer came on a few years ago to put a moderate face on the party, whose apparatus was traditionally viewed as right wing and increasingly out of step...

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke yesterday at the annual conference of the Western Governors Association in Sedona, Arizona, where he pushed three resolutions on alternative energy and global warming. “We should fundamentally change our approach to energy,” he declared. “We've all seen the pictures of melting glaciers. We know the dangers of climate change. How the oceans are getting warmer, how they're rising. How agriculture can be threatened.” "We are long past the time when we can just talk about this problem," said the former action superstar, who is being challenged for re-election by Democrat Phil Angelides. "We must take action."...

More good news for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the wake of Friday’s early morning passage of the $37.3 billion infrastructure bonds package, now set for California’s November ballot. He is getting major credit from Democrats for his role in making the deal happen. And major Democrats will be campaigning with him Monday on a flyaround tour of the state for the measure. Joining the former action superstar, according to multiple sources in both parties, on his jet will be Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, along with the Republican legislative leaders, Senator Dick Ackerman and...

Despite his successful dark passage of the weekend past, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger still has substantial lingering resentment with which to contend. Among two groups which in many quarters are viewed as having little in common. Republicans and members of the press. In addition to continuing questions about where he really stands among the independents and moderate Democrats whom he must appeal to in order to win re-election, there is a continued resentment on the right. And not just among the conservative activists who feel they were rolled by the governor’s operation at the state Republican convention just past. Which is...

When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger decided he wanted to appoint controversial Democratic operative Susan Kennedy as his gubernatorial chief of staff in the immediate aftermath of his November special election initiative defeats, according to very reliable informed sources, the former cabinet secretary to recalled Governor Gray Davis first insisted on being paid $250,000 a year. Schwarzenegger said no, and Kennedy assumed the deal was off. But when the former action superstar returned from his glitzkrieg post-election tour of China, he resumed negotiations. Kennedy ended up with a salary this year that, though short of her original figure, does approach it. She...

Political life since the Novemeber 2005 defeat of his “Year of Reform” special-election initiatives has been a whirlwind of change for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has thoroughly revamped his political operation. The Weekly has learned that just before the upheaval began, the governor received an anonymous letter alleging serious financial mismanagement and improprieties in his political operation. The letter triggered an unprecedented round of questioning of the governor’s political consultants by his legal counsel. The “letter was a stupid smear and 1,000 percent bullshit,” said Mike Murphy, who until last month was the man in charge of Schwarzenegger’s political operation....