Free Republic

Could the Public Employee Unions commandeer the Citizens Redistricting Commission? Coming December 15th, the California State Auditor’s Office will begin receiving applications for the new “Rock Star Commission”, a group of normal citizens who will be selected to re-draw the lines of California’s State Senate, Assembly and Board of Equalization Districts starting with the elections in 2012. In a previous HOGUE NEWS exclusive piece, I revealed the importance of this commission and the power they will be handed in determining California’s future. I am excited that California will remove the politicians from the census process of drawing district lines for...

Minnesota's 27th Congressional District has snared just over $3 million in federal stimulus money, five times as much as the 57th District has gotten. One problem: Neither district exists -- except on Recovery.gov, the Obama administration's website that tracks the flow of stimulus cash. Beyond Minnesota's eight actual congressional districts, which have gotten the lion's share of the money, the website list 11 phantom districts that supposedly have been awarded more than $7 million in grants.

Seven members of the board of Catholic Charities announced their resignations. They were protesting the effort by Massachusetts bishops to prohibit gays from adopting children from their Catholic social service agencies. The seven who quit said prohibition ''threatens the very essence of our Christian mission." Church doctrine states that allowing children to be adopted by same-sex couples ''would actually mean doing violence to these children...gravely immoral." If you agree with those principles, according to the Vatican, a Catholic in good standing. If you don't, you're not. Liberals raised as Catholics refuse to accept this reality. We think we can be...

California's 33rd Congressional District is hard-core Democrat. Ethnically diverse, cutting a swath from Hollywood through the city's historic black heartland, it's so thick with Democrats that John Kerry won 83 percent of the vote during the 2004 presidential election. Republicans didn't even bother to field a candidate in the last U.S. House race. So why would Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney be interested in voters here? In a twist on political logic, heavily Democratic patches in California are being fiercely contested by some Republican presidential candidates because of a change in state election rules. For the first time in a...

So, what about what’s “hiding” inside what some conservatives have taken to calling “the Trojan Horse primary,” i.e., California’s early presidential primary? It may not be all that fearsome. The great fear on the right is that California’s term limits law would be altered by voters next February 5th, when the state will all but certainly hold Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. (The bill has passed both houses of the Legislature and awaits the signature of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who proposed the idea.) Presumably the right wing fear is that the vote to alter term limits would be unfair, due...

Wildfire triage helps districts decide which properties to protect... Increasingly wary of powerful forest fires..mountain fire districts are mapping out which vulnerable homes might be sacrificed to avoid putting firefighters in harm's way and make best use of limited resources... Since [ the ] disastrous fire season of 2002, fire districts and departments...are rapidly assembling data to assist in hard decisions about what neighborhoods are defensible and which ones may be left to burn. But should a fast-rising fire force districts with too few resources to make deployment decisions fast, new maps and software give firefighters instant access to the...

Remains of past emerge from the dark - Ancient buddhist stupas discovered in bihar districts SANTOSH SINGH A mound discovered recently at Turki in Bihar’s Vaishali district. Telegraph picture Patna, May 7: A forgotten chapter of ancient history is emerging, slowly and silently, in Bihar with Patna’s KP Jaiswal Research Institute identifying as many as 70 Buddhist stupas, 50 of which remain buried underground. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) approved project plans to document all the stupas by September this year, said director of the institute Vijay Chaudhary. Buddhist texts indicate that when the Buddha died, he was cremated...

SACRAMENTO – The settlement of a landmark lawsuit two years ago created a $200 million state fund for emergency repairs in low-performing schools throughout California, but little of the money has been spent. Leaky roofs, broken toilets and other problems requiring urgent repair were cited in the suit. Only $247,000 has been spent from the fund – far less than the $30 million paid to attorneys in the suit. Some lawmakers think the fund, which is scheduled to grow by $200 million a year and reach $800 million by 2008, is not being used because school districts with tight budgets...

Enrollment drops, teachers leave, but administrators stay. That's the story at most of the 25 school districts with declining enrollment in the Sacramento region, according to a Bee analysis of state education data. Just eight of those districts reported to the state that they had cut administrators between the school years 1999-2000 and 2004-2005, even though the districts lost about 5,000 students during that period. Five of the 25 districts added administrators. And although most of those districts aren't cutting administrator positions, they are employing fewer teachers. Twenty-two of the 25 districts have fewer teachers today than they did five...

The question of how much longer a handful of states — most in the South, including Georgia — will be relegated to second-class status in our own country is pending before the U.S. Congress. At issue is extension of expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — specifically, Section 5, that 40 years later continues, without any basis whatsoever — to punish living Georgians for the sins of the dead. The irony, in fact, is that not only are most of the offenders dead, but their party has been ousted from power and many of those who govern...

Why is it that Southern California residents continually get ripped off when it comes to the distribution of federal funds, but their congressmen the people charged with distributing those funds continually get re-elected? It's all about money. Southland lawmakers have some of the biggest campaign war chests in the country, thanks to countless special interests all too happy to purchase their favor. Of seven Golden State lawmakers going into the campaign season with more than $1 million as of June 30, six are from Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties. Rep. David Dreier, R-Glendora, has the third-largest congressional...

Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., wants to change one word in the U.S. Constitution. Replacing "persons" with "citizens" in the 14th Amendment would force the Census Bureau to discount foreigners -- legals and illegals -- to ensure that every American finally would be properly represented in the House. Michigan would gain a seat, as would Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Montana and Utah, according to Ms. Miller. "It is almost ridiculously simple" she said.

Elections without choice are Democracy how, exactly?In 1812, Elbridge Gerry, the Governor of Massachusetts, redrew the legislative districts in his state to favor his party in the upcoming election. Looking at the sinuous and contorted shape of one district, which projected protuberances into dispersed pockets of voters across half the state, one observer noted that it looked rather like a salamander. "No," another commentator replied, "it looks more like a Gerry-mander." Thus, one of America's oldest and most-questionable political practices was born and named, surprisingly in Massachusetts. Gerrymandering is a political trick that parties in power use to stay in...

Small class sizes in kindergarten through third grade are a big hit with parents and teachers alike. Some school districts need added security measures. And students don't want to give up electives such as art and music. But with the state facing an $8 billion to $10 billion budget deficit in the next year, at least half a dozen Silicon Valley school districts are asking residents to tax themselves in the November election to help their schools avoid drastic cuts that directly affect learning. The parcel tax initiatives range from $50 a parcel annually in the East Side Union High...

Not in more than 40 years has the face of Georgia politics so dramatically changed so quickly. In one redistricting map, delivered last week by a special master working for a three-judge federal panel, the brutalization of Georgia by incumbent politicians determined to maintain party domination fell asunder. Whoosh. Gone. An era ended. The drawing of a fair map that treats voters equally, regardless of where they live, is as significant as the 1962 Supreme Court decision that ended the county-unit system in Georgia politics. The county-unit system, passed into law in 1917, decided elections on a county voting basis....

All who are from Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio who would like to meet with other Freepers to discuss issues, bills, proposals of both, and likewise topics please mark your calendars for Saturday June 12th, around 5:30pm in Covington, KY (right off I-75 5th St. exit). There will be a private room, at an affordable yet quality restaurant. Willies Sports Cafe! It's not a bar,however they do have a full bar, a secluded game room, and large tv's throughout the dining area. I am not sure about the private room details. Please contact me soon if you feel you know of...

<p>Across Santa Clara County, a number of school districts are making the painful decision to shutter schools in the face of falling enrollments and the state budget crisis.</p> <p>As families leave the area to escape the economic slump and the high cost of living, and as districts brace for a projected $2 billion cut in state aid, many district officials say they have few other options to balance their budgets.</p>

<p>POLLOCK PINES, Calif.(AP) - The Pollock Pines school district has three schools, but soon it may have only two principals to cover them. The district may scale back on custodians. Or it could trim its summer school schedules.</p> <p>Like most school districts across the state, Pollock Pines is looking to cut more than 3.6 percent from its budget halfway through the year. The across-the-board cuts were proposed by Gov. Gray Davis earlier this month as part of $10.2 billion in reductions to this and next year's budgets.</p>

AP: GOP Shifted Billions to Districts By DAVID PACE Associated Press Writer AP/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE [16K] BREAKING -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WASHINGTON (AP) — The 1994 revolution that gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives produced a seismic shift in federal spending, moving tens of billions of dollars from Democratic to GOP districts, an Associated Press analysis shows. Rather than pork barrel projects for new GOP districts, the change was driven mostly by Republican policies that moved spending from poor rural and urban areas to the more affluent suburbs and GOP-leaning farm country, the computer analysis showed. The result was an average...