Free Republic

SACRAMENTO – In a new television ad, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says his Democratic rival, Phil Angelides, will take the state backward "to a time we never want to see again," which the ad says was "when soaring taxes forced jobs and businesses to flee our state." The problem is, there is no such time. Campaign officials acknowledged Friday that the ad refers to the administration of former Gov. Gray Davis, who presided over the stock market bust and the recession and state budget crisis that followed. But Davis did not raise taxes, except for suspending a few small credits, such...

Doctors said sexually transmitted diseases among senior citizens are running rampant at a popular Central Florida retirement community, according to a Local 6 News report. A gynecologist at The Villages community near Orlando, Fla., said she treats more cases of herpes and the human papilloma virus in the retirement community than she did in the city of Miami. "Yeah, they are very shocked (to hear the diagnosis)," gynecologist Dr. Colleen McQuade said. "I had a patient in her 80s." "More and more senior citizens are ending up in the gynecologist office, and their diagnosis is a sexually transmitted disease," Local...

LOS ANGELES, May 18 - Thousands of dollars in expenses, including more than $1,000 worth of rose petals, disappeared from a budget for a fund-raising gala on orders of David F. Rosen, who was the national finance director for Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2000 Senate race, a witness testified here today. The witness, a party planner named Bretta J. Nock, testified at the trial of Mr. Rosen, who is charged with causing false filings to be made to the Federal Election Commission by underreporting the cost of an August 2000 event, called the Hollywood Gala Salute to President William Jefferson Clinton....

SACRAMENTO — The California Fair Political Practices Commission told a judge Tuesday that it's unclear whether Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante's campaign spending strategy violates state law. The commission filed a 12-page letter as part of a lawsuit filed by state Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), an author of Proposition 34, the voter-approved initiative that regulates political fund-raising and spending. The commission is charged with enforcing that law. Johnson's suit alleges that Bustamante violated campaign contribution limits by accepting single donations as high as $1.5 million into an old account not covered by the new law, and using the money to wage...