Free Republic

Rather than lose $48 million in revenue — the result of a budget-time tax grab by Gov. Jerry Brown last summer — Orange County officials are poised to defy the state by keeping a total of $73 million in property taxes. The expected move by county leaders, which they say must be done in order to avoid layoffs and other austere budget cuts, is an aggressive and rarely seen tactic in which a locality unilaterally shifts decisions about how to distribute taxes from Sacramento to the local level. The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted last week in closed session...

Hmm, how many poor illegal alien housekeepers possibly guilty of fraud end up with such a prominent Leftist attorney? He represented Nasir Ali Mubarak and looks to have been part of Lynne Stewart's defense team. See below. Gloria Allred named Mark Van Der Hout as Diaz's immigration lawyer on the Mark Levin Show tonight. Mark Van der Hout's political activism goes back years, this from 2004: So far, immigrant Muslims and those from the Middle East and Central Asia have suffered the brunt of the Bush administration's attacks on civil liberties. But as NLG immigration attorney Mark Van Der Hout...

In an early move, Democrat Jerry Brown launched a television advertising campaign Thursday in the race for California attorney general, using a trio of commercials to attack Republican foe Chuck Poochigian as too extreme for the state. The ads, part of a weeklong $300,000 buy on cable TV systems throughout the state, according to Brown's campaign, comes as the California GOP airs a feisty radio ad that ridicules Brown as "flaky" and too liberal to serve as the state's top law officer. Brown, mayor of Oakland and a former California governor, hits Poochigian, a state senator from Fresno, in his...