Free Republic

We all know and understand that budget management and leadership requires flexibility, common sense and cooperation. Representing common principles and conviction, Republicans and Democrats were elected to positions of trust and have sworn to serve their constituents. Somehow, many in Sacramento have forgotten their pledges, or ignored them altogether. I am speaking about our state budget fiasco, irresponsibility and double talk we have sadly grown accustomed to. We all remember the golden “surplus years” in California. California Republican Governors have historically; overcome huge and impossible budget deficits. They proceeded to prepare for the future and to protect a golden surplus...

Supposition And Irresponsibility Well have you heard the latest about what actually happened in the Superdome and Convention Center during Hurricane Katrina? We were told that there were gang rapes, murders and mayhem on a grand scale and that the basement of the Superdome was stacked with dead bodies. As it turns out none of these stories were true. Eight people died, mostly from natural causes and suicide and an official in New Orleans stated that the murder rate during Katrina was about the same as during normal times. We sat at home imagining the horrible things happening in the...

One Republican who is a maverick on this subject is conservative Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks, who received 13.5% of the vote for governor in the Gray Davis recall election and plans to run next year for lieutenant governor. McClintock has long thought that the budget should be passed by a simple majority vote. "A perverse result of the supermajority requirement is that it does not constrain state spending," McClintock says. "What it does is bid up the cost of the budget with each additional vote. Every additional vote comes with louder calls for higher spending.

The grieving dad of the 11-year-old mentally troubled New Jersey boy who suffocated in a car trunk with two younger pals blames the state's social-services agency, saying it should have put his son in a facility where he could have gotten help. "If he would have been put in a safe place, this wouldn't have happened. The child needed a lot of help," Anibal Cruz Sr. said yesterday. -snip-" [The division] did nothing," Cruz said. "Why didn't they lock the baby somewhere safe? When kids need help, they have to help them."

Since my piece on Newsweek’s Quran desecration story, some have suggested that perhaps Newsweek isn’t totally to blame for the violent response in the Middle East. For the record, the opinion I expressed in The Toilets in Cuba Aren’t Better Than Ours was written to address Newsweek’s actions. The fact is I agree that there were other causes of the uprisings in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the land of over-the-top reactions. Those who are trying to piggy-back the blame for the murderous and reactionary protests sparked by the Newsweek story onto the minor abuses at Abu Ghraib are guilty of...

Dateline: Iraq The editor responsible for the reporter who rigged a question to Secretary Rumsfeld yesterday, explained that the only mistake that the reporter made was in getting caught, by sending a confessing email to a colleague who, in a journalist felony, broke the "code of silence", and exposed the set-up. In other news today, an "embed" reporter rolled a live grenade into a group of marines, and then pointed to a wounded prisoner, before he ducked for cover. The marines were filmed shooting the unarmed prisoner, thus confirming the reporter's hunch that "they just shoot without thinking." Elsewhere, reporters...

Another winter has come in Washington and brought with it another pork-laden omnibus spending bill. That's right. Thanks to Congress's continued inability to do its job, taxpayers are once again left holding the bag as billions of our hard-earned dollars are wasted. Countless others have authored columns detailing some of the most egregious of the thousands of pork barrel projects included in the spending bill passed this week. So instead of joining the chorus bemoaning the inclusion of $1 million for the World Birding Center in Texas, $100,000 for a swimming pool in Kansas, or $2 million to buy back...

A new study by the British Medical Association finds that young people in Great Britain are living dangerously when it comes to eating, drinking, mental health, drugs, and sex. The frightening report reveals a burgeoning youth culture that is high on risk and low on character. The report found that one fifth of British adolescents aged 13 to 16 are overweight or obese. One in four 15 and 16 year olds smoke regularly, and one in five use drugs. Youth alcohol consumption now ranks among the highest in Europe, and binge drinking is becoming a serious problem. One in five...

GAO Warns of Dangerous DeficitNewsMax.com WiresThursday, Sept 18, 2003 WASHINGTON -- The head of Congress' investigative arm warned Wednesday that the United States faces "large and growing structural deficits," which, if not soon addressed, could lead to "a dangerous budgetary and economic spiral that would ultimately hurt every American." "Our nation has a major long-term fiscal challenge that is not going away, and requires serious and sustained attention," David Walker, U.S. comptroller general and head of the General Accounting Office, said Wednesday at a luncheon at Washington's National Press Club. This challenge -- more than $7 trillion in accumulated...

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We are the compassionate city. We are a city of refuge to illegal aliens; we love 'em all. Pot smokers make us their home. We won't cooperate with the feds on terrorism investigations. And we let homeless die on the street like dogs. We are a fun-loving city. We associate the cause of homelessness with some trauma such as a loss of a job or an eviction that led a person to live in on the street. This allows us to give the homeless the patina of a certified "victim" group. The reality is quite different. The typical homeless person...