Free Republic

State Sen. Alex Padilla of Los Angeles had every reason to hope that the 11 members of the obscure but powerful state Assembly Education Committee in Sacramento would back his new legislation, Senate Bill 1530, designed to let public schools more easily fire teachers who commit sexual, physically abusive or drug-related acts with their students. The bill, written by the former L.A. city councilman from the San Fernando Valley, a graduate of MIT who is seen by many as a man with a political future, had sailed through the Senate Education Committee in the upper house on a bipartisan vote....

One of the most mindless laws approved was Assembly Bill 2108, by Sonoma County Democrat Noreen Evans. It requires parents to stick kids in automobile backseat booster seats until they turn age 8, or the kids grow to a specified height. This onerous law will cost parents millions of dollars, and save between zero and seven lives annually in California. Is that a typo? Is it possible that our full-time, "professional" Legislature approved a law forcing parents to spend millions of dollars, and preventing their small children from riding with their bigger kids in the front seat, all to save...

For years, California politicians have touted crackdowns on sex criminals to promote themselves as tough on crime. But recently, in a riveting investigative series, The Sacramento Bee confirmed what many had feared: California has among the most lenient laws in the nation toward sexually violent predators, society's life-wreckers. Gaping loopholes in California law let hard-core sex criminals committed to Atascadero State Hospital choose whether they want treatment. Almost none choose treatment, and after a breezy two-year stint, they are released from Atascadero — usually unmonitored, by lax courts. As the Bee noted, the loophole is "precisely how 54 rapists and...

Think of 1958, so distant in the past that there were front-page stories about Alaska's finally being voted the 49th state. Something that didn't make headlines -- because the reality of it wouldn't become clear for years -- was the fact that 1958 was the last time Republicans controlled the California Legislature, aside from an occasional oddball year or two. It was the year California went Democrat and never went back. I mention 1958 because of the hectoring under way by California GOP hard-liners, whom pundits call the "circular firing squad" because of their corrosive effect on their own party....

Think of 1958, so distant in the past that the Los Angeles Times ran front page stories about Alaska finally being voted the forty-ninth state and Russia launching a rocket that nearly reached the moon---“farther than any object man has sent from the Earth.” Something that didn’t make headlines---because the reality of it wouldn’t become clear for years---was the fact that 1958 was the last time Republicans controlled the Sacramento legislature, aside from an occasional oddball year or two. It was the year California went Democrat, and never went back. I mention 1958 because of the hectoring underway by California...

A journalist friend of mine recently attended a banquet for hundreds of private detective agencies, and was fascinated to hear them, one-by-one, introduce themselves. The fascinating part: roughly one-quarter specialized in investigating Californians who claim to be injured on the job. The fact that California's private dick industry spends so much time probing claims of back strains, pain, and other injuries is testament to the troubles afflicting the most milked, most disastrous workers comp system in the United States. Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed sweeping reform, Senate Bill 899 by Republican State Sen. Charles Poochigian of Fresno, to cleanse...

Think of 1958, so distant in the past that the Los Angeles Times ran front page stories about Alaska finally being voted the 49th state and Russia launching a rocket that nearly reached the moon — "farther than any object man has sent from the Earth." Something that didn't make headlines — because the reality of it wouldn't become clear for years — was the fact that 1958 was the last time Republicans controlled the state Legislature, aside from an occasional oddball year or two. It was the year California went Democrat, and never went back. I mention 1958 because...

A recent Public Policy Institute of California poll shows that while Californians have strong opinions on what to do about public education, they have no idea what's going on. I give the public an “F” in Education. As a wonderfully sneaky test of awareness, PPIC asked Californians in a recent survey how much of the state budget is spent on public schools. They were clueless. Only one in three knew that public education is by far the biggest item, sucking up half the budget--very roughly, $50 billion of $100 billion. Ignorant voters insist more money pour into the schools, not...

Dear Arnold, I was driving on the Los Angeles freeway a couple of days ago, and I saw a billboard of you, as the Terminator, painted on a building near the 101. The image caused a stir when it appeared just before your election, but for the longest time it was unmarred. Now, it’s scrawled with big loops of pale greenish graffiti. That, and your poll numbers, prompted me to jot down a few thoughts on how you can turn your administration around. Three things: First, your focus should be on getting a budget passed through the Legislature before mid-summer,...

A totemic figure in L.A., Mr. Hayes has long emphasized problem-solving and individual responsibility. If you want to stop kids from shooting people , Mr. Hayes has told appalled black preachers and activists, stop blaming cops and "white folks" for urban tragedy and start blaming the lackadaisical inner-city family culture you support. Mr. Hayes spent last fall tooling around the fortified neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, knocking on security screens and urging stunned residents to vote Bush. He explained that the Democratic Party was the Klan's party in the 20th century, and the party of the slave trade before that....

I hope it's dawning on the governor that truly big reform -- broad, complex changes in the way Sacramento spends our taxes -- has never been an easy sell. Californians prefer glitzy, one-hit wonders over policy. We're a Proposition 13, term-limits, "three strikes, you're out," gubernatorial-recall kind of state. Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking a page from the playbook of former Gov. Ronald Reagan, who some 30 years ago tried to address rising taxes and legislative overspending with sweeping ballot reform. Reagan was popular and telegenic, like Schwarzenegger. But his complex plan, fought by entrenched interests, was defeated. He didn't give...

It should be a ripping good show in Sacramento in 2005, since the only place more torn by debilitating race, gender and cultural tension than the California State Assembly and State Senate might be a high school cafeteria seething with rival gangs. I realized this when I saw two lists of recent appointments announced by Republican and Democrat leaders to top jobs and committee chairmanships coveted by state senators and assembly members in Sacramento. To sum up, the Republicans are wallowing in the 1980's, still knuckle-dragging with a crew of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men, only slowly adding women and minorities....

All the caterwauling by talking heads who insist the Democrats can win the presidency in 2008 with a religious Southerner has me laughing. Well, painfully chuckling anyway. The view from The New York Times and so many others that "moral values" jumped to new prominence, driven by ardent churchgoers worried about gay marriage, sounded right to me at first. But then I peered closely at the vote in California and other spots, and was reminded how absurd conventional media wisdom can be. Many seized on exit polls showing that 22 percent of voters said "moral values" were paramount. But as...

<p>A poll says Californians don't want to refinance past debts from 2003 when they vote March 2. That's bad, because the $12 billion bond the Legislature and former Gov. Gray Davis already approved to cover their gross overspending last year is legally dubious, necessitating that voters approve the governor's March refinancing and replacement bond.</p>

Well, hellooo carrot and stick. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger just displayed dramatic examples of both in his dealings with the California Legislature, which is still reeling from it and is scrambling in private to figure out how to deal with it. But the real story as 2003 wraps up is the psychology of the governor himself, what we’ve learned after watching him for little more than one month in office and what it portends for California’s fiscal health. Schwarzenegger is a neophyte to Sacramento politics, where nothing is really as it appears and most legislators are working with both a public...

By the 100th day of his second term Gray Davis had achieved, well ... nothing. Can Schwarzenegger do any better? Illustration By B.Z. When Arnold Schwarzenegger takes office, some Democratic leaders are giving him just 100 days to show results, so it’s worth noting what the Democrats did with their first 100 days one year ago and what’s changed in the bubbling political brew since then. I attended both Gray Davis’ and Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial victory events. They were almost a year apart, both at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. All similarities end there. A year ago last November,...

Jill Stewart has posted a reply to L.A. Times editor John Carroll's somewhat irritated response to her criticism of his paper. Stewart simultaneously narrows and broadens the dispute with some intriguing reporting.... In a sudden flare-up of journalistic responsibility, I'm staying out of this one until I try some reporting of my own. ... More tk. ... But here's a question: Carroll elaborates on the difficulty of producing the big Schwarzengroping investigation in only eight weeks or so. But why did the Times have only 8 weeks? It's been known for years that Schwarzenegger had political ambitions, and for years that he often behaved badly around women....

Defenders of the Los Angeles Times are claiming that the paper wasn't showing bias when it enthusiastically pursued last-minute "Gropegate" allegations against Arnold Schwarzenegger - saying the Times did the same thing to President Clinton when it published womanizing allegations against him in late 1993. However, the two reporters responsible for the Clinton report say Times editors had to be dragged kicking and screaming to cover accounts from Arkansas state troopers who said they procured dozens of women throughout the 1980s for the then-Arkansas governor. In fact, Times editors were so reluctant to cover the story that they forfeited...

Now that the California gubernatorial recall election is over, one debate is still raging--the question of how much bias the Los Angeles Times allowed into its coverage and polls. I am offering three items below, not my normal "Capitol Punishment" column, exploring this issue. The first item is my response to John Carroll, executive editor of the Los Angeles Times. On Sunday, Oct. 12, Carroll published a bylined justification for his decisions to run eleventh-hour bombshells that alleged Arnold Schwarzenegger had groped women. Carroll used his Opinion section to attack me, Los Angeles Weekly political commentator Bill Bradley, and other...

Syndicated columnist Jill Stewart blasted the Los Angeles Times for its coverage of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and said the paper continues to cover-up for Gray Davis. Appearing on CNN’s Reliable Sources, Stewart, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, told host Howard Kurtz that the paper has still not covered stories of Gray Davis’ violent temper tantrums. Stewart first broke the story of Davis’ Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality in 1997 writing for Los Angeles’ New Times. She claimed at least one female said Davis had physically assaulted her. But Stewart made new claims on CNN Sunday. "Last year, on...