Free Republic

It's come to this: Kindergarten Cop, a banal 1990 comedy-action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a police detective who masquerades as a teacher, has been canceled and likened to the explicitly racist silent film Birth of a Nation. Kindergarten Cop was slated to kick off Portland's Northwest Film Center's Cinema Unbound Drive-in Theater on August 6 until critics led by local author Lois Leveen said the PG-13 movie promoted a "school-to-prison pipeline," according to the Willamette Week. In an email to Willamette Week, Leveen likened the Schwarzenegger vehicle to Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind: It's true...

Arnold Schwarzenegger is following the wrong script. After taking over as governor in 2003, he was expected to vanquish business-as-usual politicians in Sacramento--and pull California from the brink of fiscal ruin. Instead, he has decided to put his own political future ahead of the economic survival of his beloved Golden State. How else to interpret his recent move to join ranks with his opponents in Sacramento to put a pork-heavy $37 billion bond infrastructure proposal on the November ballot? --snip--

The familiar sounds of partisan gridlock overtook the Capitol Friday, as efforts to get a state budget agreement broke down with Democrats and Republicans choosing sides over a plan to revise how local governments are financed. The air of optimism that had characterized negotiations all week has all but dissipated. And expectations that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could still step in like a kindergarten cop and settle the flare up seem far fetched as the governor struggled with his own difficulties. "At this point, this budget is being held up and it isn't by Democrats," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los...