Calif. School Bans American Flag Clothing For Non-Existent Mexican Holiday?

-By Warner Todd Huston

California schools really do hate America. In California apparently you are a bad little boy if you wear to school clothing adorned with the good ol’ Red, White and Blue. You get thrown out, in fact. At least that is what happened to several patriotic American boys that attend Comunidad Educativa Vivo Roble in California… oh, wait, that is the Live Oak High School in California. With all the dissing of America going on in California I thought the school had changed its name. Sorry.

For the Gilroy Dispatch Lindsay Bryant reports that five young students of Live Oak High School in Gillroy, California were kicked out of school on Cinco de Mayo because they dared to wear the venerable American colors while all the Mexican students were wearing the Green, White and Red colors of the Mexican flag. According to Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez these evil American children were “starting a fight.”


The New America: Physically fit boys in American Themed Clothes = Baaaad

Yeah, in American schools you are “starting a fight” when you wear America themed clothing but innocent as the driven snow when you are sporting the colors of foreign nations. Braynt reports that over 100 students were seen in the Mexican colors. One rather corpulent girl-child even pained her face and various overly exposed body part with the celebratory colors.

One Mexican-American student, freshman Laura Ponce, had a Mexican flag painted on her face and chest, peaking out of her low-cut shirt. She did it because, “it’s our day, the only day we can show our spirit.” A school administrator took away the Mexican flag she was carrying as she was waiting to go home. Ponce said: “not cool.”

Even the morbidly obese can celebrate Cinco de Mayo, hold the lettuce. But don’t go wearing any of those evil, evil Red, White and Blue clothes!


The New America: Morbidly Obese Girls in Mexican Themed Clothes = Gooood

I am sure that Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez only speaks Spanish, I mean I can’t imagine him sullying his delicate mouth with the guttural sound of English, so let me help him out with what these fine young boys were exhibiting. It’s called patriotism, Mr. Rodriguez…. oh, yeah, sorry… I mean patriotismo Estados Unidos de América. Forgot your hatred of things American/English there for a second, Mr. Rodriguez. My most fulsome apologies.
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Calif. School Bans American Flag Clothing For Non-Existent Mexican Holiday?”


Rep. Waxman Slips in ‘Bad Vitamin’ clause into Wall Street Reform Bill

-By Warner Todd Huston

Nothing says Washington crookedness like a congressman slipping a clause into a bill that has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the main purpose of the legislation. Here we have just another cynical, corrupt bargain made in Washington D.C. with the effort of Henry Waxman (D, Ca) who slipped a little clause into the Wall Street “Reform” bill that is little else but an attack on the healthfood industry. This provision would give Congress more control over all health supplements and vitamins in America and likely lead to many of these businesses shutting their doors.

So often Congress acts like the little kid with his mom in the grocery store. While mom is putting fruits, vegetables, milk, and good marbled beef into the shopping cart, the bratty kid is throwing candy and toys made in China into the basket when he thinks mom isn’t looking. Congress is, of course, the bratty kids of our system. And they need a good whipping.

The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173), was passed by the House and is now in the Senate waiting for that body to take action. But while this law is supposed to be saving our economy, Rep. Waxman seems more interested in destroying the country’s vitamin stores. And to that end, he slipped into this economics bill more regulations on the dietary supplement industry.
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Rep. Waxman Slips in ‘Bad Vitamin’ clause into Wall Street Reform Bill”


Unionists Threaten CA Business Owner Over His Letter to the Editor

-By Warner Todd Huston

Apparently all one need do to cause Police and Firemen and their union supporters to violate their oath to protect the citizenry these days is to question their union. Union thugs in California proved that to be true in Napa Valley last week when a local business owner had the temerity to exercise his free political speech in a letter to the editor that was published by the St. Helena Star newspaper.

In the letter, Napa Valley Winery owner Dario Sattui of V. Sattui Winery made the mistake of “venting” about the overly generous union contracts that the public employees of his town had “negotiated” with compliant, left-wing politicians.

“I thought I was doing well in the wine business. Had I had any real brains I would have become a firefighter. What a racket they have. While I respect the work they do and the inherent dangers, they are greatly overpaid, work only two days a week (a third of which they sleep) and get to retire at 50 years old at 90 percent of their pay after working 30 years. I don’t blame the firefighters. Good for them for getting as much as they can. The blame goes to the politicians and the government administrators. What do they care? It isn’t their money.”

In response cops and firemen in California, or their supporters at the very least, let him know that they hoped his business would be destroyed both economically AND by fire. So much for these “public servants” and their oath to protect the public.
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Unionists Threaten CA Business Owner Over His Letter to the Editor”


Mickey Kaus, Union Fighter?

-By Warner Todd Huston

For the Washington Post’s Post Partisan Blog Charles Lane’s somewhat irreverent, perhaps even dismissive treatment of the admittedly quixotic Senate campaign of journalist Mickey Kaus painted the would-be candidate as a union fighter. Interestingly, he isn’t far off the mark, which is odd for the fact that Kaus is a pretty straight down the line liberal.

Could Mickey Kaus be the “harbinger” of a new, mildly anti-union Democrat that might replace the sold out, in-the-back-pocket sort of Democrats we’ve seen for decades and decades?

Recently City Journal writer Steve Malanga wrote a great piece detailing how the public employees unions are killing California. “The unions’ political triumphs,” Malanga wrote, “have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector.”
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Mickey Kaus, Union Fighter?”


How Unions Are Destroying California

-By Warner Todd Huston

Steve Malanga of City journal has a great piece detailing how California’s public employee unions are destroying that once great state.

Malanga starts by repeating the ominous warning to the politicos at the state capitol in Sacramento made by a Service Employees International Union chief. “We helped to get you into office and we got a good memory” the official said on to California’s pols. “Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll get you out of office.”

To me this is reminiscent of the warning by the old Soviet Union’s Nikita Kruchev who said that “we will bury you.” Only, the SEIU has far more power to bury our governments than the old Soviets had!
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How Unions Are Destroying California”


ACORN’s Tangled Branches

-By Warner Todd Huston

News is all over the country that the often criminal group the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is dead, folding its tent, kaput. All this is because, as Politico puts it, of a “conservative assault that never prompted any prosecutions.”

But let us not get our hopes up that ACORN is defeated. It isn’t. In fact, most of the groups that huddled under ACORN’s left-wing are just changing their names and moving on with all the same people involved as if nothing ever happened. And this isn’t anything new. The fact is, ACORN activists have always hid behind dozens of false front organizations and corporate identities to disguise their criminal network.

In California, for instance, one of the ACORN affiliates is changing its name to “Californians for Community Empowerment” and one of the New York offices will now be known as “New York Communities for Change.” But all the same people that ran these former ACORN offices in these states are still there, no change has been made but the name.

We also saw the shady groups connected with ACORN but not named ACORN just last year during the Doug Hoffman, New York 23 arc. There an ACORN affiliate had created a fake political party in order to funnel cash to the Democrat running in that race. One of the organizations hip-deep in that election was a political group called the Working Families Party. Of course, the WFP is more-or-less a front for ACORN in New York and no political party at all.
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ACORN’s Tangled Branches”


California’s Brown Tells Unions to ‘Attack’ His GOP Opponent

-By Warner Todd Huston

You couldn’t get any better proof that unions are little else but hatchet men for the Democrat Party than Jerry Brown’s recent visit to a labor group meeting in California this week.

At a meeting of the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Sacramento, Brown gave marching orders to the unions in his race for the Democratic nomination for California Governor. He wanted them to “attack” the GOP for him.

“We’re going to attack whenever we can, but I’d rather have you attack. I’d rather be the nice guy in this race. We’ll leave [the attacks] to … the Democratic Party and others.”

That’s a pretty cynical campaign, isn’t it? Brown hopes to unleash the “attack” dogs of the unions in his favor, but expects to stand clear of the mud flying so as to appear untarnished… yet HE’S the guy that ordered the mud to fly in the first place?

Jerry Brown may think the voters are stupid but let’s hope they disabuse him of that notion.
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California’s Brown Tells Unions to ‘Attack’ His GOP Opponent”


Unions Top the $1 Billion Club in California Political Spending

-By Warner Todd Huston

The California Teachers Association spent $211,849,298 on lobbying and political spending to get its way in California in 2009. Along with the CTA, the Calif. State Council of Service Employees and 13 other organizations spent a total of one billion dollars on political lobbying of the State House at Sacramento. All of these special interests have helped push California to the brink of insolvency.

But, according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the two unions mentioned above far and away top the spending of the other top lobbying spenders in California. The next closest in spending was the Big Pharma clocking in at $104,912,997 on its political spending with various and sundry Indian casino groups whose spending was in the less than $85,000,000 range.

Commission Chairman Ross Johnson said in a press release, “This tsunami of special interest spending drowns out the voices of average voters and intimidates political opponents and elected officials alike.”
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Unions Top the $1 Billion Club in California Political Spending”


Liebau on Unions: ‘The System is Unsustainable’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Carol Platt Liebau posted a piece on RealCleaPolitics.com that also clangs the warning bells over the unsustainable situation that the various states find themselves in between their public employees unions and the states’ fiscal obligations. She focuses on California, but nearly every state in the union is quickly approaching the mess California is in.

Liebau writes of the effort that the teachers union in California led to get kids as young as five-years-old out of school so that they could be bussed to the state capitol in Sacramento in order to protest school budget cuts. Me, I think she races by this outrage too quickly.
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Liebau on Unions: ‘The System is Unsustainable’”


Teacher Wins Against Ban of His Patriotic Banners in Classroom

-By Warner Todd Huston

Back in January of 2007 math teacher Brad Johnson of Westview High in San Diego County, California was told by his school administrators told him he had to take down the patriotic banner he had put up in his classroom because the word “God” appeared on it.

Johnson, of course, was quite upset about being told to take down his banner and took the school to court. In 2008 Judge Roger T. Benitez sided with the patriotic-minded teacher saying that the school was “brash” in its effort to force the teacher to take down the banner.

Well, after so long we have some news to report on this story and it is good news, indeed. The very same judge that sided with Mr. Johnson two years ago has officially ruled in favor of the teacher’s right to free speech.
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Teacher Wins Against Ban of His Patriotic Banners in Classroom”


Public Employees Unions Destroying California

-By Warner Todd Huston

Mark Tapscot echoes our current theme here on the blog by reporting that California is once again in a disastrous budget shortfall and one of the biggest reason that this is so is the undue power of the recalcitrant public employees unions. Tapscot says that California cannot get out of its mess because, “the unions refuse to consider relaxing their death grip on California’s rapidly shrinking legion of tax payers.”

Tapscot thinks that California is coming to realize that the unions are going to have to be confronted in order to solve the spiraling budget woes, but I am doubtful. Looking at the mess from the outside would certainly cause one to draw such a conclusion, but inside the legislature at Sacramento one sees no hint that the unions are becoming the bad guys as they should be.

Still, I hope that Tapscot is right and the California can finally lead the country in a good thing by breaking the public employees unions and, hope of hopes, eliminating them.

And why are these unions so dangerous? Tapscot’s conclusion is a refrain we’ve been touting for years.

It’s not only that public sector unions are driving many state and local governments into fiscal insolvency by forcing them to accept contracts providing compensation benefits that far exceed those in the private sector for comparable work and that cannot be paid for without crippling tax increases.

We agree, of course.

Add this report to the mounting number of individuals coming to the same conclusion we came to here on the blog.
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Public Employees Unions Destroying California”


Public Employees Unions Are Sinking California, Part 2

-By Warner Todd Huston

(Editor’s note: Some of this I posted earlier this month, but this is an expanded version that was just posted by BigJournalism.com, so I thought I’d go ahead and post it here, too.)

Steven Greenhut has an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal about how the evils of public employees unions are destroying California’s budget and economy.

Greenhut begins by noting that with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, California is losing its “productive citizens” to other states but is still saddled with an economy killing surfeit of public employees unions that, “drive costs up and fight to block spending cuts.”

Greenhut goes on to report that the unfunded pensions that California is stuck with has increased by 2,000% in the last decade because of the overweening power of the unions.

Approximately 85% of the state’s 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, “This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs.” There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

That is an absurd reality!
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Public Employees Unions Are Sinking California, Part 2″


Public Employees Unions Are Sinking California

-By Warner Todd Huston

Steven Greenhut has a great piece in the Wall Street Journal about how the evils of public employees unions are destroying California.

Greenhut begins by noting that with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country California is losing its “productive citizens” to other states but is still saddled with an economy killing surfeit of public unions employees that “drive costs up and fight to block spending cuts.”

Greenhut goes on to report that the unfunded pensions that California is stuck with has increased by 2,000% in the last decade because of the overweening power of the unions.
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Public Employees Unions Are Sinking California”


John Stossel Gives me a Shout Out

-By Warner Todd Huston

Usually I don’t give notice for every single time some news agency cites my work. If I did I’d be spending too much time doing it (no, that wasn’t too self congratulatory at all! Ha, ha). But here is one that I am sort of proud of.

On his new Fox Business blog, long-time TV libertarian John Stossel cited my piece on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s union woes today. In a post titled “Unions’ Next Victim: California” Stossel cited my Publius Forum piece published on Jan.5.

I have a ton of respect for Mr. Stossel even as I don’t agree with some of his more libertarian ideas (such as those on drug control and prostitution) but he is right on in so much. So, that being said (and why must they always say it, right John?) I was pleased to see Mr. Stossel citing my piece.

Also, I want to wish good luck to Stossel on his new job with Fox Business channel.


Once Again Unions Find a Pliant Judge to do Their Bidding

-By Warner Todd Huston

In another example of why unions are antithetical to good government, a pliant, left-wing judge in California has ruled that the Schwarzenegger Administration cannot furlough state workers that belong to three powerful public employees unions.

Governor Schwarzenegger has been battling to cut his over spent state budget for several years now and one of the solutions to the problem that he lit upon was the idea that he might furlough his workforce. He would give these workers a few days a month off without pay and this would save the taxpayer’s millions. It is a good idea and one that real-world businesses are forced to employ all the time when things get tough.

But here come the state unions to prevent this simple cost saving measure even though it is common as dirt in the real-world sector.
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Once Again Unions Find a Pliant Judge to do Their Bidding”


Rep. Brian Billbray: Rep. Gutierrez is Creating the Next Wave of Illegal Immigration

-By Warner Todd Huston

Representative Luis Gutierrez (D, IL) will introduce another stab at “comprehensive immigration reform” this month and it’s been given another one of those Orwellian names that you know means the opposite of what it says in the title. Gutierrez is calling this mess the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009, or the CIR ASAP — in other words Comprehensive Immigration Reform ASAP.

The simple fact of the matter is that, regardless of the name, this legislation will do nothing whatever to help our security or our prosperity. In fact it will damage both.

In his press release touting this bill, Gutierrez said the following:

“We have waited patiently for a workable solution to our immigration crisis to be taken up by this Congress and our President,” said Rep. Gutierrez. “The time for waiting is over. This bill will be presented before Congress recesses for the holidays so that there is no excuse for inaction in the New Year. It is the product of months of collaboration with civil rights advocates, labor organizations, and members of Congress. It is an answer to too many years of pain —mothers separated from their children, workers exploited and undermined security at the border— all caused at the hands of a broken immigration system. This bill says ‘enough,’ and presents a solution to our broken system that we as a nation of immigrants can be proud of.”

This morning I spoke to Representative Brian Billbray in that nation’s capitol and found him chagrined by the whole thing. Billbray is the Chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus and is from California’s 50th District which is situated in the San Diego County area.
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Rep. Brian Billbray: Rep. Gutierrez is Creating the Next Wave of Illegal Immigration”


Cops Insist on Getting Paid for Dressing Themselves

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here is another reason why unions need to be destroyed…

Do you think your boss should pay you for getting dressed in the morning or for taking off your day’s clothes to climb into your snuggly Pjs each night? No reasonable, sane person would. But unions are neither reasonable, sane, nor apparently interested in what’s good and right. At least the moron unionists in Oakland, California are illicit like that because the thugs of the police union have found some halfwit judge to agree with them that the city… that would mean the taxpayers… should pay them for zipping up their fly each morning and taking off their clothes at the end of each day.

In the height of arrogance, idiocy, and theft of taxes, these Cop thugs have been suing the city to get paid for “donning and doffing,” or in more sensible English, for putting on and taking off their uniforms each day. It’s bad enough these creeps had the gonads to make this idiotic attempt to steal the taxpayer’s money in the first place, but the feckless “legal” system in California has allowed it to go on AND have absurdly given these greedy public servants a victory over it all.
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Cops Insist on Getting Paid for Dressing Themselves”


With Another $15 Million, Poizner is Poizner’s Biggest Contributor

-By Warner Todd Huston

California Insurance Commissioner and candidate for the GOP nomination for Governor, Steve Poizner, has announced that he’ll donate another $15 million of his own fortune to float his flagging Gubernatorial campaign making himself his biggest contributor.

Once the transfer is complete, Mr. Poizner will have donated a total of just over $19 million of his own cash to his campaign. And it should be noted that this is being termed a donation, not a loan.

Let’s be clear, though, Poizner is not the only major candidate for governor that is using his own fortune to fund his race. Chief opponent Meg Whitman has loaned about $15 million of her own money to her campaign, as well. It is expected that she will dip into her own pocket even more as the race rolls on.
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With Another $15 Million, Poizner is Poizner’s Biggest Contributor”


American Liberty v. Obama’s Social Engineering

-By Frank Salvato

After the General Election of 2008 I made a conscious effort to give President Obama a chance. I wanted to give him an opportunity to be true to his word; to prove that he was committed to governing from the center. I also wanted to demonstrate that I was not of the same ilk as the Bush-hating, “he stole the election,” fact-ignoring Progressive malcontents that served to divide the country over the eight years of the Bush Administration. But now, a year after the election, and as we approach a full year of the Obama Administration, it has become abundantly clear that Mr. Obama has abandoned almost all of his campaign promises (but for his commitments to the SEIU) and is governing from the far Left. He has instituted a campaign of social engineering that can only be described as a direct threat to liberty.

Liberty
Liberty is defined as, “freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.” It was the single most motivating factor in the American Revolution and war for independence. Our Founders and Framers risked their lives to free the people of what would become our nation from the elitist tyranny of King George and his court, a tyranny that choked liberty – personal and societal – dead.

In addition to the limitations placed on religious freedom and freedom of speech, taxation was excessive and exploitative and it was imposed without representation. Many of the colonists believed the denial of direct representation in the British Parliament was an illegal denial of their rights, as colonists were considered Englishmen subject to the king’s rule. Thus the credo, “no taxation without representation,” served as the rallying cry for Patriots in each of the thirteen colonies as they coalesced into a movement toward American independence.

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American Liberty v. Obama’s Social Engineering”


SEIU Fixing the Vote in Fresno, Too

-By Warner Todd Huston

A few weeks ago we reported on how the Services Employees International Union was attempting to fix the vote in Sonoma County, California so that Sonoma’s in-home healthcare workers would end up with SEIU representation instead of NUHW representation.

Well, Sonoma wasn’t an isolated case. The SEIU used the same vote fixing tactics in Fresno County.

Andy Stern’s SEIU is playing hardball, using techniques that harken back to the mob-infested old days in order to win the game of representation. And THIS is the guy that President Obama is taking close counsel from? A goon. A thug. A mob-like hitman.

Its the Chicago Way, alright. From Chicago to Fresno and Sonoma Counties all the way to the White House. This president and his cronies are instituting mob action everywhere they go.
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SEIU Fixing the Vote in Fresno, Too”


Union Violates Free Speech, the Right to Vote and Smashes Common American Democracy

-By Warner Todd Huston

There’s not much that union supporters and I can agree upon. But here is one incident where I can wholeheartedly support the aggrieved members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) who have found themselves victims of their own union.

The SEIU wanted to renegotiate a contract with officials of Sonoma County, California for its in-home healthcare workers supported by county funds. SEIU representatives met with and crafted a new contract with the assistance of County officials. This was all done behind closed doors without the general knowledge of or the assistance of the workers themselves.

But that isn’t the main problem here. It’s how the contract was approved that shows how little the SEIU cares for democracy, member’s rights, and the American way.
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Union Violates Free Speech, the Right to Vote and Smashes Common American Democracy”


Sacramento City College Crushes Student’s Free Speech

**UDPATE** 11/9/09

-By Warner Todd Huston

For Constitution Day this year at Sacramento City College Associated Student Government (ASG) President and student Steve Macias arranged for a group named Genocide Awareness Project, an anti-abortion group, to participate on campus in the Constitution Day activities.

The group was approved for participation by the ASG and set up its booth at the appointed time. And then the world came to an end. Pro-Infanticide groups such as Planned Parenthood set up their own, countering booths the next day and left-wing hatemongers in the student body immediately began to circulate a recall petition to have Mr. Macias removed from the Associated Student Government leadership.

There is also some speculation that this insane, un-American recall effort being visited upon Mr. Macias is being tacitly approved of by the College adviser overseeing the ASG.
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Sacramento City College Crushes Student’s Free Speech”


Obama’s Newest Racemongering Judge: California’s Edward Chen

-By Warner Todd Huston

President Obama has gone out of his way to “diversify” the federal bench with his spate of nominations of various minorities chief of which was his successful seating of the “wise Latina,’ Sonia Sotomayor, on the Supreme Court. Obama’s nominees* for 10 district court openings include four African-Americans, three Asian-Americans, one Latino and four women. One of those nominees, San Francisco U.S. Magistrate Judge Edward Chen, received a favorable vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington today.

So what sort of judge is Edward Chen? Well, for one, the left-wing American Bar Association rated Chen a “well qualified” nominee and many of his associates at the ACLU speak highly of him. As an ACLU lawyer, Chen was known for opposing English-only policies and for pushing discriminatory affirmative action ideals. He even came to the aid of gang members in one case. Chen was quite the ACLU activist between 1979 and 2001.

His ACLU history would suffice to make many wary of him, of course. But for a segment of America, working for the ACLU is not a disqualifier. So in order to judge Edward Chen one must look at his past. Discovering what Judge Chen thinks of the country upon which he apparently assumes to sit in judgment is a telling exercise. Sadly, it seems he has quite a low opinion of the nation that he will be serving.
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Obama’s Newest Racemongering Judge: California’s Edward Chen”


Meg Whitman’s Extreme Pro-Abortion Views

-By Warner Todd Huston

A few weeks ago Jon Fleischman of FlashReport.org was fortunate enough to snag an interview with gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. But the results of one segment of the meeting left him admittedly non-plussed, or as he termed it “unnerved.” Fleischman was aghast to learn of just how extreme Meg Whitman’s views on abortion really are. And after reading Fleischman’s interview myself, I have to wonder if her views makes her completely unelectable amongst California’s pro-lifers?

In the interview, Whitman was completely upfront about the fact that she stands solidly behind public funding of abortion. She was unequivocal about it, really. Whitman explained why she felt that public funding of abortion was the right decision telling Fleischman, “My view is that if we are going to be pro-choice… that it needs to be available to all women, and whether you are rich or poor, you need to be able to access that right. And it’s unfair to women who can not afford an abortion, and that’s why I support public funding.”

It’s one thing to say that a woman should be allowed to chose abortion — this is quite a common determination among liberals — but quite another, indeed, to say that the taxpayers should have to pay for that abortion.
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Meg Whitman’s Extreme Pro-Abortion Views”


Carly Fiorina: Looking Like a Good Fit for Conservatives

-By Warner Todd Huston

Cary Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO and probable candidate for U.S. Senate from California, is starting to look like a viable choice for conservative voters in the Golden State, giving the GOP two conservatives from whom to chose.

Fiorina’s bona fides have been a question to many California Republicans because she is a relative newcomer to politics and many are not familiar with her political philosophy or what her campaign will stand for. But her recent hard hitting editorial in the Fresno Bee helps bring her ideals better into focus for the voters.

Firoina’s editorial in the Bee focuses on the water controversy of the San Joaquin Valley. As many know, a federal bureaucracy has summarily shut off water to thousands of acres of farmland merely in order to save a fish; the delta smelt. This enviro-activism has shut down thousands of acres of farmland and put thousands of residents out of work. Down the line it will also negatively affect the nation’s food supply because the San Joaquin Valley supplies much of our vegetables and fruits.
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Carly Fiorina: Looking Like a Good Fit for Conservatives”


Whitman’s Spotty Voting Record: Not Exactly as it Seemed?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Much has been made about Meg Whitman’s spotty voting record by many, including me. When the Sacramento Bee’s Andrew McIntosh first reported that records for Whitman’s voter registration going back a decade or so were nearly non-existent it seemed that the anti-Whitman camp(s) out there had quite an issue to hang their hats upon. It sure made me wary of her campaign, to be sure.

After all, wouldn’t it say something interesting if this purportedly life-long Republican candidate had little history of even voting at all — much less for other Republicans — until recently? Whether its a fair question or not, it does make one wary of such a candidate. How could the voters be asked to vote for someone that herself hasn’t seemed too interested in voting?

Of course, this whole question is only legitimate if the newspaper that broke the story had all its facts straight. Now, it is starting to look like the Bee’s story is not as cut and dried as it was presented.
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Whitman’s Spotty Voting Record: Not Exactly as it Seemed?”


Meg Whitman: A Big Lib Supporter?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Meg Whitman has had some bad days lately. After recently proclaiming herself a “darned good” conservative Republican, Senator Barbara Boxer’s staff revealed that Whitman was a Boxer supporter in 2003. Dangerously for Whitman, Senator Boxer is one of the most liberal members of the Senate.

According to Boxer aide Rose Kapolczynski, Whitman supported Boxer’s “Technology Leaders for Boxer” effort in April of 2003. A letter from Boxer’s office from 2003 features a quote from Whitman stating that she felt Boxer was a “courageous leader and friend of California’s technology industry.” (see image below)

This is just one more troublesome issue on top of her voting record — or lack thereof.
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Meg Whitman: A Big Lib Supporter?”


The Curious Case of Linda McMahon

-By Warner Todd Huston

We seem to have a trio of sudden Republicans in the news these days. I say sudden because there is a lack of any long history on the part of these three candidates of being Republicans for very long before running for office. In fact, it seems that all three only became Republicans once they stepped up to run for office.

I’ve written previously about California’s Steve Poizner, gubernatorial candidate and current State Insurance Commissioner. Poizner had no public history of being a Republican prior to his attempts to run for election in the local and state elections he targeted once he got bitten by the politics bug. In fact, he had a history of donating big money to Democrats right up until the time he started to run as a Republican.

California has a second one, too. Meg Whitman has no Republican history prior to her running for governor there. Though she has no history of large donations to Democrats that I have seen, to be sure.
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The Curious Case of Linda McMahon”


Is The NRSC Jumping the Gun in California?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Rasmussen polling group has recently reported its findings on the upcoming California Senate race and the results seem to say that the National Republican Senate Committee has jumped the gun by endorsing a candidate so early in the race.

To date, Rasmussen has found that incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer (D) is holding her own against both Republican candidates, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as well as State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

A new Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 survey of the contest in California shows Boxer now beating former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina by 10 points 49% to 39%. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are not sure how they will vote.

Against state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, it’s a nine-point race, with Boxer ahead 46% to 37%. Seven percent (7%) prefer another candidate, and 10% are undecided.

It may be a dubious distinction, but at this point DeVore and Fiorina are finding poll results that aren’t much different one from the other. One difference, though, is that Rasmussen finds Fiorina’s unfavaorables standing at 12% while DeVore’s is at 9% — a slight advantage to DeVore, there.
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Is The NRSC Jumping the Gun in California?”


Poizner Signs Anti-Tax Pledge Despite History of Supporting Tax Hikes

-By Warner Todd Huston

SoCal radio wags John and Ken got California GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner to sign a no tax pledge this week. This is momentous news, indeed, since Poizner, the current State Insurance Commissioner and putative GOP frontrunner, has a long, long history of supporting massive property tax hikes that he has yet to directly disavow.

Radio talkers John and Ken witnessed Poizner’s signing of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge during their Los Angeles based show this week. (See photos here.)

As he signed the pledge, Poizner told the radio talkers, “Not only will I not raise taxes, not only will I veto every attempt to raise taxes, I will lower taxes for the people of the state of California. You can count on that.”

Poizner joins 34 U.S. Senators and 172 members of the House of Representatives as well as 7 state governors and over 1,100 state legislators in signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. The pledge commits signers to, “oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes.”
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Poizner Signs Anti-Tax Pledge Despite History of Supporting Tax Hikes”