California's state legislature just passed, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed, Assembly Bill 3121 to explore providing reparations to California's African American population — 155 years after the abolition of slavery. Apparently, when California's one-party government cannot find solutions to current existential crises, it turns to divisive…

As infernos raged this week and California descended further into its self-created dysfunctional abyss, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti tweeted the following alert:   It’s almost 3 p.m.  Time to turn off major appliances, set the thermostat to 78 degrees (or use a fan instead), turn off excess lights and unplug any appliances…

The same weekend that Orthodox Jews in Monsey, New York, were fighting off another knife-wielding anti-Semite thug with chairs and coffee tables – they were fortunate that the perpetrator hadn't brought a firearm, like the killer who targeted a yeshiva in Jersey City only a few weeks earlier – Jack Wilson, a 71-year-old congregant and security…

From 1967 to 2019, Republicans controlled the California governorship for 31 of 52 years. So why is there currently not a single statewide Republican officeholder? California also has a Democratic governor and Democratic supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature. Only seven of California's 53 congressional seats are held by Republicans…

Have you heard about the hottest (no pun intended) can’t-miss pickup line in California singles bars these days?  “Hi.  I’ve got electricity.”  Or how about the latest billboard ad campaign from Texas, luring businesses and residents desperately fleeing California?    “Move to Texas. …

For over six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax. The state legislature sold that confiscatory tax rate on the idea that it was a temporary fix and would eventually be phased…

Californians brag that their state is the world's fifth-largest economy. They talk as reverentially of Silicon Valley companies Apple, Facebook and Google as the ancient Greeks did of their Olympian gods. Hollywood and universities such as Caltech, Stanford and Berkeley are cited as permanent proof of the intellectual, aesthetic and technological…

"Frontier justice" costs too many citizens of all races, creeds, and backgrounds their freedom and their lives. In the old days of the Wild West, vigilantes worked outside the judicial system to punish rivals regardless of their guilt or innocence. Today, outlaws operate inside the bureaucracy to secure criminal convictions at all costs.…

As the Oklahoma attorney general's office fights to keep hidden from public view the results of secret hearings on the DNA science flaws and falsehoods in former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw's case, two prominent experts have stepped forward to shed bright light on the government's myriad mind-boggling failures. Forensic scientist…

Amendment II  A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.  You'd assume that the explicit terms of the Second Amendment would resolve any debate over the individual right to keep and bear arms.  All too often throughout American…

"People Moving from New York Outnumber Arrivals by Nearly Two-to-One, Report Says."  That was a recent Albany Times Union headline highlighting the ongoing mass exodus from deep-blue New York:  United Van Lines reported Tuesday that nearly two-thirds of the moves involving New York households were outbound, a higher proportion…

If you're employed, beware. An alarming attitude is sweeping the nation that your paycheck is fair game to fix any social problem. Left-wing legislators across the nation are mandating deductions from everyone's paycheck to fund paid family medical leave programs. The programs are used mostly by women to stay home with their newborns. Sounds warm and…

California Governor Jerry Brown has announced he will issue an executive order that mandates statewide water rationing. “This executive order is done under emergency power,” Brown, a Democrat, said while appearing on ABC’s This Week. “It’s requiring action and changes in behavior from the Oregon border all the way to…

In an era when most liberals are busy trying to grow government, Democratic leaders in Minnesota just struck 1,175 laws from the books. Democratic Governor Mark Dayton pitched the idea of a legislative “unsession” last fall as a way to update and simplify the state’s regulatory structure. Dayton, who is running for reelection this…

California has long prided itself on being a leader in promoting greater fuel efficiency in automobiles. The Golden State incentivized sales of hybrid and electric cars by allowing single-occupant use of its carpool lanes to drivers of low- and zero-emission vehicles. The “California Global Warming Solutions Act” (i.e. AB 32) seeks to fight…

Defenders of federalism — the practice of devolving as much power as practicable to state and local governments, consistent with the 10th Amendment to the Constitution — often cite as their mantra the phrase of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who wrote in his 1932 dissent in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann that "a single courageous…

For all of the Democratic Party’s success in turning Colorado into a swing state, the recall of two pro-gun control state senators offers an instructive lesson about what happens when liberals overreach.  On Tuesday night, State Senate President John Morse and his colleague Angela Giron, both Democrats, became the first elected officials…

Liberals incessantly claim fealty to “science,” while falsely caricaturing libertarians and conservatives as the ones stubbornly ideological and averse to real-world facts.  Scientific method, however, involves objective observation and testing beliefs against results.  In that vein, it is liberals who prove habitually impervious…

This week, Illinois ended its dubious distinction as the final state prohibiting citizens from carrying concealed firearms.  The change was compelled by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which ruled last year that Illinois’s draconian restrictions on the individual right to keep and bear arms amounted to a violation…

Liberals, who spent the Bush years exalting themselves as the defenders of science and sweet reason, have a bit of a problem on their hands. These paragons of logic, who will supposedly go wherever the evidence takes them, are currently having their most fundamental beliefs in the proper role of government disproved in a nationwide experiment. The…

With another Republican governor reversing course and agreeing to expand Medicaid spending under ObamaCare, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the real reason for the capitulations isn’t a bad understanding of economics – it’s first-rate political opportunism.    On Monday, Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich…

In my former life as a labor attorney, I occasionally posed a question that union representatives across the table never seemed prepared to answer.  The situation almost always proceeded the same way.  Union negotiators would heap invective upon management, usually with a generous serving of vulgarity, followed by a litany of wage and benefit…

Flush with an estimated $6 billion in new annual tax revenues after voters passed Proposition 30, California Governor Jerry Brown is claiming victory over the state’s chronic budget deficit.  But Brown’s failure to reform two of the main drivers of overspending – public employee unions and their collective bargaining rights &…

With even The Daily Beast now focusing attention on the breathtaking scope of Barack Obama’s abusive expansions of presidential power, Gulf Coast lawmakers wisely are rallying opposition to The One’s latest attempted end-run around Congress. Not only is the Obama administration reportedly trying to seize control of BP oil-spill payments…

In their masterful book, “Why Nations Fail: the Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson write, “political and economic institutions, which are ultimately the choice of society, can be inclusive and encourage economic growth. Or they can be extractive and become impediments to economic growth.…

If the United States were a high school, California would likely be the quarterback of the football team. Blessed as it is by geography, climate, culture and natural resources, it is a state that takes success as a given. And why not? How many other states can boast of an appeal so widespread that it gives birth to a notion as storied as “The…

ALEXANDRIA, VA – The Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) today announced the launch of an enhanced State Sovereignty Project devoted to persuading all 50 states to aggressively exercise their authority to serve as a check on the ever-growing and often extra-constitutional power of the federal government. CFIF’s State Sovereignty…

“This is a courageous step forward for California’s future.” Those were the words recently uttered by Jim Wunderman, a man who must be accounted an optimist given the general consensus that “California’s future” is something of a bear market. The occasion for Mr. Wunderman’s remarks, however, reveal him to…

Wisconsin’s Scott Walker isn’t the only Midwestern governor to facedown a recall threat after altering the balance of power between the state teachers union and local taxpayers.  On September 24, 2011, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed into law a simple reform that could save taxpayers as much as $1 billion within the next decade…

How’s this for a Hollywood pitch?  A retired California city administrator drawing an annual public pension of $540,000 pleads guilty to misappropriation of funds.  His former associate tries to justify making $1.6 million in one year. The crusading Speaker of the state assembly wants to abolish the city after fifty years of corruption…