Free Republic

Singer Barbra Streisand has sent an email in support of California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 63, requesting $5 donations “to defeat the National Rifle Association” (NRA). Streisand pointed to the 1993 Long Island Railroad shooting to explain her support for more gun control. According to the Sacramento Bee, Streisand’s email said, “Like you, California is my home, and I can’t just wait around hoping tragedy doesn’t strike our state again. If there’s something we can do that will stop innocent Californians from being shot and killed, I will do everything I can to see it done.”

LISTEN TO THE REAL REVEREND JESSE ON THE INTERNET OR A RADIO STATION IN YOUR AREA......BOND Action, Inc...Educating, Motivating and Rallying Americans! GUESTS TODAY...Rabbi Shifren,(Surfin' Rabbi) Troy Newman,(Operation Rescue) Malik Zulu Shabazz,(New Black Panthers) Yahya Bandele (What is a black a Hebrew? Lost children of Israel?) The Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show Streamed live online from 6-9 a.m. PST / 9-12 a.m. EST. For Live Questions or Comments Call 1-888-77-JESSE(5-3773) You can email comments and questions to radio@bondaction.org For more information on getting The Jesse Lee Peterson Show picked up on a station in your local area call Ermias Alemayehu...

Thomasson: “There is now no difference in California law between marriage rights for a husband and wife and marriage rights for homosexuals.” Sept. 30 -- Campaign for Children and Families, a California-based pro-family organization defending marriage, children, and family values, is appalled that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill putting the last nail in the coffin for marriage between a man and a woman in California. On Sept. 30, the last day to sign or veto bills on his desk, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed SB 1827 by lesbian state Senator Carole Migden, a San Francisco Democrat. SB 1827 requires the...

I don't recall even being in a situation where the closer Election Day gets, the less likely I am to vote for the GOP nominee. Yet, that is where I find myself vis-a-vis Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm one of many conservatives who voted for Arnold in the recall, despite my preference for Tom McClintock. I found the prospect of Cruz Bustamante in the governor's office horrifying and wasn't convinced McClintock could win. The stakes so too high I though it prudent to back the Republican with the best chance of winning, and so I cast my vote for Arnold. Like...

After trailing all summer in the governor's contest, Democratic contender Phil Angelides described himself this week as a championship boxer eyeing a comeback in the closing rounds. But while Angelides tried to muster enthusiasm for his fight against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Democratic legislators huddled in the governor's corner to strike a global warming deal that gave the Republican his most significant election-year accomplishment. The timing seemed particularly bad for Angelides. As he focused this week on linking the governor with President Bush, the greenhouse gas reduction plan was widely portrayed as a Schwarzenegger snub of the Bush administration on an...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to cap California's greenhouse gas emissions is just the latest in a string of recent deals with the Democrats that could help him win back the moderate voters so vital to his re-election bid this fall. The deal announced Wednesday between the Republican governor and leaders of the Democratic-controlled Legislature would make California the first state to limit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from factories and other industrial sites. Earlier in the week, the two sides agreed to raise the state's minimum wage and create a prescription drug discount program. Democrats have...

For all their differences, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Democratic challenger, Treasurer Phil Angelides, have at least one thing in common. Each man continues to struggle with his positioning in the political marketplace. Schwarzenegger has famously shifted left since his disastrous “Year of Reform” special election debacle last year. Is the super-rich former action superstar back where he was when he entered politics, prior to embarking on a foolhardy path in 2005? Or is he, as many Democrats and a few Republicans argue, simply being an opportunist who will say or do anything to regain his popularity? Angelides, a rich...

Those who believe in nothing will fall for anything, as the old saying goes. So it's only fitting that a Republican Party that has ceased to believe in anything has fallen for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe in the early days of his administration, and through the defeat of his reform agenda last November, it was defensible to support him. But no more. Yet many Republican leaders at the state GOP convention in Century City were still atwitter over the Terminator's tired clichés and faux tough talk. --snip At Century City, Schwarzenegger blasted the Democrats: "Our friends in the other campaign...

Take risks–Unseating an incumbent governor is never easy. It’s only happened once since World War II. Given that fact, Angelides has to be aggressive and take some risks. Here are some things he could do: o Attack Arnold from the right : § Illegal immigration–Arnold has angered the conservative base with some of his comments on this issue. The Angelides campaign, or perhaps an anti-Arnold independent expenditure campaign, could attack Arnold in the mail or on the radio and use Arnold’s own words against him. § Taxes/government spending–The state government continues to run what is essentially a deficit and Arnold’s...

Californians deserve a spirited campaign not just for the governorship, but for the other six "down ballot" partisan statewide offices. But as the most recent poll numbers indicate, the races have a notable leftward tilt, and Republican candidates for the offices other than governor are in danger of being swept at the ballot box in November. This could be the continuation of a trend. In 2002, no Republican won a statewide race. In 1998, two Republicans won. Then, in 2003, the recall election brought Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger to power; he later appointed a Republican secretary of state after the incumbent...

SACRAMENTO State lawmakers are betting that voters eager to avoid a Katrina-style disaster in California will rally behind a $4.1 billion bond on the November ballot to shore up the state's fragile levees. While few experts disagree that California needs to rebuild its aging levee system, an Associated Press review of the bond has found the measure requires voters to take a leap of faith that the state will spend the money the way lawmakers have promised. An extensive examination of the measure, reviews of state and federal studies, and interviews with two dozen water experts, lawmakers and environmentalists have...

California voters will be asked to approve a $4.1 billion levee bond in November. The figure represents a compromise between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had sought about $6.5 billion, and Democratic lawmakers, who had wanted to spend about half that. THE PROBLEM: _ Levee system: A fragile network of 2,300 miles of levees in the state's Central Valley and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is in need of major repairs. The system includes 1,600 miles of levees that were reinforced in the 1960s and 1970s and 700 miles that amount to little more than grassy berms. It was built more than...

Mention Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in this heavily Hispanic section of Los Angeles County and the response is almost invariably negative. "I still think he's an actor, and not a good one at that," said Flora Lopez, 56, a supervision aide at a local school. "To me, Arnold hasn't done anything," said America Aguilar, 26, a student at California State University, Fullerton. "He cut the budget for the schools," said Arely Gonzales, a 27-year-old nurse, who pronounced the governor, "Awful." Their harsh views illustrate how far Schwarzenegger's star has fallen among Hispanics since the heady days of the 2003 recall election,...

Four years ago, the state set a new low for turnout in the 2002 governor's election. But don't look for that to happen again, said Stephen Kinney, a partner with Public Opinion Strategies, in a speech Friday at the Southeast Chapter of the Los Angeles County Lincoln Club. Kinney predicted a turnout of 58 percent for the Nov. 6 election, in contrast to 50.5 percent in 2002. He based the prediction on his polling data. Schwarzenegger's approval ratings are up to about 56 percent, he said. "If you ask people what the important problems are, Iraq rarely comes up," Kinney...

Tension between Antonio Villaraigosa and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Angelides surfaced Friday as the Los Angeles mayor declined to say whether he backed his own party's candidate to unseat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The rift between two of California's top Democrats became clear just after they appeared with Magic Johnson to celebrate the opening of a Starbucks on Crenshaw Boulevard. Minutes after Villaraigosa's tepid remarks on his candidacy, Angelides refused to take a stand on Villaraigosa's plan to take over the Los Angeles public schools. The dual snubs were part of a broad conflict between the two Democrats. Villaraigosa is torn...

Could Phil Angelides, the newly anointed Democratic candidate for governor, defeat Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger? Sure, it's a possibility. But will Angelides oust Schwarzenegger? With five months of campaigning ahead, it doesn't seem likely. Liberal Democrats may have gotten the champion they wanted, but in choosing Angelides over rival Steve Westly after a mudslinging contest, they also gave Schwarzenegger the challenger he wanted. The governor and his advisers believe that Angelides is too liberal, too angrily intense and too charisma-challenged to expand his appeal beyond hard-core Democrats to independents and moderates. Pre-election polls uniformly showed that Angelides fared worse than Westly...

After months of having the Democrats all over the state airwaves, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be wasting no time after the June 6 primary to get back into the starring role in California politics. .... Then, it's Terminator Time: Word is filtering out that he'll hit the road on a big bus tour the next day. If that's true, it will not only put the pedal to the metal -- it won't give the Dems (or hey, the press corps) much time to recuperate from what's been a scorched earth campaign. ...... One other thing: Arnold looks to be going...

SACRAMENTO – An initiative on the June 6 ballot that would give all 4-year-olds the right to attend preschool is casting California once again in the role of possible national trendsetter. A drive to give all children the chance to begin school a year before kindergarten, with the aim of helping them become better readers and learners later on, has begun in Oklahoma, Georgia and Florida. But Proposition 82 is much more ambitious and likely more controversial – not only because the program would be funded by $2 billion a year raised through increased taxes on upper-income Californians. The measure,...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is attempting a political comeback as he faces reelection this year, courting Democrats and independent voters by distancing himself from President Bush and pushing an expensive bond proposal to rebuild California's levees, schools and highways. Schwarzenegger, one of the nation's most prominent Republicans, has criticized Bush's plan to dispatch the National Guard to the Mexican border. He has appointed Democrats to key state jobs. In recent weeks, he helped engineer a bipartisan compromise to get the $37 billion bond proposal on the November ballot, traveling the state with Democratic legislative leaders to promote it. And he has...

Arnold Schwarzenegger now has the former top aides to his two would-be Democratic rivals working for him. It’s all part of his strategy of “buying off the ticked off,” as an Arnold friend puts it. Yesterday the governor moved unilaterally to take another major Democratic issue off the table by raising the minimum wage. Today he appoints lifelong Democrat and environmental favorite Linda Adams as his new secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency. With the retirement of veteran air quality warrior Alan Lloyd from CalEPA, there had been concern in environmental circles that the secretaryship would go to a...