Free Republic

Steven Greenhut may be the most annoying man in America. No, it’s not because he’s a mean guy or that he has created some silly reality show like Jersey Shores. It’s because Steve, a former Orange County Register columnist, writes books that you need to read, but are totally infuriating and raise your blood pressure a good fifty points. Even though I met Steve while he was covering a variety of political events in his pure journalism days, he didn’t inform me when his first book, Abuse of Power, was published in 2004. I actually learned about it when it...

In April 2008, The Orange County Register published a bombshell of an investigation about a license plate program for California government workers and their families. Drivers of nearly 1 million cars and light trucks—out of a total 22 million vehicles registered statewide—were protected by a “shield” in the state records system between their license plate numbers and their home addresses. There were, the newspaper found, great practical benefits to this secrecy. “Vehicles with protected license plates can run through dozens of intersections controlled by red light cameras with impunity,” the Register’s Jennifer Muir reported. “Parking citations issued to vehicles with...

Don't think of the May 19 ballot as a special election so much as an IQ test. California voters are being asked to approve six budget "reforms" that will supposedly fix the state's massive budget deficit and keep politicians from digging a big hole in the future. The titles and verbiage for each one are rather complex, but it's not any test of intelligence to figure out what the measures really mean. ... The real test comes with our decision about how to vote ... The underlying question for each of the propositions is the same: Are voters stupid enough...

According to local pastor Wiley Drake, the 5.4 magnitude earthquake that hit Southern California on Tuesday was not just one of those typical seismic events that take place with some regularity in these parts, but it was "[a]nother queer quake trying to get California's attention." Apparently, the Lord is mad about the legalization of gay marriage in this state. He can't be that mad, given that the quake didn't cause any death or much destruction, but Rev. Drake offers a warning: "We had better listen. 5.4 this time what is next!?" Drake is something of a caricature of a religious-right...

Syndicated columnist Bob Novak, writing about the surprising number of conservatives who are backing Democrat Barack Obama rather than Republican John McCain for the presidency, captured their widespread sentiment when he quoted one "Obamacon" with impeccable GOP credentials: "The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling around like zombies in a horror version of 'Weekend at Bernie,' handcuffed to a corpse." These Obama supporters hold no illusions about Obama's liberalism, but they are so angry at the GOP, Novak writes, that they seek a "therapeutic electoral bloodbath." Thomas Jefferson argued that "The tree...

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. … The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom, and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. … I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path." – President Ronald Reagan That quotation was appropriately reprinted on the first page of the official program for the Conservative Leadership Conference in Reno last weekend, an event that sought to rebuild the largely frayed conservative/libertarian Reagan coalition in time to...

Well, when you've got a headache, you take an aspirin. When you've got the flu, you take something a little stronger. When you've got cancer, you need chemotherapy, which kills cancer cells but can come perilously close to killing the patient. It's a sad truth, but the Republican Party has the political equivalent of cancer. The party is immune from internal reform. Only the nastiest medicine imaginable can save it, and four (but probably eight) years of Clinton, backed by a Democratic congressional majority, is pretty tough medicine. Columnist Joe Dumas, writing for the Chattanoogan.com, captured the party's problem succinctly:...

New York U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton is one of the most loathsome modern American politicians, given her barely disguised support for massive government programs, her grating schoolmarm personality and her aggressive political behavior, yet I'm left hoping that she obliterates any of the front-running Republican candidates and has long-enough coattails to expand Democratic control of the Senate and House of Representatives. Unless Republican candidate Ron Paul —- the only supporter of liberty in the bunch of GOP ne'er do wells —- somehow propels his impressive Internet campaign into an improbable electoral victory, there is nothing else, but a Clinton victory,...

Cities need to keep fees and taxes low. City staff should be helpful to customers. Hey, why not schedule office hours at times that suit those customers, not that suit city workers? Yet cities are increasingly closing their offices Fridays so that workers have another day off. Cities need to look at privatization and at shedding unnecessary departments – Sandy Springs, Ga., privatized the entire city (with the exception of public safety services) and is far better run and more efficient than neighboring cities. This new urban agenda also would end subsidies and special privileges for politically well-connected businesses, with...

Have you ever been in one of those destructive long-term relationships that, at some point, you really just needed to end? I'm not referring to my marriage to my lovely wife of 23 years, but to my 25-year relationship with the Republican Party. In recent years especially, I have found fewer things in common with the party. I feel used and abused. We've obviously grown in different and incompatible directions. It's a groan-inducing cliché, I know, but it applies here: I didn't leave the party; the party left me. I grew up in one of those East Coast Democratic households,...

Isn't that nice? The city of Manhattan Beach is renaming an oceanfront park, Bruces' Beach, after Charles A. and Willa Bruce, an African-American couple who had purchased the land in 1912 and developed it into a beachfront resort in the 1920s. The Bruces were driven off their land in the mid-1920s, according to a Los Angeles Times article last week, after city officials became uncomfortable with the idea of numerous black people sunbathing and dining at Bruces' Lodge. At the urging of the local community, the officials discovered a compelling public interest in creating a public park on that very...

We are told that Rudy Giuliani -- supposedly "America's mayor" for his calming speeches and commanding presence after the 9/11 attack on New York -- is that special Republican someone who can beat the nearly invincible Sen. Hillary Clinton. I dread Hillary as much as the next guy and am not fooled by her carefully orchestrated "moderation" as a senator. Once in office, we can expect her to push hard for socialized health care and other policies that expand the size and power of government.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger no doubt sees himself as the modern version of Pat Brown, the 1960s-era governor whose bold infrastructure programs literally paved the way for the state's prosperous and growing future. Our current governor has passed or proposed a series of admittedly bold programs: $43.3 billion in infrastructure bonds on top of the $42 billion recently passed by voters, new emissions regulations on top of the global-warming regulatory claptrap, a minimum-wage increase and now the universal health care plan he unveiled last week. But rather than building a solid foundation for the future, these programs encumber the state with...

Likewise, I've been reading the imaginative arguments from the "No on 90" committee. Proposition 90, slated for the November ballot, would ban the use of eminent domain for private uses – i.e., the transfer of your home to Costco – and would make governments pay compensation when they use regulations to steal property – i.e., the city of Brea's theft of millions of dollars in property by downzoning it so virtually nothing can be built on the land. Most Californians, liberal and conservative, would no doubt agree with the fundamental principles here. Yet a coalition of organizations in the anti-90...

Sometimes in politics the only thing worse than losing is winning. Let's start with the losing. I'm most bitter about the defeat of Proposition 90, the statewide initiative that would have banned eminent domain for private use and required cities to pay compensation for property value taken by regulation. It lost, 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent, pretty close given that the "yes on 90" campaign didn't do much of anything. I expected the corporate guys who benefit from eminent domain and the government agencies that like to exert their power to fund a powerful "no" campaign, deceptive as it was...

Those of us who argue that a system of free enterprise is far superior to one of control by government regulators are always tagged by our foes as lackeys of the rich, the powerful and big corporations. It is true that I often defend wealthy corporations against those who want to loot them. Yet I hold no illusions that corporate leaders are somehow on "our" side when it comes to issues of freedom and property rights. "[I]t's always been true that business is not a friend of a free market," argues Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. "I have given a...

At the Republican convention in San Jose last weekend, conservatives tried to mildly chasten Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for his more-liberal policies, but they were turned back by a Republican majority more interested in winning elections and putting up a facade of unity than in making a stand for principle. I'm saddened by what the failed revolt means for the Grand Old Party. The Republican Party is far from perfect, but if it doesn't stand up for limiting government, then those ideas will have no prominent place in the governing debate. Until the November special election, the governor had done a...

One of the wisest pieces of advice I can ever offer is to always deal in reality. Sometimes reality stinks, and it's easier to craft an elaborate fantasy world that soothes our inner turmoil. But, ultimately, it's a dangerous game to avoid The Truth. For those of us who follow California politics and who have invested countless hours in championing ideas and policies that would make this a freer, more prosperous and better state, it's tempting to assuage ourselves by thinking that the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis still matters. It's easy to lie to ourselves and suggest that...

... Those who control the legislative process (i.e., Sacramento Democrats) seem to have no concept of the nation's founding principles, such as limited government, personal responsibility, the rule of law, free enterprise. Even when they quote the founding fathers, they know only the words and not the meanings. (snip) Approximately 400 bills reached the floor of the Assembly in the final four-day frenzy, with only about 45 of them authored by Republicans. One bill after another ... tax, spend, regulate and impose the liberal Democratic social vision on the state. There's the plan to raise the state's minimum wage, with...

(snip) Here we have a Republican governor [Linda Lingle of Hawaii] who is a prime champion of something that flies in the face of everything a principled conservative or libertarian would stand for. I would say "I told you so," but I can't. During my speech in Hawaii, I championed the recall against our awful former governor, Gray Davis. But I voted for Schwarzenegger, who is becoming to California what Lingle is to Hawaii. I still like Schwarzenegger, but he is tacking left, hoping to defuse the union attacks against him. His reform agenda is in tatters, partly because of...