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Our view:It’s criminally negligent when politicians can’t set aside differences long enough to talk for a morning about an urgent public safety hazard The organizers of a wildfire forum in Sacramento on Wednesday brought together three members of the U.S. Congress and half a dozen state lawmakers. They drew the California fire marshal, the head of the state Fire Safe Council, Forest Service researchers and officials, and county supervisors from around the region. STORY TOOLS E-mail story Comments iPod friendly Printer friendly News alerts Subscribe to the paper Submit a news tip More Editorials Delta overhaul can't undercut northern rights...

“Legal Dramedy”, is how Wikipedia defines the format of the TV series Boston Legal. Living TV describes the show as a “… critically acclaimed and Emmy Award-winning quirky legal drama …” That is a good summary of why I first became enamored with this brilliantly entertaining program. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly common to hear the production characterized as “shamelessly liberal”. With that, Boston Legal’s brilliance and entertainment value has continued to decline and its charm is rapidly fading for me. Ironically, in a recent episode, entitled “Tabloid Nation”, Boston Legal, itself, addresses my very concern. In that episode, during...

Geraldine Ferraro’s impolitic commentary regarding Barack Obama has been widely covered and discussed. But in the rush to examine the really juicy part of her monologue, you know – the stuff about race – something else the 72 year old former congresswoman said is being lost. Toward the end of her recent, now infamous, interview, one that has apparently cost her that highly coveted role of “Honorary New York Leadership Council Chair�, the woman who broke political ice twenty-four years ago as the Democratic nominee for Vice President, talked about the big bad wolf of PARTISANSHIP. I’m referring to the...

When Barack Obama promises change for America, I graciously assume, for now, that he doesn't mean he will change America to conform to his apparently racist pastor's vision for this country, though that whole subject deserves far more scrutiny. But we should also seriously examine his promise to deliver a more harmonious climate. It's not just Obama. A lot of Democrats have been pushing the idea of bipartisanship for years. One of the Democrats' earliest criticisms of President Bush was that he didn't reach across the aisle and extend a hand to Democrats. Of course, the truth is precisely the...

Our inevitable withdrawal from Iraq could poison American politics for a generation. A few months ago, in a packed, stuffy room atop a hotel in downtown Washington, a prominent speaker made a startling remark. Even more startling, no one in the audience seemed startled. The audience was a predominantly conservative crowd assembled by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a right-of-center think tank. The speaker was Bernard Lewis, a doyen of Western Islamic studies and a man widely admired on the right for his prescient warnings about radical Islam. (Among his writings is a 1990 article for this magazine, “The...

First, he dismissed Roll Call’s assertion -- that the majority of “airdropped earmarks” in recent legislation favored committee members and vulnerable incumbents -- as just “somebody’s news article.” Then, literally seconds later, Harry Reid suggested that Iraqis’ resentment of American presence on their soil can be readily assessed – by reading somebody’s news article. When asked at Wednesday’s Democratic Leaders Year-End Legislative Briefing whether the role of “airdropped” earmarks in the $555 billion spending package approved by the House on Wednesday betrayed the “restoring accountability” reform promise Dems ran on last year, Reid replied: “I would suggest you read the...

On today's "Morning Joe," Joe Scarborough asked Chris Matthews if Republican candidates would try to get a "cheap applause line" tonight by pointing to his recent controversial comments. Said Matthews: I've been thinking about that....It's not my stage tonight. I don't have much standing to retort in real time. However, I do have one sensitive point and that is, I don't mind being wrong -- I try to be right. I don't mind somebody saying I'm not fair -- I try to be fair. ... If someone says I'm not independent, it's going to be very hard for me to...

Al Gore’s international campaign to spread his message of Anthropomorphic Climate change was dealt a blow in Britain and Mr. Gore’s views on Global warming are not going to be forced any more on unsuspecting 11 year-olds thanks to parent and lorry driver Stewart Dimmock.

Now even the partisan-resistant public must acknowledge what conservatives have known for a long time: that Newsweek is driven by a leftist agenda, even if they won't acknowledge it themselves. That can't be illustrated more clearly than by the magazine's cover story this week, titled "Global Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine." Science writer Sharon Begley writes proudly and passionately in what she obviously thinks is an eye-opening expose' about the conspiring entities who "deny the science of climate change." Her Woodward and Bernstein-like prose tracks money passages from big energy producers to intellectual skeptics, who exist to undermine what she...

When Americans try to think back to the first instance of political corruption they can recall, President Nixon and Watergate seems about as far back as most of us can remember. But to be sure, corruption in politics has been around as long as politics itself and although efforts to saddle the other team with the title of "corrupt" is a practice just as old, folks willing to consider the facts would hardly call it a partisan matter. The honest answer to the headline question is, not really. Though Democrats want to own the campaign battle cry "culture of corruption"...

Sooner or later, the American people will have to face the very real fact that the partisan mess in Washington DC is nothing more than a reflection of the partisan mess across this nation. The divisions that paralyze Washington DC are now just a partisan tool for Washington hacks. But they were given birth and are perpetuated on Main Street USA. The divisions are real in our own lives and in our own neighborhoods, and that’s why they are very real in Washington DC. We no longer have one single agenda for America. We have two distinct opposing agendas now....

NEW YORK (CNN) -- An incompetent attorney general, who says he wasn't fully aware that nearly 10 percent of the U.S. attorneys who work for him throughout the country were being fired and permitted the 110,000-person Justice Department that he leads to give inaccurate information at best, or simply lie about it at worst, to the Congress and the American people, has the full confidence of the president who's lost the confidence of most people. And this is what passes for a big-time, dramatic, historic constitutional crisis in 21st century America? You've got to be kidding. This is the most...

As a longtime observer of the American political scene I am forced to wonder: can we ever be a country again? By that I mean, can we ever again be a country where we are all free to hold our own opinions and have those opinions respected? Will we ever again be a country where those on the political left respect others’ opinions and refrain from ad hominem personal attacks and character assassination against those with whom they disagree? As matters now stand, we are no longer that kind of country. Comedian Mark Russell, a fixture of Washington nightlife for...

There's hardly a topic these days on which President Bush isn't asking the Democratic-controlled Congress to avoid "a reflexive partisan response." That's certainly the case with Iraq, but it also applies to the domestic priorities of health and energy that he set in his State of the Union address. "I have asked Congress to take several vital steps to address these issues," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "Some members gave a reflexive partisan response." He praised the few Democrats who had "welcomed this opportunity to reach across the aisle." "This is a good start," he said. In...

The bipartisan glow that swathed the state Capitol this year may give way to partisan rancor, as combative conservative Michael Villines prepares to lead Assembly Republicans in the next legislative session, political observers say. Villines, a Clovis Republican who was raised in San Jose, seized power by riding the support of conservative lawmakers, who rejected the more accommodating leadership of former minority leader, San Diego Assemblyman George Plescia. But the move may end up marginalizing the Republican caucus. "They've gone for a guy who was in (Gov. Arnold) Schwarzenegger's face in opposing the bond measures, and rendered themselves a little...

One hundred seats in the California Assembly and Senate were up for grabs on Nov. 7. Not a single one changed party hands. Conceivably, you might think, there'd be one seat that would switch from a Democrat to a Republican, or visa versa. But no. Nada. Not a single seat. The same inertia was seen in the 2004 elections. No seats changed party hands. Until last week, there was a faint chance that Republican Lynn Dauscher would buck the trend and defeat Democrat Lou Correa in the 34th Senate District, a seat vacated by a termed-out Democrat. But Correa's lead...

First off, I ’m a big fan of your show. Until you came on the scene, nobody thought politics could be funny. Yet you made it hysterical.You are an innovator in your field and I have the utmost respect for your accomplishments. Hell, I even bought a copy of Naked Pictures of Famous People. However, I do have one small bone to pick with you.

SOCIAL STUDIES Where The Missing Middle Went By Jonathan Rauch, National Journal © National Journal Group Inc. Friday, Feb. 17, 2006 In 1992, the political scientist Raymond E. Wolfinger of the University of California (Berkeley), along with five of his students, published The Myth of the Independent Voter, a book that posed a challenge to -- well, to people like me. For some time, I've been saying that the key to American politics is in the center. Independents make up about a third of the electorate, yet are neglected by the two increasingly extreme major parties. Whichever party manages to...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new Democratic chief of staff took her message of pragmatic bipartisanship to Silicon Valley, where she received a mostly warm reception Tuesday for the administration's current emphasis on rebuilding the state's highways, schools and levees. Susan Kennedy, who served as a top aide to former Gov. Gray Davis, said she accepted a job with the current Republican governor after realizing she supported much of what Schwarzenegger stood for, even if she at times disagreed with his tactics. And Kennedy said she believes that strident partisanship wreaks havoc for both parties. "The labels are killing us," she told...

Bush to Deliver State of the Union Amid Partisan Division By Jim Malone Washington 27 January 2006 President Bush delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday to outline his policy objectives for the year ahead. But at the moment, there appears to be a great deal of disunity between Republicans and Democrats over issues like national security, congressional corruption and the Supreme Court. George Bush Over the past week, President Bush has mounted a vigorous defense of a domestic surveillance program being conducted by the National Security Agency that he says targets communications with suspected terrorists. "The program is...

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows. And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view. Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered. The results were announced today. "We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What...

Ted Kennedy: Attack Dog for the Radical Left...???

Mr. President, this is one of those quiet moments in the Senate with very few people in the Chamber when, in my opinion, something very important is happening. It is happening in good measure because of the two good men, my colleagues from Virginia and Michigan, who lead the Armed Services Committee, of which I am privileged to be a member. They are two gentlemen, two patriots, two people who have known each other for a long time, who work closely together, respect each other, even seem to like each other and, most important of all, trust each other. Those...

On Friday, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald indicted Scooter Libby on five counts of obstruction of justice, false statement, and perjury. The charges are serious but, as columnist David Brooks noted in the New York Times, Fitzgerald found no evidence of the broad conspiracy hinted at by journalists, bloggers, and partisan pundits. Nevertheless, opponents of the Iraq war have painted the indictment as evidence of original sin. The American Conservative, for example, accused the Bush administration of "forging the case for war." Liberal blogger Arianna Huffington argued that "the scandal has reignited a national debate about the White House lies...

Manchester — President Bush has divided the country, mismanaged the war in Iraq and was irresponsible in not sufficiently equipping American troops, potential White House hopeful Evan Bayh told a partisan Democratic crowd Saturday night. “It’s painfully obvious that those in charge in Washington today don’t have a clue,” the Indiana senator said during a sold-out state party fundraiser at the Radisson at the Center of New Hampshire. Bayh mixed in his achievements as governor of Indiana before entering the Senate, singled out a slew of local and state officials and made his biggest target the White House. “It’s been...

Precious Ronnie:  The Earle of Smear     Click above for larger image

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Former Vice President Al Gore, co-founder of a new television channel launching next month, said he's shunning politics - and so is his media venture. "I consider myself a recovering politician. I'm on step nine," Gore told a meeting Monday of the Television Critics Association. The 2004 Democratic candidate for president was asked if he was concerned the 24-hour news and information channel, called Current, would be perceived as having a political slant. It's scheduled to launch Aug. 1. "I think the reality of the network will speak for itself. It's not intended to be partisan...

A free association exercise: Think of a Washington Nationals baseball cap. What's the next thing that pops into your head? Some people think of the old Senators, whose caps inspired the new team's logo. Some think of the first-place team they now root for, or of hometown pride. Then there are those steeped in the kind of partisan perspective that forced the french fry to decide whether it was with us or against us. They can't get past the "W," as in the president's trademark middle initial. That can be good: "My immediate reaction was, 'W! Perfect!,' " said Dan...

I don't watch the Bill Maher show on HBO. I haven't thought much about him since he had a show on ABC and implied that the 9/11 attackers were courageous for flying hijacked planes into buildings and killing 3,000 people. At the same time, Maher said that the U.S. was cowardly for attacking terrorist bases in Afghanistan by launching cruise missiles from ships at sea. He is supposed to be a comedian but also tries to come across as someone who makes serious and thoughtful points about political issues. We had to take another look at Maher because after he...

The reviews of the film The Interpreter have been extremely positive. "Two thumbs up," say Ebert & Roeper. Larry King calls it "spellbinding." Rolling Stone calls it "smart." We agree with that last characterization. As we noted in a column, the film is political propaganda designed to boost the image of the United Nations and make the U.S. look bad for opposing the International Criminal Court. It is one of the smartest pieces of political propaganda to come out of Hollywood. Meryl Gordon's article about U.N. boss Kofi Annan, in the May 2 edition of New York magazine, notes that...

It's time to revisit some of the sensationalized allegations that were trumpeted from the Mainstream Media's minarettes over the past few years, only to be largely ignored when they unraveled. You remember the headlines, now learn how they actually ended: "George Bush was not elected; he was selected by the Supreme Court." "Energy industry magnates had too much influence over Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force." "The economy is recovering, but it's a jobless recovery." "America is outsourcing all of its jobs to overseas workers." "100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the Iraq war and occupation." "300+ (the...

SPRINGFIELD - Senate Democrats on the Executive Committee hastily approved four gun-control measures Wednesday amid partisan rancor. Another Senate panel already had rejected much of the legislation, and some Republican senators repeatedly expressed disapproval at the work-around tactic. Senate Bills 1330, 1331 and 1332 were approved Wednesday even though the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected identical legislation earlier this session. Two of the Judiciary Committee's six Democrats are from downstate - Sens. James Clayborne of Belleville and Bill Haine of Alton - and both tend to vote against gun-control legislation. On the other hand, seven of the Executive Committee's eight Democrats...

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer sometimes has trouble confusing his public duties and his own political campaigns. In the middle of his antitrust action against Microsoft a couple of years ago, he accepted a $50,000 political donation from Oracle, a major Microsoft competitor. Under pressure in 2002, he returned the money. Now he has come under fire for his approval of giving $200,000 to the Health Consensus Project, "which stages town hall meetings around the state on ways to extend health care to the uninsured," reported the Sacramento Bee. "The payment was part of an $85 million antitrust settlement against...

WASHINGTON – Thursday's much-touted meeting between Gov. Schwarzenegger and California's congressional delegation to map strategy for getting more money from Washington did not get off to a good start. Partisan sniping occupied much of the day, as did complaints that Schwarzenegger upstaged the strategy meeting by later appearing with Common Cause officials to announce the group's support for his controversial redistricting plan. "In California and around the country we have a broken system where elected officials are choosing the voters they want to represent instead of the other way around," said Common Cause president Chellie Pingree in an afternoon appearance...

If you ever needed proof that the Democrats were playing obstructionist partisan politics you need look no further then their leadership, both past and present. While Senator Harry Reid and Representative Nancy Pelosi extol the evils of personalizing Social Security some troubling words have been found in the history books and the news files that should paint their faces a pristine shade of crimson, and it’s not because they just got back from Alabama. Recently, Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, made a statement that rang ominously through the halls of Capitol Hill. When asked about the president’s suggestion that those...

So the left has outed what they call a right-leaning partisan hack in the press corps. The tack this on to the *ONE* columnist that they've outed for being paid to support Bush's policies. (Sorry, Gallagher doesn't count, they were wrong there). My point is, who cares? I've watched these press briefings and had to stop because of my desire either to put my foot through the television, or to repeatedly bang my head against a table to try to bring myself down to that level. The press corps ask the same irrelevant questions over and over and over and...

In a world where most politicos are content to toe the Party line and few dare violate the precepts of political correctness, one congressman has taken a stand. U.S. Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) has chosen to make free speech a defining issue of his career, and he is campaigning hard to extend First Amendment rights everywhere from college campuses to religious congregations. Many detractors argue that reform is unnecessary on campus and unseemly in church, but thus far, the congressman has ignored his naysayers and forged onward. On the religious front, many might be curious as to why our panoply...

The new 109th U.S. Congress convenes on Tuesday with Republicans flexing more political muscle. Yet it is unclear how far they can, or in some cases want to, push President George W. Bush's ambitious second-term agenda. The record federal deficit, the rising cost of the Iraq war, plus competing positions of rival Democrats and even within the Republican Party, all pose risks to such White House goals as overhaul of the federal tax code and the Social Security retirement program. Still, Bush has high hopes. He sees his re-election, coupled with bigger Republican majorities in the Senate and House of...

SACRAMENTO -- A new Legislature, rattled by a federal corruption probe centered in the East Bay, returns in about a week to a highly unpopular "partisan cesspool" that voters worsened and should help fix very soon, says a new report from an independent, nonpartisan think-tank. Term limits have largely backfired, spurring rather than squelching political-ladder climbing and behind-the-scenes games, analysts said. In recent weeks, the investigation swirling around Senate leader-elect Don Perata, D-Oakland, has only worsened the crisis in the face of weighty issues such as the state's persistent, multibillion-dollar budget deficit. "Legislators are learning more quickly than in the...

The Ehrlich administration has taken the unusual step of banning all state officials from speaking with two Sun journalists, who they say are "failing to objectively report" on state issues. The governor's press office sent a memo Thursday to all state public information officers and to the governor's staff ordering them to not speak with State House Bureau Chief David Nitkin or columnist Michael Olesker. "Do not return calls or comply with any requests," press secretary Shareese N. DeLeaver wrote in the memo. The ban is in effect "until further notice." "There's no hiding the fact of The Sun's distaste...

Now that he's been returned to office, President Bush is going to have to differentiate between his opponents and his enemies. His opponents are found in the Democratic Party. His enemies are in certain offices of the Central Intelligence Agency. Over the past several months, as much of official Washington looked on wide-eyed and agog, many in the C.I.A. bureaucracy have waged an unabashed effort to undermine the current administration. At the height of the campaign, C.I.A. officials, who are supposed to serve the president and stay out of politics and policy, served up leak after leak to discredit the...

SACRAMENTO -- Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger boasted victory Wednesday on 11 of 16 spirited state proposition battles while majority Democratic legislators -- and especially Bay Area liberals -- bragged they flatly blocked even heavily monied GOP attacks on them. Political analysts, though generally giving the rookie governor high marks, said danger signals loom for both him and Democrats in the wake of an election where a record number of Californians cast ballots. Schwarzenegger announced he will essentially seek revenge against the dominant legislative Democrats, who mapped safe districts for incumbents of both parties. The governor said he plans to go...

Rest easy, Boone County voters, the Canadians are here to save the day. It’s a relief, eh? Canada’s former minister of communication, David MacDonald, sat in the Boone County Public Library yesterday to let us know that he and others are watching our election today to make sure there is no repeat of the 2000 fiasco marked by Florida’s hanging chads and a presidency decided in the U.S. Supreme Court. "It’s important that Americans from coast to coast … believe it was fair," MacDonald says of today’s vote. To that end, MacDonald and South Africa’s Norman du Plessis will be...

Is God a Republican?by Ed Gungor I kind of think God is a Republican-though I'm not certain that is fair. I'm a Republican. I like the idea of smaller government, less taxes, and I think the abortion and the gay rights agendas have gained too much ground. However, I am suspect that my political preferences may have been fashioned more by my upper-middle class upbringing than by true biblical faith. This became quite clear to me when I was preaching in a large Charismatic church in St. Louis, Missouri about 12 years ago-right after President Clinton and the Democrats won...

Media outcry over Sinclair's plan to show 'Stolen Honor' demonstrates just how partisan journalists can be. ...snip... The issue at hand is the announced decision of the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which controls 62 TV stations across the country, to air a special based on "Stolen Honor," an anti-Kerry documentary, before Nov. 2. The Kerry campaign has protested, of course, but one might think that reporters would be rallying around Sinclair, despite their private opinions. One might think that journalists would embrace the words of Voltaire: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right...

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's top aide told election workers part of their job was to find people to raise money for the Democrat's future campaigns, according to two people who were in the meeting. Undersecretary Mark Kyle's directions to senior staff members last year, at a meeting Shelley attended, were so overtly political and partisan that Dawn Mehlhaff, who supervised all outreach activities in the office, said she immediately demanded to be switched to another job. "Kyle told them, 'Your job is to identify people at events and in your regions who can do campaign events and raise money...

A hit piece on Neil Bush about his divorce almost two years ago with interviews of his bitter ex-wife. "In attempting to reach out to her in-laws, Sharon said she received a baffling response. "I just really basically was turned off, turned away," Sharon said, though she recounted a conversation with her mother-in-law, Barbara. "I said I think Neil is having a mid-life crisis. You know, I'm worried about his business and maybe stress was leading to this e-mail. And she basically said, you talk to your mother and Neilsy will talk to me. And Neilsy will never abandon his...

There has been some discussion of the fact that Bush may be appealing more to women in this election year because of their concern about national security issues. But the data show that there is little difference in the percentage of women who would vote for Bush and men who would vote for Bush in terms of explaining their vote in reference to terrorism or national security. The largest difference between the genders comes in the "moral values/religious beliefs" category, cited by 22% of women compared with only 10% of men.

NC-pres: Tied game in (D) poll by kos Fri Sep 17th, 2004 at 21:21:35 GMT It's a partisan poll, so adjust expectations accordingly, but it's good news nonetheles. Lake, Snell, Perry (D) for private client. 9/14-17. MoE ~4.5%. (9/7 results) Kerry 47 (44) Bush 47 (48) Bush's support is more solid than Kerry's. 37 percent support Bush "strongly", only 29 percent do so for Kerry. But the trends are moving in our favor. The Bush bounce is fading across the board. Well, maybe not in Alabama, but it's fading in the places that really matter.

Federally funded consultants hired by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley spent time registering voters for largely Democratic constituency groups and at partisan rallies, including one to "take back the White House," according to staff activity reports released Thursday. Other contractors, paid thousands of dollars through federal funds from the 2002 Help America Vote Act, described outreach efforts at, among other things, the NBA All-Star week festivities, a reggae festival, a Janet Jackson "salute" and a community event on behalf of Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles. In several cases, consultants delivered "letters of commendation" from the Democratic secretary of state...