Free Republic

Restaurants, recalls and resistance are giving California Gov. Gavin Newsom one of the worst months of his political career. California held its presidential primary election on Super Tuesday, March 5, but it was far from super for the state’s ambitious governor. Voters showed more than a little resistance to passing the ballot measure Newsom had branded with his name and image in TV ads for which he had raised $20 million. Given the razor-close outcome, what was really shocking was the amount spent to oppose the governor’s effort: nothing at all.

The John Ziegler Show on KFI has revealed the identify of the questioners of last night's state-wide broadcast forum on NBC and Telemundo. The forum included Arnold, Barbar Kerr (teacher's union) and Fabian Nunez (Dem legislator). Two of the questioners for Arnold are members Democrat central committees and one is a Democrat Congressional candidate! This forum allegedly included an independently selected balanced audience.

Thirty contributors have bankrolled nearly two-thirds of the estimated $300 million that will be spent on Tuesday's special election. The high rollers include unions, drug companies, business groups and individuals that have pumped $1 million apiece or more -- often much more -- into the initiative battle called by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Led by the $56.6 million spent by the California Teachers Association, these contributors have raised more than $189 million for an off-year election no one expected. "It's an unprecedented amount of money that violates the intent of all the campaign spending laws," said Joe Cerrell, a longtime Democratic...

State lawmakers will not return to the issue of gay marriage next year, when Democrats hope to retake the governorship and many legislators are up for re-election. Instead, any attempts to pass marriage equality bill in the statehouse will not come until 2007, said the leader of the assembly. Speaker Fabian Numez (D-Los Angeles) confirmed during an interview with the Bay Area Reporter Friday, October 14 that gay marriage will not be a part of the Democrats' legislative agenda when lawmakers return in january to begin a new session. "2007 is what we are looking at right now on reintroducing...

SACRAMENTO -- Californians aren't much interested in the upcoming special election and don't support most of the initiatives they'll be voting on, according to new poll results from the Public Policy Institute of California. The three main initiatives sponsored by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are all in sorry shape, as are dueling measures to provide low-income Californians with cheap prescription drugs. The governor's approval ratings remain dismal as well: The survey found that only 38 percent of likely voters think Schwarzenegger is doing a good job. This is the lowest such rating he has yet received. Poll director Mark Baldassare said...

SACRAMENTO -- It may be that moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger offers the last hope to save California's state government from the ideologues in the Legislature who are running it into a ditch. If so, that hope appears to be slipping away. As his approval ratings tumble in the polls, Schwarzenegger backs away from one reform after another that he has proposed to solve the state's dire fiscal problems. Three of them have survived to appear on the Nov. 8 special election ballot. But the two that might do the most repair work -- reform of the budget process and redrawing...

Some estimates say balloting could cost the state as much as $80 million. Critics call it a power grab by Schwarzenegger. SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today called a statewide special election for November – a high-risk gamble that he can leverage his popular appeal to pass proposals that the Legislature has failed to address. The Nov. 8 election would be just the fifth of its kind in California history. “With the people’s help, there will be reform,” he announced on live television. “Our broken state government will be modernized and revitalized.”The measures Schwarzenegger backed that have qualified for the...

Last night, Minutemen supporters gathered privately at the Women's Civic Club of Garden Grove (in O.C.) to hear a discussion lead by James Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen Project. About 300 protestors, charging that the Minutemen are a racist group, gathered outside to protest the meeting. When the Minutemen supporters tried to leave the event, at least two of their cars were attacked by dozens of protestors. The protestors hit the vehicles with placards and other objects until one of the drivers gunned his car to get away from the crowd. He was arrested, though I'm not sure what...

The latest attempt to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants in California cleared a Senate committee on Thursday but with provisions that restrict how the licenses can be used and what they would look like. The bill, by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, would bring California into compliance with federal law. The REAL ID Act, signed by President Bush last week, requires states to verify that people who apply for a driver's license are in the country legally. It also allows states to choose whether to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants as long as they have different markings —...

Senator Gil Cedillo's bill to give California driver's licenses to illegal aliens is set to be heard in the Senate Transportation & Housing Committee this Thursday. Please take time today to contact the committee members and ask them to oppose this bill. more information available at www.saveourlicense.com email all of the committee members (except for Maldonado, Runner & Simitian who don't use public email addresses. Use our website to contact them.)

WASHINGTON, May 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The House today passed legislation authorizing $40 million to state and local governments for training law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws.

Raul Garcia-Gomez, 19, is suspected of shooting two Denver police officers at about 1 a.m. Sunday after they refused to let him re-enter a baptismal party. Detective Donald Young, 44, died at the scene after being shot from behind three times in the back and head.

PHOENIX, Ariz. Federal authorities say members of a violent Mexican gang are using the Arizona border as a corridor to the country. In the past year, Border Patrol agents have arrested about ten members of Mara Salvatrucha -- a notorious international street gang in Mexico. Yet according to federal and local law enforcement officials, the gang members don't appear to stay in the state. The gang is commonly known as M-S-13 and has been linked to murders from Honduras to Los Angeles to Virginia. Original Mara Salvatrucha members were guerrilla fighters who fled the Salvadoran civil war in the 1980s....

Behind the counter at the busy Hart Lane driver testing center here, Rosa King looked over the man's fistful of documents, including a Mexican birth certificate and a separate, typewritten English translation. The translation, Ms. King explained in Spanish, was not exact enough. It would have to be redone. When the man returned, he would be eligible for a card bearing his photograph, date of birth, height, eye color and the words "Not Valid for Identification." Tennessee is one of only two states that issue two different driver's permits: a license, for citizens and permanent residents; and a certificate for...

When opponents of the “Real ID” legislation announced a rally for illegal immigrants and their allies in Montgomery County, MD, there was one immigration-related group I was absolutely certain would not show up: The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the people responsible for actually enforcing our immigration laws. Casa de Maryland and others claimed 5,000 people would gather on Saturday to protest the “Real ID” Act working its way through Congress, and many of these people would be illegal immigrants themselves, we were told. If I were looking for immigration criminals, it’s exactly where I would be. That’s why...

Rockville (AP) - Hundreds of Latino immigrants - many of them illegal - gathered this afternoon in Rockville to protest proposed federal restrictions that would deny driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. The federal Real I-D Act is part of the bill covering the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been passed by the U.S. House and endorsed by the White House. Opponents say the bill will likely pass in the Senate - maybe as early as next week. Maryland is one of ten states that don't require applicants to prove they are citizens or legal residents....

On Saturday afternoon, I drove to Rockville, Md., for a large "gathering to condemn the REAL ID Act." (The act will tighten driver's license standards to prevent illegal aliens from obtaining the IDs, close asylum loopholes, and provide funding to fix a huge gap in a border fence between California and Mexico.) Casa de Maryland, a government-funded open-borders group, organized the protest on the public school athletic field at Richard Montgomery High School. You can see the rally photos I took at my new Flickr site. Here's a sample: www.flickr.com Several hundred "documented" and "undocumented" workers attended, demanding driver's licenses...

Latino and immigrant support groups are mobilizing against the proposed Real ID Act, a federal law that would prohibit states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Immigrant support groups say Real ID would make roads less safe and could erode national security, not improve it. "It will make millions of people that live in our nation hide even more," said Gustavo Torres, executive director of Casa de Maryland, a Latino advocacy group. "They are going to keep driving, keep working, but now they are going to be even more scared to participate in our society, to cooperate with police...

"Congressman Reconquista": Immigration Reformers Not Welcome In GOP by William Norman Grigg May 7, 2005 According to Utah Congressman Chris Cannon, a shameless flack for the illegal immigrant lobby, those committed to protecting our borders cannot be true Republicans. During a May 4 Washington, D.C. forum sponsored by the Latino Coalition, Representative Chris Cannon (R-Utah), a congressional point man for the Bush administration’s illegal immigrant amnesty proposal, suggested that fellow Republican congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado "ought to reconsider his membership in the Republican Party," reported the Rocky Mountain News. While Rep. Tancredo, like most politicians, has a lot to...

LIKE MANY other southern Arizonans, I am deeply grateful to the few dozen vigilantes calling themselves Minutemen who set up camp along the Arizona-Mexico border last month. That few people around here were much impressed with a bunch of retirees in camouflage playing soldier, and that there turned out to be almost as many reporters as patriots on the ground, was irrelevant: We were just thrilled by the publicity. We’ve been trying to get the rest of the country to notice what’s going on down here for years. U.S. immigration policy has turned the Arizona desert between Tucson and the...