Free Republic

They were a part of history, bringing the biggest news events — from Watergate, to the 9/11 terror attacks and raging local wildfires — to San Diegans’ doorsteps. And now, the presses at The San Diego Union-Tribune are themselves history, with the final print run in Mission Valley coming to a close at 1 a.m. Sunday. Starting with Monday’s paper, the Union-Tribune is being printed in Los Angeles, a byproduct of the U-T’s sale last month to the Tribune Publishing Co., parent company of the Los Angeles Times.

The march to protest Proposition 8 is continuing to wind its way downtown, and marchers got louder as they passed a cluster of three people holding "Yes on 8" signs. One of those holding the signs, David Cruz, said he wanted to remind marchers that the majority of voters have spoken by the passage of Prop. 8 in the Nov. 4 election. "They are not going to overturn the will of the majority,"said Cruz, 34, a College Area resident. Just then, marcher David Gonzales pushed toward Cruz, screaming that he was a disgrace. March volunteers kept them separated and Gonzales...

Whether disapproving churches could be forced to choose between providing services to gay couples or losing their tax-exempt status is one of the questions swirling around Proposition 8, the Nov. 4 ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage. AdvertisementIn its May ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, the state Supreme Court made clear that it did not intend for the decision to be interpreted as interfering with a church's right to determine who it marries. Yesterday, 59 California law professors released a one-page position paper making their case that the state and federal constitutions provide ironclad protections for churches. “No church's tax-exempt...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez are probably still in the Governor's cigar tent this morning, puffing away on stogies to celebrate the Assembly's 45-31 vote yesterday in favor of their compromise health insurance “reform” bill. It was by far the pair's top goal for 2007. Schwarzenegger desperately wants another fix of national media attention after taking a yearlong victory lap for the state's landmark greenhouse gas emissions law in 2006. Núñez was deeply envious and wants his turn in the spotlight. The result of this desperation has been a farce masquerading as a public debate. No hearings...

For three reasons, that's wrong. An honest assessment of the budget picture – of the sort required of corporations by the Sarbanes-Oxley law – would put the 2007-08 deficit at $16.3 billion, not $14 billion. That's because Sacramento treats the $48 billion in guaranteed-but-unfunded health care benefits for state retirees as if it were something ethereal instead of a huge fiscal obligation that state Controller John Chiang says should be prefunded with $2.3 billion a year. Both the governor and Assembly Speaker Fabian NÚñez continue to push for a grand health insurance measure under which nearly all employers would be...

But work on Schwarzenegger's agenda may be overshadowed next year by his failure to resolve the issue that helped bring him into office four years ago in a historic recall election – a chronic budget deficit. The governor entered office facing a $15 billion shortfall in a general fund that spent $79 billion. Avoiding deep spending cuts, Schwarzenegger used a voter-approved, $15 billion bond to plug a hole in a budget he inherited from former Gov. Gray Davis. Increases in tax revenue from a growing economy helped fuel spending since then. Schwarzenegger now faces an estimated shortfall of at least...

The fundamental problem is that people took out loans they could never afford. The answer, painful as it may be, is for these people to either find affordable loans or find housing they can afford – not to shift part of the bill for their rotten judgment to taxpayers and to holders of legal contracts. We acknowledge the argument that a wave of foreclosures could roil Wall Street and spur a recession. But there is no reason to assume such a downturn would be long-lived. The fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain strong, and more than 19 out of every...

When I was browsing Rough & Tumble this morning and saw that Associated Press had come up with its own in-depth analysis of the governor's health care proposal, I was hopeful that the global wire service would take a close look at the vast evidence that the gov's plan was illegal under a 1974 federal law known as ERISA. No such luck. Even though the only state in the union with a law mandating that employers provide or pay for health insurance is the one (Hawaii) with a congressional exemption from the federal law, this fact has barely been acknowledged...

For days, we have been hearing from the Union-Tribune and other local news outlets about a purported "hate crime" committed by punks who assaulted homosexual men during the recent Gay Pride Festival. But there was another hate crime committed that weekened that was not reported: The hateful moral assault committed by the homosexual community against San Diegans of all ages through its degrading and indecent "pride" celebration. That community demonstrated its hatred of innocent children by allowing them to view a parade where adults engaged in public nudity and simulated sex acts. It displayed its hatred of impressionable teens by...