Free Republic

Many strange things happen on the final night of a state legislative session - bills that mysteriously appear or disappear, verbal and physical confrontations between overtired and/or overstimulated politicians, floor debates that deteriorate into gibberish, to name but a few. It would be difficult, however, to top the odd melodrama that played itself out in the wee hours of Wednesday morning when the union that represents prison guards tried a power play and, to use a term common inside the prisons, was "punked" by legislative leaders. It all had to do with the monthslong impasse between the California Correctional Peace...

Pay raise for prison guards dies, but not before a union ally is publicly humiliated. If you want to know what it means to accept $415,000 from the prison guards union, consider the sorry spectacle of Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, carrying soiled water as a legislative lackey in the middle of the night.After leaders of the prison guards union circulated several versions of draft amendments, Garcia agreed to author a bill that would give the union a pay raise. The backdoor tactic showed a desperate union, unwilling or unable to work through the normal bargaining process with the state...

Legislators in Sacramento are pushing four new laws that would mandate California restaurant chains and grocery stores to reveal nutrition information immediately and ban all trans fats by 2009. Legislators believe they are fighting the obesity epidemic, but they are also expanding a government that is already overweight. The current obsession with obesity is driven by studies, such as the recent report by the nonprofit California Center for Public Health Advocacy, which found that California has an average of 4.18 times as many fast-food restaurants and convenience stores as supermarkets and produce vendors. San Bernardino County was found to have...

LOS ANGELES - Despite millions of dollars in campaign spending and a flood of attack ads, the 2007 California Legislature could end up with the same partisan lineups as the 2006 version. Democrats won 47 of the Assembly's 80 seats and were leading in a 48th district that was too close to call early Wednesday. Republicans captured at least 32 seats, the number they had going into the election. In the Senate, where half the seats were on the ballot, only one seat had a chance of changing hands - the lone district held by Democrats in heavily Republican Orange...

There was a time, a generation before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested Bonnie Garcia is "hot" and she quipped she wouldn't kick him out of bed, when only her hairdresser would have known for sure. But discretion be damned; the Cathedral City assemblywoman dispenses with the mystery at the start of a luncheon speech to a Rotary Club in this Imperial County town near the U.S.-Mexico border. "These are extensions," she said, lifting her faux brown tresses and joking that they make her look skinnier. "That's always good for the cameras, you know." The only Republican Latina ever elected to the...

When it came out last month that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had privately opined that Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia had a "very hot" temperament because of her ethnicity, the Latina Republican from Cathedral City wasn't mad. In fact, she said at the time, she was going to keep campaigning for him. In fact, she reportedly told a high school economics class in La Quinta last Tuesday, "I wouldn't kick him out of my bed." The remark, reported by the Palm Springs-based Desert Sun on Sunday, came when Garcia, who is single, was asked her impressions of the governor, who isn't. According to...

La Quinta, Calif. -- Teachers aides and parents are angry about Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia allegedly telling students at La Quinta High School that she wouldn't kick Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger out of her bed. Garcia made the comment on Oct. 10 during an impromptu visit to an economics class, according to two adults aides in the classroom at the time. "I was appalled," Leah Aguilar, a classroom aide present during Garcia's visit told The Desert Sun. "I couldn't believe what was coming out of her mouth, that she was talking to students like this." Added fellow aide Kathy Larsen: "It wasn't...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized Friday for saying during a closed-door meeting that Cubans and Puerto Ricans are naturally feisty and temperamental because of their combination of "black blood" and "Latino blood." He said the tape-recorded comments "made me cringe" when he read them in Friday's Los Angeles Times. "Anyone out there that feels offended by those comments, I just want to say I'm sorry, I apologize," Schwarzenegger said. He added that if he heard his children make similar comments, "I would be upset." The statements were captured on a six-minute tape made during a March 3 speechwriting session between Schwarzenegger...

SACRAMENTO — In the sanctuary of his Capitol office with an audio recorder rolling, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger describes Republican legislators as the "wild bunch" and, referring to a Latina lawmaker, casually says that "black blood" mixed with "Latino blood" equals "hot" — a fiery personality. The governor is heard on a six-minute recording, obtained by The Times, of a meeting with some members of his inner circle last spring. At the time, Schwarzenegger was struggling to persuade Republican lawmakers to embrace his plan to place billions of dollars in borrowing on the November ballot.It's unclear why the session was taped,...

On a tape of a closed-door meeting with advisers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says that Cubans and Puerto Ricans are naturally feisty and temperamental because of their combination of "black blood" and "Latino blood." "I mean Cuban, Puerto-Rican, they are all very hot," the governor says on the recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times and made available on its Web site Friday. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it." The six-minute tape was made earlier this year. On it, Schwarzenegger and Chief of...

SACRAMENTO — Assemblywoman Nicole Parra and her father traveled to Cuba in early December on what has reportedly become an annual event organized by one of California’s most powerful lobbyists and political fundraisers. Parra, D-Hanford, and other participants said the trip was arranged by Darius Anderson, founder of one of Sacramento’s premiere lobbying firms and a top fundraiser for former Gov. Gray Davis. Since travel to communist Cuba is generally prohibited except under a license from the U.S. government, Anderson’s repeated trips there with lawmakers, business people and others raise a number of questions. Why is a lobbyist arranging religious...

(snip) Schwarzenegger has said he remains open to negotiating a compromise on all of his proposed initiatives, even though they're heading for the ballot. If so, he should start with the tenure proposal. It's an odd issue to go to war over anyway, considering the multitude of education initiatives he could be staking his political career on. Written by Bonnie Garcia, a Republican assemblywoman from El Centro, it was plucked from obscurity without much analysis. After a merit pay proposal for teachers fell by the wayside, tenure became the No. 1 issue by default. The initiative would make two changes...