Free Republic

The California Air Resources Board is on the verge of destroying the collaborative work of an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, labor, employers and municipalities. These diverse interests worked together to pass SB375, a bill to create more sustainable communities through regional planning. Now, CARB staff have issued SB375 greenhouse-gas emission targets that were never considered by stakeholders to the SB375 implementation process. Rather than keep all parties involved, the CARB staff has set lofty goals that communities realistically won't be able to achieve. ... The higher targets would have severe ramifications for our state's economic recovery. The MTC analysis indicated...

ATLANTA Several thousand neopatriots – some shouting “Give me liberty or give me death!” – took to the streets in over 30 US cities Friday, representing what some of them call the beginning of a new conservative counterculture in America. “The spark has been lit,” says Ben Mihalski, a “house husband” from Cobb County, Ga., one of at least 300 protesters who gathered in a hefty downpour outside the Georgia Capitol on Friday to protest what they see as profligate spending by Washington. Protesters with sign-slogans like “Pillage and plunder: At least the Vikings did it openly” fanned out across...

Without a doubt, the Republican primary for California's Fourth Congressional District was the highest profile legislative race taking place in yesterday's statewide elections in California. Whether you look at how the race shaped up locally, or how it was covered Inside The Beltway, the battle between conservative State Senator Tom McClintock and moderate former U.S. Representative Doug Ose was truly looked to as an election-day indicator of where the heart and soul of the GOP was, and whether Republicans want to see change in direction that their party has taken in the United States Capitol. Despite the massive financial advantage...

A Santa Ana high school teacher was arrested Wednesday morning on suspicion of lewd conduct with a student during a five-year period, police said. Lee Henry, 56, of Tustin, was pulled out of his English class at Middle College High School about 10 a.m. and arrested in the office, said Lt. Jim Peery, a spokesman for the Tustin Police Department. ADVERTISEMENT The alleged abuse began when the student was 13 years old and attended Carr Intermediate School, where Henry was his teacher, Peery said.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment nearly 30 years ago, only one governor - Virginia's George Allen in 1997 - said he took someone off death row due to character reform. Now, California's governor can take this courageous stand. ADVERTISEMENT On Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) will hold a hearing to decide whether to grant clemency to Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a cofounder of the Crips, a violent Los Angeles street gang. Mr. Williams is scheduled to be executed Dec. 13. The case is far from clear-cut. Hollywood celebrities, politicians, and other death-penalty opponents are urging limited mercy (life in...

A n old joke used to ask, Where are the last bastions of Marxism? Answer: the Kremlin and the Duke University English department. But now that the Soviet Union has dissolved, the last defenders of Karl Marx's ideas may indeed reside on a pretty, Gothic-style campus in the pinewoods of North Carolina. For literary traditionalists, the riddle is apropos. They have long bemoaned the effete nature of postmodern literary theory, calling it as hopelessly out of touch with both reality and literature as was Lenin with real-life economics. But theory's impact on the study of literature in the US has...

One Austin company is in close contact with some California election officials. Hart Intercivic has a contract with the second largest county in California to replace punch card ballots with electronic voting. The company is supplying e-slate machines similar to what Travis County has to Orange County, California. The plan's been to have them running by next year's March primaries. In someway the Austin company will help with the recall election, whenever it happens. Hart Intercivic is sending 9,000 electronic voting machines to Orange County. In contrast, Travis County uses about 1,800 of these now. The unplanned recall election did...

The legacy of Eric Hoffer: Part II Thomas Sowell June 19, 2003 | Print | Send "There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life." This is just one of the pungent insights of Eric Hoffer, who died twenty years ago. This particular quote...

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote next week to oppose a bill that could soon give cities and counties the authority to impose a personal income tax on residents. Earlier this month, the Assembly passed a bill now moving through the Senate that would allow cities and counties, with approval from voters, to tax residents' personal income to fund public safety. However, before the issue could be put on a ballot, local governments would first have to create public safety finance agencies. The tax collected would go to that entity and be used only for...

If you rely on The Christian Science Monitor for all your news, you could be forgiven for thinking that Mark Warner is the governor of New Mexico, or that Missouri's state budget deficit is $18 billion - the same size as its whole budget - instead of $323 million. It's not that the Monitor has any grudge against Bill Richardson, New Mexico's actual governor, or a desire to exaggerate the woes of the "Show me" state. Those are simply two of the more egregious errors that have run - and later been corrected - in recent issues of this paper....