Home of the Free

California has finally approved a budget that will (hopefully) carry the state through the next 17 months. The process was a case study in the extreme partisanship that has polarized (and paralyzed) the California legislature for years. Although there are a number of factors that are responsible for

Now that the second of three presidential debates is history, the mud slinging can resume. It’s true, debate mud slinging was nowhere to be found. Despite what many have called a “heated” debate in which the candidates called attention to each other’s respective records as well as the liberal interp

It would appear that John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and I have something in common. We are both self-proclaimed “realistic idealists.” I am so defined by the starry-eyed idealism of my youth tempered by real world experience gained through the years since. In his speec

I suppose I should have something to say about the presidential race. I don’t know that I do. I think I have an idea of how it will fall out, but even if I’m wrong, I can only be half-wrong. Barring an unforeseen catastrophe, John McCain will be running against either Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Oh, where to begin…New York politics, at some level, affects the entire nation. Both the city and the state are constantly under a magnifying glass and perhaps justifiably so. Even at 2,808 miles away from my home in the sleepy Sacramento suburb of Fair Oaks, the shock waves of the recent tumult can

The New York Times today ran a story pointing out some of John McCain’s inconsistencies between his rhetoric and his actions. These comparisons are, of course, fair game and should be carefully scrutinized. The article goes into great detail (and after topping out at about 3,000 words, one might say

It’s not that I haven’t been following the goings on in this presidential race. My silence on the president’s State of the Union Address isn’t indicative of complacency or disinterest necessarily. No, it’s more of an acknowledgement that there have been no real surprises. Everyone involved, from the

Although his actual birth date was January 15, 1929, today we commemorate the birthday of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. There is little argument about how much King did for the civil rights movement in the U.S. Through righteous non-violence, he coerced a nation into looking at its collective beh

Ok, I’m up now. Almost 1:30 p.m., and I’m up and about. It is not the first, or second or even third time I have been up today, but this time I’m staying up. Sleep has been a dubious luxury of late… my time has been stretched to the limit, but for now I am caught up. There is more coming - there’s a

It must be drug awareness season again. Periodically, it seems, a rash of public service announcements from the likes of the Partnership for a Drug Free America begin to flood the media outlets. Don’t get the wrong idea; this is very definitely a good thing. Drugs are bad, they do bad things and som