Any of the current Republican Candidates for the 2012 presidential election represent a distinctly better choice to lead this country than President Obama. Conservatives and those with a Kool-Aid hangover know that a second term for Obama would result in the further decline of America. Thus they will rally behind whomever t

I'm embarrassed as a Republican to hear all this whining. That's Vince Barabba, a Republican member of the Citizens Redistricting Commission, quoted in George Skelton's column about the latest twist in the party's battle against new legislative districts. (Namely, the...

Not that anyone in Sacramento would be so cynical as to use schoolchildren as political pawns, but it was very hard not to notice that the cuts to school-bus funding in this year's state budget "triggered" by a tax shortfall would have the most painful effect on remote rural districts whose residents tend to vot

I read with amusement your articles on the increasingly crowded Republican field to replace Wally Herger in Congress. I also read with amusement that the Republican Party in California stands to earn less than one-third representation in the state Legislature.

The Republican Party, with the disastrous George W. Bush presidency still fresh in public memory, has decided not to compensate for its past mistakes by moving toward the center. Seeing no real opposition from the Democrats, it has moved further to the right.

I never quite understood the source of the bad blood between former state Sen. Sam Aanestad and his successor, Sen. Doug LaMalfa. Might be nothing more than rival ambitious Republican camps. But it was there, and it might not be...

It wasn't just Les Baugh who picked up the Shasta County Republican Assembly's endorsement last week. Chapter President Tyler Clifford informs me that the group also endorsed Pete Stiglich for Congress, Rick Bosetti for Assembly, Patrick Jones for Shasta County...

Every four years Americans are treated to a parade of egocentric buffoons vying for the presidency; this year is especially entertaining.

I haven't yet had a chance to independently verify this, but the Baugh for Senate campaign says it snagged the Shasta County Republican Assembly's endorsement after a candidate forum last night. The Twitter announcement came last night: Couldn't wait 2...

"Are you better off today than you were $4 trillion ago?" — Former presidential candidate Rick Perry

"Are you better off today than you were $4 trillion ago?" — Former presidential candidate Rick Perry

A recent survey found Americans overwhelmingly support home ownership and oppose government changing laws regarding the mortgage interest deduction or making home loans more difficult to obtain. Here are some of the findings in the poll conducted earlier this month by Public Opinion Strategies and Lake Research Partners:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination and endorsed Newt Gingrich, adding a fresh layer of unpredictability to the campaign two days before the South Carolina primary.

......How Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrumsSee, one’s the work of God, but one’s a man-made inventionSee, one is the cure, but the other’s the infectionSee, because religion says “do,” Jesus says “done”Religion says “slave,” Jesus says “son”Religi

The political reshuffling after U.S. Rep. Wally Herger announced his retirement late last week has revealed a divide among north state Republicans.

A Siskiyou County supervisor says he's mulling jumping into the Assembly race against Redding City Councilman Rick Bosetti, the only Republican candidate to have officially declared in the newly drawn 1st Assembly District.

A pair of strategists on opposite sides of the political spectrum said Thursday it's unlikely statewide Democratic interests would choose to fund the campaign of Fall River Mills attorney Jim Reed, even though he's facing a new candidate this year in Doug LaMalfa, the presumed front-runner among a trio of local Repu

There is this game that is played every time control of the White House shifts from one party to the other. It probably happens in all federal agencies, but I have followed it most closely at the Department of the Interior. When a Democratic administration is in power, it issues regulations to save more land from developmen

In light of the admission during the Republican debates that mistakes were made by President George W. Bush, it needs to be pointed out that the current batch of Republican candidates want to make the same mistakes.

Fallout from Congressman Wally Herger's official retirement announcement Tuesday echoed through north state Republican circles as politicians moved quickly to adjust their campaign plans.

Talking this afternoon with Rep. Wally Herger about some of the highs and lows of his 25 years in Congress, I asked him how thing had changed from 1980s --- when it was possible for a Democratic Congress and Republican...

I haven't verified this stuff myself, but Jon Fleischman is a plugged-in Republican, and here's his description of the "north state kabuki" touched off by Rep. Wally Herger's retirement. So to recap this confusing North State kabuki dance -- Herger...

Now that Jerry Brown has gone public with the second attempt of his latest turn as governor to deliver a balanced budget, it's fair to speculate about how different things might be today if he'd lost to Meg Whitman, his billionaire 2010 Republican opponent.

No one seems to be really happy with this year's field of Republican candidates for that party's presidential nomination — except perhaps the Democrats.

No one seems to be really happy with this year's field of Republican candidates for that party's presidential nomination — except perhaps the Democrats.

I don't get the impression Assemblyman Jim Nielsen -- who after some waffling supplied a critical Republican vote to eliminate redevelopment agencies last year -- will be devoting much energy to helping revive them. From an Op-Ed published on Flashreport:...

Which GOP candidate is best? After a year of debates and campaigning,Republican voters in Iowa will gather across the state and caucus to decide which candidate should get the party's nomination.

Those several years in the last decade when actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was its Great Germanic Hope said more about the current state of California's Republican Party than almost anything else that happened during his seven years in Sacramento.

Bob Williams suggests that Republican members of Congress who signed Grover Norquist's pledge not to raise taxes have violated their oaths of office. ("GOP Plea: Concede or I'll Kill Myself," Monday.) He should have read the oath and its history before he spoke.

President Obama has clearly decided to run his 2012 campaign not on his record, but against the Republicans in Congress. Considering all factors, it is probably a good strategy. But the media's role in supporting him is both reprehensible and shameless.

It's interesting how the Republican Tea Party purports to be for "limited government, fiscal responsibility and adherence to the Constitution," yet refuses to get behind and support the one candidate who stubbornly advocates and consistently adheres to those principles — and has done so his entire life.

Republicans in California are shocked — shocked! — that politics was going on in this year's political redistricting.

President Obama's $447 billion jobs bill for the coming year has stalled in Congress. Republicans objected to major features of the bill. Various pieces of the proposed legislation are now being taken up separately. An earlier bill that reduced payroll taxes is due to expire at the end of the year. A large majority of A

I read a recent article that quoted Newt Gingrich as saying that poor children, as young as 9 years old, should work part time cleaning their schools. What?! Tell me I did not hear this man suggest we return to a time that we fought our way out of by creating public schools — schools meant for all children so that all

Candy Balma receives 2011 Woman of the Year Award

So writes commentator John Wildermuth: If Republican legislators thought they were ignored last year in the annual budget dance, Gov. Jerry Brown has made it clear they ain't seen nothing yet....

Thanks to the Record Searchlight for its Sunday spread on the Republican presidential candidates. What a sorry lot they are!

Much has been made, including by a gent who'd like to be Shasta County's next assemblyman, about the remarkable economic resilience of Texas, especially compared with California's staggeringly bad economy. Some -- especially Republicans -- think we could learn a...

For a man who likes to tout his expertise as a historian, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has a decidedly revisionist approach when it comes to his own history.

Did you know that Rep. Dan Lungren, a Republican who represents the Sacramento suburbs (and was nearly the California governor, back in 1998) is quietly pushing for the removal of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir? I didn't, but the L.A. Times says...

I found Alana Burke's description (column, last Sunday) of the 2012 Republican hopefuls quite accurate. If you read her column carefully, she pretty much admits her party's candidates are, well, less than adequate. No kidding.

The Republicans love to talk about innovation while protecting the "job creators" from paying one more dime in taxes.

The name "Newt" makes me think of the young cowboy in the book Lonesome Dove written by Larry McMurtry — an extraordinary work of fiction made into a classic miniseries. I never expected to associate the name "Newt" with the 2012 Republican nominee. Candidate? Sure. But nominee? And yet, here he is, th

"Bigfoot dressed as a circus clown would have a better chance of beating President Obama than Newt Gingrich, a similarly farcical character." So a "Republican insider" tells the National Journal, which surveyed the Washington crowd and found that Democrats and...

Now that Newt Gingrich has become the latest in a series of Republican front-runners, he is getting the kinds of scrutiny and attacks that have done in other front-runners.

It looks like the supercommittee failed to reach an agreement. Our 401(k)s will take a hit and the economy will slow a bit next year, but what could be done? The irreconcilable difference was that the Republicans thought all of the sacrifices should be made by the poor and middle class. The Democrats thought almost all of t

Democrats are unanimous in charging that the debt-reduction supercommittee collapsed because Republicans refused to raise taxes. Apparently, Republicans are in the thrall of one Grover Norquist, the anti-tax campaigner, whom Sen. John Kerry called "the 13th member of this committee without being there." Senate Major

Many of you are hip-deep in preparation for the Thanksgiving meal, to be served tomorrow at halftime, or you're preparing to drive to Aunt Sadie's for dessicated turkey and relatives whom you don't care much for. Or maybe you've decided to stay home alone and open a great American standard, a bottle of bourbon.W

Republicans/conservatives are always saying, "We want government out of our lives" and "We want less federal government control."

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catch phrase could stop thinking for 50 years. One of the often-repeated catch phrases of our time — "It's the economy, stupid!" — has already stopped thinking in some quarters for a couple of decades.