From the LA Times:

The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law.

The decision virtually ensures another fight at the ballot box over marriage rights for gays. Gay rights activists said they may ask voters to repeal the marriage ban as early as next year, and opponents have pledged to fight any such effort. Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the vote.

By 52% to 48%, voters approved the measure reinstating a ban on same-sex marriage after the state Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling last May, approved such marriages. Left in limbo were about 18,000 couples who got married in California between May and November of last year. (Note: An earlier version of this post said voters approved by a 52-48 margin the measure reinstating a ban on same-sex marriage after the state Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling last May, approved such marriages.)

The skin on these teeth is getting thinner and thinner — a HUGE fight over this issue will be forthcoming at the ballot box.

GOTTA. GIRD. LOINS. NOW!!!!!!

On November 4th, we Californians can take back the meaning of MARRIAGE from the idiotic ruling of our state Supreme(ly stoooopid) Court and pass Proposition 8 that will amend the CA Constitution to reestablish marriage as a union between one man and one woman, which was the expressed will of the people in a previous initiative.

I’m not a big initiative guy, but I’m votin’ for this one!

Technorati Tags: Proposition 8

Only in California? You wish — ’cause when stuff about emissions and excess legislation happens out here, like a bad toe fungus, it migrates all over the place. Here’s today’s latest — forcing auto dealers to post a “Global Warming Score” on each and every new vehicle starting next year for the 2009 models. We already have an “emissions” label which I’ve never bothered to examine, so what pray tell is a warming label? I’ll let GreenBiz.com tell ya:

OAKLAND, Calif. — California is making it mandatory for cars to be labeled with global warming scores, figures that take into account emissions from vehicle use and fuel production.

{…}

The labeling law forces cars for sale to display a global warming score, on a scale of one to 10, which is based on how vehicles in the same model year compare to one another. The higher the score, the cleaner a car is. The score takes into account emissions related to production of fuel for each vehicle as well as the direct emissions from vehicles.

So what you say? It’s just a label and one can ignore it just like you do the smog labels, Okie. True. However, you have to take into account the mindset of the Anthropogenic Climate Change Hysterics — this is only the first step. A clue to their eager ambitions comes in one of the article’s following ‘graphs.

A law endorsed by the European Parliament’s Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety would make governments put a monetary cost on the emissions of vehicles they plan to purchase, and add that to expense calculations.

Yep — Whoops! There it is! “Monetary cost”, just another way to say TAX.

Warmies — they never met a tax they didn’t like. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

Technorati Tags: Global Warming Score, global warming, Anthropogenic Climate Change

Upon seeing the large, above-the-fold pic on today’s page 1 of the dead-tree edition of the LA Times my first thought was of rioting middle-eastern hoards screaming “Death to the Infidel” — hmmm, that first impression wasn’t all that far off. The caption:

SPEAKING OUT: Students march down Westwood Boulevard toward the UCLA Police Department to call for an impartial investigation of officers’ use of a Taser against student Mostafa Tabatabainejad in the campus library.

The 200+ student protest was in response to the student-tasing incident last Tues. evening that is well documented and commented upon over at Patterico and Michelle Malkin’s blog, and can be watched in full at YouTube.

What I find interesting about today’s LA Times’ coverage is that in the page-1 section, before the jump to the inside, the writers Winton, Rong-Gong Lin & Proctor manage to get in not only references to the Rodney King beating but also the recent riots at the L.A. County jail. That goes hand-in-hand with Patric’s description of the Times’ coverage earlier in the week.

P.S. In case you didn’t know, the chain of command goes through LAPD, of course. Stories like this L.A. Times piece lump this videotape together with two recent videos depicting alleged excessive force by LAPD officers. This allows LAPD to somehow be tarnished by the actions of the officers in the above video, even though LAPD had nothing to do with the incident. Describing the various videos in a single story shows that it’s a “theme,” you see. I think they teach this in journalism school.

I’ll admit that it is a hard video to watch. The guy gets tased 5 times, and the screams of pain are convincing. but just like with most of these “take-down” flicks, you never get to see what prompts the caught-on-memory-chip use of force. I recommend reading the police officer’s email that Michelle posts — here’s an excerpt:

What the officer did wrong was continue to ask the subject for compliance. I can tell by his (the officer’s) actions and his words that he is so afraid of doing the “wrong” thing that he has let the safety and well being of both himself and the others in the area become secondary. Police officers across the country are taught to take action quickly and most importantly “don’t’ do it like they do in California.” In other places without the PC police, that guy would have been jacked up and carried out in under 30 seconds, without tasers, noise, or video.

But, what say you Okie — why the snarky comment about the page-1 pic? Well, maybe this little ditty from CAIR?

CAIR: ISLAMIC LEADERS CALL FOR PROBE OF STUDENT TASERING

Southern California Islamic leaders are calling for an independent investigation into Tuesday night’s incident at the UCLA library where campus police apparently stunned a student with a “Taser” gun.
(…)
But the American-Islamic relations group says an outside probe’s needed to make sure the case’s “civil rights aspects” are taken seriously.

And, the trial lawyers smell blood — or rather, make that “big bucks”!

Just another fun day in LA. (db)

Technorati Tags: UCLA Library Student Tasing, UCLA Student Protest

Cross-posted over at Junk Yard Blog . . .

It’s getting to the point where I’m not sure how much more of this stupid crap an ol’ Okie can take. The CA legislature (dominated by its Democrats) is never a beacon of clarity and insight, but this last week has shown them at their worst.

First, as Capt. Ed reported:

The California Assembly passed a bill on a party-line vote yesterday that would eliminate private health care and force Californians into a single-payer state-run medical system. It now falls to Arnold Schwarzenegger to determine whether he will reverse his previous stand against state-run health care or adopt the Golden State version of HillaryCare[.]

Yeah, here we go . . . that ol’ Utopian single payer health care for everyone working so great in Canada that the seriously ill abandon their system and cross the border for care in the US, if they can afford it . . . now coming to good ol’ CA. All one has to do is look at the condition of California’s highways and freeways, the low ranking of its public schools, its crumbling energy infrastructure and continuous budget deficits to see that this state has about as much ability to run a single-payer health care system as I do to fly without wings. Not to mention how it will be funded — oh yeah, the legislative panacea for everything — raise taxes. As per the Capt.:

[Taxes would be raised] an additional 8 percent on the payroll tax that businesses pay and a 3 point hike on the state income tax.

That should keep ‘em comin’ to ol’ Cali’ . . . NOT!

Second: AB 523, which passed the CA legislature Thurs. eve. Think that you have freedom of religion? Well, maybe not in California — or at least maybe you are a second class citizen, or maybe, you’re not a citizen, or maybe, you just shouldn’t be allowed to have a TV station license — yeah, that’s the ticket! If you have anything to do with the CHRISTIAN religion, keep your grubby little theocratic paws off our TV stations out here in CA — that’s what the Democratic controlled Legislature is saying with AB 523. Hugh Hewitt puts it this way:

It seems obvious that the California legislature has engaged in a naked bit of religious discrimination, changing the rules relating to the sale of public assets so as to exclude a religious organization.

Imagine if public land was for sale, but the Congress forbade its sale to the highest bidder if that bidder was the Catholic Church.

Or if a local government offered grants to charities housing the poor, but excluded all such charities that were faith based.

The legislated manipulation of the rules relating to the sale of this station should not have to reach a federal court to be rejected. Arnold should veto the bill quickly, with a message back to the legislature that the First Amendment, both in its religion clauses and speech clause, prohibit the government from discriminating against religious speech.

So what if the bidding process was fair, and that the religious group’s bid was $40M (cash) and the next bid was $22M or so, much of that on paper, and so what if the monies would go to the CA college system (in dire need of funds) — the Left out here is so deathly AFRAID of Christians that they would rather eat a good 20-million-dollars that should be going to the schools just to stick it to the religious Right!

Third: In the land of Count Every Vote — Every Vote Counts! comes this brilliant piece of brainiac-Leftist nonsense. From the Opinion Journal comes the skinny:

[L]ast week the California Senate passed legislation to award the state’s Electoral College votes to the candidate who has received the most popular votes nationally–whether Californians chose him or not. A similar bill passed the Assembly on May 30, so it will soon be up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign or veto the bill. Such a bill also passed the Colorado Senate in April, part of a national effort to change the way we choose our presidents. The mandate doesn’t take effect until enough other states sign on to provide a majority of electoral votes. If it were in effect in 2004, George W. Bush would have taken California’s 55 electoral votes, even though John Kerry carried the state by a margin of nearly 10%.

Now that’s rich! Trying to make an end run around the Constitution, those Democrats writing laws for the great state of California would have our Presidential election votes held hostage to the nation’s will at large. Regardless of how the people of CA vote, if the nation votes differently, CA voters get screwed! What a crap-load of me too ism. “If it were in effect in 2004, George W. Bush would have taken California’s 55 electoral votes” should be enough in itself to have put that one in the round file where it belongs, but noooooooo — it defies the Leftist “count every vote” mantra, it defies reason — unless of course, you hate the Constitution as the Framers designed it. Here’s how Patterico puts it:

Here’s how bizarre this law is: in 2004, Bush would have gotten California’s electoral votes — which he didn’t need, and which the state’s voters certainly didn’t intend.

In 2000, Gore would have gotten the electoral votes — but then, he got them anyway.

What a stupid law this would be.

Wish I could say, “only in California”, but as per the OJ, Colorado passed something similar in April. Election 2000 spooked the Left so much, that they want to change how we vote for the President, and they aren’t about to try and do it the Constitutional way, via Amendment — nah, that’s not their style. They like changing the culture and governance of the nation via judicial fiat, or by proposition, or in this case, by stupid state legislation.

Arnold needs to veto all three of these!

The Great State of California — Totally Stuck on Stupid! Go west ol’ man — go west! Wait — Hawaii’s worse! Arrrrrrgh!!!! (db)

Technorati Tags: California Legislature, AB 523, California Health Care, Electoral College

I don’t like Rob Reiner. I kinda enjoyed him as “Meathead” in All in the Family, but that was a long time ago. He’s a hard-core Lefty, and has no qualms about trampling on personal liberties, or severely taxing what he considers to be non-acceptable behavior (tobacco), to fund his own personal Leftist agendas. I’ve got a great ad hominem to use here, but this is a serious issue, so I’ll save that for another time when I’m feeling a bit more frisky.

This is all about CA Proposition 82, which would mandate government-provided preschool for all. Sounds good you say? Well, you haven’t seen the mess this state’s educational bureaucracy has made of K-12 then. A Rand study released in Jan. opens with this:

California’s public school system lags behind most of the nation on almost every objective measurement of student achievement, funding, teacher qualifications and school facilities, according to a new RAND Corporation analysis that is the first comprehensive examination of measurable dimensions of the state’s education system.

The study issued today chronicles how the state’s K-12 school system has fallen from a national leader 30 years ago to its current ranking near the bottom in nearly every objective category. It was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which is working to build support for improving California schools.

While the assessment of California schools is generally negative, researchers also note several positive trends, including significant improvement in student math achievement in recent years, and funding increases for school construction and repair.

Not much of a silver lining to that cloud! And now, ol’ Rob wants to put the same people that have screwed up K-12 in charge of all CA pre-school? Sweet! But that’s not the real scandal here. The San Diego Union/Tribune lays Reiner out, hard! [h/t: Hugh Hewitt]

It’s hard to fathom how a Hollywood actor-director-activist with an idealistic reputation for caring about children could make the transition to sleazy pol so quickly, but that’s just what Rob Reiner has done. His role in orchestrating the use of millions in taxpayer money to push his latest cause is beyond slimy and way past arrogant.

Reiner grabbed the spotlight in 1998 as the sponsor and leading advocate for the California Children and Families First Initiative, a successful ballot measure that placed a 50-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes to pay for child development programs.

Now he’s leading the push for another measure, Proposition 82, which would mandate government-provided preschool. It was bad enough to learn in December that the First 5 California Commission – the agency created under Reiner’s previous initiative to distribute tobacco-tax proceeds – had spent $18 million in taxpayer funds on a “preschool for all” TV ad campaign while Reiner was trying to gather signatures for his “preschool for all” initiative.
(…)
As for Reiner, it used to be just a bit annoying to watch him in TV interviews offering himself up as a noble man. Now such a performance would have an emetic effect. He’s a scoundrel, not a hero – a scoundrel who owes California taxpayers $23 million. [emph mine]

Gotta love those guys that tax your behavior, and then use the money to advance their own personal causes. Maybe that should be the main definition of Liberal, ya think? But then there is this question. Why is Reiner still holding this office? He’s a hold-over appointment of Grey Davis, and Arnold can fire him at any time.

As Hewitt brought to our attention earlier in the week, the Los Angeles Times soft-peddled a supposed expose of this whole mess, but the LA Weekly is on the scent, and as much as I don’t like that rag, I wish the Weekly’s Bill Bradley well on this one.

Oh, and Arnold, I voted for ya buddy — Please fire Rob Reiner — today! (db)

Technorati Tags: Rob Reiner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Proposition 82, First 5 California Commission, preschool