Today, California's voters will go to the polls to make very important decisions that will affect the lives of all their neighbors. Let's take a look at the presidential race:
Never have we Americans had such a distinction in color and age and sex to choose from.
The passage of Proposition 1A will allow the state to sell bonds to fund a state-of-the-art high speed rail network that will send passengers from the top of the state to the bottom in hours. It will be quite the feat, considering this isn't Rhode Island.
The fact that opponents of abortion are so demoralized as to introduce a sad sack of a bill like Proposition 4 is surely evidence of a fundamental problem with the Pro-Life cause.
Unlike the fire-breathing Pro-Lifers of the past who had the guts to call Roe v. Wade the Constitutional fanfiction that it was, it seems that today’s advocates for Life are more interested in putting self-evidently pointless legislation in the docket and then receding to the wilderness of irrelevance when that legislation fails to pass.
In the 2006 Parliamentary Debate World Championship finals, American debater David Denton snapped that the other side "has a heart, but they simply don't have a head." Fittingly enough, Denton was arguing the invalidity of animal cruelty laws at the time, and especially in the case of Proposition 2, his accusation rings ominously true.
Conventional political sentiment tells us that we are either for a particular proposition, or against it. We are told to support Proposition 8 if we believe in traditional marriage, or against if we believe in equality. What about those who believe that a government authority empowered by a simple majority, should not have the authority to tell dissenters that they have to share the majority’s proclaimed moral virtues?
For those of you who have been following the non-partisanprimary initiative submitted by Steve Peace on September 29th,you may have heard that it was recently withdrawn from submission. However, we have received word today that the initiative is merely beingrevised, rather than revoked.
Let's propose a thought experiment. Suppose someone approaches you and offers you the following deal: "If you sign my petition, I will give you ten thousand dollars, your car will crash in five days, your children will start skipping school, your church will burn down and your wife/husband will leave you." Let's also assume that you know that the person offering you this deal is in a position to deliver all the promised consequences. Would you take the deal?
I suppose it is not a widely held view, but suddenly I feel better about the America my twenty-something children are inheriting. As a parent I never did get comfortable with the giant rushing snowball culture that has characterized turn-of-the century America. I could never shake the nagging feeling that the fierce momentum of the economy left them chasing a train they could never catch and worse, denied them the validation they deserved for simply being good, caring people.
As noted in this report, implementation of Proposition 5 will be carried out by a governmental framework and discretionary judicial system that is outside of the normal oversight and regulatory controls of the State of California such as the Administrative Procedures Act. Therefore, in addition to meeting unfunded mandates, the state and its municipalities may have difficulty controlling costs associated with Proposition 5 once it comes into effect.
Remember the old days when the only way to make a phone call in public was to cocoon yourself in a tiny glass case, shut the door, drop a few dimes and dial a number? What were those ancient relics of yesteryear called again? Ah, that's right, phone booths. Try to find one of those on a street corner today, and you'll probably be out of luck. It appears that the same fate might befall another similar space: The voting booth.