California Secretary of State Alex Padilla sent out a press release Wednesday announcing that a new initiative has been approved for petition gathering, one that would decriminalize the use, possession, sale, transport, and cultivation of psilocybin.

What is psilocybin? It's the psychedelic compound found in various species of mushrooms.

When motorists across California go to the pump this week, they will no doubt raise their eyebrows.

The price of gas just spiked for California drivers.

Never a group to shy away from raising taxes, the Sacramento legislature earlier this year, voted to tax a gallon of gas an additional 12 cents.

That vote has caused a war of words between Democrats who supported the measure, and Republicans who said no thanks.

GAS TAX SPURS RECALL CAMPAIGN

The increase has triggered a recall campaign.

By definition, conventional wisdom is convention. It often has the added value of being right.

I read a commentary by Joe Matthews recently that argued California’s Top Two primary works against centrists and actually increases the advantage of t­he more ideological candidates of the left and right.

There's a new initiative circulating for petition signatures that would allow incarcerated felons to vote.

"The Voting Restoration and Democracy Act of 2018," pushed by Taina Vargas-Edmond among others, would empower nearly 200,000 inmates in the California Corrections system to vote.

Vargas-Edmond, acting on behalf of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, wrote the following:

The open primaries movement won an important victory last week.

Florida’s Constitutional Revision Commission—which comes into existence every 20 years—held public hearings over the past six months, from Miami to the panhandle. Thousands of Floridians testified for and against hundreds of different issues, and open primaries was one of the most popular topics represented.

Kansas businessman Scott Morgan has announced that he is hoping to organize a new party, for Kansas, to be called “Party of the Center.” He will try to get it on the 2018 ballot.

From Morgan's announcement:

The New Jersey primaries produced gubernatorial candidates that are speaking only to two ideological extremes. Politico reported Tuesday that in the 2017 governor's race in New Jersey, neither Democrat Phil Murphy nor Republican Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno appear to be reaching out to voters outside their party's base.

US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard released a video Monday, where she ripped the DNC for not doing anything to fix the problems exposed during the 2016 election. Despite widespread calls for reform within the party, Tulsi says the DNC leaders have instead ousted those who did not completely toe the party line.

With Election Day just a week away, New Yorkers are getting bombarded with millions of dollars worth of negative messaging about the constitutional convention.

While I used my previous column to detail why voters should ignore the information being spread by the “vote no” coalition, I want to focus here on some of the positive outcomes that could result from holding a convention for the first time since 1967.

One of the most interesting and important legal fights going on right now centers around the scope of the First Amendment rights of political parties. In a variety of contexts, the parties have asserted their rights over the rights of the people.

How can it be, however, that the rights of parties formed by the people can trump the rights of the people, through their elected government or otherwise, to determine how their elections for their public officials can be organized?