Author: Debra Saunders

If the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge were a football team, the coach would have been fired; the quarterback would have been dropped from the team; and the remaining athletes would have felt a pinch in their endorsement income. But because the new eastern span was a government project that ran four times over budget and […]

President Barack Obama delivered a good State of the Union address Tuesday night, but he couldn’t get past an inconvenient truth: He means well, but his schemes don’t work. Democrats championed the Affordable Care Act to increase the number of Americans with health coverage, but their plan led to the cancellation of private plans for […]

It is always in poor taste for modern Americans to liken their ideological critics to Nazis. So when venture capitalist Tom Perkins wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal that equated “the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich,’” with “fascist Nazi Germany,” he opened his double doors to the cable […]

Being a Californian confers certain benefits. Foremost among them is the knowledge that even if you don’t surf, even if you don’t spend a lot of time at the beach, even if you never have been to a beach bonfire party, if you ever should feel the urge to shout “Surf’s up!” or toast marshmallows […]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Jerry Brown is in an enviable position. He delivered a State of the State address Wednesday that did not require hand-wringing about ugly shortfalls and painful cuts for public schools. As he prepares to run for re-election, he doesn’t even need to announce that he is running for re-election. No Democrat […]

The Hollywood blacklist, according to Wikipedia, is the term for “the mid-20th-century practice of denying employment to screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals because of their suspected political beliefs or associations.” The blacklist spirit is alive and living in San Francisco, but here and now the enemies of free thought have a […]

Clarence Aaron described his time in federal prison serving life without parole for a first-time nonviolent drug conviction as “a walking death sentence on” his head. Before President Barack Obama commuted his sentence last month, Aaron faced a longer sentence than some fellow inmates with multiple felonies — even murder. Aaron was hardly the only […]

How near death is the California Republican Party? It’s this bad. Democrats hold every statewide office. Term limits have opened up a few offices; still, no serious Republican plans to run for attorney general, lieutenant governor, treasurer or controller this year. If the lead Democrat for any of those offices were to die in September, […]

If I were governor of New Jersey and: really: wanted to know whether my staff had any involvement whatsoever in a nasty political prank that closed lanes and gridlocked traffic on the George Washington Bridge in September as payback for the Fort Lee mayor’s refusal to endorse me, I would not do what Chris Christie did. That […]

Former CIA Director James Woolsey has pronounced that the proper punishment for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden would be for him to be “hanged by his neck until he is dead.” The news media want to hand him not a rope but a pedestal. The Guardian editorialized last week that its high-profile source is […]

A funny thing happened during Australian climate change professor Chris Turney’s venture to retrace a 1912 research expedition in Antarctica and gauge how climate change has affected the continent: Two weeks into a five-week excursion, Turney’s good ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy got trapped in ice. It turns out, global warming notwithstanding, that there’s so much […]

With apologies to “Howl” author Allen Ginsberg. Part I I saw the vast majority of three generations destroyed by madness, cursing unethical betrayed Spitting at frozen screens teasing 404 error waiting for the dusk of peak hours Onesie-clad hipsters sipping hot chocolate little marshmallows bobbing blinking hashtags in a sea of brown Who opened cancellation […]

The Department of Justice should get a new name — like the Department That Can See No Evil, the Department of Dungeons or the Department of Cover-ups. Once a bad law becomes the law of the land, it takes years of activism engaged by countless voices to force Washington to patch things up for a […]

President Obama commuted the sentences of eight crack-cocaine offenders Thursday, including that of Clarence Aaron, who was serving a sentence of life without parole for a first-time nonviolent drug conviction when he was 23. Aaron’s story represents the worst excesses of the federal criminal justice system. Aaron, of Mobile, Ala., had no criminal record. He […]

Jahi McMath, 13, died after a routine tonsillectomy, according to doctors at Children’s Hospital Oakland who declared McMath brain-dead on Thursday. The coroner’s office was set to remove her body on Tuesday. Jahi’s mother, Nailah Winkfield, doesn’t believe her daughter is dead. She told reporters, “I want a second opinion.” Family members and supporters have […]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., are about as opposite politically as two people can be. Nonetheless, last week they joined forces to introduce a bill to repeal the federal requirement to blend corn ethanol into gasoline. There’s something in the ethanol mandate for almost everyone — but corn farmers — not to […]

For five years, California state Sen. Alex Padilla has been pushing a bill to ban grocers and large retailers from giving away single-use plastic bags. In May, he came close; his SB 405 fell 3 votes short of the 21 needed to pass in the state Senate. On Thursday, Padilla announced that he will try […]

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was right. If the tea party were to brave a government shutdown in a bid to defund Obamacare, the stout of heart would prevail, and wobbly partisans would run for cover. Unfortunately for the GOP, Cruz was right about the wrong party. The 16-day partial shutdown in October hurt Republicans, who […]

Lately, I’ve been hearing from readers who are among the million Californians who had private health care plans, received cancellation notices and now have to buy new coverage. Some figured that if they signed up with their old providers — Blue Shield or Anthem — they’d have access to the same doctors and hospitals. Not […]

The developers who wanted to build 8 Washington in San Francisco spent seven years lobbying City Hall — winning approval from the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors — only to watch opponents kill the project by putting a successful measure on the November ballot. Suckers. Google simply started building a four-story barge made of […]

“The bottom line is this law is working and will work into the future,” President Barack Obama said of his signature Affordable Care Act on Tuesday. It would be easier to believe the president if he hadn’t said in 2009, “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the […]

Another Thanksgiving has passed without a presidential commutation for Clarence Aaron, who, at age 24, was sentenced to life without parole for a first-time nonviolent drug conviction in 1993. President Barack Obama has the unfettered power to pardon ex-cons and commute the sentences of federal inmates. Yet this term, he has used that power to […]

A few things have happened since California voters approved $10 billion in bonds for a $45 billion California High-Speed Rail project — which promised to take passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2 hours and 40 minutes — in 2008. Most recently, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny blocked the release of $8 […]

“In space, no one can hear you scream” was the tag line for Ridley Scott’s breakthrough 1979 sci-fi flick, “Alien.” With the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to revisit its 22-year ban on using cellphones in flight on passenger planes, that could change. Oh, joy, was my first thought. That obnoxious Alec Baldwin wannabe who makes […]

“Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams wants to kill Victoria Reggie Kennedy, Ted’s widow. He also wants to kill my husband, author and anti-assisted suicide activist Wesley J. Smith — and me, because I, too, oppose assisted suicide. “If you’re a politician who has ever voted against doctor-assisted suicide, or you would vote against it in the […]

The latest issue roiling the Republican Party is Medicaid, specifically whether Republican governors should expand Medicaid with federal Affordable Care Act money — especially if they want to be on the GOP national ticket in 2016. It’s a hot issue because Obamacare allows states to expand their pool of eligible Medicaid recipients. For the first […]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told “Meet the Press” on Sunday, “Democrats stand tall in support of the Affordable Care Act.” Not in her backyard — in the nearby delta counties, some Dems are trying to distance themselves from Obamacare. Last week, as Bay Area Democrats voted against a GOP House bill to allow insurers […]

Berkeley, Calif., City Councilman Jesse Arreguin has recommended that the city ban smoking in single-family homes. Councilwoman Susan Wengraf, who supports an ordinance to ban smoking in multiunit dwellings, is appalled. “The whole point is to protect people who live in multiunit buildings from secondhand smoke,” Wengraf said. Locals have told her they find the […]

Chaos. “The whole mess has thrown the country, millions of people, the insurance market, into chaos,” wrote Paul Palumbo, one of the million Californians who were notified that because of the Affordable Care Act, their Blue Shield plans would end Dec. 31. When the self-employed research analyst received the notice, he stopped paying his premiums […]

House Speaker John Boehner told reporters Wednesday that the GOP leadership has no intention of going to conference committee on the Senate’s comprehensive immigration bill passed in June. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy told Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles Director Angelica Salas last week that the House would not pass its immigration […]