Author: Debra Saunders

Sen. Barbara Boxer says she is co-sponsoring the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act in part because, with 26 states trying to pass legislation requiring said labeling, it makes more sense to have a uniform federal law. California’s junior Democratic senator has a point. It’s probably better for the folks who keep affordable food on American […]

On Sunday, Fox News’ Chris Wallace spoon-fed former GOP Sen. Bob Dole one of the media’s favorite questions: Could Ronald Reagan — or Dole — make it in today’s Republican Party? “I doubt it,” Dole answered. “Reagan wouldn’t have made it. Certainly, (Richard) Nixon couldn’t have made it, because he had ideas. We might have […]

I hate Apple. There was a time when I would look at my iPhone, and my heart would skip a beat. With its stylish white-and-gray cover, it felt like a luxury car I could hold in my hot little hand. It told me things I didn’t know. It told me how to get where I […]

California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom likes to be out front on issues. As San Francisco mayor, he approved same-sex marriages in City Hall even though they weren’t legal. He pushed for a first-of-its-kind ban on city pharmacies selling cigarettes. Likewise, he signed the Special City’s first-in-the-nation ban on groceries giving away plastic bags. Newsom has […]

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder gave Washington a preview of how the last few months of the Obama administration are going to look, and they’re going to be ugly. Holder knows ugly. He was, after all, deputy attorney general when President Bill Clinton issued his infamous 140 out-the-door pardons to such unworthies as Marc […]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Jerry Brown recently stepped in it when a reporter asked him about the Bay Bridge. In March, 32 of 96 key rods in the under-construction eastern span cracked after they were tightened. Dao Guv — who, as Oakland’s mayor, helped delay construction of the new span to win a tony, world-class […]

As a journalist, I am not supposed to admit this, but: I sympathize with the Obama administration’s frustration over national security leaks. After a spate of leaks last year — notably, The Associated Press’ reporting that national security officials foiled an underwear bomb 2.0 attempt last May — Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein joined […]

Last Sept. 11, a terrorist attack left four Americans dead at the Benghazi, Libya, diplomatic mission. The next day, a State Department official wrote in an email, “The group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.” Days later, however, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice went on Sunday talk […]

After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake shook loose a big chunk of the Bay Bridge, local politicians did not signal that they wanted to take decades to build a new eastern span, so commuters should get used to driving on a span expected to crumble in a big rumble. Instead, they made grandiose promises about […]

There is no problem too flimsy for California’s nanny lawmakers, as witnessed by the many laws that state solons have proposed to keep constituents from getting free plastic bags at the grocery. Those teensy plastic bags are cheap. They’re lightweight. They’re energy-efficient. People use them a lot, which means that they can end up as […]

The bipartisan immigration package put forward by the Gang of Eight looks like a reasonable bill, but it likely won’t become law, and it probably shouldn’t. The 844-page bill would provide a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal record, pay $2,000 in fines and are paid up on their taxes. […]

USC lecturer Darry Sragow dismissed California Republicans as “really stupid,” “racist” and “angry old white people” before his political science class last fall. Those remarks wouldn’t be news — except that student Tyler Talgo secretly videotaped Sragow, and the bias-watchdog group Campus Reform posted 15 minutes of excerpts from the 2 1/2-hour class, which the […]

When Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., visited the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board in February, he essentially predicted that Washington would end up where it is today. Asked whether an assault weapons ban had a realistic chance of passage, the longtime gun owner, Vietnam vet and Democrats’ point man on crafting legislation in the wake of […]

When the Transportation Security Administration announced that it will allow passengers to carry small knives on planes effective April 25, my reaction matched that of Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., who has called the policy change “misguided and, frankly, dangerous.” It’s impossible to think about the ban on knives on planes without remembering what prompted it […]

The Associated Press announced last week that it no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” in its stylebook. Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll explained that the AP has decided it is wrong for reporters to use the word “illegal” to describe a person, but it’s OK to use the word to “describe only an action, such […]

Readers share their ideas. Since the massacre in December in Newtown, Conn., which left 20 children and six elementary-school staff members dead, readers have passed on a host of so-called remedies. Let’s make gun owners be licensed and pass a test, some have suggested. So the problem is, I ask them, that these mass killers […]

Whom does Barack Obama want to please more — out-of-work adults who would love a high-wage job building the Keystone XL pipeline or tony venture capitalists who travel cloistered in private jets when they’re not complaining that Washington doesn’t do enough about global warming? On Wednesday night, the president attended a $5,000-a-head cocktail fundraiser, hosted […]

In 2009, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom announced a city policy that directed police not to impound the cars of unlicensed drivers if those drivers could find a licensed friend to drive away their car. The idea, then-police chief (now District Attorney) George Gascon told me at the time, was to help those who could not get […]

When you’re president, every day is a holiday. This April is National Financial Capability Month, as declared last week in a presidential proclamation. “I call upon all Americans to observe this month with programs and activities to improve their understanding of financial principles and practices,” quoth President Obama. If April is the cruelest month, as […]

Marriage returned to the two-parent union of a 1950s sitcom on Tuesday as the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the legal challenge to Proposition 8, the California-voter-approved measure that banned same-sex marriage in 2008. Urging the court to overturn Prop. 8, attorney Ted Olson argued that the law stigmatized same-sex couples by consigning […]

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., believes that Congress is “about 10 years behind the public.” So Paul said on “Fox News Sunday” as he argued against incarcerating marijuana users. Paul sagely suggested the Republican Party should employ such thinking to “appeal across the left-right paradigm.” Paul has put his money where his mouth is. Last week, […]

In his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama proclaimed, “Over the last few years, both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion.” It’s a claim that the president makes frequently — along with the notion that having done all that heavy lifting, Washington now needs to find […]

If you want to know why Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban couldn’t muster 40 votes — that’s according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who says he will cut the ban from the Democrats’ gun bill — attend a National Rifle Association event in Feinstein’s backyard. Though critics like to paint the organization as […]

San Francisco Supervisor David Campos is about to introduce a law to end the city’s 8-foot “bubble zone” around reproductive health clinics in favor of a new 25-foot “buffer zone.” It’s hard to imagine City Hall entertaining a law to curb the free speech expression of union representatives, Critical Mass bicyclists or anti-war activists, but […]

California Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, has introduced a bill to make it illegal for people to smoke in their own homes — if they live in an apartment or a condo or a multifamily home. When last I wrote about Levine, he was pushing a statewide law to require grocers to charge for bags. […]

Pamela Geller, most famous for fighting what she called the “ground zero mosque” in New York, bought ads on the sides of 10 San Francisco buses that feature hateful quotes from Osama bin Laden, accused Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan and failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad — under the headline “My Jihad.” “Jihad, holy […]

The folks at the American Conservative Union did not get the memo about the GOP’s painful election loss of 2012 — so the group forgot that you win elections through addition, not subtraction. Thus, the conservative’s conservative organization did not invite New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to its annual Conservative […]