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In The News
The Republican Liberty Caucus of California is dedicated to bringing our message to the public and keeping activists informed. We will work to make the text of our press releases and relevant news articles available to the public from our website. Keep checking back here for the most current information.
Panel to consider lifting plastic pipe restrictions
December 12th, 2006
Whether California begins to ease its limits on plastic pipe in homes, the subject of an expensive quarter-century battle, will be known in the coming weeks.

A state environmental review of the pipe, known as CPVC, is almost complete. Next month, the state building standards commission is scheduled to consider lifting all CPVC restriction for the 2007 state plumbing code.

But plastic pipe opponents threaten a lawsuit to block its use if the state tries to allow it.
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Opening the doors to day care
December 8th, 2006
As hard as it is to believe, the California Legislature actually passed and the governor actually signed a law that will advance the ability of California to live their lives free of government intrusion, albeit it in only one small, narrow area.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, sponsored AB2403, which makes it more difficult for cities to impose punitive fees on people who want to start in-home child-care facilities. "The United Way child day-care experts told me that several cities in Orange County used the fee and permit process to charge excessive fees on ... child-care permit applicants in a mostly successful attempt to prevent their startup," the assemblyman explained. He notes that some cities charge up to $4,000 in upfront fees with no guarantee of approval for home-based day-care centers that supervise nine to 14 children. Sometimes, he said, cities will take six or seven weeks to approve the permit.
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Miscarriage of justice
December 8th, 2006
CASES such as Stephen Heller make whistle-blowers an endangered species.

The Van Nuys actor and temporary worker recently pleaded guilty to a computer crime, agreed to pay a $10,000 fine, and write an apology to Diebold and its Los Angeles attorneys, Jones Day, for making confidential Diebold legal memos public in 2004.

Several MediaNews papers in the Bay Area published some of the documents. Shortly thereafter, state election officials decertified Diebold touch-screen systems statewide.
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CalSTRS set for lobbying
December 8th, 2006
Still staring down a $20.3 billion shortfall, the board of the California teachers' retirement fund is packing up its lesson plan and heading to the Capitol to educate a large class of new lawmakers about a plan to wipe out the long-term deficit.

After spending more than a year crafting a strategy, trustees of the $157 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System said Thursday that they are ready to sell 120 lawmakers, including 34 first-timers, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the pressing need for teachers, the state and school districts to increase their pension contributions.

The campaign next year will emerge as schools and the Legislature continue to wrestle with cash-strapped budgets, including a looming $5 billion state budget deficit. The knottiest issue could center on school funding and whether the state should cover the extra cost of employer contributions.
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High court to weigh ban on price fixing
December 8th, 2006
Accepting an appeal from a California manufacturer, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed Thursday to reconsider a long-standing rule that forbids companies from setting a minimum retail price for their products.

A win for the manufacturer could have a wide effect on how products are sold and how much consumers pay for items as diverse as cars and handbags. Some retail analysts said Thursday that it could lead to sharply higher prices, especially for some well-known brands.

"This case is an ideal vehicle for this court to revisit its decision in Dr. Miles," Olson said in appeal. "In this case, Leegin is a small manufacturer with no market power in an intensely competitive marketplace…. There is simply no realistic threat that its use of resale price maintenance could have had anti-competitive effects."
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A pregnant pause in right wing
December 7th, 2006
No Republican in Washington is more beloved by social conservatives than Vice President Dick Cheney, who with his wife, Lynne, has backed and breathed every issue dear to them for six tumultuous years.

News that Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary, is pregnant has therefore touched a nerve, as advocates for conservative values struggle to reconcile their loyalty to the Cheneys with their visceral opposition to same-sex relationships — and particularly to raising a child without a father.
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Separate redistricting plan from term limits
December 7th, 2006
A redistricting plan will go before the Legislature again. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a coalition of reform groups introduced it Tuesday.

Based on history, legislative leaders will swear allegiance to the concept of reform, then nitpick it to death as if their political lives depended on it.

They do, actually. Redistricting once a decade has given legislators the power to draw district boundaries to ensure their own re-election and their party's hold on power. They've done it well.
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Gerrymander pander:  Núñez, Perata invent excuses not to act
December 7th, 2006
Here in cynical Sacramento, it is fashionable to broadcast one of two opinions on redistricting reform. Both are a pile of hooey.

The first vaunted view, put forth by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and other defenders of status quo, is that voters don't care about redistricting. They don't care, apparently, that party bosses go off behind closed doors every decade and draw up legislative and congressional districts to protect incumbents and minimize any troublesome political competition.

This is totally bunk. Voters are increasingly realizing that term limits has failed to inject new blood and fresh ideas into the political process. In the Legislature, the faces change every four or eight years, yet because of gerrymandered political districts, we end up with the same kind of politicians, handpicked by the bosses, with rare exceptions.
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Talk of redistricting is back. And so?
December 7th, 2006

AHH, redistricting. This is a good idea that just about everyone professes to love and support, but it just can't seem to get a break in Sacramento, where democracy is a foreign word.

It comes up, then dies; comes up, then dies again. In the past year alone, two serious attempts at legislation permitting the redrawing the political maps in California into fairer configurations failed.

Now the idea is back, just a few months after a bipartisan redistricting bill failed, and slightly more than a year after the special election's redistricting measure tanked big. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is supporting a measure to get legislation for an independent redistricting commission, saying this time it just might work.
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Police drop questionable training tactic
December 6th, 2006
Huntington Beach police have stopped hiding guns in cars of people they pull over — a way to test how rookie officers search a suspect's vehicle — because "it's probably not the way we should be operating," a department spokesman said Tuesday.

The training practice was revealed when a driver who was stopped Jan. 3 on suspicion of hit and run complained that an officer had tossed a loaded handgun into the trunk of his car. The pistol was discovered by a rookie officer who searched the car while the driver, Tom Cox, watched.
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State lawyer, activist groups split on same-sex marriage
December 6th, 2006
The state and its would-be allies in defense of California's ban on same-sex marriage have broken ranks on whether the state Supreme Court should review the issue after an appellate court upheld the heterosexuals-only marriage law.

Attorney General Bill Lockyer, representing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials, urged the high court Monday to grant a hearing to challengers of the marriage law and provide "finality and certainty for the citizens of California'' on the issue.

The court has until mid-February to decide whether to review the case. If it grants review, it could hear the case next fall.
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Schwarzenegger proposes creating citizen panel to draw voting districts
December 6th, 2006
Reviving his push to make California elections more competitive, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday laid out a proposal for stripping the Legislature of the power to draw voting districts and transferring it to a citizen panel presumably less driven by self-interest.

Schwarzenegger's plan relies on local elections officials to select the citizens who would draw the districts. That differs from a proposal that failed to pass the Legislature in the last session.

Under the unsuccessful plan, the citizens were to be chosen by legislators and the Fair Political Practices Commission from candidates first screened by retired judges. An earlier plan championed by the governor also failed.
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Will this reform get off ground?
December 6th, 2006
Will the umpteenth time be the charm for reforming California's unseemly process of redrawing legislative and congressional districts?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday unveiled his latest redistricting reform proposal and, ever the optimist, declared, "I feel that it is possible, that there's a good shot that we can get it done."

However, given the issue's tortured history -- including voter rejection of a Schwarzenegger-backed ballot measure last year and the Legislature's strangulation of reform this year -- his optimism may be misplaced.
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Smoking ban plan stirs rage
December 5th, 2006
Angered by a proposal to ban smoking in Belmont, furious e-mailers are bombarding Belmont Mayor Coralin Feierbach's inbox, comparing her to Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.

The authors of these e-mails are enraged by the city council's move to ban smoking in all public places and multi-unit dwellings. The proposal is in the hands of the city attorney, who will draft an ordinance that the council will be asked to approve, Councilman William Dickenson said.

If the measure passes, residents will only be legally allowed to smoke inside detached, single-unit homes.
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Lockyer joins call for ruling on ban
December 5th, 2006
Attorney General Bill Lockyer Monday asked the California Supreme Court to review the legal challenge to the state's ban on gay marriage, despite having successfully defended the law in a lower court.

"The legality of same-sex marriage remains an issue of direct, personal importance to same-sex couples and their families,'' Lockyer's brief states. "Like all Californians, these couples rightly expect the final resolution of this controversy to come from the state's highest court.''

A state appeals court, in a 2-1 ruling, in October upheld a California law that restricts marriage to a union between a man and a woman, the latest chapter in a legal battle that began in February 2004. San Francisco city officials, same-sex couples and civil rights groups have challenged the ban, arguing that it is unconstitutional and discriminates based on sexual orientation.
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