Say you've got a huge prison crisis in your state. Who you gonna call?

In California, you might call the five living governors together. And Thursday, someone did.

Alas, they were united not to solve the prison overcrowding crisis, but to try to defeat the only viable solution - Proposition...

Besides the presidential race, California voters face another choice between change and more of the same on November 4. Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, asks voters to decide between squandering billions of dollars each year on the same old criminal justice policies, or voting Yes on 5...

Maybe you were as surprised as I was to open up the Sunday paper and find Parade magazine's cover story, which asked: "Is Benazir Bhutto America's best hope against al-Qaeda?"

My thoughts: No. Golly, I hope not. Given that she's dead and buried.

Parade is taking a...

I know I should be happy. Al Gore's Nobel Prize is, frankly, much cooler than an Oscar. We now see that Al Gore is one of America's greatest exports to the world, a true global statesman. I now profoundly regret all those times I just thought he sounded wooden and...

Now it seems Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to get California out of debt by selling the Lottery. Sounds like a great bet, except for a few downsides too obvious to mention. Why do it? When your investment-banker friends come a-knockin' offering $40 billion, you have to listen -...

We're all so quick sometimes to write political obituaries. With the drumbeat of bad press leading up to Alberto Gonzales' Senate testimony next week, it's tempting to say it's the end of the Attorney General's line.

His testimony will be one of those rare "big moments" in Washington scandaldom. As...

Let's face it. Addicts can be assholes. Statistics suggest most crime of all kinds is committed by drunks and drug addicts. And crime makes headlines, even if lots of addicts are nonviolent, noncriminal, navel-gazers - or occasionally superstars.

The worst you can say about most former addicts is...

We rang in the New Year with grim news: 3,000 American war dead in Iraq. Untold tens of thousands of Iraqis, too, plus one dictator, recently deceased.

Too bad, really, because it was all a mistake. What do 3,000 dead look like when it was all a mistake?

It was...

I'm only sure of three things Rupert Murdoch has done worthy of kudos. He gave us The Simpsons, he sold the Dodgers, and now he won't sell O.J.'s book.

Those three great civic acts span many years. If even a stuck clock is right twice a day, it's...

If you're a California voter, you may not be much inspired by Arnold vs. Phil. That just means you're normal. But ducking the election is not an option.

As I laid out previously, there are big issues on the ballot well worth your time on November 7. A...

Right now, my fellow Californians are poised to give the Republican party and big-money special interests their "silver lining" storyline on November 7. With a governor's race that looks more like a victory lap, progressive and Democratic voters may not see the point of turning out this time. That's dangerous....

Mel Gibson said something vile when he was drunk. Now he regrets it. But he also says he didn't believe what he said about Jews at the time. That's ridiculous.

Is Mel a Jew-hater? Of course. He was raised to be one. His father is a Holocaust denier...

As a political consultant whose firm mainly helps Democrats, I have some friendly advice for Arnold Schwarzenegger on drugs...

Dear Arnold:

This week, you have some big decisions to make about Proposition 36, a six-year-old, voter-approved ballot measure that requires drug treatment, not jail, in nonviolent drug possession...

We are so very unfair to Mexico. We take some of the nation's most motivated citizens, put them to work in dead-end, backbreaking jobs, and constantly threaten to send them all back home so they don't get too uppity. We blame the Mexican government for failing to provide for its...

If you think it's preposterous to jail people for simply using drugs, you've always had a solid principle to stand on. Now data are pouring in to prove that treating drug abuse as a public health issue saves lives and money -- big time -- with little risk to public...