Championing what he calls "prudence, not exuberance," Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday rolled out the annual "May Revise" of his proposed California state budget. How's it playing? Oh, and what's the play?

One of the strangest things about California over the past decade is how little impact Arnold Schwarzenegger's two landslide wins for the governorship had on the Republican Party.

It's not all that hard to incite a Republican race to the hard right on immigration. Once undertaken, that race ends up in the same place: one of fences, exclusion and super-heated rhetoric that utterly turns off most people of color and younger voters.

Strategy documents from an eminent consultancy circulating in the highest level of political circles around the President of the United States and the Governor of California have recently come into my possession.

While the U.S. Supreme Court may hold the line on most of the country, while likely allowing the invalidation of California's Proposition 8 anti-gay marriage initiative, it is clear that the right to same-sex marriage will be part of America's future.

Two new polls contain fascinating information about major trends of thought among California voters. The most dramatic development is a sharp reversal of opinion on illegal immigrants.

With Republicans in such profound disarray, can Democrats still screw up their opportunity for ongoing dominance?

Will Jerry Brown be unopposed for reelection? Technically, no. Effectively? We'll see.

Does Brown want to fence with Perry in such a way as to help him with his right-wing Republican base and hurt him with moderate voters? Is he just messing about? Does he want to have some fun at the expense of a relatively unarmed man?

There is no shortage of kudos now for Governor Jerry Brown, who with his State of the State address last Thursday tied the late Governor-turned-Chief Justice Earl Warren for the most such addresses in California's history. Does he have things sewn up politically in the battered but brightening Golden State?

California's generation-long chronic budget crisis is over, but, while the sun is shining, metaphorically speaking, happy days aren't here again. (To reference the Democratic Party's New Deal theme song.) Not just yet.

Governor Jerry Brown is working on the new California state budget, the first in more than a decade to be free of the state's deep chronic fiscal crisis. It's an agenda which his two most immediate predecessors, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis, in large measure promoted themselves.