Commentary by Debra J. Saunders

October 3, 2010

California Death Penalty Once Again Thwarted by Thug Huggers By Debra J. Saunders

On Oct. 28, 1980, Albert Greenwood Brown snatched Susan Jordan, 15, raped and strangled her to death with her own shoelace. Brown, who was on parole after raping a 14-year-old girl, then spent the night tormenting the dead girl's parents over the phone, telling them that they would never see their daughter again and where to find the girl's half-nude corpse and belongings. A jury sentenced him to death for that crime.

September 30, 2010

Campaign Stunt: a Bunch of Garbage by Debra J. Saunders

"What did Meg Whitman know and when did she know it?" publicity hound attorney Gloria Allred asked Wednesday.

September 28, 2010

GOP Pledge Beats Democrats' Delays by Debra J Saunders

The House Republicans' "Pledge to America" calls for an extension of the Bush tax cuts for all; a rollback of government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels; "strict budget caps," an end to the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the rest of the Obama stimulus package.

September 26, 2010

Race Pits Dream Prosecutor Against S.F.'s Nightmare DA By Debra J. Saunders

I don't understand why San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris wants to be California's next attorney general. Then again, it's hard to understand why she even ran for DA -- other than because she has a yen for elective office.

September 23, 2010

Harry Reid's Winning Strategy -- It's Losing by Debra J. Saunders

The Democratic Party has become the entrenched self-preservation party. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is its Pied Piper.

September 21, 2010

What I Would Do If I Were Governor by Debra J. Saunders

I agreed to be on a panel at UC Berkeley's Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service Monday night, where we addressed the question "California's Next Governor: What Should the Agenda Be?"

September 19, 2010

End Prohibition; Yes on Proposition 19 By Debra J. Saunders

"In almost every respect imaginable, Prohibition was a failure," former New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent concluded at the close of his new book, "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition." "It encouraged criminality and institutionalized hypocrisy. It deprived the government of revenue, stripped the gears of the political system, and proposed profound limitations on individual rights."

September 17, 2010

Authentically Newt-ered By Debra J. Saunders

This is how news gets made. Conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza writes a piece for Forbes pimping his new book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage." During a National Review interview, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich gushes over the piece and calls it "the most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama" as it reveals the "Kenyan anti-colonial" thinking that motivates Obama.

September 14, 2010

The Harsh Bigotry of Their Expectations by Debra Saunders

Why did Florida pastor Terry Jones garner all that media attention last week for threatening to burn Qurans on Saturday's 9/11 anniversary?

September 12, 2010

Zen and Art of Political Machine Maintenance By Debra J. Saunders

Jerry Brown has a secret plan to balance the California state budget. When the state attorney general and Democratic gubernatorial nominee recently visited the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board, he brought with him a large three-ring binder with his ideas on how to bring state spending back into the black. But he wouldn't tell us what was in the book.

September 9, 2010

Spare the Quran and Save the Woman by Debra J. Saunders

A Florida pastor's plan to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11 is a breathtakingly dumb idea.

September 5, 2010

Boxer, Fiorina and the Endless Recovery By Debra J. Saunders

At the end of Obamaland's Recovery Summer, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer is betting that Californians want the federal government to keep growing.

September 2, 2010

Obama Delivers on His Iraq Promises by Debra Saunders

When then-Sen. Barack Obama visited the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in 2008, I had one question for him: Which Democratic candidate for president would be best at keeping Iraq from imploding?

August 31, 2010

Obama Isn't Being Smart About Arizona By Debra J. Saunders

The latest CBS poll found that 59 percent of Americans view Arizona's SB1070, the immigration bill that allows Arizona to prosecute immigration violations, as "just right," while another 14 percent think the bill doesn't go far enough. So why does President Obama continue to hammer Arizona's law? And why did the State Department include a reference to the Arizona law in a report for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on America's human rights record?

August 22, 2010

A Federal Law Against Lying By Debra J. Saunders

In 2005, Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., sponsored the Stolen Valor Act that made it a federal crime to lie about receiving military medals or honors from the military.

August 20, 2010

Ground Zero on the Tolerance Issue by Debra J. Saunders

The mission of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's Cordoba Initiative is not just to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center near ground zero, but also to build "interfaith tolerance and respect."

August 18, 2010

Arnold and Jerry Take a Legal Holiday By Debra J. Saunders

When 52 percent of California voters passed Proposition 8 in November 2008, Attorney General Jerry Brown said he would defend the measure during the inevitable appeals. Then, as is his fashion, Brown changed his mind.  Ditto Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who twice vetoed same-sex marriage bills passed by the Legislature in deference to California voters who passed an earlier same-sex marriage statute in 2000. 

August 15, 2010

Real Tax Increases, Real Consequences By Debra J. Saunders

Taxpayers don't look at taxes the way the people who spend the tax money do. Take the battle over the extension of the "Bush tax cuts." Americans to Washington: They were tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. If Washington allows all or parts of the "Bush tax cuts" to expire at the end of the year, the result won't be to not cut taxes, as Beltway lingo and President Obama suggest, but to raise taxes.

August 13, 2010

Blood Diamonds Meet U.N. Swells By Debra J. Saunders

Prosecutors at the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague interrupted the trial of former Liberian leader Charles Taylor last week with some comic relief. They put supermodel Naomi Campbell on the stand to tie Taylor to the trade of "blood diamonds."

August 10, 2010

A Question of Citizenship By Debra J. Saunders

Trust Republicans to go too far. They take a good idea -- such as the notion that the federal government should enforce immigration laws, and states should be able to help -- and then drive it into the fringes. Witness a Fox News interview in which Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., declared, "We should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally, and you have a child, that child is automatically not a citizen."

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