Few topics divide California as consistently or as evenly as the death penalty. The last time voters had their say on it, they opted by a vote of just over 51-49 percent to keep it around. How avidly do supporters of capital punishment maintain their opinions? Two years ago, when the Prop. 34 ballot initiative aimed to dump capital punishment in California and disband the state’s only Death Row, in San Quentin Prison, its supporters raised $7.3 million while those wanting to keep the death penalty had barely $300,000.

Jerry Brown has been called a lot of names in his 45-year political career, from Gov. Moonbeam to the old man. Until now, no one accused him of being a do-nothing dud. Changing the state’s school-funding formula, balancing the budget after years of deficit, proposing a massive water transportation plan and spearheading a successful campaign for a tax increase were not enough to make Mr. Brown a busy man, says his most likely fall reelection rival.

If there is a state budget surplus, let’s return it to the people we took it from, goes the demand these days from conservative Republicans, led by Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, who now represents a lot of barren desert and would like to be governor of California. Quite a siren song, and one we have heard before, most recently 14 years ago. Who wouldn’t like to open the mail and find a fat check from the state?

For almost two months, parents of California public school pupils have been able to claim with no proof that their religion precludes getting their children vaccinated against once dreaded and disabling diseases like polio, rubella, mumps, pertussis and smallpox. This enables parents who believe in myths to …

Remember the enthusiasm of Sempra Energy back in 2009 when it had just about finished its $975 million liquefied natural gas importing plant at Costa Azul, on the coast just north of Ensenada, in Baja California? Almost giddy at the prospect of circumventing many California regulations and bringing LNG to North America from places like Indonesia and Russia, Sempra won approval from Mexican authorities by promising to sell some of the plant’s throughput for use there. And that is …

Gov. Brown and a lot of public school officials are just now rediscovering how right the 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns was when he observed that “the best laid plans of mice and men oft’ go astray.” The latest example in California is the new public school funding formula Mr. Brown aggressively pushed last year, giving…

There’s one big reason why, no matter how much happy talk you hear about “comprehensive immigration reform” from President Obama and members of Congress, it’s unrealistic to expect…

Sometimes it can take more than a decade for a completely sensible idea to catch on. So it is with what may be the single best money-saving idea in the inventive preliminary budget proposed by Gov. Brown. The idea, part of a Brown plan to appease a panel of federal judges, calls for…

Listening to radio host Rush Limbaugh and former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, you’d think all newspapers, radio and television stations are owned by the pinkest of leftists. But a series of moves by the nation’s largest owner of radio stations, Clear Channel (controlled by the Bain Capital firm once headed by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney), means the most-heard medium in California will now carry…

Like swallows returning to Capistrano, state legislators come back to Sacramento as each new year begins, ready to peck away at what they see as the state’s problems. Last year, that included…