Thomas D. Elias

There's good news and bad news on the higher education front in California these days, but so far the bad news is trumping the good.

First the good news: California high schools over the last few years graduated tens of thousands more students eligible for admission to a University of California or California State University campus than ever before. The 11 percent increase in eligibles is a sign of major progress in the state's elementary and high schools, playing out at the university level.

All over California, protestors against new taxes and big government spending turned out in respectable numbers the other day for "tea parties" decrying tax increases enacted by legislators and Gov. Schwarzenegger in February and the extensions of those taxes contained in Prop. 1A, lead item in the May 19 special election.

You always know politicians are desperate when they begin threatening the voters who elected them.

So it is today in California, where voters are being told that if they don't okay all six statewide ballot propositions before them May 19, they will suffer grave circumstances.

Reports on the impending death of the Republican Party, at least in California, have come thick and fast since the election last fall of President Barack Obama, accompanied by continued Democratic dominance of legislative races in this state.

So now we know what "post-partisanship" really means:

It's a way for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to transition into whatever he wants to do next, probably a job in President Obama's cabinet since he's now saying he won't run for any other elective office "until you change the Constitution."

There was a time when the term "states' rights" stood for trampling on the rights of individuals.

Many states asserted, during the great civil rights battles of the 20th century, that they had the right to prevent some citizens from voting, eating in the restaurants of their choice, drinking from public water fountains or sitting where they pleased on buses and trains.

California legislators know well the low esteem in which they are held: A positive rating of just 18 percent in the latest polling. And Gov. Schwarzenegger knows he has a lower-than-ever 38 percent favorable rating in the same surveys.

California legislators know well the low esteem in which they are held: A positive rating of just 18 percent in the latest polling. And Gov. Schwarzenegger knows he has a lower-than-ever 38 percent favorable rating in the same surveys.

At long last, the University of California has taken steps that just might improve its academic quality. This is remarkable because for much of the last decade, it's often seemed as if the U.C. system sought to cheapen its degrees and make them amount to less.

No federal policy shift under President Obama will be more important to California than what he does on illegal immigration. This will have more long-term significance to the nation's biggest state than even the now-taken-for-granted reversal of George W. Bush's refusal to allow enforcement of California's landmark greenhouse gas emission limits on cars and trucks.