"This bill bans nonscientific 'therapies' that have driven young people to depression and suicide."

"These practices have no basis in science or medicine, and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery."

The [California] law, which is to take effect on Jan. 1, states that no “mental health provider” shall provide minors with therapy intended to change their sexual orientation, including efforts to “change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”

California voters have "buyers' remorse" over over a $68.4 billion high-speed "train to nowhere."

"The project is still $54.9 billion short of what is needed, raising fears that the state will be unable to find the funds to finish later sections, and could be left with a futuristic rail line linking minor cities and farming communities."

A new poll shows almost three fifths would oppose the bullet train and halt public borrowing if given another chance to vote.

Almost seven in 10 said that, if the train ever does run between Los Angeles and San Francisco, they would "never or hardly ever" use it.

Not a single person said they would use it more than once a week, and only 33 per cent said they would prefer the bullet train over a one hour plane journey or seven hour drive. The cost of a ticket, estimated at $123 each way, also put many off. Jerry Brown, California's Democrat governor, has championed the project as a way to create jobs and is backed by unions.

Democratic governor... backed by unions... Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, we rejected the Democratic gubernatorial candidate who wanted the high-speed train. We rejected him in November 2010, and we re-rejected him yesterday.

Here's Tom Barrett in October 2010, just before his first loss to Scott Walker, touting high-speed rail — "a defining issue" — where "Wisconsin was the biggest winner" — bigger even than California — in getting an offer of federal money to pay for a leg of a rail system.



And here is one of the most effective political ads I've ever experienced, the ad from Scott Walker, in late summer of 2010, rejecting the high-speed rail:

"If they began this project where they want it to go — between San Francisco and Los Angeles..."

"... they would run into so much opposition from the environmentalists, and from local politicians influenced by the environmentalists, that the delays could take the high-speed rail advocates beyond the time limit for using the federal subsidy money. But the green fanatics have not yet taken over politically out in the San Joaquin Valley."

Writes Thomas Sowell about the high-speed rail line between Fresno and Bakersfield, California.

In other words, they are going to start wasting money out in the valley, so that they will be able to waste more money later on, along the coast. This may not make any sense economically, but it can make sense politically for Jerry Brown and Barack Obama.

The reason why every not-Romney candidate but Bachmann has had a surge.

We're experiencing the Santorum surge now, and it seems that the conservatives looking for a way to stop Romney have simply converged on him after the sequential failure of their efforts to converge on Perry, Cain, and Gingrich. But why not Bachmann? She won the Iowa straw poll back in August. If she was that strong then, why was she denied her turn for a surge?

There was her blunder talking about the HPV vaccine causing mental retardation, but that was a single incidence of loose talk, relaying an anecdote, and I doubt if most people even remember that.

I think what has held her back is her husband. A candidate's spouse matters. It was recently reported that when Newt Gingrich was divorcing his first wife, he (supposedly) said to a close friend: "You know and I know that she’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a president." Now, Gingrich is on his third wife, and she's relatively young and pretty (though she strikes many people as weird). But Gingrich's decline coincided with some intense focus on Callista. I'm not saying his decline was all about Callista. He had his surge, and that drew all sorts of scrutiny and criticism, and there was plenty to bring him back down. Yet the wife — and the wives — have mattered.

My question is: Why did Michele Bachmann get passed over in the sequence of surges? And my answer is that once people saw what her husband Marcus was like, they excluded her from consideration. For a female candidate, the spousal question is quite complicated. We expect the candidate herself to live up to some of the expectations we have — consciously or unconsciously — of the wives of male candidates. But what of the husband? Who will be the first First Gentleman in history? What's he supposed to be like? The role needs to be invented. And it couldn't be invented with the raw material that is Marcus Bachmann. Once people noticed him and tried to imagine him as the first First Gentleman, they ceased to conceive of her as a possible President.

If you don't remember how Marcus Bachmann burst into the national consciousness, refresh your recollection:

California's high-speed rail project nearly triples in cost — to $98.5 billion.

And the new projected completion date is 2033, not 2020.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday was expected to endorse the long-awaited plan, the first major update to the project in two years and the last before the federal deadline to begin construction next year. But state legislators, who were already skeptical, will tear through the plan starting Tuesday before deciding whether to start building, or to kill the project.

Obviously, they need to kill the project. Speaking of governors, remember this guy?



That's the ad — from August 2010 — that clinched my vote for Scott Walker.

California already requires its public schools to teach women's history and black history, so why not gay history?

There's a bill in the state legislature that has already passed the senate.

Advocates say that teaching about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in schools would prevent bullying and shatter stereotypes that some students may harbor. They point to several students who have committed suicide after being taunted by peers for being gay. But the bill has drawn vociferous criticism from opponents who argue that when and how to talk about same-sex relationships should be left to parents.

So the motivation behind forcing this study of history has little to do with history. It's about controlling behavior.

I have this idealistic belief that young people would behave better if they were respected as students, if the study of history would be premised on the value of studying history, and if, when history is studied,   historical principles determined the subject matter. 

A similar bill was approved by the Democratic-controlled Legislature in 2006, but vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said that school curriculum should be left up to local schools. But there is a new governor now. And both supporters and opponents of the bill expect it will sail through the heavily Democratic Assembly and be signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat who has been supportive of gay rights.

How much easier it is for a politician to sign a bill than for students to slog through political lessons year after year instead of learning what truly belongs in a history class. It's disgusting to compel young people to go to school and then to treat them like this.

And don't tell me that the gay rights movement genuinely belongs in a history course. Let that topic be integrated into history courses to the extent that they truly belong in a history course, not because some politicos wanted to score points or because their emotive constituents feel that there's an epidemic of bullying and suicide and it can be cured by making heroes out of Harvey Milk and his ilk.

“It is very basic to me that people dislike and fear that with which we are less familiar,” said Mark Leno, who sponsored the bill and is one of the first openly gay men elected to the State Senate. Students who come to view their fellow classmates as regular members of society, rather than misfits, will find that “their behavior changes for the better,” Mr. Leno said.

Leno just intuits cause and effect. "It's very basic to me" isn't a good enough foundation for a law that appropriates and exploits millions of hours of the time of other human beings. I could just assert that it's very basic to me that when young people are compelled to spend day after day, year after year, under the control of adults cranking out what sounds like state indoctrination, that they will rebel against authority. And then where's the good behavior you had your warm heart set on?

ADDED: Shouting Thomas cites "South Park":

The parents in that series are all veterans of the 60s, and they think that rebellion ended with them. They think that all of the issues of authority versus kids were solved when they were adolescents. So, they are constantly astonished to discover that their kids think they are pompous windbags preaching bullshit. Their kids are rebelling against them.

Click through to see what Shouting Thomas thinks about bullying.

"Once, he baked in existential estrangement, opportunistically tilting at authority figures..."

Baked? What are you trying to say, Maureen Dowd?

"Fashion forward: 10 things to get excited about in 2011."

From the L.A. Times "image staff":

1) Skirts falling. At last, some clothes for women who don't look to the Kardashians for style tips. The tyranny of the mini is over and skirts are falling. Midi, maxi and knee-length skirts were all over the runways for spring at Jil Sander, Michael Kors, Yves Saint Laurent and more. But they're going mass, too....

I led this trend beginning in '09. Took a break from it in fall '10, but after buying these boots yesterday, I've been contemplating regressing to my long skirts. (Bonus Althouse skirt-length material here. (Scroll to "Note about me."))

Oh, well, let's read on. Blah blah blah... oh!

6) The new political guard. If there is one person I'm eager to observe dressing for today's political stage, it's California Governor-elect Jerry Brown. In his 1970s heyday, he was a rake in double-breasted suits with sharp lapels. But now, almost nothing is known about what he wears.

Compared with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who favors suits by Armani, Brioni, Prada and Gucci, has been known to carry a Prada weekend bag and refers to himself as a "shoe queen," Brown is practically anti-fashion--which could almost be more interesting. 

Shoe queen, eh? Where are the pictures to prove this? All they've got is a pic of his head, which is bald on top and pensive in front, with an ear on at least one side. I'm skeptical!

ADDED: Oops. I misread. It's Queen Arnold. There's nothing at all about what Jerry Brown wears. Here's some fashion advice for Brown: wear... brown! Oh, sorry. I thought I was Naomi Wolf for a moment there. Advising Gore.

Who called Meg Whitman a "whore"? And who cares?

"The person who said that word is someone who can't be fired... Jerry's wife can't be fired" — according to an anonymous source.

By the way, who cares if the word "whore" is used in private conversations to refer to politicians who sell themselves in one way or another? Virtually all politicians take money and much of that money is given by people that are hoping/expecting to get something. In that sense, they are all whores. It's unremarkable that rough language is used. So what's the problem with calling Meg Whitman a whore? Jerry's a whore too, isn't he?

This fuss is phony. The only way it has any substance is if you think there's something especially wrong with using the standard rough language against a woman. If you think that, you don't believe in the full equality of the sexes. And it would mean that women don't belong in politics or wielding great power in the public sphere. If we can't criticize women the same way we criticize men, then we shouldn't trust them with power.

When I wrote "Jerry's a whore too, isn't he?" maybe you started thinking about the substance of the charge. Who has Jerry taken money (or other support) from and how has he, in the past, served the interests of the people who helped him? Well, the same thing goes for Meg Whitman! What was the substantive criticism? Why aren't we talking about that? Let's treat male and female politicians the same.

IN THE COMMENTS: YoungHegelian said:

If Prof Althouse thinks that politicians are "whores" because they take others' money, shouldn't Ms Whitman get a pass because her campaign is self-funded?

I mean, she may be a political masturbatrix, but she's not a whore!

I think apologies are owed here, Professor!

I said, the discussion should shift to the substance of it, and I agree that, with so much of her own money, Whitman has more chance of winning on the substance than most politicians.

Dave points me to PJ O'Rourke's "Parliament of Whores." O'Rourke wrote:  "Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us."

"Whores. Whores! Whores! Look around you. Look around you. Do you see what's happening?"

"In our town. In our very homes! You know who I'm talking about. You know! You know what's going on in that house! Vice! Perversions! Shamelessness! Cavorting... with that... devil!"

A quote from:

A. Somebody talking to Jerry Brown, who responded "Well, I'm going to use that."

B. David Axelrod, denouncing Christine O'Donnell.

C. Veronica Cartwright, attempting to warn people about what Jack Nicholson is doing.

The official portrait of Jerry Brown (from his old governor days).

Interesting, no? I ran across that at Wikipedia as I was looking up some things this morning. I wasn't checking up on his new campaign for governor. I was trying to remember what had happened in the 1992 Democratic primaries. We'd been talking about Bill and Hillary Clinton. (Would we be better off now if Hillary were President?) And I remembered that back in 1992, early on in the primary season when there were a lot of candidates, my shorthand reason for rejecting Bill Clinton was: He's a Republican. Then I was trying to remember who I voted for in the Wisconsin primary, which I knew was late, after many of those candidates had dropped out. Who was the last man standing in the 1992 Democratic primaries challenging Bill Clinton? It was Jerry Brown. Did you remember that?

As the press now focused on the primaries in New York and Wisconsin, which were both to be held on the same day, Brown, who had taken the lead in polls in both states, made a serious gaffe: he announced to an audience of various leaders of New York City's Jewish community that, if nominated, he would consider the Reverend Jesse Jackson as a vice-presidential candidate. Jackson, who had made a pair of anti-Semitic comments about Jews in general and New York City's Jews in particular while running for president in 1984, was still a widely hated figure in that community and Brown's polling numbers suffered. On April 7, he lost narrowly to Bill Clinton in Wisconsin (37–34), and dramatically in New York (41–26).

Here's a New York Times report, from just before the primary:

Mr. Clinton yesterday appeared to be straddling the divisions between the two groups [blacks and Jews], at once putting an advertisement on black radio stations touting his civil rights record and accusing Mr. Brown of pandering to blacks by saying he would choose the Rev. Jesse Jackson as his running mate.

"I think that we should not play politics with the Vice Presidency, even though it can be a vote-getter," Mr. Clinton said....

At a meeting with a Jewish group on Thursday, Mr. Brown was repeatedly asked how he could expect to win the Jewish vote after embracing Mr. Jackson, who referred to New York City as "Hymietown" in the 1984 Presidential campaign.

For his part, Mr. Brown has tried to appeal to appeal to black and Jewish voters alike with a television advertisement that criticizes Mr. Clinton for playing golf at an all-white country club. Yesterday, Mr. Clinton attacked Mr. Brown for the commercial, which he said distorted his record on civil rights.

"Let me tell you something," Mr. Clinton said. "A few years ago Jerry Brown said the real solution to racial problems was for the white boys to teach black boys how to read and for black boys to teach white boys how to fight. Now, I could have run an ad on that and made him look like a bigot."

Ha ha. I could have run an ad on that and made him look like a bigot. He just said it and got it quoted as if he were refraining from using it. Hilarious. I cannot remember if, in the end, I voted for Clinton or Brown. Probably Brown. What an amazing career that man has had. Astounding that after all these years, he's worked his way back to the California governorship.

And, for an unusual guy, an unusual official portrait, by Don Barchardy.

The political news of the day.

1. Obama's Attorney General: Eric Holder -- "a centrist on most law enforcement issues, though he has sharply criticized the secrecy and the expansive views of executive power advanced by the Bush Justice Department."

2. Ted Stevens finally goes down to defeat. The new Senator from Alaska is Mark Begich. The Dems now have 58 seats in the Senate, 2 short of filibuster-busting power.

3. Hillary might say "no" to SOS: "The Clinton camp’s effort to downplay her interest in the post might simply reflect her need to create an alternative storyline if the deal falls apart for other reasons, including the possibility that insurmountable problems arise during the vetting process, Democrats not connected with Clinton cautioned. Another possible motivation: Pushing back against the perception that she’s at the mercy of Obama’s team."

4. No Beau.

5. Joe won't go.

6. Draft Sarah.

7. Ayers airs his pent-up thoughts: "Not only did I never kill or injure another person, but the Weather Underground in its six-year existence never killed or injured another person... We did something that was extreme. Some of you would call it not only extreme but kind of nuts. You might call it off the track. You might call it crazy. You might call it defying of common sense. It was certainly illegal. To call it terrorism stretches the definition of terrorism to everything you don't approve of."

8. Remember Jerry Brown? He's now the California attorney general and he's seeking constitution review of Prop 8 in the California Supreme Court. He's looking for "certainty and finality in this matter."

9. Huck's being mean to Mitt.

10. Do we have to keep thinking about Al Franken?

Come on, everybody, pay attention to Wisconsin.

Ours — on the 19th — is the next big primary. The Cap Times marshals the historical evidence of the importance of the Wisconsin primary:

• As upstart contender Franklin Roosevelt did when he beat previous party nominee Al Smith in the 1932 Wisconsin Democratic primary.
• As Willkie did with his audacious but failed 1944 bid.
• As backers of Gen. Douglas MacArthur did when they tried unsuccessfully to build a boomlet for the Milwaukee native with an unsuccessful Republican primary bid in 1948.
• As backers of Dwight Eisenhower did when they upset the campaign of conservative Robert Taft in the state and created an opening for the general to enter the contest for the Republican nomination of 1952.
• As Massachusetts Sen. John Kennedy did when the state put him on track for the party nod in 1960.
• As Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy did when his anti-Vietnam War challenge to President Lyndon Johnson forced the incumbent to quit on the eve of Wisconsin's 1968 Democratic primary.
• As South Dakota Sen. George McGovern did when the state gave him a critical Democratic primary win in 1972.
• As liberal Mo Udall did when he narrowly failed to derail Jimmy Carter's bandwagon in the Wisconsin Democratic primary of 1976.
• As liberal John Anderson and moderate George H.W. Bush did when they tried to block conservative Ronald Reagan's candidacy in the intense Republican primary of 1980.
• As Mike Dukakis and Jesse Jackson did when they fought the essential battle of the 1988 Democratic nomination race in Wisconsin.
• As Bill Clinton did when he used a slim win in the state to prevent challenger Jerry Brown from threatening his "comeback kid" status in the campaign for the 1992 Democratic nomination.

If you need something to fill your empty hours as you wait for the 19th, may I recommend the documentary "Primary," which shows John F. Kennedy campaigning here in Wisconsin in 1960, fighting off his rival Hubert Humphrey. This is a very low key but highly-regarded film by Robert Drew. It's nowhere near as fun as "The War Room" and "Journeys with George," but it's specifically about a primary, and it takes place in Wisconsin and it's got John F. Kennedy.

ADDED: A test to see if you know your blogger: Is Althouse voting in the Wisconsin primary? If so, will she choose to vote in the Republican or the Democratic primary? If she votes in the Republican primary, who will she vote for? If she votes in the Democratic primary, who will she vote for?

AND: Another question. Assume you're a filmmaker, making a documentary about one of the candidates in the 2008 election season. Which one do you wish you'd picked? That is, knowing what you know now, which campaign would have yielded up the footage for your idea of the best documentary?

Is Jerry Brown blogging?

Jerry Brown started a blog on February 15th with one post, which got a lot of attention: Jerry Brown is blogging! Then he put up his second post on February 17th. So far, that's it. The first post reprints a letter about a political issue that had already been published in the San Francisco Chronicle and the second post is little more than pointing out that fact about the first post and noting the obvious, that he's arrived in the blogosphere. He's got 40 comments on the second post at the moment, many of which contain the phrase "Welcome to the blogosphere." I hate to be unwelcoming, but, jeez Jerry, after you got all that all that attention for putting one reprint up on a blog, why didn't you show us that you actually meant to be a blogger by tossing us a tidbit every day? I hate to be as catty and exclusionary as a state school sorority girl, but maybe we ought to hold off saluting a new blogger until he's demonstrated some actually tendency to blog.

"When Will I Be Loved?"

Linda Ronstadt is getting press today:

Singer Linda Ronstadt was thrown out of the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas on the weekend after dedicating a song to liberal filmmaker Michael Moore and his movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," a casino spokeswoman said Monday.

Now before people get all exercised about this, with cries of censorship or whatever, read this article that appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal before the concert in question:

"I always feel bad about being a (casino) shill," Linda Ronstadt says of her periodic visits to Las Vegas. She nonetheless returns to the Aladdin on Saturday, ... and that really amazes her.



The outspoken singer isn't a big fan of Las Vegas -- "It's such a strange, weird place" ....



[F]ans shouldn't expect to hear every one of their old favorites. Some songs "are not who I am anymore," she explains.



"Your story changes as your life goes on. We're not one self or editions of ourselves. You can carry those (editions) over, and they add weight to the current edition, but some songs don't lend themselves that well. They really need to stay back there for that particular moment."



The singer's political profile -- including her late '70s relationship with former California governor Jerry Brown -- are a past edition that does linger. "I've been dedicating `Desperado' every night to Michael Moore, trying to get people to go see `Fahrenheit 9/11,' " she says.



"They say the country is evenly divided, and boy is that true. One half of the audience cheers and the other half boos."



"I don't understand this country sometimes and I really fear for it," she adds. "The government is making everybody in the world hate us, including the people that used to be our friends."



Anyone who disagrees with that is welcome to get in line, behind whoever she manages to rile at the Aladdin this time.



"I keep hoping that if I'm annoying enough to them, they won't hire me back," she says with a laugh.

So what's going on here, really? It smells more like a contracts dispute or a publicity stunt than a political controversy. The Las Vegas Sun notes that she wasn't really up to the performance:

Ronstadt was merely going through the motions. ... Her performance was uninspired and generally flat. She lacked stage presence, doing little more than sleepwalk from song to song.

So, reduced to singing old songs in Las Vegas, a place she hates, Ronstadt leveraged the loathsome task into publicity that, perhaps, she hopes will make her seem relevant and important again. I'd guess she's delighted that the concertgoers "spilled drinks, tore down posters and demanded their money back" and produced "quite a scene at the box office." It seems that she'd like to publish a new "edition" of herself. Let's see how much help the press gives her.