Richard Bennett

— Don Perata, State Senator from Alameda, is one of California’s leading demagogues on gun control. The local paper, the Contra Costa Times, well and truly slammed his sorry ass today:

WITH ALL THE significant and unsolved problems facing the California Legislature, one wonders why some members waste their time on senseless measures that solve nothing while needlessly irritating a segment of the population.

The latest bit of nonsense comes from Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, the person who helped concoct the disastrous Coliseum deal with the Raiders. His most recent bit of mischief is a proposal to put a measure on the November ballot that seeks to impose a nickel-a-bullet tax on every round of ammunition sold in California.

My friend Rod Wright, Calfornia’s leading champion of the Second Amendment, likes to point out that people living in gang neighborhoods don’t get the same kind of police protection that liberals in gated communities get, so guns are essential for their security. In light of that fact, Perata’s latest tax really is an attack on the working poor, just like the cigarette tax. And no, this isn’t a myth – I once walked precincts for an opponent of Sheila Kuehl’s in the western hills of LA, where the anti-gun liberals proudly sport signs saying their houses are protected by an armed response company.

— Teddy Kennedy spoke at an Equal Pay Day rally in Washington, DC yesterday. According to Bill Maher, Kennedy said it was wrong for women to be trapped by glass windshields as they’re trying to go up in the world. I agree with that sentiment. Mrs. Bennett says that Kennedy’s exoneration for the killing of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick is the reason people like Gary Condit think they can get off for doing what he did.

— Here’s your update on Assemblyman Rod Wright’s DNA bill: the chair asked him to “hold it over” for two weeks before taking a vote. This kind of delaying tactic is common when the chair knows people are watching. She doesn’t know the half of it.

— A couple of days ago, I blogged Assemblyman Rod Wright’s Paternity Fraud bill, AB 2240. Today the bill comes up for its first hearing in the Assembly Judiciary Committee, and I’d like to take you on a field trip behind the scenes to look at its progress. This will take a couple of posts to complete.

First off, the committee system: Democrats dominate the Assembly by an almost 2:1 margin, so all committee chairs are Dems. Since term-limits, members of the Assembly can only serve 6 years, the last of which is generally consumed with an election bid to the Senate during which they check out of committee duties. Effectively, the chairs control a majority of votes in each committee, and they direct members how to vote through the committee analysis of each bill. The chair of the Judiciary Committee, Ellen Corbett of San Leandro, is a divorced mother who depends on child support to maintain her lifestyle. Historically, she’s been hostile to fathers. She assigned the task of writing the analysis of Wright’s DNA bill to Kathy Sher, daughter of state Senator Byron Sher, a Willie Brown crony and Stanford law professor from Palo Alto. Before Kathy landed this job, she was a lobbyist with the ACLU, in which capacity she argued in favor of legislation where DNA evidence exonerates falsely-convicted prisoners. Her moral flexibility in adapting to her chair’s agenda is evident in the committee analysis:

This controversial bill pits several compelling interests against each other: the interest of a man in not paying child support for someone who is not his biological child; the interest of the child, the child’s mother, and the state in having that child continue to receive support; and the interest of all parties in knowing that the matter of paternity has been resolved with finality.

Supporters and opponents of legislation explain their positions in letters to the author of the committee. Letters of support for this bill were received from several organizations and individuals, listed in the analysis at the end. If this bill is controversial, why then does the analysis admit: “Opposition: None on file?” Because it’s not genuinely controversial.

Regardless, the analysis signals a hard fight ahead; I’ll report on that after the votes are final, but my prediction is the bill will either be gutted to allow something to pass, or it will hit the wall and go down. Mr. Wright has worked this issue before, so most likely he’ll amend the bill down to get it out of the Assembly, and then take up the issues again in the Senate, on the committee where Kathy Sher’s father is a member. More to come.