The Mesa Paper

Things are looking glum for progressives in the near and medium future. As I’ve written before, the long-term trends are on our side, e.g., voter diversity, younger voter age, populations shift to cities. But there is plenty of well-placed concern about a return to broad-based trumpism in the next Congress. National and state efforts have […]

Sometimes we see news stories about the activities of Congress written in Dragnet’s Sergeant Joe Friday style, “Just the facts, Ma’am.” Readers (and maybe journalists) might be excused for not connecting dots on complex stories about two main functions of Congress: lawmaking (legislating) and factfinding (investigating). The twists and turns of legislation have been described […]

There are serious questions being raised recently by the anti-abortion law in Texas, about which the US Supreme Court heard arguments on a technicality last month. Specifically, whether the federal government may contest a state law that infringes on Constitutional liberties. The Washington Post reminds us of a statement from Alexis de Tocqueville, almost two […]

You’ve read my rant before. We live in a big state. California is geographically large (third after AK, TX), diverse (second only to HI), an economic engine (taken alone, the 5th largest economy in the world after US, China, Japan, and Germany), and population (we have 10 million more citizens than the next state, TX). […]

First, a big “Thank You!” to readers who voted NO on the recent recall ballot measure. It was a vote for continued good government, even if sometimes uncomfortable or inconvenient. What? American Taliban? Shades of 2001 John Walker Lindh. No, this is about doctrinaire trumpism where mainstream contenders cannot survive the primary election process without […]

It’s always tough being in the minority party in Congress. The best legislators in the minority party stay true to their basic raison d’être. They introduce and promote legislation in the interest of their home districts. They vote on all bills according to their political philosophy and of value to voters back home. After all, […]

Civil Rights icon and longtime Congressman, the late John Lewis, often talked about using counterintuitive “good trouble” as a means of constructive change. Can there also be a “good socialism”? One of the better ideas of the American democracy is its innate socialism, probably beginning with our radical departure from the rule of King George […]

Kevin McCarthy represents the 23rd Congressional District of California between Fresno and Lancaster. In the 2020 election, he won by 25 points, so he is well-supported by his district, notwithstanding being only one of only 11 republicans in the 53 member California Congressional delegation. In spite of being from our overwhelmingly Democratic state, McCarthy has […]

Reasonable doubt. That’s all Derek Chauvin’s defense team needed to create in one Minneapolis juror’s mind during the murder trial to avoid a guilty verdict. Just create a tiny reasonable doubt that the mountain of professional testimony, medical evidence, and eyewitness video was wrong to blame Chauvin for the death of George Floyd. It didn’t […]

The filibuster remains unchanged from last month, as it has for a couple hundred years, so the Senate didn’t act to eliminate it. The expressed original intent of the legislative filibuster was to allow a sizeable minority to have a voice when only a slim majority favored a bill. It was a creative empowerment of […]