As we face yet another Sophie’s Choice election within less than three weeks, I’ve been waiting to see when and if the Trump campaign would start challenging the person who could end up being President: California Senator Kamala Harris. After all, she would be far more dangerous to the future of America than Joe Biden […]

Will the phrase “San Francisco Democrats” be revived nationally in the 2020 presidential contest? Opponents of Kamala Harris very well could test that idea. As in 1984 when the phrase was first coined, it would be an attempt to exploit the divide in the Democratic Party.

There were few surprises in the rancorous hearings to commend Brett Kavanaugh for appointment to the Supreme Court. They have now mercifully come to a close. Were he to fail in getting the simple majority of votes he needs for Senate confirmation it would cause a tsunami shock with reverberations that will rock the political […]

Sen. John McCain didn’t quite make it to the presidency but he might have worn the title easily had history gone another way. In an extraordinary lifetime of achievements that catapulted him from naval hero and prisoner of war to re-election to the Senate where he was serving his sixth term, McCain demonstrated the highest […]

MEMO To: Queen Elizabeth II From: Joe Mathews Re: Mutual respect Your Majesty, I don’t mean to rush someone who just turned 92. But it’s high time that you showed California some appreciation—by making our entire state an honorary member of the British royal family. Perhaps that seems a bit much, but ask yourself, Ma’am: […]

California has had its share of towering leaders—-Governors Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren, (who also became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court), Ronald Reagan, and Governor Edmund G. Brown. Senators William Knowland and Dianne Feinstein along with the first woman House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (both still serving) and the current head of state, Jerry Brown, could […]

Jim Comey’s testimony was about the most widely anticipated hearing since Oliver North sat before Congress in 1987 during the Iran-Contra scandal. That was six years into Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Comey sat before the microphone less than five months into Donald Trump’s first term. He was poised, calm, collected and extremely candid in his answers […]

In the early morning hours of Saturday, January 28, the day after Trump signed his executive order temporarily banning travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, congressman Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania, put in a call to Kevin McCarthy, the six-term Republican from Bakersfield, California, and majority leader of the House of Representatives. Among the […]