The Los Angeles Times reports:

The pioneering effort would cap greenhouse gases emitted by more than 600 power plants, refineries, cement plants and other big factories at 15% below today’s levels by 2020. And it would allow companies to buy and sell emissions allowances among themselves as a way to meet the overall goal less expensively. [...]

Cap-and-trade, a centerpiece of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s push for flexible market-based regulations, could yield $2 billion to $4 billion per year in revenue to the state from affected industries, depending on the market value of carbon, how many allowances for greenhouse gases are auctioned, how many are given away. [...]

The state’s landmark 2006 law requires emissions of planet-heating pollutants to drop to 1990 levels by 2020. The cap-and-trade program will take effect beginning in 2012, complementing strict rules to cut emissions from automobiles and slash the carbon content of fuels.

“I have no idea,” said Fiorina. “You’ll have to ask Sarah Palin. She’s on a mega book tour right now — that’s exciting to see. I share Sarah Palin’s values, and I suspect, I hope, that Sarah Palin thinks it’s important to win. That’s up to her.”

Audio is here, if the link below does not work.

Yeah, my only comment on that is that the president is doing himself no favors by spending millions of dollars to block the release of documents surrounding his birth certificate. And as long as the president keeps fighting tooth and nail to prevent the release of such things, I think people are going to remain skeptical. Now, that having been said, the Natural Born Citizen requirement of the Constitution was never put into statutory, enabling language, so there is no statutory requirement for secretaries of state around the country to verify one’s citizenship eligibity when one files to run for president of the United States. And so clearly, from a political standpoint, it was probably incumbent on Sen. [Hillary Rodham] Clinton’s campaign to push the issue back when they raised it. And having been unsuccessful, it seems to me it’s kind of hard to undo.

Just like the impeachment, with [President Bill] Clinton, my concern over issues like this is that, just as with Clinton, there are policy matters that I profoundly disagree with the current president on. And to the degree that we get distracted into these secondary questions, it begins to allow the president and his allies to shift the debate on an issue that is going to be very hard for us to win, while at the same time allowing them to escape the sort of scrutiny on the policies that we need to engage in to win. To win on our issues.

I was a little surprised that DeVore didn’t knock this down harder; it seems to be stinging him today.

UPDATE: A statement from the candidate:

I said ten years ago that the move to impeach and convict President Clinton was a distraction from countering his liberal policies. So too is the effort now to question President Obama’s legitimacy. Make no mistake, the Constitution is clear: Barack Obama is the President. The more time Carly Fiorina’s campaign spends on this side issue, the less time we have to work against the far-left agenda and failed policies of President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Boxer.

Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina (Photos courtesy of Chuck DeVore, Agencia Brasil)

Carly Fiorina announced her 2010 campaign for California’s U.S. Senate seat in the usual way. She rolled out a new Website. She bounded across a stage at a “green detergents” factory to the strains of “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and gave a short speech about “solutions that work.” Then she added a step that has become more-or-less essential for serious Republicans–a conference call with conservative bloggers. Over 23 minutes, she fielded some of the friendlier questions she’d get all day, such as whether she’d learned anything from 2009’s successful Republican candidates that could help her in her challenge to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

“My team knows very well how to run a campaign against a nasty Democrat,” said Fiorina.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“I am a pro-life conservative,” said Fiorina. “I believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. I am a fiscal conservative. In other words, I share the conservative values that many Republican voters share, and have been public about that for a very long time.”

Riehl stayed on the line, posing more questions from the right about McCain-Feingold campaign legislation, and about regulation of the internet. “I’m just picking up on things that I’ve seen,” he said, “that have been used to come after you from the conservative base.” And Fiorina, who had not brought up DeVore, went after him for accepting DeMint’s endorsement. “I find it interesting,” she said, “that Chuck DeVore, a couple weeks ago, was claiming that he is an anti-establishment candidate and perhaps he isn’t quite so much.”

It was a punchy debut for a candidate who, if national Republicans had their way, would not be worrying about a primary. Getting Fiorina, the multi-millionaire former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, to join the race, was a coup for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And in other public appearances, Fiorina has brushed DeVore aside. Her opponent, she says, is Boxer. The man who got into this race in November 2008 should be an afterthought. As DeVore ties Fiorina in the polls and turns conservative activists against her–as he talks bluntly about fascism and even about Barack Obama’s birth records–he’s forced Republicans to pay attention.

In the wake of the NY-23 special election debacle, where Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman united the national conservative movement against a liberal Republican candidate and let a Democrat sneak in to win a key congressional seat, Republican strategists are looking at more contested primaries than they’d like. While the Senate primary between Marco Rubio and Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) has gotten the most attention, there are primaries in Ohio, Kentucky, New Hampshire and to a lesser extent Illinois that pit experienced Republican politicians against more ideological activist candidates–some with deep pockets. Democrats who are running defense on their control of Congress are making all they can out of primary battles that, so far, have driven candidates such as Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) to dent their moderate credentials as they try to win over the party’s base.

The California primary is something of an aberration. DeVore has a longer political resume than Fiorina. Her political baptism came as an adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign. He worked for the Reagan administration and has been a member of the California legislature since 2005. He has a lengthy voting record and a longer rhetoric of conservative speeches and blog posts. Ever since it became clear that Fiorina might jump in the race, his small campaign staff has laid traps for her by portraying her as a closet moderate–the kind of candidate many Republicans believe they need in blue California, but not one the base should have to settle for.

“I’m a movement conservative,” DeVore told TWI. “I’ve been in the conservative movement since 1981. I was head of the College Republicans at Cal State-Fullerton.”

DeVore’s case to national activists has been bolstered by unexpectedly strong showings in the polls. According to a Field Poll conducted in October, Fiorina, who had once led DeVore 31-20 in trial heats, had fallen into a 21-20 tie. That Field Poll showed Boxer leading Fiorina by 14 points and DeVore by 17 points; a Rasmussen Poll conducted in September, before both candidates were in the race, showed the race closer, with DeVore outperforming Fiorina. And a November Los Angeles Times poll had DeVore and Fiorina tied at 27 percent each.

One Democratic strategist suggested that if DeVore and Fiorina were on equal financial footing, DeVore would be the stronger candidate. An October FEC report revealed that DeVore, having raised around $700,000, had blown through all but $60,000 of it. DeVore argues that this is more than previous candidates against Boxer have raised; other Republicans look at that as more proof that Fiorina’s potential to raise millions of dollars is another reason to back her. (When one blogger suggested that DeVore’s low fundraising numbers ruled him out as a serious candidate, he dove into the comment section to pronounce “DeVore Derangement Syndrome.”) One Republican strategist suggested to TWI that California Republicans, tired of watching obscure conservative candidates loose statewide elections, are ready to get behind Fiorina. They just didn’t want to throw DeVore under the bus while doing it.

DeVore, well aware of the buzz, has responded by keeping up aggressive web-driven campaigns against Fiorina and Boxer and holding out the possibility that he can raise more money. He told TWI that he’d had conversations with the Club for Growth, the conservative 527 whose money, according to the campaign, “put gas in the tank” for Doug Hoffman.

“I get dozens of emails from him every week, as do other activists,” said Ray McNalley, a Republican strategist in Sacramento. “He’s running a race that’s more aggressive, I think, than what you’ve seen from some of the last statewide Republican challenges. If he comes in with a couple bucks in the bank, if he exceeds expectations, he could light a fire out there.”

From the conservative activist’s perspective, DeVore’s an ideal candidate. After writing a war novel, “China Attacks,” in 2000, DeVore became a frequent reviewer at Amazon.com. His take-outs on action novels and political texts reveal more about his political thinking than most candidates would be comfortable divulging. On a Tom Clancy novel about the threat posed by Japan Devore wrote: “Replace “Japan” with “China” and the thesis holds together rather well in 2005.” On Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”: “Roosevelt’s New Deal had much in common with Mussolini’s fascism.” On the libertarian lessons of his state’s economic meltdown: “Gazing at California, [libertarian economist Friedrich von] Hayek would surely shake his head sadly.”

When he speaks at length about politics, DeVore reveals a sober view of his state’s constitutional woes. He was aware, he said, that liberals view California’s supermajority requirements for passing budgets and raising taxes as factors that wrecked the state. He disagrees.

“We’ve had this system in place for quite a while,” said DeVore, “but if you go back before these innovations of term limits, gerrymandering and donation limits, what you find is a remarkable amount of bipartisanship, of budgets getting passed on time. This kind of hyperpartisanship, I think, is a relatively modern invention.”

Asked about the use of the filibuster and senatorial holds in the body he wanted to join, DeVore suggested that presidents might deserve more deference than President Obama is currently getting. He recoiled at the idea of filibustering judges unless there was a reason to. Instead, he talked about issues he wanted to work on with Democrats, such as prison reform.

The quiet campaign against DeVore hasn’t really gotten into those issues. Republican strategists have heavily advertised DeVore’s friendship and connections with Floyd Brown, a Republican strategist who has “disputed” the president’s birth certificate–some of the most unpleasant material wound up in The Huffington Post, credited to a “Republican source.” DeVore acknowledged that Fiorina would cast him as an out-of-the-mainstream radical and make issues out of his connections.

“She’s going to do that,” said DeVore, “just like I’m going to remind people that John McCain and Olympia Snowe and Lindsay Graham are backing her.”

Nonetheless, asked what he thought of Brown’s ideas, DeVore didn’t take the chance to denounce “birther” rumors or the movement itself–which has been heavily active in California.

“The president is doing himself no favors by spending millions of dollars to block the release of documents surrounding his birth certificate,” said DeVore. “As long as the president keeps fighting tooth and nail to prevent the release of such things, people are going to remain skeptical.” The door was left open, said DeVore, because Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign didn’t go after Obama’s qualifications when it had the chance, and because there were no statutory requirements for verifying a candidate’s citizenship.

Answers like that give ammunition to Fiorina’s supporters; they also ensure that the would-be-frontrunner can’t ignore the conservative movement’s preferred candidate. A week after the Fiorina conference call, her campaign created a Website, CallMeBarbara.com, dedicated to a June incident in which Boxer told a military witness to call her “senator” instead of “ma’am.” DeVore’s campaign made great hay out of the Boxer remarks in June, producing a parody Web video, milking the incident for all it was worth. When they saw Fiorina treading the same turf, they blasted out an email to reporters.

“If the Fiorina campaign intends to send out breathless asks with five-month lags,” wrote DeVore media adviser Joshua Trevino, “then I look forward to [a] March 2010 e-mail beginning, “How ’bout them Saints?”

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) (WDCpix)

To hear the Democrats tell the tale, the extension of jobless benefits enacted over the weekend will provide those living in high-unemployment states with an additional 20 weeks of insurance.

Well, not quite.

Because the bill was held up for so long in the Senate, an end-of-the-year filing deadline will prevent anyone from accessing the final six weeks of benefits, according to state officials and sources on Capitol Hill.

On Friday, President Obama signed into law legislation extending jobless benefits by 14 weeks nationwide, with an additional six weeks for those states where unemployment rates top 8.5 percent. Those benefits kicked in on Sunday. But there’s a glitch. The new law treats the 20-week extension as two separate extensions of 14 weeks and six weeks, with participants required to exhaust the first 14 weeks before applying for the next six. However, the current law keeps a Dec. 31 application deadline, roughly seven weeks from now, making collecting the full 20 weeks impossible.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

As a result, some members of Congress are already eying another sweeping unemployment extension, which would both address the deadline glitch and provide additional help — well beyond the six weeks in question — to those unable to find work next year, when jobless rates are expected to hover near double digits.

The Orange County Register first reported on the deadline glitch last week.

In a state like California, where unemployment currently stands above 12 percent, that technicality would prove significant. Loree Levy, spokesperson for California’s Employment Development Department, said Monday that an estimated 92,000 residents had exhausted all of their available unemployment by the end of October, and roughly 285,000 will be eligible for the newly enacted benefits by the end of the year. Whether they can get 20 weeks or only 14, though, depends on whether Congress extends the filing deadline.

Some in Congress are well aware of the problem. The office of Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said Monday that he’ll be pushing a proposal to provide as much as an additional year’s worth of jobless benefits. The proposal will be wrapped into a package to include other provisions designed to ease Main Street’s pain amid the downturn, including money to subsidize COBRA health benefits, as well as a provision to extend the full federal funding of a traditionally state-federal unemployment insurance program called FedEd, which got full federal funding under the stimulus bill. Without congressional action, states would again have to pick up part of the FedEd tab at the end of 2009.

McDermott doesn’t have an easy task. The pricetag for extending just the unemployment benefits for one year is roughly $80 billion, the McDermott aide said. With deficit spending having topped $1 trillion in the last fiscal year — and with an enormous health reform proposal in the works — the congressional appetite for expensive new proposals is hardly ravenous. Still, with national unemployment at 10.2 percent — and no wave of new jobs on the horizon — even the most ardent small-government conservatives would have a tough time voting against additional relief.

Update: The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirms that Congress must pass another bill to guarantee the full 20-week extension.

… American Progressives and European fascist theorists admired each other and exchanged ideas. From William James to Georges Sorel, from eugenics to the militarization of society (”War on Poverty” anyone? It was William James who penned the “Moral Equivalent of War” in 1906), both the American left and European fascists sought to remake society using crises to urge action to justify bigger government at the expense of individual liberty.

Ronald Reagan had it right in 1981, when he remarked that Roosevelt’s New Deal had much in common with Mussolini’s fascism, including frequent words of praise from Roosevelt’s brain trust directed towards Italy in the 1930s.

Absolutely nothing controversial here from the Tea Party perspective, and the “words of praise” line is accurate. But how will this play in a state that in 2008 gave Barack Obama the biggest Democratic landslide margin since FDR in 1936?

“Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are two of the most unpopular people in American politics,” said Gary Bauer, who endorsed Hoffman early on. “I think they can become potent symbols in the 2010 election. At the end of the day, however, I think it’s important for Republicans not to just say ’send a message to Nancy Pelosi’ or ’send a message to Harry Reid,’ but rather to remind people how a Republican Congress will be different than what they’re seeing right now.”

Nonetheless, as Brian Beutler points out, the immediate impact of the House victories is that the Democratic conference in the House will rise from 256 to 258. That gives the party more breathing room on a health care vote. And it’s hard to underscore just how much Republicans were hoping that a Hoffman victory, or a more long-shot victory by David Harmer in California, would strike fear into conservative Democrats worried about their own re-elections. Republicans have been messaging today about Governor-elect Bob McDonnell’s landslide margins in vulnerable Virginia House seats won by Democrats last year, but Democrats generally understand that McDonnell was the beneficiary of a bumbling Democratic campaign against him. The Democratic House victories give the party some breathing room.

Overall, Garamendi holds a 10-point lead in the district. That’s a fairly poor performance for a Democrat — voters here gave the Obama-Biden ticket a landslide 32-point victory over the John McCain and Sarah Palin — but it’s enough to elect Garamendi. Among voters who’ve already cast ballots — more than half of the electorate — Garamendi leads 51 percent to 41 percent. Among late-deciders, he leads 49-40. And SurveyUSA, which often produces strange numbers in its small samples of non-white voters, finds Garamendi only leading by six points with African-Americans. His real lead with those voters is doubtlessly much larger.

If Harmer grabs more than 40 percent of the vote here, Republicans will call it a moral victory. But the larger impact will be on the 2010 GOP gubernatorial primary. Garamendi would resign his office to start serving in Congress, giving Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) the power to appoint a new lieutenant governor. If, as some expect, he appoints former GOP Congressman Tom Campbell, that would give the conservative a leg up in the June 2010 primary.

Just three years ago, Marin county residents were busy raising money for a legal fight to stop Habitat for Humanity from building four homes affordable to families making under $56,000/year, saying it would “blight” their exclusive neighborhood of million dollar plus houses. (The project is still being debated.)

But now they are being welcomed with open arms in another part of the county as they renovate one of the foreclosed homes that even Marin has acquired a passel of. Habitat bought the house, which needs extensive rehab, for $215,00. It doesn’t sound affordable exactly to those of us in more affordable parts of the country, but in a county where the median home price is $800,000, I guess it qualifies.

Nothing like a wave of foreclosures to change those “Not In My Backyard” attitudes. This, by the way, is what affordable housing looks like in Marin.

As the Marin case shows, high-priced homes are increasingly going into foreclosure. Don’t be surprised to see Habitat next in a place like Palm Beach, Fla. Or maybe the group will take on even more foreclosures in Marin. The one constant about this crisis is that no region escapes its reach, even neighborhoods that once thought they were safe. For some once-exclusive cul-de-sac communities, it may be time to drop the NIMBY attitude,  roll up your sleeves,  and help out with the Habitat renovation.