California Is Burning

Wildfire ravages the Sunshine State. Sadly, there is nothing unusual about that with seasonal La Nina or El Nino winds feeding flames from natural or man-made ignition, exacerbated by years of over-development sending urban sprawl into areas of dried scrub brush where environmental policy often prohibited common sense clearing that gives fuel to fires that could otherwise be more easily extinguished. That is par for the course in California, but the state is burning in another way-perhaps just as dire. The state is drowning in the debt of her own excesses. The courts have ordered the release of 27,000 state prison inmates, which will doubtless encourage both law abiding citizens and the tourists who are staying away in droves to place full faith and confidence in the absent one, Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has spent about a quarter of the last month in Massachusetts burying his ideological simpaticos-his Kennedy in-laws. If the state of fruit and nuts could wobble through in a conflagration without him, then maybe they do not need an ersatz conservative who gave a brief charade of a fight against his leftist legislature and in support of some ballot initiatives before letting his inner-Kennedy out and declaring that ultimately the state is responsible for providing everything for everybody.