While Mark Twain's oft-quoted comment about not getting into fights with people who buy ink by the barrel is wise, sometimes a pundit can be so wrong that you have to respond, no matter how much power of the press he has behind them. Fresno Bee Editorial Page Editor Jim Boren's recent column (published on modbee.com, Aug. 28) calling for abolishing the Legislature is a good example.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must welcome the heat she's getting for wobbling on the farm and energy bills. Having caved in to Detroit on fuel economy standards and compromised with Midwest agro-plutocrats on crop subsidies for millionaires, she's shown that she's more a pragmatic Baltimore pol like her father than a knee-jerk San Francisco liberal. That'll serve her well.

Jerry Brown, who has been confounding state Republicans for more than 30 years, is at it again.

The 15 "trailer bills" accompanying the stalled-out California state budget contain countless words, many of which deal with matters that have nothing to do with the budget itself. As noted in previous columns, the trailers are often used as vehicles to slip into law provisions that bypass the ordinary legislative process.

This is the time when toute la France heads off on its monthlong summer holiday. No, it's not everybody. Somebody has to drive the trains, keep the nuclear power plants running, staff the seaside hotels and patrol the autoroutes.

State Senate Republicans are proposing, as a major cost-savings measure to try to bring the California budget out from a deficit situation, reforming the CALWORKS program. As Michael Herald wrote his piece, he responded item by item to Sen. JeffDenham's points.

Lost in all the rhetoric and false accusations about the Governor's proposal to reform CALWORKS (the state's welfare system) are the facts. While the liberal Democrat leadership of the Senate and Assembly try to portray this proposal conforming to federal law as somehow throwing single mothers and kids out into the streets, nothing could be farther from the truth.

California's two-thirds vote for state budgets — it's one of just three states with a supermajority requirement — provides minority Republicans with one of their only opportunities to wield real power, and they often use it to pursue agendas that have little or nothing to do with the budget.