SATURDAY POLITICS: California Voter Registration By Party, 1998-2014

California's Secretary of State released figures on voter registration as mandated by law 60 days before the June 3, 2014 primary election. The data show the dramatic increase in the number of voters who select the "No Party Preference" option as well as the dramatic collapse of the Republican brand in California. Independents went from 12.2% of registrants in 1998 to 21.1% in 2014. In that same period Republican's share went from 35.8% to 28.6%. Democrats have slowly decreased, from a high if 46.8 in 1998 to 43.5% now. Bizarrely, there are now more counties where Republicans (31) outnumber Democrats (27).

However, the top 10 counties by Democratic registration are:

1. San Francisco 56.27%
2. Alameda 56.06%
3. Santa Cruz 54.43%
4. Marin 54.38%
5. Sonoma 51.80% 
6. San Mateo 51.01% 
7. Monterey 50.96% 
8. Los Angeles 50.64%
9. Imperial 50.14%
10. Contra Costa 49.41%

Happily, this includes the largest country in the state, Los Angeles. There are now 17,660,486 registered voters, up from 16,897,383. That equates to 73.3% of eligible voters being registered.

Hat/tip to KPCC

Why Elections Matter: Chief Justice Robert's New Yorker Profile

kos over at Daily Kos highlights this key graf from Jeffrey Toobin's profile of Chief Justice John Roberts in the latest New Yorker

After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

Thanks, John Kerry! But if we didn't have Bush's second term we probably wouldn't have Obama's first term and Democratic control of the US House and Senate.

But this also highlights why Obam's choice to replace Justice David Souter is so important.

Best (Mad Professah reviewed) Films of 2006

Now that the 2006 Oscars are over and I'm going to begin watching movies released in 2007 this weekend (one of my favorite books, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake has been made into a movie starring Kal Penn by Indian director Mira Nair and Frank Miller's 300 looks too homoerotic too miss) I can finally provide the list of the Best reviewed films of 2006 that I saw and reviewed. (The link in the list below goes to the original Mad Professah review)
10. An Inconvenient Truth.
9. Casino Royale.
8. Blood Diamond.
7. V for Vendetta.
6. Pan's Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno).
5. Little Miss Sunshine.
4. The Queen.
3. The Prestige.
2. Akeelah and the Bee and Charlotte's Web.
1. Dreamgirls.

Notice the Best Picture Oscar winner The Departed is not on the list, though it probably would have been #11. Also, I actually never reviewed Dreamgirls on this blog, though I have been calling it "a religious experience." I may try and see it again this week and attempt a review that gives it justice.