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Debra J. Saunders is a columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. Debra Saunders has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The National Review, and Reader's Digest. Debra Saunders is the author of the book The World According to Gore. Saunders is married to Wesley J. Smith, a lawyer, author and senior fellow in bioethics at the Discovery Institute.
By Debra J. Saunders (May 08, 2011)
How small is the California prison population likely to become if Gov. Jerry Brown has his way? In three years, California's prison population would be 20 percent... more
By Debra J. Saunders (May 05, 2011)
San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey explained in The San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Insight his opposition to Secure Communities, the federal program that automatically... more
By Debra J. Saunders (May 03, 2011)
Nothing succeeds like success. In the years since 9/11, Americans have had to live with the fact that President George W. Bush failed to take Osama bin Laden "dead or alive"... more
By Debra J. Saunders (May 01, 2011)
On April 25, gay-rights advocates -- led by the Human Rights Campaign -- scored a victory after the HRC applied pressure on a law firm hired to defend the Defense of Marriage... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 28, 2011)
Behold the damage Donald Trump hath wrought. Every credible fact check has established that Barack Obama was born in this country. Yet on Wednesday, a reality TV show... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 26, 2011)
It wasn't that long ago when Democratic members of Congress were warning about conservative colleagues trying to insert their religion into politics by trying to cut funding... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 24, 2011)
The first tip-off that Greg Mortenson's memoir "Three Cups of Tea" has some credibility issues comes in the book's introduction. Co-author David Oliver Relin writes that as... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 21, 2011)
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Last year, when President Obama wanted to convince Americans that his policies were paying off and creating jobs, he visited a solar-panel plant in... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 19, 2011)
You know the war on drugs has gone too far when politicians keep ratcheting up restrictions on cold and allergy medications in order to prevent kitchen drug labs from buying... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 17, 2011)
President Obama well may have begun another undeclared war -- this time on states that try to enforce their own death penalty laws -- on the dubious grounds that the Food and... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 14, 2011)
Mitt Romney is too much like Barack Obama. I don't see how he'd win the 2012 GOP nod because he's got too much in common with the guy he wants to replace.Both men began a run... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 12, 2011)
If you think that academia is not the exclusive playground of the academic left, consider the fate of UCLA epidemiologist James Enstrom.In 2008, Enstrom thought that a report... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 10, 2011)
President Obama has dedicated his time in office to soaking up applause and shifting blame. Last year, when Democrats owned the White House, the House and the Senate,... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 05, 2011)
The New York Times reported last month that General Electric earned $14.2 billion in international profits, including, $5.1 billion in the United States. Yet GE did not pay a... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Apr 03, 2011)
"No blood for oil" was a popular slogan chanted by the left in opposition to President George W. Bush's push to send U.S. forces into Iraq. Now that President Obama... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 31, 2011)
California Gov. Jerry Brown won the blame game and lost the budget.
Brown began with a proposal to put a measure on the ballot to extend the 2009 tax increases on income... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 29, 2011)
In Sacramento, the knee-jerk response to any crisis is to blame the Republicans. But if Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders can't cut a deal to win the two... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 27, 2011)
Every American should look at Libya through the prism of the 1988 Pan Am 103 terrorist bombing that left 270 people dead. Moammar Gadhafi -- the man whom Ronald Reagan called... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 24, 2011)
California prisons confiscated more than 10,000 cellphones last year. This year, officials at Corcoran State Prison found a cellphone with a camera in possession of convicted... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 22, 2011)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Perhaps one of the most dangerous sentences in the English language is: "It can't get any worse." Anyone who doesn't know that should not be trusted... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 19, 2011)
The White House Office of Management and Budget projects that this year, mandatory spending will exceed federal revenue. Congress could cut every dime of discretionary... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 17, 2011)
Grover Norquist, the affable head of the Washington-based Americans for Tax Reform, doesn't want Republicans to negotiate with Democrats to solve Washington's deficit... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 15, 2011)
At Friday's news conference, President Obama tried to connect with the common man coping with rising gasoline prices. Instead, the president left little doubt that he is... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 13, 2011)
P>Forget the recent scandals involving National Public Radio. Go back to the days before NPR chief exec Vivian Schiller resigned, before a conservative prankster videotaped... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 10, 2011)
Gov. Jerry Brown's strategy to win the governor's seat has led California to this moment. March 10 was Brown's self-imposed deadline for passing his budget package and... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 08, 2011)
"America is not broke," filmmaker Michael Moore told a group protesting against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's attempts to curb public employee union collective bargaining in... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 06, 2011)
Last month, the website Politico reported that the Department of Justice dropped its representation of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his former deputy, Paul... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 03, 2011)
This week, Charlie Sheen owns network news. No wonder Americans hate the media. In a rush for ratings, TV news shows have been clamoring for sit-downs. The goal, of course,... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Mar 01, 2011)
I am reluctant to join the chorus of scolds who chide Republicans for opposing Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to put a tax-increase extension on a special election ballot in... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 27, 2011)
In 2008, 56 percent of Wisconsin voters supported Barack Obama for president. In 2009, Wisconsin's Democratic governor and Democratic Legislature passed legislation that... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 27, 2011)
In 2008, 56 percent of Wisconsin voters supported Barack Obama for president. In 2009, Wisconsin's Democratic governor and Democratic Legislature passed legislation that... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 25, 2011)
SACRAMENTO, CALIF. -- Call me Sutter. Sutter Brown. California's first dog, the shortest, cuddliest member of Gov. Jerry Brown's and Anne Brown's nuclear family.You may rub... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 24, 2011)
SACRAMENTO, CALIF. -- Call me Sutter. Sutter Brown. California's first dog, the shortest, cuddliest member of Gov. Jerry Brown's and Anne Brown's nuclear family.You may rub... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 20, 2011)
In 2009, when CNBC's David Faber asked former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan what lessons could be learned to prevent another great financial meltdown in the wake of... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 17, 2011)
P>My first reaction to stories about the Public Policy Polling survey that found that 51 percent of GOP primary voters believe President Obama was not born in the United... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 15, 2011)
The liberal group Moveon.org has been sending out e-mails to warn that Republicans are back in control of the House and to ask recipients to sign a petition that states,... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 13, 2011)
On Feb. 15, on the recommendation of its Peace & Justice Commission, the Berkeley (Calif.) City Council is set to vote on a resolution to invite "one or two cleared"... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 10, 2011)
In one of her many iterations, Arianna Huffington targeted "corporate greed" as a force undermining America. That was during one of her populist phases, which frequently are... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 09, 2011)
When he was in his residency, studying psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from 2003 to 2009, Nidal Hasan gave a lecture in which he defended Osama bin Laden,... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 06, 2011)
After receiving at least $43 million in aid from the state of Massachusetts, Evergreen Solar announced last month that it would be closing its manufacturing plant in Devens,... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 03, 2011)
Forget all that talk about bipartisan civility. When some 200 conservatives showed up for a weekend conference hosted by the libertarian-leaning industrialist brothers... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Feb 01, 2011)
"We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem." That's a Republican mantra often used to explain why the answer to Washington's deficit spending is not a tax... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 30, 2011)
Four times this month, the U.S. Supreme Court has slapped down the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Four times the Big Bench unanimously reversed Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 27, 2011)
The problem with left-leaning elites trying to run the U.S. economy from the top down is simple: They think the answer to America's economic woes is to create... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 23, 2011)
GOP Assemblyman Chris Norby is a former Orange County supervisor with a longtime and deep aversion to California's 425 redevelopment agencies. Some redevelopment zones may... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 20, 2011)
In a January 2008 Democratic presidential debate, then-Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both promised to deliver universal health care plans. But Obama hit Clinton for... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 18, 2011)
Gary Johnson, former Republican governor of New Mexico and likely 2012 presidential candidate, is serious when he says he wants to end deficit spending. He's so serious that... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 16, 2011)
When he unveiled his budget, the California governor boasted that he was delivering a spending plan without "gimmicks, tricks and unrealistic expectations."On the one hand,... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 13, 2011)
This is a free country. If Sarah Palin wants to run for president in 2012, she is free to try. But she will not win the GOP nomination because Republican voters are not... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 11, 2011)
How do we react to the horrific murders of Christina Green, 9; John Roll, 63; Gabe Zimmerman, 30; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79; and the... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 09, 2011)
Odysseus-like, Jerry Brown journeys back to his ancestral home.
Sing in me, Muse, and tell the story of the godlike Jerry Brown,
Who became a political wanderer,... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 04, 2011)
As he was sworn in as governor at Sacramento's Memorial Auditorium on Monday "with no mental reservations," Brown gave Californians reason to be optimistic that he might... more
By Debra J. Saunders (Jan 02, 2011)
While WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is celebrating his $1 million-plus book deal on a 600-acre estate and enjoying his status as a lefty fringe hero, former cartoonist... more