The sponsors of last fall's Prop. 8, which rolled back the recently-won right of homosexuals to marry, are now complaining because some of their targets no longer want to do business with proposition backers.

It would be one thing if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the top officials of the state Legislature had pursued all logical and available methods for solving the state budget crisis.

It's the constant bugaboo of California politics: Republicans and business interests have claimed for decades that businesses will move out of state if taxes, home prices and utility rates rise.

It's fast becoming clear that all the talk about fighting global warming from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and leading Democrats in the state Legislature might be just so much hooey, happy talk to make them look good.

That's the implication of the final item in the Democrats' lengthy list of proposed cuts aimed to help bring this year's state budget into balance and make a start on solving next year's likely problems, an item also among the cuts in Schwarzenegger's newest budget blueprint.

There is no more sacred a cow in California state government than the prison system, whose population has multiplied by seven since 1980 to a total of about 170,000.

Even while politicians incessantly say they're looking for every dime of waste, they never finger prisons. They should.

While all around him, prospective candidates for governor are pulling out checkbooks and fattening up campaign war chests, lame-duck Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gives mixed messages about what he might do next.

Whatever he does, he says he won't be acting anymore, and he will be pushing environmental causes and clean energy.

Almost exactly two years from now, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be termed out and leave the office he loves, like it or not.

Which means he now faces the possibility of hanging around for two years as the lamest of lame ducks while a host of Democrats and a few Republicans fight over which one of them will inherit the governor's office and all the unsolved problems that go with it.

For a governor with barely two years left to serve, one who can't balance a budget or compromise with the state Legislature, Arnold Schwarzenegger has an odd way of establishing a positive legacy.

Look at the map provided by the American Civil Liberties Union and you'll see that almost all of California resides in a “Constitution-Free” zone the ACLU maintains is being created and policed by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Just in case anyone still wondered, President-elect Barack Obama has now made it plain he is a greenhouse gas believer. He gave no truck during his campaign to skeptics' frequent claims that climate change has nothing to do with human activity, and it's now certain he won't as President.