Sheep and chickens. That's what America's greatest corporations have become. Whether it's in California or nationally, it's the same sad story.

The only person I know who is better off today than he was four years ago is President Obama. He's making more money, living in a bigger house and playing more golf. And when his wife goes on a shopping spree with her girlfriends, it's to Spain on the taxpayer's dime. If you asked President Obama if he's better off today, he'd say, "Hell, yeah! And we don't want it to stop!"

Cuba is a one-party state. North Korea is a one-party state. California is a one-party state. I'm not trying to draw any false parallels. 

I don't know if it's Dodd-Frank. Or if it's Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd themselves. Or if it's just the big bankers. But the reality is, our banking system is completely screwed up when it comes to getting a home loan. The problem used to be that the banks, in collusion with a federal government, made bad loans to bad people. That's what helped bring us the housing bubble and the inevitable bust that followed.

Who should we tar and feather for the scandalous spending spree at that General Services Administration "conference" in Nevada two years ago? Whose fault is it that a bunch of GSA bureaucrats wasted money on $44 breakfasts, a clown and a $75,000 bicycle-building exercise? Not the GSA's bosses. Not the Obama administration. I pin the blame on Watergate and Congress.

You told some newspapers editors last week that if Ronald Reagan were running for president today "he could not get through the Republican primary." I know what you were up to. You were trying to enlist Ronald Reagan in your tireless effort to get the GOP's presidential candidates to violate their principles. You want them to defect to your side and come out in favor of raising taxes to reduce the record budget deficits you've created for our grandchildren with your reckless spending.

President Obama wants his dear friend Vlad the Russian not to worry about the details of how the American missile defense system in Europe will be designed and implemented. Once he gets re-elected, the president said, he'll have more "flexibility" to deal with Moscow's concern that the missile system, which is intended to guard Europe from attack by rogue nations like Iran, is a threat to Russia's strategic security. Obama obviously didn't want the American people or the rest of the world to hear what he said.

Gong, Gong, Gong! I don't know about you, but watching the Republican primary season is making me feel like a judge on the "The Gong Show." I watched or listened to all three candidates after Tuesday night's Illinois primary. I'm still crying.If Mitt, Newt and Rick had given those uninspiring speeches on Chuck Barris' twisted 1970s amateur talent show, the celebrity panelists would have gang-gonged them in 30 seconds.

In less than 50 years they ruined my home state. They over-taxed it, over-regulated it and bankrupted it. They strangled its vibrant economy, destroyed its education system and let its infrastructure crumble. Who are these people who've turned the Golden State into Greece? Not Big Business. Not the rich. Not the poor. Not millions of immigrants from Des Moines or Juarez.

We all need to calm down and watch our mouths. Last week Rush Limbaugh referred to a Georgetown University law student who had testified to Congress about contraception as a slut. Rush did the right thing. He apologized. Last year Ed Schultz referred to talk-show host Laura Ingraham as a slut. Ed also did the right thing. He apologized.

When will they stop asking Republicans like me about our party's choice for vice president?

 Another tremendously talented American who had riches and fame beyond most people's dreams has killed herself with drugs. Whitney Houston's life was wrecked and cut tragically short at 48 because she became mired in the self-destructive hell of drug use.In the late 1970s my birth brother was living in L.A. and working as a writer on "Laverne & Shirley," the number one-rated TV show in the country. It was pretty heady stuff for a 21-year-old kid from Ohio.

I am an adopted son. I am a very lucky adopted son. And as an adopted son I want all adoptees like me to have the same wonderful adoptive parents I was lucky enough to have. 

I am somewhat mystified -- and dismayed -- by the spectacle of a lot of so-called conservatives who weren't around in the 1980s dropping Ronald Reagan's name to promote themselves while they go about slandering Newt Gingrich who, like my dad, was there in the '80s and '90s and also helped him elect more Republicans than anyone else in recent memory.

Much like one of his predecessors, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Barack Obama has all but declared war on the United States Supreme Court.It will be remembered that in 1937 FDR was angry over the high court's refusal to put a stamp of approval on much of his New Deal agenda, and sought to bend the court to his will by adding new members to the existing court membership.