Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Congressman Devin Nunes, a Republican from the Central Valley, describes California as an economic basket case and outlines, by my count, five ballot initiatives that he believes are needed to fix the state. Why should anyone care? Because Nunes, while little known to most Californians, is one of California's more thoughtful Republican politicians, and he has the ability to raise money to pursue at least a couple of these ideas at the ballot.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at efforts by the pay day lending industry to use ballot initiatives to fight off regulation.

The Wall Street Journal thinks so. Here's the Journal's round-up of state ballot measure. The paper pays extra close attention to a South Dakota ballot initiative that would ban naked short-selling, a practice that many companies have blamed for contributing to the collapse of big firms. Short sellers are folks who borrow a stock and then sell it when they think the price will drop. "Naked" short selling is whe folks do this through contracts without actually borrowing a stock. Supporters of the initiative believe the SEC should have cracked down on this practice.

The Wall Street Journal reports that some 40 percent of donations to the campaign in favor of Prop 8, the California initiative to ban same-sex marriage, come from Mormons. For my momey, the best part of the story is at the end, when one of the Yes on 8 campaign's evangelical leaders is grudgingly grateful for the cash, even as he says he wouldn't deign to talk with Mormons if it weren't for this campaign. C'mon guys, can't you get over ancient religious traditions and come together, accepting one another and feeling the love?

Oh, that's right. I forgot this is the Prop 8 campaign.

John Fund writes in the Wall Street Journal that the left is waging a war on direct democracy by attempting to obstruct gatherers for conservative initiatives. There's some truth in the argument, but it goes too far. Blocking campaigns of the type Fund describes have long been part of the initiative game. Experience and academic studies show they're ineffective. And a lack of organization and money in the Connerly camp is a big part of the reason for the failure of the anti-affirmative action measures.

The real war against direct democracy is a bipartisan one, and it's being waged by elected officials who, in the name of "cleaning up" signature gathering, change the law to make it harder to gather signatures. These laws usually restrict "out of state" gatherers (petition circulators are a traveling army, so almost everyone who knows how to do this is at some level "out of state") or limit the time to gather sigantures (a true liberal, democratic form would extend or even lift deadlines to permit community groups or true grasroots organizations to gather signatures over the period of a year or more).