State Government:

Living up to California's reputation as a land of fantasy, Democrat legislators there have just enacted just about every dream in left-liberalism's storybook. Thank you, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

For starters, the Republican governor out-Gored Al Gore by welcoming, even encouraging, a radical plan to combat global warming. The state is now committed to reducing greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — essentially the aim of the Kyoto treaty, which President Bush prudently refused.

Though Schwarzenegger held out for a "market based" system of trading emissions rights, the measure places direction of the world's sixth largest economy, not to mention the private lives of highly mobile Golden Staters, into the hands of the California Air Resources Board.

Plan supporters, not so secretly intending a political slap at the Bush administration, imagine that the government's draconian handling of "Big Oil" will midwife a host of new green technologies, thereby leading the way to a carbon-free world. Moving the state back to the undeveloped world's standards is more like it.

The governor doesn't seem to mind. He's ahead in the polls against state Treasurer Phil Angelides, on whom Democratic leaders have given up, casting an eye on 2010, when party favorite and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will take a shot at the governorship.

The Terminator thinks he's triangulating. The Democrats who run Sacramento think they're playing him like a Viennese violin.

So they pushed through an extreme plan for state-managed health care that even Angelides says is premature. Schwarzenegger has vetoed it, but the Democrats have defined the possibilities for socialized medicine for when they're back in the governor's mansion.

Meanwhile, the governor pushed through his own plan to require drug companies to offer discounted medicine to the elderly. The idea, contrary to the free-market thinking he brought with him two years ago, will cut into those companies' research capital. As the Pacific Research Institute's Sally Pipes notes, the governor would have the state do what the companies can't: fix prices.

Santa Monica's senator, Sheila Kuehl, who authored the universal health care plan the governor vetoed, did secure the former movie star's signature on her pet bill. A Hollywood favorite, it forces private and religious colleges, schools and day care providers that accept tax dollars not to discriminate against gays, lesbians and transgendered job applicants.

Conservative Republicans are furious, but Schwarzenegger apparently has calculated they'll be back come November, a one-party state dominated by Democrats being enough of a nightmare to keep them in line. The Legislature's antics under the Democrats' leadership already have been enough to give them acid reflux.

The governor did veto another Kuehl measure that would have required public schools to teach "respect" for alternative lifestyles. So he tried to appease the right with that gesture while giving Kuehl her intervention into private instruction that could jeopardize future efforts to enact a voucher system.

Leaders of both parties famously promised to turn over their much-maligned redistricting power to a nonpartisan panel of retired judges. But with their legislative deadline looming, they unceremoniously dumped the idea.

Mysteriously, and unbeknown to most GOP legislators, an amendment was slipped into a pact with the California Highway Patrol that would let the governor boost his top appointees' pay as much as 125% — not exactly an impulse you'd expect from a reformer. Apparently, he appeased his conscience by signing on to raise the minimum wage to $8 per hour, the highest in the nation.

Almost forgot: Democrats also tried an end run around the Electoral College by committing the state's presidential electors to vote for the winner of the majority of votes nationwide. They did so by stealthily joining with a handful of other state legislatures in such a pact, which happens to be barred by Article I of the Constitution.

The governor hasn't said whether he'll sign that measure, which — go ahead — you can dub Gore's Revenge. You may also speculate he's waiting for another constitutional bypass — one that'll send naturalized citizens to the White House.