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 . '/' . substr('9780520223165',-6,3) . '/' . '9780520223165' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Orville Schell (Foreword), Wayne Miller
$28.99
$13
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Flickr / jslander
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Starting with 2009 models, new cars in California will sport a sticker that rates just how environmentally friendly they are, based on emissions and fuel economy. Not to be outdone, the European Union might require governments to monetize and budget for emissions.
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AP photo / Phil Klein
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Lower temperatures and higher humidity helped crews battling wildfires in Southern California early Monday morning. Fires in the state have laid waste to more than 800 square miles in recent weeks. Many thousands of acres remain ablaze. [Update]
Posted on Jul 7, 2008
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Politicians usually try to explain away their records once they bid for higher office. Take the case of just about any big-time Democrat and the issue of gay marriage. But San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who formally launched an exploratory bid Tuesday for the California governorship, says he’s not worried about his gay rights legacy: “We’re about civil rights and equal rights, you better believe it. ... I’m proud of that, I’m not going to hide from that.”
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AP photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez
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By Bill Boyarsky — Watching the couples in line for licenses in Beverly Hills on the first day of gay marriage in California, I was struck by how the scene was so commonplace, even boring—just a bunch of men and women waiting their turn at a nondescript government office.
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On Aug. 2, 2007, Chauncey Bailey was murdered in Oakland, Calif., while investigating Your Black Muslim Bakery. A secret police video unearthed by the Center for Investigative Reporting captures the remarkable scene of three key figures in the case discussing the murder.
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Flickr / dsearis
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John McCain is hoping that Americans, particularly those living in coastal states, are so sick of high gas prices they won’t mind a little extra offshore drilling. That’s a risky assessment according to The Politico and the former head of the Florida GOP, who said that back before fuel costs skyrocketed it “would have been like pulling a pin on a grenade and rolling it into the state.”
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AP photo / Tony Avelar, file
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On Monday, gay and lesbian couples celebrated the California Supreme Court’s recent lifting of the ban on gay marriage by, well, getting married. Tuesday is expected to be a bigger day, though, for devoted duos to make it official, as that’s the day when most California counties are slated to start giving gay couples marriage licenses.
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Flickr / BBQ Junkie
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Here’s a little something to get that dad or grad you may have missed these last couple of weeks: Honda is rolling out the first commercially available hydrogen fuel-cell car. They get great mileage, emit only water vapor and run real smooth, provided they don’t Hindenburg. True to form, some Southern Californians are already on the waiting list.
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The Brad Blog
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If you’re going to mess up someone’s vote, it’s probably a bad idea to do it to one of the nation’s more vocal critics of election shenanigans. After voting in California’s statewide primary on Tuesday, election integrity journalist Brad Friedman checked his ballot to discover that four of the 12 races he voted in had been flipped.
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Flickr / Randy Son Of Robert
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has made it official: California is in a drought. It’s the first official drought declaration for the Golden State in 17 years. Schwarzenegger has threatened water rationing to protect the state’s $32 billion agriculture industry.
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Not known for being a shrinking violet, Keith Olbermann left no uncertainty about what he thinks of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s explanation for why she invoked the specter of Robert Kennedy’s 1968 assassination when discussing her decision to keep campaigning to the end. He’s not buyin’ it, folks.
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EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson got the oversight chairman’s blood going by refusing to answer a straightforward question, but it was fellow Congressman Darrell Issa who sent Waxman’s gavel flying. The best part about being chairman is you get to say: “I will have you physically removed from this meeting if you don’t stop.”
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Flickr / alforque
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A former EPA official, Jason Burnett, told congressional investigators that the White House interfered in a decision regarding California’s regulation of carbon emissions. EPA staff members were unanimous in supporting California’s right to tougher restrictions, Burnett said, but after the agency spoke with the White House and got “input into the rationale” from Bush aides, the state’s request was denied.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Imagine what it would be like not to be able to marry the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life. Then imagine how tens of thousands of gays and lesbians in California must have felt last week when the California Supreme Court declared that homosexuals have a right to marriage under the state’s constitution.
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porpoiserecords.com
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In an act that may further infuriate reactionaries across the country, the California Senate voted Thursday to remove membership in the Communist Party as a fireable offense for public employees. The measure now goes to the state Assembly.
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Comedian and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres announced during a taping of her TV show on Thursday that she plans to marry girlfriend Portia de Rossi, now that the California Supreme Court has laid the groundwork for gay and lesbian couples to tie the knot.
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Flickr / bobster1985
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The California Supreme Court has ruled that gays and lesbians have a right to marry. Chief Justice Ronald M. George aptly explained the landmark 4-3 decision: “Even the most familiar ... traditions often mask an unfairness and inequality that frequently is not recognized or appreciated by those not directly harmed.”
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AP photo / Gary Kazanjian
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When a Southern California TV station recently ran a story about the possibility of authorities finding more victims of Charles Manson and his followers in Death Valley, it seemed like just another unseemly attempt to trump up a slow news night. Perhaps it was, but the story has now gotten a boost from the BBC, which reports that excavations aimed at finding bodies at Barker Ranch will start in 10 days.
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By David Sirota — Congress is ravaged by a disease inside the Washington Beltway inhibiting emotions like compassion and integrity. As the housing crisis intensifies, this malady is getting worse.
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bpbraves.net
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UCLA professor Wellford Wilms, one of the nation’s leading authorities on the crisis of public education in America, offers a must-read counterpoint to Bush’s blather about “No Child Left Behind.”
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flickr.com / Willie Stark
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In what seems to be an all too common occurrence across the U.S., an inmate has died in California after being shocked with a taser by sheriff’s deputies. Jason Jesus Gomez is the latest casualty at the hands of the infamous Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
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AP photo /Tony Avelar
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By Bill Boyarsky — More than a quarter of a century before Barack Obama made his name with a speech at the Democratic National Convention, another African-American politician, Willie L. Brown Jr. of San Francisco, did the same—but under much different circumstances.
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Willie Brown is a familiar name to many Californians, as one of the state’s most powerful and notorious politicians. Here he talks with Tavis Smiley, who asks about Brown’s new book, which is reported to be surprisingly frank.
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As many as 166,000 children could be counted as truants in California after the 2nd District Court of Appeal launched a statewide initiative to ensure that home-schoolers were being taught by credentialed teachers.
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A California court has ordered Wikileaks.org, a Web site that allows users to anonymously post documents and allege corruption, to be shut down. A Swiss bank brought the case after someone using the site alleged the firm had facilitated money laundering. Wikileaks says it was “given only hours notice” of the hearing.
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epp-ed.eu
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A California senator is working to push a bill through the state’s legislative channels that would make global warming a required study topic in California public schools, but detractors maintain that the science behind Sen. Joe Simitian’s proposed academic addition is unclear.
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flickr.com
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Sen. Hillary Clinton is focusing on the high points of the last week—her Super Tuesday successes in weighty states like New York and California, for example—and looking to potential wins in Texas and other elections to hold her position in the race for the Democratic nomination in coming weeks.
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By Mark Arax — It is said that behind every great fortune there is a crime. Here’s a true-life drama of self-invention, greed and ambition involving four larger-than-life men who singly, and together, helped create California. A book to be read after you’ve watched “There Will Be Blood.”
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By Ellen Goodman — Super Tuesday, Super Duper Tuesday, Plus-Size Tuesday, Vastly Engorged and Rotund Tuesday turned into a serious case of political bulimia. Never before have so many gorged on such huge portions of political expectations only to find themselves purged the next morning.
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By Marie Cocco — Kitchen-table worries trumped even the charisma of Camelot. This theme has sounded again and again since the Democratic primary contests began, yet neither the national media nor, apparently, the Obama campaign can hear it.
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AP photo / Chris Carlson
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As the dust settles from Tuesday’s “national primary,” we know two things: John McCain is the Republican front-runner and the Democrats still have a race on their hands. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama swapped states all night. Obama won more states overall, but Hillary took home the big prizes of California and New York. Updated
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There’s a reason campaigns are more expensive than ever: commercials. Although they try, the candidates can’t be in every Super Tuesday state at the same time, and the most effective way of reaching millions of people in one state is the same for politicians as it is for Tylenol. Even Barack Obama, who has bet big on his grass-roots organization, spent around $4 million on ads in the last week of January.
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Super Tuesday, when 22 states and American Samoa could decide the Democratic nominee, is one day away and no one knows what is going to happen. A new CBS News/New York Times poll shows Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton dead even nationally. Clinton led by as many as 15 points a month ago. But it’s the biggest prize of the contest, California, where only a week ago Clinton led by 17 points, that has everyone guessing.
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Original: AP photo / M. Spencer Green
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Barack Obama had cause for celebration Friday. Though he still trails Hillary Clinton in most big states, he picked up two endorsements that will undoubtedly have an impact. MoveOn says it is already mobilizing its 3.2 million members—more than half of whom live in super Tuesday states—on behalf of Obama. The Los Angeles Times was flattering of Clinton, but, as the editorial board put it: “Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long—a sense of aspiration.”
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AP photo / Elise Amendola
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This weekend, Sen. Barack Obama is unleashing a secret weapon in the final push to win Tuesday’s California primary: Oprah Winfrey. Team Obama partly attributes his successes in Iowa and South Carolina to her influence, which he’s hoping will help convince California women to choose him over Hillary Clinton.
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With mere days left before Super Tuesday and down to just two candidates, Thursday’s Democratic debate in Los Angeles gave voters a crucial eleventh-hour look at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who kept things friendly enough while staking out their differences on several key issues—health care, the economy and, most importantly, the Iraq war.
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nytimes.com
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California’s celebrity governor has thrown his muscle behind the McCain campaign. Despite the occasional pander, McCain still plays better with California’s moderates than Mitt Romney, who appears to have been embraced, if reluctantly, by the more conservative elements of his party.
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proof7.com
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Rudy Giuliani is expected to endorse John McCain at the Reagan library in California on Wednesday. The man who suffered one of the most dramatic campaign implosions in recent memory explained his collapse to supporters this way: “You don’t always win, but you can always try to do it right, and you did.” Although doing it a bit earlier, too, wouldn’t have hurt.
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By David Sirota — Now, a handful of states have disproportionate power to determine our national path in presidential elections. But a remedy is available.
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has taken some well-deserved heat for its ersatz “press conference” held in response to October’s California wildfires, but, as it happens, FEMA wasn’t the first to stage such a smoke-and-mirrors act.
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By John Mack Faragher — One of the most gifted historians of the American West takes a close look at the remarkable tale of triumph and tragedy that Keith Meldahl recounts in his dramatic story of the largest overland migration since the Crusades, as well as the equally compelling epic of the geology of the harsh and sublime Western landscape.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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California is sick of the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s attempts to block two-year-old legislation that would cut auto emissions in the state well beyond federal guidelines, and the state attorney general has filed a lawsuit against the agency, which under the Bush administration has failed utterly in its principal mandate.
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By Marie Cocco — Though time will certainly tell, the Bush administration so far has not yet surpassed that of Richard Nixon’s in its contempt for a free press and its unrelenting war on the truth.
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altamodernista.wordpress.com
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Michael D. Brown’s got cojones—either that, or a distressing lack of self-awareness on some fundamental level. The former FEMA director, roundly roasted for his too-little-too-late leadership style during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, is now aiming to bring his disaster management skills to California’s fire-ravaged regions.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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The president has at last landed in the Golden State to see for himself the fires that have caused over a billion dollars in damage and forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. With uncomfortable parallels to Katrina already in place, we can’t say we’re all that excited about his arrival here.
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Instead of being alert in Wednesday’s Cabinet session about California’s wildfire crisis and perhaps offering some helpful action items for the team, Vice President Dick Cheney apparently decided it was snooze o’clock and got a little shuteye at the meeting table, although a White House flack insisted he was simply “meditating.”
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Boy, is al-Qaida ever busy these days! In addition to threatening U.S. troops in Iraq, running riot in the hinterlands of Pakistan and generally requiring huge amounts of money and the potential sacrifice of thousands of lives to thwart its infiltration on several fronts, al-Qaida might even be behind the wildfires currently plaguing Southern California, according to “Fox and Friends.”
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