SB 128, a controversial measure that would allow doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients, was pulled from the Assembly Health Committee schedule at the request of the authors, who knew they did not have the votes needed to get the bill out of committee. Alexei Koseff and Jeremy White, Sacramento Bee:
“Senate Bill 128, which would allow doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients, passed the Senate last month but has encountered stiff resistance in the lower house amid lobbying from a coalition of medical, religious and disability rights groups. Of the 19 committee members contacted by The Sacramento Bee, just four said they would support the bill in its current form.
“Proponents said they would continue to pursue the legislation, despite long odds and a critical deadline next week. Its authors were unclear, however, about how they might sway their wavering colleagues in order to meet a July 17 committee deadline – or whether they would gut-and-amend another bill already through the committee process to circumvent it. Supporters have also pledged to pursue a ballot initiative next year should SB 128 fall short.
“’We don’t foreclose any option,’ said Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel.”
Meanwhile, the passage of SB 277, the other most controversial bill of the year, has inspired death threats against public officials. Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times:
“The California Highway Patrol sent a bulletin to security officials in the Senate and Assembly about the felony vandalism arrest of Marlon Andrino, 28, of Ontario. He was arrested July 2 in Beverly Hills and released on $80,000 bail, according to a report by the Beverly Hills Police Department.
“Andrino allegedly used spray paint to write ‘4 Every Kid Afflicted A Public Figure Will Die, SB 277,’ at West Hollywood City Hall, the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce and 10 Freeway walls in East Los Angeles and Baldwin Park…”
Senator Dianne Feinstein added her voice to the chorus blasting San Francisco officials for freeing the man charged with killing a woman in San Francisco last week, arguing that ‘sanctuary’ should not have been provided to a convicted criminal. Carla Marinucci and Heather Knight, SFGate:
“In a letter to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, Feinstein expressed her outrage that defendant Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez was freed in April despite a detainer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. She placed the blame for his crime squarely on Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s department.
“’I strongly believe that an undocumented individual, convicted of multiple felonies and with a detainer request from ICE, should not have been released,’ she wrote to Lee. ‘The tragic death of Ms. Steinle could have been avoided if the Sheriff’s Department had notified ICE prior to the release of Mr. Sanchez, which would have allowed ICE to remove him from the country.’”
Governor Brown is scheduled to speak at a conference on climate change in Toronto today. Chris Megerian explores how Brown’s religious leanings – he once planned to become a priest – have shaped his views on climate change. From the LAT:
“For Brown, who left the seminary and eventually began his long career in government, climate change is an issue that melds the spiritual and the political.
"’Religion deals with the fundamentals,’ he said. ‘When you deal with the fundamentals of what makes the atmosphere, and the weather, and whether that permanently or radically changes, that's very similar to a fundamental principle of right and wrong.’"
Fremont Democrat Ro Khanna is preparing his second run against Rep. Mike Honda, and has outraised the congressman in the second quarter this year. Josh Richman, San Jose Mercury News:
“Khanna, a Fremont resident who served for two years in President Barack Obama's Commerce Department, lost last year's bruising, nationally watched election by 3.6 percentage points as Honda held on for an eighth term.
“In the first quarter of this year, however, Khanna outraised Honda 3-1, collecting $801,000 -- mostly in the few weeks after C-SPAN aired footage of Honda apparently dozing off for an instant on the House floor during a Homeland Security funding debate.”
State Senator John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa) has raised some eyebrows, calling Sacramento’s new Mexican Consul General “hot.” Alexei Koseff has the story (and video) for the Bee:
“The California Senate this week welcomed Sacramento’s newly-appointed Mexican Consul General Alejandra Garcia Williams with praise for her previous experience in Orange County...and her looks.
“’All I can say, as politely as possible, is Alejandra is hot,’ said Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, who also noted that Williams speaks Dutch.
“Standing nearby, Williams shook her head and smiled, while Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León laughed and applauded as he walked to the microphone to speak next.
“Tim Clark, Moorlach’s chief of staff, said the senator didn’t mean the comment in a sexist way. He said Moorlach considers Williams an old friend and is impressed by her ability to speak Dutch.
In the wake of last month’s deadly, racist shooting in South Carolina, California lawmakers have weighed in on removing the names of those associated with the Confederacy from public schools, government buildings, parks, etc.
The One Voter Project reminds us of one virulent racist’s name that’s probably not going anywhere: Governor Henry Haight –as in the namesake of hippie heaven Haight-Ashbury.
“Senate Bill 539 by Senator Glazer would prohibit the use of a name associated with the Confederate States of America to name schools, government buildings, parks, roads, and other state or local property.
“One person who isn’t covered by the bill, but really should be, is California Governor Henry Haight. He has a major street in San Francisco named for him, two neighborhoods (San Francisco’s Haight-Fillmore and Haight-Ashbury) as well as an elementary school in Alameda. He did do some arguably positive things, like signing the bill creating the University of California in 1868, he was more than just a little racist….
“Haight also criticized the Reconstruction efforts in the South following the Civil War, describing it as giving ‘the political control to a mass of negroes just emancipated and almost as ignorant of political duties as the beasts of the field’ and arguing that it would lead to ‘the subjection of the white population of the Southern States, men, women and children, to the domination of a mass of ignorant negroes just freed from slavery.’
“Haight also went on to express his ‘unceasing astonishment’ that ‘any white man could be found on this continent to sanction a policy so subversive of rational liberty, and in the end so fatal to the Union and the Government…’ and described as ‘evils absolutely intolerable’ the idea of granting the right to vote to African-Americans and Asians.”
