The Assembly Floor provided great theater yesterday, as
several controversial bills were brought up leading up to Friday's deadline to get bills out of the house of origin.
One such bill,
AB 19 by
Mark Leno, which would
legalize gay marriage, found uniform opposition from the Republican caucus and an unwillingness of enough moderate Dems to pass the lower house. The LA Times quotes part of the debate: "We need standards in order to get along with each other to accomplish anything in a civilized society," said Assemblyman
Doug La Malfa (R-Richvale). "Some of those might be defined by the Ten Commandments, the Bill of Rights or even just the laws of nature."
And, just when Capitol watchers thought that La Malfa was going to reprise former Assemblymember
Peter Frusetta's infamous lesbian heifers speech, La Malfa went for the kids argument. "'I just really, really worry about a world I'm trying to raise my kids in….When you change a standard like this, no standard or institution is safe from humanistic interpretation,' La Malfa said."
Meanwhile, top cop
Bill Lockyer was
appealing a judge's ruling finding the state's ban on same-sex unions unconstitutional, endearing himself to Democratic primary voters everywhere.
Patty Berg's
AB 654 to allow physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients didn't have the votes, and the author put the bill on hold until later in the session. "'It would allow us the opportunity to really
straighten out some of the myths and the inaccuracies that are being spread about this bill,' Berg said." The News and Review
gives the bill and author feature treatment.On the other side of the building, the Senate approved
SB 1,
Kevin Murray's bill
carrying the governor's Million Solar Roofs initiative.Meanwhile, the governor caught a little bit of Bay Area liberalism during a speech at the United Nations World Environment Day in San Francisco. In his speech,
he pledged to cut 80% of greenhouse gas emissions in California in the next fifty years. It is good to see that since the budget negotiations seem to be moving in the wrong direction, the governor has decided to take on the easier stuff, like reversing global warming.
"'I say the debate is over,' Schwarzenegger said in urging action. '
We know the science, we know the time for action is now. Global warming, pollution and the burning of fossil fuels that caused it are threats we see here in California and everywhere around the world.'"
Of course, earlier this week, Assemblyman
Dennis Mountyjoy gave an Assembly floor speech in which he seemed to say anyone concerned about global warming should just turn their air conditioning up higher, but we're not surprised that Schwarzenegger went looking elsewhere for his scientific data.
Schwarzenegger's ambitious executive order was praised by environmental groups: "'The governor is a real, live climate-action hero today,' said
Nancy Ryan, senior economist for Environmental Defense, a nonprofit activist group that claims more than 400,000 members. 'We're very excited about the announcement he has made.'"
Dan Weintraub offers a
good little history lesson about trying to use tax hikes to pay for schools from the Wilson era. Well, Weintraub writes that the Speaker's staff dismissed his "facts" as supply-side "Republican spin." You be the judge...
(Director's Note: Cue love letter from the Speaker's office we're sure to get later on today.)Openings in The OC? With the announcement yesterday of
William Donaldson's departure as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the naming of Orange County Republican Congressman
Christopher Cox as his successor, the
names are flying in who will hop in the race to succeed Cox. From the LA Times: "Heading the list of potential candidates is state Senate Republican leader
Dick Ackerman of Irvine. Others include state Assembly members
Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine),
Todd Spitzer (R-Orange) and
Mimi Walters (R-Laguna Niguel). Former GOP Assemblywoman
Pat Bates of Laguna Niguel was also a possibility."
Perhaps it's our
own damn cynicism or just a little bout of
Gray Davis Disease, but why is it when we see headlines like
Villaraigosa Wins Over Crowds in Nation's Capital we can only think he's setting himself up for a fall?
Finally, from our
"Nothing Better to Do" Files Connoisseurs of that chronicler of California cognizance
Rough and Tumble may have noticed a new ad in the web site's prime, above-the-fold, 500-dollar real estate.
What is CA Confidential? asks the ad, with the provocative promise that we'll all find out on June 7.
Well, we at The Roundup just couldn't wait that long, so we did some snooping on our own. First, we checked out the
web site, which promised only to tell us the goings on of the "smoky back room" (forgetting for a moment that smoking indoors is illegal in our fair state). There was a solicitation for name and email address, which we provided, but something was left wanting. So we snooped on.
As it turns out, according to our friends at Network Solutions, the site is registered to the office of
Sen. John Campbell, complete with the Orange County senator's Capitol phone number. There was also, interestingly enough, an Oakland fax machine number attached (We called. No answer.), and an email address, with a vermette.net address.
We plugged Vermette.net into our Web browser and found a "personal Web page" of a
Josh Vermette, (matching the email address we found at Network Solutions) complete with cute-as-a-button movies of his new baby. (Did we mention the baby is c-u-t-e?!?) We don't know any Josh on the senator's staff, though that doesn't mean none exists. And we've heard of crazier things than commuting from Oakland to Sacramento...
We Googled, but to no avail. But a look around the Web site seems to suggest the man has a touch of The Poet in him. Take for example
this entry about skiing naked, or at least watching other people ski mostly naked.
Now that we know who
Deep Throat is, we're left to wonder about Josh Vermette. Has it really come to this?
Guess we'll just have to find out more on June 7...
