In the end, Sen. Frank Padavan had neither a Coke nor a cup of coffee during his ill-fated trip to the members lounge. I went in there to get Coke,

by Chris Jones The California High Speed Rail Authority released a scoping report [.pdf] yesterday for the San Jose to San Francisco section of the proposed state high speed rail system that will eventually whisk people from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in just over two hours. Won't that be fun? Well, not if the folks down on the Peninsula have their way. The report includes over 950 letters from assorted cranky Peninsula NIMBYs, hippies, and Howard Jarvis looking Ay

This just in from Liz Stookesberry Myers: Assembly Bill 130 will be heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee very soon. It was introduced by Kevin Jeffries (Republican ) of the Temecula area. The Bill was presented at the request of the Recorder Association of California. They want to be able to handle Marriage Records the same as Birth and Death Records. That means that they can black out the Mother’s Maiden name, if the County Recorder chooses. The Recorder also has the option of

The Senate Democrats had convened for this morning's court-ordered session and were halfway through a roll call of the missing senators - all the Repu

Pete Martin and Zachary Roth have an excellent piece on how Republican nominees have made the Federal Election Committee disappear. It’s a great example of the kind of story that is too politically loaded for the mainstream media: FEC watchers say the commission’s three Republicans—Donald McGahn, Matthew Petersen, and Caroline Hunter, each nominated by President Bush—are acting out of philosophical opposition to the very idea of regulating campaign money. “It’s the Republican caucus