Capitol characters

Speaking of mean people, I found this item pretty hilarious until I got to the part where the target of the roast is actually sponsoring the event. Either the Assemblywoman figures "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," or she honestly doesn't get it. Hopefully the former...

Warning: irony-meter overload imminent...

Not one, but two senior officials in the California Republican Party exposed as illegal immigrants? You can't make this stuff up.

Strange days indeed

Today's headlines feel like an episode of "News of the Weird," even when they aren't trying to be. First, for the geek squad we'll include the thinnest notebook ever. (Too thin for a CD drive? Hmm...) Then we move to the cops pepper-spraying and arresting unruly sports fans... at a tennis match. And of course we also had the Dems struggling to play nice, while the Reeps fell into complete disarray. Meanwhile, California voters may be grouchy about any number of things, but they still love their celebrity guv. In the Dept. of Strange Bedfellows, we find the ACLU leaping to the defense of Sen. Larry Craig. And finally, it seems the problems we are experiencing with health care for humans are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Ah, but then there's the news you really care about (if you live in my household, anyway). Unfortunately, Sam Warburg's terrific run at the Australian Open came to an end yesterday as he fell 6-4, 7-6(4), 6-2 in a hard-fought match with the impressive Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Regardless, Sam's four straight wins will give him a nice bump in next week's rankings and a nice check to take home. A great way to start 2008!

California the ungovernable

I often take columns from the SacBee's resident curmudgeon Dan Walters -- who skewers politicians of all ideological stripes with equal and unrestrained cynicism -- with a heaping teaspoon of salt.

That said, when he's right, he's right. And he's right about this:

"Government worked better four decades ago because California was a simpler, more homogeneous place then with more clearly definable priorities. A governmental/political process that requires consensus cannot function effectively when the society it serves has become the most complex on Earth and no longer can muster consensus on any issue..."

Those who think terms limits or redistricting reform or budget reform or any other sort of fiddling at the margins is going to solve California's governance problems are kidding themselves. The state has in actual fact become, through no fault of anyone in particular's, virtually ungovernable.

There are simply too many people with too many different opinions of the direction the state should take on any given issue, and this reality is not just a prescription for but a near-guarantee of political stalemate and paralysis. In that sense our Legislature really has evolved into a microcosm of the U.S. Congress; the ideological divide between the Right and the Left is so huge that you are sometimes left to wonder how meaningful conversation between the two is even possible.

Former Assemblyman Stan Statham's proposal for splitting California into three separate states might have seemed like a crackpot idea at the time, but it's looking better every day now.