We reported before that L.A. Times Schwarzenegger reporter Peter Nicholas was leaving Sacramento for the Washington bureau. Now here's the memo from bureau chief Doyle McManus and national editor Scott...
Anna Richardson is the former British late-night TV personality who said that Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled her onto his knee, fondled her and asked if her breasts were real after a...
Brad Friedman's Los Angeles-based liberal blog has been all over the vote irregularity issues in the Busby-Bilbray congressional race in San Diego County. Friedman is scheduled to appear tonight on...
Two items: Josiah Beeman, the former aide to San Francisco politicians and Ambassador to New Zealand and Western Samoa for President Clinton, died at age 70. He ran three Jerry...
Betty Pleasant, the Wave's Soulvine columnist, digs out that congresswoman Maxine Waters has bought a home in Hancock Park—quite a distance from her district covering Inglewood, Gardena and a swath...
Updated with 100% returns Don't believe the analyses you find in the morning papers. They were all written on spec last night before the results were known. Today's radio shows,...
• Voting results after 8 pm: Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder results page, Secretary of State results, NBC-4. • Gov. Schwarzenegger will spend election night in Sacramento before heading north Wednesday...
The New York Times looks from afar at Jerry Brown's quest to be attorney general of California—a quest that figures to take a big step forward with tomorrow's whuppin' of...
♦ The Clippers tie up their NBA playoff series 2-2, beating the Suns 114-107 at Staples Center on Sunday. ♦ USC basketball freshman Ryan Francis was shot and killed while...
One day after Alex Padilla showed his hand and announced the endorsement of City Council President Eric Garcetti and nine council colleagues, Cindy Montañez countered with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The...
Well, I can report that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger beat the mayor back from the National Football League meetings in Texas. Two dark SUV's just pulled over in a red zone...
Sunday's New York Times has a piece about the origin of the friendship between supermarket czar Ron Burkle and former President Bill Clinton. dating it to the aftermath of the...
City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's quest to become the attorney general of California just isn't picking up much momentum. The Field Poll out today shows former governor Jerry Brown with a...
...you do things like this and send out press releases on it: Los Angeles City Councilmember Alex Padilla today announced that he has filed an amicus brief in support of...
Rick Jacobs, the Howard Dean campaign chair in California and regular chipper-in of thoughts at the Huffington Post, really didn't like the phone call he got from Los Angeles politics...
Rob Reiner has resigned under pressure as chair of the state's California Children and Families First Commission. Gov. Schwarzenegger has appointed Hector Ramirez to replace him. Ramirez is Vice President...
Caspar Weinberger, the former California legislator who served in the Cabinet for Presidents Nixon and Reagan, died at age 88. As Secretary of Defense for Reagan, he presided over the...
There were probably some good stories swapped tonight wherever politicos and journalists gather from Sacramento to Washington. Lyn Nofziger, the Copley reporter who became Ronald Reagan's spokesman and chief quipster—"irreverent...
Marching students downtown swarmed onto the Harbor and Hollywood freeways this afternoon, shutting down traffic and prompting some arrests. NBC-4, meanwhile, came up with a good man-in-the-news profile on Piolin,...
♦ Saturday's downtown protest march against the Sensenbrenner bill to criminalize giving aid or jobs to illegal immigrants was really big. The LAPD, usually conservative on these things, estimated the crowd...
♦ Former West Basin Municipal Water District board member R. Keith McDonald, convicted on ten felony counts of corruption, has asked to delay prison so he can care for his ailing...
Andy Spahn, the head of corporate affairs at DreamWorks and political consigliere to Messrs. Geffen, Spielberg and Katzenberg, is heading out on his own. Well, he won't exactly be alone....
Marco Firebaugh, a Democratic candidate for the state Senate in the 30th district of southeast Los Angeles County, died this morning or last night. Liver illness is reportedly the cause....
RAND, the Santa Monica think tank, debuted a new Foreign Policy Roundtable series targeting leaders of the entertainment and media communities. Friday night's gathering at the Bel-Air home of Kenneth...
Just over ten percent of registered voters in the 2nd Board of Education district cast ballots in Tuesday's election—for a total of 13,561 votes. So much for the persuasion of...
Here's one more thing you can't do on regular radio but can on pay radio. The Young Turks, which airs from here on Sirius Satellite Radio with hosts Cenk Uygur,...
A right-wing activist has founded something called the Bruin Alumni Association and published a list of 31 UCLA professors he claims are "radical" for talking about President Bush, the Republican...
Miriam Pawel, the reporter on this week's L.A. Times' series on the United Farm Workers union, will be on KPFK's Deadline L.A. Saturday at noon at 90.7 FM. Barbara Osborn...
Another Pellicano case guilty plea, Arnold's illegal problem, Patterico and Hiltzik go mainstream, DA Cooley wants to reform three strikes—plus the end of the UFW series, Michael Eisner, Mack Reed,...
Turn the page for the fill-in on Gov. Schwarzenegger's fat lip, the latest on the Times' UFW investigation, Eric Garcetti week at the city council, Sheriff Baca's defense of Compton,...
Back in 2001, former Clinton Administration official-turned-D.C. lobbyist Jarvis Stewart mused that he might someday open an L.A. office to help celebrities "learn how to get their messages across in...
I don't know whether Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik is the paper's designated hitter or just is being allowed to take his Golden State blog wherever he feels it naturally...
Few culture war causes strike me as more dishonest and less trivial than the Fox News-promoted meme that liberals are anti-Christmas. (Excuse me while I stop laughing.) Part of the...
Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman's party to raise campaign cash for Senate Democrats was supposed to be the last big Hollywood political event of the season. Melissa Etheridge came to...
LA Weekly Deputy Editor Joe Donnelly had a pleasant enough interview with Mike Lacey, the New Times co-founder who will soon be in charge of the Weekly (and its OC...
To see an earlier side of Arnold Schwarzenegger, check out the video LA.com found of Mr. Universe at Carnival in Brazil talking about how at heart he's a derriere man,...
Voters rejected every one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's so-called reform measures, as well as the other propositions on Tuesday's ballot. The only one that could even be considered close was...
Patt Morrison reviews Sen. Barbara Boxer's co-written first novel in today's LAT and calls A Time to Run "a passable political thriller of wishful thinking and wish fulfillment — Capitol...
The lede of a front-pager in this week's L.A. Business Journal calls Adelphia "the cable company that can do no right." The Deborah Crowe story was inspired by the much-chronicled...
A little bit late today...  ♦ Mayor Villaraigosa asked for an outside review of the DWP's power failures and appointed Forescee Hogan-Rowles to the agency's board.  ♦ Doug Dowie won't get to...
Republican State Sen. John Campbell of Irvine came close yesterday—but not close enough—to winning the coastal congressional seat given up by Christopher Cox. Campbell will go through the motions on...
Kim Day got the offer she couldn't refuse to leave as head of LAX personally from Mayor Villaraigosa's in-house counsel Thomas Saenz and deputy chief of staff Marcus Allen, according...
Matt Szabo has been in the campaign trenches as a communications guy with Bob Hertzberg and others. He blogs today that Arnold Schwarzenegger's standing ovation last night on Jay Leno...
Joe Scott blogs today about the Warren Beatty-for-governor rumors, which are being fed by the actor's political speeches around the state. Beatty told ABC last week that he won't rule...
• Looks like Gov. Schwarzenegger announces Friday that he will run for reelection, the Times says. Also, La Opinión says its reporter was denied entry to the governor's recent community meeting...
Torrance City Councilman Ted Lieu won the special election to replace the late Mike Gordon in the 53rd assembly district. There would have been a runoff if the Republicans in...
If you have a spare thou lying around, you too can dine with William F. Buckley and the editors and publisher of The National Review next week. Here's the invitation...
Longtime local conservative blogger Xrlq posts that he has been summarily banned from posting comments at Hit and Run, the blog of (loosely) Los Angeles-based Reason magazine. Spotted at Patterico's...
The L.A. Times has a story saying that American Media, the tabloid publisher that backed off Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was running for governor and signed him to a rich...
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's political committees have paid him $166,859 the last three years for renting space in the Main Street Plaza he owns in Santa Monica. The San Francisco Chronicle...
Gov. Schwarzenegger says he'll give up the millions he arranged for just days before taking office. His statement: Statement by Governor SchwarzeneggerRegarding American Media Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today made the...
Gov. Schwarzenegger's lucrative deal with the fitness magazines makes the front page of Friday's New York Times. Andrew Pollack goes with the $5 million figure, not the $8 million the...
Geez, you try to skate by for a few hours and stuff starts to pile up in the in-box... • Former Burbank mayor and current city councilwoman Stacey Jo Murphy was...
Actually it came in Monday afternoon, while I was otherwise occupied. It's an exit email from Edward Headington, leaving as communications director for State Sen. Gil Cedillo to resume his...
Up in Sacramento, Political Pulse bought the Capitol Weekly website and newspapers and plans to launch a state political news portal later this summer. The portal, a partnership with Scott...
The office of state Assemblyman Mike Gordon announced that he died today from the brain tumor that was diagnosed in February, shortly after he took office. Gordon was from El...
The Liberty Film Festival, which got some attention for its debut last year as a West Hollywood showcase and schmoozefest for conservatives, is coming back around. They're going to do...
There's no rest for the politics weary. No sooner is the mayor's race over than the drumbeats begin for the governor's agenda-pushing special election, called for Nov. 8. I'll gin...
Howard Kurtz's column this week in the Washington Post visits with Stephanie Miller, the L.A.-based host for Air America, the talk radio-for-liberals service. As recently as 2000, Miller hosted a...
Maria Shriver tells the New York Daily News' Lloyd Grove that she had no contact with anyone at NBC about the Schwarzenegger biography by Laurence Leamer. "It never came up,...
Laurence Leamer, author of Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger, lost a shot at promoting the book on "Today" because of Maria Shriver, according to David Carr's media column in...
Turns out that Sen. Hillary Clinton's appearance at Roland Emmerich's house was just the kiddie portion of her Wednesday night stay in L.A. She raised about $450,000 earlier in the...
At the end of yesterday's column on the Senate filibuster compromise, L.A. Times political correspondent Ron Brownstein alerts readers that his new wife recently became the spokeswoman for Sen. John...
• Longtime Channel 7 weatherman Johnny Mountain joins the rival Channel 2 news on May 8. He will work the news at 5, 6 and 11 p.m. He left KABC in...
Former mayor Richard Riordan will leave his post as state Education Secretary on June 30, Gov. Schwarzenegger's office just announced. With deep regret I have accepted Richard Riordan's resignation as...
R. Gregory Stevens, 42, was a houseguest of the actress in Hollywood for Oscar weekend, the Washington Times says. She found his body Saturday morning, hours after they attended a...
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger raised more than $23 million in contributions, mostly from the usual suspects—critics typically call them "special interests"—in his first full year as a partisan politician. He spent...
KCRW has decided on Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of the Washington Times and former Newt Gingrich press secretary, to hold the conservative seat on Left, Right & Center. They...
Scanning the Sunday Opinion section yesterday, I completely missed that Hugh Hewitt wrote the second installment of the Times' new commentary spot, "Outside the Tent." That's where the editors intend...
The Roundup, it's called, is from the editors at Political Pulse and AroundtheCapitol.com. It joins Rough and Tumble ("a daily snapshot of California public policy and politics") in linking to...
Three network execs and producer Mary Mapes lost their jobs after an independent report concluded that a bogus "60 Minutes Wednesday" story on President Bush's National Guard failed to apply...
L.A. blogger Patterico has split his annual year-end rant from the political right about the Los Angeles Times into two installments. Part one finds liberal bias rampant in the paper's...
Joe Scott wrote a notes column called "The Body Politic" that ran on page two of the Herald Examiner during the 1980s. It was a must-read for politics junkies. Before...
Political and media hands have been lamenting the demise of the annual holiday party thrown in Hancock Park by the Times' Janet Clayton and her husband Michael Johnson. For many...
* Updated with newest posts at the bottom • The February issue of Hustler will carry the story by Michael Collins and Mark Cromer that liberal critics of Rep. David Dreier...
The California Journal is halting publication in January—at least temporarily—after 35 years. A non-profit board has tried to build an endowment to keep the monthly journal of state politics and...
The recalled ex-governor has joined the Los Angeles law firm of Loeb and Loeb. An AP story says Davis had been a lawyer before, briefly, after getting his law degree...
KPFK and the nation's other Pacifica stations are preempting normal programming on Thursday to raise money for preserving the Pacifica radio archives. From 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., KPFK will...
CityBeat has added Andrew Gumbel, the Los Angeles correspondent for The Independent in London. They are calling the column American Babylon; this week's first offering advises Kerry supporters who believe...
California First Lady Maria Shriver has dropped her push to have the state history museum in Sacramento reinvented as a women's museum. It will remain devoted to California history. No...
A year since Gov. Schwarzenegger took over in Sacramento, KPCC's road-traveling talk host, Kitty Felde, takes Talk of the City to the capital on Friday from 2 to 3 p.m....
Janelle Brown gives downtown the 36 Hours treatment in today's New York Times Escapes section. Chinatown galleries, dinner at Ciudad, Saturday morning at the flower market, a walking tour with...
The LAPD press room at Parker Center is named for Norman "Jake" Jacoby, who reported on the cop beat from 1935 to 1991 for City News Service, the Los Angeles...
Forget any talk of national healing. On today's L.A. Times op-ed page, former major league baseball player-turned-Christian broadcaster Frank Pastore warns Kerry voters that America is about "ethnic and religious...
Regarding that pledge of blue-red civility and support for the president that blogger Jeff Jarvis made over the weekend, Reason magazine's Matt Welch dissents on his personal blog: To split...
Some Republicans are crowing that George W. Bush racked up the most popular votes of any president in history. It's true, but misleading: John Kerry also got more votes than...
High profile New York blogger Jeff Jarvis, reacting to the last wave of "spit and bile and venom" from ultra-partisans as the presidential campaign comes to a close, posts this...
The late Richard Avedon's portraits of the election season run for 32 pages in this week's New Yorker. They are great. A slide show can be entered at this page,...
The Daily News of Los Angeles backed George W. Bush in 2000 and praises the president for his guidance after 9-11, but says "for all the leadership Bush showed in...
Both Steve Lopez and Patt Morrison write columns in today Times playing off the governor's quip about getting no sex from Maria for two weeks after his speech at the...
The Sacramento newsletter Political Pulse has found a new way to generate income from its election coverage. On Thursday, editor and co-publisher Anthony York will moderate a conference with Republican...
On the Times op-ed page, journalist/First Lady Maria Shriver defends her role in pushing the California State History Museum to become the California Women's History Museum. She says she's happy...
Prompted by the gay media speculation about Rep. David Dreier and other recent events, the local chapter of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association will hold a panel discussion...
The governor has "left the state," the late Friday email advised Sacramento reporters. Well, where did he go and when might he be back? "It's personal, private," said Margita Thompson,...
William Bradley, who filed scoop after scoop out of the Schwarzenegger camp during and after the recall campaign, contends in the LA Weekly that the governor "is beset by political...
The Times picked liberal columnist Patt Morrison to review Ann Coulter's newest book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must). She begins by calling Coulter "the Miss Mullah...
The L.A. Press Club annual meeting that was originally scheduled the night of last week's presidential debate will be held tonight. This is the one where they elect new board...
Sacramento Bee opinion blogger Dan Weintraub passes along two new polls that pick up a slide in Kerry's lead over Bush among California voters. In one, the Democrat's edge is...
Analyzed at Cinemocracy: You’ve got a three-act structure (four if you include the vice presidential encounter), recurring characters, and a narrative line driven by the ups and downs of the...
Today's LA Weekly runs a follow-up story from Doug Ireland to his piece last week alleging that congressman David Dreier is (gasp) gay, conservative and in the closet. The story...
Times reporter Scott Martelle, currently assigned to the Barbara Boxer-Bill Jones Senate race, will move over to the Style desk after the election to cover the L.A. literary beat. The...
The New America Foundation, based in Washington and headed by Ted Halstead (co-author with Michael Lind of The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics), has opened a Sacramento office...
Conservative critiques of Robert Scheer are about as newsworthy as a Scheer blast at George Bush or Rush Limbaugh. But Kevin Drum, the SoCal-based house blogger for the Washington Monthly,...
Seymour Hersh chats about his book Chain of Command with Lawrence O'Donnell on The Politics of Culture Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. on KCRW (89.9 FM or live on the web)....
In the October issue of Los Angeles magazine, Steve Oney traces the transformation of Arianna Huffington from first foreign president of the Cambridge Union debating society to lover of Bernard...
Jay Leno phoned up the LA Weekly's Nikki Finke to talk about media and politics after she wrote about him and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Weekly put the resulting sit-down interview...
Talk radio ideologue Hugh Hewitt has a long blog piece seeking to compare the controversy over Dan Rather's probably fake documents about George W. Bush to that anti-Fox speech given...
The New York Times calls last Sunday's profile of Haim Saban the L.A. media mogul's "most extensive interview in years." In the piece, Andrew Ross Sorkin describes Saban as "one...
Sure the media (and of course, we bloggers) wrote about them a lot, but Paul Colford writes in the New York Daily News that the anointed convention blogs didn't attract...
Syndicated columnist Jill Stewart (Daily News, Register, Pasadena Weekly) has the cover story in the September issue of Wired on her favorite Koll-i-fornia governor. Headline: The New American Idol. Her...
Hollywood producer Rob Long is in New York to do up the RNC alongside Warren Olney at KCRW — the station's Republican analogue to Harry Shearer, who went to Boston....
Reason's convention blogger Matt Welch catches up with former California AG Dan Lungren and, in a Madison Square Garden stairway, with Pat Buchanan. An excerpt of his encounter with the...
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gets a prime speaking slot tonight at the Republican convention to introduce himself to the national party. In today's L.A. Times, Joe Mathews stops in with some...
After a night of parties, the Republicans get going today in New York. KCRW's Warren Olney goes on the air from the convention at 1 p.m. with "To The Point"...
Some things to note from while I was gone:    • Larry McCormick: The co-anchor of the KTLA "News at Ten Weekend Edition" began at channel 5 as a weatherman in 1971....
Another batch of questionable public relations contracts with a political twist has caught the media's eyes. The Times' Jason Felch reports today that the giant Metropolitan Water District has paid...
Singer Linda Ronstadt, the girlfriend of Jerry Brown back when he was governor, got booed out of the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas for talking nice about Michael Moore and...
In Monday's New York Times, Los Angeles bureau chief John Broder analyzes Gov. Schwarzenegger's sound bite about the Democrats from the weekend: The "girlie men" remark was a play on...
The top editorial in today's L.A. Times, headline Show Riordan the Door, urges Gov. Schwarzenegger to use the latest blooper by Richard Riordan to do away with the "redundant office"...
I don't think Richard Riordan is long for the state education secretary post, but we'll see. The latest is that the mother of 6-year-old Isis D'Luciano, who our ex-mayor teased...
Robert Tagorda hasn't quite left town yet, and he blogs today that when his friend suffered a diabetic seizure in Santa Monica over the weekend, a certain high-cheekboned First Lady...
California will vote on measures covering stem cell research to mandatory DNA testing of felons, and yet again two more on Indian gambling. The propositions are numbered 59 through 72....
Top left on the front page of Thursday's New York Times (at least in California), Charlie LeDuff and John Broder of the L.A. bureau proclaim Gov. Schwarzenegger a political master...
The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, the largest business group in town, today endorsed the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative that will be on the November ballot....
Every so often, the mail brings something that lets L.A. Observed give a glimpse behind the scenes of how things really get done. This installment is an email from Joe...
Joel Kotkin, the Valley-based author and political analyst, proposes in The New Republic that Reagan conservatism's ideological heir for Californians is not Bush or anyone in the red states, it...
The Democratic candidate's Disney Hall fundraiser — called off last night after the death of Ronald Reagan — is now set for June 24. Just following through on this post......
Guests who were planning to attend Monday's John Kerry campaign fundraiser at the Walt Disney Hall have been emailed and called alerting them the event is off. Kerry is suspending...
Dan Weintraub reports on his California Insider blog that Gov. Schwarzenegger has returned from a short getaway to an undisclosed location. The reason the locale was kept secret, he says,...
Friday was International Media Day for Gov. Schwarzenegger, who spent several hours sitting in his Los Angeles office relieving the backlog of requests by the foreign press to interview our...
The deputy governor and senior confidential adviser/media image consultant to Arnold Schwarzenegger -- and by that I mean Maria Shriver -- guests on Jay Leno tonight. Also, the Sacramento Bee's...
Michael Huffington clarifies the record in a piece by Robin Abcarian in today's LAT, saying that he is bi not gay, intends (unlike ex-wife Arianna) to stay a Republican, did...
Democrat George Smith tells the tale in the Village Voice of how he came to be, for a one-week media cycle, what he calls "an unwitting hit man for the...
Miller is the Hollywood stuntwoman who came forward just before the recall election last fall to publicly allege that Arnold Schwarznegger groped her, then was labeled a criminal by his...
Former L.A. City Council member Jackie Goldberg, now in the state Assembly, and her partner of 28 years, poet and activist Sharon Stricker, were among six gay and lesbian couples...
Says AP, via Yahoo and I Want Media: "Gov. Schwarzenegger, the former action figure and champion bodybuilder, has inked a deal to become executive editor of Muscle and Fitness and...
Or can it? The New York Post's Keith J. Kelly says today that Gov. Schwarzenegger "is close to signing a deal with the parent company of the National Enquirer that...
Arnold Schwarzenegger returned in triumph to "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno Monday night, and who should drop in but Gray Davis. The two govs bantered, with Davis saying that...
Well I guess there really is a presidential primary here next Tuesday. Tomorrow (Friday) at 10 a.m., John Kerry has scheduled a UCLA speech "where he will outline steps that...
Heading into Thursday's debate at USC, John Kerry leads John Edwards in California by a whopping 32 points, the latest L.A. Times Poll finds. The debate will include those two...
To continue the politics theme for one more item, the California presidential primary is less than two weeks away. But as Kevin Drum at Calpundit points out today, nobody's really...
That's how much the campaigns spent in last year's recall election, the L.A. Times writes, based on campaign reports and interviews. Some of the biggest spenders: Schwarzenegger: $26.6 million     (including...
The L.A. Press Club is hosting an informational chat with "key political advisers and campaign strategists" in the California primary on Thursday. None, apparently, had confirmed by the time the...
Dan Weintraub, the Sacramento Bee columnist-blogger (California Insider) whose take on Arnold Schwarzenegger during the campaign and his first months in office has been largely favorable, seems to be turning...
Dean Singleton, Hearst, Copley & Scripps. (From Editor and Publisher, thanks to Brooks for the tip). Earlier: LAT campaign gifts...
The Boston Globe's Ideas section (via Commonwealth Magazine) maps out the "10 regions of U.S. politics" and puts L.A. in a narrow, brown sliver that comprises the SoCal coast and...
Editorial writers mostly liked Gov. Schwarzenegger's State of the State speech last night. Steve Lopez doesn't join them. L.A. Times: Masterful...Schwarzenegger delivered a tough but upbeat speech, at times eloquent,...
Well, education cuts aren't off the table anymore. The L.A. Times says Gov. Schwarzenegger will propose cleaving $2 billion out of the ed budget today -- and with the signoff...
Gov. Schwarzenegger, who used to say he wouldn't play the political fundraising game, has accepted $750,000 in contributions in recent weeks. Dan Weintraub at California Insider says "the money comes...
Gov. Schwarzenegger has dropped his private probe into the groping charges against him, which Dan Weintraub says makes sense -- "nobody understood what the investigators would be looking for...and if...
Robert K. Dornan, the conservative who lost his House seat to Loretta Sanchez in Orange County in 1996 (and lost to her again in '98), has filed papers to run...
The L.A. Times covers the dust-up over last night's Beverly Hilton gathering of Hollywood liberals. It seems Drudge was incorrect when he leapt to the conclusion that the event was...
In addition to the reconstruct of the Times' Arnold stories, the new issue of American Journalism Review has a piece on newspaper blogs. In it, Dan Weintraub says his California...
Two takes on Gov. Schwarzenegger's stand on runaway film production, by Alex Ben Block in Television Week and Matt Welch at Reason magazine's blog Hit and Run....
Looks like the Democrats in Sacramento have anointed another L.A. lawmaker to be the next Assembly Speaker. Dan Weintraub says it is Fabian Nunez, the first-term member who used to...
The media scene, from AP and Gary Delsohn in the Sacramento Bee. It was L.A. Times staffer Jeff Rabin who Schwarzenegger complimented as "this gentleman with the nice-looking beard and...
KCRW plans to carry the Schwarzenegger swearing-in ceremony live at 11 o'clock this morning. Meanwhile, historian and state librarian Kevin Starr in the L.A. Times' Sunday Opinion section (and veteran...
Bill Bradley notes in the LA Weekly that the Schwarzenegger administration "is shaping up so far to be less bipartisan than advertised, even though it will be more liberal than...
Burt Pines used to be the elected Los Angeles city attorney and most recently has been the judicial appointments secretary for Gray Davis, helping the governor choose which lawyers to...
Margita Thompson, the press secretary for Dick Riordan's campaign for governor last year, is going to do the same job for the new Guv. She is a producer for CNN's...
Dan Weintraub's California Insider reported Sunday night that Richard Riordan will be appointed Gov. Schwarzenegger's secretary for child development and education, probably today. Given the anonymity of such posts in...
Katie Roiphe, in a piece for Slate, ponders the evolution of USC law professor and feminist author Susan Estrich, who wrote a column strongly attacking the LAT story on Schwarzenegger's...
That's the secret, not-to-be-uttered-in-front-of-Him nickname that some on Schwarznegger's staff have for Arnold, says Lloyd Grove, the new gossip at the New York Daily News. Actually it's tame compared to...
Matt Labash has a pretty funny Boy on the Bus report from the final days of the Schwarzenegger campaign at the Weekly Standard site. He mingles with the crowds and...
Bunch of interesting L.A. presence on Schwarzenegger's transition team, including Richard Riordan and Eli Broad (do they go everywhere together?) and Democrats like mayor Jim Hahn, Bob Hertzberg, the former...
A&E is planning to begin production on a TV movie called "See Arnold Run." Says the New York Times: The movie will trace what its creators call the parallels between...
Mickey Kaus's long explanation of why he voted as he did is pretty interesting, dare I say brilliant. Read the whole thing, as they say. Scroll down to "Why I...
Turnout in today's election could hit 65%, the Field Poll says. That would be the most in any California election for governor in 20 years, though less voters than in...
The final Field Poll of the recall race shows the Schwarzenegger lead solidifying -- 36% to 26% for Bustamante. They were even in the previous Field Poll. "No on recall"...
Yesterday in New York, the question "Is California Crazy?" was debated at lunch by Ron Reagan, Tom Hayden, Bill Simon, Barry Goldwater Jr. (the long-lost former Valley congressman and son...
Dan Weintraub takes a big swig at the Schwarzenegger debut party in Sacramento....
The new L.A. Times Poll pretty much agrees with all the others (except CNN-USA, which seems to have overstated everything). Barring the unforeseen, the outcome looks certain -- Gov. Arnold....
Yes the Indian casinos are the biggest spenders in state politics, but they aren't the reason California is in a hole. Arnold has taken their money before. So what's with...
New Republic writer and now blogger Gregg Easterbrook says that Schwarzenegger could not possibly have written the op-ed under his name in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. As someone who...
In case you can't find your ideal political mate among the 135 candidates on the recall ballot, here are 26 more who have qualified as write-ins. Lovely. (San Jose Mercury)....
Scoring the big debate: -"Gray won" - Dave Jensen, Condor blog -"I'd say (Cruz) won" - Outside the Beltway blog -"I don't think anyone won" - Dan Weintraub, Sacto Bee...
The recall election is back on for two weeks from today, compliments of the 9th Circuit. Unanimous 11-0 decision that the ACLU says it won't appeal. I'm guessing Prestopundit is...
From the September poll by the Public Policy Institute of California: Both independents and moderates are evenly split on the recall. A higher percentage of Republicans are for (86%) than...
Republican strategist and commentator Arnold Steinberg, in Tim Rutten's L.A. Times column today: Schwarzenegger's strategy requires a docile news media, and he's getting one. Steinberg and Rutten (and Democratic strategist...
Arnold's campaign requires every staffer to sign a five-page confidentiality agreement, including a clause that the agreement itself is a secret. The L.A. Times received a copy: Schwarzenegger has devoted...
Lou Cannon will be on Life and Times Tuesday night (7 p.m., Ch. 28) to talk about his fifth book on Ronald Reagan. He also has an op-ed in today's...
Loyola law professor Rick Hasen is blogging on the 9th Circuit court order delaying the recall election, a move he supported in a brief. Incidentally, he has a piece about...
Bernard Weinraub in the NYT covers the Huffington fundraiser in Holmby Hills Tuesday night: ...the liberal-come-lately newspaper columnist who has frequently opened her Brentwood home to stars, talent agents, producers...
Peter Ueberroth has cancelled his public appearances and called a 1 p.m. news conference, apparently to make his exit from the recall race, AP reports. (Via Drudge Report) update 1:30...
Round two of the independent recall polls begins with the Field Poll today showing Davis behind 55%-40%. Bustamante is still ahead of Schwarzenegger 30%-25%, with McClintock at 13%. Soon I...
I thought of Mike Davis a couple of weeks ago when the LAT ran an astounding photo from up around Lancaster of a billboard bent backwards 90 degrees. "High winds"...
A selection from the August Index: Rank of California governor Gray Davis's approval rating in May among the lowest in the 55-year history of the state poll : 1 Number...
Bruce Cain, the Berkeley professor and politics junkie who has been quoted on the recall more than most of the candidates, is leaving for four months of real work at...
Rough and Tumble points to 39 recall items in the media (and a couple of blogs) this morning, and the race is just getting started. More are about money than...
Tim Rutten takes on and pretty much destroys the myth of the liberal Hollywood monolith, and along the way quotes the author-blogger Roger L. Simon at some length [see next...
Jack Kavanagh at Rough and Tumble has ramped up his posting pace in response to the recall, adding stories often through the day and recently linking to a few blogs...
If you search on Google for recall candidate Garret Gruener, a sponsored link comes up for the Gruener for Governor campaign: "Cut through the clutter. Restore the California Dream." Gruener...
Arnold S. plans to unveil his first TV ads on Wednesday and has formed an independent fundraising arm, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall Committee, that sure makes it look as if...
L.A. Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak was one of the gang on CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday and disclosed that the day Schwarzenegger was mugging for TV cameras in...
Cruz and Arnold are tied in the new Field Poll (yes, Bustamante is ahead 25%-22%, but it's within the 5% margin of error (PDF file)). Turns out that it's pretty...
Recall Watch has come back online with its one-of-a-kind monitoring of the cash flow into campaigns -- including $1 million from Peter Ueberroth to himself. Garrett Gruener has also pumped...
Hugh Hewitt provides a handy guide in the Daily Standard for media bookers in need of wisdom on the recall, and the Orange County Republican radio pundit includes some Democats...
I keep trying not to post about the recall, but it's hard. In tomorrow's LA Weekly, Marc Cooper lets loose his inner Jill Stewart and columnizes that the bleating elites...
Film critic Henry Sheehan (Film Week on KPCC-FM) looks at the Schwarzenegger boomlet from another angle and predicts that, win or lose, by running he has "pretty much put the...
Editorial cartoons on the recall -- ten pages of them -- compiled by Daryl Cagle. Thanks to Prestopundit for the link....
Long story by advertising reporter Stuart Elliott in the New York Times Business section today on Lester Terry Tate Speight, the lone joke recall candidate who was literally put up...
Among media heads, the big winner in the first phase was Dan Weintraub, the Sacramento Bee columnist who began blogging his analysis and opinions in April. He picked up on...
OK, we have official candidates now -- 158 or so -- and the real race is on. Schwarzenegger starts out on top of course, but only because the electoral bar...
Rick Orlov in the L.A. Daily News quotes an unnamed Richard Riordan aide saying that "the mayor was stunned. He was amazed and angry. He felt like he had been...
The California Supreme Court declines to intervene in the recall election. Details to come. Update 4:59 p.m.: Prof. Hasen at the Election Law blog has the order and I'm sure...
That's the headline (minus question mark) at Slate.com, where Timothy Noah's Chatterbox insists that even though Schwarzenegger has pumped money into Holocaust education and is a friend of the Simon...
On Warren Olney's national show on KCRW, Daniel Weintraub and longtime Republican consultant Arnold Steinberg are saying that if Schwarzenegger truly did not tell his staff or Dick Riordan that...
The most intriguing story of the day is Jim Rainey's inside the L.A. Times, quoting an unnamed confidant of Richard Riordan saying the ex-mayor was outside the loop and stunned...
Dan Weintraub at the Sacramento Bee reports that former baseball commissioner and Los Angeles Olympics chief Peter Ueberroth is now thinking of sliding into the recall race. Ok, that raises...
After Schwarzenegger left, a giddy Jay Leno -- who connected on at least a dozen good jokes in his monologue -- continued his roll: "That was a big announcement...right up...
Schwarzenegger tells Jay Leno on tonight's show that he's running for governor. The question now is what kind of game was Schwarzenegger playing when he sent signals through aides for...
Until Ann Coulter came along and cheapened the whole concept. L.A.-based blogs Hit and Run (Matt Welch) and the Volokh Conspiracy (Eugene Volokh) both smack her for this twisted bit...
The website that aggregates recall news and campaign contribution reports and bravely (stupidly?) has a discussion forum claims it has been "subject to a hacker attack for the last 24-48...
Los Angeles blogger Robert Garcia Tagorda (Priorities and Frivolities) has the only site I know of that mixes politics with regular takes on the Dodgers. He's aware of the dichotomy,...
George Skelton, the L.A. Times columnist in Sacramento, suggests doing something that would have more effect in the state Capitol than replacing Gray Davis: make lawmakers part time. If the...
Sitcom writer-producer Bill Prady, the showrunner for "Good Morning, Miami," recently went to Vegas, got lucky at craps and won $3,500. Just enough to pay the recall filing fee, so...
John Broder's report in tomorrow's New York Times quotes an unnamed consultant who has worked for both Riordan and Schwarzenegger: "There's a very interesting game of chicken going on." Update...
Recall Watch keeps a running tally of cash flow into the various committees pro and con on the recall, and links to news stories. It should link to more, today's...
Claudia Eller and Michael Cieply in the L.A. Times say Schwarzenegger's got issues if he wants to eschew politics and remain a film star. In particular, "how to become a...
Marc Cooper attended the weekend strategy session at Arianna Huffington's house and thinks she is running for real, as an independent, but with a solidly left team. Bill Zimmerman, who...
For those of us who don't care strongly either way -- and who remember voting on all this less than a year ago -- the recall better at least be...
The recall calculus is altered if what Dan Weintraub of the Sacto Bee reports on his blog is true: that Schwarzenegger has opted not to run, meaning that former mayor...
Replacing his old chief of staff. Too rich. Also the other Huffington. The ballot could be crowded with Huffingtons....
I've put together a new grouping of links to sites on California news and politics, high in the right-hand sidebar. It's just a start, will add more soon....
Mickey Kaus takes what I think (not being a recall junkie) is the contrarian view and suggests it is likely that Gray Davis beats the rap. He also predicts it...
On the front page of the New York Times today are two dead Husseins, one Private Lynch and congressman Darrell Issa. The money man behind the Gray Davis recall jokes...
If Arnold Schwarzenegger can run for governor, then what about Ozzy Osbourne, says the LALATimes....
The Daily News front page banners a story on lessons for the recall folks to take from last year's Valley secession fight. The connection is -- how should we put...
There's a website pushing Arianna Huffington to join the mini-race to replace Gray Davis if he is recalled, and some Democratic activists are talking her up. We first heard about...
The New York Times reports that Democrats are all riled up about New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's suggestion that city offices -- from his on down -- be elected on...
After a furious month of posting on his Sacramento Bee blog, Daniel Weintraub hasn't added an item on the Davis recall -- or anything else -- since 7:34 Sunday morning....
It'll be nasty on both sides, but Davis has no goodwill left to spend. Says John J. Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont-McKenna: "He will need to attack his...