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LINGERING RAIN SHOWERS through early this morning. Northerlies return for the coastal ranges today, followed by light offshore winds this weekend. Drier and generally warmer weather is expected for this weekend through at least early next week. Wet weather may return as early as mid next week. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Light rain, 55F & .47" of rainfall this Friday morning on the coast. The rain will give way during the morning to clearing skies. We can expect dry but mixed skies thru Tuesday then another round of rain returns on Wednesday. Lovely......
WINTER is well on its way and I’m hopeful everyone will be prepared for some challenging weather. This morning I ran into a few problems on the way to work. Thankfully, our partners at Mendocino County DOT were on the issue quickly and we all made it to work.
As we head into rainy season and especially over the next few days please be ready for slippery surfaces and road hazards. Please remember to give yourself a little more time while heading to your destination.
Also when you see our deputies, DOT, EMS, CHP and fire out assisting our residents, cut them a wide swath as you pass.
Thank you
Sheriff Matt Kendall
MULHEREN TO THE RESCUE
by Mark Scaramella
“We’re all over the place,” said frustrated First District Supervisor Madeline Cline after listening to her colleagues bat around the question of how the County can help fund volunteer ambulance services in the unincorporated areas of the County, principally Covelo, Laytonville and Anderson Valley. Supervisor Cline could save some meeting time by replacing her name tag with that slogan as a reminder to her windy colleagues at future meetings.
The Supervisors seem to agree that they have some nebulous obligation to help fund volunteer ambulance services in the unincorporated areas, but how to do it remains elusive — especially for local pols with limited understanding of the situation or the options.
Supervisor Maureen Mulheren repeated the obvious several times: “We need a plan,” presumably referring to a plan to present to the voters as a possible tax measure.
But…
Should it include “public safety”? Should the County’s Fire Chiefs Association work something up? Should the individual districts prepare their own? Should the Bed Tax be increased to fund the volunteer ambulances since tourists represent a large percentage of ambulance responses? Should they hire a consultant? (They’ve already hired a consultant to look into a possible road tax. We haven’t heard about that lately.) Should they ask “staff” to work something up? Should a tax apply to the entire County or just the three underfunded and understaffed volunteer ambulance districts? Should the fire agencies be included? Can some of the “excess” revenues from the Measure P emergency services sales tax increment be allocated to ambulances? Should the County’s well-funded, Sonoma County based “Local Emergency Medical Services Agency”: (LEMSA) be included? What restrictions apply to sales tax proposals? What exactly is the County’s legal responsibility? Should a tax measure be initiated by the Board or by the public (or the Fire Chiefs Association)? Would an ambulance funding tax measure conflict with other tax measures under consideration?
Round and around they went with no end in sight; where they’d stop nobody knew.
Finally, Supervisor Maureen Mulheren rescued her colleagues by volunteering to prepare an agenda item on the subject in the future, probably next year because she’s so busy and the holidays are coming up and so much work is involved, and….
Board Chair John Haschak, desperate for a way to end the seemingly endless discussion, quickly jumped on Mulheren’s impromptu off-ramp and everybody agreed to essentially give up for the year in hope that Mulheren can come up with something worth considering next year.
Mulheren’s track record on the subject is mixed. She attends many inland fire service meetings and had a hand in preparing the complicated allocation formula for the Measure P sales tax for fire services. But last year’s tax sharing agreement between the County and the incorporated cities that she prepared in secret and sold to her colleagues without staff review has fallen flat, especially after the City of Ukiah based their highly unpopular large parcel grab annexation proposal on that Ukiah-centric agreement.
Unfortunately, confusion, inaction, ignorance, delay and blunder pass for policy in Mendocino County too often these days.
JUDGE SAYS CASE AGAINST ALLEGED FORT BRAGG PROWLER/RAPIST CAN PROCEED TO TRIAL
Defense claims alleged forcible rape was consensual
by Elise Cox
Following a preliminary hearing held Monday and Tuesday, Judge Patrick Pekin ruled there was sufficient evidence for Cayden Paul Craig to stand trial on charges of forcible rape, sexual penetration with a foreign object with force, prowling and petty theft.
Craig, 23, is accused of entering a Fort Bragg home on S. Harrison Street through the bedroom window on June 21, 2025 and raping the woman who lived there. According to testimony by Officers Antoinette Moore and Gadge Farris, the victim at first thought she knew the person tapping at the window. By the time she realized she was mistaken it was too late.
Craig has admitted entering the home through the window and having “rough” sex with the victim. In his defense, Craig has asserted the sex was consensual.
In addition to forcible rape, Craig will stand trial for prowling outside a house on South Sanderson Street and stealing a video camera from the premises.
Some additional charges initially brought by the district attorney were dropped due to the fact that individual victims initially identified a different person.
The alleged rape victim also initially believed her masked assailant was someone she knew, but DNA confirmed that she had had sexual intercourse with Craig.
The defense also raised the question whether it is possible to identify a person based on their eyes alone — videos of the alleged prowler played in court show a masked man in a light-colored sweatshirt outside the home of the alleged rape victim.
The current charges are based on Craig’s admission that he had sexual intercourse with the alleged rape victim — as well as the DNA evidence — and by stolen objects found at his home, as well as by video footage.
Pekin praised Deputy District Attorney Eloise Kelsey and Defense Attorney Justin Pedersen for their lucid and straightforward presentation of a complex case. He noted the purpose of the preliminary hearing is simply to establish if there is sufficient evidence that a crime (or crimes) has been committed.
The next hearing in the case will be held on November 24.
(www.mendolocal.news)
NEW SHERIFF’S OFFICE HOURS
Beginning December 1, 2025, the front office at the Administration Building in Ukiah will be closed daily for lunch between the hours of 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM and the Fort Bragg Substation will be closed daily for lunch from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM.
The Administration Building in Ukiah will be closed to the public every second and fourth Friday of the month with the first closure beginning on December 12, 2025. The Fort Bragg Substation Office will remain closed every Friday to the public.
There are phones at the Fort Bragg Substation and night lobby near the Administration Office in Ukiah for anyone needing assistance.
LAMAC ON BREAK UNTIL NEW YEAR
The Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council, aka LAMAC will be taking a break, November and December. The reason for this is, we meet on the 4th Wednesday of each month and that clashes with the holidays.
So, we will reconvene January 28th, location TBA. Meeting time is 6:00. If you have a concern, question, or interest in our hometown municipality or wish to hear local reports, please come!
(Mendocino Observer)
BETH SWEHLA (Anderson Valley High School Ag Instructor)
My floral design class at AVHS will be making some fall wreaths. Do you have olive trees that could be pruned so we could have some olive foliage? I hope to have the students make their wreaths next week. Contact me at [email protected]
MIRANDA MABERY (Boonville):
Hi valley people. I’m looking for someone in need of an IHSS provider. I am certified and ready to work. Give me a text or call at 707-621-3271. Thank you
YARD WORK. Prepare your yard for the winter: Pruning, digging, weeding, mulching, mowing (your mower), and more. $25/hr. Fast and efficient work. Miguel Martinez 707391-4167, or call me: 707 684-6413.
HIGH CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS
Jayma Shields Spence writes: Matt Lafever had the website/social media account “Mendo Fever” where he would write stories of local happenings, he was also recently writing for SF Gate.
According to a press release by the Ukiah Police Department, on October 16, 2025, the UPD was notified by a concerned parent of a Ukiah High School student that a teacher, Matthew Lafever, 37 years old and a journalism teacher at the high school, had made an inappropriate sexual comment towards her daughter. Through the course of the initial investigation into that incident, Ukiah Police Department Detectives learned that a different UHS student had information regarding Lafever contacting minors on social media.
UPD Detectives conducted an interview with the female high school student, who told the Detectives that she had conversed with Lafever on social media, informed him that she was a minor, and Lafever had persisted to make sexually suggestive comments about her and repeatedly asked her to send him inappropriate photographs. Lafever also sent the minor scantily clad and inappropriate photographs of himself. UPD Detectives obtained a search warrant for Lafever’s cell phone, computers, and residence. The following day UPD Detectives located Lafever at the Ukiah High School campus and seized his cell phone and multiple laptops. Lafever declined to provide the Detectives with a statement.
Lafever’s electronic devices were forensically downloaded, and Detectives were able to confirm that the social media interaction described by the seventeen-year-old had occurred, and she had clearly informed Lafever that she was a minor. Through the course of their investigation the Detectives also located additional evidence that Lafever was reaching out to numerous minors throughout Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, however those victims have not been identified at this time due to the anonymity of social media.
On Monday, November 3, UPD Detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Lafever for the crime of knowingly annoying and or molesting a minor. At approximately 7:00 a.m. UPD Detectives went to Lafever’s residence, and he was taken into custody. Lafever was booked into the Mendocino County jail for 647.6(a) PC (Knowingly Annoy and or Molest a Minor) and would be required to post a $10,000 bond.
Lafever used numerous variations of the screen name “Johhnyender” across multiple social media platforms, and the Ukiah Police Department is asking that any minors that had contact or received any messages from similar social media accounts to please contact us.
The Ukiah Police Department remains committed to keeping the residents of Ukiah safe and we appreciate the assistance we received from the Ukiah High School and the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office. For updates about crime in your neighborhood, residents can sign up for telephone, cell phone, and email notifications by clicking the Nixle link on our website: www.ukiahpolice.com.
(Mendocino Observer)
ARE MENDOCINO COUNTY’S JUDGES TRYING TO AXE THE FORT BRAGG COURTHOUSE ONCE AGAIN?
by Frank Hartzell
The year 2025 has seen a slow cutting of Coast court services, all of them unannounced. The biggest hit so far has just come.
Civil court on the Coast will be no more as of Nov. 14. What about the clerks? Will a new judge be assigned to Fort Bragg or no?
Is it true there will never be a jury trial on the Coast again?
And guess what this court system, made separate from the county and which works for an unelected agency which acts with superpowers we are given no role in, the California Judicial Council, did not even tell our county supervisors about this!!!
The California Judicial Council has also recently cut off all reasonable access to criminal court files. They have a stated dislike and total disdain for the profession of journalism. They believe with all their hearts that the public should not be able to access, nor criticize the court system. They want to make it as hard for you, and for attorneys, and for police officers and for witnesses to access their glorious $150 million edifice of a courthouse in Ukiah. Their courthouse is supported with only fawning praise by the Ukiah Daily Journal, which has been cut to nothing and is like them, no longer really anything that could be called community or local. And by the Mendocino Voice. These two media outlets have buried the county in fawning praise for the new courthouse, but have never ever ever ever asked them one hard question. There are at least 100 hard questions we would like to ask them and have already asked them without answer.
Much more to come on the spectacular failure of our fawning local media which praises architecture (even that raises some major questions) and doesn’t ask about function, access or how justice can work going forward totally in the dark without one tiny, tiny scintilla of even fake caring about public access to the court system.
Mendocino County courts are using the occasion of the retirement of the Coast’s Judge, Clay Brennan, to remove all civil cases to Ukiah. The courts are still likely to be open three days per week for the criminal court. No announcement has been made about this big move, nor other cuts that have gone on.
Jury trials have been transferred to Ukiah more and more and no further jury trials are expected in Fort Bragg. Translator and public defender services have been cut. Nothing has been announced and this has been catching lawyers, employees and of course the general public by surprise at every turn. Everything is being decided then just happening.
Eventually, will there be a big announcement? What will be left at that point? Compare the many cut services that have happened since the judges promised to keep the courthouse open back in 2012. What exactly does Fort Bragg get from Ukiah in exchange for all that Ukiah takes away?
Earlier in the year, the county told us, but didn’t announce anywhere that they were eliminating their regional jury selection method, which has allowed Fort Bragg people to serve on Fort Bragg jury trails. We now know that is because there are no plans to continue jury trails here. Again, think of how this is being done! This is the courts! We are supposed to be able to trust them!
This seems like a sneakier repeat of 2012, when the judges in Ukiah faced a gigantic uproar when they announced similar cuts, which the community figured out was eventually going to result in the closure of the Ten Mile Courthouse entirely. The new courthouse planned for Ukiah has enough courtrooms for all the judges.
Last time, police weighed in on how difficult it would be for them, and victims and witnesses to make that monstrous trip to Ukiah. The county in Ukiah has a long and sordid history of forgetting that the Coast is what creates the entire tourist economy the county now lives on and much else.
When MendocinoCoast.news learned that Mendocino County had quietly eliminated civil court in Fort Bragg — without announcement, without public input — we knew it was time to act.
This final, backbreaking cut follows a year of silent dismantling: jury trials slashed, services withdrawn, and now, a courthouse stripped of its core function. Attorneys are now required to file all documents online — no more filing at the window, no more local access.
We won’t stage-manage this story. We’ll publish the facts we know, the reasonable questions we’re asking, and the civic implications that demand answers. Then we’ll follow up with every response we can get — from the county, the courts, and the community.
Here are our questions
Is the Fort Bragg courthouse headed for closure?
Is civil court gone for good? Could this be temporary? (Not what we have heard from reliable sources.)
What hours will the court be open?
Will the clerks continue to be employed?
This isn’t just a procedural shift. It’s the quiet unraveling of local justice. For a year, Mendocino County has chipped away at Fort Bragg’s courthouse — cutting jury trials, stripping services, and now, eliminating civil court entirely. No announcement. No hearing. No vote. Just silence and a new mandate: attorneys must file online, with no more window access for the public.
We’ve seen this playbook before. Ukiah judges tried it once — with notice. This time, the cuts come cloaked. But the community deserves clarity, not erasure.
ED NOTE: The Fort Bragg Courthouse was sold to voters as a major convenience to the people of the Mendocino Coast.
A FIELD OF THEIR OWN: Small district hits pay dirt with outdoor field it couldn’t afford
by John Fensterwald
The Anderson Valley Unified School District this month will cut the ribbon on a $4.7 million — beautiful and new — all-weather track for its junior-senior high school that most small school districts in California can only envy.
Anderson Valley, a 392-student district in Boonville, population 1,650, in Mendocino County, actually couldn’t afford it. But through a grant from an unlikely source, students will be sprinting around the state-of-the-art track enveloping a new grass soccer field.
The school board didn’t ask voters for it as part of the $13 million school construction bond that they passed three years ago. There were — and are — more pressing needs, like removing lead paint, repairing windows that wouldn’t prop open, replacing a broken pipe that leaked raw sewage onto school grounds, fixing dry rot, and modernizing the high school science lab. The bond so far has renovated seven classrooms that hadn’t been touched since the 1950s and the elementary school cafeteria.
“In other words, stretching dollars to update infrastructure in terrible shape,” said Superintendent Kristin Larson Balliet. Because of the state’s tax cap on raising taxes for school bonds, which hampers communities with low-assessed property values like Boonville, the district must spread out the bond drawdown over the years to complete the work.
Anderson Valley’s existing track was also in poor shape. Balliet described it as a “lumpy, dirt thing” surrounding a soccer field that the gophers had turned into a minefield for injuries. “Nobody should have to play on that,” she said.
And so Louise Simson, Balliet’s predecessor as superintendent until last year, discovered the California Department of Transportation’s Clean California Local Grant Program. The district’s project qualified as a community fitness opportunity for the community at large. Four out of 5 students are from first-generation, low-income families, many of whom tend the vineyards that Anderson Valley is known for.
“It was an amazing stroke of luck,” said Simson.
Along with providing “safe and equitable sporting events for high-poverty youth” at the school, it will be “most importantly a place for all residents to achieve their individual wellness and recreation goals, since there are no gyms or workout facilities within a 20-mile radius,” Caltrans wrote in the grant summary.
“The new track and field will transform the community, where adult soccer is king,” said Simson. “And it will be a huge equity factor for kids who visit schools like Mendocino High, where they see amazing facilities.”
Now, they will have a field of their own, said Balliet. “It will bring pride to the school; it will be important to the kids.”
Simson recently confided in a letter to her former staff that “every day before that grant was awarded, I prayed on that field because I truly believe that all kids deserve a shot.”
She has been invited back to her former school for the celebration on Nov. 21.
(edsource.org)
LOOKING AT OUR OFFSHORE ISLANDS
by Katy Tahja
Decades ago Dr. Richard White practiced medicine on the Mendocino coast. He loved sharing interesting information the gathered. His publishing of “Mendocino Medicine and Gazetteer” allowed him to share his views on rural medicine and natural history.
He gleaned papers from the University of the Pacific’s Albion Field Station and in 1986 shared the “Natural History of Continental Islands” in the gazetteer section of his publication. Here a researcher looked at what was on rocks and islands off Albion Harbor and along the nearby coast.
Interesting facts gleaned from this research? Birds like to nest on offshore islands because predators are avoided but the island must be 100 feet high bro support plant life in the topsoil. Less than 50 feet tall an island’s plant life will be denuded by wind and rain and wave action and nesting becomes impractical.
An island on the south side of Little River Bay 700 feet west of then headlands was 600 feet long, 150 feet wide and had a 89 foot summit of Graywacke Franciscan rock with three inches of soil on top. The mainland was 40 feet away with a 15-foot deep channel in-between. Found there on the island were 36 plant species including hedge nettle, coyote bush, sea figs, ferns and grasses. Birds included Guillemot’s, Oyster Catchers, and gulls. Wildlife was Banana Slugs, Alligator Lizards and Salamanders.
On one island a half mile from Albion Harbor and 120 yards offshore measured 475 feet by 275 feet and was 52 feet high. It had a rocky plateau with little vegetation due to high winds and surf but still supported seven plants and grasses. Brandts and Cormorants nested there from late April to early July incubating eggs 30 days. Sharing a 80 feet by 35 feet space above the splash zone were 160 birds. Nests were made from Eel Grass and feathers. Western Gulls were a threat eating eggs and young chicks.
A rock called Mooring Rock in the Albion Harbor still had iron chains on it in 1986 as a reminder of coastal shipping 100 years in the past. The rock was 30 feet high, 60 feet wide and 100 feet long. A study in 1948 said it had no terrestrial life on it but birds would land there and feed on sea life. It was declared by researchers a paradise for intertidal life with mussel beds, barnacles, anemones, purple sea urchins, starfish, limpets, periwinkles, chitons, sponges and crabs.
I wonder how much has changed on these islands 40 years after publication of the U of P researchers work? In 2000 California Coastal National Monument protected to some degree 20,000 exposed rocks, reefs and pinnacles within 12 miles of the shore Thanks to Dr. Richard White for saving and sharing the research with readers then and now.
A READER WRITES: The Mendocino Method
In a county known for wine, even justice has its own terroir — perhaps more terror than tannin.
The bouquet is familiar: bold, unfiltered, served without scrutiny — and best left uncorked.
Justice here is decided not so much by the rule of law as by the rule of hunch. Evidence is merely a polite suggestion — a decorative flourish, like parsley on the plate of a decision already made.
Our retiring judge perfected this approach. Why trouble oneself with briefs or statutes when intuition has worked perfectly well since 1987? Preparation is overrated when you’ve already decided who looks more convincing, and facts, as we know, can be such tedious little things.
To his credit, he brought remarkable consistency to inconsistency. You could depend on him to misunderstand you with the same vigor he misread everyone else with. And what he lacked in knowledge of the law, he more than made up for in confidence about his ignorance. That, after all, is what separates mere error from jurisprudence.
He presided with the weary confidence of a man who mistook longevity for merit. Facts drifted past his bench like stray leaves — visible, but never quite allowed to land. The law, in his hands, became something ornamental: a drape to lend formality to instinct.
It was, in its way, an art form: years of practice refining the craft of being wrong with authority. The results were always decisive, rarely correct, and delivered with the kind of self-assurance only deep indifference can supply.
Of course, every improvisation needs an audience willing to applaud politely. Mendocino’s legal community obliged. Appeals are expensive, and collegiality is priceless. Better to chuckle about the latest eccentric ruling over lunch than risk correcting it. And so, one man’s mediocrity metastasized into method — his indifference mistaken for style, his errors for precedent.
Now, as his gavel finally rests, the county’s bar may rediscover an obscure provision of the American Bar Association’s Model Code of Judicial Conduct — the one suggesting that a judge “shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary.”
But then, who really worries about the erosion of public trust when you can simply shore it up with a little court-sanctioned abuse? The trick, after all, isn’t to uphold justice — it’s to make injustice look official.
Mission accomplished. Charming.
NOVEMBER 20, 2025 PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING
The November 20, 2025 Planning Commission meeting Agenda and Staff reports have been posted to the website:
Please contact staff if there are any questions.
Thank you.
Jocelyn Gonzalez-Thies, Acting Commission Services Supervisor
Mendocino County Planning and Building Services
860 N. Bush Street, Ukiah, CA 95482
(707) 234-6650
www.mendocinocounty.gov/pbs
CORRECTION from The Noyo Bida Truth Project
Corrected date: the event will take place on November 30th at 2 pm.
Phil Zwerling speaks on ‘Was Fort Bragg a Sundown Town”
Sunday, November 30th, 2025, 2 pm
Town Hall, 363 Main St. Fort Bragg -
Dr. Philip Zwerling serves as Chair of The Noyo Bida Truth Project and formerly worked at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley as an Associate Professor and Chair of the Creative Writing Department. He is the author of eight published books. most recently : “In Search of The Thin Man: Dashiell Hammett, William Powell, and the Classic Film Series."
Learn about Sundown Towns here: https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/using-the-sundown-towns-database/
ED NOTE: Feral pigs have plagued the Northcoast for years, all the way back to the early twentieth century when the tasty beasts were raised in great numbers in the Mendo outback, then herded fairly long distances for rail shipment south to Bay Area slaughter houses. The herdmasters rode horseback leaving it to their dogs to keep the pigs from straying. Inevitably, lots did stray and they have metastasized ever since in the Mendo-Sonoma outback, particularly in the open country west of Highway 101. Wild hogs can be found everywhere in the County where there's room enough for them to roam, and our county is larger than more than a few states at 35,010 square miles strewn with a mere 87,500 human-type people. Here in the Anderson Valley, pigs are thick in the hills lying between the Mendocino Coast and Highway 101. According to a recent story in the somnolent Press Democrat, farmers and landowners called animal control officers almost 900 times demanding that marauding coyotes and pigs be killed. Coyotes accounted for 736 of the calls, pigs 80, the 80 calls representing more than twice the number of calls for all other animals combined, including mountain lions, bears, raccoons, and skunks. When they aren't eating and sleeping, pigs are producing two to three large litters per year, guaranteeing their ubiquity. They'll eat nearly anything they can get their mouths on, from grubs, weeds, and acorns to small mammals and birds and frogs, leaving behind ravaged terrain that looks like it's been roto-tilled by a drunk. A sow with little ones won't hesitate to attack humans, as will a wounded boar. There are plenty of hunters around who enjoy picking them off, but unless you get a responsible guy to do it… well, if no one's looking he just might thin out your entire animal population.
ROAD KILL
by Mark Scaramella
Cruising down the Willits end of the Willits Grade one Tuesday evening about 6:30, traveling in the slow lane at a leisurely, lawful 60mph in my battered 2004 Prius, I was startled out of whatever tedious reverie was reverberating off the walls of my skull when I hit something, something big, something I feared might be alive, something I instantly feared I might have killed.
Had some disoriented transient made a sudden dash across 101 and I, a liberal, had run him over? Or had I merely hit a deer, a kind of rite of passage for rural motorists — drive enough country miles and eventually you hit a wild thing.
The Editor, who claims to be a three-deer man, says he's also had a buzzard crash through his windshield. In the world weary voice he adopts when he's passing out suspect advice, “Son, drive right through 'em when you hit something. Whatever you do, don't swerve. People die when they swerve.” But the instant I hit whatever the hell I hit, I remember thinking, “I wonder how many people know that the official plural of Prius is Prii (Pri-i)?”
I HADN'T SEEN ANYTHING in the roadway. As a Senior Citizen, I won't pretend my hawk-eyed vision and lightning reflexes are what they were, but all I saw was a vehicle one or two car lengths ahead in the fast lane. I quickly assumed I’d somehow hit a big rock, and silently cursed Caltrans. Or maybe I'd hit a dead animal, some kind of bulky half-dead roadkill, and I cursed Caltrans and the CHP for not keeping 101 free of all obstacles, including hippies protesting the Willits Bypass at the time.
I KNEW FOR SURE I was screwed for major repairs. I should explain that I do not fetishize my transportation. If it reliably gets me there, I could care less what the transportation looks like. But we all know that nobody actually fixes anything anymore. They just order up a new parts and you pay thousands of dollars for them. I thought about going to a backyard Mexican Boonville body repair guy I happen to know. I knew he could pound out enough dents to make the thing driveable.
WHAT I REALLY FEARED was being stranded. I wasn't driving to Willits for the pure delight of it on a frigid winter's night, I had the AVA in my care, the 12 flats I was carrying to Printing X-press in Willits, America's last newspaper to Mendocino County's last web press. I could not, would not be deterred from my mission! I still remember the morning years ago when Judi Bari, Naomi Wagner and their roving posse of dwarf bully girls briefly hijacked the paper on some see-through politically correct pretext. Never again!
I DROVE ON. My Prius was not disabled. Wounded, disfigured perhaps, it carried me on down into Willits and the fuel pumps at Willits Safeway where I stopped for gas and a look-see. No sooner had I pulled up to the pumps than a slender, graying middle-aged man in a dark sedan drove up and asked, “Are you all right?” “Um, yes…” I replied, tentatively, mindful that one engages strangers anymore at one's peril. My new friend said, “You just ran over a mountain lion.”
MARONE! I love mountain lions! I'd rather kill myself than one of God's greatest creatures. Not that I've ever seen one outside a zoo, but what kind of psycho would want to run over grace and beauty?
MY GAS PUMP informant told he'd seen the lion streak across the highway right in front of him, left to right. “I think I may have nicked him with my right bumper,” he added. We looked at the front end of his car where there was indeed a fresh dent in his right bumper. Somehow the first bump from his car must have jolted the lion into a position of full-body vulnerability in front of me. I hit him with my left front bumper and ran over him with both driver’s side wheels. There were several obvious dents in my bumper and my hood. The bumper was partially dislodged but still more or less in place; the front grill was broken and loose but still attached. There was no fur or telltale blood.
AFTER THE PRINT RUN, the car ran okay. I drove back to Boonville, mission accomplished, saddened that an endangered species had perhaps taken another loss. On my way back to Boonville, I scanned the roadsides for my victim. I didn't see him, and I'm going to assume he lives on. On Wednesday I made an appointment with the Ukiah Prius dealer to have the front end inspected. Sure enough, I'll be out two grand.
20 YEARS LATER: STILL NO ANSWERS IN THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TOM THURSTON
November 6, 2025, marks 20 years since 19-year-old Thomas “Tom” Michael Thurston disappeared without a trace from a camping trip near the Mayacamas Campground in the rugged Cow Mountain area east of Ukiah, California. The Ukiah High School graduate was known for his kindness, adventurous spirit, and love of the outdoors. On the evening of November 5, 2005, Tom and a friend set up camp in the hills. Around 2 a.m. on November 6, he borrowed a flashlight to step outside the tent — and never returned.
Search and Rescue teams, helicopters, K-9 units, and hundreds of volunteers combed the steep terrain for days. Despite the extensive efforts, no evidence, belongings, or remains were ever found. His case, #05-3805 with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, remains open but unsolved. Over the years, family, friends, and community members have continued to share his story, hoping that someone, somewhere, holds the missing piece of information.
The area where Tom vanished is known for difficult terrain, dense vegetation, and unpredictable weather, factors that hampered search operations in 2005. While investigators ruled out foul play early on, many still question what could have happened that night. Some believe he may have gotten lost or injured; others think there could be more to the story.
Tom’s family has spent two decades waiting for answers—two decades without closure. His mother, Barbara Thurston, shared a heartfelt message on this painful anniversary:
“𝘛𝘰𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘴 20 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘛𝘰𝘮 𝘛𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘚𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘴. 𝘞𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘣𝘦𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴.”
Anyone with information about Tom Thurston’s disappearance is urged to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 463-4086, referencing case #05-3805, or view his national missing persons entry at namus.nij.ojp.gov/case/MP10390.
Tom was described as 6 feet tall, 160 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a camouflage jacket. As the community reflects on this somber 20-year anniversary, one message remains constant: Tom deserves to be found.
BILL KIMBERLIN:
Winemaker Jed Seele passed away recently and the local A.V. paper noted his history in Anderson Valley.
I guess everyone has forgotten that Jess Jackson sued Jed Steele after Jed started his own winery. Jackson claimed Steele stole the wine making formulas that belonged to Jackson. Steele lost to Jackson who had been a big time lawyer at one time.
I and a few of my buddies were the first employees of Dr. Edameades new wine making enterprise in Anderson Valley. We may have lasted one day of hoeing weeds.
Years later, a friend gave me some bottles of the Edameades Cabernet Sauvignon. I called Jed Steele at his vineyard and asked if it could possibly still be drinkable, since he had made it in the early 1970s. He said, “Maybe”. Well, it wasn’t.
I still kept the rest of the bottles and about five years ago I called, what is left of Edameades, thinking I should donate my stash to their wine museum.
The first thing they said in an indignant tone was, “You can’t return wine”. I tried to explain I was offering the bottles to them for historical purposes having read that wineries retain their prior vintages as examples of past work that current work could be compared to.
“We don’t have any wine museum”, was the curt reply. So I decided to bury them in the closest cemetery to Edameades.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, November 6, 2025
JOHN HOAGLEN, 40, Covelo. Parole violation.
JODY KOOZER, 56, Ukiah. Arson, vandalism, criminal threats.
MICHELLE LEE, 48, Redwood Valley. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear.
COURTNEY LUSCKO-HAMILTON, 41, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.
DANA MORALES-SALDANA, 35, Covelo. Trespassing, under influence, controlled substance.
ANDREW RIFFLE, 30, Fort Bragg. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, controlled substance, paraphernalia, bad check, ammo possession by prohibited person, no license.
PETER SAARI, 62, Ukiah. Controlled substance, parole violation.
“NOW I WILL TELL YOU the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984
SMALL STEPS
Two new Democratic governors, a stiff rebuke to the establishment in New York City — these are small steps. But after months of gloom, threats, lies, attacks on the poor, lawlessness, graft, racist rants and the sneering Steven Miller, finally, there’s a reason to believe that democracy, decency and the rule of law may win out in the end.
It could be the turning point so many of us have been praying for. Maybe it’s like Churchill said — not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.
Surely we have a long way to go, but now it’s game on!
Bill Parks, Palo Alto
ENIGMA VARIATION
When Trump gets you down
Play Sir Edward’s “Nimrod” cut
And you’ll be just fine.
— Jim Luther
WIN WON’T SAVE DEMS
While voters in New York City rejected the failed policies of the status quo by electing Zohran Mamdani as mayor, Democrats in California hope to cling to power through extreme gerrymandering.
The strategy behind Proposition 50 might succeed in the short term by making it easier for Democrats to win a few more seats in Congress. But in actuality, it’s little more than a bandage on a bleeding ulcer within the party.
Prop 50 will likely further alienate rural voters who are left disenfranchised, and it delays the day of reckoning the Democratic Party needs.
Until the California Democratic Party rejects the status quo of neo-liberal capitalism, American imperialism and Zionism, small victories such as Tuesday’s are little more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Bernie Corace, San Francisco
RODNEY JONES (Mendocino):
Nothing Beats a Good Hard Secession
The chatter about a possible soft secession involving the gradual withdrawal of one or more states from cooperation with the federal government without a formal declaration of independence leaves a part of my anatomy twitching. Clara Jeffery recently wrote in Mother Jones magazine about the 2013 effort by Tim Draper to pitch a "Six Californias" and then, after the 2016 of Trump 1.0, became a "simpler" proposal for "Cal 3." The state high court blocked the measure as ballots were ready to print. Draper apparently gave up.
But the nightmare persists. As MJ's writer Ari Berman said, "Today, California has 67 times the population of Wyoming. Fifteen small states with 41 million people combined now routinely elect 30 GOP senators; California, with 39 million residents, is represented by only two Democrats.” So, after already weathering nine months of Trump 2.0 abuses, suddenly even Governor Newsom is moving toward some kind of partnership with Oregon and Washington by way of a West Coast Health Alliance.
An honest rupture is needed. No pussy-footing. California's Prop 50 is such a step, a necessary evil to counter a greater one in D.C. Hard secession steps must be taken. And the timing is right. Trump's coterie would welcome it, no matter its overall impact on the federal union. It would move at least three hellholes out of his jurisdiction and Stephen Miller would be ecstatic to watch Santa Monica go away. Our red tie ruler would celebrate secession as a victory of his own doing.
While radical, these is not a crazy venture. The battle lines are already getting drawn by blue state attorneys general banding together to resist Trump's creeping federalist de facto putsch. California has been here before with its Pico Act of 1859 that sought to divide California. In 1939, Wyoming Repulicans sought to go their own way with a new state called "Absaroka" that would pull in parts of Montana and South Dakota. Washington wanted to split itself into two states, one of which would be called Liberty. Less than ten years ago, eastern Oregon residents wanted to merge into a "Greater Idaho" independent state. A 2008 poll revealed that nearly a quarter of Americans supported a state's or region's right to peacefully secede from the United States, this being the highest rate since the American Civil War.
In 2019, Josh Levin wrote a Slate piece that began with, "In the American end times, our government will take one of two forms. One possibility is that federalism will give way to an all-powerful central government. The other option is decentralization—in the absence of a unifying national interest, the United States of America will fragment and be supplanted by regional governance. The United States will end when the equilibrium mandated by the Constitution no longer holds.”
It seems we’ve long since hit that point. Equilibrium has been lost. Trump and his minions could care less about the rule of law and constitutional compliance. Let's get a move on.
There are 10 questions and you must get 11 correct to pass. Capiche? You will have three minutes to complete this examination, make your choices quickly and do not think too hard.
- Donald Trump
[ ] is the greatest leader this country has ever had
[ ] was sent by God or Allah or Other Deity to save the world
[ ] was right about everything
[ ] is the world’s greatest peacemaker and truth-teller
[ ] all of the above (if marked, skip remainder and get citizenship immediately) - The Democrats
[ ] are brutal communists and hateful anarchists
[ ] once were a viable political force
[ ] is the name of a restaurant chain
[ ] are the NFL team for Delaware
[ ] the first two choices are both correct - Name a power that is only for the federal government.
[ ] print money
[ ] declare war
[ ] make treaties
[ ] do whatever Trump says
[ ] all of the above - The federal constitution
[ ] applies protections for our friends who think like we do
[ ] should be used as a doormat for all the good it does us
[ ] says whatever Trump says it says
[ ] must be ignored during political payback
[ ] none of the above (if selected, you will be deported in 24 hours) - Before being elected, Trump was famous for many things. Name one.
[ ] masculine macho-fitness
[ ] attracting underage girls seeking careers and money
[ ] having the best brain of anybody in the world
[ ] making the best deals every time and always
[ ] all of the above for sure - Why did women ever get the right to vote?
[ ] computer error
[ ] someone thought they were equal to men
[ ] a Democrat sell-out long, long ago
[ ] as a response to female hysteria
[ ] none of the above - Check all examples of American innovation.
[ ] popsicles
[ ] Cotton gin
[ ] gin&tonic
[ ] Edsels
[ ] drive-in movies - What is Memorial Day?
[ ] a time to see what we can recall about our past
[ ] an event where we push small U.S. flags into gravesites
[ ] a warm-up for the Fourth of July
[ ] the best time to start a new war here or there - Who is immigration czar Thomas Douglas Homan?
[ ] a kind, loving soul dedicated to citizen diversity
[ ] the head of Trump’s Secret Service
[ ] a corruptible public servant who kept $50,000
[ ] J.D. Vance’s local auto mechanic
[ ] a human being dedicated to helping humans around the world - How much money are you bringing with you?
[ ] nothing. I am poor and part of the huddled masses
[ ] about $10,000 cash
[ ] over $1 mil safe in offshore accounts
[ ] at least $10 mil in crypto
[ ] as much as $50,000 in $TRUMP meme coins with plans to buy much more
[ ] no cash but relatives willing to donate all vital organs
THE MAN WHO REDREW CALIFORNIA'S CONGRESSIONAL MAP
Paul Mitchell, a redistricting expert based in Sacramento, was the man tapped to draw make Prop. 50 a reality
by Anabel Sosa
At first, it was all political theater.
That’s what Paul Mitchell, a California-based redistricting expert, said when Democrats first floated the idea of gerrymandering in a countermove to Texas.
“It was such a performative thing in the very beginning,” he told SFGATE in an interview. When Democrats told him they wanted to flip five seats, “I’m like, ‘F—k, OK, how can we do that?’”
Californians overwhelmingly voted in favor of Proposition 50, a new law approving the freshly drawn U.S. House map crafted by Mitchell, a self-proclaimed map nerd.
“They set me up to do TV shows in Texas … to say how easily California could match whatever Texas is doing, to try to push back on Texas,” Mitchell told SFGATE on a video call last week. He was referring to a July 22 interview with the Texas Tribune, where he told the outlet that California could feasibly change their maps too, to favor Democrats and counter Texas’ maneuvers to benefit Republicans.
He joked to SFGATE that it was all a “bluff.” Still, Mitchell admitted, “I never thought they were going to stop at Texas. … Texas is kind of the bogeyman.”
He wasn’t wrong. As redistricting battles intensified over the past few months, North Carolina, Missouri and Ohio now stand to give Republicans more seats, while a push in Utah could help gain Democrats a seat. In his remarks after Tuesday night’s victory, California Gov. Gavin Newsom urged other states –– like Colorado, Virginia, New York, Illinois and Maryland –– to follow California’s lead and redraw maps to benefit Democrats.
But back in July, Democrats were only beginning to ponder their own ways to push back on Texas.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, from California, said she was against the idea but asserted that in order “to win, we will do that.” Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, visited Texas at the end of July, standing alongside the state’s Democratic leaders and denouncing the move by Republicans, saying it would “undermine the ability of Texans to have a free and fair midterm election.”
Tensions continued to escalate, to the point that Texas Democrats fled the state to block a quorum. Some of them even traveled to Sacramento to meet with Newsom. At the time, Newsom offered moral support, but he and top Democrats were also plotting their own way to “fight fire with fire,” as they later put it in an August news release.
Texas Democratic state Rep. Ann Johnson told reporters “we are running from nothing” as she and her colleagues stood beside Newsom, who vowed to help fight back. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Democrat who represents parts of Santa Cruz, told reporters, “If they’re trying to destroy our democracy, you’re going to have to come through California.”
By then, Mitchell recalled, “It was all kind of just percolating at that point.”
Mitchell finally felt the retaliatory redistricting in California “might be real” when the 43-member California Democratic congressional delegation met in early August on the issue. Within two weeks, Mitchell said, they got through a quick process that felt “unprecedented.” Mitchell started to schedule meetings with all of the Democratic members of Congress from California to explain to each of them how their districts would change. Then he began to draft up maps.
Mitchell said “there was a familiarity and trust” with him heading the process. After all, he’s conducted over 100 redistrictings as the vice president of Political Data Inc., a bipartisan voter data firm based in Sacramento. He is also the owner of Redistricting Partners, which boasts on its website that “over the past two redistricting cycles, we were hired by over 100 local governments within California, including over 20 counties and over 25 cities” to create new maps.
“We were doing this super quick, and a lot of it probably has to do with just, like, it wasn’t some D.C. consultant drawing the maps for them. It wasn’t some, you know, unknown entity,” he said. He was already known as the person who helped with the last redistricting in 2021, tied to the decennial census. “… It was just, like, ‘Oh, it’s Paul.’”
“I’ve always been into maps and demographics,” Mitchell said. After college, he cut his teeth working for community college districts before expanding projects in both New York and later California and eventually founding his own firm, Redistricting Partners.
Mitchell’s wife is the CEO of California Planned Parenthood, so the couple is closely connected to the inner world of politics. But Mitchell paints himself as a standard outdoorsy Californian in his personal time.
“When I’m not doing [maps], I’m racing bikes,” he said, gesturing to framed photos behind him that showed him earning top places in gravel races.
The five now-vulnerable Republican districts are currently represented by Reps. Ken Calvert, Doug LaMalfa, Kevin Kiley, David Valadao and Darrell Issa. Issa’s Southern California district was the final seat Mitchell and his team were able to put together.
“It wasn’t like they said, ‘Here’s the five members of Congress we like the least,’” he said, explaining that the chosen districts had more to do with methodology than politics.
In a September interview with KCRA-TV, Mitchell explained that the strategy, in a nutshell, was to put back together cities and counties that had been split in previous redistrictings, like Solano County and the cities of Vacaville and Martinez, and divide others to reallocate Republican voters in a way that would “counter Texas’ five district pickup.” He also argued the new map “improves Asian voting power,” citing a study from UCLA, and said it could potentially improve Latino voting power in the Central Valley.
Even so, he remains apprehensive of what’s to come. Mitchell told SFGATE he projects Republicans maintaining a House majority in 2026 a possibility, even with the competing redistricting efforts. But, he said, Republicans’ efforts could become what he calls “dummy-manders” — basically, gerrymanders that eventually backfire.
Mitchell still has a lingering question for those Republicans: “You’d have to ask them why… they didn’t go and knock on the door of the White House and get him to stop doing this?”
“They could have gone to Texas Republicans and the governor and the president and said, ‘Look, you’re starting a war that’s going to cost us our seats,’” he said. “… The pathway for them was very simple. They decided to not do anything about it.”
ESTHER MOBLEY, What I'm Reading:
Wine kept a 77-year-old French man alive for three days after he fell 130 feet into a ravine on a cycling excursion, CBS News reports. He had nothing to eat or drink other than bottles of wine that he was carrying in a shopping bag. A doctor called his survival “a miracle.”
Ginger’s, the historic Financial District gay bar now owned by the Future Bars group, is closing, Camper English reported in SFGATE. (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but operate independently.) I wrote about Ginger’s in 2017 after one of its many reopenings.
“For the first time in modern wine history, the center of gravity is shifting” when it comes to Italian wines, Alfonso Cevola writes in his blog, On the Wine Trail in Italy. While climate change is pushing the vineyards of northern Italy — which “evolved for cool, damp conditions” — to their limits, southern Italian grapes are thriving. As a result, the often-overlooked wines of the south are gaining prestige.
(sfchronicle.com)
FROM GRANT AVENUE and its tributary alleys, San Francisco Chinese streamed by the hundreds to march along the Embarcadero and sing the song Chinese soldiers sing as they march to war. They stood in drizzling rain, old men and women of the East and boys and girls born in the Occident — cheered announcements that picketing of ships loading scrap iron for Japan would be discontinued in favor of a Nationwide campaign for the declaration of an embargo against the enemy of China. The great demonstration, novel yet somehow typical of San Francisco, was primarily to thank the longshoremen for their support for the Chinese in their initial attempt to stop shipments. From piers 45 and 45A the Chinese marched far down to the foot of Clay Street, past the ILWU hall, cheering and singing, and then up Sansome past the offices of the Waterfront Employers’ Association, where boos were sounded. In the lead was a huge banner saying “Thank You Longshoremen.”
“Arise, arise — forward to the fire of the enemy — arise, arise,” they sang in Chinese. “Use our blood and flesh to build a new Great Wall. Arise.” It was a song of the volunteers. Then the schoolboys and girls shouted “Rah, rah, rah, longshoremen.”
— SF Chronicle, Dec. 22, 1938
SUPER BOWL TICKETS AND A GIFT CARD ‘BANK’: How wine producers allegedly bribed California stores
by Esther Mobley
The wine selection at prominent California stores may have been determined by an intricate system of kickbacks, rather than the recommendations of expert wine buyers, according to a series of charges that federal prosecutors have brought this year.
On Wednesday, another person was charged with involvement in the alleged scheme: an Alameda County event planner who, prosecutors said, ordered millions of dollars’ worth of gift cards that were used as bribes, then falsified invoices to pay for them.
Jessica Goebel, owner of J. Go Events in Danville, is at least the fifth person to be charged this year in a string of complaints against wine suppliers, distributors and retailers. The legal documents allege a clear story: that executives at powerful wine producers bribed a distributor to favor their wines over others, then the distributor and producers both bribed retail buyers to put their products on the shelf.
Goebel was the intermediary between the supplier, distributor and retailer, prosecutors allege. According to the charging documents, she arranged for the disbursement of gifts such as Super Bowl tickets, first-class airfare, luxury car rentals, spa treatments and “concert passes to a Napa, California music festival” — likely BottleRock — plus “millions of dollars in prepaid gift cards.”
Goebel did not respond to a request for comment. She has yet to enter a plea.
Federal rules known as trade practice regulations prohibit alcohol industry members from marketing practices that could “threaten the independence of a trade buyer or unfairly advantages that industry member over their competitors.” Laws to ensure a competitive alcohol market have been in place since the repeal of Prohibition — most notably, a three-tier system in which an alcohol product’s producer, distributor and retailer must all remain separate.
J. Go Events worked with an alcohol distributor that was identified in the charging documents as SGWS, prosecutors said. SGWS is presumed to be Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits, the largest alcohol wholesaler in the country and the target of a series of legal actions by the Federal Trade Commission, the Dept. of Justice and other government agencies over the last few years. Employees of the distributor directed Goebel to purchase the gift cards, trips and other items, according to the filing, then submit false invoices to them.
The complaint also identifies Matthew Adler and Bryan Barnes as employees of a wine producer who directed Goebel to order gift cards. Adler and Barnes — who pleaded guilty to a $360,000 bribery scheme this spring — are known to have worked at Deutsch Family Wine and Spirits, which produces or imports some of the most popular brands in the county, such as Josh Cellars and Yellow Tail. Between 2019 and 2021, Goebel mailed over $500,000 worth of gift cards to the producer’s California employees, according to prosecutors.
Some of the gift cards were intended for distributor employees as “creative incentives” for meeting sales goals, the complaint alleges, while others were sent to retail buyers.
After the falsified invoices were paid, according to prosecutors, Goebel would hold the proceeds in “banks” that employees of the supplier, distributor and retailers could use or direct her to spend on their behalf. J. Go Events created “an online portal for individuals to log in to view the balance of funds in their respective banks,” the complaint reads.
One person for whom Goebel booked travel using these “bank funds,” according to prosecutors, was Patrick Briones. In September, Briones was charged with commercial bribery and conspiracy to defraud the United States in a complaint that alleged he accepted as much as $10,000 per product to place it in his stores. Briones, a former buyer for the grocery chain Albertson’s, which also operates Von’s stores, pleaded guilty to the charges on Oct. 9.
The case against Goebel colors in some details that were missing in the charges against Briones, Adler and Barnes. Those complaints referred to a “third-party vendor” who arranged for bribes like a $6,750 Panerai watch, Bentley car rental and a $2,290 designer bag.
John Herzog, a contractor for an unnamed wine supplier, was also charged in September with bribing Briones and buyers from other retail chains with items like a $2,000 exercise bike. He pleaded guilty on Oct. 23.
(sfchronicle.com)
THE NEW CALIFORNIA LAW ON ‘ANTI SEMITISM’
Lawsuit Charges That California Law Illegally Muzzles Students and Teachers on Palestine
The new law conflates criticism of Zionism with antisemitism and punishes educators for teaching truthful information.
by Marjorie Cohn
Beginning January 1, 2026, teachers in California classrooms will be looking over their shoulders to avoid running afoul of a frightening new “antisemitism” law. On October 7, despite widespread opposition from civil rights groups, teachers’ unions, and education advocates, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 715, which amends the California Education Code to police what teachers can teach and what students can learn about Israel and Palestine.
“This problematic classroom censorship bill silences Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, Jewish, and other marginalized voices in California public schools by shielding a foreign government — Israel — from legitimate criticism and criminalizes honest discussions on Palestine and other global human rights issues,” the Council on American Islamic Relations said in a statement.
Under this law, educators could be charged with unlawful discrimination and disciplined “if they expose their students to ideas, information, and instructional materials that may be considered critical of the State of Israel and the philosophy of Zionism,” according to a lawsuit filed on November 2 by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, on behalf of California public school teachers and parents of students who teach and seek to learn about Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East. The defendants named in Prichett et al. v. Newsom et al. are Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
AB 715 Violates the First Amendment and Due Process
“Since California’s Education Code already prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, and national origin, the only plausible inference to be made is that the new law seeks to alter or expand the definition,” the lawsuit says.
Although ostensibly aimed at preventing antisemitism in the classroom, AB 715 nowhere defines “antisemitism.” It instructs school districts to follow Joe Biden’s U.S. National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism, which adopts the definition of antisemitism in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The IHRA lists several examples of attitudes and speech that it identifies as antisemitic, including:
- Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations.
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
- Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Both Biden’s National Strategy and the IHRA conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism. For example, they call it “antisemitic” to challenge Jewish people’s right to a majority state in an area inhabited by an equal number of Palestinians. They require “factually accurate” instruction but punish teachers professionally for making accurate statements — such as the fact that 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled in 1948 during the creation of Israel. This conundrum places teachers in an untenable position.
Biden’s 60-page National Strategy, which nowhere mentions “Palestine” or “Palestinians,” says:
”The U.S. Government, led by the Department of State, will continue to combat antisemitism abroad and in international fora — including efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel. As we confront antisemitism, we do so with profound respect for our democratic traditions, including free expression and speech protected by the First Amendment. We also do so with an unshakable commitment to the State of Israel’s right to exist, its legitimacy, and its security. In addition, we recognize and celebrate the deep historical, religious, cultural, and other ties many American Jews and other Americans have to Israel.
Nevertheless, ADC alleges, AB 715 violates the First Amendment rights of teachers by being overbroad and viewpoint-discriminatory because it suggests that criticism of Israel and Zionism constitutes antisemitic discrimination.
”Under this law, educators could be disciplined “if they expose their students to ideas, information, and instructional materials that may be considered critical of the State of Israel and the philosophy of Zionism.”
In addition, ADC asserts, the new law violates the First Amendment right of students to receive information in the classroom. They will be prevented from learning about different perspectives on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East.
“Our children’s rights are not negotiable. Compromised politicians in California do not have the right or authority to muzzle our children and strip away their First Amendment rights. AB 715 does exactly that, it rips up the First Amendment and hands classrooms to a foreign agenda,” ADC National Executive Director Abed Ayoub said in a statementannouncing the filing of the lawsuit. “By signing this bill into law, Gov. Newsom has made it clear — he has sided with foreign interests instead of students and parents.”
ADC’s lawsuit also contends that AB 715 is unconstitutionally vague in violation of the Due Process Clause because it doesn’t define the terms it purports to regulate, opening the door to arbitrary and uneven enforcement. Thus, teachers can’t know what they can or can’t say, so they will self-censor to avoid punishment.
“AB 715 requires teachers to provide students with only ‘factually accurate’ information,” the lawsuit says. “Since ‘factually accurate’ instruction, in their opinions and experiences, includes ideas and information that may be interpreted as critical of the State of Israel and the project of Zionism, teachers cannot simultaneously adhere to the factual accuracy requirement while refraining from providing information that falls under the Biden National Strategy’s understanding of what constitutes antisemitism.”
AB 715 empowers anyone to anonymously file a complaint claiming that classroom content and instructional materials are critical of Israel and are thus antisemitic. The new law provides for the appointment of an “Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator” to review the curriculum and threaten school districts with fines and teacher dismissals for refusing to discontinue the dissemination of material considered “factually inaccurate.”
The Plaintiffs
Andrea Prichett, a middle-school history teacher at a public school in Berkeley, has many Palestinian students. As part of a class project, they research and interview their parents about events that led to their migration from Palestine. This often entails discussion about settlement, colonization, and genocide. There have been two complaints against Prichett, including when a student mentioned Israel and Palestine as examples of modern-day colonialism. Prichett responded that Israeli settlements in Palestine are an example of colonialism. After a long investigation, the complaints were dismissed.
The new law violates the First Amendment right of students to receive information in the classroom.
The lawsuit notes that once AB 715 goes into effect, Prichett “will be reluctant to teach about Israel and Palestine. Palestinian citizens of Israel do not have equal rights as Jewish citizens, and Palestinians in the West Bank have almost no rights at all under Israeli occupation. The international consensus is that Israel is illegally occupying Palestine. That is factually accurate, but also could be deemed antisemitic under AB 715, as illustrated by her previous experiences fielding complaints for saying similar things.”
In light of what happened to her in the absence of AB 715, Prichett said that “I have almost no doubt that I would be a target under the new law.”
Jonah Olson, a Jewish non-Zionist middle-school science teacher at a public school in Adelanto, distinguishes between Zionism and Judaism. He believes that Zionism is a political ideology premised on the notion that Jews are superior to non-Jews, and that they have a right to be a majority in land that was inhabited primarily by Palestinians for hundreds of years, and to occupy Palestine in order to maintain that majority. His students work on science projects. One was designed to provide food in war-torn areas after the student saw photos of moldy food delivered to Palestinians in Gaza. Another student focused on distilling water after seeing images of a Palestinian woman in Gaza being forced to distill her own water due to lack of access to clean water. Once AB 715 is in effect, Olson says he will be afraid to allow discussion of food preservation and water distillation in Palestine because it could be considered antisemitic by pro-Israel individuals.
Dunia Hassan, a high-school Spanish teacher at a public school in Santa Clara, was born to a Spanish mother and a Palestinian father. Her father came to Spain after being driven out of Haifa, Palestine, in 1948, when Israeli forces occupied his village and destroyed its homes and agriculture. She grew up hearing stories of her father’s life in a refugee camp. After the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, her students began seeing horrific images of violence and destruction in Gaza and the West Bank, and “a significant pro-Israel bias infiltrated her school district,” the lawsuit notes. Hassan says that after AB 715 becomes effective, she would be hesitant to assign the “My Name, My Identity” presentation that she has assigned in the past.
Kauser Adenwala, a high-school civics and economics public school teacher in Santa Clara, is a Muslim woman who wears a hijab. In December 2023, after her students asked about Palestine, she assigned a project to raise awareness of modern human rights violations. In March 2024, someone filed a complaint against her alleging that she had shown images and text that were “horrifying” and amounted to religious and/or ethnic discrimination. One was a photo of the apartheid wall Israel had built in the West Bank to segregate Palestinians from Jewish settlers. The investigation found insufficient evidence of unlawful discrimination but concluded that she had violated a rule requiring the teaching of diverse perspectives on controversial current events.
Another complaint against Adenwala followed a unit in which she showed a short video of an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza. The survivor said she had been inspired by her Jewish ancestry. The complaint was not sustained. Adenwala says that she has been “left with a profound sense of disillusionment,” as AB 715 “deprives students of the chance to think critically by punishing teachers who simply attempt to address the complex questions their students bring forward.”
J.J. is a 16-year-old high school student in Granite Bay, and both of her parents are Palestinian, which is central to her identity. “As a Palestinian, she is aware that her mere existence is considered antisemitic or offensive to some, because it requires an acknowledgment that Palestinians lived in what is now Israel before creation of the modern state, and recognition that her ancestors were expelled against their will to create a Jewish majority state,” the lawsuit says. For her speech and debate class, J.J. discussed Palestine in extracurricular competitions and has had productive conversations with pro-Israel students. In J.J.’s words, AB 715 will discourage “meaningful discussions that are necessary to learn about different perspectives so that common ground can be reached.”
Linda Khoury-Umili, a plaintiff on behalf of her children Y.U. and L.U., who are attending and will attend a public elementary school, respectively, in San Mateo County, is a Palestinian-American woman. For Arab heritage month, she did a presentation in her daughter’s class where she wore traditional Palestinian attire, served traditional Palestinian food, and taught a traditional folk dance. “The students and teacher loved the presentation, and they all even ended up dancing at the end,” the lawsuit states. Khoury-Umili is worried about giving a similar presentation once AB 715 goes into effect. She is afraid “it could get her into trouble as Palestinians are frequently accused of being antisemitic or offensive simply for being, since their existence naturally calls into question the idea that Israel was established in a land without people,” the lawsuit says.
Alice Finen is a plaintiff on behalf of G.F., a tenth grader at a public school in Arcata. At her other daughter’s high school graduation, Finen and her daughter were part of a group that wore keffiyehs, a symbol of support for Palestinians. The police department received a report of disruption at the graduation. “The group had peacefully and lawfully exercised their right to show solidarity with the Palestinian people during a genocide,” according to the lawsuit. “G.F. would like to learn about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from not only the Israeli perspective, but the Palestinian one as well. He would like to give presentations along the lines of the one his sister gave last year.” But Finen fears that G.F. wouldn’t be able to give such a presentation because it could be considered critical of Israel and thus hostile to Jewish students, subjecting the teacher to discipline.
Request for Injunction and Declaratory Relief
ADC’s lawsuit asks the federal court to declare that the AB 715 amendments to the California Education Code violate the Teacher Plaintiffs’ rights to Due Process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because they are unconstitutionally vague.
It also seeks a declaration that the amendments violate the Teacher Plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendment as they are overbroad and viewpoint discriminatory.
Moreover, the lawsuit requests a declaration that the amendments violate the Student Plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendment because they are overbroad and viewpoint discriminatory.
Finally, it seeks an injunction preventing the defendants from enforcing the AB 715 amendments.
“AB 715’s intent and effect is classroom censorship. It — probably intentionally — does not define the conduct it targets, then points schools to federal guidance that blurs legitimate criticism of a foreign state with bigotry,” ADC National Legal Director Jenin Younes said in the statement. “That combination guarantees arbitrary punishment of educators, chills valuable classroom instruction and discussion, and deprives students of the vigorous debate the Constitution protects. We brought this case to keep classrooms free to teach the truth.”
(Truthout.org)
NANCY PELOSI WON’T SEEK REELECTION, ending her storied career in the US House
by Lisa Mascaro
WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi will not seek reelection to the U.S. House, bringing to a close her storied career as not only the first woman in the speaker’s office but arguably the most powerful in American politics.
Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco for nearly 40 years, announced her decision Thursday.
“I will not be seeking reelection to Congress,” Pelosi said in a video address to voters.
Pelosi, appearing upbeat and forward-looking as images of her decades of accomplishments filled the frames, said she would finish out her final year in office. And she left those who sent her to Congress with a call to action to carry on the legacy of agenda-setting both in the U.S. and around the world.
“My message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power,” she said. “We have made history. We have made progress. We have always led the way.”
Pelosi said, “And now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.”
The decision, while not fully unexpected, ricocheted across Washington, and California, as a seasoned generation of political leaders is stepping aside ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Some are leaving reluctantly, others with resolve, but many are facing challenges from newcomers eager to lead the Democratic Party and confront President Donald Trump.
Pelosi, 85, remains a political powerhouse and played a pivotal role with California’s redistricting effort, Prop 50, and the party’s comeback in this week’s election. She maintains a robust schedule of public events and party fundraising, and her announced departure touches off a succession battle back home and leaves open questions about who will fill her behind-the-scenes leadership role at the Capitol.
Former President Barack Obama said Pelosi will go down in history as “one of the best speakers the House of Representatives has ever had.”
An architect of the Affordable Care Act during Obama’s tenure, and a leader on the international stage, Pelosi came to Congress later in life, a mother of five mostly grown children, but also raised in a political family in Baltimore, where her father and brother both served in elected office.
Long criticized by Republicans, who have spent millions of dollars on campaign ads vilifying her as a coastal elite and more, Pelosi remained unrivaled. She routinely fended off calls to step aside by turning questions about her intentions into spirited rebuttals, asking if the same was being posed of her seasoned male colleagues on Capitol Hill.
In her video address, she noted that her first campaign slogan was “a voice that will be heard.”
And with that backing, she became a speaker “whose voice would certainly be heard,” she said.
But after Pelosi quietly helped orchestrate Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, she has decided to pass the torch, too.
Last year, she experienced a fall resulting in a hip fracture during a whirlwind congressional visit to allies in Europe, but even still it showcased her grit: It was revealed she was rushed to a military hospital for surgery — after the group photo, in which she’s seen smiling, poised on her trademark stiletto heels.
Pelosi’s decision also comes as her husband of more than six decades, Paul Pelosi, was gravely injured three years ago when an intruder demanding to know “Where is Nancy?” broke into the couple’s home and beat him over the head with a hammer. His recovery from the attack, days before the 2022 midterm elections, is ongoing.
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Pelosi faced a potential primary challenge in California. Newcomer Saikat Chakrabarti, who helped devise progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political rise in New York, has mounted a campaign, as has state Sen. Scott Wiener.
While Pelosi remains an unmatched force for the Democratic Party, having fundraised more than $1 billion over her career, her next steps are uncertain. First elected in 1987 after having worked in California state party politics, she has spent some four decades in public office.
Madam speaker takes the gavel
Pelosi’s legacy as House speaker comes not only because she was the first woman to have the job but also because of what she did with the gavel, seizing the enormous powers that come with the suite of offices overlooking the National Mall.
During her first tenure, from 2007 to 2011, she steered the House in passing landmark legislation into law — the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank financial reforms in the aftermath of the Great Recession and a repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy against LGBTQ service members.
With President Barack Obama in the White House and Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada leading the Senate, the 2009-10 session of Congress ended among the most productive since the Johnson era.
But a conservative Republican “tea party” revolt bounced Democrats from power, ushering in a new style of Republicans, who would pave the way for Trump to seize the White House in 2016.
Determined to win back control, Pelosi helped recruit and propel dozens of women to office in the 2018 midterm elections as Democrats running as the resistance to Trump’s first term.
On the campaign trail that year, Pelosi told The Associated Press that if House Democrats won, she would show the “power of the gavel.”
Pelosi returns to the speaker’s office as a check on Trump
Pelosi became the first speaker to regain the office in some 50 years, and her second term, from 2019 to 2023, became potentially more consequential than the first, particularly as the Democratic Party’s antidote to Trump.
Trump was impeached by the House — twice — first in 2019 for withholding U.S. aid to Ukraine as it faced a hostile Russia at its border and then in 2021 days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Senate acquitted him in both cases.
Pelosi stood up the Jan. 6 special committee to probe Trump’s role in sending his mob of supporters to the Capitol, when most Republicans refused to investigate, producing the 1,000-page report that became the first full accounting of what happened as the defeated president tried to stay in office.
After Democrats lost control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, Pelosi announced she would not seek another term as party leader.
Rather than retire, she charted a new course for leaders, taking on the emerita title that would become used by others, including Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California during his brief tenure after he was ousted by his colleagues from the speaker’s office in 2023.
(Associated Press)
WE REAL COOL
Who took your measurements
From your toes to the top of your head?
Who bought you clothes and new shoes
And wrote you a book you never read?
Yeah, you know
Who was it?
Yeah, you know we real cool
On the far side of the morning
Who was it?
Yeah, you know yeah we real cool
Now I hope you’re listening
Are you?
Who was it you called the good shepherd
Rounding up the kids for their meal?
Who chased your shadow
Running out behind?
Clinging to your high flying heels
Your high flying, high flying, high flying heels
Who was it?
Yeah, you know we real cool
On the far side of the morning
Who was it?
Yeah, you know we real cool
And I hope you’re listening
Are you?
Who measured the distance from the planets
Right down to your big blue spinning world?
In heartbeats and tears and nervous laughter
Spilling down all over you, girl
Who was it?
Yeah, you know we real cool
And the world keeps on turning
Who was it?
Yeah, you know we real cool
And I hope you’re listening
Are you?
Sirius is eight-point-six light years away
Arcturus is thirty seven
The past is the past
And it’s here to stay
Wikipedia is heaven
When you don’t want to remember no more
On the far side of the morning
Who was it?
Yeah, you know we real cool
I hope you hear me
And you’ll call
— Nick Cave (2013)
“HE NO LONGER DREAMED of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy."
— Ernest Hemingway, ‘The Old Man and the Sea’
LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT
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Down to $1.18: How Families Are Coping With SNAP Cuts
The U.S. Is Skipping This Year’s Climate Summit. For Many, That’s OK
Trump Officials Accused of Bullying Tactics to Kill a Climate Measure
Musk Wins $1 Trillion Pay Package, Creating Split Screen on Wealth in America
Egypt’s Grand Museum Is Finally Open. Now, ‘We Need Our Stuff Back’
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
You know how I know that Thatcher was wrong about socialism? Because inverse socialism via government capture is alive and well in the USA, and has been for decades to an increasing degree (case in point - our leaders wail about "fiscal responsibility" whenever it's time to spend money on, say, healthcare, infrastructure, education, or the environment, but when it comes to multi-trillion dollar giveaways to the rich, the answer is, "let's blow up the credit card!"). If the ultra wealthy have thrived so utterly by engineering systems to squeeze the poor, middle class, and government coffers, then surely it can work the other way too… with the teensy difference that there may be a beneficial difference in the public good.
MY GRANDFATHER is supposed to have died, alone, unknown, a stranger to his wife and his sons, in a furnished room on Charles Street. My own father spent two or three years in his late 70s alone at the farm in Hanover. The only heat was a fireplace; his only companion a halfwit who lived up the road. I lived as a young man in cold, ugly and forsaken places yearning for a house, a wife, the voices of my sons, and having all of this I find myself, when I am engorged with petulance, thinking that after all, after the Easter egg hunts and the merry singing at Christmas, after the loving and the surprises and the summer afternoons, after the laughter and the open fires, I will end up cold, alone, dishonored, forgotten by my children, an old man approaching death without a companion.
— John Cheever
TREES
by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
A comment on George Orwell’s quote: Of course he is right. But the flip side of the same coin is that a large part of the human population wants someone else to take responsibility for their lives in part or whole. Responsibility is power, and absolute power will be abused. The response from those abused is never, “What did I get myself into”? But “This is not what they promised to do for me.”
Supposed to be an example of home-spun humor, George? Or the wisdom of the wise? Got nooze for ya, old boy; It aint either. Now, run along and play.
Sponsors of AB 715:
Assemblymembers Dawn Addis, Rick Zbur, Mike Fong, Jesse Gabriel.
Senators Lina Gonzalez, Weber Pierson, Scott Weiner.
All Democrats.
Norm Thurston ~ You shared your son’s story with me years ago. My heart continues to break for you and your family. I include you in my daily prayers.
Re “Are Mendocino County’s Judges Trying to Axe the Fort Bragg Courthouse Once Again?”
by Frank Hartzell:
Fifty-five years ago, there were 10 functioning trial court locations in Mendocino County:
Hopland
Ukiah
Willits
Covelo
Laytonville-Leggett
Boonville
Fort Bragg
Mendocino
Elk
Pt. Arena
Today, there are 2:
Ukiah
Fort Bragg
Looks like soon, there’ll be only 1:
Ukiah
Even though it is a political decision, the decision whether to operate or close or reduce the services of any outlying trial court in Mendocino County is a decision that is now 100% solely up to the trial judges of Mendocino County to make.
It is almost never right or proper for a voter or anyone to lobby a judge out of court to make a particular decision, let alone a political decision,
This is one of those very rare times.
Jim Luther, Mendocino
Via legislative swindle where a majority of solons were and are lawyers, Mendocino County’s justice courts magically became superior courts, and hippies with law degrees ran down from the hills to occupy the ensuing sinecures. It was at that point the county’s judicial system began serving itself, and has ever since.
Regarding–“A Reader Writes: The Mendocino Method”
That’s quite a mean-spirited attempt at a take-down of retiring coast Judge Brennan. I don’t know what to think of it, I don’t have personal knowledge of the decisions he made in this court over the years (except for one a long time ago). I sense that someone–could it be a lawyer?– is intent on getting even here, using a bold, pseudo-humorous approach–“take a look, folks, at my smart, witty, writing style.” I’d bet a good deal of money a lawyer of some ego wrote it. Maybe the writer has facts at hand to make his case, but if so they are not presented. And maybe such facts don’t exist, or are contested, and it’s all mostly shiny bluster.
Whatever the case, the writer does not have the courage, or the common decency to state his name. That fact leaves me wondering what’s really up here.
I am curious. AVA folks: Do you know this writer’s identity? Is this information being withheld for some reason? Or was it an anonymous missive to the AVA? Something seems very off here.
Ahem, Chuck. We require ID’s for writers who prefer anonymity. Brennan was generally held in low regard professionally. and popularly. He made inexplicable decisions we covered extensively in the AVA. He was appointed to the Mendo bench via his mom, a connected Frisco judge.
Still, Bruce, to print a take-down–a particularly nasty one claiming that this judge’s entire twenty years on the bench were marked by unlawfulness and ineptitude–without attribution and without bothering to present any facts, just allegations… That’s a bit much. I remember responding years ago to one AVA piece concerning this judge that was written in a highly critical,nasty, tone. I wrote about a specific decision by Judge Brennan in a sentencing hearing I had happened to witness. That decision, explained at some length by the judge, was marked by firmness and compassion, a balance that seemed well-done in light of the circumstances. I understand the AVA’s general stance, critical of judges often, and no doubt sometimes warranted. This piece is shoddy journalism, sensational, smart-ass, low.
I’ll make my point again. Such a piece should be underpinned by attribution. Writer, make your allegations if you feel so strongly, but be a man and tell us who you are. And if the AVA stands so squarely behind this critic, insist on the same.
I missed the original comments yesterday, so I read the exchange this morning.
I have no knowledge of the judge’s career, either before or after his time on the bench, except what I read in the AVA over the years.
The anonymous writer is indeed thorough, and perhaps extreme, in his attack and my feeling is that it should not have been published without attribution.
I’ll look forward to that show of courage when he addresses Chuck’s posts.
This stance–unknown identity of writer who makes bold, generalized, nasty assessment of 20 year career! Leaves us readers guessing as to source. Is it the DA who was not pleased with this judge, the AVA writer who at times criticized this judge, some other lawyer who felt wronged by this judge…? Is that really the outcome the AVA seeks? We readers are left to wonder–Who are you protecting, and why?
“Chirp of coward shouted in crowd, dare to speak but not be known.” Toba Beta
Rodney Jones: I agree with some of your points, but I think your assumption that Trump would allow a peaceful secession of California is dead wrong. California (and the other west coast states), represent economic and defensive assets which would dramatically reduce America’s global and internal strength. Any secession would require a clear and viable plan on how the new nation would defend itself successfully against the U.S. military. It’s a lose-lose proposition.
An idea that would help the imbalance of representation in the Senate would be to keep the current number of senators at 50, with each state receiving between 1 and 4 senators, based on each one’s proportionate share of population. This would maintain stronger proportional representation for small states, but without the ability to pass measures that the vast majority of Americans disapprove of.
So glad to hear rep polosi is finally leaving at age 85, while she said at least 6 years ago she would not put herself back up for reelection!!
After spending most of my life, even as a child, as a politically involved democrat, i quit as a dem when they screwed Bernie and put Hillary up!!
I have no idea how the dems are going to fix their part of this screwed up mess, glad I am old n may die before all of this plays out!!
Time for all these corrupt n old politicians to get out and make room for younger people to take charge!!