Ruth Bader Ginsburg's connection to the Hallinan saga is indirect and faint, but the AVA is a newspaper, above all, and the Supreme Court is now Action Central as Antonin Scalia's protege ascends; so here's some relevant…
Posts published in “Essays”
Brown Act violations: After observing the Lake County Board of Supervisors for only a few months (early 2001), it became blatantly obvious that the creation of the agenda and the manner of presenting “proposals” by…
Fall color is showing itself on the steep hills rising up from Lake Cayuga, which stretches north from the city of Ithaca in the middle of New York State. The Ice Age glaciers carved the…
“Just pick any political meeting you wish, go to it, and write a short report,” ordered our high school “social studies” teacher, way back in the 1970s. This was in Orange County, California, named “America's…
In May, 1999, two men who ran CHAMP, a cannabis dispensary in San Francisco's Castro district —Ken Hayes, then 33, and Mike Foley, 34— were arrested in Petaluma, along with Hayes's pregnant girlfriend, Cheryl Sequoia.…
To historians maps are a time trap—just ask the folks at the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino. A map inspection can turn from a quick glance to an hour or more, often with the assistance…
A number of the propositions on this ballot are there because the legislature doesn’t legislate the tough issues, especially those likely to offend their funders. Most props are easy to figure out simply by looking…
