Watching dethroned pageant queen Carrie Prejean throw a hissy fit on Larry King's show made me feel relieved she wasn't endorsing an issue important to me. Since I see her as an agent for arrogant intolerance: social, religious, intellectual, take your pick, those are not values I wish to embrace, I couldn't help but enjoy her juvenile antics on a national stage. In fact, I want to share this delightful segment with those of you who missed it. She is certainly royalty in her own imagination. I imagine another designation for her, but I will refrain from mentioning it. Are those of you who think she speaks for you sure you want her representing you?

There were not many people packed in to the Los Angeles "town hall" meeting who had heard of the foreign woman with the unfamiliar title who had come to listen to their tales of plight. But many took it as a good sign that she had worried the last American government enough for it to keep her out of the country. Deanne Weakly was among the first to the microphone. The 51-year-old estate agent told how a couple of years ago she was pulling in $80,000 (£48,000) a year from commissions selling homes in LA's booming property market. When the bottom fell out of the business with the foreclosure crisis, she lost her own house and ended up living on the streets in a city with more homeless than any other in America. She was sexually assaulted, harassed by the police and in despair. She turned to the city and California state governments for help. "No one wanted to listen. They blame you for being homeless in the first place," she said.

What did Mecke think of that bill’s being called SB 420? “There’s a lot of humor in politics. A little tongue-in-cheek goes a long way with some of these issues,” he said laughing. I asked him how many legislators understood the connotations of 420, and he suggested that it might make a good survey to take among legislative members-to get a sense of how "up to speed" they are on current culture.

Since the passing of Proposition 8, gay rights activists vow to continue their efforts in legalizing same sex marriages in California. Neither side is ready to sit still and rejoice or mourn the decision from the past ballot. Both feel this is just the beginning of the battle in California.

After years of effort on the part of Medical Marijuana advocates, California is now issuing state identification cards intended to help legitimate patients avoid unnecessary detainment and arrest. The state's new Medical Marijuana Program (MMP) is being administered by the California Department of Public Health.

A federal judge ruled last week that if anti-gay Prop 8 lawyers delay discovery — a process that could reveal secret communications between Prop 8 operatives and the Mormon Church during last year’s ballot campaign — he may agree to a preliminary injunction that could allow gay marriage to resume in the California at least until appeals of the injunction are resolved.

Hard times are causing more homeowners to fall behind on their property taxes. But in thousands of cases, they are not responsible to their local governments, but to private companies that charge double-digit interest and thousands of dollars in service fees. This is because in recent years struggling cities and counties have sold their delinquent tax bills to the highest bidder. It seemed a painless way to turn old debts into cash to finance schools or public services. But housing advocates say the private companies may be exacerbating the foreclosure crisis, pushing out homeowners faster than would governments, which are increasingly concerned about neighborhoods becoming wastelands of abandoned properties.

President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation. In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to "true" health-care reform. Note: Here's a CLG comment that fits quite nicely with this story: B*** me, Obusha. Who do you think gave you $750 million so that you could get elected and implement 'change?' That's right - mainly the *left* side of your base, that is already sick and more than tired of your sycophantic acts of conciliation and out-and-out lies. --LRP

Assemblymember Nancy Skinner on Prop 8 ruling

Budget Committee chair Noreen Evans on Prop 8

This week, famously, the California Supreme Court issued its decision, Strauss v. Horton, upholding Proposition 8, the voter-adopted prohibition against same-sex marriages. Within twenty-four hours, former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson and celebrated trial attorney David Boies had together filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn this controversial provision of the California Constitution. Olson and Boies are best known for their roles in Bush v. Gore. In their challenge to Proposition 8, Olson, the conservative, and Boies, the progressive, represent two California couples who are precluded from marrying in light of Proposition 8's changes to California law.

Full text of Senator Christine Kehoe's statement to the press following the California Supreme Court's decision to uphold Proposition 8.

I know, we're supposed to be this unswerving bastion of progressive liberalthink, the frothing epicenter of just about every wild/weird/wonderful sociocultural movement and civil right in America. After all, we're the birthplace of hippie culture and gay culture and New Age culture and roughly 10,000 other progressive beliefs and revolutions and soul-fellatings you can name and many you can't, because they have yet to be concocted in one of our genius inventor/scientist/poet's feverish peyote dreams. I know. In other words, we're supposed to know better. We're supposed to get it right, particularly about something as obvious and relatively, uh, straightforward as gay marriage, exactly the kind of issue about which the world expects California not merely to have our godless, revolutionary sh-t together, but to know how to follow through. After all, in terms of blue-state, damn-the-fundamentalists street cred, we gotta represent. This is why the truth is so very difficult to admit: we failed. Choked. Dropped the ball. Botched it completely. Gay marriage, that is. Prop 8. The whole gay rights shebang. What a shame. And how utterly embarrassing.

Ammiano speech after Prop 8 court ruling

What follows is the complete text of LGBT legislative caucus leader Mark Leno's statement following the California Supreme Court's ruling that upheld Prop 8's ban on same-sex marriage in California (Tuesday, March 26, 2009)

Legislators at the state capitol Tuesday gathered to denounce the state Supreme Court's rulong that upholds the ban on sam-sex marriage in the California.

Gay marriage is a foregone conclusion. It's a done deal. It's just a matter of time. For the next generation in particular, equal rights for gays is not even a question or a serious issue, much less a sinful hysterical conundrum that can only be answered by terrified Mormons and confused old people and inane referendums funded by same. It's just obvious, inevitable, a given. Let us hereby be reminded, before sadness and frustration overwhelm once more: Proposition 8 and its ilk are merely the last, fitful gasps of a long-dying ideology, markers of a certain kind of sad, conservative desperation. They are the final clawings and scrapings of a reactionary worldview that attempts to outlaw and punish all it cannot, will not understand. Same as it ever was, really.

San Francisco police arrested about 175 protesters who were part of a group that blocked a major intersection for hours today in response to the state Supreme Court's ruling upholding Proposition 8, the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. Hundreds of people filled the intersection of Grove Street and Van Ness Avenue late this morning after word spread of the ruling. The court also ruled that roughly 18,000 existing same-sex marriages in California remain valid. Around 12:45 p.m., officers were seen placing plastic handcuffs on protesters and leading them to police vans waiting nearby. With each new arrest, the crowd cheered.

"The California Supreme Court upheld a ban on same-sex marriage today, ratifying a decision made by voters last year that runs counter to a growing trend of states allowing the practice. The decision, however, preserves the 18,000 marriages performed between the court’s decision last May that same-sex marriage was lawful and the passage by voters in November of Proposition 8, which banned it. Supporters of the proposition argued that the marriages should no longer be recognized."

Howard Ahmanson, the heir to one of Southern California’s great family fortunes and a major contributor to right-wing extremist causes, including most recently donating $1 million to Proposition 8, has shocked the political establish by abandoning the Republican Party and now says he’s a Democrat. He says he left the GOP because of its stubborn refusal to raise taxes in the face of mounting deficits.