California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Arnold & George: a visual history, California Progress Report, putting one’s money where one’s mouth is, a day of canvassing, the benefits of vagueness, lots of Doolittle and Pombo, and a bit of immigration.

This ‘n’ That

• The California Progress Report continues to be a great outlet for content from progressive groups in California. Here’s an article on TV competition. And two different pieces from the CNA on Clean Money: One, Two. And last, a piece on the California Compassionate Choices Act — who do you want making your decisions: you and people you love, or some religious extremists you’ve never met?
• Tom Hilton has some questions for anti-choice “moderate” Monika Rodman. I like this approach — make people deal with the legitimate consequences of their stated beliefs.
• Kaloogian supporters in CA-50 either “canvassed churchgoers” or “stuffed flyers under windshield wipers” in church parking lots on Sunday, says the discussion at SD Politics. I thought Sunday was a day of rest for the faithful, not a day of politicking. Must have been some other Bible I read.

Goobernatorial Race

• EmilyD of Daily Kos found a whole buncha pictures of Governor Schwarzenegger and President Bush together. No, Arnold’s not a Bush Republican. Pay no attention to these photos or his campaign team.
• Alliance for a Better California notes Arnold’s new ad, and says it ain’t surprising he’s running on his environmental record. It’s not bad (not awesome, either), and that’s about the only policy area where that’s true for the Governor.
• Bill Bradley ruminates on the Angelides and Westly ad strategies. And, he does some math resulting in an opinion that Angelides will have to raise taxes to do the things he wants to do. Westly, by comparison, simply hasn’t disclosed how he thinks he’ll pay for what he wants to do, so he dodges that bullet for now.

Doolittle, Do Less

• Dump Doolittle suggests that we should judge John Doolittle by the company he keeps. And, of course, he keeps company with his wife.
• Both Nite Swimming and Dump Doolittle report that John Doolittle posts at redstate.org (home of racist plagiarist Ben Domenech, among others). Doolitlle doesn’t, ah, acquit himself as admirably as one might hope.
• Last, Nite Swimming has a roundup of recent bad news for Doolittle.

Tell Me Pombo, Pombo, Pombo

• Say No To Pombo has an email interview with the three Democratic candidates for CA-11, asking them questions about the recent bankruptcy bill. Full o’ substance, and we like it.
• Richard Pombo, ever on the lookout for a handout, is “sponsoring” Medicare Part D seminars using industry front groups to explain the program. Of course, if the program weren’t such a train wreck, designed to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry, one wouldn’t need industry front groups to explain it. The thing would just work.
• Progressive 11th suggests that Richard Pombo should call the waaaahmbulance and stop blaming other people for reacting entirely appropriately to his badness.
• Pombowatch thinks that you can place a lot of the blame for the salmon closure squarely on Richard Pombo’s enviro-hating shoulders — he ignored the structural problems on the Klamath, and chose to externalize the effects to fishermen while he helped the farmers in his district. Oh, and then he blamed the Endangered Species Act.
• Defenders of Wildlife Action have a series of events, the first on April 15, 10.30 am, San Ramon Public Library for leafletting. Progressive 11th has a listing of other CA-11 events as well.

• ABC thinks about what I do of Schwarzenegger’s immigration op-ed — not much, because it says not much.
• Marc Cooper wants to blame the Senate Democrats for the failure of the half-baked compromise bill on immigration. D-Day explains why that’s ridiculous, even citing Orrin Hatch. Marc Cooper still blames the Democrats, and spins some implausible scenarios in which the immigration bill comes out of committee and doesn’t get completely perverted by floor amendments and conference committee. I kinda wonder if he’s been watching the way that Congress actually works under the Republicans.
• Cooper asks a good question here, though: “Where is the backlash?“
• The Citizens point out media bias in photo selection and cropping. Nifty.
• janinsanfran has photos from today’s immigration press event.

The SacBee just released a story saying that the governor has been put on notice about pending flooding in Northern California:

A state water official told Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday that “one of the top-five weather seasons on record” has put California on the precipice of a flood disaster.

“All of our reservoirs are full, and we are not able to contain all the water,” Les Harder, deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources, told the governor during a briefing at the department’s Flood Operations Center. “So the river system, and the levee system, is being taxed beyond its designed capacity.” (Sac Bee 4/10/06)

The Governor also put seven counties on a state of emergency.  I think now is a time to push both federal funding and state funding for levee repairs.  Look, we couldn’t pass an infrastructre bond package because the parties can’t work together.  Fine.  But the least we should be able to do is agree on the fact that the state of the levees is untenable.  At this point, it is only a matter of time until we have a major disaster.

Of course, even additional funding for the levees doesn’t answer the long-term problem.  We need to reconsider how we build in flood-prone areas.  The Delta region may just not be able to support a massive spread-out population.  Developers keep pushing growth on vulnerable areas and the state never stops to consider where we are going to divert all the water in case of a major flood.  So, where does all that water go now that the reservoirs are full?  Beats the hell out of me.

The time to answer these questions is now.

Todays California News Roundup is on the flip. Blog Roundup should come later today. Teasers: immigration, more on Westly payola (?), some oppo research on Angelides masquerading as news, CA-50, SacBee thrashing John Doolittle, global warming, salmon, rural roads.

UPDATE: Somehow I forgot the story concerning voter registration fraud by Republican-hired contractors.

• We lead today with immigration. First, Governor Schwarzenegger has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Editorial Pages (the nation’s most expensive platform for wingnuttery) in which he burnishes his compassionate conservative credentials on the immigration issue, without actually saying very much beyond “gastarbeiters good, I’m compassionate”. But one should check out Tom McClintock, Schwarzenegger’s running mate, to see what the Republicans are really about.
• The Mercury News profiles some of the undesirable illegals who the Republican Party wants to deport (or exploit, as long as they’re entirely outside of the law). And, the CC Times reports on Sunday’s march in San Diego.
• In the Democratic Primary, there’s a lot of news recently. First, a little follow-up on the question of whether Westly did anything wrong by recommending Healthpoint to CalPERS after taking money Healthpoint raised. In what looks like a piece of oppo research fed to the SacBee by the Westly campaign, it’s noted that in 1994, Angelides sold his minority share of a failing bank before he began his run for treasurer. The story is full of innuendo, but doesn’t seem to amount to much.
• Color me surprised — Daniel Weintraub doesn’t attack Phil Angelides for talking about fulling funding California schools. Dan Walters puts together a pedestrian response to the Angelides-Westly rhetoric ratchet that I won’t bother linking to, but he has an interesting piece on vocational education. If one can ignore the undercurrent of sneering at the “elite”, it’s not a bad read.
• CQ Politics (Is it a blog, is it news? I don’t know.) has a rundown on the mudslinging in CA-50. The one comment is particularly entertaining (maybe comments are a sufficient precondition for blogginess?) Also, the LAT notes that there is a special election in SD-35 on Tuesday as well.
• The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board explains in great detail exactly why John Doolittle’s arrangment skimming off contributions through his wife is so very troublesome. Their news page does a rundown on the rest of the candidates in CA-4.
• The Union-Tribune explains the current set of players, rationales, and proposals concerning California’s current thinking on global warming. Schwarzenegger, of course, wants to do less, not more. In related news, there’s still a shortage of raw materials for solar panels.
• 75 fish per boat per week. That’s the restriction on the California Salmon fishery this year. I’ve worked in the salmon fishing industry — on shore — and have a hard time imagining how few fish that is. When I worked, we pulled brailers full of fish off of the fleet from 6 at night until we were done, sometimes 3 or 4 the next afternoon.
• Last, I just thought this piece on the condition of rural roads was interesting. Turns out people who live in the sticks have pretty much the same needs as the rest of us.