Links:

• The new Assembly Republican Leader Sam Blakeslee is respected in the chamber. He is an interesting man with some interesting opinions. One that might intrigue our readers is his support of a constitutional convention.

• Brian McGowan takes on the myth that California businesses are fleeing the state.  It won’t work, of course, and McGowan, a Deputy Secretary for the Governor, sounds a bit like a California tourism ad, but there you are.

• The UC Regents voted to approve a tuition increase. Among the four dissenting votes was LG John Garamendi.

• A new report blames the Coast Guard, the captain, and the bar pilot for the Cosco Busan oil spill.

• We have two lawmakers at the highest levels of rewriting US energy policy, and while I generally believe in them, both appear to be faltering.  Barbara Boxer is teaming up with James Inhofe to foreground highway funding in the transportation bill instead of carving out more space for transit, and Henry Waxman has offered free permits to polluters as a means to save his wide-ranging climate and energy bill.  We have to make sure they get pressure on this from the left as well as the right.

• The recall petitions for Anthony Adams are on the streets.