As you are no doubt aware, starting on Monday, a Federal Court in San Francisco will review the California Supreme Court decision to uphold the infamous Proposition 8.

This trial will be one of the most important civil rights cases in a generation, in which Bush/Gore 2000 adversaries David Boies and Ted Olson team up to defeat California’s Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriages. We don’t want to miss it.

Firedoglake wants to bring Scooter-Libby-trial style reporting to San Francisco’s Federal Courthouse.  We have a California team — David Dayen arrives from Los Angeles this weekend and I’ll provide commentary and video interviews — and will welcome Libby liveblogger Marcy Wheeler later in the week.

But we need your help to do it.

We want to bring some interpid Firedoglake bloggers and reporters to cover the Prop 8 trial, but we need your help to make it happen. Can you help us reach our goal of 3,000 people donating $1 a day or more to help us cover the Prop 8 trial?

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FDL has grown a lot since we covered the Scooter Libby trial in 2006, and we now have an incredible group of full time writers and reporters like Jon Walker and David Dayen, in addition to our superb editing and tech crew. But that means the cost of publishing the blog on a daily basis has also increased dramatically.

If 3,000 people donate just $1 a day, it allows us to pay our staff and our regular expenses and continue to produce independent journalism that is free from the limitations imposed by corporate, foundation or big donor funding.

Perry vs Schwarzenegger will set an important precedent in civil rights cases of this kind, and represents an opportunity to continue the same kind of unbridled, independent journalism that you can’t get from the mainstream media.

The trial starts on Monday. Can you donate $1 a day to help us bring David Dayen and Marcy Wheeler to cover this historic trial?

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This just in from Total Buzz:

A win for Registrar of Voters today…just got back from court, where Judge Michael Brenner denied a motion from Team Trung to see 178,385 documents from the First District election.

Brenner said it appeared that the subpoenas covered “everything having to do with this election,” that the suit sought “another recount,” and he didn’t want to start over. “I have difficulty with the idea that that would be appropriate,” he said. Brenner sided with Deputy County Counsel Leon Page’s argument that Team Trung had already seen those documents twice — during the recount and during ballot challenge periods.

Today’s action is also, of course, a win for Janet Nguyen’s team, as the decision certainly limits what Team Trung can do during the trial.

So at least, the judge is not buying into Team Trung’s flimsy case…
Let’s just hope that this just hastens the end of this increasingly ridiculously long special election.