Month: June 2011

From the National Alliance on Mental Illness

The tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of six innocent citizens in Arizona focused national attention on the state of the public mental health system in Arizona and other states. Many asked how a tragedy like this could happen again, with chilling references to Virginia Tech. How did Jared Loughner fall through the cracks when the signs of a serious psychiatric crisis seemed so clear?

We have an initial report of a strange, and potentially ugly incident that occurred on Brighton Avenue yesterday Sunday in…

A report by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and Wisconsin Public Radio described an episode in which three unnamed sources said that Justice David T. Prosser had grabbed another justice, Ann Walsh Bradley, around the neck during an argument in her chambers this month. This alleged assault occurred just before the justices released their ruling on the anti-union resolution passed by the GOP-controlled Wisconsin legislature.

At last weekend’s Netroots Nation gathering in Minneapolis, liberal activists expressed frustration that they lacked the political power or media focus given to the conservative tea-party movement. Former White House environmental official Van Jones is hoping to change that with a new political effort dubbed “The American Dream Movement.”

As the Union-Tribune noted in its article on San Diego Noir: “When it comes to the literary genre known as noir—that dark terrain of desire and desperation, of passion and paranoia—certain cities come immediately to mind. Los Angeles. San Francisco. New York. Not San Diego.” Well, not exactly.

While San Diego does not have as rich a literary and/or filmic history as Los Angeles, it too has some noir in its past. In the 1890s, Thomas and Anna Fitch saw Coronado as a suitable location for testing a doomsday weapon in Better Days: Or, the Millionaire of To-morrow. Then famously, in 1932, Edmund Wilson labeled San Diego the “The Jumping-Off Place” as a result of its nation-leading suicide rate….

Editor: New boundaries for the County Board of Supervisors’ districts are being drawn. Most of the new plans would have Ocean Beach and most of the beaches shift to Ron Robert’s district – areas currently in Greg Cox’s district.

By Christopher Cadelago / SignOnSanDiego

Proposals to redraw the county’s political boundaries — a process that has long been fraught with power plays and legal challenges — would require supervisors to represent unfamiliar areas.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday refused to let California clamp down on the sale or rental of violent video games to children, saying governments lack authority to “restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed” despite complaints that the popular and fast-changing technology allows the young to simulate acts of brutality.

By Helen Villines / June 27, 2011

“Why run for a political office, when you don’t even intend to vote for yourself,” Rocky Neptun asked a recent gathering of the San Diego Renters Union. In announcing his withdrawal from the race for mayor of San Diego next year, he told the tenant group that “we have the first opportunity in many decades to elect a progressive candidate in Congressman Bob Filner, who will take back our city from the special interests and their wealth based politics.”

I have six kids I’m proud to call my own and this past Father’s Day, my 54th as a dad, I spent a few moments just thinking about them when I was alone.

Our journey as father and offspring began when I was but 18. My own life, in the scheme of things, seemed to have just begun as I welcomed Debbie, my very first one, into the world. What a darling little girl. She took that frightened teenager who was me and, ever so innately, and ever so gently, guided me with a demeanor of “Hey, I don’t know what I’m doing either – so let’s just go with whatever feels right.”

In response to a deadly Border Patrol shooting by this week in the Tijuana River Valley, Mexico’s president confronted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the incident, and later demanded punishment for whomever was responsible.

San Diego’s controversial restrictions on medical marijuana cooperatives could be reversed next week.

The San Diego County Registrar is expected to certify over 31,000 signatures collected by medical marijuana supporters that oppose the ordinance. That would force the city council to make a decision; end the ordinance and start over, or put it to the voters.

Plagued by ethical breaches and links to groups calling for armed insurrection against the U.S. government, Clarence Thomas must resign his seat on the Supreme Court.

Time was when, at any right-wing gathering, chances were that you’d hear the justices of the Supreme Court derided as black-robed usurpers of democracy. Today, not so much. Ever since the seating of the Roberts court, the right has been pretty happy with high court’s decisions, especially the outcome of Citizens United v. FEC, the case through which the court, in a decision handed down last year, opened the floodgates of corporate money into the electoral system.