OC Blog

Announcing Red County 2.0

We here in the Red County salt mines have been quietly toiling away at creating a newer, bigger, better version of the Red County media empire.  Starting today, Red County/OC Blog has moved here.

The new website has a home page, home pages for each sub-blog, a blog portal page that will aggregate content from all of our sub-blogs, and pages related to the magazine. It will bring the various Red County blogs together under one roof, where readers can follow them all in a single feed or just their favorite, local blog. In the coming days, we will be rolling in all of our local blogs and adding new communities as well -- but at the moment it house just OC Blog.

This new version will also enable us to expand the type of content we can offer. And to simplify your search for news beyond our Red County blog coverage areas, we've included several national news feeds.

And that's for starters. We'll be adding more exciting new features during the next few weeks.

PLEASE ADJUST YOUR BOOKMARKS AND HOME PAGES TO THE RED COUNTY WEB ADDRESS (www.redcounty.com).

We apologize in advance for any bugs readers encounter as we roll out the new site...and please give us your feedback.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO OCBLOG.NET?
OC Blog (www.ocblog.net) will continue to be a live site. However, from this point forward the publishing of new posts will be suspended and advertising and functionality will be removed. The new site will contain every post and comment from January 1, 2007 onward, and OC Blog will serve as a searchable Orange County political archive.

Also, we're closing the comments to the 2007 archived posts here on OC Blog. All the 2007 posts are over at RedCounty.com, and we encourage readers to continue their conversation over there, rather than here.

Coincidentally, we just past the 6,000 posts mark. Since OC Blog was born on June 17, 2004, we've had 6,007 posts and 43,178 comments since November 2004 (when TypePad began tracking it).

I had no inkling OC Blog would wind up where it is when I launched it three-and-a-half years, and I'm excited about the changes we've made and features we've added to make Red County bigger and better.

I sincerely appreciate the support, the enthusiasm, and the editorial contributions so many of you have  made over the years that has made this next step possible. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Regards,

Matt Cunningham
Online Editor, Red County

Three Santa Ana Commissioners Resign In Wake Of Gordon's Defenestration

In the wake of the Santa Ana Council's saturnine defenestration of EPIC Commissioner and blogger Thomas Gordon, three more city commissioners -- all former or current members of the Orange Juice blogpen -- have resigned there positions.

Art Pedroza, Ryan Trabuco and Luis Rodriguez have all resigned -- Art and Ryan in protest, Luis partly so  but mainly due to time considerations.

The OC Register has more here.

I sympathize with the message they're trying to send to this banana republic council, but my advice would have been to stay and fight it out. If the council wants them gone, make them pull the trigger themselves.

Save Thomas Gordon

Orange Juice reports the Santa Ana Council will vote today on whether to remove OJ blogger Thomas Gordon from its anti-gang commission, known as the Early Prevention and Intervention Commission (EPIC).

Obviously, appointed commissioners serve at the pleasure of the elected council, and I believe an the appointing councilmember should have the prerogative of dismissing "their" commissioners. Thomas is the EPIC Commissioner for Ward 6, which is represented by Councilman Sal Tinajero.

That said, this is stupid on so many levels.

New Blog: Mission Viejo Dispatch

A press release just came over the transom from O-Juicer Larry Gilbert announcing a new blog -- or rather, a revive one -- "Mission Viejo Dispatch."

The proprietor is Brad Morton, who I believe ran for MV City Council a couple of election cycles ago.It's a nice looking blog.

Welcome back to the OC blogosphere!

OC Register.com Needs To Fix The Basics

As a blogger, it's interesting to watch the ongoing blogification of the OC Register. The online versions of the news stories increasingly resemble blog posts. Indeed, the individual story links more and more frequently are to posts on OCR blogs. The folks at the Reg now recognize the importance of commenters: the number of comments is prominently displayed underneath the headlines on the website.

The OCR ran a story today calling attention to this continuing transformation, saying "We've upgraded OCRegister.com" by enabling readers to publish blogs, news and photos on their website.

That's a shrewd step in the right direction.

But while they're in the upgrading mood, perhaps they can also-re-focus on some basics such as making sure one can find stories on the website.

TheLiberalOC: U.S. = Nazi Germany

My liberal Irvine neighbor Dan Chmielewski has this over the top post on TheLiberalOC conflating America with Nazi Germany, et al.
(See: http://www.theliberaloc.com/2007/09/20/the-14-points-of-facism-remind-you-of-anyone/#comment-11124) 

Geez, and our friends on the left wonder why so many of us view them as kooky, angry, America-haters…

I’m reminded of a comment by Dennis Prager.  Prager said that liberals claim that they criticize America because they love America.  He then remarked that that would not work so well with one’s spouse, “Honey, I criticize you because I love you...”  Eventually, Prager noted, constant criticism turns into something very much other than love.

Demographics is Destiny: Score GOP 2.57 to Dems 1.71

Demographics is Destiny – a View from the Legislature

We’re on a half-hour break from our non-stop voting right now and my thoughts drifted back to this August 20 OCBlog post “Religion, Demographics and Red & Blue America” http://www.ocblog.net/ocblog/2007/08/religion-demogr.html. 

The piece was a rehash of well-known data showing that socially conservative people tend to have more children and that because children typically follow the beliefs of their parents this has important long term implications for politics. 

The post elicited some vigorous comments from the blogosphere.  Joining the fray, I wrote, in part, “All this makes one wonder at the linkage with liberal secularist support for restricting growth through various measures (typically the environment these days) vs. conservative support for economic growth…”

Ever since that post, I wondered what a demographic snapshot of the 120 members of the Legislature would reveal.  My statistics studies tell me that 120 is a large enough sample size to draw some conclusions.  Well, I’ve crunched the numbers and here they are:

A Court Victory For Bloggers...Here In OC

Bloggers won a court victory here in Orange County on August 24, when OC Superior Court Judge ruled in favor of Mr. Christopher Lotts, a blogger who works in the Santa Ana office of the state Department of Labor Standards Enforcement.

You can read my June 24 post for a more complete backstory, but I'll cover it quickly here:

Lotts runs a blog called No Labor Standards, in which he exposes what he sees as waste and incompetence in the DLSE. Department management had been hounding Lotts for months, in hopes of shutting down his blog. Specifically, they wanted him to reveal who were his sources and to turn over his private journals.

Lotts hired Garden Grove Councilman Mark Rosen and sought a writ of mandate telling the DLSE to back off trying to get Lotts to couhg up his sources and journals. I had the opportunity to testify as an expert witness on blogging when the trial began back in late June.

On August 24, Judge Sheila Fell handed down her ruling, which I excerpt here:

The Defendant [the DLSE] did everything correctly to investigate the alleged wrongdoing in the operation of the Department EXCEPT questioning Plaintiff about his sources. Under the First Amendment and case law the sources of a blogger are protected as they are to any other journalist.

Plaintiff's reporting of wrongdoing within the Department were, and are, matters of public interest. His reporting of personal items regarding co-workers, if untrue, is actionable on an individual basis by the offended party.

Let a Peremptory Writ of Mandate issue directing Defendants not to proceed further with the interrogation to the extent it seeks protected material. The Court further grants Plaintiff's request for a permanent injunction enjoining Defendants from demanding to view Plaintiff's journals or disclose Plaintiff's sources.

I'll post Judge Fell's full decision at the end of this post.

So there you have it. A legal victory for bloggers right here behind the Orange Curtain. Our sources are still  safe. Christopher Lotts continues to excoriate his superiors in his scorchingly caustic way, protected by the 1st Amendment. I got to be cross-examined by e DLSE attorney intent on convincing the judge I had no particular expertise on blogging.

A good day for democracy.

Here's Judge Fell's decision:

Jon Fleischman Profiled In Mercury News

Orange County's own Jon Fleischman is the subject of a front-page profile in the San Jose Mercury News, focusing on his efforts to back-stop the resolve of the Senate GOP Caucus' stand for a balanced budget against the forces of government-as-usual.

Jon and the FlashReport were similarly profiled in the Contra Costa Times last week. Jon catches a lot of flack from the Left for his efforts on this and other fronts, so he must be having an impact.

Did we drive up a wrong way Street?

The last thing that I am want to do is to pass judgement on someone based solely on what is reported in the media.  I have seen first hand how they can and do get basic facts wrong a lot of the time.  That said, it seems to be rather accepted at this point that our elected County Treasurer, Chriss Street, made a decision to "modernize" his offices, complete with ceiling to floor glass walls, setting up a professional "trading floor" as if his offices were located on Wall Street, and the ergonomically correct designer seats around the office each apparently cost the better part of a grand.  So, I guess we get to offer up the Red County/OC Blog challenge to our Treasurer...  Send us your explanation of what you did to your office and why, in the first person, and we will publish it verbatim right here.  You will be able to take your message straight to readers without any spin, editing or interpretation by go-betweens.

I know that all of the readers here would be very interested in hearing what you have to say, especially the five Supervisors (whom I am told frequent this site regularly), who have to decide whether to give you more "adult supervision" as a department head.

Hopefully you take us up on our offer to explain the seemingly lavish remodel.  I want to understand this because it goes to good judgment, something I expect a great deal of from someone who is managing such a massive investment portfolio.

I'm sure that Supervisor John Moorlach and former OC GOP Chairman Tom Fuentes are all ears -- I know both have pulled the laboring oar on your behalf.