Sanchez: Get it together girls!

​[UPDATE at 5 p.m.: After her morning TV appearance, Congresswoman Sanchez appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews in the afternoon and reiterated her stance that "it's really sad" that Komen for the Cure has decided for political reasons to attack "a very important" medical resource for countless women, Planned Parenthood.

[ORIGINAL POST at 12:30 p.m.:] After praising the "good" work of the Susan B. Komen for the Cure organization, Rep. Loretta Sanchez told a national television audience this morning that she believes conservative, anti-abortion forces in the group have unnecessarily caused a rift with Planned Parenthood.

"It's a shame to see this [relationship] break apart," Sanchez, an Anaheim Democrat, told MSNBC. "[But] it's driven by politics."
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​When one author praises another on a book jacket, and the second author then does the same on the first author's tome, that's logrolling. It's a practice that's also common among academics and movie critics. In politics, logrolling happens when political favors are exchanged, even among members of different parties. The Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) got into the logrolling game this week when it applauded the $260 billion federal transportation reauthorization bill and, especially, language included that could speed up road construction, including another agency's 241 Foothill-South toll road expansion.
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​Barack Obama will tread where Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have already been this presidential election season: Corona del Mar.

You read that right: this month our Democratic Prez Dog is venturing deep into Newport Beach, which for decades and decades has served as an ATM machine for Republican office seekers, many of whom have located their district offices there to cut the drive time.
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Detective Spitzer

​It turns out that even though he's no longer an assistant district attorney, Todd Spitzer still has insatiable prosecutorial instincts, and his current suspect is none other than an old, bitter nemesis from the Orange County district attorney's office: Susan Kang Schroeder.

In an 18-page complaint (including attachments) filed just before lunch today, Spitzer told District Attorney Tony Rackauckas that Schroeder, his media-relations director and chief of staff, improperly "used government resources to orchestrate a campaign" against him in his current race for Orange County supervisor.

The affair, which I'll tentatively call Titlegate though Schroeder labels it "character assassination," began with a Jan. 20 Spitzer campaign staff flub: an email press release for a Third District election forum describing its candidate as "Assistant District Attorney, former Orange County Supervisor [and] small-business owner."
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​UPDATE, JAN. 30, 3:54 P.M.: Orange County Superior Court Judge William Monroe today denied former public administrator John Williams' request for a temporary restraining order aimed at getting him back into his county office.

In other words, the locks that were changed after Williams left his office last week remain.
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OC Weekly

Uncle Slammed: Drunk with power

​Any reasonable person who saw Dana Rohrabacher's Jan. 27 performance on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher appreciated that the right-wing Orange County Republican congressman set a new low for political discourse.

Hilariously acting as if he's a seasoned, elder statesman, Rohrabacher--the self-described "surfin' congressman' who can't surf and who is, I grant, an expert in Tequila consumption--tried to rationalize Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's disrespectful finger wagging at President Barack Obama.

Rohrabacher--who actually blames the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on Bill Clinton's 1995 White House intern blow job--claimed that Republicans are disrespectful of the current president because they know Obama is secretly--dastardly?--determined to "gut" the U.S military.
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Rohrabacher: He wears a pearl necklace

​As expected, Dana Rohrabacher--Orange County's senior career politician--embarrassed the county during a Jan. 27 appearance on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher and then got into a Twitter fight with a viewer who called him "a pathetic old queen."

"I'm happy, not gay," Rohrabacher felt the need to declare after the show.

During his appearance as a panelist with MSNBC's Martin Bashir, ex-Florida Congressman Mark Foley and Reason TV's Kennedy, Rohrabacher--who married a campaign staffer after being outed as a closet gay man--angrily asserted that Republican hostility to Barack Obama is based largely on their perception that the president has a secret desire: "gut the military."
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​A Hispanic business and community leader in Santa Ana has joined other Hispanics around the country in signing an open letter to Mitt Romney that essentially accuses the GOP presidential candidate of hypocritically running away from his Mexican heritage. "Our purpose here is to advise you that those of us who have stood by you are now withdrawing our backing in favor of Newt Gingrich," reads the letter which the former House speaker's National Hispanic Inclusion Coordinator saw fit to forward to the media. Wonder why?
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​Remember last fall when Texas Governor Rick Perry packed 1,000 supporters--including former Orange County Republican Party chairman Tom Fuentes, rising from his death bed--into Roger's Gardens in Newport Beach? Perry also scooped up cash for his presidential run at some private affairs with Orange County's wealthy as he was being portrayed as the savior of the GOP, not as robotic as Mitt Romney, more telegenic than Newt Gingrich and about as teabaggy as Michele Bachmann. My, how times change.
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​Tim Naftali left last month as the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum since the National Archives in 2005-06 took over the tapes, documents and most of the facilities from the private foundation that dedicated the Yorba Linda tourist trap 15 years before. You'll note from the job posting that follows the director gig pays $119,554 to $165,300 a year, travel expenses may be picked up, and one requirement is "[d]emonstrated success in building public-private or other coalitions and partnerships to advance the programs and missions of a public or private institution." That's key because among the trickiest (Dickiest?) chores is presenting an honest, non-partisan view of the disgraced presidency while taking fire from the tres partisan foundation run from the same offices.More >>