By PETE GOLIS Peter Behr was a Yale-educated lawyer who represented the North Bay in the state Senate from 1970 to 1978. Among the Legislature’s most passionate advocates for the environment, Behr, who died in 1997, led the campaign to create the Point Reyes National Seashore, and he authored legislation to protect the state’s wild and scenic rivers. William T. Bagley is a Berkeley-educated lawyer (and valedictorian of his senior class) who represented the North Bay in the state Assembly… Read More »

If you read my February 10 column – here – you know I’ve been eating a lot of popcorn lately. I wrote about six Oscar-nominated movies and what they tell us about the time in which we live. Shameless dilettante that I am, I’ve actually seen eight of the nine films nominated for Best Picture – “Amour,” “Argo,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Django Unchained,” “Les Miserables,” “Lincoln,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” and “Zero Dark Thirty.” I liked them all, which… Read More »

Lori A. Carter reports this morning that more than 1,000 people attended Sunday afternoon’s benefit for Cristina Garcia, 16, and Alexis Vargas, 17. If you were there, you know this was an extraordinary event, combining the best of what a community can offer – compassion, energy, generosity and pride. Whether they knew Cristina and Alexis or not, people wanted to be there to show their support, to show how their town steps up when others need help. As Supervisor Efren… Read More »

By PETE GOLIS I drove through San Francisco last week and saw absolutely no one in a state of undress. It may be that folks otherwise tempted to disrobe anticipated the next day’s headline in The Press Democrat. “Bare majority for nudity ban,” it said. (At times like this, newspaper editors can’t help themselves.) The story recounted how a San Francisco supervisor named Scott Wiener convinced his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors to support an ordinance banning public nudity.… Read More »

Even if you don’t live in Cotati or Rohnert Park, even if you know absolutely nothing about Karyn Pulley, you may want to vote for her. Pulley is the school board member targeted last week by a pair of robo-calls from an anonymous detractor. In the meanness and pettiness that afflicts local politics from time to time, it has come down to this. Someone other than one of her rival candidates decided it was OK to take a free shot… Read More »

Anyone who pays attention to the tech world knows that a second-generation iPad will be unveiled on Wednesday. In the blogosphere, the rumor mill has it that the new device will boast a camera and a faster processor. It will also be thinner and smaller, the bloggers say, and it may come in white. As someone who can never own too many tech toys, I find myself strangely disinterested. It happens that I like my decrepit, first-generation iPad. A year… Read More »

On Sunday, I wrote – here – about the challenges and uncertainties of journalism in the digital age. Now comes the news that AOL will purchase The Huffington Post – a site that combines liberal politics with celebrity gossip – for $315 million. The announcement said that HuffPo’s founder, liberal activist and talk-show celebrity Arianna Huffington, will be placed in charge of content at AOL. It’s no surprise that tech, business and journalism blogs this morning are alive with conversations… Read More »

I spent the morning contemplating the deeper meanings of Tuesday’s election -  just me and a zillion other orange-clad fanatics lined up on the streets of San Francisco. For the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory parade, people went nuts. The buzz of vuvuzelas, horns, sirens, costumes, cheering, chanting. (Oo-ree-bay! Oo-ree-bay!)  So much fun. Home again and once more serious, I offer this random download on Tuesday’s results: – So much for slates. The resident political camps wanted Santa Rosa… Read More »

Thirty years ago, as a member of the Capitol Press Corps, I covered the administration of a governor named Jerry Brown. A.P. just projected that the next governor of California has the same name. What a coincidence. Yes, it’s the same guy I first wrote about in 1974. Click here for my March column on Brown’s comeback. And please ignore the accompanying photo.

Pundits today are calling it by all kinds of names – rout, tsunami, massacre, earthquake. Whatever they call it, it seems clear that Republicans across the country will score a massive victory on Tuesday. The influential Web site, Politico, predicts Republicans will gain 60-plus seats in the House of Representatives, maybe more. Forecasts from The New York Times political blogger and statistician Nate Silver put the number at 53, but Silver says no one knows for sure. One way or… Read More »