With the special election for California's 36th congressional district seat rapidly approaching on July 12th, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn is branding herself as one who has never held partisan office.

This weekend, Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone unveiled a plan for thirteen counties in Southern California, excluding Los Angeles and Ventura counties on the coast, to secede from the Golden State and form a 51st state. His announcement came on the same day that Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that will divert $14 million in revenue from Riverside County.

After the House of Representatives soundly defeated a resolution to authorize the war in Libya for the period of a year – a companion bill to the McCain/Kerry measure in the Senate – the body rejected another measure that was being pushed as an “antiwar alternative.”

The Navajo Generating Station near Page, AZ uses about 8 million tons of coal a year to provide 2.25 GW of power and nearly 95% of the electricity for the huge pumps on the Central Arizona Project canal that bring water from the Colorado River.

A Field poll study sampling 950 registered California voters shows that the state's Tea Party-affiliated voters follow what's going on most of the time in government more than Democrats and voters classified as "Non-partisans/others."