SAN FRANCISCO -- U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will likely get an earful today during a hearing on whether the Federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling in the outer continental shelf should be restored.

The hearing at UCSF's Mission Bay Conference Center will kick off at 9 a.m. and will feature a cavalcade of California political luminaries who stand opposed to former President Bush's decision to lift the ban last year.

What would you do with $50 billion?

Would you balance a budget, and keep funds to spare? Would you hire more police and firefighters and/or increase their salaries? Would you invest heavily in infrastructure and restructuring a foundering education system? Funny thing is, with all of the many thousands of elected and appointed government officials throughout California, a consensus has yet to be reached on this question.

ALAMEDA -- Fighting discouraging poll numbers for the May 19 Special Election initiatives (Props. 1A through 1F), Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brownappeared Tuesday morning in front of an East Bay fire station sayingthat voters must pass the propositions or risk throwing the state intofurther economic chaos.

A classmate of mine at Northeastern School of Law, Greg Huff, recently died. At his memorial, a professor read some of his legal work. To paraphrase one of Greg's powerful essays from memory, he explained that he was a strong advocate of gay rights because he "forcefully endorsed an individual's right to choose to define themselves rather than conform to a culturally manufactured binary choice".

California'sAfrican-American, white, Latino and low-income students all have improved significantlyon national tests in fourth-grade reading and eight-grade math over the pastdecade, and at a slightly better pace than the nation as a whole, accordingto a new report.

California leadsthe nation in financial aid offered to low-income college students. It's in themiddle of the pack - 25th - nationally when it comes to college affordability.

Amidstthe storm of budget "compromises" currently being turned into cause fora full-blown election circus, one in particular seems to be getting adisproportionate amount of attention, given its seemingly apoliticalnature.

That measure is Proposition 1C, a proposal to, as the Legislative Analyst's officeeuphemistically puts it, "allow the State lottery to be modernized."

I remember back in school, when one kid seemed to be taking too long at the drinking fountain, the next person would yell "Save some for the fishes!" Is the newest appropriate response instead, "Save some for the Californians!"?

California is as good asout of fresh water.

The state is thrown into drought conditions with everyless-than-abundant-rain year, and a series of dry years (like now) decimatereservoirs beyond sustainable thresholds. The fiscal situation is comparablydire; like freshwater, Californiauses more than they've got coming in, a fundamentally unsustainable equation inboth finance and ecology. How convenient and unusual that a silver bulletexists to solve both problems: desalination.

Possibly the only people happy last Tuesday when the Setton Pistachiorecall was expanded to include last year's entire crop were the folks at
PeanutCorp. of America.

Finally, they're out of the news for a while.

Now that theRepublican Party in California has officially passed the budget hurdle,the civil war which has plagued the Right since November appears tohave come to California. And interestingly, the battle is not betweenmoderates and hard-liners, but rather between different varieties ofhard-liners who have different tactics for achieving the hard-line.