Dan Morain

Want to spend a lovely weekend at your "own private ocean front" gazing at the sunset near Point Reyes?

Magdalena Romero sat at a picnic table in this dusty town's one park, remembering the baby she named America.

On the night that a new Republican organization celebrated election victories of three Latinos for local offices, Tim Donnelly, the assemblyman who hopes to import Arizona's anti-immigration law to California, held a fundraiser for his "campaign" for governor.

Like much in Vegas, the façade of Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital is deceiving.

Debi Austin spoke loudest after surgeons removed her cancerous vocal cords.

Setting aside questions of propriety, Chevron was shrewd to hire state Sen. Michael Rubio to head its governmental relations operation.

Sacramento County jailers released Matthew Herrera a week ago Saturday after keeping him separate from other inmates for his safety and theirs. Because he had no clothes, jailers issued him a disposable paper jumpsuit and flip-flops, and sent him on his way.

At the urging of Gov. Jerry Brown and major business groups, some of the most influential legislators in Sacramento are trying to fix the California Environmental Quality Act.

The tea party may be a shrinking, aging slice of the electorate. But you'd never know that from Sal Russo's operation.

In the language of Sacramento County jailers, Matthew Herrera is TSEP, short for total separation, a designation given to inmates who are kept isolated for the safety of themselves and others.

Upon counsel's advice, political operative Joel Fox declined to discuss the $11 million that was funneled to his political action committee last fall, other than to say he had done nothing wrong, and that he had received a subpoena from the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Some people have said Rep. Tom McClintock is defensive, thin-skinned and humorless.

After a three-hour hearing Tuesday focusing on gun control, some of us might have been left to wonder what more can be done in a state that has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country.

Gov. Jerry Brown is about to repent for a sin he didn't know he committed in 1975.

The Maloof brothers, their shirttails untucked, seem intent on thumbing their noses at Sacramento.

On a cold night at the northeast end of Stockton, a California Department of Justice agent wearing a bulletproof vest beneath his black uniform knocked on the door of a small tract home. A 65-year-old man living alone peeked out.

Jeffrey Beard's testimony in the landmark litigation over California's violent prison system cut to the bone.

Whatever piece of hide that his doctors had excised, Jerry Brown returned to work no worse for the wear.

Sacramento has no shortage of lobbyists. So Jeff Miller's decision to move his family to Austin, Texas, shouldn't be a big deal, except for what it says about our state and opportunities elsewhere.

Never one to build bridges, Rep. Tom McClintock has spent the better part of 30 years in office deriding the government that gives him his paycheck.

Two months before Adam Lanza used one of his company's guns to massacre 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School, George Kollitides talked about threats he perceived to his children.

Anne Blue is happily remarried and recently retired, splitting her time between a Land Park townhouse so she can be near her daughters, and a lakefront house in Alabama, where she met her first true love, the big man on the Auburn University campus.

Bloomberg news service has counted 150 publicly traded corporations whose boards of directors have sped up dividend payments by $20 billion, a step that allows investors to pay taxes under current low rates, rather than what almost certainly will be higher rates in 2013.

Oil companies and taxes are a little like gasoline and lit matches.

Attorney General Kamala Harris is saying that local police can ignore federal Secure Communities policy.

Joe Baca never saw it coming, and neither did Gloria Negrete McLeod.

Kevin James is a former talk radio host and federal prosecutor who aspires to become mayor of Los Angeles, and is promising to restore fiscal order to City Hall, all perfectly understandable.

Tom Steyer wore the same plaid wool tie that he wore the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.

Rep. Dan Lungren, trailing by 3,824 votes a week after Election Day, has not conceded, and the ballots won't be tallied fully for several more days.

As they make their big plans, Democrats emboldened by their likely supermajority in the Legislature should study Betsy Butler and Michael Allen, two Democratic Assembly members who might not be coming back to Sacramento.

Voters approved Jerry Brown's $6 billion tax hike this week because California has changed and Brown hasn't. Lots of help from organized labor didn't hurt.

To sum up: A shell within a shell within a shell, crouching in a hall of mirrors. Money laundering isn't too strong a term. Welcome to the world of Citizens United, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that emboldened the richest Americans to spend unprecedented sums to influence elections.

As he has done in campaigns since Eisenhower beat Stevenson the first time, Rep. Dan Lungren is walking with a slight limp.

From now until Election Day, President Barack Obama will make heavy use of two of California's top Democrats, Attorney General Kamala Harris and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to help win over voters in the most vital swing states.

Contributors have given $340 million to pass and defeat the 11 measures on this November's statewide ballot, by my count. You can assume some of them expect a return on their investment.

California Common Cause filed a complaint with the FPPC demanding that a hitherto obscure Arizona nonprofit corporation disclose the donors who gave $11 million.

Union workers on leave from jobs in Los Angeles and San Francisco showed up ready for duty at a messy office near the Reno airport, and started rhythmically clapping and chanting, "Sí, se puede."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy would have no idea that Gary Ewing died on Aug. 24, and probably wouldn't care. But Kennedy had a direct hand in Ewing's life and his fate.

Gov. Jerry Brown must be feeling like he has left California and landed in the State of Munger.

Political rallies have become so yesterday, so passé in California in 2012.

Howard Broadman doesn't second-guess decisions he made during the 13 years he spent as a Tulare County judge.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is not totally delusional, and his autobiography is not a work of total fiction. But the former governor is making a total fool of himself as he tries to reshape his sullied image.

For a billionaire like Sheldon Adelson, who gives $5 million at a pop to super PACs, people like Shirley Peters, a retired child protective services worker living in Fresno, ought to be incredibly annoying.

The race between Rep. Dan Lungren and Dr. Ami Bera is far from over, but the doctor-challenger missed his one good shot at decking the incumbent as the candidates met in their first and likely only debate on Tuesday.

The question was simple enough. If Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen could do it over again, would she have signed the pledge in which she promised to never vote to raise taxes?

A campaign ad airing statewide portrays crooked politicians and shady lobbyists meeting in garages and stairwells, seemingly at the California Capitol.

As high-powered consultants plot strategy in the race for U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer's seat, they should factor in Sandy Greiner, a 64-year-old grandmother six times over from Keota, Iowa.

The headline was true enough, though it was politically incorrect by today's standards: "Pretty Teen Coed Is First Vote Caster."

As the young 'uns preened on a national stage in Charlotte, Gov. Jerry Brown stepped out of his Sacramento loft and into his Pontiac a few minutes before 9 the other morning. He was focused on the issue that matters most to him, an initiative that would raise taxes by $6 billion a year.