Let us not overlook the big cute fluffy animal in the room: outside the Bay area, Gavin Newsom is nationally known as an adorable LION (or else, in ignorant prejudiced circles, a despicable weasel) for showing generosity, wisdom, big-heartedness, golden-heartedness, kindness, sweetness, fairness, and justice, for his extra-judicial decision to allow same-sex couples to be married within his jurisdiction.

He won, basically, in California.  But with pain.  The same people whom he married in 2004, whose marriages were later cruelly invalidated, are now returning, in embarrassment, yet again, to see if once again their mature adult confessions of love matter to anyone.

Dear Californians, if you want to be leaders, if you want to be leaders for goodness, then support Mayor Newsom's wisdom and good-heartedness, and STRONGLY oppose the anti-same-sex-marriage ballot.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

directed city departments to purchase 100 percent recycled paper and reduce overall paper use by 20 percent by 2010

So the state that has been having so much trouble with wildfires, (which emit copious amounts of CO2) wants to decrease the incentive for companies to manage local forests thus increasing the chances of future forest fires?  This seems to be counterproductive if his goal is to decrease CO2 emissions.

I'm certainly not saying paper recycling is bad, just pointing out the irony that California is probably the place that needs it's forests managed (sustainably) the most.

It has been proven that logging is one of the main factors causing more, bigger, and and hotter wildfires than would occur naturally.  By removing forest canopy, logging makes the ground hotter from lack of shade.  By removing the biggest trees, because they are also the most valuable, the most fire resistant trees are removed while the smaller, least resistant ones are left because they're not as valuable.  Of course, I say this in the context that wildfires are natural and necessary to the ecosystems in which they occur.  The only issue is whether they' more frequent, bigger, and/or hotter than normal.

But I don't at all understand how global warming could be causing unnaturally large or hot fires in California.  The natural climate here is 4-6 years of wet winters followed by 4-6 years of drought, then back to wet winters again.  We had around ten really wet winters for the first time in thousands of years, and are now only into our second drought year, the first being a very mild drought.  So exactly how is global warming causing more, bigger, or hotter fires in California?

Whatever you think of proper forest managment, a large portion of California wildfires occur in chaparral environments, which aren't exactly prime logging areas!