Obviously less than confident about a Democrat being governor next year, the Democrats in the California government are dumping every last loonie piece of legislation they can on Davis' desk.

From this column:

I watched in awe as the legislature, approaching a Sept. 12 legal deadline, passed last-minute laws never debated in public and changed laws from one meaning to an entirely new meaning after inept discussion. Of some 400 mostly needless bills approved, nearly all were by Democrats. That's because the powerful Dems prevented Republican bills from even from leaving committee.

Editors have sent up a howl for copy on what motivates the 9th Circuit, the single most overturned federal appeals court. But when it comes to the broken cogs in Sacramento that fuel the recall, the media rarely explain the story behind the story.

Maybe the public ought to do something about this. Watch for coverage of awful laws just approved. Does the journalist tell you who ghost wrote it (like a big union), how the law was dramatically altered, and who gives money to legislators who pushed it? If not, it's not even Journalism 201.

Here's my latest watch list of turkeys sitting on Davis' desk:

AB 1245, by John Laird. Prevents draft ballot measures from first going to the Attorney General, who currently cleans up illegal language before public distribution. Instead, measures will go on a website so we see every screw-up. The intent is to create chaos around measures so they'll fail at the polls. Laird should be flogged in public for this sneak attack on our initiative process. Too bad we don't do that anymore.

AB 1309, by Jackie Goldberg. After a school district tears down houses to build a school, this allows a district to go tear down somebody else's house, somewhere else, to put up housing for those originally displaced. The intent is to make white suburbanites, whom Goldberg detests, suffer instead of brown urbanites. Watch for lawsuits by broad-sided homeowners.

AB 587, by Mark Ridley-Thomas. A box asking your skin color will now go on voter registration forms. It's voluntary---but expect a move next to make it required. Davis signed this creepy law Wednesday.

AB 1742. If your taxman has more than 100 clients, he now must send your return in via Internet. Your privacy is at risk.

SB 796, by Joseph Dunn. Allows workers to seek fines of $200 each from firms who commit tiny labor violations. California's labor code is thicker than a Manhattan phone book. One code specifies a font size employee notices must be posted in. So 50 employees can now get $10,000 over improper fonts. More ice for our business climate. Dunn's special interest servicing of lawyers and unions is shameless.

SB 892, by Kevin Murray. Withholds funds from schools with dirty bathrooms. More anti-reform. Instead of giving principals the power to decide how to use money---such as on cleaning bathrooms---Sacramento has emasculated principals. Now, dopes like the oafish Murray ensure that struggling schools are further punished. Brilliant.

AB 231, by Darrell Steinberg. "Reforms" the food stamp program, which required that nobody own a fancy car if taxpayers were buying their food. Up to now, car value was capped at $4,650. But now? Now, you can own a Rolls, and your household can own as many luxury cars as it wishes. Also, no more face-to-face interviews to qualify. Just give a buzz. Who's this for---busy, jobless billionaires? If it's really so poor workers can keep reliable cars, why wasn't a new cap set of $15,000? Did I mention that California's food stamp program is rife with fraud, and in particular is being targeted by con artists who are not poor?

A few stupid ideas were defeated. Steinberg's idea to heavily fine hospitals unless they lower nurse-to-patient ratios---in the midst of a massive and thus far unsolvable nurse shortage---got killed when Assemblyman Keith Richman, a liberal/moderate Republican and one of the rare doctors in the legislature, told legislators that hospitals would make their ratios by closing beds and units. "No nurses are out there, and you will end up denying care to the sick," Richman pleaded.

It was one of the very few arguments that stopped more than a week of pell-mell nonsense by legislators, egged on by the increasingly panicky Davis.

Also barely defeated was Senate president John Burton's nutty bill to give California Indian tribes tremendous new sway over any development anywhere near an Indian burial or sacred site---even if it was miles away.

That clearly unconstitutional law would have allowed many of the decisions about development to be made in secret---barring the public and the media---and would have spawned a huge new state bureaucracy run by the obscure Native American Heritage Commission.

I could list another 100 idiotic bills. Davis, openly pandering to groups for whom they were written, is expected to sign many of them.

The similarity between the mindset of a Democrat and that of the leaders of the European Union is no coincidence.

"No man's life, liberty and property are safe when the legislature is in session''