[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Kenneth Burt

The breaking news about Senator Kennedy’s medical condition has provoked a flood of memories, many of them deeply personal.

I was one of Kennedy’s youngest delegates to the 1980 Democratic National Convention. For an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, it was a life-altering experience.

The convention experience was amplified by traveling to New York with Dolores Huerta, as I was a staffer that summer for the United Farm Workers. I still have the blue and white Kennedy button I wore with the UFW’s Aztec eagle.

Kennedy’s speech electrified Madison Square Gardens. As he talked about “sailing against wind,” my mind was filled with promise of liberalism to create a more just society. The fact that we came up short in the delegate count only proved that victory is not certain, that the progress often requires a lifetime’s commitment.

Senator Kennedy has certainly dedicated his life to advancing the common good, whether it was advocating for universal health care, the minimum wage, or comprehensive immigration reform.

The last time I saw the senator was in 2004, at yet another Democratic National Convention, where he joined the California delegates in Boston for breakfast. Kennedy brought down the house when he sang “Jalisco,” accompanied by Mariachis, in his Boston-accented Spanish.

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Nothing less than the future of marriage as we know is in the hands of the state Supreme Court, and defining the 'M-word' is a thorny issue for all parties, writes Lawrence Levine in today's Sacramento Bee. On the one hand,there is valid concern about whether the courts—or the court of publicopinion—should decide such sensitive measures, but on the other, issuesof liberty and equality have always risen above majority vote.

As California's prison overcrowding crisis goes down to the wire, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson says he is confident theGovernor and inmate-rights lawyers can reconcile before trial,according to the Bee. Unfortunately, the Republican "tough on crime"mantra is part of why we're here—a little common sense, and lesspolitics, is in order.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in again on the Obama-Clinton fight on ABC's "This Week," saying superdelegates should honor the candidatewho is ahead in the delegate count, the San Francisco Chroniclereports. While Pelosi did not mention either candidate by name, thisposition is clearly favorable to Obama, who is all but guaranteed tomaintain his lead.

There's more...

Photo courtesy of the Sacramento Bee.

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Paul Hogarth

Everyone wants the Democratic presidential nomination to end, but the media momentum myth that has kept Hillary Clinton alive makes the movie “Groundhog Day” look benign. Here’s what we’ve seen at least three times so far: Clinton wins a primary that cuts off Barack Obama’s winning streak – and regardless of the raw delegate count that she needs to get nominated, gets legitimized as a “comeback.” We saw this most recently in Ohio and Texas, but it also happened after New Hampshire, Nevada and Super Tuesday – only to later realize that she did not make the gains that the media exclaimed. Obama won the Wyoming caucus on Saturday, and is expected to win Mississippi tonight – paving the way for another Clinton “comeback” in Pennsylvania. But Obama should win most of the subsequent primaries, making the whole myth of a “tight race” slightly exasperating and dishonest. Unlike Mike Huckabee, Clinton does not get ridiculed for believing in miracles – rather than math.

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

by Julia Rosen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]