By now you’ve either opened your presents for the year or you’re a sadist or a masochist. So that leads to a couple of questions:
What’s the best present you GAVE this year?
What’s the best present you RECEIVED this year?
Brag on one or both!

Alternative question: what’s the absolute WORST box you opened this year?
About Greg Diamond
Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that.
Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too.
He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.)
His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)
If you could harness the power of squirming children in church on Christmas, we could be energy independent.
Best present this year ….news from San Clemente Green:
“Apparently Edison will have to completely redo their calculations for their operational assessment to demonstrate tube integrity at 100% power, not just at 70%. They may have to apply for a license amendment for operation at reduced power, which would likely give the public the much sought after opportunity for a trial-like hearing. Another outcome might be that that the Replacement Steam Generators (RSGs) will prove to be inoperable at 100% power which we hope would lead Edison to determine that it is time for an early decommission. ”
Hell no! We won’t glow !
A correspondent checks in with a report from the LagunaNiguel-DanaPoint.Patch.com (an invaluable publication for those who have trouble remembering which is the Lagunas is contiguous with Dana Point):
Ken Lopez, — who used to be Ken Maddox, and then Ken Lopez Maddox, and we can thus tentatively conclude is probably planning on running for something (and wouldn’t it be easier if he ran on a ticket with Steve Chavez Lodge?) — said this:
Correspondent notes that Ken Maddox (Lopez) (Maddox Lopez) was a cop in Tustin, not a place where he would have encountered Richard Ramirez. The Orange Juice Blog is now seeking a contract correspondent to find out from Ken MLML when he encountered Ramirez — and whether it was perhaps by watching his television.
Send applications to Donna Kay Hooker at mail2greg4-shapeshiftinghooker at yahoo dart com. Include the hyphen in the address.
Laguna Beach and Laguna Niguel both share a border with Dana Point.
Also, the Original Night Stalker committed one of his crimes in Niguel Shores, which is in Dana Point.
Confused yet?
I consider Laguna Beach a special case, because it has been around for so long. Same with SJC and San Clemente. It’s the location of the other Lagunas (along with anything there with a San, Forest, or Viejo) that have me sometimes checking a map. I don’t have a strong feeling about municipal consolidation, but glomming everything between Irvine and Laguna Beach to the north and San Juan Capistrano in the south into a city named whatever the Spanish translation is of “Saint Old Forest Lagoon” would be would make it a lot easier on those who were here several decades ago.
(OK, Google Translate says that it would be “Laguna San Bosque Viejo.”)
Demagogue is mistaken. Richard Ramirez’s killing spree took place in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties. The only exception was his last crime, which took place in Mission Viejo. (Which does NOT share a border with Tustin.)
But either way, what’s up with Ken Maddox-Lopez-Maddox-Chavez claiming to have “encountered” him?
I was talking about the “Original” Night Stalker, an unidentified killer/rapist who was never caught. He murdered at least ten people in Southern California from 1979 through 1986. Not Ramirez.
The name difference is like “Tommy Burgers” vs “The Original Tommy Burgers.”
They’ll both kill you.
What? When did they determine that Ramirez didn’t kill the earlier victims? Source?
Several sources:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/06/local/la-me-original-night-stalker-20110506
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011/05/19/investigators-still-on-the-trail-of-original-night-stalker/
Reply to ocresident in OCWeekly’s comments section, http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2012/12/orange_county_child_safety_zon.php#Comments, which apparently won’t post.
@ocresident You write:
“Please read the Constitution of the State of California, PC 3053.8, the ordinances and the Court Decision regarding the parks ordinances. The ordinances preempt state law. The OC one and the Irvine one and all in between. Prohibiting anyone other than a person on parole for a registerable sex crime against a minor under the age of 14 from entering a park, again, preempts state law and is therefore unconstitutional.”
Where you write “preempt” do you mean “would preempt if given effect” or “attempts to preempt” (or better, “attempts to supplant”? The term “preempt” means the successful ability prevent something else from having effect. When I say that the law under consideration did not preempt state law, I mean that it did not have the capacity to succeed in doing so. Even though I’m saying “does not preempt” where you say “preempt,” which seems like the opposite, I think that you mean to say “would preempt,” in which case we’re saying the same thing.
A local ordinance may differ from a governing state law in areas where the state law permits local clarification and such. I’m not sure that the Irvine area does so. You’re sure; fine. I’m not going to debate it.
Going back to my initial comment, the point is that Republicans (backed up by the Weekly) did not slam Agram for wrongfully trying to preempt state law (under your and my view), but for not doing so ENOUGH. Hence my criticism of them.