Whew! What a week we had here at the Orange Juice. In this weekly column we will review this week’s hottest and most interesting stories. If we had a theme this week, it was “free speech,” as you will read below.
We began the week with a look at OC GOP favorite Assemblyman Van Tran – who has escaped criticism by his party leaders even though he has been supporting select Democratic candidates.
Our series of “Who is?” posts continued with “Who is Mike Metzler?,” which examined the life of the executive director of the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, and “Who is Carlos Bustamante?,” which focused on one of Metzler’s favorite local politicians.
Sean Mill continued the Bustamante theme with one of this week’s hottest posts, “One Year Out, Focus Needs to be on Ward 3.“
Thomas Gordon and I later stumbled across a plot to hide the fact that the Santa Ana City Council is going to be voting tomorrow on Metzler’s request for $82K in taxpayer money to fund his CityLine propaganda rag, which we covered in “The cat is out of the bag…and Metzler wants his money.”
Speaking of hot stories, I asked our readers how they felt about adding anonymous bloggers to the Orange Juice blog team, with a post entitled “What about anonymous bloggers?” Twenty nine comments later our readers made it crystal clear that they LIKE knowing who is on our blog team and overall do not want pseudonymous writers on our team.
Our Santa Ana writers came under attack this week and Mill addressed our rights as bloggers with “Have I Violated my Oath of Office?“
We continued the free speech theme with “Free speech prevails in Santa Ana, for now” which logged thirty eight comments. In that post we took a closer look at this week’s apparent effort to remove me, Sean Mill and Thomas Gordon from our City Commissions.
And we also looked to our neighbors in Costa Mesa, with “Does free speech still matter in Costa Mesa” which focused on the Benito Acosta trial. I then heard from Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor with his feedback on that story, which led to another post entitled “Mansoor’s take on the Benito Acosta trial.”
Larry Gilbert also reviewed the issue of free speech with “Elected officials in Santa Ana are not the only ones who fear local bloggers.”
Our entire blog team was running on all cylinders this week! We heard from our new blogger, Coach Chris Emami, with a look at the GOP candidates for the 71st Assembly District. He also reviewed the GOP candidates for the 60th Assembly District.
Our other new blogger, Aria Ghafari, chimed in with a look at the Iranian chief of state, Ahmadinejad. And Claudio Gallegos followed up on that theme with “Ahmadinejad and Republicans find common ground.”
Thomas Gordon pitched in with “Show it if you got it,” which examined whether or not we ought to have voter I.D. cards.
Finally, Claudio welcomed our newest blog team member, Julie Meigs. Welcome aboard Julie! I look forward to adding your posts to future editions of the Orange Juice: Week in Review.
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