Today's Quotes: Brown, Whitman Respond to Lauer Challenge, Mehserle Sentencing Legal Brief

"In one week left, would either of you, or both of you, make a pledge that you'd be willing to end the negativity?"
--NBC's Matt Lauer, at the 2010 Women's Conference, challenging Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman to pull all of their negative ads

"Sometimes negativity is in the eye of the beholder."
--Jerry Brown, to Lauer

"I will take down any ads that could even remotely be construed as a personal attack. But I don't think we can take down the ads that talk about where Governor Brown stands on the issues. I just think it's not the right thing to do."
--Meg Whitman's response, which was met with boos from the audience

"While (the) defendant attempted to convince the jury that the shooting was an accident, the jury found otherwise."
--David Stein, Deputy District Attorney, in a brief filed for the upcoming sentencing portion of the Johannes Mehserle case

"It’s not like a light switch you can turn on and off."
--Mark Hughes, ConocoPhillips spokesman, on the shutdown of the company's Rodeo refiner. The plant has been shooting visible flares into the air due to an equipment malfunction.

"There is evidence there's less distress out there, but it's still at abnormally high levels."
--Andrew LePage, analyst with MDA DataQuick, on a new report showing fewer California homes in process of being foreclosed

"It's mostly really fear and ignorance we're fighting."
--Dale Sky Jones, Proposition 19 spokeswoman, at a press conference

"Taxis never stop -- taxis in San Francisco drive about 90,000 miles a year, and make anywhere from 20 to 50 trips a day. It's a great opportunity to educate consumers that electric vehicles are a possibility."
--Jason Wolf, from "battery switching" startup Better Place, on a grant from San Jose's Metropolitan Transportation Commission that includes $7 million to install battery switching stations for use by taxis

"It's alarming to think we could be sending bonus checks to people when we're underfunded by the billions."
--Chuck Reed, San Jose mayor, on the City Council's vote to suspend bonus checks to retirees for eight months

"We put these things forward without any discussion with those affected, and we wonder why morale is so low."
--Ash Kalra, San Jose councilmember, on the vote