- It was one Giants' step for mankind last night. Well, let's not go too crazy. On second thought: let's! Congratulations to the Giants, who beat the Texas Rangers 3-1 to take the World Series four games to one. Edgar Renteria, who hit a homer that drove in all three Giant' runs, was named the Series' MVP.
- ...and now the other shoe drops. The Bay Area is dense with Democrats, but that home field advantage won't help House Speaker Nancy Pelosi keep her job. If a slew of polls and conventional wisdom hold true, Democrats nationally will have to pull off a Giants-like miracle to retain their majority in the House and perhaps the Senate. California, however, may buck that trend. Polls show Jerry Brown ahead of Meg Whitman and Barbara Boxer leading Carly Fiorina. Meanwhile, the Chronicle reports that a remarkable procedural voting trend is occurring:
...a new Field Poll survey estimates that, for the first time ever in a general election, more than half of the votes today will have been cast before election day.
About 55 percent of the votes in today's election will have arrived by mail, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll. That means that any candidate or ballot measure that falls far behind when those first early ballots are tallied minutes after the polls close at 8 p.m. will have a tough, uphill road the rest of the night.
- Arizona's Governor, Jan Brewer, and state lawyers were in San Francisco Monday appealing a lower court's ruling that threw out parts of Arizona's controversial immigration law. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the Court appears ready "to reinstate, but weaken, a central provision of an Arizona law allowing police to stop and question suspected illegal immigrants."
A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals indicated that it would authorize police to demand papers from those they reasonably suspected of being in the country illegally, but would not allow authorities to arrest or prosecute them under state law.
That would still allow suspects to be referred to U.S. authorities for deportation, however.
At an hourlong hearing in a packed San Francisco courtroom, two panel members suggested that a federal judge had gone too far when she blocked enforcement of all major provisions of the law.
Hundreds of opponents of the law, the Examiner reports, marched to the courthouse at Seventh and Mission streets in San Francisco, protesting and blocking traffic.
- Steven Zierk, a 17-year-old Los Gatos High School senior, has won the World Youth Chess Championship in the under-18 division. The tournament is sponsored by the International Chess Federation.
- NY Times Chess Blog report
- Round 8 video and interview w/ Steven Zierk (World Youth Chess Championships)