Well, the Chronicle has their watch-thingie to pick on small, local bay area officials about semi-trivial issues like broken signs, graffitti and potholes. Since we're small and local, we'll turn it around and pick on a big official on semi-trivial issues like journalistic ethics, campaign financing ethics and, well, potholes.

Seems Skeletor Maria Shriver is kind of back to working on the Today Show, at least in the capacity of vetting guests that have something to do with her husband (she had left the show to focus on the Governator's campaign, because it would have been a glaring conflict of interest as a journalist):

Things seemed to be going well until a series of e-mail messages in March between John Murphy, head of publicity at St. Martin's Press, which is publishing the biography of Mr. Schwarzenegger, and Andrea Smith, a producer at "Today" in charge of authors. In that exchange, it became apparent that before "Today" would officially book Mr. Leamer, he needed to first obtain Ms. Shriver's blessing. Ms. Smith said as much in an e-mail message she sent to Mr. Murphy on March 8, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times: "Anyway, you can ask Maria to call me so I can just make sure she is O.K. with us doing the Leamer book."

In other news, we find out on Daily Kos that some fundraiser named Tom Noe in Ohio is now so ethically tainted that George W. Bush has decided to give the man's campaign contributions back. Herr Gropenfuhrer (Gary Trudeau's joke, not ours) doesn't seem to have any problem with the $10,000 he received from Noe during his own campaign. While teachers, firefighters, nurses and police officers are 'special interests' in his eyes, apparently millionaires who don't even live in California and pour money into Republican campaign coffers nationwide aren't. Who knew?

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