Morning News Round-Up -- 4.3.09: Supervisors takes on Hollywood...Dynamic Duo takes on Lehman Brothers

Sequoia Union High School District's "final offer" to Everest Charter School was revised a bit on Tuesday night. But it doesn't matter. The Everest folks just don't want to be in East Palo Alto, and there is nothing the Sequoia Board of Trustees can do about that.

This is unbelievable. I can't encapsulate what is going on any better than Shaun Bishop did in his piece about what the Supervisors are up to:

The endorsement of the Smoke Free Movies campaign, approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors, calls for the motion picture industry to adopt stricter regulations on the depiction of smoking in movies.

Supervisors think they can dictate what happens in movies? They should have spent as much time discussing how to keep the Coastside Family Medical Center open as they did talking about this...

Never has a field's conversion from real grass to artificial turf taken longer or been more discussed and argued over than in San Carlos. Now, the end may (?) be near...and the Daily Journal Editorial Board asks that the movement to (safe) turf proceed...please. Perhaps then the City of San Carlos can move on to important topics of discussion, like stopping smoking in movies...

The window that opened months ago closes this weekend...Mavericks will not happen this year. If you are a big wave surfer and you read Watch Dog, you must be very disappointed this morning...

The Dynamic Duo of Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and Congresswoman Jackie Speier (not this Dynamic Duo and certainly not this Dynamic Duo) will hear from local agencies that got screwed by Lehman Brothers at a hearing on April 16th in the San Mateo County Supervisors Chambers.

High-Speed Rail is causing several head-aches up and down the Peninsula. San Mateo, which supports the idea of High Speed Rail, is now considering its full impacts on its downtown. Now?

This may make things a bit easier on the High-Speed Rail front. The phrase "four-track rail alignment" will (seemingly) be eliminated from the conversation between CalTrain and the High-Speed Rail folks.

But Menlo Park's letter protesting High-Speed Rail was thrown out of a lawsuit that the City wanted the letter to be part of. This is a weird story, but it seems to question whether Menlo Park ever actually sent a letter into the High-Speed Rail Authority at all in 2007. Lee Duboc, do you have anything to say on this matter?

One of our State Senators, Leland Yee, has a bill being considered in Sacramento that would "make it illegal for businesses to prohibit the use of foreign languages in their establishments." Well, that doesn't seem to sit too well with some folks -- and Senator Yee is hearing about it...and the calls he is getting are ugly.

Someone yelled "fire" at the Stanford Theatre, and they weren't kidding...a projector was on fire...

The Palo Alto Weekly's great blog experiments got another post from economist Stephen Levy. Beware readers of Stephen Levy, he is going to make you register to comment and he (alone) will decide if your comments are worthy of posting. Watch Dog, on the other hand, we'll pretty much post anything. After all, that's what online communities are all about. Take it or leave it Mr. Levy.

The Chronicle features a Pacifica couple who have been together for 23 years and are Registered Domestic Partners in California. One (major) problem, the Federal government wants to deport one of the partners because she is not a legal citizen. Half of our County's aforementioned Dynamic Duo (Congresswoman Speier) got a three-week stay of deportation for Shirley Tan...everyone is waiting to see what is going to happen next, including Watch Dog.