Want to make a big splash to bolster your chances in a political campaign? A tried and true strategy for some attorneys general has been to champion a populist position by exploiting the legal system for publicity. Just look at the lead up to the launch of former New York AG Eliot Spitzer gubernatorial campaign with his attacks on Wall Street.

And that appears to be the playbook California Attorney General Jerry Brown is using in a lawsuit accusing State Street (NYSE:STT) of cheating the state's two largest pension funds, the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, of at least $56.6 million.

However, CNBC's Michele Caruso-Cabrera wasn't afraid to ask Brown if that was indeed the case in an Oct. 20 interview on CNBC's "Power Lunch."

As noted by John Stephenson of NewsBusters, much of the media has been ignoring the enormous Van Jones controversy. However, Joe Garofoli, the politics writer and blogger for Jones' hometown newspaper, the liberal San Francisco Chronicle, has just written about the toxic effect of Van Jones and who is standing by their Van and who isn't in his Politics blog:

The Bay Area's Van Jones -- the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality -- just finished apologizing for calling Republicans "a-holes" when he got something else to start explaining: How his signature got on a 2004 petition asking for an immediate "inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur." Van said he didn't carefully review the petition before signing it "certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."

The attacks on Miss California Carrie Prejean have gotten so bad that even same-sex marriage champion and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is taking notice.

Prejean, the runner-up of last Sunday's Miss USA pageant, has been the target of reports from the Hollywood media intelligentsia after her feud with gossip blogger Perez Hilton for the stance she took on same-sex marriage. And Newsom, who had just announced his intentions to run for governor of California, has noticed.

"I want to challenge her on her point-of-view," Newsom said in an appearance at Sapphire Energy, a bio-tech company, which aired on NBC's San Francisco affiliate on April 23. "She challenged me on my point-of-view and she spoke her conscience. What more can you ask? I speak my conscience, she should speak hers. So, I think she's being a little unfairly maligned."

The only thing remotely interesting about San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's bizarre decision to upload his incredibly dull 7.5 hour "state of the city" speech to YouTube is the knowledge that it is sure to inspire parodies. So how dull is Newsom's speech? Well I challenge you to listen to just a couple of minutes of it without hearing the beckoning call of Mr. Sandman enticing you to enter a deep slumber. Here is the take on this YouTube speech by Michelle Malkin:

Hey, remember that judge who sentenced noise violators to Barry Manilow music? Here’s a worse sentence: Sitting through 7.5 hours of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom droning on and on and on about the “state of the city.” There are YouTube segments on health care, education, and the environment. But nada on the city’s infamously deadly illegal alien sanctuary policies.

He’s uploaded his entire speech on YouTube. Even his fellow libs can’t take it:

If only elderly voters in California would die off in large enough numbers before November 4, then the final nail could be hammered in the coffin of California Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. That according to liberal activist Kristina Wilfore, the executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, "an advocacy organization that specializes in using ballot initiatives to further liberal causes." Her comments were buried deep inside Michael Lindenberger's October 21 item at Time.com:

Wilfore says she's prepared to take the long view in California. "I am not going to be discouraged if we lose," she says. Victory will come over time in the courts, as demographics works its influence on the nation's voting patterns, she says, noting that young people support gay marriage far more than their parents and grandparents do. "A lot of people are going to have to die" before Election Day is an easy day for gay marriage, she says.

While Wilfore was not wishing for the deaths of thousands of elderly conservative voters per se, one can imagine the ire the media would focus on such a statement of say a conservative activist annoyed with elderly voters blocking Social Security reforms.

As we have seen before, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom isn't exactly the brightest bulb in the universe when it comes to political smarts. In fact, many blame Newsom's poorly timed push for gay marriages in 2004 for John Kerry's presidential election loss that year. Despite the animosity towards Newsom for his role in causing the Democrats to lose their chance at the White House, San Francisco Chronicle political writers Joe Garofoli and Carla Marinucci gushed over Newsom as a new "hotshot" at the Democrat convention a few weeks ago:

Both Newsom and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris appeared Tuesday at a Time magazine panel on "Hotshots to Watch" panel along with Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker and Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala. Obama appeared on the same panel before the 2004 convention.

What do you do when you are the mayor of San Francisco and your poorly timed push for gay marriages is blamed for your party's loss in a presidential election, you get yourself involved in a sleazy sex scandal where you get caught sleeping with the wife of your campaign manager, and a much criticized policy of declaring the municipality you represent a "sanctuary city" results in a multiple murder by an illegal alien? Why you get the San Francisco Chronicle to write a glowing story about you enthusing about how you are a "hotshot to watch" with a bright political future on the horizon. Such is the case with San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, no stranger to other puff pieces such as this June story in Time magazine. San Francisco Chronicle political writers Joe Garofoli and Carla Marinucci use Newsom's appearance at the Democrat convention in San Francisco as a launch platform for gushing over their mayor's future:

As Bill Clinton and Joe Biden dominated center stage Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was presiding over "Unconventional '08," a street party held in an artsy warehouse corner of the city featuring indie bands and a knot of people young enough to be Biden's grandchildren. There, mingling beneath an art gallery facade full of iconic images of Sen. Barack Obama was the evening's host - the former Sen. Hillary Clinton delegate Newsom.

Before pouring sweet syrup over Newsom, Garofoli and Marinucci take us along on a brief but unpleasant trip down memory lane:

Time magazine writer Michael Lindenberger's dispatch "From Gay Marriage's Ground Zero," read more like puffy campaign literature for the liberal Democratic mayor of San Francisco than an objective news piece.

Here's how Lindenberger opened his paean to the thoroughly heterosexual Gavin Newsom.:

Same-sex couples began marrying late Monday night in courthouse ceremonies across California, putting triumphantly happy human faces on a debate that is nevertheless far from over. Crowds turned out to welcome - and, for some, to protest - weddings in Beverly Hills, Oakland and the wine country north of San Francisco.

Later in his piece, Lindenberger took at face value Newsom's recollection of how he decided in 2004 to challenge state law and grant marriage licenses to gay couples. Those "marriages" were later invalidated of course, but the recent decision by California's highest court paved the way for gay weddings, at least between now and November when a ballot initiative may outlaw same-sex marriage.

Lindenberger dutifully transcribed Newsom's insistence that he didn't know how big a deal his civil disobedience would be:

The market is good for corn farmers right now. Corn prices are reaching highs because of the increased demand for food and as of late, the increased demand for corn-based ethanol.

The price of corn is at an 11-year high. Its $4.38-a-bushel price tag is fueling food inflation, according to the December 17 "CBS Evening News."

However, that's contrary to what CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta told viewers on the December 18 "American Morning." It is the low price of corn, he said, that has prompted the need for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to impose a "sugary drink tax," specifically drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup.

"[I]f you look at the history of this substance, ["American Morning" co-anchor] Kiran [Chetry] - I think this is very important - we subsidize a lot of corn production in this country," Gupta said. "We've been subsidizing it for a long time to support the corn farmers, which is a good thing. If there is a problem in all of this, it is that maybe we make too much corn and some of that corn gets turned into this high-fructose corn syrup."

Same story, different day – the networks do another bottled water/environmental story.

Who would have thought corporate “big water” would ever have the bulls-eye painted on it by the rabid environmentalists in the television media?

“Across the country cities are urging thirsty Americans to think outside the bottle,” said NBC’s Chief Environmental Affairs Correspondent Anne Thompson on the October 17 “Nightly News.” “From Austin to Boston, it's bottle versus tap in taste tests. They are talking about the ecological impact of bottled water in Portland.”