Free Republic

SACRAMENTO – One week after accepting a $50,000 donation from a partner in a tribal casino project, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's political committee said Wednesday it would return the money after questions were raised about the donation by The Associated Press. Schwarzenegger made a promise during the 2003 recall campaign not to accept campaign contributions from groups that negotiate directly with his office – specifically identifying tribal gambling as one of those special interests. Last week at a birthday celebration fundraising event in Yuba City, the governor received a $50,000 contribution from Yuba County Entertainment LLC, a partner in a proposed...

A deal to bring the state's first metropolitan casino to San Pablo figured to quickly surface when the state Legislature reconvened in early January. Instead, the compact that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed last August with the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians remains in limbo, as the tribe struggles to find political support in the Capitol. "It's got an uphill battle," said Senate Republican leader Dick Ackerman of Tustin. "I sense a lot of reluctance on it for a variety of reasons." If the Legislature ratifies it, the compact would allow the tribe to operate up to 2,500 slot machines and...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing to sign new gambling agreements with several Indian tribes, including one that could spawn California's first major urban casino — something the governor has said he opposed. The Bay Area facility, a short drive from Oakland and San Francisco, could be one of the world's largest gambling halls, as large as five Costcos, with up to 5,000 slot machines, multiple sources said Monday. The agreement would require that once the 259-member Lytton Band of Pomo Indians opened the facility, now the site of a card club called Casino San Pablo, it would pay...

Since 1982, the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The BLFC was the brainchild (or Rosemary's baby) of Professor Scott Rice, whose graduate school excavations unearthed the source of the line "It was a dark and stormy night." Sentenced to write a seminar paper on a minor Victorian novelist, he chose the man with the funny hyphenated name, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who was best known for perpetrating The Last Days of Pompeii, Eugene Aram,...