At times during those years [his first Governorship], his talk about an era of limits and the need to lower expectations seemed just a little – well, preachy. Similarly "small is beautiful," the British economist E.F. Schumacher's metaphor for the design of human-scale appropriate technologies that Brown embraced, often seemed almost un-American at a time when "bigger is better" was the rallying cry of national progress.

But limits – whether economic, environmental, political or military – hardly seem so strange now, even if the state, and other states and the nation as a whole, didn't face the monster budgetary crises they now struggle with.

Something similar is true about what you could call Brown's futurism. Thirty years ago Brown's fascination with the advanced and at times esoteric ideas of people like the great anthropologist and cybernetician Gregory Bateson, who he would appoint to the University of California regents, seemed too far out for the earthy practicalities of everyday government and public administration. Brown even flirted with the idea of a California space program. Chicago columnist Mike Royko's famously called him Governor Moonbeam.

During his last tenure as governor, Brown created a California Office of Appropriate Technology (which was promptly shut down by George Deukmejian when he succeeded Brown in Sacramento), and pushed hard for many of the model environmental and energy efficiency programs and policies for which the state has since become globally famous.

In recent years ... it has consistently been conceptualized and measured in terms of four themes: the denial of discrimination [against blacks], criticism of blacks' work ethic, and resentment of blacks' demands and [resentment of blacks' supposed more favorable] treatment by the broader society, which together form a logically, psychologically, and statistically coherent belief system. Its origins were said to be obscure, but now have been shown to lie, at least partially, in the theorized mixture of antiblack affect and individualism. Its distinctiveness from Jim Crow racism was questioned, but whites' support for the latter has been sharply diminished while support for symbolic racism remains quite widespread, and the political effects of symbolic racism dwarf those of Jim Crow racism.

Fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats, according to the National Election Poll exit poll conducted by Edison Research. Not even in Republicans’ 1994 congressional landslide did they win that high a percentage of the white vote.

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political strategist, said in an interview that "it would be a mistake to take exit polls from a midterm election and extrapolate too far" toward 2012. Conditions—and the composition of the electorate—will change a great deal by then, he said. But he acknowledged that Obama must "reset" the public perception about his view of government’s role. Axelrod, who plans to return to Chicago next month to help direct the president’s reelection campaign, also made it clear that he sees as a "particularly instructive" model for 2012 the case of Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado, who won his contest last fall by mobilizing enough minorities, young people, and socially liberal, well-educated white women to overcome a sharp turn toward the GOP among most of the other white voters in his state. [my emphasis]

• It's worse than sloppy not to make it clear whether the Edison Research data on political attitudes of whites and blacks was a survey of actual voters; the way he describes it, that's the only reasonable conclusion, but it isn't entirely clear. And it makes a big difference how you read the results whether we're talking about people who voted in 2010 versus the general public.

• Brownstein offers no comparison of comparative turnout to 2008 until many paragraphs into the article. The off-year electorate is normally older, whiter, more affluent and more conservative. When he gets around to mentioning it, he says the Edison results showed that "among minorities and young people", "both groups fell off even more than usual in 2010, producing an older and whiter electorate that compounded the GOP’s advantage." This actually suggests a different framing of the results, which is to ask why more than the average amount of the Democratic base stayed home, thus making it proportionately an even "older and whiter electorate" than in most mid-term elections.

• Citing national trends of Latino voters doesn't mean much unless the Florida votes in particular are analyzed separately; the Cuban-American voting trend there has a very different political history than Latino voting in Arizona, California or Nevada. Nevada Latinos voted very heavily for Reid, as California Latinos did for Brown.

• Saying that Republicans had their "best congressional result among white voters in the history of modern polling" (he means 30 years or so) is meaningless unless it's put in terms of the changing percentage of whites to all voters and unless the South is analyzed separately. He does some of that regional analysis late in the article, but doesn't seem to recognize that it mitigates some of his generalizations about race.

• The approval/disapproval figures on Obama's Presidency seem skewed toward the disapproval side compared to other recent polling.

• The analysis of people's view of the health care law doesn't deal with what aspects of the law people approved or disapproved; it also implicitly assumes that the split described is primarily based or race and not only some other factor like income, party affiliation and amount of time spent watching FOX News, all of which are very relevant factors.

• Brownstein leaves the most interesting single poll finding he cites with no real analysis: "Minorities were almost exactly twice as likely as whites to say that life would be better for the next generation than for their own; whites were considerably more likely to say that it would be more difficult." Especially if the Edison results were of 2010 voters only, this suggests a very different perception among the older and more affluent that is related to wealth and class.

Still, the 90 or so revelers who were actually conscious for the big party, held at fabulous Lucca restaurant (plenty of valet parking), did their best to overcome their disappointment at his absence [an imaginary character!, dining on smoked chicken risotto, chicken saltimbocca, pan roasted salmon and grilled bistro steak, consuming mass quantities of Ray Station Merlot, Kendall Jackson Chardonnay and Camelot Cabernet, and enjoying an evening utterly bereft of the tedious, mind-numbing speechifying that characterizes most such events in Sacramento.

Plus, they got a really cool credential — the type which the skinflint Brown operation provided to no one covering his big day.

He doesn't have a press secretary or a communications chief.

Insiders say he is planning to replace the 14 people who have been fielding the hundreds of media requests from television, radio, print and online journalists reporting on the government of the largest state in the country, the eighth largest economy in the world, with as few as three staffers and an assistant.

Josiah Royce (1855-1916) was the leading American proponent of absolute idealism, the metaphysical view (also maintained by G. W. F. Hegel and F. H. Bradley) that all aspects of reality, including those we experience as disconnected or contradictory, are ultimately unified in the thought of a single all-encompassing consciousness.

Royce's friendly but longstanding dispute with William James, known as "The Battle of the Absolute," deeply influenced both philosophers' thought. In his later works, Royce reconceived his metaphysics as an "absolute pragmatism" grounded in semiotics. This view dispenses with the Absolute Mind of previous idealism and instead characterizes reality as a universe of ideas or signs which occur in a process of being interpreted by an infinite community of minds. These minds, and the community they constitute, may themselves be understood as signs. Royce's ethics, philosophy of community, philosophy of religion, and logic reflect this metaphysical position. [my emphasis]

Royce's ethics is rooted in his analysis of the conditions necessary for an individual life to be meaningful. It is not enough that one's actions merely conform to the strictures of conventional morality — a trained animal might well fulfill such minimal conditions of morality. To lead a morally significant life, one's actions must express a self-consciously asserted will. They must contribute toward realizing a plan of life, a plan that is itself unified by some freely chosen aim. Such an aim and its corresponding plan of life could not easily be created by an individual out of the chaos of conflicting personal desires and impulses that we all encounter. Rather, such aims and plans are found already largely formed in social experience: we come to consciousness in a world that proffers countless well-defined causes and programs for their accomplishment. These programs extend through time and require the contributions of many individuals for their advancement. When one judges a cause to be worthwhile and freely embraces such a program, several momentous things happen. The individual's will is focused and defined in terms of the shared cause. The individual becomes allied with a community of others who are also committed to the same cause. Finally, a morally significant commitment to the cause and to the community develops. This commitment is what Royce calls "loyalty."

While every community hopes for the accomplishment of its central cause, and sees that cause's fulfillment as its highest achievement, Royce places particularly high emphasis on the phenomenon of loyalty to a lost cause. A lost cause is not in Royce's view a hopeless cause, but rather one that cannot be fulfilled within the actual lifetime of the community or any of its members. Many lost causes are rightly lost, of course: Royce would have recognized the Confederate States' defense of slavery during the U.S. Civil War as such a case. Besides such misguided causes, though, there are a number of legitimate causes that are, by this definition, "lost" simply in virtue of their scope and magnitude. Such causes are not hopeless, however. It is precisely these causes that establish ideals capable of evoking our highest hope and moral commitment. [my emphasis]

Brown, to be sworn in this morning, wants to slash virtually every state-funded program to help balance California's massive deficit, in many cases resurrecting cuts sought by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger but rejected by lawmakers. Brown would restrict Medi-Cal access, divert low-level offenders to county jails and cut deeply into California State University and the University of California.

The Democrat is counting on lawmakers to approve the cuts to encourage voters to also provide revenue. A June ballot measure would extend higher tax rates on income, vehicles and sales set to expire this year, as well as eliminate a new corporate tax benefit. The money from the vehicle and sales tax extensions would be sent to local governments, which would take on some functions the state performs now.

Brown also wants to take money from voter-approved accounts that fund early childhood development and mental health care, a plan similar to one rejected by voters in 2009.

Brown's widescale cuts seem designed to hit services that permeate every part of Californians' lives. The reductions to state parks and libraries, for instance, are minuscule against the backdrop of a deficit greater than $25 billion over the next 18 months. But park and library closures would surely draw the attention of middle-class families.

So would cuts to the state's two university systems, which Brown will pursue one year after Schwarzenegger singled out the state's higher-education system for protection.

Brown plans to pass a budget through the Legislature within two months, instead of the usual seven or eight. Those involved in budget discussions with him say he then plans to ask voters to extend temporary increases to the state sales, income and vehicle taxes that lawmakers and the governor enacted in 2009. Voters have already rejected an extension of those taxes as part of a 2009 special election, and Republican leaders have indicated there is no GOP support for putting the issue back before voters.

Brown's main charge will be to keep voters on his side, even as he introduces a series of spending cuts and potential tax increases that are bound to be unpopular.

His Excellency the Rector of al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmad al-Tayyib, expressed his utmost regret and pain at the criminal incident and sent his condolences to the families of the victims. Al-Tayyib said in his official statement that the criminal action is prohibited in Islamic law, since Islam obliges Muslims to protect churches the same way they protect mosques. He said, "The targets of this attack are not the Christians alone, but rather all Egyptians." He said that the bombers were seeking to destabilize Egypt by dividing it.

The Rector of al-Azhar is among the most respected Sunni Muslim leaders in the world, and many Egyptian believers take his rulings or fatwas very seriously.

Brown has said he wants to negotiate a budget agreement with the Legislature by March, far sooner than is typical. That would allow time for a special election in June. Brown promised in the gubernatorial campaign not to raise taxes without voter approval.

Brown will need a two-thirds majority of the Legislature to place the tax-extension matter on the ballot, requiring some Republican support.

Senate Republican leader Bob Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga, said he does not believe Brown will achieve that. [my emphasis]

For the president's loyalists, of course, this indictment is profoundly unfair. He inherited a mess at home and abroad. The economic downturn began on Bush's watch, but its bitter fruits were harvested after Obama took office. By contrast, Franklin Roosevelt took power after Herbert Hoover had presided over three of the most miserable years in American economic history. Blame was firmly fixed on Hoover by the time FDR showed up with his jaunty smile and contagious optimism.

And, yes, there is the small issue of Obama's real achievements, the health-care law, above all. If insuring 32 million more Americans is not an enormous social reform, then nothing can be said to count as change. The now well-rehearsed list of additional accomplishments - from Wall Street and student-loan reform to the end of "don't ask, don't tell" to the simple fact that the economy's catastrophic slide was halted and reversed - would, in the abstract, do any administration proud.