While I was away . . .

Some media and political items and antics from the last couple of weeks:

• District Attorney George Gascon took a pass on conducting a criminal probe of the powerful folks behind the financing of the “Run, Ed, Run” campaign, citing insufficient evidence. Chronicle
• Gavin Newsom’s office, after a bit of delay, forked over information about his trip last month to attend that Giants photo-op at the White House, for which he billed taxpayers $978. Chronicle
• Another gubernatorial candidate-in-waiting, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, began raising his profile with tough talk aimed at taking down Prop 13. Chronicle Politics blog
• Laid-off NBA writer Mark Heisler penned a rebuke of the corporate masters who drove the LA Times into the ditch in a piece for Truthdig titled: “Confessions of a Dead Tribune.”
• Public approval of state lawmakers is at an all-time low, but that isn’t keeping at least a dozen of them from gearing up to run for Congress, for which public approval is equally dismal. Capitol Alert
• Jefferson Morley was named the new Washington editor of Salon. Romenesko
• The smart money appears to be on Minnesota Public Radio storyteller Kevin Kling as the future replacement for Garrison Keillor on “A Prairie Home Companion.” Poynter
• SF Weekly reported that Chronicle reporters can’t get columnist/lobbyist/mayoral power broker Willie Brown to return their phone calls.
• Does launching a Twitter attack against CNN’s Piers Morgan qualify ratings-deprived Current TV kingpin Keith Olbermann as desperate already? HuffPo
• CNN, which has become increasingly silly of late, shed a little more of its dignity by shamelessly milking Christine O’Donnell’s walking off the aforementioned Morgan’s set. TV Newser
• Dean Singleton announced a pay wall for 23 more MediaNews Group papers, including the Vacaville Reporter and the Vallejo Times-Herald in the Bay Area. SF Peninsula Press Club
• Abercrombie & Fitch staged a PR stunt that sucked in just about all of mainstream media this side of Jupiter. Romenesko
• Ralph Albertazzie, the former Air Force One pilot who famously flew Richard Nixon home to California after he resigned, died at 88. LA Times
• Goofy quote from BART’s Linton Johnson, defending the transit agency’s decision to pull the plug on cell phone service for commuters in the name of disrupting protests: “Outside the fare gates, that's the public forum area. Inside the public fare gates is a non-public forum and, by law, the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court, there is no right to free speech there." Bronstein at Large