PRESTOPUNDIT -- "An intense brain-buzz, guaranteed" (2blowhards)

The making of a recall. Money quote:

A few weeks after the election, Davis raised the stakes on the budget debacle. Estimates of the budget gap had zoomed past the $20 billion mark and were rising quickly to $35 billion. Democratic and Republican legislators, mired in gridlock, floated the idea of a ballot measure to give voters the choice of higher taxes or deep spending cuts. [Ted] Costa, director of People's Advocate, a tax watchdog group, saw Davis' imprint and considered it a political bailout, he said. "I figured, if the dirty bastards are going to do that, (Davis) ought to be on the ballot with them," said Costa, describing one of the first baby steps into recall talk.

And this:

California's recall provision, approved by voters in 1911, does not specify particular reasons why an official may be recalled. "Sufficiency of reason is not reviewable," it says.

"I look at the recall as a tool that's open to the people," said Costa. "It's part of our social compact in California. It's not negotiable."

Costa polled the members of his anti-tax group. The result: near unanimous support for a Davis recall effort.

He began planning.

There is lots more in this piece of very good reporting. Why isn't there more of this sort of thing in the California press? The major papers spend a good deal of their limited time sifting through dirt-ball "scandal" stories pushed by the Davis camp, but its a rare thing for one of them to tell us this BIG story of the making of the recall -- which IS news and which IS happening and which IS making history. If journalism is history in a hurry, the Contra Costa Times has written some history.