Newsom, a Democratic gubernatorial wannabe, has claimed similar freedom from pesky accountability by using a private device to conduct public business. Shortly after an oil tanker leaked crude oil into San Francisco Bay, Newsom flew to Hawaii on vacation, assuring everyone he was in constant contact. However, he refused to reveal any messages regarding the spill that were sent to or from his iPhone.

More damning for Palin is how hamhanded her efforts were: She actually claimed "executive privilege" on emails sent via her official account on which she included her civilian husband, Todd Palin, as a recipient. And free Yahoo webmail? Even the people who read blogs aloud to Republican presidential nominee John McCain know that can't possibly be particularly secure. (Photos by AP/Eric Risberg, Tony Avelar)

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom may be known nationally as the patron saint of gay marriage, but back home, Newsom has built his career on things like buying fleets of hybrid vehicles and installing windmills near the Golden Gate Bridge.

Small problem — as Curbed SF points out, Newsom has never built a windmill or anything else energy-related anywhere near the Golden Gate Bridge. Not that such considerations would quell admiration from right-coast hacks looking to promote handsome, young politicians for the benefit of the party machine.

If you live in New York, you might think San Francisco's Gavin "Gavvy-gav" Newsom is some sort of John Lindsay-handsome but Michael Bloomberg-effective miraculous wonder. He married the gays! And instituted universal healthcare! And tans his hot bod with solar panels! It's okay, we understand — you guys have never had as firm a grasp on left-coast reality as you thought you did. In truth, Newsom's administration has failed on such basic points as violent crime, public transportation, and affordable housing.

While local New Yorker correspondent Tad Friend chewed on Newsom's presentation hook, line and sinker, even he can't be entirely blamed. The regional press corps has been filled with unapologetic boosters since the gold rush days. With Nancy Pelosi, our local political machine's grand inquisitor, running the House of Representatives, it's only natural that we press a lanky golden-boy type upon you poor suckers statewide. For my sake and yours, however, don't believe the hype.

Gavvy-gav was, and is, a ditzy jock who just happened to be related to somone endeared to the Getty oil fortune. As a perennial ringer for upwardly mobile softball teams otherwise stacked with the obliged noblesse, he rose quickly from above the muddied ranks of local activists and condo association street fighters. Picking topics which cost him little political capital locally while presenting them as daring moves nationally, Newsom has cemented the perception of his position firmly between the socially center-left and economically center-right.

Which, honestly, is about the perfect balance for the pot-smoking, free-market and gay-loving populace which forms his constituency. Still, it's no frame to hang an Obama-level cult of personality on. Newsom's feather-light shoulders and uncannily cheery countenance really can't take the weight of serious responsibility. Take pity, east coasters, and please don't bother to burden him with it.

(Photo by Franco Folini)

An FYI for everyone terrified of nuclear power: Chernobyl can't happen again. The RBMK model reactors — only used in Russia — were retrofitted for better control, containment and mitigation years ago. Three Mile Island, in hindsight, turns out to be a classic media scarefest. A post-action review at MIT found that "The melted nuclear core was contained and any radiation released was minimal. Thus, the plant design and safety protocols actually worked, despite numerous operator mistakes." Thirty years later, Westinghouse has designed a nuke that doesn't even need backup generators to stay cool if there's a power outage.

We should be worried about nuclear waste disposal, not a China Syndrome-style meltdown. Nuclear waste processing has been engineered for the type of waste (LLW, MLW and HLW) that has been produced and effective strategies are working successfully right now. The real problem is that people gladly use the electricity cranked out by nukes, but freak out if there's a waste site within 2,000 miles of their backyards.

Meanwhile, I wonder how many greenies know that fossil fuel releases radioactive material when burned? Uranium ore and other radioactive material are stored naturally in coal ore, from which America still gets about half of its electricity. Compared to the old choke factory at Hunter's Point, Diablo Canyon sure is pretty.

Mayor Newsom is on his honeymoon.

Best part? The boilerplate continues "Note: Mayor’s schedule is subject to change." Don't give up hope, ladies! (Photo by Getty/Justin Sullivan)

Yes, Jennifer is one of those Siebels — her dad, Ken Siebel, is a cousin of Tom Siebel, the founder of Siebel Systems. The father of the bride is also chairman of Private Wealth Partners, which manages a $444 million fund. But Newsom might find it difficult to pry any campaign contributions from his new father-in-law, since the elder Siebel has donated only to Republicans in national elections since 2000, including George W. Bush, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani.

Newsom did at least convince the bride's family to host the wedding in Stevensville, Montana, where the groom wore a casual linen suit and the bride wore Vera Wang and rode down the aisle bareback on a white black stallion. By far the best blow-by-blow of the nuptials was from Newsom's predecessor at City Hall, Willie Brown. Siebel and Newsom plan to tour Africa on their honeymoon — no word if they intend to indulge in the hot celebrity trend of adopting a child as a souvenir.

Being in the family way might help burnish Newsom's image after an adultery scandal in 2007 and a public admission of the entrepreneurial wine salesman's drinking problem. The timing of this marriage eerily reflects that of Newsom's first in 2001, when the then-Supervisor wed Kimberly Guilfoyle months before he announced his candidacy for mayor of San Francisco.

But the couple divorced a year after he was elected amidst talk of a new "Camelot" couple rising in the Democratic Party ranks. You can expect the eternal flame of the media's love for Newsom to be rekindled along those lines, though I doubt the newlyweds will be posing in any oil-money mansions this time around.

With Newsom now fielding an exploratory committee to run for statewide office, longtime superfan and San Francisco Chronicle blogger Beth Spotswood was generous: "I give them two years, that's my wedding gift to Gavin." Which is just long enough to last until June 8, 2010, when the votes for Governor will be tallied.

Hopefully Siebel can continue to steer clear of commenting on blogs in the meantime. Siebel's first publicity challenge will be to show up California attorney general Jerry Brown's longtime partner and current wife Anne Gust in the primary, followed by Maria Shriver, wife of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Photo by Getty Images/Meg Smith)

Allison's sort-of ex, Digg cofounder Kevin Rose, said he was buying Google. Surely not for Knol, Google's weak attempt at taking on Wikipedia — at launch, its search engine didn't even work. Jackson, come back and help us make sense of this crazy business! (Photo by Jason Calacanis)

Infoworld has an insider report on the tech side of the story from another San Francisco IT staffer. The Chronicle report by Matier & Ross is more people-oriented:

A team of code crackers brought in from Cisco Systems had been working around the clock to try to decipher Childs' codes, but with only marginal success.

"It wasn't cheap and I just couldn't see us keep spending that kind of money," Newsom said.

Then, out of the blue, Childs' lawyer, Erin Crane, called the mayor's office Monday afternoon, offering a jailhouse meeting.

Childs, according to the lawyer, was ready to give up the codes - but only to the mayor, who had gone out of his way in his public comments not to portray Childs as some sort of monster.

Newsom didn't hesitate. Without asking the city attorney for an opinion or giving a heads up to police or the district attorney, he was at the Hall of Justice in half an hour.

With Crane by his side, Childs told Newsom about the computer system he'd set up and how all the current problems sprang from a series of misunderstandings.

Crane didn't let him go on for too long, and Childs got to the business at hand, asking for a pen.

He then wrote out a very long computer code.

"This better be right," Newsom said.

"It is," Childs assured him, but asked the mayor to deliver it in person to the Cisco specialists — not to the city's computer brass.

Newsom took the code to the city computer center and gave it to a Cisco techie, who found that it didn't work — prompting a call-back to Crane.

"He said you would be calling and you would be upset," the lawyer said. "He forgot to give you the protocols to go along with the code" — and she read the accompanying computer prompters to the mayor over the phone.

By Tuesday morning, the system was back in the hands of the city.

(Photo by AP/Eric Risburg)

Anita and I just installed solar panels on our home, and we couldn’t be happier. We used a firm called Akeena Solar which has been in business for several years and has offices around the state. If you’ve ever thought of putting solar on your home—there has never been a better time.

Shilling for your own company without disclosure is certainly one way to pass the baton to presumptive Governator challenger Gavin Newsom, who will undoubtedly point to this program to give wealthy San Francisco property owners taxpayer money for a handful of solar panels as an example of his stellar environmental record. Mixing business and politics and implementing costly new tax incentive programs while slashing the budget for social services? God bless America. (Photos by AP/Branimir Kvartuc and AP/Eric Risberg)

Philadelphia was a particularly interesting choice because it's the corporate home of Comcast. Here in San Francisco, the plan to build a citywide wireless network was initially opposed by the telco giant, along with AT&T, as the two companies feared it threatened their duopoly. Turned out they had little to be afraid of — between Comcast's influence in City Hall and villainously-coiffed God-mayor Gavin Newsom's inability to understand the political process beyond publicity, the combined powers of Google and Earthlink couldn't get anything done (and publicly mocking political opposition certainly didn't help).

Wi-Fi is simply bad technology for large-scale wireless connectivity. The microwave spectrum the technology uses can't cover large distances omni-directionally, and everything from humidity to trees interrupt the signal. And those problems are compounded by the difficulty in building a network infrastructure to feed all those access points with enough bandwidth to satsify thousands of users at any given time. Again, expanding fiber optic networks makes much more sense, because a bunch of wireless routers in a mesh network does you no good unless they can actually connect to an Internet backbone at dozens if not hundreds of points.

Having lived in the Bay Area since the turn of the century, I've actually noticed a decrease in Wi-Fi availability, mostly thanks to individuals who've started to lock down their access points and businesses that have tired of freeloaders. By the time Philadelphia and San Francisco were busy trying to build out citywide systems, the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard was already getting old, while cell network provides were introducing 3G data connections. Politics doomed such projects from the start, and now obsolescence will finish them.

What was once the technological pride of Phildelphia is now a failed dream on its last legs. Meanwhile, I can't get a fiber optic connection if I wanted one (and I do, desperately). Had we been listening to San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano instead of mayor Newsom years ago, maybe San Franciscans would be getting the true broadband speeds countries in Asia and Europe enjoy. (Photo by Bob Jagendorf)

With just a few dozen access points and coverage for some public housing projects planned, nor at speeds as snappy as the free fiber optic connections the non-profit Internet Archive is providing to a new public housing development. Meanwhile, along the Peninsula, MetroFi's routers will go dark over the coming weeks in Valley hubs like Cupertino, which can now chalk up the city's second failed attempt at a public-private partnership to bring free Wi-Fi to residents. (Photo by AP/Eric Risberg)

Hopefully some of that power will go to San Francisco, which is already struggling to meet its power needs, and working on building new fossil fuel-powered plants. Because the City's hunky god-mayor, Gavin Newsom, wants to build a fleet of electric cars and a network of charging stations, and that power currently comes from coal and oil. Thankfully, Newsom is practically BFF with PG&E, so surely they can bask together in the warm rays of publicity and profits, respectively. (Illustration by BrightSource Energy)

(Photo by Kevin Krejci)

Speaking of which, the crowd included Chuck Phillips, the president of Oracle; Accel Partners' Jim Breyer; Google angel investor Ram Shiram; Gavin Newsom; former California governor Jerry Brown; Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles TimesBarron's; AllThingsD's Kara Swisher; former Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein; MarketWatch's Therese Poletti; Craig Newmark; and renowned San Francisco socialite Denise Hale, who rather liked my tie.

Zittrain's book is about the tradeoffs between freedom and control, security and creativity. New devices like the iPhone provide a safer, smoother experience than the uncontrolled Web — but at the cost of having a gatekeeper, Apple, dictating what can and can't run on the device. That kind of chokepoint, in turn, makes it far easier for government regulators to get involved. The alternative, though, is not particularly attractive: an Internet ruled by spammers and hackers.

Like his counterparts in politics, Zittrain is seeking a third way. I couldn't help but think this impulse is driven by an early experience he related at the party: Getting beaten up in high school. (He thanked the hostess, Melanie, "for not beating up on me.") Having been bullied, Zittrain doesn't want revenge: He just doesn't want anyone to bully, or be bullied. This moderating impulse is seen in a passage where he discusses how neither governments nor citizens ought to be able to wholly circumvent the law through technology:

Perhaps it is best to say that neither the governor nor the governed should be able to monopolize technological tricks. We are better off without flat-out trumps that make the world the way either regulator or target wants it to be without the need for the expenditure of some effort and
cooperation from others to make it so.

And yet Zittrain's career could well exceed Lessig's. That he was able to fill a room — an impeccably furnished, tastefully modern room in one of San Francisco's wealthiest enclaves, at that — speaks to his draw. Liberal San Francisco politicans, self-made entrepreneurs, and the Web's wacky fringe can all find things they agree on in his work.

The danger for Zittrain is that his work might be nothing more than a justification for compromise and tradeoffs. Will he find a third way for the Web — or just point out the middle of the road? His calls for a "generosity of spirit" are reminiscent of the assumptions that turned eBay, a marketplace of strangers, into a very profitable community of traders. Hoping for the best really can pan out, as it happens. But the answers Zittrain will have to find, or inspire, are far more complicated than asking someone to be on their best behavior.

The days where I had a little dollop of gel are gone. I'm using quarter of a bottle at a time and I'm not proud of it. And I know that I need help!

• Pick a popular, if quixotic, issue: Everybody loves renewable energy, and everyone hates global warming. A few solar panels will do little to change anything except the Hair Apparent's chances for statewide office.
• 
  
• Run it through a minion with political ambition: Even though city assessor and Gavster appointee Phil Ting's job doesn't include proposing environmental spending legislation, its his proposal. If it works out, he's got something to sell voters in a run for mayor, and if not, he takes the fall.
• 
  
• Suggest that it will help hardworking people: Never mind that this amounts to grants to people who own property in one of the most valuable real-estate markets in the country. These are, in the Newsomverse, homeowners and small businesspeople struggling to make ends meet.
• 
  
• Fast-track it to skirt public review: The time to find solutions to global warming is now, not after careful research, competitive bidding and public comment. If anyone questions the process, suggest that they aren't "creative" or "visionary."
• 
  
• When all else fails, blame your failure on democracy: Sure, our duly elected public officials are politicians, and therefore should expect politics to be part of the program. So when the Board of Supervisors delay your plan because it has no provisions for funding, don't take responsibility, blame them for petty political opportunism.

(Photo by Kevin Krejci)

The secret? Piggybacking on the existing, municipally owned fiber-optic infrastructure and connecting to the Internet backbone through the Internet Archive's switches. Yes, the same municipal infrastructure that Google openly mocked last April. Three cheers for actual altruism, and not profit-seeking self-interest marketed as altruism! (Photo by AP/Ben Margot)

"I want to make sure it works in San Francisco, and once we improve it here, try to make a strong argument across the state." Newsom is discussing cap-and-trade pollution policies, but sure sounds like he's simultaneously making a case for statewide office.

A surfeit of self-expression: San Francisco may not have furries actively roaming its streets, but you'd be hard pressed to find another community so accepting of trannies, facial piercings, fauxhawks, and assless chaps. Oh wait — this June, San Francisco will have furries actively roaming its streets. See? Just like Second Life.

Toleration for public sex: Second Life has always been plagued by a seedy, fornicating underbelly. San Franciscans simply need visit SoMa.

City of lost souls: Anyone who visits San Francisco's Civic Center has witnessed the crazies, drug addicts, alcoholics and other afflicted. On Second Life, they just don't stink.

Statistical self-delusion: San Franciscans believe they're the center of the universe, though the city they live in isn't even the largest in the Bay Area. The same can be said of Second Lifers, who can't believe that the other 99.7 percent of the world doesn't want to join their party.

A plague of wantrepreneurs: When Anshe Chung became the first Second Life millionaire, she started a gold rush, though one mostly without the gold. People have flocked to the virtual world in the hopes of striking it rich, just as countless misguided startuppers race to South Park in hopes of running into a venture capitalist.

A ghost town much of the time: With a population of 744,000, it's hard to argue that San Francisco is a big empty, but if you've tried to find a restaurant open after 10 p.m., you might start to believe it. Much like Second Life, whose residents are all too fleeting in their visits.

A sense of impending doom: There's no escaping it. Some day all those Second Lifers will wake up from their bad dream and realize the whole experience is just some terrible pyramid scheme. It will crumble into ruin — just like San Francisco after the Big One strikes.

Well, a good source tells us so. But hard evidence backs up our tipster. Newsom's public schedule notes the normally mayor had no public events. San Francisco supervisor Sean Elsbernd filled in as acting mayor. And I got a somewhat exasperated spokeswoman in his office to confess, finally, that Newsom was out of the country over the weekend.

Last year, Newsom claimed that he isn't particularly close to Page or Brin. And here he is going to Page's wedding. A politician lying? Shocking.

(Photo by Steve Jennings/WireImage.com)

Council member: I heard you need my John Doe on something.
Clerk: I need your signature on some documents.
Council member: Yeah, my John Doe.
Clerk, laughing: You mean your John Hancock — John Doe is an anonymous dead body. [Council member looks puzzled.] John Hancock has the biggest signature on the Declaration of Independence — that's where the term comes from.
Council member: Oh.

City Hall
San Francisco, California

There are eleven members of the Board of Supervisors. It includes three women, three guys with unfortunate facial hair, one guy who looks like a network TV anchorman, and one bald fat fellow. No longer included is former supervisor Ed Jew (who, by the way, is Asian, and not, to my knowledge, Jewish), elected to represent the Sunset district while, a pending case alleges, he was secretly living in Burlingame, a suburb near the airport. None of these people, to my knowledge, had an affair with god-mayor Gavin Newsom while married to his campaign manager.

Other than that? Not much to write home about. They're San Francisco supervisors. The only thing they've done that has influenced tech is kill the citywide Wi-Fi deal. For my money, any of these boneheads could be the culprit. Why does the smartest city on the planet have the dumbest people running it?

That's former U.S. Vice President and current Google "senior advisor" Al Gore, who has a previous engagement in Oslo, Norway that weekend — he's receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. ("Larry Page allowed that, on the list of excuses, that was acceptable," Gore told the Chronicle.) Gore is hoping to attend via videoconferencing, destroying any pretense of this being a high-society soirée —Necker's going to be Nerd Island for the weekend.

The Examiner's full slate of candidates:

• Harold Brown: San Francisco Bulldog blogger
• George Davis: author of "Naked Yoga" / nudist activist
• Lonnie Holmes: San Francisco Juvenile Probation manager
• Harold Hoogasian: owner of Hoogasian Flowers
• Alec "Grasshopper" Kaplan: homeless taxi driver
• Quintin Mecke: director, Safety Network Program, a San Francisco nonprofit
• Wilma Pang: ESL and music teacher at City College of San Francisco
• Michael Powers: owner of Power Exchange sex club
• Chicken John Rinaldi: showman
• Ahimsa Porter Sumchai: physician
• Billy Bob Whitmer: educator
• Josh Wolf: CNET blogger, outreach coordinator, Peralta Community College

Yes, that's the same Josh Wolf who holds the Guinness Book record for longest stretch in jail by a journalist for contempt of court. Wolf's a shoe-in for the local liberal blogger vote, and you know what that'll do to Newsom: Nothing. Despite publicized problems with booze and broads, Mayor McDreamy is unstoppable.

(Photo of Gavin Newsom by Noah Berger. Photo of Josh Wolf courtesy of the San Francisco Examiner.)

Inside, according to a declaration from Inspector James Ramsey, police found a map of San Francisco with the location of the mayor's building highlighted and a line following streets from the building to the Bay Bridge. Also found were a cutout composite photograph of the mayor, Shin and Shin's father, magazines with articles about Newsom, a laminated photograph of Newsom, three purple latex gloves and a cassette tape titled "President Newsom."

At one point, Newsom's jacket fell off a chair and Shin picked it up, wiped it off in a caressing manner and then held it on his lap, according to Fleming's declaration. He proceeded to attempt to get Newsom's attention in a flirtatious manner. Afterward, he grabbed the mayor and prevented him from closing his car door till a police officer intervened.