Deregulator: Alive since '85!

Can't we all just get along? Let's see, here. "Community leaders" in L.A. urge peace if Schwarzenegger refuses to grant clemency to Tookie Williams. So Los Angeles may again go up in flames if the state fails to legally execute a man who not only killed four people -- and has neither expressed remorse nor taken responsibility for his actions -- but also founded a homicidal gang which has terrorized hundreds of thousands of innocents? Some community you got, folks. SOP ought to be you don't negotiate with or lend succor to terrorists -- no matter how many useful idiots Hollywood lines up in their support. Get me outta here.

Free the grapes From the 1880s until the 1960s, the Inland Empire -- the Southern California area spanning roughly from East L.A. to the deserts surrounding Palm Springs -- was the backbone of the California wine industry. The emergence of Napa, and the demand for housing in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, nudged land owners to plow the vineyards and plop down subdivisions. But a sliver of winemaking areas remain in SoCal, and the two dozen or so vintners in the Temecula region near San Diego County want to use the force of law to protect their little slice of heaven from competition. The Riverside County supervisors today will vote on a set of new restrictions that would block outsiders from building new wineries in Temecula unless they abide by rules that might well make their operations unprofitable. The big impediments: Wineries with tasting rooms would have to grow 75 percent of their grapes in Riverside County; and tight limits would be imposed on the number of "comm...

Shake off the Winter blues I'll be a thousand miles away, but if you're a blues lover and are on or near the West Coast in January, you've got to check out Mark Hummel's Blues Harmonica Blowout . The Bay Area harp man has put together these January tours annually since 1991, and he's brought in the old lions and the young turks. We caught the show in Riverside this year, which featured Superharp himself, the legendary James Cotton (from the Muddy Waters bands of the 1950s and '60s), along with Charlie Musselwhite and Fabulous T-Bird founder Kim Wilson. Hummel's rockin' band The Blues Survivors backs up all the players, and it's three-plus hours of fun. This year, Hummel's pushing the envelope. Along with Jerry Portnoy, another Muddy Waters alum, the tour features Lee Oskar of War and Magic Dick of the J. Geils Band. (Wilson will join in a few gigs, and don't be surprised if Hummel's longtime buddy Huey Lewis doesn't pop up at a show ...