A viewing party of east L.A.County Democrats enjoyed watching former California governor Jerry Brown outmaneuver former eBay official Meg Whitman in the first California gubernatorial debate.

The gang at Russ Warner headquarters in Claremont got plenty of applause lines from Brown, who presented as smoother, better informed and — in his peculiar, dry, pleasure-sucking way — more energetic than Republican Whitman. (Warner, the host of this TV party, is running for Congressman in the Golden State’s 26th district, a seat being defended by David Dreier.)

Whitman’s best punch of the night came when she charged Brown with running away from his own record as the “education mayor” of Oakland. In the same flurry she also scored a glancing blow against Brown’s opposition to Proposition 13, the state’s landmark property tax limitation.

Other than that, it was Brown’s night. It goes without saying that Jerry Brown is a zen fascist führer who will send the suede denim police to take away my uncool niece. And my inclination whenever a man and woman compete is to back the woman and find any excuse for her lousy performance. Finally, Whitman’s general (very general) references to free market capitalism were just the song I was in the mood for. I even appreciated (without quite converting to) her economic case for the death penalty: that it’s cheaper to fry the death row population than to keep them alive.

But I recognized Whitman tonight as a species I got to know all too well during my dotcom days: the dull, untutored powerpointillist with a genius for changing the subject the moment her talking points start to fail. The second time you’re using the old Einstein’s-definition-of-insanity chestnut in one night is twice too many.

Brown also undermined Whitman’s credibility by noting that she cravenly excluded cops and firefighters — who represent a fourth of the state’s total pension liability and are well represented in pension “spiking” and related abuses — from her plans for pension reform.

While Jerry Brown, like Sen. Barbara Boxer in her debate with Carly Fiorina, waged class warfare against Whitman, he didn’t engage in Boxer’s vapid and gushy condemnations of outsourcing or try to make an issue of Whitman’s wealth. Instead, he described Whitman’s contributor base strictly in terms of political quid pro quo. This may or may not have deflected Whitman’s very important complaint that Brown is beholden to unions, but it demonstrated his familiarity with the practice of California politics. And in this debate it was Whitman, the career non-voter, who needed to prove her understanding of how government works.

In fact, while it was to be expected that Brown would try to get a few digs in against government employees in this era of Bob Rizzo and the pension buffet, he distanced himself from his union patrons repeatedly, with references to having said no to organized labor several times during his own career. (All of which I’m sure will turn out to be bullshit once somebody checks it out, but still!)

It’s not clear whether the remote audience in Claremont (the actual debate was at UC Davis) even registered all that tough-on-unions baloney. My incomplete and informal canvas turned up no private-sector employees and little awareness that California even has a pension crisis that worries both Republicans and Democrats.

I did get a fairly decent level of libertarian recognition, though. One Brown supporter asked if libertarianism is “what Bill Maher is for,” while another immediately recognized the “free minds and free markets” slogan as a libtertoid tell and ended our conversation. (Just more support for my campaign to change Reason’s slogan to “Arbeit macht frei.”)

Except for one query on the candidates’ plans to address the state’s perpetual water shortage, the questions were uniformly dull, and it was a pretty substanceless debate.

A month ago, if you’d asked me to build a scenario in which one Republican wins a prominent California race and another loses, I’d have picked the hail and well met Whitman as the winner and the weird, offputting Fiorina as the loser. One debate in, I think I might be ready to reverse that.

brown whitman debate

No Ordinary Family Premieres on ABC – The last line up of fall season premieres are now coming up. A new show entitled, “No Ordinary Family” premieres on ABC, September 28. The show is a one-hour sci-fi drama. Episodes for No Ordinary Family will be aired every Tuesday at 8pm ET/PT.

The cast of “No Ordinary Family” includes Michael Chiklis as Jim Powell, a police artist who is super-strong, nearly invulnerable, and can leap tall building; Julie Benz as Stephanie Powell – a scientist with super speed; Kay Panabaker as Daphne Powell, a teenager with telepathy; Jimmy Bennett as JJ Powell, a teenager with vast intelligence; Romany Malco as George St. Cloud; Tate Donovan as Mitch McCutcheon; Autumn Reeser as Katie Andrews; Christina Chang as Det. Yvonne Cho; Stephen Collins as Dr. Dayton King; and Josh Stewart as Watcher.

Technically, this television series seems like “The Incredibles” to me or another sort of Heroes type of television series. Will a series like this work for the viewers? We have to first take a look at what “No Ordinary Family” has to offer along the series before we can safely conclude about their success.

So here is a sneak peak of “No Ordinary Family” on ABC.

no ordinary family

WORCESTER —  Students returned to Grafton Street School’s Building 2 today, a week after a mercury spill closed the building and started a cleanup effort that stretched into homes and after-school programs.

‘ Tomorrow at 6 p.m., the school department will hold an informational meeting for parents of Grafton Street School students at St. Stephen’s Church at Grafton and Hamilton streets.

Screening teams were still visiting homes of Grafton Street students today to see if mercury contamination found on students’ clothes and belongings last week had left any contamination in the homes, said Catherine Young, an on-scene coordinator with the EPA. Teams have already visited most of the approximately 100 houses they had planned to.

The total cost of the cleanup is unknown, but the city and school department’s share could run approximately ,000, according to the city’s Emergency Management Division.

Brian E. Allen, chief financial and operations officer for the Worcester public schools, said he is trying to figure out the school system’s portion and where it will come from but hopes to have the figure for the Oct. 7 School Committee meeting. The school’s costs will be taken out of the district’s overall budget, not Grafton Street School’s budget specifically, he said.

As of today, the school department plans to pay for the cost of cleaning up the school, while other agencies will pay for the home visits, said Nicholas Child, chief of emergency response for the Department of Environmental Protection’s central regional office.

“Both DEP and EPA, we know we’re spending taxpayer money when we do this kind of stuff, so we’re very diligent in how we do this,” Mr. Child said.

“If we find the person who is responsible, we will certainly bill them,” he said.

One of the biggest pieces of the puzzle is where the mercury came from and why anyone had nearly a half pint in a bottle. A sixth-grader brought it to school Sept. 21 and showed his teacher. The student’s home had to be evacuated and decontaminated.

State and local authorities are investigating the mercury’s origin, Mr. Child said.

“We don’t know how they could have gotten a hold of it yet,” he said of the student.

The cleanup effort involved relocating students for three days, checking students’ homes and that of at least one faculty member, and collecting 187 urine samples from students and faculty. None of those samples had elevated mercury levels, according to the state Department of Public Health. One hundred fifty of those samples were from students in Grafton Street School Building 2, and the rest were from staff (fewer than 10, according to city Commissioner of Public Health Dr. Leonard J. Morse), siblings of students and some students from Building 1, according to the state health department.

Dr. Morse visited Grafton Street School this morning.

“Everything is copasetic,” he said.

In addition to tomorrow’s meeting, there is a toll-free number at the EPA parents can call with questions related to the mercury spill: (888) 372-7341 (1-888-EPA-REG1).

Contact Jacqueline Reis at jreis@telegram.com.

is there school tomorrow

The Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade County school districts announced late Tuesday that they would remain open Wednesday. Broward district administrators said they will continue to monitor weather reports. Sustained wind speeds must reach 40 mph before school are closed, officials said.

All Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Miami follow Broward County. Pine Crest School also follows Broward County. However, American Heritage in Plantation will be closed Wednesday, according to an email the school sent parents.

Palm Beach County public schools will be operating on time Wednesday, unless a change to the storm track or intensity overnight requires a change, spokesman Nat Harrington said Tuesday night.

“Based on an assessment of all of the information, it appears this will be a rain event, that winds will not prevent buses from running and that student and staff safety will not be jeopardized,” Harrington said.

Any announcements regarding changes to afterschool activities will be made on Wednesday.

Palm Beach parents can check www.palmbeachschools.org for updates. The district also says it will contact the media and use its automated phone calling system to contact all parents.

Broward parents can check www.browardschools.com for updates.

At Florida’s major colleges and universities, classes were scheduled to be in session Wednesday, including Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University, Nova Southeastern University, the University of Miami and South Florida’s three community colleges. Several schools set up employee and student hotlines and put notices on their websites saying they would continue to monitor the tropical storm and post any updates.

“Any student or employee who feels that his or her routine activities during this time, such as driving through flooded areas, could pose a risk to personal safety or the safety of others, should speak with his or her professor or supervisor,” according to an FIU statement.nts for help in keeping students safe, including dressing for travel in rainy weather, especially during afternoon dismissal.

broward schools

Gordon Ramsay, host of “Kitchen Nightmares,” during an appearance at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on August 2, 2010 in Beverly Hills, California. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images photo)

(CBS) Suicide claims more than 34,000 Americans every year, and it looks as if two recent victims had one thing in common:

Both were former contestants on a reality show notorious for dishing out tough love to aspiring chefs.

Joseph Cerniglia, 39, of Pompton Lakes, N.J., apparently leaped to his death yesterday from the George Washington Bridge, the New York Post reported. The owner of a restaurant in suburban New York, Cerniglia had appeared in 2007 on “Kitchen Nightmares,” a show that subjected struggling restaurateurs to harsh criticism from English foodie Gordon Ramsay.

In 2007, 41-year-old Rachel Brown shot herself after to death after appearing on “Hell’s Kitchen,” another show that featured Ramsay.

Ramsay is famously tough on contestants.

“Your business is about to f – - king swim down the Hudson,” Ramsay told Cerniglia, the married father of three, according to the Daily Mail.

Does that kind of talk drive people to kill themselves?

Probably not, says the former president of the American Academy of Suicidology, Dr. Robert Yufit.

“My guess is that both of these people had major problems before appearing on the show,” Yufit told CBS News. “I would almost bet that the show itself should not be held responsible. I would say say that the show might have tripped off something else that was going on in their lives.

Yufit, a Chicago-based clinical psychologist, said he wasn’t acquainted with the particulars of the deaths. But, he said, the ways Cerniglia and Brown apparently killed themselves suggest that both were determined to die.

“Shooting yourself and jumping off a bridge are extreme situations where death is almost a certainty,” he said. That’s not the case with pills and other, less violent forms of “self-harm, he said.

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