Paper Jam? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Paper Jam!

From Sacramento's Capitol Morning Report:

A memo to staffers in the Capitol: if you're photocopying a sensitive document--especially one that may be political in nature (and not official government work)-- you might want to remove any paper jam and take the crumpled copy with you when you leave.

That would have been good advice to follow for the staffer yesterday who was making a copy of what appears to be a political strategy memo from the Latino Legislative Caucus, a caucus of Democratic Latino lawmakers.

Three pages were reportedly found jammed in the machine, and made their ways into the hands of the California Republican Party, who then distributed them to reporters.

Oops.

While some of the printing fell victim to a lack of toner, you can clearly read passages about the caucus' efforts to defeat the initiatives of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. That includes spending more than $2.7 million on everything from a campaign to encourage Latinos to vote absentee to a phone bank to call Latino voters.

The memo's summary says "the Schwarzenegger initiatives to cut programs, control legislative redistricting, and to rob teachers of the needed benefits of tenure along with the right-wing initiatives to attack working families are the greatest threat to progressive politics in the history of politics."

The issue, say Republicans, is that the memo seems to be political work being promoted (or copied, to be accurate) on the taxpayer's dime. The chief of staff to Latino Caucus chair Senator Martha Escutia (D-Whittier) says the senator has never even seen the memo, but admits that the mystery staffer clearly made a "mistake" by using a government copier-- one she says won't happen again.

A while back a top Dem strategy session went out over a speaker phone to Repubs. They never learn, but they keep holding onto the California legislature.