BREAKING: Riverside County to Move Forward with "South California" Talks

The Sacramento Bee reports some intriguing news this evening: the Board of Supervisors in Riverside County has endorsed Supervisor Jeff Stone's proposal to enter discussions with officials in 12 other California counties about splitting off into a new state called "South California."

The approval came with a catch: the County will not allow Stone to use taxpayer funds to pursue the secession plan. His staffers, however, say that their office is being flooded with volunteers offering to help. And we'd like to think that the pro-secession crowd wouldn't have it any other way.

Most of the Bee's article is devoted to listing the obstacles facing the plan, which is odd considering what a long shot it is. We expected more dismissals like this one from Jerry Brown's spokesman: "If you want to live in a Republican state with very conservative right-wing laws, then there's a place called Arizona." (We're guessing the spokesman wasn't aware that 177,000 Californians decamped for the Grand Canyon State between 2005 and 2009.) We're not ready to take the idea of South California seriously just yet, so it's interesting that the Sacramento paper of record felt compelled to complain about it in such detail.