Here is another scrap of good political news. Don Thompson reports for AP, "A powerful union representing California prison guards on Thursday dropped its recall campaign against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying it will instead focus on ballot questions and pointing out that he doesn't have much time left in office anyway."

Giving credit where it is due, we are pleased to see that an organization that made a really dumb decision realized how dumb it was and stopped. That doesn't always happen.

A little later in the story, we find out the news isn't quite as good as we thought from the first paragraph. The union's ballot measure efforts will not be focused on the criminal justice measures but instead on preserving the gerrymandering that has been such a large factor in making the California Legislature the dysfunctional mess that it is. Oh, well.