Café Brioso has the best pesto on a sandwich I’ve ever had. I think what makes this pesto so unique is that they use pecans. When I am downtown and in the mood for a simple soup and sandwich combo, this is one of my favorite stops. Everything on their menu is made fresh daily, from scratch, including their Foccocia (however, that is not vegan because it has dairy in it). There are a few exceptions to their house “made from scratch” products lines; their delicious and moist artisan wheat and sourdough sandwich breads are organic and locally sourced from Dan the baker. The wheat bread contains honey and the sourdough is currently the only vegan bread option. They typically offer at least one vegan soup and often a vegan fresh fruit salad can be found. Their coffee is roasted on site and can be enhanced with a vegan milk option; I’m fond of their Ohio Maple Latte with soy milk. Warning- the downtown meter readers are predatory, so don’t park at the 30 minute meters in front of the restaurant if you plan to hold a meeting or are inclined to be distracted when running into people you haven’t seen in a while, you will get a $45 ticket.

Who knows, soon we might see headlines and cable TV shows asking: "Is Dianne Feinstein a whistleblower or a traitor?"

A truthful answer to that question could not possibly be “whistleblower.” It may already be a historic fact that Senator Feinstein’s speech on March 11, 2014 blew a whistle on CIA surveillance of the Senate intelligence committee, which she chairs. But if that makes her a whistleblower, then Colonel Sanders is a vegetarian evangelist.

In her blockbuster Tuesday speech on the Senate floor, Feinstein charged that the CIA’s intrusions on her committee’s computers quite possibly “violated the Fourth Amendment.” You know, that’s the precious amendment that Feinstein -- more than any other senator -- has powerfully treated like dirt, worthy only of sweeping under the congressional rug.

A tidy defender of the NSA’s Orwellian programs, Feinstein went on the attack against Edward Snowden from the outset of his revelations last June. Within days, she denounced his brave whistleblowing as “an act of treason” -- a position she has maintained.

Schoolboy Q sold out the Newport Saturday. The Southern-Central L.A. rapper’s new album Oxymoron had debuted on the Billboard charts as the number 1 album in the country earlier in the week. While one would assume both of those facts have an obvious correlation, I would also offer that his chart and touring success is a testament to not sensationalizing the extreme negative in marketing makes for a good financial decision in terms of touring the Live Nation/Clear Channel type of venues. There are plenty of ways to make money in rap. But this is probably the most efficient. And as the saying goes: If You Don’t Work. You Don’t Eat. Not that this a new phenomenon: A$ap Rocky packed the Newport when I saw Schoolboy Q open for him in October of 2012 and so on and so forth. In between songs, Schoolboy Q extolled the virtues of smoking weed on stage to the adulation of his audience. It was evident his label TDE’s “Black Hippy” movement was in full stride with the college crowd when coupled with obvious over-the-top success of fellow Top Dawg Entertainment recording artist Kendrick Lamar.

I wonder how the late Townes Van Zandt would feel if he knew two or three of his songs provided 15 minutes of fame and spotlight to a dozen-and-a-half performers in a crazy little time warp of a place called Dick's Den? Given the sometimes ragged but nearly always heartfelt performances Friday night in a very packed Den, I think he would've been mildly amused and secretly deeply satisfied. Because there is something very, very special about TVZ's lyrics. Has anybody lyrically captured the essence of lives lived with more naked poignancy? And with novella-like depth and tight economy, never a wasted word or an unnecessary image? If nothing else, if that were my work being sung, sometimes butchered, I'd have been prouder than a three-legged dog winning the Kentucky Derby. The glory was ragged, but the work stands.

So the Republican Party pulled it off. On Friday, March 7 Ohio Libertarian governor hopeful Charlie Earl and his Attorney General candidate Steve Linnabary found out they were no longer candidates. Through thuggish and authoritarian tactics the Republicans managed to knock the gubernatorial candidates of both the Ohio Libertarian and Ohio Green Parties off the 2014 primary ballot. How did they do it? Like any two-bit dictator, they did it by usurping the U.S. Constitution and simply outlawing all minor parties in the state of Ohio. It is very difficult to get signatures for a candidate when your party has been banned from the ballot. In legal terms, it is called “irreparable harm.” Before he was banished from the ballot, Earl was polling at 6 percent of the vote. Political pundits across the state speculated that he might cost John Kasich to lose his re-election bid. The day Earl initially announced for governor, a Republican Party Senator introduced a bill that would kill all minor parties in Ohio. Critics aptly nicknamed the bill “The John Kasich Re-Election Protection Act.”