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The California Supreme Court earlier today refused to review the appeal by former supervisor candidate Trung Nguyen challenging the recount that gave Janet Nguyen her election victory by 3 votes. See docket here.

That should be the end of all various complaints and lawsuits filed by the Garden Grove School Board member and his mastermind Mike Schroeder. (Unless the Bolsavik missed something, which is very much possible considering the number of proceedings held.)

There were also at least three other complaints - two with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, and one with Attorney General Jerry Brown. All three deal with just one topic: Janet Nguyen had set up a legal defense fund to fight Trung Nguyen’s lawsuit, but it turned out county rules don’t allow legal defense funds, so she had the money returned. The legal defense funds were in her attorney’s account, so the attorney wrote the refund checks, and they bounced. He wrote new checks.

Janet paid $5,000 in fines to the FPPC for the illegal legal defense fund. The return of the money mooted the other two complaints (the one filed with Jerry Brown claimed that because the checks bounced, Janet committed perjury).

Meanwhile, after trial judge Mike Brenner ruled on the recount and gave Janet her 3-vote victory, Trung Nguyen filed for a writ of mandate (a sort of emergency appeal) to the Court of Appeal. He lost. So he filed a regular appeal.

When he lost the emergency appeal, the Board of Supervisors voted to seat Janet, who took office as the highest ranking Vietnamese-American in county politics. That new reality on the ground made it very difficult for Trung’s court case. Predictably, Trung lost the regular appeal as well. So he sought review by the high court. That is the review that the Supreme Court declined today.

The Court of Appeal’s opinion is here. The earlier denial of writ of mandate is here.

The OC Register’s Peggy Lowe has an entry about the Supreme Court’s denial of review here.

Photo by Mark Boster, L.A. Times

Black April is the name Vietnamese overseas give to April 30, the anniversary of the day in 1975 when Saigon fell to the communist forces.

This year’s Black April story in the L.A. Times is this piece by My-Thuan Tran, entitled “Lives remembered, lives rebuilt, attitudes changing — 33 years after South Vietnam fell.”

Tran did a really good job capturing the diverse lines of thoughts in the Vietnamese-American community on what to do with the communist government back in Southeast Asia. At the risk of being branded a commie (again!), the Bolsavik highly commends this piece for being very different from the normal (and effortlessly routine after 33 repeats) memorial stories that usually occupy the “Black April specials.”

Quote:

Thirty-three years after the Vietnam War ended, the fallen country of South Vietnam lives on — in the streets of Orange County’s Little Saigon and in the minds of thousands of refugees who fled communist forces and rebuilt their lives here.

The memories of hardship are still so bitter for some that they continue to mount street protests, fly the South Vietnamese flag from businesses and lampposts, and rail against communism on radio talk shows.

Now there are signs of shifting attitudes in the historically anticommunist community, the largest Vietnamese enclave in the U.S.

Vietnamese Americans are beginning to see opportunity in their home country, and increasingly, people are moving back, expanding their business ties or starting humanitarian organizations to improve the lives of those in Vietnam — actions barely imaginable a decade ago.

Though the change is subtle and those who associate with Vietnam often keep a low profile, the movement is remarkable in a community where a statue of a South Vietnamese soldier stands near the civic center and noisy street protests against perceived communist sympathizers are still routine.

Be sure to click on the Audio Slide Show.

Very nicely done, featuring the voices of (pictured right, top to bottom; photos by Mark Boster, LA Times): Tammy Tran, political activist and founder of VietACT, an anti-human trafficking advocacy group; Quynh Kieu, a pediatrician who led medical missions to Vietnam; Linda T. Vo, Chair of UCI’s Asian-American Studies Department; and Bill Pham, an enterpreneur who opened a clean-energy technology company in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Jeff Tatch killed two birds with one stone yesterday.

Coming out of the arraignment for Ky Ngo, the attorney went over to the courtroom next door. There, he got the arraignment for Trong Doan (pictured), another lead protester and also a client of Tatch’s, advanced. The arraignment on Doan’s assault and battery charges had been originally scheduled for May 1.

Tatch told the Bolsavik that he “entered a plea of not guilty and set a pretrial date” as well as “ordered all discovery.”

Trong Doan’s next court date is now the pretrial on May 28, a week after Ky Ngo’s. Doan’s jury trial is set for June 10. Ngo doesn’t have a trial date yet.

Read more about the alleged assault and battery here.