On Friday, San Diego's City Attorney issued a full opinion on the Blackwater issue, calling for an immediate stop-work order and environmental impact report. This was most certainly a welcome development, but even more encouraging was the response from Mayor Sanders, who agreed and "ordered work to stop on Blackwater Worldwide's proposed military training facility in Otay Mesa."

A Sanders spokesperson explained that the Mayor would revisit the issue after the city's CEO completes an ordered review of the permitting process- due May 23. So this buys at least a week and is a demonstrable step in the right direction from the Mayor's office. If he does in fact stick to his good governance guns, there's simply no way that Blackwater's new facility fits under the permits that have been issued. It will be important to find out what went wrong in the process and fix it, but first we've got to prevent the bad outcome.

Brian Bonfiglio, for his part, did his usual bang-up job of making Blackwater look condescending and tone-deaf:

It is tragic that City Attorney Aguirre is driving Mayor Sanders to turn our troops and the San Diego economy into unwilling pawns in an Election Year game. However one feels about the war in Iraq, one cannot doubt that the Navy needs Blackwater to provide its sailors with specialized training, and one similarly cannot doubt that San Diego needs all the taxpaying businesses it can get, to fuel its economy during these challenging times.

First of all, the San Diego economy is not an "unwilling pawn" in an election. It's one of the more relevant issues. Second of all, Bonfiglio is subtlely insulting the military here by proudly declaring that they can't handle their own training. Memo to Bonfiglio: insulting the local military community is unlikely to win you their favor. Third, folks in the military know full well that Blackwater's employees haven't helped anything in Iraq, so trying to cozy up now as a friend of the troops is even more unimpressive. Finally, the condescending picture of Blackwater as the savior of poor, destitute San Diego is as absurd as it is demeaning while also suggesting that Blackwater has plans for far more than just a single Navy contract.

It's great to see Aguirre and Sanders getting some movement against this sham of a permit process and taking steps to Block Blackwater (again). It'll be important to watch where this leads and stay on the local government to see this through to the end.