With Chris Daly focusing on the birth of his second child (congrats, Chris and Sarah!), SF Board of Supes prez Aaron Peskin has manfully taken over the essential city function of provoking District 2's Michela Alioto-Pier: today's Matier and Ross column has MAP running crying to City Attorney Dennis Herrera and DA Kamala Harris about Aaron Peskin telling her "payback's a bitch" when she asked why he'd changed his vote on her proposed charter......

-- Judge tosses out California's new lethal injection procedures. [SFGate] -- DA Kamala Harris and the quality o' life. [BeyondChron] -- Robert Goulet dies. Sniff. [CBS5] -- Not everyone is happy about BART's Halloween closure. Including some BART elected officials. [SFBG] -- Gizmodo gets put under the BetterKnowanSFBlog microscope. [The Snitch] -- Howard Street convicted of attempted murder for shooting a Berkeley copper. [Inside Bay Area]......

E to the Dizzo, J to the Ew-wo -- not guilty, we gots to feel him! Ed Jew, in an American flag tie, appeared in state criminal court today and pled not guilty to the charges of lying about his residency, but not before waving at and hugging members of a 100-deep cheering crowd outside the courthouse. Just to remind, today's hearing was just on the charges that DA Kamala Harris filed -- the......

Man, we're bummed the Chron still hasn't put back up the pictures of the Canton Flower Shop and their stymied attempts to inspect the legendary shower in the back -- but we do have a new Matier and Ross column to summarize from the Tapioca Ed perspective: we call it M&R and Everyone We Know. --First up -- Ed Jew himself: M&R repeat what faithful SFist readers recalled earlier this week: DA Kamala Harris......

DA Kamala Harris wants more prosecutors on her team -- which seems to be a smart move for a DA that's been criticized in some circles for being soft and rarely prosecuting. But her reasoning for beefin' up the staff? To tackle the "quality of life" crimes of graffiti, prostitution and aggressive panhandling that, according to Harris, can graduate to more serious crimes....

In a sad story, the wife of the dean of the USF School of Education was killed when a Cadillac Escalade making a U-turn hit an SUV going through the intersection. The SUV careened into two people in the intersection and then slammed up against the wall of a building, and the wife of the dean was pinned under the car. There's upsetting pictures from the scene online too. A freshman possibly on shrooms fell......

--They want to put more antennas on Sutro Tower. --Are you ashamed to be anti-Daly? --Expect ads for Tanqueray on your BART commute soon. --50 years of Lockheed Martin. --DA Kamala Harris is convicting more people. --It's Leather Pride week starting this weekend! --The Stanford band is barred from playing homecoming. --and there was a security breach on Second Life.......

50 out of 50 Wednesday precincts reporting -- Tonight: Come see newly-anointed state assembly representative Fiona Ma, along with DA Kamala Harris, performing at the SF Black Film Festival's Urban Slam spoken word event tonight, at the Theater Artaud. My name is Fiona/ Janet Reilly is bologna..... The Urban Slam starts around 8:15, after the 6:00 p.m. screening of the movie Sp!t, a documentary about the hip-hop poetry slam scene. $10 for the movie, $10 for the slam. Theater Artaud is at 450 Florida (x Mariposa). Tickets here. Thursday: Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who wrote that Sean Penn movie "21 Grams", will be at the Balboa for the 7:00 p.m. screening of "The 3 Burials of Melquidas Estrada," for which he won the Palme D'Or last year. Arriaga will be signing copies of his book The Night Buffalo starting at 6, and at 7, he'll be leading a discussion about screenwriting tips. The Balboa's at Balboa and 38th Ave. and Friday: Shoo-be-doo-waaaaaah -- the Pacific Mozart Ensemble presents an evening of a capella jazz and pop songs at the Green Room in the War Memorial Building on 401 Van Ness. $20. Finger-snapping is always our favorite. Download musical excerpts here....

Everyone's talking about the man in the SF DA's witness protection program that was shot outside a Bayview auto body shop yesterday, in broad daylight. He had testified against two murder suspects before a grand jury. DA Kamala Harris called it "horrific," but otherwise seemed remarkably unsympathetic about the situation, saying that he shouldn't have come back to the Bayview if he wanted protection. "The first and last rule in witness protection is, don't go back to your danger zone," she said. The suspects in yesterday's shooting remain at large. He's dropped the Li'l, and maybe now he should change his name to Pow-Pow -- two people were shot outside the HP Pavilion last night after the Bow Wow show. Bow Wow (no longer dating Ciara, if you care) was performing at Wild 94.9's Bomb 21 show, along with E-40, Federation, Rihanna, and Bubba Sparxxx. The two people's injuries are not considered life-threatening. And we can't tell if this is encouraging people to take public transportation or not: apparently people are now stealing gas from cars parked in BART parking lots in the East Bay. BART did warn everyone, but also doesn't plan on increasing security -- no doubt because they're like, "see? we told you it was better to take public transportation." The police say to buy a locking gas cap, or "buy a Prius." ...

Bay Area crime roundup...