First footage from 'Jon & Kate Plus 8's' new season

California appealing video game violence bill to the Supreme Court

California is taking one last stab at saving the state's video game violence bill.

Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown announced today that he would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Appeals Court and District Court rulings that invalidated the bill on First Amendment grounds.

"These video game makers are shamelessly exploiting vulnerable children for profit," Brown told The Times in an interview. "And in the same way pornography can be banned, pornographic violence can be banned as well."

The law, which Gov. Schwarzenegger signed into law in late 2005, requires that video games deemed by the state to be "violent" be labeled with the numeral "18." Retailers who sell or rent such games to anyone younger than 18 could be fined as much as $1,000.

Video game publishers and retailers have consistently opposed such laws by arguing that their voluntary ratings system, similar to the one used for movies, is sufficient and that games shouldn't be treated differently than other media.

"We are confident that this appeal will meet the same fate as the state's previous failed efforts to regulate what courts around the country have uniformly held to be expression that is fully protected by the First Amendment," said Michael D. Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Assn., which represents game publishers.

Eight similar laws passed by other states and localities have been struck down by courts.

Should the Supreme Court agree to hear Brown's case, it would be the first before the nation's highest judges to deal with regulation of video games. Experts have clashed over whether games, because of their interactive nature, are more likely than other media to influence children to engage in violent behavior.

Brown said he was confident the Supreme Court would take the case.

"I think, as Justice [Robert H. Jackson] once said, that the Constitution is not a suicide pact," Brown stated. "Disseminating this kind of poison to children is noxious."

-- Ben Fritz

Photo: Jerry Brown. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

First footage from 'Jon & Kate Plus 8's' new season

It hasn't been an easy few months for the Gosselin family.

And as you can see in this footage from the new season of "Jon & Kate Plus 8," which premieres Monday on TLC, the strain is showing, especially on Jon Gosselin.

You've no doubt heard about the scandal that has swirled around Jon and Kate Gosselin. You can't walk by a magazine rack or click on a gossip site without hearing about alleged infidelity by both parties, which Jon and Kate have both denied. Yet things appear to be quite tense. In this video, for example, Jon and Kate both look grim and they don't sit together on the couch they usually share for interviews.

Most notably, there's something flat and listless about Jon's voice. "Too much of anything is bad," he says. It certainly looks as though too much attention from the tabloids has taken its toll on the father of eight (one set of twins and one set of sextuplets). 

A TLC representative said that this 2-minute clip would be the only new footage that the media would get before the show's premiere. I'll be writing a more extensive "Jon & Kate" review that will run on Monday. But I wanted to share this clip now and also ask you this question: Do the recent stories about "Jon & Kate" make you more or less likely to watch the show?

I think I will argue in my upcoming piece that the controversy may garner even more viewers for "Jon & Kate," which, as media writer Kim Masters noted in this piece, is already a "monster hit" for TLC. One of the attractions of the show has always been the tension between Jon, who seems passive and hapless, and Kate, who, even before the recent headlines, came off as a control freak.

Now that those tensions are at an all-time high, could the show draw even more than the 4.6 million viewers who watched the previous season? What do you think?

Wanderlust: A beach that offers more than just sun and sand
A newly reopened beach at Fort Ord offers more than sun and sand.
TV Networks Preview Fall Shows

TV networks roll out their fall schedules this week. Ken Tucker, editor-at-large and TV critic for Entertainment Weekly, talks about the big surprises so far.