On the Lookout for an Inside News Beat About the Border

It pays to pay attention.

* Problems at the San Diego-Tijuana portion of the U.S.-Mexico border continue to be a hot story for the international press corps.

Among those sending reporters here in recent weeks: Basque television, Canadian television, Le Monde, The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and a Dutch magazine for a story on “Het Tortilla Gordijn” (The Tortilla Curtain).

A crew from the CBS show “Street Stories” is set to arrive in a few weeks and has already contacted veteran Tijuana television reporter Lourdes Sandoval for assistance.

The CBS story may prove to be the splashiest yet. Tentative plans are to fit Sandoval with a hidden camera and have her pose as an illegal immigrant sneaking across the border.

* Banner from the top floor of the office building under Interstate 805 bridge over Mission Valley: “Ideas . . . they have the power. Napoleon Hill.”

For the non-cognoscenti, Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich” was a cult hit in the 1930s and still sells big-time.

* Ed Meese comes to San Diego today to sign copies and do interviews for his new book, “With Reagan: The Inside Story.”

Meese whacks old rivals (primarily David Stockman), says the press misunderstood his boss and blames Iran-Contra on Jimmy Carter.

Meese’s advance men (no joke) are providing questions for pliant reporters: viz, “Do we really need another book about Ronald Reagan and his presidency?”

Good question.

* The night of June 25 should be memorable for Richard W. Jacobsen, soon to depart the county government payroll as director of the Department of Social Services.

That’s the night welfare employees are throwing a farewell party for him at the Town & Country Hotel.

It’s also the night that ABC’s “Prime Time Live” airs a story on the scandal in Jacobsen’s department, in which welfare fraud investigator David Sossaman blames Jacobsen for not detecting phony welfare payments that cost taxpayers plenty.

Judging Remarks About Judges

That was then, this is now (but with an explanation).

A few days before the recent election, the San Diego Union-Tribune published a letter from prominent San Diego defense attorney John J. Cleary warning of the dangers of reelecting incumbent judges.

The letter was written in response to an editorial calling for the reelection of two judges who are former prosecutors.

Wrote Cleary: “A policy of controlled turnover would encourage a diversity of capable advocates to serve. Long-term institutionalized judicial service is unhealthy for the judge and the community.”

Then again, Cleary has not always appeared so adamant that the republic is imperiled by a long-serving judiciary.

During the Carter Administration, he applied (unsuccessfully) for a federal appellate judgeship: a lifetime appointment with no provisions for election, turnover or diversity.

That’s true, says Cleary, 56, who once headed Federal Defenders and now partners with Charles Sevilla.

But he adds that he only applied as a semi-lark, so someone from San Diego would be considered, and that he only planned to remain a judge a few years and then return to practicing law.

“I would like to think there would be life after a federal judgeship,” he says.

Fleeting Moment of Film Fame

Cultural watch.

* There’s always a local angle.

That’s C. Brian Bunn, 43, who grew up in Lakeside and graduated from El Capitan High in 1965, in the background behind Tom Cruise in a climactic scene in “Far and Away.”

Bunn, who now lives in Missouri, was among a group of animal handlers hired to be part of the Oklahoma land rush scenes, which were shot in Montana.

Bunn drove a team of oxen for a month’s worth of shooting. He’s in the film for 30 seconds.

* San Diego actress Avalon Anders, best known for her appearance in the “Swedish bikini team” commercial for Old Milwaukee Beer, has a new part: in National Lampoon’s new movie, “Loaded Weapon.”

(If I didn’t tell you about these things, who would?)