Crazy week! First, there was a storm a-brewin' around normally-dull judicial elections that got much stormier when a pastor turned up dead. The background: Religious leaders who supported Prop 8 are organizing to throw equality-minded judges off the bench in June primaries. They're backed by the National Organization for Marriage -- itself under fire this week for questionably legal campaign practices, as always -- and have the backing of anti-gay legislators. (Didn't we learn a lesson about anti-gay politicians last week? Speaking of which, keep your eye on Steve Poizner, an anti-gay gubernatorial candidate who spoke out against gay families. He's currently married to a woman with whom he purports to have had a daughter.)

The Conservative Versus Judges Show is a pretty shrewd strategy: as the ACLU's Matt Coles pointed out, this is a battle that'll be won or lost in courts, so having sympathetic judges would be an advantage to either side. But an unexpected surprise could change everything: in the middle of the week, the guy leading the movement to boot pro-gay judges died of a heart attack! PLOT TWIST. It's unclear what happens now.

Elsewhere, the folks pushing the 2010 repeal of Prop 8 announced that voters can now sign the petition electronically from an iPhone. Neat! But word isn't really getting out: there's been almost no press attention, and the campaign doesn't have the money to advertise. And you thought the Prop 8 campaign had messaging problems.

And there was one more legal skirmish this week: the ACLU and EQCA went to court to argue that they shouldn't have to release confidential memos. Judge Walker seemed nonplussed by their arguments, annoyed that they pointed out that he was frequently overruled by other judges, and frustrated by the delay caused by the challenge. In fact, he eventually stormed out of the courtroom in the middle of the No-On-8 side's argument. NICE WORK GUYS. No word on when Walker will rule, and still no sign of when closing arguments might happen.