Thanks for the clarification! My understanding was that the liquor license could not be transferred, and that it was due to expire this week anyway, thus the rush for the new one.
Do you think the judge would/should be censured in some way? She apparently signed off without an affidavit of probable cause, and there was no actual urgency to the search warrant. Plus she should have (theoretically, at least) known that you can't (generally) use search warrantss on newspapers.
I'm not sure how much the DA (CA) was involved. With the county apparently being run this unofficially, it's possible the sheriff went straight to the judge. I will note that the DA is the brother of the hotel owner, though whether that figured into his/her calculations (if indeed they were involved) I don't know.