ICE agents have reportedly claimed to be police officers to gain consent to enter a person’s home – a tactic that is viewed as unethical, but within the powers granted to the officers. Civil rights groups supported Kalra’s bill, looking to stymie the Trump administration’s promise to use any and all available tools to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Many groups fear Trump will expand deportations to include all undocumented immigrants, their families and relatives.   read more

To right-wingers, they are “Obamaphones,” government handouts for people who abuse taxpayer generosity by illegally hoarding the freebies and fraudulently exploiting the system for personal gain. To the poor people who take advantage of Lifeline, the federal program that subsidizes phone service, its expansion in California to include free access to cellphones is an opportunity to communicate in a modern world the way most people do.   read more

Four years ago, the Los Angeles Times was skeptical of Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris’ push for solar power and his avowed goal of eliminating the city’s carbon footprint within 10 years. The reporter called it an “unlikely development” in the “straight-laced conservative area.” The mayor announced last week that the city will rewrite its residential building code to require all newly-constructed single-family homes to have solar panels starting January 1, 2014.   read more

While state and federal governments increasingly opt for austerity measures over infrastructure investments to cope with the never-ending 2008 economic downturn, California streets and roads are crumbling A just–released report, sponsored by the League of California Cities, California State Association of Counties and other transportation entities, calls the situation a “crisis” and says it will take more than $82 billion over 10 years to bring California streets and roads up to par.   read more

Yahoo isn’t alone in reversing course on what had been a flexible use of telecommuting by its employees. The California Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) is no longer allowing its workers to live in Switzerland while they technically work in Sacramento.   read more

If Teri James hadn’t gotten pregnant she would probably still have her job at San Diego Christian College. But even at a school where virgin birth is not unheard of, James’ pregnancy was undeniable evidence that she had participated in premarital sex. And that, James claims, is why they fired her last October.   read more

The 2011 state realignment plan to reduce the state prison inmate population and comply with federal court edicts over overcrowding has had the not-unexpected result of adding more prisoners to the already over-crowded county jails.   read more

The study was part of a larger project called CalWater, which began in 2009 as a 3-year, $3 million inquiry. Lauren Morello at Climate Central describes its mission succinctly: “How do aerosols affect cloud formation and precipitation? Where are the aerosols that reach the Sierra Nevada coming from? And how will atmospheric rivers—weather systems that transport huge amounts of water across the Pacific into California—change as the climate warms?”   read more

The Consumer Sentinel Network (CSN), an online database of complaints gleaned from hundreds of local, state, federal and foreign sources, ranked California third in identity theft complaints per capita, behind Florida and Georgia, in 2012. That’s about a 5.4% rate increase over 2011, although the state’s rank didn’t change.   read more

No state’s residents are worse than Californians when it comes to claiming food stamp benefits from the federal government. Fifty-five percent of eligible Californians decline to apply for federally-funded nutrition benefits on a yearly basis, according to California Food Policy Advocates (CFPA), leaving $4.7 billion in Washington.   read more

Karl Rove was in California Saturday exhorting the state's Republicans to improve communication of their “timeless principles” in order to recover from their dismal political showings of late. Comments last week by Celeste Greig, president of the California Republican Assembly (the state's oldest and largest GOP volunteer organization), probably weren't exactly what he had in mind.   read more

While local, national and international debate rages over the use of drones for surveillance and war, the only question at the Point Mugu Naval Base is when can they get started on establishing a new drone center there. The U.S. Navy is seeking public comment on its draft environmental plan to base four remote-controlled Triton Unmanned Aircraft Systems at Point Mugu.   read more

Right now, sequester means we have a lot more stories in the press about what sequester might mean. But if Congress fails to enact meaningful, long-term measures soon the budget-slashing process it put in place nearly two years ago will take some luster off the Golden State.   read more

Apparently state officials think a debate between the federal courts and California over the mental and physical well-being of prisoners is best served by hiding important information about inmate suicides. The Los Angeles Times reported that the administration suppressed a report by national suicide prevention expert Lindsay Hayes in 2011 that the system for holding suicidal patients in tiny, filthy, airless holding cells contributed to them committing suicide.   read more

Undocumented Oakland residents were offered a unique choice at the beginning of February: they could obtain the nation’s first combo municipal identification/debit card and run a higher risk of fraud, or stick with cash and run the higher risk of getting mugged.   read more

Thousands of California public school instructors, do not have proper qualifications to teach the classes assigned to them. That number has declined over the past five years, but as a California Watch investigation showed last year, not nearly as much as bogus early state data indicated. Now, an analysis indicates that the Commission on Teacher Credentialing is misreporting the problem by using a questionable method of calculating so-called “misassignments.”   read more

Now that the $1 billion computer system that was going to link California’s judiciary has been mothballed (with half the money spent), the 58 trial courts that offered fairly uniform resistance to the effort are starting over on their own.   read more