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

An innovative plan by the University of California to offer online courses at relatively modest prices to people outside the UC system has run into a formidable obstacle—free stuff available from great schools like Harvard and Stanford.   read more

In the still untamed world of mobile applications for cellphones and tablets, you can lead developers to privacy guidelines, but can you make them partake? California Attorney General Kamala Harris thinks so and last week the state Department of Justice released “Privacy on the Go,” recommendations for developers on how to avoid compromising the privacy of mobile device users.   read more

A killer and rapist who begged for execution in the ‘60s, but was instead paroled in 1990, confessed to killing his 90-year-old mother last week and is back in jail. Dennis Stanworth, 70, killed two women and raped at least four others during a Bay Area rampage in the mid-‘60s noted for its brutality. He got caught, pleaded guilty and begged for the death penalty. He got it in 1966, but it didn’t stick.   read more

While Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed 2013-14 state budget was hailed in many government quarters upon its release yesterday, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye had to settle for being “relieved” that it wasn’t much worse for the judicial branch.   read more

The first Democrat elected mayor in San Diego since Maureen O’Connor in 1986 wasted little time in shaking up that famously staunch Republican city when he denounced the “persecution” of medical marijuana dispensaries by the city attorney and demanded that prosecutions of pot shops be stopped.   read more

It seemed like a prudent move four years ago―after the cargo ship Cosco Busan smashed into the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on a foggy morning, spilling 53,000 gallons of bunker fuel―for the Harbor Safety Committee to ban large ships from sailing when visibility is low. The Bay region is one of the foggiest harbors in the United States.   read more

Who could have predicted that giant financial institutions would lie about a key benchmark that they self-report on the honor system and is used to calculate the interest rates used by banks loaning money to each other? Eight California cities, counties and other entities joined a parade of institutional investors this week who claim they were ripped off by major banks through their manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor).   read more

State Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, speaking at a press conference Tuesday, said he was surprised, angered and stirred to action by the “unreasonable” rate increases, but he has virtually no power to make health insurers hold back on increases. California, unlike 37 other states, does not regulate health premiums.   read more

Governor Jerry Brown threatened a U.S. Supreme Court fight if federal authorities don’t relinquish their 7-year control of California’s prison system and stop forcing the state to pour money down a “rat hole of incarceration.” The governor declared the “prison crisis is over” and the “job’s done” at a press conference on Tuesday, the day after the state handed over its admittedly deficient court-ordered plan for further reducing the prison population by June and improving inmate health care.   read more

The U.S. Supreme Court waded into admittedly polluted waters on Monday when it unanimously ruled that Los Angeles County cannot be held responsible for the effluence that runs through the L.A. River on its way to being dumped in the Santa Monica Bay. Local governments essentially argued that so many communities along the Los Angeles, Santa Clara and San Gabriel rivers were dumping so much crap in them that it was virtually impossible at this point to assign blame to anyone for the pollution.   read more

Despite state laws legalizing medical marijuana, the former owner of three pot shops in Southern California’s Inland Empire was sentenced by a federal judge to 10 years in prison on Monday. Aaron Sandusky was found guilty of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and intent to distribute at his G3 Holistic facilities after a jury trial last October that was largely devoid of discussion about the conflict between state and federal law.   read more

Among the competing ideas in the complicated debate over how best to secure sensitive medical records during a healthcare revolution in an uncertain digital age, one of the proffered solutions is decidedly NOT to store them in Stephan and Liza Dean’s house and garage.   read more

California courts have not been very accommodating to the Roman Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America this past week, refusing to let them shield their files on child abusers in their midst from public scrutiny.   read more

Considering that San Onofre nuclear energy is almost certain to be absent again next summer, JPMorgan’s attempt to block renovations at a power plant in Southern California was bound to engender another round of jousting with regulators.   read more

A San Diego Superior Court judge smacked down the state’s main child welfare agency for writing regulations that short-circuited a 5-year-old law meant to increase public access to information about kids who died while under its supervision.   read more

How the California Department of Parks and Recreation came to possess millions of unreported dollars sometime in 1996 “may never be fully understood,” the state Attorney General’s office reported last week. But sometime between 1999 and 2003 the merely suspicious became deliberate subterfuge, and for the next nine years, until the scandal broke last year, a parks fund that topped $29 million at one point sat hidden from view.   read more