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

The argument that corporations are people has been famously made by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney—“Corporations are people, too, my friend” —and affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2010 landmark Citizens United case that unleashed untold millions of dollars in dark money on the U.S. political system.   read more

Laguna Niguel dentist, lawyer and full-time “birther” Orly Taitz lost yet another challenge to the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency when a U.S. District Court judge rejected her petition last week to halt counting of Electoral College votes.   read more

As the Bush tax cuts rolled toward their 10-year, January 1 expiration date, California budgetmeisters were eyeing a potential windfall. A resumption of higher pre-2000 estate tax levels would generate billions of dollars in extra federal revenues, millions of which would be passed along to California through the resuscitated state estate tax credit that died in 2004 as part of the Bush tax cuts.   read more

A new way of mapping the incidence of breast cancer in California has turned up four “areas of concern” that did not previously exist. An “area of concern,” which could be smaller than a county or stretch across county lines, is one in which breast cancer rates are 10-20% higher than the state average.   read more

Tiburcio Vasquez’ place in history has been primarily a subject for historians, but occasionally the public at large takes an interest, as did the Alisal Union School District in Salinas, which decided last month to name a school after him. Vasquez, who was hanged in 1875 for murder after 20 years of banditry, was the unanimous pick of the school board to be honored with a nameplate on the district’s newest elementary school, still under construction.   read more

ConocoPhillips and a company it spun off, Phillips 66, were sued Wednesday by California Attorney General Kamala Harris for alleged improper inspection and maintenance of 560 underground gasoline storage tanks across the state. The civil lawsuit, alleged that the two companies “tampered with or disabled leak detection devices,” didn’t “maintain operational alarm systems” and “improperly handled and disposed of hazardous wastes and materials” associated with the tanks since 2006.   read more

If only the man who had crawled into bed with the woman―known in the court record as Jane Doe―had impersonated a husband instead of a boyfriend, he would have been guilty of rape. Instead, the California Court of Appeal for the Second District ruled that the state Penal Code is clear: sex-by-impersonation is only rape when the impersonator is pretending to be a spouse.   read more

Drivers with suspended licenses or none at all are nearly three times more likely to cause fatal accidents than lawful drivers in California, according to a study of fatal automobile crashes. The study was seized upon by those with an anti-immigration bent as evidence that visitors from other countries pose a threat to the state’s safety and well-being.   read more

Four years after the last group of investors, led by billionaire Sam Zell, extended years of asset extraction from the Los Angeles Times parent Tribune Co. by filing for bankruptcy, the company has emerged from Chapter 11 and is back in the marketplace.   read more

The lawsuit, using blunt language, goes on to say, “The Japanese government kept representing that there was no danger of radiation contamination to the U.S.S. Reagan (CVN-76) and/or its crew, that ‘everything is under control,’ ‘all is OK, you can trust us,’ and there is ‘no immediate danger’ or threat to human life, all the while lying through their teeth about the reactor meltdowns.”   read more

Buried among the bribery, conspiracy and fraud detailed in the California State Auditor’s “whistleblower” report released last month is the tale of a state employee who had an overwhelming desire to comment on stories published by the Sacramento Bee.   read more

For various reasons―including budget restraints, policy priorities, politics and convenience―neither the Attorney General’s office, law enforcement nor the state Medical Board that oversees physicians have utilized the database much to track down corrupt or negligent doctors who are illegally prescribing boatloads of drugs to the addicted and undeserving, often to the detriment of their patients.   read more

Lawmakers who have been the subject of congressional investigations for possible VIP treatment from California-based Countrywide Financial, a firm at the heart of the mortgage meltdown in 2008, got a clean bill of health from the House Ethics Committee last week.   read more

There are 876 new laws poised to take effect today, or shortly thereafter, passed by the Legislature and signed by Governor Jerry Brown during the past year. Another 120 bills were vetoed by the governor, and the absence of some could prove as meaningful as those that survived.   read more

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers giveth, and the Army Corps taketh away. A lush 43-acre area in Southern California’s Sepulveda Basin, cultivated by the corps in the mid-1980s as a wildlife preserve in the Los Angeles Flood Plain, was decimated by the same corps seeking to rid the site of homeless people and lewd behavior. The Army Corps clearcut cottonwood and willow groves, home to mammals, reptiles and 250 species of local and migratory birds.   read more

The high court, on a 6-1 vote, said that “the state's interest in promoting collective bargaining to resolve labor disputes” accorded unions special protection from laws which recognize that private walkways in front of stores are not fair game for anyone who wants to be a presence.   read more