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

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney took a swing through California on the weekend, raising money and insulting most, but not all, of the state. While bemoaning the country’s descent into a European-inspired torpor, Romney warned, “It's even possible we could be on a pathway to become California— I don't want that either.” Both those courses, he suggested, “were extremely foreign to us.”   read more

Acting as if they attended the same seminars on how to rip off the U.S. Department of Education, groups of fraudsters operating independently used stolen personal identity information and “straw students”―who have no intention of earning a credential―to steal $770,000 through California online schools and community colleges.   read more

California’s four newest cities, teetering on the brink of financial ruin, won’t be bailed out by the state government that put them in harm’s way. Governor Jerry Brown vetoed Assembly Bill 1098 this week after claiming that the state couldn’t afford to put back $18 million it took in June 2011 from the state motor vehicle license fund to pay for local public safety programs.   read more

More than one-fifth of the Forbes 400’s richest Americans live in California, not far from three of the nation’s five poorest regions. Fresno, Modesto and the Bakersfield-Delano area are among the top five U.S. regions with people living under the poverty line, according to U.S. Census figures, an area that is home to the state’s dominant $35 billion agriculture industry.   read more

Less than two months before Californians vote on whether products using genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) should be labeled as such, a new French study has cast deep doubts about the safety of the products. Peer-reviewed research by Caen University in France found that rats fed a lifelong diet of modified corn suffered breast tumors and liver and kidney damage.   read more

The federal government and more than half the states, including California, have laws allowing them to collect a person’s DNA and store it in a database without there being a criminal conviction. On Wednesday, all 11 judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sat “en banc” to hear arguments that California’s Proposition 69, passed in 2004 with strong voter support, violated the Fourth Amendment and was an unconstitutional search and seizure.   read more

Although more costly and perhaps more dangerous, sneaking into the United States by sea has become a popular alternative to crossing by land from Mexico for illegal immigrants. The switch to ocean routes began after President George W. Bush signed the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which called for beefing up physical barriers in the Southwest near the border.   read more

After years of fudging its on-time rate to meet voter-mandated standards, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency finally published honest numbers and they validated what riders already knew―buses don’t run on time very often.   read more

In what appeared to be a veto-proof 8-3 vote Tuesday night, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors ended Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) monopoly on the local consumer power market by approving a five-year contract with a company that will provide 100% renewable power.   read more

The demise of redevelopment agencies in the state, and their lucrative source of taxpayer dollars, did not slow the momentum of Anschutz Entertainment Group’s (AEG) drive to build a new football stadium in downtown Los Angeles and bring a National Football League team to the city after a 17-year absence. In the end, it appeared there remained just one force that could upend the inevitable. It was AEG, itself.   read more

The Bakersfield Condors finished last in the Western Conference of the East Coast Hockey League in 2011-12, way behind the next worst team, the Stockton Thunder, to whom it had dedicated its December 27 promotion—“Our City Isn’t Bankrupt Night.”   read more

Researchers at Stanford University recently claimed that organic foods are no safer or nutritious than conventional foods. Organic advocates were taken aback by the findings, and after doing a little digging, discovered why the experts might say such a thing. It turns out that Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which supports the academicians who released the controversial study, has received funding from the chemical and agribusiness industry.   read more

The California Teachers Association has contributed $16.1 million to oppose Proposition 32, with the knowledge that if the ballot measure passes in November, it might very well be the last time it has that kind of money to put in a political campaign. Last week, a group with ties to the conservative billionaire Koch brothers kicked in $4 million in support of Prop. 32, the “Paycheck Protection” initiative, and they are guaranteed to still have deep pockets whether it passes or not.   read more

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney famously echoed the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United when he said, “Corporations are people, my friend.” And since corporations are people, the California Office of Administrative Law (OAL) has reasoned, they ought to be able to have permits for selling assault weapons, just like their corporeal embodiments.   read more

A family is suing a Jewish cemetery in the Mission Hills area of Los Angeles for moving their mother’s ashes so it could sell the space—located next to the remains of Groucho Marx—to someone else.   read more

When a proposition was put on the November California ballot requiring the labeling of genetically modified food, everyone knew that the big bioengineering companies and agribusiness giants would contribute heavily toward defeating the measure. And they have. But, to the consternation of some Prop. 37 opponents, Monsanto, Dupont and the like have been joined in the fight by the parent companies of some of the most popular organic food producers in the country.   read more