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

In a decision thought unlikely to be reversed via instant replay or the U.S. Supreme Court, the three-judge panel unanimously ruled that the law prevented San Jose from luring the Athletics baseball team from Oakland. But Judge Kozinski called baseball's anti-trust exemption "one of federal law’s most enduring anomalies.”   read more

The pope said he would bypass the usual requirement that the candidate perform a second verified miracle, although critics might consider receiving a sainthood designation in the face of their complaints that the Spanish Franciscan missionary practiced genocide as pretty extraordinary. The pope will visit Philadelphia in September and might go to Washington D.C. and the United Nations in New York. A Serra sainthood could put California on the agenda.   read more

A year after California passed Senate Bill 4, regulating oil and gas well-stimulation techniques like hydraulic fracturing for the first time, the state has some idea where the fracking is. Fracking was found in 96 of California’s 500 oil fields, producing around one-fifth of the state’s oil. But its popularity has risen. Between 125 and 175 new wells out of 300 drilled each month, on average, are fracked.   read more

The regulations are the strongest in the nation, but scientists, farmworker advocates and environmentalists say they still fall short of protecting people—especially children. Chloropicrin was the Number 1 pesticide, measured by pounds applied within one-quarter mile of a school, in 15 key counties surveyed by a state and federal program in 2010.   read more

The commission started the clock ticking as the college fixes up 32 areas of deficiency. The school needs to add more classified staff and administrators, more efficiently operate and maintain existing facilities, secure its technology infrastructure, manage its finances better to avoid “excessive” short-term borrowing, improve assessments of student learning and achievement, and do a better job of reporting its financial information.   read more

The findings of methane were up to 61% worse than expected. “It’s a very significant increase in the estimate,” the project’s senior research scientist, Stanley Sander of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. NASA conducted its observations for two years from the top of Mount Wilson, pointing its equipment at one of 28 designated sites every 90 minutes during daylight hours.   read more

In cautioning against making any promises today the state might not want to keep tomorrow, the Analyst pointed out that most of any windfall is already committed to education through Proposition 98 and lawmakers should be wary of making commitments outside of that. With that in mind, he recommended lawmakers begin discussing now how it would spend additional Prop. 98 K-12 money generated by a booming economy.   read more

The Orange County Register countersued the Times for $8.5 million over claims that someone screwed someone over distribution of the OC paper. The Register’s counterclaim accuses the Times of “strong-arming distributors, bribing distributors, having its agents intimidate drivers and other improper actions to make sure that OC Register would not be able to have a full and complete delivery service,” according to Courthouse News Service.   read more

More than 720 hospitals were dinged nationwide under the Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program (HAC), costing them an estimated $373 million for adverse events, including blood clots, bedsores and avoidable infections resulting from catheters. Many prestigious hospitals were penalized, including the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.   read more

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat said county officials were caught by surprise when news of the greenhouse surfaced, but it wasn’t totally unexpected. Denver-based United Cannabis Corporation (UCANN) recently announced it had signed agreements with three tribes to grow medical marijuana. It didn’t identify the tribes.   read more

The FBI trumpeted the post-9/11 case as a blow against the growing threat of environmentally conscious “eco-terrorists”—leftist radicals who were taking deadly aim at corporate and government interests. But the bureau had failed to turn over thousands of pages of files to defense lawyers that seemed to paint a picture of entrapment.   read more

It will be the first U.S. Senate race using an open primary. A crowded field of Dems in a top-two race could split votes and allow a Republican—or two—to slip in. The possibility of two Republicans squaring off for a Senate seat in the bluest of blue states is not far-fetched. Are we ready for Condoleezza Rice versus Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin in 2016?   read more

As Governor Brown pointed out in his inaugural/state-of-the-state speech last week, California has gone from a $26-billion budget deficit to a balanced budget in four years. The budget is, however, precariously perched upon the razor’s edge of a volatile world economy, escalating climate change, and ill political and social winds.   read more

The Boy Scouts kept so-called “perversion files” between 1960 and 2007. Hundreds were released in previous legal cases. Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Donna Geck ruled that the files from 1971 to 2007, including previously unreleased documents since 1991, were relevant in the upcoming civil trial of Al Stein, a former Scout leader.   read more

San Bernardino said it would pay its annual $24-million CalPERS bill and start repaying millions more. The Luxembourg bank wants that decision to be made by a judge. If CalPERS is made whole, the bank wants the city’s entire $50 million debt to them paid. California’s Constitution explicitly protects pension funds but a federal bankruptcy judge said he wasn’t bound by that in determining Stockton’s fate last year.   read more

The 8-year, $500 million program employs nine Predator B drones to patrol 1,993 miles of border along California, Arizona and Texas. A tenth ditched in the ocean near San Diego a year ago. The inspector general’s audit found the program was wildly expensive, there was “little or no evidence” of its effectiveness and its administration shoddy.   read more