The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) plan is to issue a golden eagle take permit to Shiloh IV Wind Project, which operates 50 turbines on 3,500 acres in Solano County. In exchange for taking precautionary measures to protect the birds, the company would be allowed to kill five eagles over five years. “It really does set a precedent,” FWS Deputy Assistant Regional Director Scott Flaherty told Peter Fimrite of the San Francisco Chronicle.   read more

The conventional wisdom is that the Internet, competition from the innovative private sector and sky-high pension costs of pampered federal employees are killing the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). It’s not true. The post office is being savaged for thinly-disguised political reasons, including the enrichment of a few select individuals. Investigative journalist Peter Byrne says California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, is one of those profiting mightily.   read more

The bill fundamentally changes the way forests on national land would be managed. It would, for the first time, set timber harvesting levels in legislation, rather than through the more deliberative regulatory process that includes public input and environmental analyses. And it provides exemptions from the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.   read more

A San Jose Mercury News analysis of the documents found that half of the reported incidents resulted in a visit from the FBI. The reports included: a man “nonchalantly taking photos” while traveling on the Los Angeles subway; a “notable increase” in women wearing veils and burqas at a shopping mall; a big-rig driver sporting an upside-down American flag; and someone scrawling anti-government slogans on a wall at the University of California, Davis.   read more

Using language that sounded, at times, like a cheer rally for California’s innovative global warming law, a federal appeals court reversed a lower court’s decision that the state had violated the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Out-of-state companies cried foul and claimed they were being blatantly discriminated against just because they weren’t from around these parts.   read more

California lawmakers sealed the deal last week when they approved Senate Bill 630, legislation that ratified the revised “Tahoe Regional Planning Compact.” Changes to the 44-year-old bilateral agreement will encourage denser development, allow more input from localities on land-use issues and give special recognition to economic factors in weighing the worthiness of new projects.   read more

San Francisco was forced to spend its own resources (about $500,000) to care for the patients. The city claims “virtually all” of the patients dumped in California required continuing medical care, something the Nevada hospital failed to arrange for. The complaint also notes that “many of these patients were not California residents” at the time they were discharged and put on buses.   read more

The most cautious assessment of a broad sampling—from Paul Elias at Associated Press—found that a “majority” of the “justices appeared reluctant,” but most observers were more inclined toward the view of Howard Mintz at the San Jose Mercury News: “Each of the court's seven justices indicated that a nearly 20-year-old federal immigration law blocks them from permitting illegal immigrants to become licensed California lawyers.”   read more

The law, which is apparently the first of its kind in the U.S., requires makers of prescription drugs sold or distributed in Alameda County to fund and operate product stewardship programs allowing consumers to turn in unused medicines safely, rather than flushing them down the toilet and into the water supply or letting them hit the streets. Failure to comply carries up to a $1,000-per-day fine.   read more

Months after saying that her office could not post comprehensive campaign and lobbying financial data online in a searchable database, Bowen did the next best thing. “Next best thing” might be a bit of an overstatement. In this case, the next best thing is a zip file that takes more than an hour to download. It comes loaded with 80 data files that can be sucked into a database or spreadsheet and four pdf files that explain how to set the whole thing up. It is not for amateurs.   read more

Half of California voters say they are having a tough time paying for health care, but three-fourths of them under the age of 65 don’t know about the health care exchange that opens in October as part of the Affordable Health Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, according to two new Field Polls.   read more

The study of excessive drinking, put together in 2011-12, used a broad array of data from 2006, just before the economic crash gave people a few more good reasons to get drunk. California’s share amounted to 14.3% of the $223.5 billion researchers said the country spent on “losses in workplace productivity, health care expenses, and other costs due to a combination of criminal justice expenses, motor vehicle crash costs, and property damage.”   read more

Rohrabacher is an outspoken conservative from arguably the most conservative county in the state, and he has been saying weird, insulting stuff since long before Tea Party politicians entered the political theater, stage right. He has been in Congress since 1989. Although he is probably best known for his intellectual contributions to the debate over global warming, he has a broad portfolio of off-the-cuff quips that have endeared him to his constituents.   read more

Greenhouse gas emissions have increased from 1990 to 2010; the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases in coastal areas is greater; and acidification of coastal waters is rising. Average temperatures are up 1.5 degrees in California since 1895. Extreme heat events, especially at night, are more common everywhere in the state since 1950. The winter chill, a critical element in the productivity of fruit trees, has been decreasing the past 60 years.   read more

Yes, the FBI was spying on the Muslim community in Southern California and, yes, it lied to a federal judge about the existence of documents relevant to a case regarding that surveillance. But, no, the FBI shouldn’t be sanctioned for its behavior. That was the ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which disagreed with U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney.   read more

The legislation, which was heavily amended during its short six-month life, would have required schools to provide a platform that would make use using of a statewide mechanism to access online courses being marketed by outside groups, including for-profit companies. It’s an evolving concept in search of a business model that has been pushed hard by cash-strapped school administrators and governments while being derided by skeptical educators who see it as a cheap dumbing down of academia.   read more