You no longer have to smile for the camera if you’re running a red light in San Diego. Newly-elected Mayor Bob Filner announced last week that he was ending the controversial “traffic trap” program begun in 1998, and on Friday the cameras were turned off at 15 intersections throughout the city.   read more

Republican State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, cited a year ago for carrying a loaded concealed weapon without the proper permit at Ontario International Airport, introduced legislation this week to arm school employees, including teachers. The bill is Tea Party activist Donnelly’s response to the Sandy Hook massacre that claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.   read more

As California lawmakers poured through myriad proposals this week for reducing the threat from guns, one didn’t involve changing the law at all. Just enforcing it. Nearly 20,000 registered gun owners in possession of 39,000 handguns and 1,600 assault weapons have convictions for felonies, domestic violence or drugs, or mental health conditions that prevent them, by law, from being armed. But the state has not dedicated the necessary manpower and financial assets to rounding up the weaponry.   read more

The Coastal Commission would like to put the project through a review process because it and the area around it have changed dramatically, but the Navy refused to participate. Last week, the commission sued in federal court to have its way. The lawsuit is the latest shot in the running battle between the commission, the Navy and would-be developer Manchester Pacific Gateway LLC, with whom the state is already fighting in court.   read more

Trial court records that are routinely made available to the public and press could be delayed for weeks if the Judicial Council of California accepts an innocuous looking proposed change in its Rules of Court. Under the proposal, an (electronic) e-filing would not be considered filed, and therefore available to the public, when initially received. Instead, it would first have to be processed and reviewed before being designated “officially filed,” a process of indeterminate length.   read more

Nearly a year after word began to surface that the California Department of Parks and Recreation might be sitting on millions of dollars in hidden money, it looks like a criminal prosecution is not in the immediate offing. The Sacramento County District Attorney’s office announced Thursday that it would not be going after any bad guys because the case turned over to it by the state attorney general did not identify any broken laws or possible criminal targets.   read more

A Southern California school district police force has obtained 14 assault weapons without knowledge of the school board and stashed them around the district in case of an armed attack. Fontana school police didn’t need to clear the purchase with the board because the total price of $14,000 fell below the $25,000 reporting threshold.   read more

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) recently flipped the switch on 16 cameras in the northern San Fernando Valley suburbs that use wireless and face recognition technology to give officers and volunteers sitting in a control room miles away a birds-eye view of the unsuspecting subjects. The cameras, which zoom and tilt for maximum viewing, cost $680,000 and cover a 66-square-mile area that has 450,000 residents. They are not the first police surveillance cameras in the city.   read more

Governor Jerry Brown officially got away with one last November when the Democratic Party managed to get his tax-hike Proposition 30 placed at the top of the ballot, a coveted spot that probably contributed to its success. Last Friday, the state Court of Appeal for the Third District released a ruling that took a dim view of the parliamentary maneuver used by the majority party in the Legislature.   read more

Declining migration and California’s falling birthrate mean fewer children in the state’s immediate future, but beyond that, conclusions about what it means for the future are mixed. Some see it as a harbinger of socio-economic upheaval, others as a prelude to a healthier, less-stressed environment.   read more

In a country where the leader of the lefter of the two major political parties—President Barack Obama, a Democrat—self-admittedly acts like a moderate Republican of the 1980s, California still keeps its antenna up for any signs of untoward communist influence. One area of eternal vigilance is in the state’s schools. California Education Code Section 44932 lists 11 things you can’t be or do and still teach. Two of the 11 are about communists.   read more

The Crossroads of the West gun show has been a fixture at the state-owned Cow Palace in Daly City for a quarter century. Despite years of opposition from local and state politicians who want it out of the building, and a series of national tragedies involving assault weapons, the gun show thrives. An estimated 10,000 people thronged to the show on Saturday, the first day of a two-day event.   read more

Bottled water provided by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) to the town whose groundwater it famously poisoned in real life—and in the movie “Erin Brockovich”—has been found to contain high levels of the same toxin, chromium-6.   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

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