Free Republic

INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- Inglewood police killed one man and wounded another when they opened fire on a vehicle, saying they believed the occupants had shot at them -- although it turned out that the men were unarmed and their car was never struck with bullets. Two officers were in the area of Crenshaw Boulevard and 85th Street at 1:40 a.m. Sunday when they said they heard gunshots coming from the parking lot of a Rally's Restaurant, said Inglewood police Sgt. Jeff Steinhoff. "As they looked over, their attention was drawn to a male running away eastbound from the parking lot,"...

To his devotees, state Sen. Tom McClintock is a righteous defender of the Constitution and an unrepentant fighter for reining in government spending. To his detractors, the conservative populist and revered orator is a lone wolf who refuses to bend even when his closest colleagues are preaching compromise. "Lincoln said, 'I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true,' " said McClintock, a 22-year state lawmaker. "I have stayed true to my convictions." McClintock, the Thousand Oaks lawmaker now running for Congress in Northern California's 4th District, is a man as consistent in his principles as...

A television ad in which the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and a former speaker, Newt Gingrich, warn about the dangers of climate change may violate federal election law. The spot, which shows Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Gingrich seated on a couch in front of the Capitol, is being questioned because the California Democrat faces a primary election June 3 in her San Francisco district. “It’s prohibited,” a Republican campaign finance lawyer, Jan Baran, said. He said the ad constitutes a “coordinated” expenditure on behalf of Ms. Pelosi’s campaign by the group sponsoring the ad, the Alliance for Climate...

Sacramento -- With the state's fiscal crisis worsening, there will likely be no good news when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveils a revised version of his budget proposal on Wednesday. Schwarzenegger warned last month that California's looming budget deficit could be as high as $20 billion, a staggering figure that represents about one-fifth of the state's annual general-fund spending. Efforts to close the gap are expected to result in cutting popular programs as well as generating more revenues by increasing taxes or fees. And with budget negotiations likely to drag on through the summer, this story probably won't have a happy...

Thadd McNamara was at the helm of his motor home on a cross-country trip in 2005 when his cellphone rang and a neighbor gave him the news: His grown son, Sean, was in trouble with law -- again. ... It turned out Sean McNamara was accused of burglarizing his father's home and attempting to make off with a baseball cap bearing the logo "Snap-On Tools." It was classic Sean, his father would later say. Nothing serious. Just another knuckle-head move from an overgrown kid who drank too much beer, didn't pay his bills and, essentially, refused to grow up. Thadd...

Do you think talk radio in its current format is fair and good for our democracy? Please e-mail your answers to forum@sacbee.com and include your name and where you live. Please limit your responses to 300 words, and we'll consider them for next Sunday's Forum There's a mournful hush in Sacramento these days, the empty sound of an entire political viewpoint quieted. More than 32,000 weekly listeners who once tuned to KSAC (1240 AM) to hear partisan Democrats beat up on President George W. Bush, now hear only Christian hip-hop. But there are six other commercial radio stations licensed in...

There was a plaque dedication on Saturday in memory of promising young athlete Jamiel Shaw. The 17-year-old was slain two months ago by a gang member who was also in the country illegally. Now there is a push for a law to get killers like him out of the country before they commit crimes. Leelila Strogov has the details in this video report.

LOS ANGELES, May 11 (Reuters) - Dennis Farina, a former policeman who built a Hollywood career playing detectives, was arrested on Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport for carrying a loaded gun on his way to board a plane, police said. Farina, 64, told police he brought the .22 caliber, semi-automatic pistol with him on a drive from Arizona to Los Angeles and forgot it was in his briefcase when he tried to pass through airport security, police said in a statement. He was scheduled to take a United Airlines flight to his home in Chicago. "Farina was very apologetic...

Bond measure to improve children's hospitals on ballot A $980 million bond measure aimed at modernizing and expanding children's hospitals in California has qualified for the November ballot.

Welcome to FReep #16. It was Mary, Kelly, and me for this Friday's FReep. As usual our side received more honks than what the moonbats could ever hope to get and we got many waves, thumbs up, and a few kind words from passing motorists. The moonbats seemed a bit more tired and worn out today. While most of their group usually shows up between 4:30 to 4:45 there were only a handful of them from 4:20 to about 5:15. The rest of the old hippies finally straggled in at about 5:20. One of the moonbats brought his little boy,...

Carol Rudes has not read her son's love letter couched in a short autobiography he has written. He's been waiting for the perfect time to give it to his mom. Today. "My name is Mathew Rudes, and this is my story. When I was brought into this world 21 years ago, doctors predicted that I had less than 24 hours to live. "They had only to look at my warped body, hands bent at odd angles, to know that something was not right. I was quickly whisked away to another room. The doctors refused to let my mother look at...

He denounced it as a political stunt and power play, but was the recall campaign against state Sen. Jeff Denham the best thing to ever happen to his political career? The upside for the Atwater Republican grew immensely this week when Senate leader Don Perata, D-Oakland, called off the campaign. Denham, who has raised considerable funds to fight the effort, vowed Thursday to continue his defense because his name will still be on the ballot June 3. Indeed, some local Democrats intend to keep campaigning against the senator on a grass-roots level. Ads against him have already run. But Denham...

EVER since former Vice President Al Gore won an Oscar and a Nobel Prize for his fight against expanding climate change, there have been claims that nuclear power plants are the easy solution. They give phenomenal amounts of energy, after all, without much carbon production. Some who seek facile solutions say it's about time to dump the safeguards of 1976's Proposition 15, which essentially put a stop to atomic-power facility construction in California after completion of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant on the central coast. One example: Last fall, Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore of Orange County introduced a bill aiming...

Anyone who enjoys cagey politicking should doff his or her cap to California's Republican legislators. That's because the Reeps have been very impressive lately in maneuvering their Democratic counterparts into a corner in this year's dance over the state budget. As we all know, Republicans make up just 39.1 percent of the Legislature, and have no illusions of increasing that percentage anytime soon. Moreover, they've been a minority for more than a decade. Traditionally, the Reeps have been content to just say no when it comes to the budget. As one of the very few substantive legislative processes in which...

The conservative Club for Growth was an early supporter of state Sen. Tom McClintock in his bid for the Republican nomination to succeed Rep. John Doolittle in the 4th Congressional District. This week the club's political action committee began radio and television ads in an independent campaign against the Thousand Oaks Republican's opponent, former Rep. Doug Ose. Following is the television ad's text and an analysis by David Whitney of The Bee's Washington Bureau:•ANNOUNCER: Doug Ose has lots of ads, but they leave out several pieces of the puzzle.Ose had a really liberal record in Congress. He voted to waste...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - When members of an anti-illegal immigration group offered to sponsor litter cleanup on local roads, they never imagined California officials would offer them an Adopt-a-Highway stretch near a Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5, the main artery carrying illegal migrants north from the U.S.-Mexico border. On Friday, lawyers for the San Diego Minutemen told a federal judge that the state had no right to rescind the offer after state legislators complained to the California Department of Transportation. The group asked that its blue Adopt-a-Highway sign be put back where it stood without incident for about six...

With John Doolittle vacating the 4th Congressional District seat after 16 years, voters will elect someone new. This heavily Republican district stretches from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe and runs up the Sierra Nevada to the Oregon border. The winner of the June 3 Republican primary will face presumptive Democratic nominee Charlie Brown. The GOP race features two well-known candidates. Doug Ose is a land developer and former three-term congressman. Tom McClintock is a 22-year state legislator who has been on the statewide ballot seven times. (Suzanne Jones and Theodore Terbolizard also are on the Republican ballot.) Ose and McClintock have...

There's a mournful hush in Sacramento these days, the empty sound of an entire political viewpoint quieted. More than 32,000 weekly listeners who once tuned to KSAC (1240 AM) to hear partisan Democrats beat up on President George W. Bush, now hear only Christian hip-hop. There's nothing wrong with Christian hip-hop; it's a great outlet for artists breaking out of the gansta rap mold. But there are six other commercial radio stations licensed in the Sacramento area programming the Christian message. In the political realm, three local radio stations program 264 hours of partisan Republican radio talkers beating up on...

By declaring bankruptcy, Vallejo has thrust itself into the national spotlight as a test case for thousands of floundering cities desperate to unload their extravagant public employee contracts. "There's a wave of this coming across the U.S.," said Sajan George, an adviser to struggling public entities who worked on restructuring Orange County after it declared bankruptcy in 1994. "What happens in Vallejo could definitely set a precedent." Battered by the plummeting housing market and skyrocketing public employee contracts, Vallejo made dubious history Tuesday night by becoming the largest California city to declare bankruptcy. The North Bay city of 117,000 was...

San Francisco state Sen. Carole Migden is making the rounds, spending her evenings shaking hands, chatting with voters and asking for their support as she fights to hang on to her political career. Such campaigning is routine for many officeholders, but for Migden, never known as a backslapping pol, it shows how seriously she's taking her June 3 Democratic primary showdown with San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno and former San Rafael Assemblyman Joe Nation. In a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 55 percent to 16 percent, the winner of the Democratic primary will probably be a shoo-in in November's general...

Cheeseheads don't need to be bleu: Experts say predictions that California will soon overtake Wisconsin as the nation's top cheese producer are unlikely to come true. The Golden State and its happy cows gained quickly on Wisconsin in the past decade, but plants in California are maxing out, while efforts to boost production in Wisconsin are paying off, said Dick Groves, longtime owner of the Madison-based trade publication, Cheese Reporter. Groves helped spark the friendly competition between the states 10 years ago with an editorial predicting California would overtake Wisconsin in cheese production by 2005. He later amended it to...

SOUTH LOS ANGELES Four people were arrested and a school went on lockdown after a fight between black and Hispanic students raged, according to authorities. Police were sent to Locke High School shortly after 1 p.m. Friday afternoon. The fight allegedly involved some 600 students.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A fight at a troubled South Los Angeles high school escalated into a campuswide brawl involving as many as 600 students before it was quelled by police officers in riot gear. The melee, which students said was between rival black and Hispanic gangs and started around noon on Friday, forced the authorities to shut down the school, Locke High, and keep students in their classrooms. After restoring order, they rounded up those involved and separated them, holding Hispanic students in the gymnasium and black students in another room.

An Iranian-born United States citizen was sentenced here yesterday in US District Court to two years in prison and six months of home confinement for illegaly exporting US military aircraft parts to Iran via associates in Germany and the United Arab Emirates. Reza Tabib, 52, of Irvine, CA, pleaded guilty in June 2006 to violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which prohibits the export and re-export to Iran of certain items of US origin. The prosecution is the result of a joint investigation by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS). In...

SAN DIEGO When members of an anti-illegal immigration group offered to sponsor litter cleanup on local roads, they never imagined California officials would offer them an Adopt-a-Highway stretch near a Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5, the main artery carrying illegal migrants north from the U.S.-Mexico border. On Friday, lawyers for the San Diego Minutemen told a federal judge that the state had no right to rescind the offer after state legislators complained to the California Department of Transportation. The group asked that its blue Adopt-a-Highway sign be put back where it stood without incident for about six weeks until...

Local Media was there, KTLA and FOX, so watch the news. Lots more pictures: http://s294.photobucket.com/albums/mm86/wendylajamielshaw/?albumview=slideshow This was very emotional event. The marker marking the spot where Jamiel Shaw was shot down is just three doors down from their family home. Attending was Terry Anderson, Jesse Lee Peterson of BOND, Sheriff Lee Baca and City Councilman Zine. Sheriff Lee Baca spoke briefly of the need for "intervention programs" to prevent young people such as Pedro Escobar from joining gangs. This was generally met with groans and eye rolls. City Councilman Zine spoke of his initiative to amend Special Order 40. He...

Washington, D.C., is lousy with rats, and not just of the human variety. I knew that before moving here—you’d always see them scampering around sidewalks and alleys when walking around town—but it took living full-time in the city to appreciate both the awe-inspiring magnitude of the infestation and the jaw-dropping indifference of a municipal government more focused on giving free money to billionaires than addressing the capital’s legendary civic rot. ... It’s not like the non-baseball services Washington provides are famous for their effectiveness. The potholes in the roads would embarrass a Romanian. The neighborhood papers are filled with complaints...

A Navy deal for an unmanned plane is the latest won by a unit of the defense contractor, the region's second-largest private employer.With a bulbous head and plank-like wings, the aircraft resembles a lumbering whale. And its seven-word, 49-letter name -- Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aerial System -- is a whopper. But the award last month of a Navy contract to build the hulking, robotic patrol plane, nicknamed BAMS, could not have come at a better time for Northrop Grumman Corp. and, in particular, its military aircraft business headquartered in El Segundo. Flying highThe contract, potentially worth nearly $4...

SACRAMENTO, CA (KGO) -- Governor Schwarzenegger says he is opposed to raising taxes to help with California's budget shortfall, but his office is holding conversations about what to tax if he changes his mind. Instead of raising the sales tax, applying it to a range of services might be the way to go to solve the state's budget crisis. The governor's people may be testing those waters with an old ally. Golfers chasing that elusive birdie might have to cut back on lessons, if that makes the list of services to be taxed. "Golf lessons are always a 'want.' Some...

Run for the Wall returns More than 400 bikers rolled down Hobsonway last year, the first time Run for the Wall came through the town. This year a pair of helicopters plan to join in the parade to the Colorado River Fairgrounds. By Marty Bachman Over 400 motorcyclists will return to Blythe on May 14 as part of the 20th anniversary of the "Run for the Wall," paying tribute to veterans as they make their way to visit all the war memorials in Washington, D.C., including the Vietnam Wall Memorial. Veteran bikers from the Vietnam War, Somalia, the Gulf War,...

A fight between rival groups of black and Latino students at Locke High School quickly escalated into a campus-wide melee Friday, with as many as 600 students brawling until police restored calm with billy clubs. The troubled campus in South Los Angeles was locked down after the fight broke out at 12:55 p.m., as students returned from lunch to their fifth-period classes. Overwhelmed school officials called Los Angeles police for help, but students and faculty said it took about half an hour before dozens of officers, many in riot gear, restored order. "The kids were crazy, running from place to...

LOS ANGELES -- Four people were arrested Friday after a fight involving more than 400 teens broke out at a South Los Angeles high school, resulting in a campus lockdown, officials said.

SAN DIEGO (AP) - The FBI has released surveillance video of a powerful pipe bomb explosion that shattered big windows at a federal courthouse and filled the lobby with smoke. FBI spokesman Darrell Foxworth says the agency hopes anyone with information about the explosion early Sunday feels compelled to contact investigators after seeing the video. The bomb caused significant damage to the lobby but no injuries, and forced the courthouse to close for one day. The FBI recovered more than 100 nails and shrapnel up to two blocks from the courthouse, Foxworth says. Investigators believe the bomb may be linked...

Most military folks I know, even the Navy Seals and the Marines, admit that no war can be won without a lot of behind-the-scenes home-front help. Of course, there's home-front help, and then there's home-front battle. A lot of us are cut out for the former, and do our share of helping in myriad ways. Our troop-support efforts are as varied and ingenious as is the spirit of the American people. But only a few of us seem to be cut out for the home-front battles, those necessary confrontations with the anti-military leftists, the Cindy Sheehans and Medea Benjamins and...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Barbara Gonzel has lived in a two-bedroom duplex in northwest Los Angeles for 13 years, protected from the region's soaring housing costs by the city's rent-control ordinance. That could change, and Gonzel could find herself paying hundreds of dollars more in monthly rent, if voters approve one of two property rights initiatives on the June 3 primary election ballot. One of the measures, Proposition 98, is supported by landlords and business owners and contains a provision that would phase out local rent-control ordinances for apartments, duplexes and mobile home parks. It also would eliminate tenant-protection rules that...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is instructing state fire officials to begin fining rural homeowners who fail to clear their properties of brush, trees and dry grass. Schwarzenegger says clearing around homes is particularly important because of this year's dry conditions throughout the state. A 2005 law required that homeowners who live near forests or grasslands increase the so-called "defensible space" around their houses from 30 feet to 100 feet. State Fire Marshal Kate Dargan says inspectors have issued few citations to homeowners who ignore the law. Instead, firefighters have focused on educating them about the dangers of overgrown properties. During a...

Sacramento, CA (AP) -- Sacramento mayoral candidate Kevin Johnson upset local gay and lesbian leaders after saying he believes marriage is between a man and a woman. The former NBA star made the statement in response to a question during a candidate debate this week. Gretchen Bender, vice president of the Sacramento County Board of Education, says Johnson's statement shows that he is not ready to lead the city. Bender and a half-dozen other gay and lesbian leaders held a news conference to express their concern about the former Phoenix Suns star.

The arraignment of 14-year-old Brandon McInerney, accused of shooting an Oxnard schoolmate in the head, was postponed again Thursday and rescheduled for June. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Kevin McGee granted the delay requested by McInerney's lawyer William "Willy" Quest. Earlier, Quest said in an interview that he is working on a legal motion attacking the constitutionality of trying his client as an adult. The attorney said it will be a "very in-depth" legal issue pertaining to serious constitutional matters. Quest wants time to prepare and submit his legal motion before his client is arraigned McInerney made a brief court...

The question you have to ask about the officially bankrupt city of Vallejo, and other California cities with similar financial profiles, is this: Didn't you know something was wrong when you realized you were spending 75 cents of every dollar in the general fund on public safety costs? In a broader sense, how can any city anywhere make a legitimate claim of vibrancy when so many essential social services are shortchanged? It seems we're about to find out in Vallejo, a city with a population of 117,000 whose City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to file Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection...

LOS ANGELES — California has awarded $271 million in grants to build 12 stem cell research centers in the state, even as one of the political rationales for the building program might soon disappear. The awards, announced here Wednesday, represent the largest chunk of money awarded at one time by California’s taxpayer-backed stem cell program, which is slated to spend about $3 billion over about a decade. The universities and research institutes that are receiving the money have said they would spend an additional $560 million on the laboratory construction, money they are trying to raise from donations. The resulting...

An environmental activist has been sentenced to nearly 20 years in federal prison for conspiring to destroy a Northern California dam, a genetics lab and other targets. Eric McDavid, 29, of Foresthill, was convicted in March for masterminding what FBI agents described as an eco-terrorist plot in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. The group has claimed credit for arsons across the West. McDavid's defense lawyer argued that his client was a victim of entrapment by an FBI informant. Two co-conspirators pleaded guilty and testified against McDavid. They are awaiting sentencing. According to court testimony, the three considered bombing...

LAKE ARROWHEAD, Calif. — A coyote grabbed a 2-year-old girl by the head and tried to drag her from the front yard of her mountain home in the third incident of a coyote threatening a small child in Southern California in five days, authorities said. The coyote attacked the girl around noon Tuesday when her mother, Melissa Rowley, went inside the home for a moment to put away a camera, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said in an incident report. Rowley came out of the house and saw the coyote dragging her daughter towards a street. She ran towards...

Some of the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist rhetoric in the San Francisco Bay Area is simple anti-Semitism, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post Sunday. Newsom, in the country for four days as part of a large San Francisco Jewish Community Federation delegation, said he expected to see some people protesting against his trip here when he gives a commencement address next week at San Francisco State University. The university was the site of some of the ugliest anti-Israel protests in the US during the second intifada, with some pro-Palestinian protesters chanting "Hitler didn't finish the...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Bernie Ward, a prominent radio talk show host and reporter in the Bay Area for more than two decades, admitted today to distributing child pornography in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker was prepared to accept Ward's guilty plea at a hearing in San Francisco to one count of distributing child pornography, but agreed to hold off at the request of Ward's attorney, Doron Weinberg. Had the guilty plea been officially submitted today, Ward could have been sent to prison immediately. Instead,...

DNC Superdelegate Puts His Vote Up For Sale Steven Ybarra Wants $20 Million For His Vote SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CBS13) ― In this tight battle for the Democratic nomination we've heard a lot about the candidates courting superdelegates. But, one superdelegate is courting the candidates. He says he'll sell his vote for a price. A very high price: $20 million. Steven Ybarra of Sacramento says that eight-figure price is peanuts for the presidency.

Vallejo has become the first city of its size in California to seek bankruptcy protection. The decision to file for bankruptcy came in a unanimous vote by the city council Tuesday night as hundreds of residents watched. The dramatic vote came despite a last-minute appeal by state Sen. Pat Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa, and an aide for Assemblywoman Noreen Evans for the city to avoid bankruptcy. Mayor Osby Davis said he had "turned over every rock he could find to find a solution" but none came and there is no longer an ability for the city to pay its debts. Vallejo...

They turned up the heat on the politics of crime Wednesday over an initiative likely to appear on the November ballot aimed at gangs and guns. Opponents said the "Safe Neighborhoods" act targets African American and Latino youth and that its backers are trying to fire up "ultraconservatives" to turn out for the presidential election. Proponents denied a political motivation. They said their initiative is just as much about prevention and programs as it is about putting people in prison. Last week, supporters of the measure sponsored by state Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, submitted signatures to the California secretary of...

Vallejo has become the first city in California to file for bankruptcy because it didn't have enough money to provide basic services. This is dreadful news for Vallejo - and its citizens - but it's also an ominous report for the rest of us. The city council's unanimous decision Tuesday night, which came after hours of impassioned public comment, represents a failure of Vallejo's police and firefighter unions to understand basic economic realities. The unions - whose members are among the highest-paid in the state - refused to allow the city to cut their pay. Perhaps they didn't believe that...

SACRAMENTO - All indications point to water cutbacks this summer and probably next year, based on reports from the governor's office, the state Department of Water Resources and Antelope Valley water agencies. The most recent assessment of California's water plight resulted from the final snow survey of 2008: Department of Water Resources officials announced last week that water content in the Northern Sierra Nevada snowpacks is at 67% of normal for the beginning of May. "Snow depth and water content declined since April," the Department of Water Resources said. Electronic sensors registered the water content in the snowpack at 82%...

SACRAMENTO - A quick pop quiz on state politics: How big is California's budget deficit? Is it: a) $14.5 billion, b) $8 billion, c) $10 billion, or d) $20 billion? The answer is, there is no correct answer. Or perhaps any of them are right, depending on when you happen to tune in. Anyone reading a news story or listening to a state politician speak over the past month could reasonably come away thinking any of the figures is accurate. California's budget mess has spawned a silly season to rival any political campaign. One day the deficit is pegged at...