Free Republic

Though local lore held that the so-called "scorpion tree" had been the work of cowboys, paleontologist Rex Saint Onge immediately knew that the tree was carved by Indians when he stumbled upon it in the fall of 2006. Located in a shady grove atop the Santa Lucia Mountains in San Luis Obispo County, the centuries-old gnarled oak had the image of a six-legged, lizard-like being meticulously scrawled into its trunk, the nearly three-foot-tall beast topped with a rectangular crown and two large spheres. "I was really the first one to come across it who understood that it was a Chumash...

Reporting from Sacramento - Even as the state grappled with a budget crisis last year, bureaucrats spent nearly $45 million on new vehicles, almost $30 million on new furniture and more than $2 million on off-site meetings and conferences, a legislative panel has found. The expenditures were outlined in a report released Monday by the Assembly Committee on Accountability and Administrative Review, which plans to call on state agency managers to explain their spending at a hearing Wednesday. "These expenses came despite an executive order from the governor last year for each state agency to cut costs and eliminate vehicle...

Times are tough in Vallejo these days, a city with more street violence than nearby Richmond, and a rapidly shrinking police department. In the last week alone, the city has witnessed two homicides, a knife attack that injured three people, the shooting of an ice-cream vendor and a mob assault on a city employee - an incident captured on video at a local gas station. One of the homicide victims was Matthew Allen Hicks, the father of one of two teens suspected in the attack near the gas station. Hicks was found shot in the head early Monday. "It has...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Toyota faced its first U.S. class-action lawsuits stemming from complaints of faulty brakes in its top-selling Prius hybrid car and from investors claiming they were misled about problems with unintended acceleration in a wide range of models. Litigation mounted as the Japanese automaker prepared to follow global recalls of some 8 million vehicles for repairs to ill-fitting floor mats and sticking gas pedals with yet another recall to deal with braking problems in the new Prius model. A class-action suit filed on Monday on behalf of U.S. shareholders accuses Toyota Motor Corp of issuing "materially false...

Energy The administration asked for public comments on a plan to expand offshore drilling. When they came in 2-to-1 in favor, the Interior Department sat on the news. Time for a "Texas tea" party? When you ask for public comment on a major policy issue, at some point you should make the results public, not hide them until you can figure out a way to spin the public reaction to support a conclusion you've already drawn. On its last business day in office, the Bush administration published a proposed draft of a five-year plan to lease areas in the Atlantic...

The LAPD this afternoon sent the most unusual non-chalant e-mail to the community today. "On February 11, 2010 the Hollywood sign will be covered up for an international campaign," an e-mail read. "The sign will be covered until further notice. Do not be alarmed, the sign will remain in place and there will be no changes done to the sign. This is just an informational e-mail so we do not receive phone calls from worried citizens." That got David Markland at Metblogs curious enough to call Councilman Tom LaBonge’s office [Added: The LAPD is referring all calls to Ramsay]. But...

Friday Feb 5th, Judge Gonzalez of the Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York, in the Chrysler Bankruptcy case denied a Motion brought on behalf of over 70 of the former Chrysler Dealers to overturn the Rejection Order which stripped them of their franchises in the spring of 2009. Led by Island Jeep’s James Anderer of New York, the dealers Motion would have reversed the decision which stripped 789 dealers, including Timberline Chrysler Dodge of Portland Or., of their franchise contracts during the bankruptcy and sale of Chrysler to Fiat. Anderer's argument rests primarily upon the fact that...

A blizzard of safety concerns surrounding Toyota has put the Obama ­administration in a delicate position as it seeks to avoid the temptation of boosting the fortunes of Detroit's struggling US carmakers by bullying the Japanese manufacturer too aggressively. Toyota has swiftly become the butt of jokes in the US. The talkshow host Jon Stewart this week dubbed the firm's pedal problems "the Toyotathon of death". Speculating on the reaction of the bosses of General Motors and Chrysler, Stewart said: "Boys, we're back in the game! All we had to do was have the leading competition become a death trap."...

Chuck DeVore is a common sense conservative candidate for United States Senate in 2010 against Barbara Boxer. Chuck DeVore represents 500,000 constituents in the California State Assembly. He is the Vice Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation and serves on the Veterans Affairs Committee, and the Joint Legislative Audit Committee. Chuck was elected in 2004 and reelected in 2006 and in 2008. Chuck has been honored as the Legislator of the Year by seven groups: the California Veterans of Foreign Wars, the California chapter of the American Legion, the California State Commanders Veterans Council, an umbrella organization...

Three decades after Ronald Reagan catapulted the catchphrase "welfare queen" into the political lexicon — and 14 years after President Bill Clinton helped "end welfare as we know it" — welfare has suddenly become a steamy political issue in the California governor's race. GOP candidate Steve Poizner, the state's insurance commissioner, first raised the issue in October, declaring that welfare should be a "transitional assistance program, not a permanent way of life." And last month Poizner's opponent, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, made welfare reform the subject of her first ad focusing on a single policy issue. In the radio...

California has the worst bond rating in the nation, hovering just above junk bond status. ....................................................... Some people place a portion of California’s debt problem at the feet of voters who approve nearly every bond initiative, from $3 billion for an embryonic stem cell research bond to $10 billion in debt to build a high-speed rail system. It’s hard to blame citizens of the Golden State for voting for debt when the most famous Californian, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, proclaims bonds “a gift from the future.” It’s also hard to blame voters for approving bonds when the bond ballot descriptions and...

As the federal budget season heats up, some Placer County officials are grumbling that Republican Rep. Tom McClintock's ideological opposition to congressional earmarks puts their constituents at a disadvantage. "It's already hurt us," Supervisor F.C. "Rocky" Rockholm said in a recent interview. McClintock said he will not seek congressional earmarks – budget requests made outside of the budget process. "I've made it very clear that I will fight for our district through the normal appropriations process," he said.

Sarah Palin will be speaking tomorrow at the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference. The schedule says Monday, February 8 3p.m. and 7 p.m. Governor Sarah Palin Redding Convention Center Are any freepers planing on going?

Rivers of mud and debris damaged or destroyed dozens of homes as they cascaded down the hillsides of La Cañada Flintridge. Crews are racing to make room in catch basins before more rains arrive.A flash flood warning in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills damaged by the Station fire has been lifted and a second band of rain cells passed through the burn area without triggering more of the mudslides that damaged or destroyed 43 homes in La Cañada Flintridge, closed several roads in the Santa Monica Mountains and washed out portions of Angeles Crest Highway and Ortega Highway near Idyllwild....

A local Tea Party organizer is in the early stages of challenging the high-powered Rep. Jerry Lewis for the Republican nomination to represent his district in the House of Representatives. Kathleen Lane Schneider, 59, of Redlands is a graphic designer and organizer for the Redlands Tea Party Patriots. She is one of two GOP candidates .. The district, California's 41st, includes the Redlands area, San Bernardino Mountain communities, a.. Even if the kind of populist sentiment that has fueled tea partyers across the United States is strong in the 41st, Schneider or any challenger to Lewis faces a tough prospect...

Man Pleads Guilty to Filing 250 Tax Returns for Dead People Riverside, Calif. (January 27, 2010) By WebCPA Staff A California man has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. after he was accused of filing at least 250 tax returns of deceased individuals. Haroon Amin of Upland, Calif., pleaded guilty Monday to the charges. He was indicted, along with Ather Ali of Diamond Bar, Calif., in December 2008. The two were accused of filing the returns in 2002 and 2003 falsely stating that the deceased individuals earned wages from which income tax was withheld. The false returns claimed...

<p>I was just enjoying Glenn Beck’s show today on the subject of California’s budget debacle (vs. the polar opposite - Texas). Like many of you I imagine, I wished I could chime in when Glenn was asking questions of his panelists.</p>

In Meg Whitman’s first TV commercial, set to begin airing statewide on Friday, the Republican candidate for governor tells viewers that “the state is in the worst shape that I’ve seen in the 30 years that I have lived in California.” But although the former EBay chief first moved to California nearly 30 years ago, in 1981, she has not lived in the state continuously since then. For a period during the 1990s, after she left the Walt Disney Co., Whitman moved to Massachusetts with her husband, a brain surgeon who worked at Massachusetts General Hospital. News reports have said...

Turns out the coast isn’t the wettest part of California. Three Golden State cities are among the top ten “drunkest” in America, according to a survey by Men’s Health magazine posted Thursday, with Fresno’s 500,000 residents knocking back the most suds. Reno, Nevada took the runner-up slot and Billings, Montana grabbed the bronze. Riverside and Bakersfield in California were numbers four and ten, respectively. On the other end of the spectrum, in spite of being a hub for thirsty college students, Boston is the nation’s “least drunk” city, the magazine found. Three of America’s teetotaler cities were in the New...

Another great floor speech by Congressman Paul Ryan, taking Pelosi to task for indicating she is proud of raising the debt ceiling.

Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina stood by her now infamous “demon sheep” ad on Thursday morning, arguing that the online video, widely panned by pundits but also widely viewed, did what it was intended to do – challenge the underpinnings of primary opponent Tom Campbell’s candidacy. “Look, what I like about the ad is first, it’s funny, but it’s also factually correct. Despite all the commentary about this ad, no one, including Tom Campbell, has even attempted to dispute the facts because the facts are true,” .. Fiorina’s campaign caused an uproar on Wednesday when it released a three-minute, 21-second...

Among states, California arguably has the most to gain from an overhaul of its health care system: it has the greatest number of uninsured residents in the country and the largest public insurance program for the poor, which struggles to serve 6.5 million people while reimbursing doctors at one of the nation's lowest rates. Stuck between the increasingly uncertain future of national reform, a looming $20 billion state budget deficit, and a health care system that is limping along and likely to face even greater demand in the coming years, Californians are frustrated. Doctors, patients, politicians and researchers all agree...

Days before San Bernardino officials were set to ink a deal for cleaner trucks at a local rail yard, the trucking company partnering on the project has pulled out of the project. San Bernardino Associated Governments officials learned this week that J.B. Hunt Transportation was postponing the planned retrofit of 262 of the company's trucks from diesel engines to natural gas. "This was based on business priorities," said Michelle Kirkhoff, director of air quality programs for SANBAG. The project, to develop trucks that run on natural gas as opposed to diesel fuel, was funded by $19.2 million in state and...

6.0 Earthquake just occurred off the coast of northern California. Shepard smith reporting on FOX News. Will talk about damages, injuries, etc. NOW. Eureka, CA is closest larger city. Quake hit 3:21 p.m. EST

Just felt here ih Willow Creek 6.0 http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/nc71348851.php

A state assemblyman who represents Toyota's North American headquarters in Torrance is so peeved by the automaker's safety problems and its recent decision to close a California plant that he's asking his colleagues to stop buying the Japanese-made hybrid cars. Assembly Rules Committee Chairman Ted Lieu, who is running in June to be the Democratic Party's candidate for attorney general, said he plans to ask the committee on Thursday to reinstitute a "Buy-American" policy when purchasing pool vehicles that the house's 80 members use to get around Sacramento. ... "With the massive safety problems that Toyota is experiencing, I think...

POMONA - Republican Carly Fiorina said she is running for the U.S. Senate to bring common sense and real-world experience to Washington, D.C. In a speech on Wednesday to members of the California Federation of Republican Women Southern Division, Fiorina shared anecdotes from her life and work experience that she believes make her qualified to defeat Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in November. "I am a conservative because I know based on years of experience in the real world that people make better choices for themselves and their families than somebody else can make for them," Fiorina said. "And that people...

California Deadbeats Ditch Their Mortgage, And Save Their Cash For Their Credit Card Bills Vincent Fernando Feb. 4, 2010, 8:28 AM Credit history company TransUnion has found that Americans are shifting their priorities when it comes to paying down debt. Consumers are paying down their credit cards while ignoring their mortgage payments. The company's most recent study found that a rising percentage of Americans are current with their credit cards but delinquent on their mortgage payments. At the same time, a falling percentage are deliquent on their credit card while current on their mortgage. Moreover, this shift in debt payment...

YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo7HiQRM7BA Description: Carly for California released FCINO, exposing Tom Campbell as a Fiscal Conservative In Name Only. Since his flip-flop into the Senate race, Campbell has been calling himself a fiscal conservative based on his time as a member of Congress nearly two decades ago, hoping that voters will ignore his recent support for more government spending, increased borrowing, a $16 billion tax hike and a 32-cent gas tax increase.

VALLEJO, CA (KGO) -- Dozens of teenagers saw it happen in broad daylight, but no one has come forward to identify the mob of young people who beat up a Vallejo city worker. Police have released surveillance video to generate tips. (snip) The city worker gets knocked down and eventually a crowd of up to 40 people begin beating the man while he is on the ground. The victim, a 20-year city employee, was transported to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center Vallejo where he is being treated for his injuries. Police say the mob fractured his skull, broke his jaw and...

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has had his share of problems dealing with state lawmakers, referring to them as "girlie men" early in his tenure. One of his would-be successors, GOP candidate Meg Whitman, indicated this week that she wouldn't come bearing flowers should she be elected. In an interview Tuesday with Dennis Prager, a conservative radio host, Whitman said she wants to "reorient" legislators to focus on more important issues, threatening to use her veto pen, much as Schwarzenegger has, to get them in line. She added that none of the legislation approved last year was "on point." "The governor...

Just when you thought environmental extremists couldn’t go any further, they surprise you with yet another ploy in their never-ending quest to turn back modernity. With the public push-back on the cap-and-trade scheme and creating man-made droughts to save a 2-inch fish, environmentalists have become craftier in their efforts. Always the vanguard of the latest environmental regulation, California has a new idea for getting polluters out of their cars: get rid of free parking. Last week the State Senate passed Senate Bill 518, legislation that would incentivize local governments to begin abolishing free parking spaces within their jurisdictions. The goal...

oday the campaign of conservative State Senator Sam Aanestad will announce their endorsement by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association PAC -- a major and significant endorsement in any race for public office in California, but an especially powerful one in a Republican primary. This imminent endorsement should not come to a surprise to anyone who even remotely follows California politics because there are only two candidates running for the GOP nomination -- conservative Republican Sam Aanestad and liberal Republican Abel Maldonado. There is no need for us to lay out the case for why HJTA is backing Aanestad in this...

To if you are a conservative in the California legislature, and you decide you want to seek higher (or lower) office - you can expect a few questions to come your way. As important as the no taxes pledge has rightfully become in GOP primaries because government at every level has expanded well beyond a sustainable level, the next big question will be - "How did you vote on the confirmation of Abel Maldonado as Lt. Governor?" If you are a conservative in the state legislature, public policy positions taken by an official that you would place one-heartbeat (a very...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday sent another letter to California's congressional delegation asking for more federal dollars after President Barack Obama released a budget that provided only $1.5 billion of the $6.9 billion in new money that Schwarzenegger wants. The governor wrote that Obama's budget "represents only a down payment on what we are owed," but described the president's plan as "the first step in a lengthy and complicated process that can result in the fair and equitable treatment of California's taxpayers -- with your help." Schwarzenegger hopes to use federal dollars to help bridge the state's $19.9 billion deficit....

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO, said Tuesday that she won't debate GOP challenger Steve Poizner in front of party activists at the state Republican convention next month but will debate him before deep-pocketed party donors in Orange County. Whitman's campaign team said she will not debate Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, at the state party's convention March 12-14 in Santa Clara. Hundreds of the party's most loyal activists, as well as candidates for all statewide offices and for a U.S. Senate seat in California, will attend the three-day gathering. State GOP Chairman Ron Nehring said months...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California plans to install a network of computerized monitors to measure methane emissions from regions that are home to dairy ranches, farms, landfills and other sources. It will be the first network of its kind in the United States and will help the state take another step toward reducing emissions of the gases related to global warming. By May, seven devices about the size of a personal computer will be placed in regions of the state where methane emissions are believed to be the highest. Those include the farm fields of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys...

FONTANA, Calif. — Authorities say a pack of escaped dogs mauled three young siblings in California, leaving a 5-year-old girl in critical condition. Police Sgt. Jeff Deckers says the dogs — a mastiff and four pit-bull mixes — escaped a Fontana backyard Monday afternoon and attacked a mother walking with her four children. Deckers says the mastiff pulled the girl from her mother's hand and shook her violently. She has a punctured lung, broken ribs and bites and is on a ventilator.

"UP cops nab IM terrorist planning aerial strike" Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui, TNN, 2 February 2010, 01:48am IST SNIPPET: "LUCKNOW/NEW DELHI: The arrest of Shehzad alias Pappu — one of the key accused in the September 2008 serial blasts in Delhi and the Batla House encounter — by the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) of UP Police from Azamgarh on Monday evening is being seen as a major breakthrough in exposing a module that was planning to unleash air strikes. Shehzad, intelligence agencies had recently discovered, had undergone a training to fly planes from an institute in Bangalore and had surfaced as a...

Port of Oakland truckers are facing another deadline: They have until Friday to line up financing to pay for diesel filters or new trucks to comply with the state's strict air quality rules that went into effect Jan. 1. Drivers who are not able to purchase the new equipment will not be able to haul cargo at the Port after Feb. 15, but organizations who are offering low-cost loans to pay for the filters say they have received fewer applications than they expected. About 1,300 drivers who haul cargo for the Port were denied grant funding for filters and trucks...

In what proves to be an interesting follow-up to the question I raised last week about whether and when a candidate’s marriage to another elected official should be noted, Nadia Lockyer announced today that her campaign for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors District 2 seat collected about $168,000 in the latter half of last year – including, she notes, a $75,000 contribution from her husband’s Bill Lockyer for Treasurer re-election campaign. Bill Lockyer can certainly afford it; his committee had almost $9.4 million in the bank by mid-2009, and raised at least $58,000 more since then. He’s unopposed in...

DREAMs and CA Budget Cuts Bethany Stotts, February 2, 2010 The budget cuts—and tuition hikes—in University of California system have been hard on students there, prompting student protests and the mantra, “get more, pay less.” “We’re paying more and getting less,” Associated Press reporter Donna Gordon Blankenship quotes student “Steve Dixon, a Humboldt State University senior who heads the California State Students Association” in her February 1 article on tuition hikes across the country. According to Blankenship, “At the University of California, which has 10 campuses and about 220,000 students, in-state undergraduate fees in fall 2010 are set to reach...

Leadership: The speaker of the House wants to extend a proposed freeze on domestic programs to include defense spending. In a world of growing threats, perhaps she'd also like to cut her travel and bar bill. Last week the Russian air force celebrated the maiden flight of the Sukhoi T-50, Moscow's version of the American F-22 Raptor stealth fighter. We have shut down the F-22 production line, viewing it as an unaffordable and unnecessary extravagance. (snip) Everybody has to make a sacrifice," Pelosi was quoted as saying in an interview with Politico, shortly before Obama announced his proposed discretionary spending...

GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner today said he has reported "threats" made by the Republican rival Meg Whitman's campaign adviser to law enforcement officials. Poizner said at a press conference that Whitman campaign strategist Mike Murphy issued "crystal-clear" threats to his staff in an attempt to effectively "cancel the election" by pushing him to drop out of the race. "This is not an attempt to be hardball and to be aggressive, but this is an attempt to effectively manipulate the election process, the integrity of the election process, by issuing these threats behind the scenes to get me not to...

My friend, Orthodox Rabbi, California-based writer, blogger, and fellow political conservative, Rabbi Dov Fischer, has the disturbing scoop on Ms. Fiorina. He is the head rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, a Modern Orthodox synagogue, of whose Detroit branch both my grandfathers were co-founders. Rabbi Dov notes a very recent video, posted below, in which Ms. Fiorina details her very friendly, “working” relationship with shakedown artist, anti-Semite, and racist Jesse Jackson, when she welcomed him to his shakedown stop at Hewlett-Packard while she was CEO. Anyone who describes Jackson with the word “gracious,” as she did, is simply brain...

A dance party to raise money for the legal defense of student protesters turned violent in San Francisco early Sunday morning, as police arrested 11 people at a building South of Market. Ten people were cited and released for misdemeanors, including public drunkenness, said Officer Samson Chan of the San Francisco Police Department. A 23-year-old man remains in jail after police said he threw a large M-80 firecracker, barely missing an officer. He faces felony charges of aggravated assault. Police went to 154 Seventh St. around 1 a.m. after neighbors complained of noise, Chan said, and the fire marshal couldn't...

Blue California may turn red Low turnout of Latinos, other minorities could defeat Democrats By Tony Castro, Staff Writer 01/30/2010 Voter apathy among Latinos and other minority voters threatens to turn traditionally blue state California into another Massachusetts-like shocker in this year's midterm elections, political experts are warning. The importance of the turnout among Latinos and other minorities, according to several political consultants and strategists, underscores the tenuous position of statewide Democratic candidates in a new Field Poll showing them in trouble with white voters. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer trailed Republican challenger Tom Campbell, 46 percent to 43 percent...

An Amtrak train bound for Chicago was stopped suddenly Tuesday when a man began spouting terrorist threats.

Vernon the mystery dog is mysterious no longer: The German shepherd mix, whose dramatic rescue last week from the flooded L.A. River was carried live on many TV news stations, has been reclaimed by his owner. The dog had been taken to the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority shelter in Downey after his rescue, and animal control officers had been unable to locate his owner because he wasn't wearing ID tags and hadn't been microchipped. Officers called him Vernon after the city in which he was rescued. Turns out, Vernon's name is really Spikey, and he's owned by an elderly...

The world turns. In Indonesia, the principal of a Muslim boarding school in Tangerang who is accused of impregnating a 15-year-old student says the DNA test will prove that a malevolent genie is the real father. In New Zealand, a German tourist, Herr Hans Kurt Kubus, has been jailed for attempting to board a plane at Christchurch with 44 live lizards in his underpants. In Britain, a research team at King’s College, London, has declared that the female “G-spot” does not, in fact, exist. In France a group of top gynecologists led by M. Sylvain Mimoun has dismissed the findings,...