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PASADENA - A woman shot and killed a raccoon that was fighting with her pit bull terrier, police said. Pasadena police Lt. Randell Taylor said neighbors called authorities to report a shot fired in the 600 block of Las Robles Avenue at about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. When police arrived, they learned a large raccoon had attacked a resident's dog. "She got a shovel and hit the raccoon about 15 times," Taylor said. "She shot it in the mid-section and it was still getting the best of the dog." Taylor said the woman retrieved the shovel and again hit the raccoon...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave Democrats the cold shoulder as he grew convinced he can somehow win Republican support for a midyear budget deal that includes tax hikes, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said Wednesday. The Democratic Senate leader said he and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass came just shy of closing a budget deal Sunday that would have reduced the state's estimated $40 billion deficit by $17 billion over the next 17-plus months. But Steinberg said in subsequent talks the governor spurned their offer with an eye toward reaching a bipartisan agreement with support from anti-tax Republicans instead of working...

LOS ANGELES, CA. (January 3, 2009) A burglar in Los Angeles chose the wrong celebrity to mess with -- quite literally. Actress Jennifer Aniston and her personal assistant Debi Burke returned to Aniston’s Hollywood Hills home yesterday after a week away to find that thieves had emptied almost everything in the house. "Tears just rolled down my face as I walked in and saw everything gone and piles of trash all over my home," Aniston reportedly said. Aniston sent her assistant to the local police precinct to file a report while she inspected the piles left behind. As she walked...

SACRAMENTO -- Democratic leaders of the state Legislature, deadlocked with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over how to solve California's growing fiscal crisis, sent the governor their $18 billion budget package today despite his vow to veto the bills. Schwarzenegger followed through with his promise, immediately rejecting the bills and sending the Legislature back to square one with the state bleeding revenue and expected to run short of cash to pay its bills as early as next month."It was wishful thinking on (the Democrats') part," said Aaron McLear, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger. "The governor said three weeks ago that he would veto...

SACRAMENTO — A Democratic gambit to generate billions in new tax revenue for the depleted state treasury was on the verge of collapse Tuesday, after legislative leaders declared that Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has refused to cut a deal with them on the $18 billion plan. "The governor seems to be getting cold feet," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said at a news conference in the Capitol this afternoon. Earlier in the day, taxpayer groups and Republican lawmakers announced they had filed suit to block the proposal, which both houses of the Legislature approved last month virtually on...

Complaining that they already have been hit hard by the ailing economy, many Inland bar owners are upset by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to raise taxes on cocktails, beer and wine purchased at bars. "It's awful," said Paula Jones, owner of Arts Bar & Grill in downtown Riverside. Business has dropped 30 percent the past year, the worst decline Jones has seen in 25 years of owning the bar, she said. The nickel-a-drink tax is part of Schwarzenegger's plan to solve a nearly $40 billion state budget shortfall projected through June 2010. If approved by the Legislature in the coming...

Following the lead of cities such as London and Singapore, officials in San Francisco are considering a plan to ease traffic by charging drivers a fee upon entering notoriously clogged sections of the city. Using $1 million in federal funds, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority is studying various "congestion-pricing" options. If approved, such pricing would make San Francisco the first U.S. city to charge cars a fee to enter certain neighborhoods at certain times. "I want a San Francisco that is far less congested and far easier to navigate," said a city supervisor, Jake McGoldrick, who has shepherded congestion-pricing...

Meg Whitman fueled speculation that she was readying a run for office of California governor when it became public today that she stepped down last week from several corporate boards she was serving. After retiring from eBay in March, the former President and CEO had stayed on as Special Advisor to the new president and CEO, a role that netted her compensation of up to $1.2 million a year. She terminated that position on December 31 and resigned from the eBay Board of Directors. According to eBay, "Whitman's decision to resign is solely for personal reasons and time considerations and...

Reporting from Sacramento -- That 52-inch, flat-screen television on the family room wall may have a terrific picture, but there's a big drawback: It's an energy hog. State regulators are getting ready to curb the growing power gluttony of TV sets by drafting the nation's first rules requiring retailers to sell only the most energy-efficient models, starting in 2011.

Millions of Californians with limited English proficiency now have the right to an interpreter from their commercial health and dental plans – made possible by a first-in-the-nation law aimed at dismantling the language barriers that get in the way of good medicine. The new regulation – implemented New Year's Day after five years of hearings, delays and wrangling among insurance companies, regulators and consumer advocates – is widely hailed as a milestone in reducing mistakes because of miscommunication. "This is really huge, especially in California where we're getting more and more diverse," said Martin Martinez, policy director for the California...

Vandals spray-painted swastikas on a Catholic church in San Francisco's Castro District Saturday night. It appears the vandals are upset about the Catholic church's support of Proposition 8, which made same-sex marriage illegal in California. But, the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church on Diamond Street is gay-friendly. Many parishioners voted against Prop 8 and they are upset their church was targeted. "We're very disturbed by the hierarchy's support of the Yes on Eight Campaign. We've been in conversation with the bishop, which is the way I think we need to handle it. I think Catholic teaching shows us we're all...

I want to call your attention to a statewide initiative in California that may change the debate on the automatic citizenship that is wrongly bestowed upon children born to illegal aliens and foreign visitors in the United States. The initiative—The California Taxpayer Protection Act—is being planned for the June 2010 California ballot. This may seem like a distant point on the horizon, but it’s really not when you consider the herculean efforts necessary to secure a spot on the ballot in the state. Supporters are being sought from across the nation for this important initiative. Initiative Background The initiative is...

"Summary of Overnight Events, 03 January 2009"

The executive board of the Service Employees International Union will take up a proposal Thursday to consolidate in a single local all long-term-care workers in California, despite the vehement protests of critics who say the change will weaken labor's hand. ... The idea is to move the 65,000 long-term-care workers of the 150,000 members of United Healthcare Workers-West in Oakland, San Jose's Local 521 and Los Angeles-based Local 6463 into a single group. Proponents say the concretion of wealth and globalizing corporate ownership requires unions to organize on a scale to compete with employers. Opponents, and in particular Sal Rosselli,...

The picturesque coastal town of Pacific Grove, California promotes itself as “Butterfly Town USA” because of the migration of hordes of Monarch butterflies from Canada that flock to the city every winter. The city’s beauty, coupled with its small-town atmosphere, made it a perfect choice for the shooting location of the 1989 movie, Turner and Hooch, starring Tom Hanks. But with the recession and falling home values, Pacific Grove is now in a financial crisis. For years it has not fully funded its public employee’s pensions, and sales tax revenues are falling faster than butterflies mate. The city council was...

Move over city and highway MPG.  Smog ratings - you're yesterday's news.  Beginning today, those shopping a new ride in California will face a new standard in town -- something called a "Global Warming Score." No kidding. Pursuant to Assembly Bill 1229, a sticker displaying a rank comparing "the emissions of global warming gases from the vehicle with the average projected emissions of global warming gases from all vehicles of the same model year sold in the state" must be affixed to all motor vehicles henceforth sold in the state.  These so-called "Global Warming Scores" range from 1 to 10,...

"The strain of a once-innocuous staph infection that has become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics kills more people each year than the AIDS virus and in most cases is contracted in hospitals. ...SB 1058 will require hospitals to report infections such as MRSA to the Department of Health Services, effective Jan. 1."

These greedy SOB's overtax the people, confiscate their tax dollars every week, blow the cash on useless, unproductive government programs, and now they don't have any of the people's money to give back after "borrowing" it - interest free - all year. From MSNBC. If you expect you'll be getting a refund from California when you file your 2008 state income tax return, be prepared: you may instead receive a "registered warrant." Translation: an IOU. Well, I have a few suggestions on how to deal with these reprobates. More . . .

The New Year is shaping up as a brutal one for Californians. With the potential acquiescence of a governor who once posed as taxpayers' most ardent defender, the Democrats who control the Legislature are poised to execute a slick end run around the state constitution and impose vast tax hikes on a simple majority vote. These higher sales, gas and income levies are likely to make the recession last longer and be more destructive. And they will only be the beginning. At least until Proposition 11 ends gerrymandered legislative districts in 2012, we can expect a steady series of tax...

Calif. Taxpayers Due Refunds May Get IOUs By Patrick Healy NBCBayArea.com updated 8:46 p.m. ET Dec. 31, 2008 If you expect you'll be getting a refund from California when you file your 2008 state income tax return, be prepared: you may instead receive a "registered warrant." Translation: an IOU. California is rapidly running out of money. Blame it on the state budget deficit that continues to bleed billions of dollars from California's reserves. Facing inadequate credit to make up the difference, California's Controller John Chiang warns that by the end of February, the nation's most populous state may not be...

Sacramento -- State Controller John Chiang, who oversees California's cash flow, warned state agencies Tuesday that unless Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature agree on a budget, the state will have to begin issuing IOUs to some state employees and contractors as early as Feb. 1. "Without immediate cash solutions or the ability to borrow billions from the strained financial markets, the state controller's office has no choice but to pursue the deferral of potentially billions of dollars in payments and/or the issuance of ... IOUs," Chiang wrote in a letter to state agencies. Tuesday, Chiang was still in the...

The year might have ended on a purely triumphant note for Andy Stern, who heads the nation's fastest-growing labor union and played a key supporting role in President-elect Barack Obama's drive for the White House. Instead, Stern has seen the Service Employees International Union jarred by a spending scandal and internecine feuding, and more recently by the favor-selling investigation that led to the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Stern has not been implicated in any wrongdoing, and many say he has moved forcefully to address the allegations of corruption in the union's biggest California chapter and internal complaints of...

<p>Financing schemes that sidestepped voter approval have put local governments deeper in hock.</p> <p>Oxnard was in a bind, facing a $150-million bill to fix cracking and crumbling streets and no way to pay for the work without cutting other services.</p>

I was born and raised in Chicago and have resided on the northside ..most of the time in the Illinois 5th Congresional district. Rod Blagojevich and Rahm Emmanuel have BOTH been my congressmen. Now because Rahm has announced that he is leaving and a special election will take place, I am considering throwing my name in for the special election. After all I reside here! Many of the Life-long Politicians who want the seat are just that, Life long politicians looking for another job. So I am asking FReepers far and wide to put on their think caps and help...

(AP) Mexico City - Salim Boughader Mucharrafille was arrested in 2002 and convicted on organized-crime and immigrant-smuggling charges. Boughader, a Mexican of Lebanese descent, ran a cafe in the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California.

In an unprecedented move, California Attorney General Jerry Brown, has declared that he will not fulfill his statutory obligation to defend all the laws of the state. The issue prompting this dereliction of duty is, of course, the recently voter-passed constitutional amendment declaring that only a union of a man and woman shall be recognized as a marriage under state law. “It came down to a choice between doing what the law requires and what I personally think is right,” Brown announced. “While the case could be made that defending the laws of the state—whether enacted by the legislature or,...

Reporting from Sacramento -- Over the last six months, California tax officials have quietly mailed thousands of official letters to doctors, beauty salons, insurance agents and other service providers looking for some badly needed state tax revenue. The letters asked these service businesses to check records on their out-of-state purchases for the last three years and pay any back taxes they owe. Failure to do so could lead to an audit of the taxpayer's books going back eight years, the letter warned. Californians know all too well about sales taxes they pay almost every day on purchases. But less known...

With its days numbered, the Bush administration has made an unnecessary and dangerous change to a 25-year-old regulation that bans concealed, loaded firearms in America's national parks and wildlife refuges. This regulation, created by the Reagan administration, has done an outstanding job of making these special places among the safest in the nation. And it did so without imposing unreasonable restrictions on gun owners - it merely required that weapons be unloaded and kept in a place that's not readily accessible, such as a car trunk. But this 11th-hour rule change - slipped in by a lame-duck administration late on...

Redding gun stores haven't noticed the economic downturn felt by most of America this holiday season. Just the opposite. Owners of three of the area's largest gun dealerships say their sales have doubled or even tripled as hundreds of worried gun-rights advocates rush to buy firearms before President-elect Barack Obama and a Democrat-controlled House and Senate take power after January. "After the election, there definitely was motivation," said Fred Drollinger, 53, of Shingletown, who picked up a new Kimber .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol earlier this month from Jones' Fort in Redding. "The Democrats have a very different view of guns" than...

Color the brake lights red as the column of cars backs up from the Caldecott Tunnel, the often bottled-up gateway between Contra Costa and Alameda counties. Color drivers' moods red as the congestion worsens over a span of 45 years. Many drivers are looking forward to relief from a long-planned $420 million fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel, but a lawsuit by Alameda County neighborhood groups and a bicycling advocacy organization could delay the project scheduled to begin in the summer and finish in 2014. A ruling on the lawsuit is expected soon from Alameda County Superior Court judge Frank...

California's intellectual pipeline to the White House is again open wide and flowing, as the Golden State will have key advocates bending President-elect Barack Obama's ear on its behalf. Naturally, the nation's most populous and electorally rich state (which is also rich with campaign contributors) would have a great deal of influence. But the Democratic stronghold mattered less to the Bush administration. As Chris Lehane, a former Clinton administration official and San Francisco political consultant, said: "Before, the door was slammed in our face. Now, the welcome mat is out. The access issue is a big deal." "You have an...

December 23, 2008, 4:00 a.m. Gross Dereliction of DutyBy the Editors As attorney general of California, Jerry Brown has a duty to defend the state and its laws in court. That duty requires him to offer the best grounds in defense of any law that may reasonably be defended. In a brief he filed last Friday in the case challenging Proposition 8 — the ballot measure that amended California’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage — Brown grossly violated that duty. On Election Day, California voters approved Proposition 8. Opponents of Proposition 8 then rushed to court to invalidate it...

The cause of gay rights has made enormous progress in the last couple of decades, but the more specific cause of gay marriage continues to be battered. In the same election that voters helped bridge the United States' racial divide by electing the country's first African-American president, voters in California overrode a ruling of that state's Supreme Court and effectively rebanned gay marriage. Reliably Democratic-voting California — home to those much-mocked "San Francisco values" that tolerate gay lifestyles — has now joined 29 other states, including Ohio, banning gay marriage. Protests in reaction to the vote popped up across the...

OAKLAND -- Bay area longshoremen were up in arms Friday night when they were denied work at one of Oakland's cargo terminals. The cargo ship, the Zhen Hua 19, pulled into Oakland's Pier Seven and on board was tons of steel slated to be used for the new Bay Bridge. Caltrans decided not to hire the ILWU Local 10 longshoremen to unload the vessel, a decision that angered some local union members.

Bay Area officials are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of tens of billions of dollars in tax subsidies for a high-speed rail line from Oakland to Los Angeles. This is so wrong on so many levels. Can anyone say “High-Speed Rail to Nowhere?” With the economy in recession, California’s plan to ask the federal government for billions of dollars to help build the nation’s first high-speed rail system might seem like wishful thinking rather than a feasible financial strategy. But transportation officials say that California’s high-speed rail project seems to be on a fast track to a...

Jody Miller is doing her best. The only tree she could squeeze into the temporary apartment she is sharing with her husband this Christmas was too tiny to decorate. So she strung up lights above the fireplace, pinned stockings to the front door and lined up three glowing reindeer on the patio wall. It feels festive. But Christmas won't be the same without all the couple's friends and neighbors from the Oakridge Mobile Home Park. The close-knit community once celebrated the major holidays together. But the residents have scattered since fire erupted last month in the hills above Sylmar and...

Re "Warren invitation" (Letters, Dec. 23): I am getting tired of hearing gays and left-leaning Democrats refer to anyone who opposes gay marriage as being "homophobic" or even "bigoted." I voted yes on Proposition 8 because I believe marriage is a bond between one man and one woman. For the sake of my children and their children's future I will do everything I can to protect the institution of marriage and family for them. That doesn't make me a bigot or homophobic. That makes me an American exercising my right to vote. Having the Rev. Rick Warren give the inaugural...

I was intending to write something lighthearted as my last entry for Fox and Hounds in 2008. (F&H will not publish again until January 5, 2009.) But then I read that the California Teachers Association has filed an initiative to raise the sales tax. And another initiative has been filed, I assume by the same group, to lower the vote requirement to raise many other taxes. (You can find the initiatives on the Attorney General’s site numbered 08-0021 thru 08-0023.) Of course, we have the call for permanent tax increases to solve the growing budget deficit. And, then there is...

Get ready for the geek-in-chief. President-elect Barack Obama used to collect comic books, can't part with his BlackBerry, and once flashed Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" sign. That and other evidence has convinced some of Obama's nerdier fans that he'll be the first American president to show distinct signs of geekiness. And that's got them as excited as a Tribble around a Klingon. Obama is good at "repressing his inner geek, but you can tell it's there," especially when he goes into nuanced explanations of technical_matters, said Benjamin Nugent, author of the book "American Nerd:...

RIVERSIDE - Greyhound won't shut down its downtown Riverside terminal -- originally set to close today -- for another three months so it can serve customers during the holiday season.

Faced with a gaping budget deficit, Orange County officials disclosed plans Tuesday to lay off nearly 60 Probation Department employees and to start releasing some juvenile criminal suspects rather than holding them in juvenile hall. Word of the cutbacks came the same day that 1,000 angry workers stormed the Orange County Hall of Administration to protest previously announced plans to lay off 210 social services employees. * Confrontation Confrontation * Orange County cuts 210 workers * EDITORIAL: Orange County's careless cutbacks The social services cuts stem from a steep reduction in state funding that county officials said left them with...

Mickey, Donald, Pluto and Goofy are helping to keep Don Perata out of jail and they may not even know it. The Walt Disney Co. is one of a number of well-known groups and companies that has pumped money into the former Oakland state senator's "Leadership California" fund, which was put together in 2005 to raise money "to support or oppose state and local ballot measures and other lawful purposes." In the past year, that "other lawful purpose" has been stoking the cooling boiler of Perata's legal defense fund, which has paid out about $2 million to attorneys charged with...

OAKLAND — By late July 2007, detectives investigating two North Oakland street killings had strongly tied them to Your Black Muslim Bakery and had a witness who saw a gunman running from a scene, according to a search-warrant affidavit a judge allowed to be released Monday. The affidavit is further evidence of police suspicions that bakery members were tied to escalating violent crimes before the shooting death of journalist Chauncey Bailey and shows police moving quickly to raid the bakery. The Chauncey Bailey Project has reported that police delayed the raid from Aug. 1, 2007, to Aug. 3, 2007, to...

I find it difficult to believe that every Long Beach Democrat is dim witted, a sadist, or a masochist. With a historic $42 Billion dollar deficit sure to degrade most every aspect of life in our State, how can Democratic voters not demand better results from their own majority Party who created the massive problems. As our once top rated Public Schools were decimated by the illegal infestation while under total control of the elected Democratic majority, why don't Democratic Voters demand better. Democrats in the other State's demanded better from their Party politicians and the results have been very...

Warren invitation I am a 68-year-old gay woman. As a longtime political watcher I have seen President Bush signal his conservative bona fides by sacrificing gays to the Karl Rove hatchet attacks. Now as an Obama supporter I see the invitation of conservative preacher Rick Warren to offer up a blessing at the inauguration as a big slap in the face for gays. This is a major misstep for the Obama team. It panders to the right-wing soft bigots like Warren (who just condemn homosexuality, not gays per se). Del Whan

Attorney General Jerry Brown's legal challenge to California's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage marks the first time that the state's top lawyer has refused to defend a newly enacted ballot measure since 1964 - another epic discrimination case that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In November 1964, an overwhelming 65 percent majority of the state's voters approved Proposition 14, a constitutional amendment that overturned a fair-housing law and allowed racial discrimination in property sales and rentals.Attorney General Thomas Lynch - newly appointed to succeed Stanley Mosk, a Prop. 14 opponent who had just been named to the state Supreme...

Case No. 8168047 IN THE Supreme Court of the State of California KAREN 1. STRAUSS et al., Petitioners, v. MARK B. HORTON, as State Registrar of Vital Statistics, etc., et al., Respondents; DENNIS HOLLINGSWORTH et al., Interveners. INTERVENERS' OPPOSITION BRIEF KENNETH W. STARR (Bar No. 58382) 24569 Via De Casa Malibu, CA 90265-3205 Telephone: (310) 506-4621 Facsimile: (310) 506-4266 ANDREW P. PUGNO (Bar No. 206587) LAW OFFICES OF ANDREW P. PUGNO 101 Parkshore Dr Ste 100 Folsom, CA 95630-4726 Telephone: (916) 608-3065 Facsimile: (916) 608-3066 Email: andrew@pugnolaw.com Attorneys for Interveners TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF AUTHORITIES iii ISSUES PRESENTED 1...

It was an early scene from The Matrix, but even Keanu Reeves began to figure out things had just gotten really weird. He discusses said predicament with his wasted buddy, Choi. Neo:You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're awake or still dreaming? Choi: All the time. It's called mescaline, it's the only way to fly. Wikipedia describes Mescaline as a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid that is used to enhance transcendental practices. Apparently, serving as Attorney General, in The Great State of California, offers the office holder opportunities to experience transcendence; even without the pharmaceutical props. At...

SAN DIEGO – A former adviser to Lt. Gov. John Garamendi and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Navy under President Clinton pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to possession of child pornography, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Wade Rowland Sanders, 67, an attorney, entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Whelan, U.S. Attorney Karen P. Hewitt said in a written statement released Monday night. According to court records, Sanders admitted that on or about May 2, he possessed a computer and computer media that he knew contained more than 600 images of...

Reporting from Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders are close to agreement on a landmark red-ink reduction package. But to see how close, you'd have to look inside Schwarzenegger's head. And I don't know anyone in Sacramento who knows how to do that. When he vowed to veto the $18-billion package of tax hikes and spending cuts that Democrats passed in both houses Thursday, what was that all about? Was he merely trying to squeeze Democrats for more on his holiday wish list? Or did he really not want any part of this Democratic scheme, considering it...