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The San Francisco Giants and 49ers both said Thursday they are "disturbed" by allegations that the CEO of the company that provides concessions to AT&T Park and Levi's Stadium was caught on video kicking and abusing his dog. Media reports have circulated surveillance video of a man identified as Centerplate CEO Desmond Hague kicking a frightened puppy and choking it with its leash in a Vancouver elevator last month. The Connecticut-based company handles food and beverage sales at numerous entertainment venues, including for the Giants and 49ers. Its Board of Directors said in a statement that it has censured Hague,...

Take your blood pressure medicine or just double up on your meds before watching this video. David Spady of Americans for Prosperity California takes you on a fact filled tour of the welfare abuse and fraud in California. Post your comments or your favorite cassarole recipe.

On May 21, Los Angeles voters will go to the polls to select a new mayor. Who will govern Los Angeles, however, is only the second-most important local question in the city today. The most important, by far, is who will buy the Los Angeles Times. The Times is one of the eight daily newspapers now owned by the creditors who took control of the Tribune Co. after real estate wheeler-dealer Sam Zell drove it into bankruptcy. Others include the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel and the Hartford Courant. The Tribune board members whom the creditors selected...

Ending a half-century of geological speculation, scientists have finally seen the process that causes rocks to move atop Racetrack Playa, a desert lake bed in the mountains above Death Valley, California. Researchers watched a pond freeze atop the playa, then break apart into sheets of ice that — blown by wind — shoved rocks across the lake bed. Until now, no one has been able to explain why hundreds of rocks scoot unseen across the playa surface, creating trails behind them like children dragging sticks through the mud. “It’s a delight to be involved in sorting out this kind of...

The first witnesses to an enduring natural mystery are an engineer, a biologist and a planetary scientist who met thanks to a remote weather station. Lacking direct evidence, explanations for this geologic puzzle ran the gamut, from Earth's magnetic field to gale-force winds to slippery algae. Now, with video, time-lapse photographs and GPS tracking of Racetrack Playa's moving rocks, the mystery has finally been solved.

For years scientists have theorized about how large rocks — some weighing hundreds of pounds — zigzag across Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park, leaving long trails etched in the earth. Now two researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, have photographed these "sailing rocks" being blown by light winds across the former lake bed. Richard Norris and James Norris said the movement is made possible when ice sheets that form after rare overnight rains melt in the rising sun, making the hard ground muddy and slick. On Dec. 20, 2013, the...

It's a geological enigma that's had scientists speculating for half a century. But the mystery behind Death Valley's 'Wandering Stones' has finally been uncovered. It was previously unknown what caused the rocks to move across Racetrack Playa, a desert lake bed in the mountains above California's Death Valley, leaving their distinctive trails behind them. But researchers have witnessed a thin layer of water freezing over the lake, before breaking into sheets the thickness of a window pane and nudging the rocks as they were blown by the breeze. “It’s a delight to be involved in sorting out this kind of...

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona) A rolling stone gathers no moss – but on Mars it can nevertheless cloak itself in mystery. This NASA image shows the track of a boulder that rolled across the Nili Fossae region of Mars. For now it is anyone's guess what set the rock in motion. This false-colour picture (click on it for higher resolution) was posted on 7 June to the Beautiful Mars Tumblr feed, a collection of high-resolution shots from the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows dark, jagged tracks left in the soil by a lumpy boulder, probably...

One of the mysterious peripatetic, or roving, rocks of Death Valley National Park in California and Nevada sits at the end of a curved track in a summer 2010 picture. Found in the Racetrack—an aptly named dry lakebed, or playa—the moving rocks have stumped scientists since the 1940s. For instance, the rocks are thought to move as fast as a walking person, but they've never been seen in action. Previous studies have shown that gravity or earthquakes can't explain the objects' movements. Now a student-research project led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has lent support to the idea that,...

Actively studied for 50 years, the rocks that mysteriously move around the dried lake bed playa in Death Valley, called the Racetrack, are yet to have an unquestionable explanation for their movement. ... In 1976 Robert Sharp and Dwight Carey diputed the ice-sheet theory. They analyzed the tracks and concluded because of track characteristics and the geometries of the tracks relative to each other that ice sheets could not have been involved in forming the tracks and moving the rocks. Sharp and Carey concluded due to the non-parallel nature and the crossing of some trails that it would be impossible...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 April 10 Unusual Rocks in Death Valley Credit & Copyright: Joe Orman Explanation: How did those big rocks end up on that strange terrain? One of the more unusual places here on Earth occurs inside Death Valley, California, USA. There a dried lakebed named Racetrack Playa exists that is almost perfectly flat, with the odd exception of some very large stones, one of which is pictured above....

By now, most of us know there is water on the moon. But did you know that it comes in three flavors and there is so much of it--158 billion gallons--that it could fill all of Seattle's water needs for three years? It turns out there is water all over the lunar landscape, which is rather astonishing since astronomers were convinced for such a long time that it was bone dry. Discovery.com and Space.com report this all changed when actual measurements were taken using the Mini-SAR and Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3 or "M-cubed") instruments on India's Chandrayaan-1 moon probe and...

Boulder, CO, USA – A geologist's sharp eyes and upset stomach has led to the discovery, and almost too-close encounter, with an otherworldly geological process operating in a remote corner of northern Chile's Atacama Desert. The sour stomach belonged to University of Arizona geologist Jay Quade. It forced him and his colleagues Peter Reiners and Kendra Murray to stop their truck at a lifeless expanse of boulders which they had passed before without noticing anything unusual. "I had just crawled underneath the truck to get out of the sun," Quade said. The others had hiked off to look around, as...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There are 65 prominent people who might run for president in 2016. The Democratic and Republican fields contrast sharply. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner, while there is no front-runner on the Republican side. Twenty-three Democrats have been mentioned as a candidate or are eyeing a bid, according to an analysis by The Hill. The GOP side has 42. Most of the people on this list won’t run, and some have adamantly claimed that they’re not interested. But many politicians have changed their minds on seeking the White House. Before mounting his 2008 bid, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he...

VIDEO: Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi don't agree on much, but they do agree on the government's involvement in "climate change", as you can see from this 2008 joint ad.

For House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the “war on women” and victimhood are always in style when election season rolls around. According to CNS News.com, on Thursday, Pelosi said on a conference call that American women have been victims throughout the history of the nation. “It was a struggle all the way,” Pelosi said. “Women marched. Women starved. Women were starved. Women were force-fed. Women could barely speak up in their own homes.” She continued: Women left their homes to take the message. And it was successful, and the right to vote, again, so precious, so hard fought. ......

Bob Owens at Bearing Arms talks about a new piece of Democrat legislation which, rather than trying to ban various types of weapons, seeks to restrict civilians from using certain classes of body armor. These anti-gun Democrats keep failing to stop us from having guns… and so they seem intent on making sure that we cannot defend ourselves against theirs. HR 5344, the laughably titled “Responsible Body Armor Possession Act,” is nothing more or less than attempt ban Level III and higher body armor that can defeat most common rifle ammunition, such as the steel plate armor sold by AR500...

It was a major attack on a South Bay electrical substation, but first responders are now saying that a member of Congress—and the public—may not be getting the truthThree members of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office who responded to a major attack on a South Bay electrical substation last year recently revealed their belief that those in charge mishandled critical decisions just hours after the incident. Around 1:30 a.m. on April 16 last year, an attacker or attackers opened fire on Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Metcalf substation located off Highway 101 in south San Jose. Bullets from a...

A Friday afternoon dispatch at the Politico from Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein tells us that "The White House is putting the finishing touches on a post-Labor Day schedule that will send the president to states where he’s still popular." The list of states where the Politico pair alleges that's the case is quite short: "Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California." That's it. Obama, in a situation resembling that of Richard Nixon in the final months of his presidency, when "Tricky Dick" was mocked for being able to find friendly audiences in just a few Southern states, is apparently...

A court hearing provided new details of the killing of Nancy Hammour, a 28-year-old woman whose body was found under a bridge in Newport Beach. The prosecutor said Irvin Tellez killed Hammour as the two rode in a car because she started screaming after seeing him shoot a woman in the face. Tellez could face life in prison without possibility of parole if he’s convicted and a jury finds the murder was committed for the benefit of a gang. Deputy District Attorney Jim Mendelson said the violence started shortly after midnight Sept. 2, 2013, when Jaime Rocha pulled to the...