Free Republic

Don Mattingly won't return as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers next year after agreeing with his bosses that he and the team needed a fresh start.

Sanden Totten October 20 Angelenos live under constant threat of a major earthquake, but a controversial new study from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory puts a number on that threat. The scientific paper claims there is a 99.9 percent chance of an earthquake between magnitude 5 and 6.3 in less than three years. The study was published earlier this month by the American Geophysical Union's Earth and Space Science journal. The bold claim has taken many in the seismic community by surprise. Lead author, Andrea Donnellan of JPL, said this study used GPS and airborne radar data to look at land...

The Los Angeles Police Department misclassified an estimated 14,000 serious assaults as minor offenses in a recent eight-year period, artificially lowering the city's crime levels, a Times analysis found. With the incidents counted correctly, violent crime in the city was 7% higher than the LAPD reported in the period from 2005 to fall 2012, and the number of serious assaults was 16% higher, the analysis found. When presented with the findings, top LAPD officials acknowledged the department makes errors and said they were working to improve the accuracy of crime data reporting. "We know this can have a corrosive effect...

LOS ANGELES — Four California schools will be forced to change mascots after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation barring public schools from using the "Redskins" name for sports teams. It was one of three sports-related bills Brown approved Sunday. He also signed a measure that bans using or possessing smokeless tobacco on the playing field at professional baseball parks and another that recognizes competitive cheerleading as a high school sport. The mascot legislation will prevent public schools from using a term that American Indians regard as offensive. It goes into effect in 2017. Only four schools still use the name....

At the beginning of the new "X-Files" miniseries, two old characters can be seen exchanging some fresh banter. "It's always good to see you," Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully says to her former partner. "It's always good to find a reason," replies Fox Mulder, the truth-seeker played by David Duchovny. That spirit of reunion might also be applied to the larger "The X-Files." The landmark series returns to Fox for six episodes beginning Jan. 24, nearly 14 years after the show was last on TV.

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Cole Hamels and the Texas Rangers finally clinched the AL West title on the last day of the regular season. Hamels pitched a three-hitter, Adrian Beltre hit a go-ahead homer and the Rangers beat the Angels 9-2 Sunday, eliminating Los Angeles from playoff contention. A year after their 95 losses were the most in the American League, two months after they were still eight games out of first place and three days after ensuring themselves a postseason spot, the Rangers wrapped up their sixth division title. Texas plays its first AL division series game since 2011 on...

Was he a Half-White Supremacist? According to the LA Times, Chris Harper Mercer, the Oregon killer, was a "White Supremacist". One slight problem. Mercer identified as multi-racial. His mother was black. He doesn't seem to have even known his father. He identified with black TV killer Vester Lee Flanagan. This doesn't seem to have stopped the media with George Zimmerman who was labeled a white Hispanic, so maybe Chris Harper Mercer was a white Black? Was he a Half-White Supremacist? I'm not an expert on "White Supremacism", but being half-black and then shooting a bunch of white Christians would make...

Why China Is on an L.A. Spending Spree: "It's Just Monopoly Money to Them" by Seth Abramovitch 10/2/2015 6:00am PDT "$20,000 on drinks is a plain night on the town," says one local restaurateur, as big-time Chinese money pours into Los Angeles, consuming everything from wine to diamonds to watches to cars to prime real estate (in one case, 25,000 square feet for a teenage college student). The ultra-wealthy Chinese tend to get what they want, and right now most of them want one thing: to get out. More than 60 percent of China’s most affluent citizens have already left...

The labor union that led the charge for a $15 minimum wage hike in cities across California is now moving to secure an exemption for employers under union contracts. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor buried the exemption on the eighth page of its 12-page proposal for the Santa Monica City Council to review Tuesday while deciding whether to follow Los Angeles and increase the minimum wage. The loophole would allow employers with collective bargaining agreements to sidestep the wage hike and pay their union members below the proposed $15-per-hour minimum wage. James Sherk, a research fellow in labor...

Mayors from eighteen U.S. cities signed a letter to President Obama saying they are willing to take even more refugees than what has been proposed by the administration. “We will welcome the Syrian families to make homes and new lives in our cities,” wrote the mayors, all of whom are part of the Cities United for Immigration Action coalition. “Indeed, we are writing to say that we stand ready to work with your Administration to do much more and to urge you to increase still further the number of Syrian refugees the United States will accept for resettlement.” “This is...

A Saudi prince was arrested at a gated Los Angeles compound after allegedly trying to coerce a worker in the home into performing a sex act on him, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud, 28, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of forced copulation with an adult, a Los Angeles Police spokesperson told THR. The Los Angeles Times was first to report the news. The prince was booked and released on $300,000 bail on Thursday.

(RNS) Paul Ryan has been taking a lot of heat over the factual accuracy of claims he made in his prime time address at the Republican convention last week, but Wednesday night at the Democratic confab the GOP vice-presidential candidate – and practicing Catholic – was schooled by a popular nun on the moral shortcomings of his budget proposals. “Paul Ryan claims this budget reflects the principles of our shared faith,” Sister Simone Campbell, who became a celebrity of sorts this summer when she led the national “Nuns on the Bus” tour for social justice, told cheering Democratic delegates...

“The fallacy that President Obama is a Muslim has tripped up many a politician,” said NPR’s Jessica Taylor hopefully on Friday, “and on Thursday night, GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump was its latest victim.” Trump’s presumed faux pas was his failure to correct a questioner who asserted that Barack Obama was a Muslim. Taylor’s real error as a reporter, like that of all her mainstream colleagues, was to dismiss the questioner’s assertion as a “fallacy” without providing any evidence to the contrary. Strange but true, reporters pride themselves on knowing nothing about Obama’s roots. Last month, for instance, Catherine Thompson...

But soon, there could be something a little different and a lot faster: a high-speed train connecting Palmdale to Victorville, all the way to Las Vegas. XpressWest and China Railway International have put out $100 million to start the project. Not only would it provide a comfortable and fast-way to get to Vegas, but you could avoid the 15 Freeway as well. "The 15 Freeway is murder. Trying to get to Vegas for New Year's or any other holiday, it's like a three, four or five-hour delay," said Brigette Conyers of Victorville. ... He also said the environmental hurdles for...

A long-discussed high-speed rail project linking Southern California and Las Vegas will be built by a U.S.-China joint venture, Chinese officials said Thursday, though many details about the agreement remained hazy. Announcement of cooperation on the XpressWest project adjacent to the 15 Freeway comes days ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States. Financial terms of the agreement, and the cost of the project, were not immediately clear. XpressWest, a private venture formerly called DesertXpress, has been under discussion since at least 2007. Chinese officials described the project as a 230-mile train linking Las Vegas and...

Republican presidential contender Donald Trump is promising subsidized private health care for frustrated veterans, charging that immigrants in the country illegally receive better care than the nation's wounded soldiers. The comments, delivered Tuesday aboard a retired World War II battleship in Los Angeles harbor, came on the eve of the second Republican presidential debate in nearby Simi Valley, where some of the billionaire businessman's GOP rivals are expected to challenge his fiery rhetoric on immigration. "We have illegal immigrants that are treated better by far than our veterans," Trump declared, the USS Iowa's massive 16-inch guns behind him. "It's not...

His appeal was on full display as GOP rivals prepare debate assault.LOS ANGELES — Master showman and Republican poll leader Donald Trump strode across a stage aboard a retired battleship on Tuesday night, reveling in the cheers and chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump!” “I am with the veterans 100 percent,” Trump declared when he took the podium on the USS Iowa, having just been endorsed by the group hosting the event, Veterans for a Strong America. Dubbed “the battleship of the presidents” for having hosted Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the Iowa offered a useful backdrop...

Police are investigating a street race between two high-performance exotic cars in Beverly Hills that garnered hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube — and the man claiming to own the cars says he is protected by diplomatic immunity. The video shows a white Porsche 911 and a yellow Ferrari LaFerrari, a hybrid supercar with a combined horsepower rating of around 950, speeding through a residential tract at high speeds on Saturday evening in the 700 block of North Walden Drive. It includes an exchange between a journalist who captured the video and a man outside the house where the...

In case you missed the live stream. Not as in depth as I would have liked him to be...no particulars.

A YouTube video that went viral — showing a Ferrari LaFerrari and Porsche 911 GT3 tearing through residential streets of Beverly Hills; flying though stop signs while pedestrians waited to cross, narrowly avoiding other motorists — has caused outrage, with neighbors pleading with police to take action before someone gets hurt. According to NBC4, the owner of said vehicles is claiming “diplomatic immunity,” telling a video journalist who asked for comment, “I could have you killed and get away with it.” The name of the car’s owner has not been released, but he is rumored to be part of the...