Free Republic

Donald Trump's hyperbolic rhetoric about Mexico apparently has claimed a victim. Mexico abruptly replaced its low-profile ambassador to Washington with an experienced, well-traveled diplomat and put a public relations expert into its Foreign Ministry’s top spot for American affairs. {snip} Named to replace him is Carlos Manuel Sada Solana, who has been consul general in Los Angeles for three years and previously served at Mexican consulates in New York, Chicago, Toronto and San Antonio. A Mexican Foreign Ministry statement announcing the changes emphasized Sada’s “broad experience … protecting the rights of Mexicans in North America, as well as defending the...

ANAHEIM (CBSLA.com) — For the first time in Anaheim, a special tribute has been unveiled honoring the city's four-legged crime fighters. The bronze monument was revealed Sunday at La Palma Dog Park on N. Anaheim Boulevard and was inspired by former Anaheim K-9 police officer, Bruno.

Friends and neighbors of a man who has been charged with killing his son because he was gay said Saturday that the young man had a troubled history and was involved in several incidents that resulted in the police being called to the house. On Friday, Shehada Khalil Issa, 69, of North Hills was charged with fatally shooting his son, Amir Issa, 29, outside the family’s home earlier this week because he was gay, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. “The murder was committed because of the victim’s sexual orientation and because of the defendant’s perception of that...

A speaker at an evangelical Christian college urged students to accept the views of Black Lives Matter and consider themselves as having benefited from white privilege while looking to the Palestinians for inspiration in how to get along with one’s adversaries. The Rev. Christena Cleveland, a social psychologist who teaches at Duke University School of Divinity and authored the book "Disunity in Christ," brought a message of reconciliation and "love without exception" to Biola University in Los Angeles last week. At a conference titled "Love No Matter What: Politics, Sex, Race and the Way of the Cross," Cleveland touted the...

<p>A man accused of fatally shooting his son outside a home where his wife was found dead has been charged with one count of premeditated murder as a hate crime, with prosecutors alleging he killed his son for being gay.</p>

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump may want to avoid West Hollywood when he campaigns in California ahead of the state's potentially decisive June 7 primary. Lindsey Horvath, the mayor of West Hollywood, Calif., which is located in the heart of Los Angeles County and home to a sizable population of gay men, penned a letter to Trump this week explaining that he is unwelcome in her city. "With the primary making its way to California, as West Hollywood's Mayor, I want to make very clear that your campaign of violence and intimidation is not welcome in our City," she wrote...

Hunkered behind a MacBook decorated with stickers that read "This laptop was brought to you by capitalism" and "TRUMP 2016," Jake Lopez bounces T-shirt slogans off his friend Ian McIlvoy. "Trumplicans," he says, nodding with satisfaction. "I think it'll take off." Lopez is the California director of Students for Trump. Working from his dorm at Westmont College, he helps marshal the thousands of students who are pounding out phone calls, taping up fliers and blanketing Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat in an effort to persuade their peers that Donald Trump is the man. Although vastly outnumbered nationwide by left-leaning classmates chanting...

Controversy over Trump has failed to dent his standing with his core supporters in the Republican primaries, but his image among the rest of the electorate has plunged. The share of Americans with an unfavorable view of Trump is extraordinary: 68% in the most recent Bloomberg poll, 67% in the CNN/ORC survey, 67% in the ABC/Washington Post poll, 65% from Gallup. The 57% unfavorable rating he received in the most recent CBS/New York Times survey looks mild by comparison.

Confirmed: Demoralized Cops Equal Higher Crime Jack Dunphy Gentle readers, fasten your seatbelts. We are about to embark on a virtual tour on which you will join me in a Los Angeles Police Department patrol car cruising some of the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods. We will be patrolling the LAPD’s 77th Street Division, which year after year ranks at or near the top in violent crime among the city’s 21 patrol divisions. The Los Angeles Times tracks crime in more than 200 communities across L.A. County, and five of the top ten on the list are in 77th Street Division....

George Clooney is hosting a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on April 15 where seats at the head table cost $353,400 a couple The next night, another fundraiser will be held at Clooney's Los Angeles home and tickets are $33,400 each On Sunday, Bernie Sanders called the two fundraisers 'obscene' in an interview on CNN 'The people coming to this event have undue influence on the political process,' Sanders said Most of Sanders' fundraisers are '$15 or $50', he said 'It is obscene that Secretary Clinton keeps going to big-money people to fund her campaign,' Sanders said on CNN's State of...

SACRAMENTO (CBSLA.com/AP) — California legislators and labor unions have reached a tentative agreement that will take the state’s minimum wage from $10 to $15 an hour, a state senator said, a move that would make for the largest statewide minimum in the nation by far. “This is not a done deal,” Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco said Saturday. “Everyone’s been operating in good faith and we hope to get it through the Legislature.” Leno said if an agreement is finalized, it would go before the Legislature as part of his minimum-wage bill that stalled last year. If the Legislature approves...

....But among the voters most likely to turn out, the poll shows the race between Trump and Cruz is nearly tied, with Trump at 36% versus Cruz at 35%. The difference illustrates how a low turnout in the June 7 primary could hurt Trump and boost Cruz....

Riding a rebellion fueled by opposition to illegal immigration and pessimism about the nation's future, Donald Trump leads a scrambling duo of competitors less than three months before California's Republican presidential primary, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times statewide poll has found. Yet the party whose nomination he is seeking has fractured because of his candidacy, with ominous prospects for Republicans if the New York businessman emerges victorious after the party's summer convention.

Riding a rebellion fueled by opposition to illegal immigration and pessimism about the nation's future, Donald Trump leads a scrambling duo of competitors less than three months before California's Republican presidential primary, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times statewide poll has found. Yet the party whose nomination he is seeking has fractured because of his candidacy, with ominous prospects for Republicans if the New York businessman emerges victorious after the party's summer convention. A quarter of California Republican voters polled said they would refuse to vote for Trump in November if he is the party's nominee. Almost one-third of those...

The way the presidential campaign is shaping up, Ventura musician Jon Gindick may do something he's never done before. "I've never voted for a Republican," the registered Democrat told me. "I like Trump." A waiter told me he thought Trump's trade restrictions would create more jobs at higher wages. A couple wearing matching red, white and blue shirts told me their healthcare costs had tripled under Obamacare — a program Trump says he'll shred. To Gindick, Trump's remarks about criminals coming across the border were refreshingly honest, and not at all a condemnation of all immigrants or Latinos in general....

Hillary Clinton could not stop showing her agreement during a roundtable in Los Angeles on Thursday, nodding her head almost without a break for at least three-and-a-half minutes during one man’s remarks. Salam Al-Marayati, the head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, spoke at length near the end of the roundtable with other Muslim community leaders about, among things, the positive role Muslims could play in the United States in combatting radicalization. Clinton, seated to his right, nodded fervently throughout his speech. She also nodded a lot at the other speakers that discussed myriad issues involving the American Muslim community....

As the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable invoked the name of Vin Scully in lobbying DirecTV to carry SportsNet LA, the Hall of Fame broadcaster said Wednesday he was not entirely comfortable "to have my name tossed into a negotiation.” Said Scully: “I’m pretty shy with that kind of stuff.” The beloved Scully, 88, is entering his 67th and final season as voice of the Dodgers. A TWC spokesman said Tuesday that the company had cut its asking price for the Dodgers-owned channel "especially because of the historic nature of this year, with it being Vin Scully’s final season.”

Ignore Cruz And Trump — Scapegoating Muslims Is An Un-American Response To The Brussels Attacks It has been clear at least since the massacre in Paris last November that jihadist terrorists are embedded in Europe, difficult to detect and determined to engage in spectacular acts of violence. So while Tuesday's carnage in Brussels was horrific, it also was achingly familiar. This time more than 30 people were killed and hundreds injured in separate attacks at the Brussels airport and at a downtown subway close to the headquarters of the European Union. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks. While condemnations...

George Clooney made his political proclivities known in an open letter that pointedly bashed Republican front-runner Donald Trump. The Hillary Clinton campaign emailed Clooney's letter to supporters on Monday, in which he called for voters to rally behind the Democratic presidential hopeful and her "voice of tolerance and experience." The actor-activist and his wife, Amal, a human-rights lawyer, are hosting a fundraiser for Clinton at their Los Angeles home next month.

The questions were coming fast and frantic: How strong was the earthquake? Was it on the San Andreas? Is the Big One coming? A massive temblor had struck near Joshua Tree shortly before 10 p.m., causing buildings to sway all the way to Las Vegas. As the public braced for more shaking, the media flocked to Caltech that night in 1992. One woman seemed to have all the answers. It was a magnitude 6.1, explained U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones, and the odds of a larger quake in the next three days stood at 15%. She shifted her weight...