Free Republic

Few states pay closer attention to food than California. We are the cradle of the Central Valley and almond milk lattes, the home of of Full Belly Farms and Alice Waters and Ikeda markets, the state that introduced America to soda taxes and tomatoes to die for and cage-free hens.

A civil liberties group on Tuesday filed a lawsuit that could slow California’s plans for resuming executions. The ACLU of Northern California challenged a state law that gives the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation wide flexibility in establishing execution procedures. Delegating such policy decisions to a state agency, the suit says, violates separation of powers provisions of the California Constitution. The suit follows a Nov. 4 decision by the corrections department to finalize new regulations for conducting lethal injections and the subsequent passage of a ballot measure intended to expedite executions. A separate lawsuit challenging Proposition 66 is pending before...

What do we say to Californians who want to secede? Most often, I hear, "Good. Do it," or some variant thereof. But that is way too flippant, and there are much better potential responses. Another appropriate response might be, "That wasn't the deal. The deal was that you would move to Canada." But even that misses the major lesson that should be learned from this election. The truth is that the people who elected Donald Trump as President spent the last 8 years suffering through Obama. There was little talk of secession, and certainly no organized effort to secede by...

In 2008, when Barack Obama first captured the enthusiasm of millennials across America, 67 percent of voters aged 18-29 cast their ballots for the nation’s first African American president. Eight years later, with a chance to elect America’s first female president, an estimated 55 percent – or 13 million of the 23.7 million under-30 millennials who voted – chose Clinton, according to exit poll data from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). “There’s been a clear drop-off in enthusiasm,” Paul Taylor, author of “The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown,” said...

California is quickly becoming a battleground for immigration policy as a cross-section of leaders across the state vowed to fight any plans by President-elect Donald Trump to deport thousands of people in the U.S. illegally. Trump said during the presidential campaign that he’ll build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and deport people in the country illegally. He is expected to unwind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an initiative by President Obama that protects immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children. California has some of the nation’s most liberal policies when it comes to handling immigrants here...

Protests and riots exploded across California and throughout the nation for the third night after Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the presidential election. In Oakland, the East Bay Times reports, the rioting is almost out of control.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Donald Trump’s election as president is giving a big social-media boost to an unlikely effort in the nation’s most populous state: a plan to vote on seceding from the union. The Yes California Independence Campaign hopes to put a question on the November 2018 ballot that would authorize a statewide independence vote for the spring of 2019. The effort drew little attention until Tuesday’s election, which also kept Trump’s fellow Republicans in charge of Congress and raised the possibility of a conservative shift on the U.S. Supreme Court. Any effort to get an issue on the ballot...

California Gov. Jerry Brown, who earlier this year mused about building a wall around the state should Republican Donald Trump be elected, pledged Thursday to do his part to find common ground with the president elect. But Brown also put Trump on notice that “as Californians, we will also stay true to our basic principles. We will protect the precious rights of our people and continue to confront the existential threat of our time – devastating climate change.” Despite his complicated history with the Clintons, Brown endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton a week before California’s June primary, and then campaigned for...

An Oceanside man who died of natural causes in September was elected to office in the coastal San Diego County city more than a month later, officials confirmed Wednesday. Gary Ernst was elected to Oceanside City Treasurer by a six percent margin over challenger Nadine Scott. The election results are expected to be certified on December 7th by the city council. Ernst died Sept. 23 which did not allow enough time to remove his name from the ballot. With all precincts reporting, Ernst earned 17,659 votes. City councilmembers can declare the seat vacant since the winner cannot physically take office,...

For the first time since 1999, California has raised the taxes on cigarettes—and thanks to an interesting provision in the state laws, the state’s taxes on cigars are also going up. Just before midnight local time, the Associated Press called the decision on Proposition 56, a ballot measure that asked California voters whether to raise the tax on cigarettes from 87 cents to $2.87 per pack. California voters overwhelmingly said yes. Taxes on cigars will also be going up substantially. California adjusts taxes on other tobacco products, including cigars, every year. The state’s Board of Equalization determines the rate by...

California voters on Tuesday defeated a ballot measure to repeal the state’s death penalty, and instead narrowly passed a proposition that aims to amend and expedite it. The outcome concluded a closely watched ballot race to address what people on both sides of the debate have agreed is a broken system. Proposition 62, which would have replaced capital punishment for murder with life in prison without parole, garnered 46.1% of the vote. Proposition 66 intended to speed up executions by designating trial courts to hear petitions challenging death row convictions, limiting successive petitions and expanding the pool of lawyers who...

A California man says a stranger hurled expletives and set his truck on fire Thursday after seeing a pro-Donald Trump sticker on the bumper. Hao Lee had taken his 2-year-old son fishing on a pleasant November afternoon in Sacramento. He parked his white Dodge Ram truck with a pair of Trump stickers on the bumper along Garden Highway. "About a couple hours into fishing I heard someone yelling out 'F' Trump," Lee told KTXL. Lee and his son were only about 50 yards from where his truck was parked, near the edge of the river. Their peaceful fishing trip was...

The Los Angeles County Registrar is investigating how 83 ballots were sent to a single address at a San Pedro apartment. The unused ballots were found on Saturday by tenant Jerry Mosna, sitting on top of the mailbox center at his apartment building in San Pedro. The ballots were all addressed to a two bedroom apartment upstairs from Mosna's, belonging to an 89-year-old woman. All of the names on the ballots were different, and Mosna did not recognize the names on the ballot envelopes. Mosna and his wife took the ballots to the police and were told to bring them...

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Hillary Clinton still is expected to beat Donald Trump in California easily, but the hit to her numbers in recent polling could raise some concerns for her nationally. In a poll conducted mostly after the revelation by FBI director James Comey about emails found on former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s computer, Clinton’s lead among independent California voters dropped from 25 percent to only 9 percent. And Clinton, who leads Trump by 17 percent among those who haven’t voted, has only a 21 percent lead overall in the state. That’s down from 26 percent in the previous poll conducted by SurveyUSA and...

Poor woman assaulted as she supports Trump

Donald Trump’s popularity is prompting the tech industry to wonder whether its massive success has left some Americans behind. Unless you’re invited to Graydon Carter’s private dinner, the cocktail party at San Francisco’s historic Ferry Building is supposed to be the highlight of the annual Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, a high-end business conference for the coastal elite. On Wednesday evening, guests were escorted from the Yerba Buena Center to the Embarcadero by trolley and greeted by a six-person mariachi band who played through the selfies. But a little past 6 p.m., the crowd in the cathedral-esque lobby had already...

I drove by this while Uber driving. Nice to seeTRUMP!Even Rusty the T rex agrees! Trump!

Trump Rally in Hollywood, CA today

In response to Peter Thiel's pledge to donate $1.25 million to Donald Trump's presidential bid (reported by the New York Times on Sunday), some in the Silicon Valley-centered tech community are going public with a call to reject any company willing to do business with the PayPal co-founder. In addition to co-founding PayPal and data analysis software firm Palantir, Thiel sits on the board at Facebook and is a part-time partner and investor in startup seed fund Y Combinator. Thiel substantial donation to Trump doesn't come as a surprise--he did have a prime-time speaking slot at this summer's Republican National...