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Internet companies such as Amazon and Overstock are threatening to pull out of California rather than collect state sales tax on tens of millions of dollars worth of business, the Los Angeles Times reports. The move comes after the Golden State’s Assembly passed a law expanding the tax to Internet sales for companies that have a physical presence or sister companies with offices there. The move passed the Democrat-controlled lower house on Tuesday on a 47-16 vote. It now goes to the Senate. [Snip] One Republican voted with the majority. The rest rejected the move saying it would drive business...

A recent Consumer Reports survey found that roughly 7.5 million Facebook accounts belong to users younger’ than 13 and that as many as 20 million are under 18. While that might seem like a relatively low number given Facebook’s 500+ million users, being a minor with a Facebook account is increasingly becoming a scary thing: Cyber-bullying on the site has reached frightening proportions and child predators are a well known concern associated with the site. Considering Facebook’s apparent reach with children and the risks associated with having an account, it’s surprising it took this long for a bill giving parents...

When the state's hands-free cellphone law was enacted three years ago, the rules seemed so simple. Holding a phone in your hand to make a call would be illegal. Few ifs, buts or maybes. Then came a law against texting. Then came an explosion of phones that double as GPS devices, cameras, music players, voice recorders and email dispensers. And today, amid an unprecedented crackdown this month on cellphone scofflaws, what's legal and what's not has motorists and even some cops scratching their heads. "When you look for loopholes, the whole issue of cellphone use, texting or distracted driving becomes...

Reporting from Sacramento -- As the battle over same-sex marriage makes its way through California's courts, another gay rights fight is smoldering in the Legislature. Democratic lawmakers have revived a plan to require state schools to teach about the contributions of gay, lesbian and transgender Americans. They are reigniting a movement that halted five years ago when legislators approved such a requirement only to run into opposition from then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, with a Democrat in the governor's office, the lawmakers and gay rights activists are more hopeful that school curricula will be revised.

Lawmakers in the state of California are proposing a law that would require schools to portray lesbians, homosexuals, transsexuals and those who have chosen other alternative sexual lifestyles as positive role models to children in all public schools there. "SB 48: The worst school sexual indoctrination ever" is how officials with the Campaign for Children and Families describe the proposal, SB 48, sponsored by state Sen. Mark Leno. Openly homosexual, Leno boasts on his website of founding a business with his "life partner, Douglas Jackson," who later died of AIDS complications. That description as "worst" is considerable, considering the Campaign...

Many readers don’t want to hear another horror story about doing business in California. Because I live and practice law in California, I am perhaps more sensitive than other pundits to the ongoing collapse of the state’s economy, and I also have a front row seat to the parade of regulatory insanities that march by on a near-weekly basis, even as the businesses that once made the state an economic titan line up to head east. Earlier this week I wrote on the so-called "Green Chemistry Initiative” for the Washington Examiner, and one of my law partners quickly emailed to...

From Bob Dylan’s lyrics to a real California workplace policy, progress is being made. Despite an economy on life support with only weeks, if not hours, remaining to survive fiscally before the State Treasurer of California begins issuing IOU’s for payments, legislators have come up with a plan. Their plan is now to force employers to accept employees who come to work stoned. This should really help light-up the ailing economy. It may sound like a joke, but it’s serious. A state lawmaker in California, during the nation’s worst recession, wants to outlaw employers from firing workers who come to...

A few days ago I wrote about the homosexual activist’s witch hunt against normalcy. I pointed out that the latest threshold of insanity is being pushed in the textbooks in Great Britain where activists would indoctrinate children to accept homosexuality not only in health class but in math and science class.In that article I reminded readers how liberals in America continually look to socialist Europe and demand that the United States follow in those footsteps (to ruin). I said it would only be a matter of time before Leftists pushed it here. Little did I know that it was already...

In a dramatic ruling giving gun owners a win in an National Rifle Association / California Rifle and Pistol (CRPA) Foundation lawsuit, this morning Fresno Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Hamilton ruled that AB 962, the hotly contested statute that would have banned mail order ammunition sales and required all purchases of so called “handgun ammunition” to be registered, was unconstitutionally vague on its face. The Court enjoined enforcement of the statute, so mail order ammunition sales to California can continue unabated, and ammunition sales need not be registered under the law. The lawsuit was prompted in part by the many...

One state lawmaker from the southland is taking another shot at helping undocumented California college students pay for their education. Democratic Assemblyman Gil Cedillo of Los Angeles Tuesday re-introduced a state version of the federal "DREAM Act" which was shot down by Congress last month. Cedillo's previous attempt to help illegal immigrant students obtain financial aid was vetoed three different times by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who cited the state's financial crisis as his reasoning. If approved, the measure would give undocumented college students in the Golden State the opportunity to vie for Cal grants and other means of financial aid....

Californians will welcome 725 new laws on Jan. 1. Here's a glance at some of the laws taking effect when you ring in the new year: AB 119 prevents insurance companies from charging different rates for men and women for identical coverage. SB 782 prevents landlords from evicting tenants who are victims of domestic or sexual abuse or stalking. AB 1844—informally known as Chelsea's Law and authored by local Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher—will increase penalties, parole provisions and oversight of sex offenders, including a "one-strike, life-without-parole penalty" for some.  AB 1871 allows people to lease out their cars when they...

Openly gay state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill today that would require public school materials to include the historical contributions of gay people as a way to fight bullying. Leno's Senate Bill 48 is similar to a proposal that was approved by the Legislature in 2006 but vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Most textbooks don't include any historical information about the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) movement, which has great significance to both California and U.S. history," Leno said in a press release. Leno was recently named to prominent leadership as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee....

Thursday October 7, 2010 Schwarzenegger Vetoes Gay-Sponsored “Trojan Horse” Measure on Marriage By Peter J. SmithSACRAMENTO, California, October 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger earned muted praise from pro-family advocates last week after he vetoed a measure that one pro-family group described as a “Trojan horse” that could have helped homosexuals overturn Prop. 8 in 2012. SB 906, authored by the openly homosexual Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and supported by many homosexual groups, would have changed the Family Code to refer to “civil marriage” instead of just “marriage.” The bill also stated that no authorized religious official...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday signed seven major health care-reform bills, including legislation establishing a Web-based insurance exchange that will allow consumers to comparison-shop for coverage. The governor's action makes California the first state to implement an oversight board for insurance exchange marketplaces since the new federal health care law was enacted earlier this year. Massachusetts implemented its exchange prior to reform. "For national reform to succeed, it will be up to the states to make it work, and California is moving forward on reforms that will provide affordable and quality health care insurance," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is using his veto pen to push back on some bills that legislators passed ... On Thursday, he attached this veto message to Assembly Bill 2418, which would have removed the apostrophe in the “Contractors’ State License Law.” To the Members of the California State Assembly: I am returning AB 2419 without my signature … -Number of legislative committees that took time hearing this bill: 3 -Number of pages in this bill needed to remove an apostrophe: 184 -Taxpayer dollars used to pass this bill through the Legislature: $ thousands and thousands. -The outrage the public...

Amid appeals from the White House and consumer health care advocates, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed two key health bills Thursday that make California the first state to begin establishing its own health insurance exchange, which could widen medical coverage for small businesses and the millions of uninsured. Facing a deadline of midnight Thursday to act on bills, Schwarzenegger signed scores of new laws, ranging from requiring schools to provide fresh drinking water to extending foster-care benefits to young adults and rolling back the date by which kindergartners must turn 5 in order to start school. The health benefits exchange is...

If you call a burglar alarm dealer in California for a GSM alarm system, you will find out that you will have to obtain the burglar`s permission to record his voice if he says anything while he burgles your house. - California law- cannot broadcast voice recording via GSM without subject`s permission - cannot record voice without subject`s permission- Ergo- voice recognition app`s cannot be used in court to prove someone burgled your house- California moonbats at work using taxes for idiotic applications.

A Lesson In Bias Joseph Farah It's unusual for me to devote an entire column to an otherwise obscure assistant professor with a less-than distinguished writing career – let alone a second column. But Mel Seesholtz of Penn State University, the subject of my musings Wednesday, has responded in a letter to the editor suggesting I ignored the substance of his argument in favor of "bias free" education and dwelled only on his thinly veiled call for my death, along with James Dobson's. Somehow, it had never occurred to me that I should concern myself with the substance of an...