Free Republic

SACRAMENTO - In a significant blow to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Sacramento superior court judge ruled Friday that he illegally delayed a state law requiring California hospitals to raise staffing ratios to one nurse for each five patients. Judge Judy Holzer Hersher also issued a preliminary injunction canceling Schwarzenegger's emergency delay, a move administration officials quickly vowed to fight. The judge made her decision after the attorney general's office and California Hospital Association argued that she was overstepping her authority. The attorneys also argued that invalidating the governor's emergency action would endanger public health as well as hospital industry finances....

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suffered a major potential setback Thursday when a judge tentatively ruled that he illegally blocked a law boosting the number of nurses needed to staff California's hospitals. Sacramento County Judge Judy Holzer Hersher ruled tentatively in favor of a preliminary injunction to lift emergency state regulations that stopped the law from taking effect Jan. 1. Hersher's ruling represents a possible victory for the 60,000-member California Nurses Association, which has protested the governor's decision in numerous public settings for months. The union nurses have marched on the Capitol, flown message-trailing planes over the governor's home...

Banned book now availableNow that a federal appeals court has temporarily blocked a lower court's order preventing author Irwin Schiff from selling a book that argues paying income tax is voluntary, the book is available for the April 15 tax deadline. In an emergency stay in September, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals prevented U.S. District Court Judge Lloyd George from enforcing a preliminary injunction against Schiff. George had banned the self-proclaimed tax guru from distributing the book, Federal Mafia: How It Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes.According to Amazon.com, if you want the book to use when...

Two Hevron residents were illegally imprisoned for a night - a mother and her nursing baby. Yesterday morning, when the mother was brought before a judge, he rebuked the police for having provided false information and causing him to order an illegal imprisonment. The story began when the police arrived at Yifat Alkobi's home on Tuesday afternoon to arrest her, after an Arab resident of the city complained that she had built a playground on his property. She had refused an earlier summons to come herself to the police station, on the grounds that the charges were too ridiculous to...

About a year after a high-ranking Republican officeholder in Illinois illegally used state workers to try to keep LP candidates off the ballot, a federal grand jury is investigating the incident. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, a federal grand jury is looking into charges that Illinois Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka used state employees to challenge a slate of Libertarian candidates before the 2002 election. The employees were on the state clock at the time. Topinka, who was first elected state treasurer in 1994, is currently serving her third term in office. She also serves as the state...

US: Boeing, Hughes Helped China Illegally WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department said on Wednesday it had charged Hughes Electronics Corp. and Boeing Co.'s Satellite Systems unit with illegally sharing sensitive space technology with China in the 1990s that may have helped Beijing fine-tune its missiles. The companies, which have long denied any wrongdoing in the case, were formally charged on Thursday with 123 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, said Lou Fintor, a department spokesman. He said he did not know whether the 123 violations applied to each of the companies...