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"We knew we had problems when the returns from Los Angeles County started coming in." That's what Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin told me several days ago when we chatted by phone about her race for the state controller's office. Turns out LA County voter returns are still catching the eyes of political gurus throughout the state. To refresh, Swearengin, a Republican, lost to Betty Yee, a Democrat, in the Nov. 4 general election by a 54%-46% margin. Yee had 3,810,304 votes. Swearengin had 3,249,668 votes. That's a difference of 560,636 votes. Those numbers from the state's official Statement of Vote....

A new aggressive daytime-biting mosquito capable of transmitting debilitating and possibly deadly viruses has been found in the Los Angeles region, officials announced Wednesday. Known as yellow fever mosquitoes, the insects were found Oct. 7 and 8 in Commerce and Pico Rivera, respectively, according to the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District. The Aedes aegypti species, which has black and white stripes and grows to about a quarter-inch in size, can transmit dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever -- viruses that can cause painful symptoms including headaches and high fever, officials said. "While these debilitating viruses, so far, aren't locally...

A photograph of a smiling woman in a Cudahy nightclub brandishing two handguns and wearing a councilman's badge may have played a role in Sheriff Lee Baca's decision to recall about 200 badges the department gave to local politicians. Baca's decision came two weeks after the FBI arrested three Cudahy city officials on bribery charges, and in support of those charges, the U.S. attorney's office released the photo. One command-level sheriff's official briefed on the badge recall said the move was prompted by the revelation in Cudahy. Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore, however, said that the timing was a coincidence and...

Budget cuts are set to force the Los Angeles County court system to close 56 courtrooms, including that of its most famous adjudicator, Judge Lance Ito. The courtroom controlled by the man who presided over O.J. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial will be shut down by June 30, the Associated Press reported. Ito will be reassigned to fill in on cases in which no judge is available, AP said. His courtroom is one of many across the nation's largest trial court system that will go dark. The county courts will also lay off 350 workers, reduce use of court reporters and...

-snip- In the incident at the fast-food restaurant, a deputy in a McDonald's heard his car alarm go off and went outside to find that the vehicle had been hit. He and the other driver agreed to exchange information, but the other driver didn't want to alert police, prompting the deputy to pull his gun out and tell the driver he was a cop. The other driver, surprised by the statement, got back in his car and drove off. As the car pulled away, the deputy fired several rounds at it. The man wasn't struck, but his car was. -snip-...

One of the more bizarre aspects of officials sanctioning raves at the publicly owned L.A. Coliseum and Sports Arena is that Los Angeles County health authorities have actually embarked on a campaign to teach young people how to take ecstasy safely. Under the strategy of "harm reduction" -- if you're going to get wasted, mind as well help you do so without killing yourself -- the county this year will distribute fliers at raves that give tips that essentially amount to advice on how not to O.D. on this illicit, schedule 1 drug. Strange, because the Coliseum Commission, which runs...

According to county figures released last Friday by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, welfare payments to children of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County increased in July to $52 million. In addition, county taxpayers spend $550 million in public safety — mostly for jail costs — and nearly $500 million for healthcare for illegal immigrants, Antonovich said.

Even before the doors opened on the $1.02-billion Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center many observers warned that the new hospital was too small. Now, more than a year and a half of experience appears to confirm it. The overcrowding has become so intense that health officials asked county Supervisor Gloria Molina eight months ago what she would think if the hospital began placing patients in the hallways, the supervisor recalled in an interview. "I said, 'Absolutely not. We will not have patients in the hallway,' " Molina said. Instead, County- USC officials have increased patient transfers to other hospitals. Despite...

ProtectMarriage.com was disappointed to hear that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has disregarded the will of the people of Los Angeles and the rest of the state by voting to join a lawsuit filed by the City of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Clara county challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8. “This is a legal issue for the court to decide,” said Andy Pugno, ProtectMarriage.com attorney. “It doesn’t matter how many politicians line up to ask the court to overturn Prop 8. What matters is that the majority of the voters approved Proposition 8, regardless of opposition...

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer July 25, 2008 Hate crimes in Los Angeles County rose to their highest level in five years last year, led by attacks between Latinos and blacks, officials said Thursday. The annual report by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission showed hate crimes rose by 28%, to 763, with vandalism and assault leading the way. Robin S. Toma, executive director of the... Boy, 6, critically hurt as gunfire...The Homicide Report Bratton walks a fine line on race Video: Surveillance tape: anti-Semitic graffiti on synagogue In what commission Executive Director Robin Toma called...

LOS ANGELES California motorists make millions of daily crossings of bridges and overpasses classified as "structurally deficient" like the span that collapsed in Minneapolis, but state transportation officials say none are in danger of falling down. Of the 50 most heavily trafficked bridges and overpasses deemed structurally deficient in the United States, 38 are in populous Southern California, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Federal Highway Administration. Of those, 32 are in Los Angeles County, five in Orange County and one in Riverside County. Bridges with the designation in Essex and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey...

The LA County Gun Task Force has served another search warrant on the home of another member of the fifty caliber community. On Monday September 18th, eighteen police cars swarmed the neighborhood where the FCSA member lives and served a search warrant signed by Judge Steven Kleifield of the LA County Superior Court. The officers were at the residence for several hours and confiscated all semi-automatic firearms belonging to the victim. The probable cause for issuing the search warrant was not available in the body of the affidavit so the reason for the search is unknown at this time. It...

. FReeper help needed: To help promote FReeper AnnaZ's BRAND NEW SaveOurSeal.net video, I need some ONLINE images of the Taliban blowing up those Buddha statues. Some time VERY SOON, AnnaZ will be releasing a BRAND NEW short video,which will open with VIDEO images of their destruction by Muslim fanatics.This new video will be about the ACLU fanatics who recently forced Los Angeles County to remove a tiny cross from their official County Seal, and how this ANTI-religious fervor is much more DANGEROUS, and much more WIDESPREAD than some might think. I would like to use something like THESE images,...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The head of the Los Angeles County health department was ordered to move his office into troubled Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center by supervisors frustrated by continuing reports of deaths and poor patient care. "Park yourself there," Supervisor Gloria Molina directed Dr. Thomas Garthwaite during a contentious supervisors' meeting Tuesday. "Take your schedule. Tear it up and spend every moment that you're working for us working on solving the crisis," she said. Garthwaite said his department had taken disciplinary actions against hundreds of King/Drew employees. Supervisors also ordered the Department of Health Services to hire...

Roger Nash Baldwin was the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and a notable American Communist. These are facts. Now, read his words: “I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is, of course, the goal."— Harvard Class Book of 1935, spotlighting Baldwin's class of 1905 on its thirtieth anniversary.[1] “Do steer away from making it look like a Socialist enterprise...We want also to look like patriots in everything we do. We want to get a good lot of flags, talk a good deal about...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A day after hundreds of protesters objected to closing the trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, the county released findings that treatment at the center is "poor to marginal." The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, which runs King/Drew, released a one-page executive summary Tuesday that described the findings by two trauma experts. A full report is due in about two weeks. The timing of the findings was questioned by some supporters of the trauma center, which serves a poor stretch of South Los Angeles and serves victims of gunshot wounds, stabbings...

Court brief seeks to include all basin well owners in case Two large carrot farms are pumping more water from their wells since suing a number of water districts over the districts' usage of the Antelope Valley groundwater basin, claim Los Angeles County attorneys in a brief filed in Riverside Superior Court. Because of the allegedly excessive pumping, water is being pulled out from the basin faster than the natural recharge rate, a dangerous condition that has contributed to ground subsidence around Lancaster, said Fred Pfaeffle, the county lawyer handling the case. "If you look carefully through the numbers in...

LOS ANGELES - Organizers of a grass-roots effort to retain a tiny cross on the county's seal will again try to convince three supervisors Tuesday to put the issue on the November ballot. Supporters of the cross gathered between 80,000 and 100,000 signatures in a little more than a week on a petition drive that would have allowed voters to decide the seal's fate Nov. 2. But they fell short of the 170,000 needed by a July 9 deadline, said David R. Hernandez, the drive's organizer. "All we're asking for is the opportunity to vote on the issue and …...

Controversy over the removal of a cross from the county seal of Los Angeles is being resurrected, as voters may get the chance to vote this fall on the symbol's presence. A motion was introduced this week by two county supervisors, Don Knabe and Mike Antonovich, to put the issue on the ballot this November. But the L.A. Times reports the effort to keep the cross on the seal has little chance of winning the four votes needed to pass, as the other three board members – Gloria Molina, Yvonne Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky – have consistently voted to...

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