Free Republic

Legislation to restrict the use of gas-powered landscaping equipment in California also would outlaw portable generators in a state only a year removed from rolling power outages amid deadly heat. Should Newsom sign the bill, which cleared the California State Legislature on Thursday, it could ban another gas-powered necessity: portable generators. The Portable Generator Manufacturers’ Association warned AB 1346 could lead to a ban on the sale of portable generators in California as soon as 2024. “No matter how well-intentioned this bill might be, it makes a critical error in equating portable generators with other small off-road engine equipment,” said...

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon put the brakes on a sweeping plan to overhaul the health care market in California Friday, calling the bill “woefully incomplete.”

The incredible journey of California's high speed rail took another hit this past week when authorities inked a contract revision pushing back the opening of the first segment of the line from 2018 to 2022. Project costs for this one, 119 mile stretch of track through the relatively empty Central Valley have topped $69 billion, with only a fraction of those funds appropriated. The high speed rail authority has only purchased half the land necessary to complete the first leg of the project and not a single foot of track has been laid. The feds are blaming opponents of the...

Pro-life pregnancy centers in California must choose between providing abortion information or paying fines. They face that dilemma after California judges denied multiple requests for preliminary injunctions against a law that went into effect January 1, mandating that all licensed pregnancy centers "disseminate to clients" a message promoting public programs with "free or low-cost access" to abortion and contraceptive services. Pregnancy centers that fail to disseminate this message "are liable for a civil penalty of five hundred dollars ($500) for a first offense and one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each subsequent offense." ...

A British Muslim family heading for Disneyland was barred from boarding a flight to Los Angeles by US authorities at London's Gatwick airport amid concerns of an American overreaction to the perceived terrorist threat. US Department of Homeland Security officials provided no explanation for why the country refused to allow the family of 11 to board the planeeven though they had been granted travel authorization online ahead of their planned 15 December flight. Senior politicians have been drawn into the case, warning that a growing number of British Muslims are being barred from the US without being told the reason...

At 12:02 p.m. on Thursday, November 12, Mary Spellman resigned as Dean of Students following calls for her resignation after students of color articulated concerns about the Dean of Students office being unsupportive towards students of marginalized identities, and two students yesterday began hunger strikes calling for her resignation. Additional coverage coming later — find Spellman’s email to the CMC community below. Dear CMC Community: Since 2010 I have been privileged to serve as Dean of Students at Claremont McKenna College. Today I am submitting my letter of resignation, effective immediately. I do so with sadness beyond words, because these...

San Diego State University has axed its longtime tradition of naming a homecoming "king" and "queen," and this year will go with the gender-neutral term "royals," the Daily Aztec campus newspaper reports. As recently as last year SDSU named a homecoming "king" and "queen" during its annual football game, according to the university’s website. But this Saturday when the Aztecs take on the University of Wyoming Cowboys, the Royal Court will end up with the "final two Royals," the website adds. It’s unclear if those final two "royals" will be one male and one female, or some other iteration of...

Gov. Jerry Brown said today that "humanity is getting dangerously close to the point of no return" on climate change, and he launched a website criticizing conservatives who dispute its significance. The website "Climate Change: Just the Facts," is hosted by Brown's Office of Planning and Research. It devotes one page to "the denialists" and another to rebutting "common denialist arguments." [Snip] "Global warming's impact on Lake Tahoe is well documented. It is just one example of how, after decades of pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humanity is getting dangerously close to the point of no return," Brown...

After desperately trying everything from huge budget cuts to secret negotiations with creditors, the Stockton City Council finally ran out of options Tuesday night and voted to file for bankruptcy. The 6-1 vote was to authorize a day-to-day operating budget, called a pendency plan, that will go into effect when city officials file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in federal court in Sacramento. That filing is expected Wednesday. Stockton, a river port with 292,000 residents, will become the biggest city in U.S. history to vote itself into bankruptcy. The previous largest bankrupt city was Vallejo, which filed in 2008 and...

Despite objections from the mayors of California's ten largest cities, the Assembly last week approved Assembly Bill 1692 by Fremont Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski. The bill will make it harder for cities to seek bankruptcy protection. It reneges on a carefully crafted compromise measure approved just six months ago that requires financially beleaguered cities to enter into good-faith negotiations with their creditors—including most significantly, public employee unions—before filing for bankruptcy protection. Stockton was in the midst of that mediation when the bill to undo it began moving in the Legislature. Just how bad are things in Stockton? Well how's this for...

California politics can be a cross between a wrestling smackdown, a demolition derby and the juiciest reality show -- so no wonder a crowd of academics, reporters and political junkies will try to sort it all out starting Friday at a much-anticipated conference to dissect the 2010 election. But -- as the Calbuzz crew so bitingly put it this week -- there's plenty of drama in the two-day UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies confab. For one, as we've reported, GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's team isn't showing up -- a first for a leading campaign team in the long...

BC man arrested after allegedly tossing daughter onto Hwy 9 by Peter Burke / Press-Banner Apr 22, 2010 Boulder Creek resident Eric Rebert Johnston, 23, was arrested on suspicion of committing a series of violent acts against his 9-month-old daughter and his wife April 1 and has pleaded not guilty to several felony and misdemeanor counts. According to the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office, Johnston became angry while driving with his wife, 22-month-old daughter and 9-month-old daughter at about 7:50 p.m. and pulled his red Volkswagen Beetle over to the side of the road along Highway 9 at Riverdale...

Wayne Brown gave up $40,000 in income to move from the Bay Area to Kansas. And he feels great. It got to be too much last year for the college information-technology officer: the commute to downtown San Francisco that sometimes took two hours, the housing-price spiral and the high-wire borrowing that paid for it. ``I would find myself sitting in traffic,'' Brown recalled, ``screaming at people.'' When the Kansas job came up in early 2005, Brown and his wife, Teresa, sold two Bay Area homes and happily settled in a suburb of Kansas City. They have never looked back. The...

Survey cites it as major reason 2 of 5 residents consider leaving. You're not the only one dreaming of ditching the Bay Area for a Midwestern college town or a coastal city in the Southeast. Two out of five residents of the nine-county region have given serious thought to moving away -- mostly because of high housing costs, according to a survey released today by a business and public policy group. The Bay Area Council's annual poll found that concerns about housing ranked as the region's second-most-vexing problem, behind transportation woes. Even with some recent cooling in the local...

Despite the threat of losing millions of dollars in state and federal funding, a California school board is refusing to adopt a new anti-discrimination policy that would offer special protective status to transsexuals and others confused about their gender. The California Department of Education has told the Westminster School District in Orange County that it must update its anti-discrimination policy to include the word "sex." But three of the district's five school board members are standing firm and say they will not support language that allows students or staff to immorally redefine their gender. Trustee Judy Ahrens, a Christian, says...

<p>It was only his 12th day as mayor of San Francisco, but Gavin Newsom decided that night -- the very night he attended President Bush's State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. -- that he was going to defy California law.</p> <p>And turn the nation on its ear.</p>

<p>For the moment, gay and lesbian couples in San Francisco may find it easier to get a civil marriage license than the full blessings of a church wedding.</p> <p>Debates over same-sex marriage have fractured the nation's religious landscape in recent decades, and San Francisco, despite its gay-friendly reputation, is no exception.</p>