Free Republic

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva wrote to the L.A. Board of Supervisors on Wednesday to ask them to declare a “state of emergency” on the local homeless crisis, saying that “failed policies” were causing death on the streets. Villanueva has recently adopted a more assertive approach, vowing to clear homeless encampments from the Venice Beach area and standing up to the L.A. City Council on its failure to contain the spread of tent cities throughout the city. This week, he stepped up his efforts by calling on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to act, in a press conference....

The California Department of Finance released estimates Friday reporting that the Golden State lost 0.46 percent of its population in 2020. The population loss is the first the state has measured as an annual decline in the decades it has been tracking annual population data. In 2019, state demographers had estimated a population increase of 0.2 percent, or 87,494 people. But in 2020, California saw a net loss of 182,083 people and a net exodus of 310,918 people.

MILWAUKEE — If Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) is worried about his reelection odds, he’s not showing it publicly. “It seemed like I really had an unfair advantage,” Hickenlooper quipped after a Democratic Governors Association briefing here Friday afternoon. “The approval ratings were so high — it really didn’t seem even fair. So, we made a few strategic decisions to try to move ourselves back into play, forcing us to be on our game, a little more focused.” A June Quinnipiac University poll showed the first-term Democrat running neck and neck with Republican Tom Tancredo, a failed 2010 gubernatorial candidate...

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) pledged on Wednesday to investigate both Barack Obama and George W. Bush with his newfound subpoena power when he takes over as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “I’m going to be investigating a president of my own party, because many of the issues we’re working on began [with] President Bush or even before, and haven’t been solved,” Issa said during an interview on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown.”