Free Republic

SACRAMENTO -- A day after furious Coloradans recalled two state senators who voted for new gun laws, California lawmakers pressed ahead with their own agenda Wednesday aimed at giving the Golden State the strictest gun control in the country. Colorado's recall elections and California's rush to pass gun bills in the final week of its legislative session quickly reignited the national debate over balancing public safety with constitutional rights. The Colorado votes sent a Rocky Mountain chill down the spines of lawmakers in other battleground states, but those in bright blue California seemed unfazed. "I don't see anybody switching teams...

Our investigators visited the homes and offices of legislative sponsors of the California Homeless Bill of Rights to find they're not interested in practicing what they preach. Their investigative reward? Homeland Security threatening their fourth amendment rights. Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R_En28jaeM

For two years, Juana Reyes helped feed her two small children and pay her rent by selling tamales at the Walmart Supercenter parking lot on Florin Road. Now the undocumented single mom faces possible deportation for peddling her chicken, pork and chili cheese tamales. Reyes was arrested for trespassing June 28 after the store's security guard and Sacramento County sheriff's deputies said they repeatedly told her to take her tamales elsewhere. Reyes spent 12 days in the Sacramento County jail until the trespass charge was dropped, said her lawyer, Julia Vera, and her children – Cesar Cuesta, 10, and Monserrat...

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — The next time you plan a movie night without the kids, you may have to provide more than just pizza for your babysitter. Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento are fast-tracking a bill that would require workers’ compensation benefits, meal breaks and paid vacation time for all “domestic employees”, including nannies, housekeepers and even babysitters. Assembly Bill 889, authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), has already cleared the Assembly and is expected to receive overwhelming support from Senate Democrats, who control both houses of the California legislature. Under AB 889, parents legally become household “employers” and are...

How will parents react when they find out they will be expected to provide workers' compensation benefits, rest and meal breaks and paid vacation time for…babysitters? Dinner and a movie night may soon become much more complicated. Under AB 889, household “employers” (aka “parents”) who hire a babysitter on a Friday night will be legally obligated to pay at least minimum wage to any sitter over the age of 18 (unless it is a family member), provide a substitute caregiver every two hours to cover rest and meal breaks, in addition to workers' compensation coverage, overtime pay, and a meticulously...

Reporting from Sacramento — Textbooks and history classes in California schools would be required to include the contributions of gays, lesbians and transgender Americans under a proposal given final legislative approval in the Assembly on Tuesday and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown. The measure sparked a spirited debate, including personal pleas from two openly gay lawmakers — Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). They said the bill would reduce the bullying of gay students and correct an oversight by history books. "I don't want to be invisible in a textbook," Ammiano told his...

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has introduced legislation to keep Californians convicted of illegal marijuana cultivation out of state prison. Ammiano's Assembly Bill 1017 seeks to set a maximum sentence of one year in county jail for people convicted of illegal cultivation. Current California law treats illegal pot growing as a felony allowing up to three years in state prison, with stiffer sentences if the cultivation is connected to illegal sales or trafficking. The bill by the San Francisco Democrat is also intended to make it easier for authorities to charge non-medical pot cultivators with a misdemeanor instead of a felony, ....

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. 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 for...

The Extreme polarizing of politics by Democrats Congressman Joe Wilson. Just the name strikes up conversations of proper decorum and how one should speak to an elected official. Elected Republicans threw Rep. Wilson under the bus while braying about how wrong is was for the Congressman to shout out “You lie!” while president Barry Hussein Soetoro lied to the American people and to Congress about health care in a rare televised special called bicameral setting. California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano. Nothing? Nothing comes to mind? Oh you didn’t hear about this? We just went over a national civics lesson on decorum...

  Supervisor Ammiano drafting legislation for ID card for illegals Wyatt Buchanan   San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano is drafting legislation to create a city identification card for immigrants unable to get traditional ID cards, a move likely to anger advocates of tougher immigration enforcement.The cards would be accepted by all city agencies and organizations that receive city funding. Ammiano plans to introduce the legislation within a couple of weeks. He also is trying to persuade financial institutions to allow residents to use the cards to open accounts."There is a large community who contribute, and there are not a...

San Francisco voters Tuesday will weigh in on the national debate over gun control by deciding whether to make their city home to the toughest handgun ban in the country. And in a place known for its left-leaning politics, gun opponents would seem almost guaranteed a victory. Proposition H would make it illegal for city residents to possess handguns, and those who already own them would be required to turn the weapons in to police by April 1. The measure also would make it illegal to buy, sell, distribute and manufacture firearms and ammunition within city limits, though there is...

Lost Opportunities To Show Leadership. Three times in the last year two Mayoral candidates, and members of the Board of Supervisors, had the opportunities to lead the Board in decisions the people of he City of San Francisco wanted.  - Both failed.1.      On May 7, 2003, the Office of the Controller for the City of San Francisco released a scathing review of the Film Commission, and its loss of cash and checks turned over to it by film companies using the City. The Film Commission was so difficult in working with the Controller’s Audit Division, that it only allowed them...