Free Republic

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Wednesday prompted by a decade-long CBS News California investigation into California's newborn genetic biobank. We still won't know who is using your DNA for research, or what the research is for, but the California Department of Public Health must now reveal the number of newborn DNA samples that California is storing and the number of DNA samples that the state sells to researchers each year. In response to our decade-long investigation, lawmakers introduced several bills this year that were intended to shed light on how the state is amassing and using California's newborn DNA...

<p>SACRAMENTO - During the past four years, California's troubled prison system hired 1,000 guards at a cost of up to $100 million and without permission from the Legislature, state finance officials revealed Wednesday.</p> <p>In fact, the non-partisan legislative analysts office told lawmakers that the Department of Corrections budget in recent years grew at a faster rate than the inmate population. Over the past decade, the budget has doubled, to about $6 billion, while the number of inmates jumped only about 20 percent, to roughly 160,000.</p>