The only way the planned California bullet train could possibly be exempted from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) would be via legislative action followed by a signature from Gov. Jerry Brown.
Stark's 'Second Litter' Subsidy Rep. Pete Stark, 80, has seven children; three are minors, the product of his third marriage. He once told the Los Angeles Times that he calls the three youngest his "second litter." Lucky Stark. Thanks to a dated Social Security system, he enjoys a "second-litter" subsidy. As Carolyn Lochhead wrote in The Chronicle, Stark has reported a net worth as high as $27 million, and he earns $174,000 as a member ...
WASHINGTON - According to the pollsters and the so-called mainstream media, as of the dead of summer, the presidential contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is a dead heat. We also are told this race is all about the "economy" or "jobs" or "middle-class taxes" or "repealing Obamacare." Or not.
A very public marital melodrama is now playing in San Francisco. It shows the idiocy of domestic violence laws and the extremism of the feminists whose ideology paints men as innate batterers and women as victims of the patriarchy.
There are two sides within the anti-abortion movement. On one side, stand men and women who care deeply about human life and fear that abortion devalues society by creating a caste of disposable people. On the other side, lurk crabbed adults who think women should be punished for having extramarital sex and that pregnancy is fit punishment that (luck of the draw) spares men and falls instead on women and girls.
Mitt Romney is a bit of a sci-fi buff. He not only took his grandkids to see "The Hunger Games" when the movie came out but also read the Suzanne Collins trilogy. I wonder whether he was thinking about the books when he picked Paul Ryan to be his running mate.
Floyd Corkins, a volunteer for the last six months at the D.C. Center for the LGBT Community, marched into the Family Research Center with a gun and serious ammunition, denounced FRC's policy positions and shot a security guard in the arm before being subdued. Another hate crime, but this time against, perhaps, the pre-eminent pro-family organization in America. CBS gave the story 20 seconds. NBC spent 17 seconds.
Let's take a trip deep into the magic kingdom of "Laissez Fairyland" and prostrate ourselves before the infallible and inscrutable force known as the free market.
Vice President Joe Biden played the race card this week when he drawled Southern-style to a racially mixed audience that if Mitt Romney takes the White House, he'll "unchain Wall Street. They're going to put y'all back in chains."
When the Legislature passed Governor Brown's public safety "realignment" plan last year, I was vehemently opposed to it because I predicted that it would put Californians in serious danger. Regardless, we were promised that the plan would save money without compromising justice. But judging from recent history and a new report from the Chief Probation Officers of California, the Valley is receiving none of what we were promised. It turns out, ...
It seemed that Joseph Holman, a 51-year-old redhead from Brooklyn, had climbed into the middle class the old-fashioned way: by the sweat of his brow.
For all of the gun lovers, feel free to go buy your Glock, shotgun, hunting rifle, .22 pistol, .357 magnum or any of the other guns at your disposal, but you do not need an AK-47.
The campaigns of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are engaged in a fierce battle in Ohio, knowing full well that it is one of the critical battleground states that could determine who wins in November.
Gabrielle Douglas became the fourth American - and first black female - to win a gold medal in women's individual all-around gymnastics. Effervescent and attractive, Gabby stands to make millions of dollars in endorsements. But she has received criticism - in the social media, via Twitter, Facebook and, according to The Daily Beast, several "black blogs."
In this very negative election season, the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns don't sweat accuracy. Even if fact-checking PolitiFact rates a 30-second spot as "pants-on-fire" false or Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler gives it four Pinocchios - his maximum rating - no worries; they don't clean up their act. As Slate's John Dickerson wrote, to the grizzled campaign operatives of 2012, "if you're not getting four Pinocchios or a ...
Amy Meyer was curious. Then she was appalled. Then she was charged with the "crime" of using a cell phone to video what appalled her.
Federal unemployment benefits for 400,000 Californians out of work since last fall recently dropped 18 percent, a $52 cut out of weekly checks that average $297. Similar cuts are rolling out in other states.
The report from the Arlington, Va., Police Department is, on its face, hardly newsworthy:
Obamacare was supposed to be a big success by now, according to predictions made by liberals who railroaded it through Congress in 2010. Instead, as admitted by one of its leading architects, Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, it's heading for a "train wreck" later this year.
Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III started tongues wagging when he posted this cryptic message on Twitter: "In a land of freedom we are held hostage by the tyranny of political correctness."
Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that we saw George W. Bush on TV reading The Pet Goat to some second graders. Now he's all grown up and has an entire , super-duper, king-sized library filled with big books and other neat stuff - all dedicated to him.
After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake shook loose a big chunk of the Bay Bridge, local politicians did not signal that they wanted to take decades to build a new eastern span, so commuters should get used to driving on a span expected to crumble in a big rumble. Instead, they made grandiose promises about a "world-class" structure. Then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown demanded a tony design; then-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown stood up for Treasure ...
It is almost unbelievable that this is a first.
Compared to the hell Jackie Robinson went through, Jason Collins is getting a ticker tape parade.
The Washington Post reported something surprising on April 29 - a hidden-camera expose by pro-life advocates. On the front page of the Metro section, the Post reported how a veteran D.C. abortion doctor named Cesare Santangelo told a 24-week pregnant woman that in the unlikely event that an abortion resulted in a live birth, "we would not help it."
"The worst mistake of my presidency," said Ronald Reagan of his decision to put Marines into the middle of Lebanon's civil war, where 241 died in a suicide bombing of their barracks.
The Pecksniffs of America had nothing but scorn for Congress' vote last week to stop furloughs of air traffic controllers, which were ostensibly mandated under the 2011 Budget Control Act.