ICE agents have reportedly claimed to be police officers to gain consent to enter a person’s home – a tactic that is viewed as unethical, but within the powers granted to the officers. Civil rights groups supported Kalra’s bill, looking to stymie the Trump administration’s promise to use any and all available tools to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Many groups fear Trump will expand deportations to include all undocumented immigrants, their families and relatives.   read more

The Salton Sea is fading away, but its smell remains more pungent than ever and may be the source of stench that lingered over a broad swath of Southern California Monday.   read more

California spending on its prison system has steadily increased over the past 30 years, corresponding to a similar decline in spending on higher education, according to a study by the non-profit organization California Common Sense (CACS). The result is that California now spends slightly more on its correctional institutions than it does on the state’s three pillars of higher education―the University of California, California State University and community colleges.   read more

Winners and losers in the California courthouse construction sweepstakes were announced last week as 23 projects got the green light and seven were put on hold after 20 hours of public hearings that left everyone bruised and battered.   read more

While acknowledging that former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last-minute sentence reduction for the son of a political ally was “repugnant to the bulk of the citizenry of this state,” Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly said Friday that it wasn’t illegal.   read more

A Southern California woman who admits stealing $700,000 from her employer using forged checks lost $500,000 of the money in an internet scam that promised her love and a new life. Instead, Luellen Leyva, 58, of Moorpark is sitting in the Ventura County jail with a $200,000 bond.   read more

The California Supreme Court, reacting to a heavy caseload of capital crime appeals from prisoners, unanimously decided to put a 500-page limit on habeas corpus briefs that are often filed after conviction. The court took 122 pages to make its case for strict restrictions, including a 50-page limit, on arguments which might literally involve life and death.   read more

You don’t have to be stoned in Los Angeles to be lost in a haze about the status of legalized medical marijuana. Federal law has criminalized marijuana since the early part of the last century. California gave medical marijuana a green light in 1996. In 2004, the state authorized non-profit cooperatives to sell medical marijuana.   read more

A good ghost scam is apparently hard to keep down. Stories began surfacing in San Francisco earlier in the year about older Asian women being approached on the street by other Asian women who convinced them that they were cursed, with ghosts attached to them. The only way the older women could rid themselves of the curse was to go home and gather up their jewelry and valuables, put them in a bag and bring them back to the suspects for a purification ceremony.   read more

You can be proud, disdainful, haughty, arrogant and overbearing—all synonyms for insolent—at city council meetings in Costa Mesa, but you can’t be profane or slanderous. That’s the ruling from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which, on a 2-1 vote, struck down a portion of Costa Mesa’s municipal code that prohibits “insolent” behavior by attendees at city council meetings.   read more

While debate rages over how to reign in spiraling public pension costs without stomping on workers’ rights and eviscerating lawful contracts, most everyone agrees that a good place to start is curbing a practice commonly known as pension spiking. State Controller John Chiang doesn’t think the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) has done nearly enough to stop it.   read more

When the Los Angeles County Museum of Art wanted to drag a 340-ton boulder across the city to display in an exhibit, it managed the task with only the loss of two palm trees along the way. In sharp contrast, carting the space shuttle Endeavour from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to its new home 12 miles away at the California Science Center in Exposition Park will result in the chainsaw massacre of 400 trees in Los Angeles and the city of Inglewood.   read more

A securities industry watchdog not particularly known for its bark or bite may find itself on a tighter leash in California after an appellate court ruling made it easier for securities brokers to expunge their past records. Until the California First District Court of Appeal’s unanimously ruling last week, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. (FINRA) would pretty much only remove information from its extensive database of bad broker behavior if the data was shown to be wrong.   read more

In a year when few environmental bills made it out of the Legislature, conservationists couldn’t be blamed for marking as one of their most satisfying achievements the deflection of a hasty, last-minute rewrite of the landmark California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).   read more

State Senator Lois Wolk introduced a bill that would have created what some call a virtual solar power source by enabling residents to collectively buy power from shared renewable sources—wind, solar, geothermal, small hydro, biomass—but it died in committee on the Legislature’s last day in session after opposition from utility companies. “Unfortunately, PG&E and Southern California Edison control the committee,” Senator Wolk wrote in a prepared statement after the bill’s death.   read more

Joan and Robert Vanderhorst of Bakersfield never had a problem with their son, Bede, a 16-year-old with Down Syndrome, during the 30 or so airline flights they made together. But that was always in the economy section, and, last Sunday, the Vanderhorsts decided they wanted to see how the other half lived.   read more

As California community colleges—hammered by budget restraints—shrink their enrollments, reduce their class offerings and shift costs to students, a growing number of them are turning away from federal student loan programs.   read more