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

After looking through “two confidential federal complaints against the school” and other documents, the newspaper said the school should also have copped to 27 more unreported alleged assaults in 2012. School officials and faculty told the Times that Dean of Students Barbara Avery told them there were 34 assaults that year. The school only reported seven.   read more

The lawsuit says a regression analysis of loan data that takes into account credit history and other factors found that a Wells Fargo African-American borrower was 2.078 times more likely to get a predatory loan than a white borrower. A Latino was 1.548 more likely. When you break out those borrowers with FICO credit-worthy scores of over 660, African-Americans were 2.124 times more likely to receive a predatory loan than a white person.   read more

The state’s numerical rating was 77 out of 100, earning it a “C.” No state received an “A” or “B.” Forty-two states and the District of Columbia received failing grades, with awful levels of transparency making it hard to find relevant public records on potential lapses. Three states—Montana, Utah and Idaho—require no judicial disclosure.   read more

The three-member board’s rejection was based on a simple principle: no permit to proceed until environmental reviews have been completed. It takes a compelling reason for the board to break that rule and the state offered none. That could set the project back a long time and cost a lot of money. Or not.   read more

Hunter told a C-SPAN interviewer that Middle East culture fosters lying and deceit and Iran is irrational. He hopes this doesn’t mean war is inevitable, but, “I think if you have to hit Iran, you don’t put boots on the ground. You do it with tactical nuclear devices, and you set them back a decade or two or three. I think that’s the way to do it—with a massive aerial bombardment campaign.”   read more

Mayor Robert Jacob is, perhaps, the first top municipal official in the country to be so blatantly involved in a business considered illegal by the federal government. acob was instrumental in writing Sebastopol’s medical marijuana ordinance, said to be a model for other cities in the state.   read more

Physicians at the veterans’ hospital in San Francisco have been caught renewing highly addictive painkillers to patients without seeing or talking to them first. The IG reviewed 264 opiate prescription renewals and learned that in 53% of cases, the physician renewing the medication had not communicated personally with the patient. The IG report also says there were seven opiate overdoses among patients at the hospital, and that doctors “did not consistently monitor patients for misuse.”   read more

Fifty-four percent of residents in the high-desert city of Palmdale, just north of Los Angeles, are Latino. But, as usual, none of the city council members elected last month is. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Mooney said that is a direct result of the system used to select the council—a citywide vote rather than by-district—and declared it a violation of the state Voting Rights Act.   read more

A Malaysian professor, educated at Stanford and barred from this country for eight years, has apparently become the first person to drag the federal government into a trial over the no-fly list. Whether her lawyer or the judge gets them to actually participate remains to be seen.   read more

The website has been promoted by Republican politicians as a guide to navigating the health care system. Among the helpful links the site does provide is one to a list of 18 frequently asked questions. Apparently, the only questions asked of them were about how badly everyone was going to get screwed by Obamacare. The answer to pretty much all the questions was the same: “a lot.”   read more

Many of the officers, who had jobs patrolling parks, hospitals and county government facilities, had committed serious offenses that probably should have disqualified them from becoming sheriff’s deputies. Almost 200 had failed to get hired by other law enforcement agencies for various deficiencies, around 100 had been involved in acts of dishonesty, like falsifying police records, and at least 15 had been caught trying to manipulate their lie-detector tests.   read more

Their reluctance to back a new study is based on the dam’s safety. “The dam is essentially overbuilt,” DWR chief of dam safety David Panec said. If he’s wrong and a quake brought down the dam, the result would be catastrophic. Water from the second largest reservoir in the state would flood the city of Oroville and other communities downstream, including Yuba City and parts of Sacramento.   read more

The members of the House—Democrats Barbara Lee, George Miller, Sam Farr and Eric Swalwell—join a long list of state and local officials who have complained that the federal raids and attacks on dispensary operators should stop. The letter argues that Haag’s actions appear “to directly counter the spirit of Deputy Attorney General Cole’s memo, and is in direct opposition to the evolving view toward medical marijuana, the will of the people and, by now, common sense.”   read more

Images of sick cows being kicked, prodded with electric shocks and hauled around with forklifts prompted the recall of 143 million pounds of beef. About a fourth of that was in the school lunch program. Although the final judgment against Westland Meat Packing will be entered as $155 million (down from the original $497 million deal), the company lacks the assets to pay it and the government agreed to accept a much lower figure.   read more

Starr, who is black, said he was stabbed 23 times by Latino gang members and claimed the sheriff was responsible for procedures and security deficiencies that led to his assault. The appellate court agreed and last week the county Board of Supervisors approved a $722,000 settlement of a civil lawsuit that claimed the sheriff’s “deliberate indifference” to the jail’s unsafe condition.   read more

Child-rights advocates have long argued that police are brought into student disciplinary situations too early and too often. A study by the Center for Public Integrity found that 43% of the 10,200 LAUSD tickets issued in 2011 went to students 14 or younger. Civil rights groups have argued that thrusting kids into the criminal justice system early creates a system that sets kids along a path likely to increase their chance of being involved in criminal behavior later in life.   read more