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

Veteran Congressmen Howard Berman and Brad Sherman, now competing for the same seat in the House, were having a spirited exchange before a raucous crowd last Thursday when the 57-year-old Sherman suddenly wrapped his arm around the shoulder of the smaller, 71-year-old Berman, jerked him close and shouted, “Do you want to get into this?”   read more

A barrage of questionable advertising, fueled by millions of dollars from giant biotech and agriculture corporations, has eviscerated support for Proposition 37, an initiative that would require labeling of genetically-modified food (GMOs).   read more

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has designated a street gang with Los Angeles roots as an international criminal group, allowing the federal government to target the finances of a gang for the first time. MS-13 thrived locally, but the gang’s connections to Central Americans in other U.S. cities and foreign nations developed over time, assisted by the U.S. deportation policy.   read more

For the second time in a week, unsubstantiated charges have been made that the books were cooked to show favorable national employment numbers, i.e. bolster Democrats politically. This time the focus was on California, after Business Insider published allegations that the state Employment Development Department (EDD) had failed to submit its jobless claims report to the U.S. Department of Labor, resulting in skewed numbers that looked good for the Obama administration.   read more

Five years after a sweeping settlement with the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese over sexual molestation claims, an attorney for plaintiffs says he is days away from getting promised personnel files on 25 priests.   read more

A yearlong study paid for by the owner of the Inglwood Oil Field in the Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles County has concluded that hydraulic fracturing―the controversial practice of oil and gas extraction known as fracking―poses no harm to the environment. Cardno Entrix was the consultant to the U.S. Department of State on TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline and wrote that the controversial project would have “limited adverse environmental impact.”   read more

The city of Santa Monica has been ground zero in the War on Christmas since it opened a holiday display on city property overlooking the ocean to a lottery system, only to see atheists win 18 of the coveted 21 spaces where traditional nativity scenes had been displayed for nearly 60 years.   read more

The U.S. Department of Defense is spending $10 million over the next three years to help high schoolers become better computer hackers, starting with 16 schools in California this fall. Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach (MENTOR) is being run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a unique government research organization that funds projects devoted to developing cutting edge technology related to national security.   read more

A deadly outbreak of meningitis has been traced back to medicine produced by a specialty pharmacy that the federal government does not regulate. To date, eight people have died and 105 have become ill from a steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, used to treat back pain and joint disorders. More than 600 people in California have received the shots, although no deaths have been reported in the state.   read more

A man flying to Boston from Japan was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport wearing body armor, flame retardant leggings and knee pads under a trench coat. When his stored luggage was searched, it turned up an array of weapons, including a smoke grenade, a collapsible baton, several knives, a hatchet and three leather-coated black-jack billy clubs. The luggage also contained packed body bags, masks, duct tape, handcuffs, leg irons, oven mitts, cooking tongs and a full-face respirator.   read more

There is no shortage of explanations for why gasoline pump prices have soared to record highs. A Chevron refinery fire in Richmond, pipeline contamination, refinery maintenance, state pollution restrictions, retailer fears, buyer panic, California karma. Now, Senator Dianne Feinstein would like the federal government to see if, perhaps, the price spike has something to do with “malicious trading schemes in the California gasoline market.”   read more

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is poised to begin weeks of sonic earthquake fault testing off the coast of its Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant at San Luis Obispo that will affect the “migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding or sheltering” of marine animals, but hopefully won’t kill or injure them.   read more

The U.S. Navy, in a September 18 community presentation, pronounced the inhabited areas of San Francisco Bay’s Treasure Island “free of any threat to public health or safety . . . based on the data independently collected by the Navy and the CDPH [California Department of Public Health].” But the public health department is not on board with all the findings in the draft report, according to the Bay Citizen.   read more

Mi Pueblo Food Center, a 21-store Latino supermarket chain undergoing labor turmoil, is facing a surly customer base and an unnerved workforce after revealing that it joined a controversial federal computer system that screens for the immigration status of employees, and is now being audited by the government.   read more

The National Bank of Canada is taking advantage of a loophole in the law to threaten hundreds of state homeowners with foreclosure if they don’t pay off credit card debt the financial institution bought up in a secondary market. Credigy Receivables, a unit of the bank, buys judgment liens from California lawsuits over unsecured debt and then files foreclosure lawsuits using the liens.   read more

When it was announced last month, to the horror of tree-huggers everywhere, that 400 healthy pine, ficus, magnolias and the like would have to be cut down so the shuttle Endeavour could cross Los Angeles County unimpeded to its new home at the California Science Center, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa promised, seemingly as compensation, “the mother of all parades” along the route. Last week, they found out there will be no parade.   read more