Free Republic

Civil rights activists on Tuesday demanded that California take more aggressive action to combat police shootings of African-Americans and other minorities.

Over the past generation, members of the college-educated class have become amazingly good at making sure their children retain their privileged status. They have also become devastatingly good at making sure the children of other classes have limited chances to join their ranks.

A woman and her mother beat her girlfriend's 3-year-old boy with a plastic rod and then threw him across a room because he drank milk from a jug, authorities said Monday. The boy died of his injuries.

When Maria got an eviction notice telling her she had to be out of her Redwood City apartment by late February, she thought something seemed fishy. She contacted housing attorneys, who confirmed to her landlord that the notice was not served legally and she didn’t have to move out right away. Her landlord responded with a text message threatening to call immigration authorities on Maria if she didn’t comply, saying it was a “duty” to report anyone who is undocumented.

Black Lives Matter activists issued a video response to a chilling advertisement published by the National Rifle Association, and demanded that the NRA take its video down. "We demand that the NRA immediately remove their dangerous propaganda videos narrated by conservative radio hosts Dana Loesch and Grant Stinchfield," a Black Lives Matter

When it comes to hate, as goes Los Angeles, so goes California? Hate crime reports in the city of 4 million represented nearly a quarter of all reported hate crimes in the state last year, according to the state Department of Justice’s latest tally. About one-third of the 11 percent increase in California hate crimes from 2015 to 2016 came in the city. Other large, racially diverse urban areas showed a similar trend, according to the state data.

Stockton’s mayor says he’s exploring options to try to reduce violence in the city, including a Richmond program that pays people not to shoot each other.

Hidden by pine forests near the deserted site of what was once East Germany’s biggest nuclear reactor, two shiny pipelines emerge from the Baltic Sea to mark the spot where Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to secure the country’s energy future. Not far from the Hanseatic town of Greifswald — an area Merkel represents in parliament — the chancellor wants a $10 billion pipeline expansion built to increase the amount of Russian natural gas imported from Siberia, more than 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) away.

It would be nice to be able to say that July Fourth this year is the same as any other. Same barbecues, same fireworks. Sadly, amid the celebration, more than smoke hangs in the air. Disunity sits like a thick fog. Our civic discourse has turned acrid. Our culture is stained. It is hard to know if the divisiveness we’re experiencing is less toxic than it seems, or worse than we imagine. What is clear is that commonly accepted norms are being eroded and disregarded. What reasonable people can agree upon is suddenly under attack and disputed

Law enforcement agencies reported Monday an 11.2 percent increase in total hate crimes across California – the second year in a row the state saw double-digit increases, according to state Justice Department officials.

The year is 1942. After the Luftwaffe launch a devastating attack on the British fleet, Hitler's ships race across the Atlantic and - with the help of 5th columnists - invade America. This is just one of the nightmare scenarios imagined by Life magazine at the time, when the threat of a Nazi invasion seemed all too real.

Faced with significant salary hikes and ballooning health benefit and pensions, school districts across the state scrambled to balance their budgets at the end of the fiscal year. And the outlook for the coming years is even worse.

As debate in the nation’s capital has focused on health care, Russia and secret tapes, President Donald Trump’s signature proposal — building a “big, beautiful wall” on America’s southern border — has faded from the spotlight. But preparations are quietly moving forward to start the first wall-related construction on California soil in the next few months, in an effort to translate campaign rally applause lines into cold, hard concrete. Construction is scheduled to begin on four to eight wall prototypes by “late summer,” acting Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost said at a recent congressional hearing. They’ll each be 30 feet...

A federal judge on Friday ordered Illinois to start paying $293 million in state money toward Medicaid bills every month and an additional $1 billion over the course of the next year, worsening a cash-flow problem caused by two years of budget-free spending by state government.

Whales have been breaching and feeding in the San Francisco Bay over the past couple of months and residents and tourists have been doing their best to grab photos of the enormous animals. But one boater recently got a little too close to the action. A boater appears to collide with a humpback as seen in a photo taken near the Golden Gate Bridge on Wednesday, June 28.

"They use their media to assassinate real news," the woman's voice says scornfully. "They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again."

California could be poised to set up more generous rebates and incentives for electric vehicle buyers — and not just affluent drivers cruising in Teslas. Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, is pushing a proposal to establish a $3 billion fund to support the spread of electric vehicles with bigger rebates, more programs for low-income buyers and the deployment of more charging stations. It would also deliver discounts at dealerships, eliminating the need for consumers to file for tax rebates.

One in three people enrolled in a government-subsidized phone program might not qualify for the service, with thousands of accounts belonging to either fake or dead people, according to a government audit released Thursday. The oversight is costing taxpayers more than $100 million worth of improper payments per year, according to the audit by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan federal watchdog.the audit n audit released on Thursday.

Anger over Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon’s decision to shelve universal health care legislation in California has boiled into aggressive protests and even violent rhetoric against the Democratic leader. Rendon said Wednesday that he and his family have experienced “distressing” death threats since announcing late last Friday that the “woefully incomplete” Senate Bill 562 would not move forward this year.

The man accused of shooting a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy in the face with the officer’s gun at a North Highlands light-rail station has an extensive criminal record, including involvement in a double homicide in the Bay Area a decade ago. Law enforcement search teams arrested Nicory Marquis Spann, 27, Tuesday night after finding him in a fetal position in a motel hallway a few blocks from the Interstate 80 and Watt Avenue station three hours after the scuffle and shooting.