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This Valley guy just turned 100, but the Silver Star on his chest never gets old Joe Pietroforte is still going strong all these years. And he still has a sense of service. It’s pushing midnight and Bazooka Joe is showing no signs of calling it a night. It’s his 100th birthday party and the World War II veteran is out on the dance floor in his Khaki uniform with his Silver Star pinned on his chest, swing dancing to Steve Waddington & the Retro-Rockin’ All-Stars. Every red naugahyde upholstered booth and barstool in Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant in Sherman...

Paleoanthropology Division Smithsonian Institute 207 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20078 Dear Sir: Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled “ 211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post . Hominid skull .” We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents “conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Oklahoma County two million years ago. .” Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small...

Dear Supporters, As you probably know we are having pre-screenings of the Gosnell Movie across the country in advance of our nationwide launch on October 12th. And so we wanted to tell you about the most important screening so far and hope you or someone you know can go. Planned Parenthood are holding a posh $400 Gala Dinner at the Hyatt Hotel in Austin where they are honoring their former President Cecile Richards. So we have decided to have a simultaneous screening of the Gosnell Movie at the same time in the same hotel. As you know we wanted to...

PAMELA MURPHY All these years later, she’s still remembered by newspaper editors and publishers in small towns across this country wanting to know if they can reprint for their readers a column I wrote on her death. Sure, I tell them, go ahead. We had her all to ourselves out here for so long working at the Sepulveda VA, we almost took her for granted — as if that were ever really possible. There never has been a woman who commanded so much attention and respect from the first moment the veterans heard whispers in the VA hallways about who...

JEFF SESSIONS IS RIGHT Last week I got a call from the attorney general of the United States. Yep, that one. The guy who just filed a federal lawsuit against the state of California. I don’t usually get phone calls from attorneys general. Let me amend that; I never get phone calls from attorneys general, at least not until Wednesday. But Jeff Sessions was in Sacramento to speak to the California Peace Officers Association, and he had a lot to say. “California, we have a problem,” said the attorney general, and love him, hate him or never heard of him,...

Police say that the 3-week-old boy's father spiked him to the ground like a football. Short video at link.

By Jon Coupal | | PUBLISHED: February 2, 2018 at 8:30 pm | UPDATED: February 3, 2018 at 1:07 pm America’s economic recovery has benefited California more than most states because the real estate crash hit the Golden State a lot harder. In other words, we’ve had to claw our way up from a deeper hole. The good news is that the strength of the recovery is impressive. Hourly wages have jumped by four dollars since the start of the Great Recession. Unemployment has dropped to 4.3 percent, a record low since 1976 when California started keeping track of the...

January 24, 2018 at 2:26 pm Editor’s note: Breaking views are thoughts from individual members of the editorial board on today’s headlines. California’s bullet train project has basically been one long, embarrassing and wasteful disaster ever since it got started. Alas, it persists. The latest update on the first phase of the project, the 119-mile Central Valley section considered the easiest to build, came out a week ago, when the rail authority had to revise its 2016 cost estimate of $7.8 billion in favor of the more realistic though perhaps still optimistic $10.6 billion. It was originally expected to cost...

Editorial Sanctuary state policies come at a cost Consistent with campaign promises, the first year of Trump’s presidency saw a noticeable uptick in immigration enforcement. Unfortunately, much of it was against noncriminal undocumented immigrants. According to data released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency last month, both arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants without a criminal conviction increased significantly from prior years. Of the 143,470 administrative arrests made in fiscal year 2017, more than one in four of those arrested did not have a criminal conviction, with 10.8 percent not having any criminal record at all. Notably, “at-large”...

Guest Commentary By Steven Greenhut | | November 11, 2017 at 11:20 am SACRAMENTO — There are few areas of private life that California’s legislators won’t at least attempt to meddle, which makes it that much more infuriating when the Capitol crowd can’t get its own house in order. I’m thinking, of course, about the unfolding sexual-harassment scandal, and lawmakers’ amazing efforts to basically look the other way. Nothing to see here, just keep moving on. Maybe, by the time lawmakers get back to work in January, the whole mess will be off the news pages. Then they can go...

SACRAMENTO, CA (KTVU/FOX 11) - Supporters behind a far reaching proposal to criminalize abortion as first-degree murder in California have moved closer to putting the measure on the November 2018 ballot. Daniel Ehinger, whose is behind the initiative, announced on Facebook on Friday that supporters have been cleared to begin collecting signatures to put the measure before voters. "We received our circulating title to gather signatures and work to get Abolishing Abortion on the November 6th, 2018 ballot through a state ballot initiative that would amend our constitution. Please pray for our efforts," Ehinger wrote in a post. According to...

Confederate monument removed from Hollywood Forever Cemetery overnight By Brenda Gazzar, Los Angeles Daily News Posted: 08/16/17, 10:07 AM PDT The spot where a Confederate monument once stood is seen Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2017, at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood. The statue was removed earlier in the morning. A monument honoring Confederate veterans has been removed from Hollywood Forever cemetery days after deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, prompted in part by clashes over the planned removal of a statue there of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The Long Beach chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owns...

LAW-ENFORCEMENT ACCOUNTABILITY Time to show rape victims matter By Helena Lazaro I’d just turned 17 when I was abducted from a car wash by a stranger near my Los Angeles home and repeatedly raped at knife-point. I begged the attacker to spare my life and release me, and he did — but not before he took my driver’s license swearing to kill everyone in my home if I ever told police what happened. That cold night in 1996, I risked my life and the safety of my family by reporting what happened. I underwent the deeply traumatic evidence collection process...

The former director of food services for the Los Angeles Unified School District has been charged with misappropriation of public funds and embezzlement for allegedly diverting $65,000 in district money to a culinary club he controlled, prosecutors said Tuesday. David Binkle, 55, is also accused of forging a district vendor application, failing to report his outside financial interests to the district and funneling public funds into his personal bank account, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. All told, he’s accused of 15 felony counts. Binkle resigned from the LAUSD in 2015 following a critical audit...

LOS ANGELES (FOX 11 / CNS) - The City Council on Wednesday approved a $650,000 payout for a man who successfully fought how the city of Los Angeles processes challenges to parking tickets. Cody Weiss, who sued the city in 2014 after he received a parking ticket, argued that the city unlawfully allows a private for-profit company to process challenges to tickets. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled in his favor last year, and the decision was upheld by the Second District Court of Appeal. City Attorney Mike Feuer petitioned the California Supreme Court to review the appellate decision,...

LAPD Officers Join Compton Students For Father-Daughter Dance Friday was a night of celebration in Watts for dozens of young princesses. The gymnasium at Compton Avenue Elementary School magically transformed into a beautiful ballroom - all for the annual father-daughter dance. The music was thumping, feet were moving and smiles were everywhere! "I really like the fact that these beautiful ladies are being empowered. They're being shown that they are princesses in their own right, and all are individuals and all are appreciated here," father Jesse Melano said. But not all of these young ladies have a father figure in...

WESTLAKE VILLAGE Grief fuels father’s battle against illegal immigration By Brenda Gazzar bgazzar@scng.com @bgazzar on Twitter WESTLAKE VILLAGE » Don Rosenberg is a lifelong liberal who may have only one thing in common politically with President Donald Trump: his battle against illegal immigration. Rosenberg became an activist on the issue after his 25-year-old son, Drew, was killed in a 2010 collision in San Francisco with a Honduran immigrant who had entered the country illegally, but been granted temporary immigration status. The Westlake Village resident now spends much of his spare time firing off letters to journalists, sounding off on TV...

Brenda Gazzar bgazzar@scng.com @bgazzar on Twitter A Los Angeles street gang member who starred in a rap music video about “flocking” — a slang term for breaking into a home in order to steal — has been on the run for months after being charged by Ventura County prosecutors with four counts of residential burglary, authorities said. After 27-year-old Darren King was arrested in the Simi Valley burglaries, he posted bail of $50,000 last August but failed to appear in court later that month, according to police. A warrant in the amount of $1 million was issued for his arrest....

North Hills(San Fernando Valley): ‘This could have been prevented’ family says of collision allegedly involving driver with lengthy criminal record By Gregory J. Wilcox gwilcox@scng.com @dngregwilcox on Twitter It was a day that began like so many others. But in the end, it was a day that would forever change the lives of the Duran family of Arleta. On the afternoon of Feb. 19, Sandra Duran, 42 — a mother, daughter and sister — was killed in a violent car crash on a rain-slicked road in North Hills. Los Angeles police say Estuardo Alvarado, the man who allegedly caused the...

STATE SENATE Certain immigrants not so favored When former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., decided to write a book about his life in the U.S. Senate, he titled it “Herding Cats: A Life in Politics.” In his experience, that’s what it was like trying to get a hundred senators on the same page. In California the felines are a little bit easier to control — they all seem to hate President Trump and are willing to do anything possible to block his agenda. Not long after President Trump was elected, state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los...