Free Republic

Democratic activist Sandra Fluke -- who is running for a state Senate seat in California -- leads her opponent by seven percentage points, according to a new survey from the Fluke campaign. Forty-one percent of voters in the poll of California’s 26th Senate District said they prefer Fluke. Ben Allen, a member of the Santa Monica-Malibu school board, took 34 percent. Twenty-five percent of voters in the Los Angeles area district remain undecided. Fluke holds advantages among Democratic voters (53 percent-25 percent) and non-affiliated voters (44 percent-28 percent). Her opponent leads among Republicans (58 percent-15 percent).

FOUNTAIN VALLEY (CBSLA.com) — An inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration retrieved a metal panel that reportedly fell from the sky on Thursday morning after a JetBlue airliner was forced to make an emergency landing. The three-foot-long panel, which was located by Cindy Gilbert of Fountain Valley, fell from the sky and onto the sand of Huntington State Beach. Gilbert told KCAL9’s Michele Gile that she was on a bike ride in the area of Magnolia Street and Pacific Coast Highway when she saw the piece in her peripheral vision. “I went back. [I] saw this right there,” she explained....

With school employees returning to work, Sonoma County’s unemployment rate dipped in August to 5.4 percent, the lowest rate for the month in seven years. In August, Sonoma had the fifth-lowest unemployment rate among the state’s 58 counties. Marin ranked first with a rate of 4.2 percent. Napa ranked fourth at 4.8 percent, Mendocino was 12th at 6.1 percent and Lake, 40th at 8.9 percent.

INGLEWOOD (CBSLA.com) — Civil rights leaders Friday called for a “Django Unchained” actress to apologize to the Los Angeles Police Department after she claimed officers racially profiled her. Project Islamic Hope President Najee Ali, Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson and other civil rights leaders held a meeting at 9:30 a.m. denouncing Daniele Watts after a recent incident. Watts, 28, was detained by officers responding to an “indecent exposure” call on Sept. 11 in the 11900 block of Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. Police said they had received several calls about a couple engaging in lewd behavior...

A disturbing story came and went, barely noticed a few weeks ago. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is being unceremoniously booted off the campuses of California's 23 state universities. This begins with a process of "derecognizing" these as legitimate campus groups. Why? Though everyone is welcome at their ministry events, ICVF reserves leadership only for those committed to their goals and creed, just as a homosexual group would presumably reserve leadership for gays or those who affirm its pro-gay agenda. Or a Muslim group for Muslims. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is a network of campus ministries. It is evangelical in orientation and has...

In one of America's richest towns residents are paying more than ten times the going rate for water in a desperate attempt to stave off California's "epochal" drought ___ Nestled under the Santa Ynez mountains and cooled by the Pacific Ocean breeze, the billionaires' bolt hole of Montecito, California, seems at first glance like a palm tree-strewn idyll. Here, in one of America's wealthiest post codes, celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, George Lucas, Rob Lowe, Kevin Costner and Ellen DeGeneres live alongside CEOs too numerous to mention in some of the world's biggest and most outlandish homes. But look a little...

An eighth grade student from Weaverville Elementary School got a detention slip for sharing his school prepared lunch Tuesday.Kyle Bradford, 13, shared his chicken burrito with a friend who didn’t like the cheese sandwich he was given by the cafeteria.Bradford didn’t see any problem with sharing his food."It seemed like he couldn't get a normal lunch so I just wanted to give mine to him because I wasn't really that hungry and it was just going to go in the garbage if I didn't eat it," said Bradford.But the Trinity Alps Unified School District has regulations that prohibit students from...

Anyone who still doubts that there is a deliberate takeover of America being orchestrated through an alliance of treachery between Mexico, Central America and the Democrat Party needs to stop kidding themselves and open their eyes to the events that are going on around them. On Constitution Day, September 17th, the Ninth Circuit Court of California refused to hear a case en banc in an appeal of a decision against four American students who were sent home from Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, CA. The four were suspended for one day for wearing American Flag apparel on May...

Windsor police responded in force Thursday afternoon to a residential neighborhood on Alden Lane after a prank 911 call reported a shooting in a home there. Officers swarmed the quiet residential block just before 6 p.m., when elementary school-aged kids and parents were attending an evening program at the nearby Mary Agatha Furth Center. Police showed up at the home where a retired man and his wife live with one of their daughters and her child, after receiving a 911 call that appeared to come from the their address. The caller said a grandfather at the home had shot someone...

SEATTLE, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp will close its Silicon Valley research-and-development operation as part of 2,100 layoffs announced on Thursday, as it moves toward its new CEO's goal of cutting 18,000 staff, or about 14 percent of its workforce. News of the closure of the Microsoft Research lab at the company's campus in Mountain View, California, was first made public on Twitter by employees. The company later confirmed the move and said it would involve the loss of 50 jobs.

A 37-year-old man was arrested and charged with intentionally igniting the massive King Fire, which has burned 71,000 acres of Sierra foothills east of Placerville while sending up a cloud of smoke visible as far as the Bay Area, officials said Thursday. El Dorado County authorities took Wayne Allen Huntsman into custody Wednesday on suspicion of felony arson and jailed him in lieu of $10 million bail. Huntsman is a resident of Pollock Pines (El Dorado County), a community in the heart of the fire area.

Democrats are sending warning signals on a previously sleepy southern California House race — a tangible sign of an increasingly tough midterm for the party. Freshman Rep. Julia Brownley is one of three House Democrats receiving extra and early help from the national party. A year ago, her district was barely on the party’s radar of competitive races, after President Barack Obama carried it by 10 points last cycle. “This is a tight race and a difficult seat, and we are committed to hanging onto it,” said Matt Thornton, a spokesman for House Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC aiding...

Authorities issued new evacuation orders on Thursday for Northern California mountain communities after an out-of-control wildfire doubled in size overnight, scorching more than 100 square miles of drought-parched timber and brush. A force of nearly 3,700 firefighters struggled to stop the forward march of the King Fire, the largest and most dangerous of 11 major wildfires raging across California, but had managed to cut containment lines around 5 percent of the flames as of Thursday morning, officials said.

The State of California continues its war on productive activity, fining a small family-owned winery that earns $11,000 a year a whopping $115,000 for the crime of inviting volunteers to learn about wine while helping out with the harvest and the crush. That is enough to drive it out of business, and the winery is starting to lauch a going out of business sale in response.Rebecca Parr reports in the San Jose Mercury-News: A small-time vintner's use of volunteer workers has put him out of business after the state squeezed him like a late-summer grape for $115,000 in fines --...

Gov. Jerry Brown signed historic groundwater legislation Tuesday, imposing new rules in the Golden State that could limit how much water commercial and residential users are allowed to pump from underground aquifers — a move decades in the works, spurred this year by California’s drought. The new laws, which take effect in January, will require local government officials to ensure use of groundwater basins is sustainable, protecting underground reserves and averting other environmental damage. The regulations could have a ripple effect on thousands of farmers and ranchers across the North Coast.

The fashion police descended in droves on the Los Angeles Fashion District last week, confiscating $100 million (mostly in cash), seizing three homes and arresting nine people. The raids on some 75 businesses are related to “Black Market Peso Exchange” (BMPE) schemes to launder drug money controlled by international drug cartels.

Wednesday at the Senate Foreign Relation Committee hearing on U.S. strategy for combating ISIS, after Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) criticized Secretary of State John Kerry, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was left "shaking and trembling" in shock. Boxer said, "I think it is shocking and a sad state of affairs that we heard just now, such angry comments aimed at you, Mr. Secretary, and through you, at our president ....

On Friday, the California State Assembly outdid itself. You can always count on the leftist leaders of what is supposed to be the “people’s house” never lets a crisis go to waste. With the passage of AB 1739 (Dickinson-D), SB 1168 (Pavley-D), and SB 1319 (Pavley-D), 100 years of history was reversed. The authors painted a grim picture of California’s groundwater future. Most of what they said is true. The only problem they didn’t bother to tell you two key truths: 1.It was these same so-called leaders who give up our seat—the property owner and the farmer’s place at the...

State Sen. Rod Wright submitted his resignation Monday after he was sentenced last week to three months in jail for lying about where he lived when he ran for office. Wright, a Democrat from Los Angeles County, was convicted of perjury in January for lying about his residence and later was suspended with pay from the Senate. During the sentencing in Los Angeles last week, Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy said Wright is no longer eligible to hold public office.

SAN JOSE -- A San Jose resident who was one of several people recording the aftermath of an officer-involved shooting in South San Jose last month is alleging he was intimidated and threatened with detainment for refusing to surrender his cellphone or delete the images he took. The allegations are contained in an Aug. 21 internal-affairs complaint filed by Andrew Payne and comes as the issue of recording police performing their duties in public has gained national attention in light of the civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri...