Free Republic

BELLEVUE, WA, and ROSEVILLE, CA – The Second Amendment Foundation and The Calguns Foundation earned a significant victory today when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case of Richards v. Prieto, challenging the handgun carry license issuing policy of Yolo County, California, Sheriff Ed Prieto. “Today’s ruling reinforces the Second Amendment’s application to state and local governments, and will help clear the way for more California citizens to exercise their right to bear arms,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “California officials have been put on notice that they can no longer...

(Reuters) - Two Mexican nationals were indicted on Thursday on charges of running an outlaw weapons-supply shop in northern California that assembled and sold unmarked, illegal firearms and accessories, including machine-guns and silencers. A federal grand jury in Sacramento indicted brothers Luis Cortez-Garcia, 44, and Emiliano Cortez-Garcia, 37, on one count each of unlawful manufacturing and sales of firearms, conspiracy to unlawfully manufacture and sell firearms and multiple counts related to making and selling illegal assault rifles, U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner said in a statement. "The conduct alleged in this case involves the systematic evasion of federal firearms laws, for...

The Attorney General’s office was repeatedly invited to participate in this case both by Sheriff Gore’s attorney, and by the plaintiffs. The Attorney General declined to participate in the case, just as she has refused to get involved in similar cases challenging policies in other cities and counties that refused to accept self-defense as justification to get a license to carry a firearm in public to defend yourself and your family. In fact, when the Attorney General’s office was named as a defendant in some of those cases, it has successfully moved to be dismissed from the cases because the...

A man who lives at this house told police that someone had shot at his house and was trying to break in. He says he got his own gun, fired back in the direction of the shots, and called 911. When police arrived the intruder was gone, apparently having sped off in a car with at least one other person. A short time later, a man was dropped off at a hospital with at least one gunshot wound and he died. "After further investigation, they determined that the subject at hospital was related to incident that occurred here on Pine...

LOS ANGELES— A California couple on their daily walk with their dog, a walk they've taken for years, discovered what may be the greatest buried treasures ever found in the U.S. The cache of rare Gold Rush-era coins is worth more than $10 million, a currency firm representing the pair said on Tuesday. The 1,400 gold pieces, dating to the mid- to late 1800s and still in nearly mint condition, were discovered buried in eight decaying metal cans on the couple's land in April, said coin expert David McCarthy of currency firm Kagin's.

Doctors in California say as many as 25 children are suffering from a mysterious, poliolike virus that is leaving them with paralyzed limbs... The cause of most of these cases is not known, health officials say. The average age of the children is 12.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — California State Sen. Ron Calderon and his brother have been indicted by a federal grand jury on multiple political corruption charges, including mail and wire fraud, bribery and money laundering, federal officials said Friday. Calderon, 56, and his brother, 59-year-old Thomas M. Calderon and a former member of the California State Assembly, were named in a federal indictment Thursday, Department of Justice spokesman Thom Mrozek said. The lawmaker, who is traveling, has agreed to surrender to federal authorities Monday. According to the 24-count indictment (PDF), Calderon was indicted for mail fraud, wire fraud, honest services fraud,...

Free Dominion, one of the arch-foes of the Canadian Gun Registry, has been shut down. The conservative website, Free Dominion, has shut down after a long legal battle with censorship champion lawyer Richard Warman.  Warman gained notoriety for his attacks on conservative sites by using the "hate speech" law in Canada (the Canadian Human Rights Commission) to censor speech he disagreed with.   He was essentially the only person using the law and the process.  The CHRC became his personal tool of repression.  He had considerable success, though the CHRC has since been reformed by parliament as a result....

Politics comes down to people.  Some of them are real people, and some of them are invisible.  This is true even in the case of sophisticated legal appeals to the 9th district court.  Bill Gore is the Sheriff of San Diego County.  He said he wanted to issue licenses so citizens could carry a concealed weapon in public.  He really wanted to.  That is what he told me.  He said, sadly, that California law prevented him from granting those licenses.  That is what his un-named lawyer told him.  I’ve had legal experts tell me otherwise, but it is hard to...

The county has 14 calendar days from the date of the ruling to move for rehearing en banc. If the county fails to move, any judge of the court, of their own volition, move for such rehearing within 21 days of the ruling. This seems to fit the grounds for such a motion, in particular conflict with other circuits and an issue of pressing national importance. A majority of the court can vote to grant. En banc: normally, ruling are handed down by 3-judge panels. En banc in all other circuits means that all of the judges of the court...

SAN JOSE -- A cook who stabbed an off-duty bouncer to death during a confrontation downtown has been released from jail after prosecutors declared that he was acting in self-defense, a decision sparked by the revelation that the man who died was also armed with a knife. The 22-year-old San Jose man who works as a cook at a downtown restaurant may have at some point worked with 26-year-old San Jose resident Ryan Viri, who was well known in the downtown bar and restaurant scene. Assistant District Attorney Marc Buller, who reviewed the case, said security cameras in the area...

HAYWARD -- A man was killed late Sunday afternoon during an apparent home invasion robbery. Dispatchers with the Hayward Police Department received a call at 5:28 p.m. regarding a man who had been shot during a possible home invasion robbery in the 21000 block of Western Boulevard, according to a news release. When police arrived, a victim told them one male suspect, who was shot, was inside the home, and that other suspects had fled the residence. When officers entered the house, they found a deceased man who had appeared to have been shot, according to the release.

Here is an interesting press release from the San Diego County Sheriff Department.  The Sheriff, William Gore, is up for election in a few months.  The release is decidedly ambiguous, but having worked in bureaucracies, that is to be expected.  No one wants to be seen as making a decision, or telegraphing what the decision is until there has been time to consider the possibilities. The chairwoman of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors has commented that she has no problems with the Ninth Circuit decision.  From the LA Times: Dianne Jacob, chairwoman of the San Diego County...

The Los Angeles Times ran an article on the decision of the Ninth Circuit in Peruta v County of San Diego, by Maura Dolan and Tony Perry.   While I have come to expect old media reporters to be ignorant about guns, the first sentence in the article makes me wonder about their reading comprehension about judicial matters as well: "In a significant victory for gun owners, a divided federal appeals court Thursday struck down California rules that permit counties to restrict as they see fit the right to carry a concealed weapon in public." Uh.. no.  The court did...

Kevin Faulkoner recaptured the mayor’s office in San Diego for Republicans in a special election yesterday. The polls were skin-tight leading into yesterday’s election, and unions poured in millions to keep control in the nation’s eighth-largest city. Faulkoner defeated fellow City Council member David Alvarez by nine points in a city that Barack Obama carried by 63 percent to 37 percent only 15 months ago.

<p>California grows a mind-boggling amount of the nation's produce: 99 percent of artichokes, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, and on and on. That's why the record-breaking drought (yes, it's finally raining—no, it won't help much!) can affect your grocery bill, even if you live nowhere near California. But with almonds—the state's most lucrative agricultural export—the effect could reverberate for years.</p>

(Reuters) - Residents of bankrupt San Bernardino, California on Tuesday voted to complete a rout of the city's pro-union old guard, electing business-friendly pragmatists who have pledged to try to reduce pension costs and take on vested interests. As San Bernardino enters into a fourth month of mediation with its creditors, the biggest of which is Calpers, California's giant retirement system, voters on Tuesday elected Carey Davis as the crisis-hit city's new mayor. Davis, a businessman and political novice, ran in part on a campaign to reduce the city's pension obligations. In an interview in November, when he became one...

Facing a $78 million budget shortfall, California’s ObamaCare exchange has spent $1.37 million to fund an outreach video featuring exercise guru Richard Simmons gyrating on the floor and hugging a contortionist who is kneeling with his buttocks in the air. The “Tell a Friend — Get Covered” campaign by Covered California features other celebrities Olivia Wilde, comic Billy Eirchner, Fran Drescher and Tatyana Ali. The centerpiece of the effort was an eight-hour live web stream that ran on Jan. 16. None of the celebrities were paid for their work, Covered California said.

(CNN) -- The White House has secured commitments from some of the nation's largest companies for a plan to boost hiring of the long-term unemployed. "What we have done is to gather together 300 companies, just to start with, including, some of the top 50 companies in the country, companies like Walmart, and Apple, Ford and others, to say let's establish best practices," President Barack Obama told CNN Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper in an exclusive interview. "Because they've been unemployed ... so long, folks are looking at that gap in the resume and they're weeding them out before these...

Murder charges were dropped Wednesday against a family friend suspected of killing a man who was allegedly assaulting a 13-year-old Boy Scout, authorities said. The investigation is still ongoing. Police said the charges were dropped against Carmen Reyes, 53, because detectives need more time to gather evidence in the case. Reyes is the family friend of a 13-year-old boy who was attacked about 5 a.m. Saturday while helping his mother load the car for a camping trip. The assault happened near 182nd Street and Van Ness Avenue in Torrance.