Free Republic

The California Department of Transportation, in cooperation with a joint powers authority, will in June begin buying land to build a 63-mile high desert freeway connecting the Los Angeles County communities of Palmdale and Lancaster with the San Bernardino County communities of Victorville, Apple Valley and Adelanto. ... The county’s first new freeway in a quarter-century is something of a throwback, as regional planners have shifted their focus in recent years toward mass transit and infill development to combat snarled traffic and housing shortages. Yet it serves as a reminder that even as Los Angeles moves to encourage more density...

Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Records About Removal of Alleged Anti-Trump FBI Official from Mueller Team Obama State Department Cut Deal with Hillary to Keep Call Log, Schedules Secret Judicial Watch Sues California and Los Angeles Over Dirty Voter Registration Rolls Judicial Watch Asks Supreme Court to Restrain FCC Ability to Impose Government Control Over the Internet Through “Net Neutrality” Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Records About Removal of Alleged Anti-Trump FBI Official from Mueller Team The FBI and Justice Department are engulfed in a rule of law crisis because of new revelations of evident bias among FBI officials...

‘Eleven of California’s 58 counties have registration rates exceeding 100% of the age-eligible citizenry.’ ‘California has the highest rate of inactive registrations of any state in the country. Los Angeles County has the highest number of inactive registrations of any single county in the country’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a federal lawsuit against Los Angeles County and the State of California over their failure to clean their voter rolls and to produce election-related records as required by the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) (Judicial Watch, Inc.et al. v. Dean C. Logan, et al....

A pilot program that pays some Los Angeles County homeowners to build a second dwelling on their property to house homeless people was approved with a 4-0 vote Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors. Homeowners in unincorporated communities who qualify can receive up to $75,000 to build a second dwelling in areas zoned for such structures, while others may get $50,000 to update and legalize an existing dwelling. The program was introduced last year as part of Los Angeles County’s set of 47 strategies to solve homelessness. The office of Regional Planning will work with several departments countywide with an...

John R. Lott, Jr. | Crime Prevention Research Center The Distribution of murders The United States can really be divided up into three types of places. Places where there are no murders, places where there are a few murders, and places where murders are very common. In 2014, the most recent year that a county level breakdown is available, 54% of counties (with 11% of the population) have no murders. 69% of counties have no more than one murder, and about 20% of the population. These counties account for only 4% of all murders in the country. The worst 1%...

To the editor: Like the vast majority of Latinos, I am not a supporter of Donald Trump. But for Los Angeles city and county leaders to use $5 million in taxpayer funds for the legal defense of the undocumented is mind-boggling. It is overreaching decisions like this one by mega-liberals that awoke the rest of the country and got Trump elected in the first place. (“Responding to Trump, L.A. proposes $10-million legal defense fund for immigrants facing deportation,” Dec. 19) The rationale used by City Atty. Mike Feuer, who said the funds would ensure “more fairness and more effectiveness in...

Votes Percent PRESIDENT-VICE PRESIDENT HILLARY CLINTON DEM 2,110,538 71.54 DONALD J TRUMP REP, AI 681,971 23.12 GARY JOHNSON LIB 76,520 2.59 JILL STEIN GRN 63,337 2.15 GLORIA E LA RIVA PF 17,863 0.61 TOTAL PRECINCTS 4,988 PRECINCTS REPORTING* 4,988 100 REGISTRATION** 5,103,353

Boeing will shift more than 2,400 jobs out of its Huntington Beach facility over the next four years, the aerospace giant announced Tuesday, slicing in half the number of workers at the sprawling campus. A nationwide streamlining of operations at the company’s Defense, Space & Security division will result in the transfer of 300 Huntington Beach jobs to its Seal Beach facility and 1,600 positions to its plants in Long Beach and El Segundo. Another 500 jobs will move to St. Louis. And an additional 400 will move to Huntsville, Ala., from Huntington Beach and other facilities around the country.

The Los Angeles County Registrar is investigating how 83 ballots were sent to a single address at a San Pedro apartment. The unused ballots were found on Saturday by tenant Jerry Mosna, sitting on top of the mailbox center at his apartment building in San Pedro. The ballots were all addressed to a two bedroom apartment upstairs from Mosna's, belonging to an 89-year-old woman. All of the names on the ballots were different, and Mosna did not recognize the names on the ballot envelopes. Mosna and his wife took the ballots to the police and were told to bring them...

Authorities called the death of Los Angeles County sheriff’s Sgt. Steve Owen a “calculated execution.” Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell described the death in detail. “Sgt. Owen approached the suspect in response to a burglary call,” McDonnell said as large photos of Owen were behind him. “The suspect immediately shot Sgt. Owen. He then stood over and executed Sgt. Owen by firing four additional rounds in his body.” Before the news conference began at 4 p.m., authorities identified the man accused of killing Owen as Trenton Trevon Lovell, of Lancaster. Owen was shot and killed Wednesday after he responded...

Ed Edelman, the longtime Los Angeles County supervisor whose crusading policymaking influenced many aspects of local life including child welfare, health services and environmental preservation, has died. He was 85. During his 20 years on the Board of Supervisors, Edelman championed efforts to improve the way county government treated its most vulnerable citizens while also fighting to protects parts of the Santa Monica Mountains from development.

In Los Angeles County, 22 school districts started school this week, and only four of the county’s 80 districts do not have an August start date, according to the Los Angeles County Office of Education.For some children in Los Angeles County, the first day of school has seemed to move earlier and earlier into August. That change has left some parents wondering what happened to school typically starting after Labor Day? In Los Angeles County, 22 school districts started school this week, and only four of the county’s 80 districts do not have an August start date, according to the...

Two fatal shootings over the holiday weekend marked the 13th and 14th homicides by gunfire in the Bakersfield area within the past two months, There have been at least 29 shootings resulting in injury or death in Bakersfield since April 1,

A large police presence was expected to be on hand in hopes of keeping any possible protests outside of Donald Trump's rally in Anaheim under control Wednesday. The event at the Anaheim Convention Center was scheduled to begin about noon as Trump returns to Orange County for the first time since a campaign rally in Costa Mesa on April 28. Seventeen people were arrested when violence erupted outside the Pacific Amphitheatre on the OC fairgrounds that day. Video from Sky5 showed a protester jumping on top of a parked patrol car at the event. One of the protesters was charged...

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump may want to avoid West Hollywood when he campaigns in California ahead of the state's potentially decisive June 7 primary. Lindsey Horvath, the mayor of West Hollywood, Calif., which is located in the heart of Los Angeles County and home to a sizable population of gay men, penned a letter to Trump this week explaining that he is unwelcome in her city. "With the primary making its way to California, as West Hollywood's Mayor, I want to make very clear that your campaign of violence and intimidation is not welcome in our City," she wrote...

Seven more states signed on to a lawsuit challenging President Obama's executive action halting the deportation of as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants, bringing the total to 24 states, Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday. The new states to join the coalition were Arizona, Florida, Arkansas, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma. The original 17 states, including Alabama, Kansas and Texas, filed suit in U.S. District Court last week, arguing that Obama overstepped his powers in enacting such changes on his own. "The president's proposed executive decree violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law, circumvents the will of...

The Department of Labor coordinated with the White House on whether or not to release hidden portions of former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ schedule as Solis battled an FBI investigation into her illegal fundraising for President Obama. New emails provided to The Daily Caller from the nonprofit legal research firm Cause of Action show the White House thanking the Department of Labor for “flagging” a public information request for “withheld” portions of Solis’ schedule. (SEE THE EMAIL CHAIN). The White House then asked for the name of the conservative group making the request — information that Labor officials were eager...

The former Georgetown University law student who gained national attention for being denied a chance to testify in Congress for health plan contraception coverage—and then was subjected to degrading comments by radio host Rush Limbaugh—is hoping to make public policy of her own. Sandra Fluke is running as a first-time candidate for a seat in California’s state Senate to represent some of the most affluent communities of Los Angeles County, a district that stretches from the Hollywood Hills to the Palos Verdes peninsula. In a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1, Fluke is campaigning on an agenda that includes subsidized...

At a time when election officials are struggling to convince more Americans to vote, advocates for the disabled say thousands of people with autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy and other intellectual or developmental disabilities have been systematically denied that basic right in the nation’s largest county. A Voting Rights Act complaint to be filed Thursday with the U.S. Justice Department goes to a politically delicate subject that states have grappled with over the years: Where is the line to disqualify someone from the voting booth because of a cognitive or developmental impairment? The complaint by the Disability and Abuse Project...

Two members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have introduced a proposal to add the image of a cross in the county's official seal -- a move likely to reignite a contentious debate that sparked a multi-year legal challenge nearly a decade ago. Supervisors Michael Antonovich and Don Knabe filed a motion Tuesday to add a cross to the depiction of historic San Gabriel Mission on the emblem that appears on county property, The Los Angeles Times reported. The seal once featured a tiny gold cross above an image of the Hollywood Bowl. The cross was justified as...