Free Republic

Democracy isn’t as popular as it used to be. Take the Oroville City Council’s overwrought recent declaration that it’s a “Constitutional Republic City,” which is steeped in creeping disregard for a once-presumptive American ideal. “NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT HEREBY RESOLVED by the Oroville City Council that the City of Oroville is declared to be a Constitutional Republic City,” thunders the resolution, and “that any executive orders issued by the State of California or by the United States federal government that are overreaching or clearly violate our constitutionally protected rights will not be enforced by the City of Oroville against its...

Sacramento Bee News Guild Honeybee @SacBeeGuild · We have alarming news. The owner of The Sacramento Bee is trying to tie journalists’ pay to the number of clicks their stories get. We’re urging the company to reconsider. Here's our letter to McClatchy’s new CEO about how this could hurt our community. https://mobile.twitter.com/SacBeeGuild/status/1318212995785224192

The Sacramento Bee will leave its 2100 Q Street headquarters next summer, a move that is intended to help offset a decline in ad revenue, according to the newspaper’s regional editor. The announcement was made on the Sacramento Bee’s website in a story surrounded by more than a dozen digital advertisements, some of which obscured the text of the article when they weren’t distractedly animated. The move comes as many non-essential Sacramento Bee staff had been asked to work from home due to the ongoing coronavirus health pandemic.

Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday slammed President Donald Trump’s retreat from the world climate stage and challenged fellow Republicans to accept the science that spurred him to push cap-and-trade legislation. Schwarzenegger held up the bipartisan legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Treasure Island as a powerful signal to Washington that the United States has not pulled back from its environmental commitments, despite Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord.

Dear Mr. President, Last year I ended my lifelong loyalty to the Republican Party and did all I could to keep you out of the White House. I took a lot of heat for backing your Democratic opponent, but I knew you were not only unqualified to lead our nation, but morally unfit for the job. Since your election, you have graciously validated my decision by finding new, jaw-dropping ways to disgrace the American presidency virtually every day. But that’s not why I’m writing you now. Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article160008864.html#storylink=cpy

"The victory of Ted Cruz in the Texas Republican Senate runoff primary means that the torch is being passed to a new generation of principled small government constitutional conservatives and that the 'let's make a deal' Republican Party of old will soon go the way of the Dodo bird. "Ted's nomination sent a strong signal that a new conservative Republican Party is being born and, by 2016, principled conservatives will replace most leaders in Congress and the Party at the national, state, and local levels. GOP leaders should 'ask not for whom the bell tolls -- it tolls for thee.'...

For weeks now, the nation has been riveted by arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court over one provision of the Affordable Care Act. Does the law's requirement that every adult buy health insurance violate the U.S. Constitution? We think it does not. Yet even if the court ultimately shares that view, the federal health care reform law will face monumental hurdles to be successfully implemented. The biggest of these is its cost. Can the nation afford to insure all its citizens? If we don't get a handle on rising health care costs the answer to that more important question is...

The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento said today it's one of 29 initial investors in a company designed to license and make profit from online news content.McClatchy, which publishes The Bee, joined with other news companies in launching NewsRight, a fledgling business led by former ABC News President David Westin . . .

When the tea party movement arose in early 2009, it seemed more a sign of the times – a backlash to the recession and President Barack Obama's election – than a lasting force.The movement has outlived many expectations. Thousands of tea party groups have sprung up across the country, and tea party activists are having a significant impact on shaping Republican primaries.Here's a primer on the tea party movement. Is the tea party a political party?No. The name plays on the 1773 Boston Tea Party, when colonists protested British efforts to tax tea imports and dumped tea into Boston Harbor....

Californians are pretty sure President Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A., but not at all sure about the tea party movement, according to a new Field Poll. Conversely, the survey found that those who identify strongly with tea partiers are not at all sure about the president's true nation of origin. "It's an interesting phenomenon that they are not only rebelling against the growth and size of government, but they are actually questioning the authority of the president," said poll director Mark DiCamillo. Doubts about whether Obama was born outside U.S. soil, and thus constitutionally ineligible to be president,...

The Bee announced another round of staff cutbacks today due to what its publisher called "a prolonged period of revenue declines." The paper said 25 jobs will be eliminated as of Jan. 29, and the paper hopes almost all of the cuts can be achieved through voluntary buyouts within specific departments. If the paper can't get enough workers to agree to buyouts, then it will resort to layoffs to reach the goal. The cutbacks are the fourth and smallest to hit the newspaper in the last 18 months, and the first since last March. They will affect 2.7 percent of...

Feeling bruised and abused this morning? Well, you can't say you didn't see it coming. The polls have been saying for weeks that voters were going to do just what they did on Tuesday: Conclusively reject your slate on the ballot, Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D and 1E.

Editorial: Do GOP senators value no-tax vow more than their oath of office? Feb. 18, 2009 For observers outside the Capitol bubble, California's free-fall toward the abyss must seem baffling. For weeks, lawmakers have known the state was running out of money. The governor and others have warned that, without a fix in the current-year budget, the state would be forced to lay off state employees and suspend infrastructure projects, putting more people out of work.

Under continued pressure to reduce costs, The Bee cut its work force on Wednesday by another 7 percent, this time through voluntary buyouts. The Bee said 87 full- and part-time employees accepted a buyout offer that followed a previous round of layoffs and attrition in June that shrank the staff by 8 percent. The buyouts went to 23 newsroom employees. It wasn't clear whether that's the end of the staff cuts. At the time buyouts were offered, Publisher and President Cheryl Dell said more layoffs were possible if there weren't enough takers. She said on Wednesday the paper won't know...

The Bee offered voluntary buyouts to the majority of its full-time employees today and hinted that another round of layoffs is possible as well. The buyouts represent the latest round of cost cutting at The Bee, which is facing a big slump in advertising revenue. Two months ago the newspaper eliminated 86 jobs as part of an across-the-board layoff ordered by its parent, The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento. McClatchy imposed a companywide wage freeze two weeks ago. But Bee executives said today they needed to make more cuts. The economic downturn has deepened and The Bee, like the rest of...

The Modesto Bee is moving forward with plans to print the newspaper at The Sacramento Bee. In an update to employees, Publisher and President Margaret Randazzo said that based on an analysis of printing The Modesto Bee in Sacramento, "it is clear that this move makes both financial and operational sense." "This regional synergy with our sister McClatchy paper allows us to combine resources and streamline processes, resulting in significant cost savings and the avoidance of future capital expenses," Randazzo said in her memo Friday. "This is consistent with combining operations across the entire industry," including at other McClatchy papers....

The Bee's posting last week of an online database making it easy to look up the salaries of state workers by name has made two things clear: First, many state workers are irate, complaining it is an invasion of their privacy. Second, the database is wildly popular, with more than 2 million page views in just the first three days, setting a sacbee.com record by a quantum leap that's growing each day. Beyond those two facts, though, there's little agreement. Certainly for hundreds of state workers who called or e-mailed my office, nothing will suffice except the database's removal. Many...

One of The Bee's most controversial practices for several years has been when and how the paper identifies the race of suspects in crime stories. The paper has set a high standard, allowing the use of race only when it is accompanied by a detailed physical description or when reporting a serial crime or when using police sketches of suspects. The bar was set high to avoid racial stereotyping caused by vague or unreliable racial descriptions provided by police, crime victims or witnesses. Not surprisingly, critics through the years have accused the paper of political correctness, and the issue's volatility...

From Jan. 1, 2004, until her final column on April 26, Griego Erwin wrote 171 columns. The Bee's investigation found 30 names in 27 separate columns that could not be verified during that time period. The people could not be found in voter registration rolls, property records, telephone books, identity databases or through scores of phone calls. In light of those findings, the review expanded to include a sampling of columns spanning her 12-year tenure with the newspaper, and 13 additional cases in another 10 columns were found. Many of the columns in question fit a template: essays, often with...

Remember that much-publicized Jayson Blair case at the New York Times, in which a coddled reporter was found to have been making up facts for his newspaper stories? Jayson Blair's actions were greatly deplored and led to his firing and the resignation of his editor. Now, the Sacramento Bee in my hometown, finds that it has had on its staff a columnist whose journalistic inventions over her twelve years of employment may dwarf those of Jayson Blair. The liberal Sacramento Bee reported on Sunday, June 26, that its investigation of columnist Diana Griego Erwin's politically correct, three-times-a-week, human-interest columns reveal...