Free Republic

LOS ANGELES -- Legendary former UCLA men's basketball coach John Wooden is celebrating his 99th birthday today with the release of a new book that he co-wrote. Wooden coached the Bruins to an unprecedented 10 NCAA championships in his final 12 seasons, including a record seven in a row from 1967 to 1973. ...In addition to his championships and 620-147 record as UCLA's coach from 1948 to 1975, Wooden was acclaimed for the values he espoused. He had three rules for his players -- don't use profanity, be on time and never criticize a teammate.

UCLA Science Lab Students Watched In Horror As Male Classmate Slashed Female Student's Throat Spencer Weiner, Anthony Pesce, Andrew Blankstein and Larry Gordon Los Angeles Times Staff Writers October 8, 2009 Students in the UCLA science lab described the horrifying moments this afternoon when a male classmate slashed the throat of a female student, who was critically injured. One student who was inside the lab when the attack occurred shortly after noon told The Times that he looked up as the assailant appeared to repeatedly punch the victim. Then the man calmly turned and walked away as the victim lay...

July 10, 2009 Suit Challenges Two-Thirds Vote On Taxes A former UCLA chancellor asked the California Supreme Court today to declare that the state constitution's requirement of two-thirds legislative votes to raise taxes is invalid. The suit was filed by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP on behalf of Charles Young, former chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The suit described Young as "a citizen, taxpayer, and voter of the State of California, interested in seeing that the California government carries out its public duty consistent...

June 27, 2009 The fans killed their idol. They always do Those who professed to love Michael Jackson were vampires, feeders and jackals – their adulation hastened his end Janice Turner Outside UCLA hospital they gather with their candles and their teddies, spooky lookalikes in full Thriller garb, wan teenagers wearing a single lace glove. They sway and sing I’ll Be There with sad faces to disguise the serotonin buzz from their frenzied collective mourn-in. Fans cry now for Michael Jackson, but they killed him. They always do. I met Pete Doherty’s mother a few years back when he was...

Anti-abortion movement gets a new-media twist Lila Rose, a UCLA student, goes undercover at Planned Parenthood clinics to pose as an underage girl pregnant by a 31-year-old. Her surreptitious videos go on YouTube, and inspire outrage. [Pic in URL] By Robin Abcarian April 26, 2009 The girl's voice in the videotape is tiny and tentative. She is talking to a nursing aide in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bloomington, Ind. The girl wants an abortion. The aide explains that the girl will need a parent's consent because she is only 13. The girl balks; she does not want to name...

As soon as he heard his car alarm blare and saw the orange glow through his bedroom window, UCLA neuroscientist J. David Jentsch knew that his fears had come true. . . . But Jentsch has decided to push back. Jentsch, an associate professor of psychology and psychiatry, has founded an organization at UCLA to voice support for research that uses animals in what he calls a humane, carefully regulated way. He is organizing a pro-research campus rally April 22, a date chosen because animal rights activists, who contend that his research involves the torture and needless killing of primates,...

    If you think the pro-life movement has run out of energy and new ideas, you should meet Lila Rose. You may not know her name, but you very likely have seen the media coverage of her various sting operations at Planned Parenthood clinics around the country.   Rose is 20 years old, but she is already entering her fourth year of covert operation, as it were, exposing the underhanded -- and, in some cases, potentially illegal -- practices at abortion clinics run by Planned Parenthood. She has already made appearances on The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity's America.  ...

A vehicle was firebombed outside the home of a university researcher on Saturday, prompting Chancellor Gene Block to issue a statement condemning the attackers. There were no reports of injuries, said Phil Hampton, a university spokesman. Animal rights activists claimed responsibility for the firebomb in a statement released through the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which speaks on the behalf of the activists. They threatened in the statement to continue to harass the targeted researcher – whose name was not released because of the ongoing investigation - until he stops his research. Block responded to the threats on Monday....

Two UCLA economists are blaming the length of the Great Depression on President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who instead of being blamed has always been thought of as the main catalyst who brought the country out of the Depression. Instead, in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude that the New Deal policies FDR signed into law thwarted economic recovery for the country. See UCLA Newsroom. After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into...

Education: A new survey shows America's professors downgrading the classics and elevating social activism as a teaching goal. There must be cheaper ways to train community organize.We should not be surprised, from what we know of the academic culture. But the latest round of "The American College Teacher," a national survey done every three years by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, will nonetheless disappoint anyone who still thinks of a university as a place where young minds encounter the great minds of the past. Based on responses by 22,562 professors at 372 colleges and universities during the 2007-08 academic year,...

A vehicle was firebombed outside the home of a university researcher on Saturday, prompting Chancellor Gene Block to issue a statement condemning the attackers. There were no reports of injuries, said Phil Hampton, a university spokesman. Animal rights activists claimed responsibility for the firebomb in a statement released through the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which speaks on the behalf of the activists. They threatened in the statement to continue to harass the targeted researcher – whose name was not released because of the ongoing investigation - until he stops his research. Block responded to the threats on Monday....

A UCLA bio-geographer says he know where Osama is hiding. (Pakistan, with a garden)

If further proof was needed that the field of Middle East studies is marred by a politicized, morally vacuous approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the reaction of many of its leading lights to the current war in Gaza should suffice. According to these self-appointed arbiters of international law, Israel’s military campaign against Hamas following the firing of over 6,000 rockets at Israeli civilian targets since 2005 is unjustified. Hamas, they tell us, is not a terrorist organization bent on Israel’s destruction, but rather a national liberation movement that seeks only the noble founding of a Palestinian state. Either that or...

Who Likes Hamas? With even the Arab League blaming Hezbollah and Hamas for the violence in the Middle East, it seems the terrorist organizations' last bastions of support are Iran, Syria — and parts of California. Left-wing protesters chanting their support for the two groups in front of the Israeli consulate in San Francisco had to be separated from pro-Israel demonstrators by police the other day. Many protesters waved Palestinian flags, while some mask-wearing demonstrators wore t-shirts advocating violence against Jews.

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years. "Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10-...

Applying to UCLA's Grad school for film for the fifth time. Obviously I've been rejected the first four times. Been wondering if anyone has advice or recommendations.

A 52-year-old man was being held without bail on suspicion of shooting at a traffic light in Westwood and having more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in his van and a storage locker late last week, UCLA police said Monday. Gene Bush allegedly began firing at a traffic light at Broxton and Le Conte avenues shortly before midnight Thursday. Campus police responding to the shooting reported that they found Bush on the sidewalk, empty-handed but wearing a holster. They said that when they ordered him, at gunpoint, to get on the ground, he responded: "Not until everyone else gets here."...

WESTWOOD Police Friday arrested a 52-year-old homeless man they say fired several shots in the air near UCLA while making anti-government statements. The man, was reportedly was in possession of more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition, was being held Monday without bail, according to police.  UCLA Police Department officers responded to reports of a shooting at Broxton Avenue and Le Conte Place, the edge of the campus, about 11:50 p.m. Friday. Officer said they found Gene Carlton Bush wearing a holster and standing empty handed, said UCLA police Sgt. Baguiao. The officers ordered Bush to the ground at gunpoint, but he...

Arguing that UCLA admissions policies are being manipulated to circumvent the state's ban on consideration of applicants' race, a professor there has resigned from a faculty committee that he says refused to allow him to study the matter. Political science professor Tim Groseclose resigned Thursday from the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools, saying high-ranking university administrators and fellow committee members are engaged in a "coverup" to block illegal activity from being discovered. "A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions," he wrote in an 89-page report posted on a UCLA website. University...

A professor who said he suspects UCLA is cheating to illegally admit black students resigned Thursday from its admissions committee, saying the university refused to provide him the data he needs to investigate his suspicions. "A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions," political science Professor Tim Groseclose wrote in a report he released Thursday. "Specifically, applicants often reveal their own race on the essay portion of the application."Students typically report their race on their applications, but the people who evaluate their files don't see names, race or ethnicity. If race does come up in...

If only Amanda Beard moved as quickly through the water in the 200-meter breaststroke on Wednesday night at the Water Cube as she did afterward in the mixed zone -- which she ripped through at warp speed -- she might have avoided creating another first in her long Olympic career. Beard had won a medal in the 200-meter breaststroke in the last three Olympic Games, including gold in 2004 in Athens. This time, she didn't even make it out of the heats, finishing 18th in 2 minutes, 27.70 seconds, nearly a half-second out of the last qualifying spot. For better...

CNN was forced to apologize Thursday after it aired an interview on American Morning with a University of Southern California student whom it identified as Eric Pearlmutter, a College Republican, who said that there was little enthusiastic support for Sen. John McCain's candidacy on campus. Following the broadcast Ben Myers, president of the USC College Republicans, shot back saying that he had never met or seen Pearlmutter at a College Republican meeting and that Pearlmutter is not even a member. "As far as I know, he could be a Democrat," Myers told the Los Angeles Times. On Thursday night a...

TORRANCE, Calif. (AP) — There was far less pomp in these circumstances, but Bill Clinton did give a Southern California commencement speech this week. A lingering labor dispute at UCLA kept the former president from giving a planned talk to thousands of graduates there Friday, but he spoke to all 26 eighth-grade graduates of Riviera Hall Lutheran School in Torrance on Thursday. Clinton's nephew Tyler, son of his brother Roger, is a student at the school. Clinton spoke for about 10 minutes in the school's chapel about the value of education and public service, making no mention of politics at...

Bill Clinton on Tuesday canceled a commencement speech at the University of California, Los Angeles, because of a lingering labor dispute. The former president was scheduled to address 4,000 graduating seniors on Friday, but his office said he would not appear because of the long-running rift between the university and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

As further evidence of the not-so-great minds inhabiting higher education, political science professor and director of the UCLA Globalization Research Center on Africa, Edmond J. Keller, recently made the following statement about Zimbabwe's destructive dictator, Robert Mugabe: Mugabe has tried to start programs that would increase indigenous business opportunities, but the high inflation rate, the worthless Zimbabwe currency; and a vibrant civil society which has become anti-government make it impossible for him to hold on to power.That's funny, last I checked, Mugabe had been in power for 28 years. And he's been destroying the country (once labeled the "bread basket...

The MSA at UCLA   By FrontPage Magazine FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, April 01, 2008 Over the next several days, Frontpage will publish profiles of individual chapters of the Muslim Students Association on a variety of campuses around the country, showing how they work to advance the cause of radical Islam and lead the effort to stigmatize Israel. These profiles are compiled in our new booklet, "The Muslim Students Association and the Jihad Network." To read the introduction, click here. – The EditorsThe University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) chapter of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) operates both on campus...

Right on the heels of Harvard’s capitulation to Sharia mores at its Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center, the Harvard “academic” community indulged an ideologue with much grander aspirations for implementing Sharia, UCLA Professor of Law, Khaled Abou el Fadl. My dear friend and colleague Hillel Stavis had the morbidly fascinating experience of witnessing this pseudo-academic fraud peddle his paltry wares March 5, 2008 at Harvard’s Divinity School, during a lecture entitled, non-sequitur, “Conceptualizing Islamic Theology: Sharia and Human Rights Doctrine”

Santa Cruz, Calif. (AP) -- The FBI is investigating possible links between animal-rights activists in Southern California and a weekend attack on the home of a University of California, Santa Cruz researcher. Patti Hanson, an FBI spokeswoman, said the bureau was looking into possible connections to "domestic terrorism." A demonstration by six masked protesters in front of the UCSC scientist's Westside home Sunday afternoon turned violent when the group pounded on the door and were confronted by the researcher's husband, police reported. The incident invited comparison to recent attacks on UCLA researchers that were linked to animal-rights groups. No one...

Los Angeles (AP) -- The University of California went to court Thursday to try to keep animal rights activists away from UCLA employees who say they have been threatened because of their research. Three times since June 2006, Molotov cocktail-type devices have been left near the homes of faculty members who oversee or participate in research that involves animals, according to a statement from the University of California, Los Angeles. Researchers' homes have also been vandalized and they have received threatening phone calls and e-mails, according to the university. On at least one occasion a faculty member received a package...

Deconstructing Universal (Conservative?) Values by: Bethany Stotts, January 03, 2008 Chicago, Illinois- In this uncertain time of global conflict, some professors believe it is time to teach students to reevaluate and deconstruct America’s real enemies—conservatives, science, democracy, and capitalism. “And so what we’re seeing in globalization is just an extension of our universality. And I would argue the three main modern forms of universality are science, democracy, and capitalism. So that’s one [type] of rhetoric that I think we have to unpack for our students,” said English Professor Robert Samuels at the annual Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention. In other...

ESPN is reporting that Rick Neuheisel will be UCLA's new head football coach.

The nation and the state will experience an economic malaise into 2008, but a recession is not in the cards, according to a report by UCLA Anderson Forecast. Housing will continue to drag on the economy in the first half of 2008, but should begin a slow recovery thereafter. While housing declines in the past have been good indicators of recessions, the latest decline is not coupled with the job loss that plunges an economy into recession. "There's going to be an extended period of economic sluggishness," said Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast. "It's going to be...

The nation's housing doldrums will drag on at least through 2009, dampening U.S. economic growth and job creation, but the slowdown won't push the economy into a recession, according to a new economic report. Despite plunging housing values, rising oil prices and the credit crunch that battered Wall Street, the nation's job market is unlikely to suffer the kind of steep losses that would tip the economy into a recession, according to the quarterly Anderson Forecast by the University of California, Los Angeles. "We still think an official recession is not in the immediate future," concluded Edward Leamer, director and...

Los Angeles, CA (Sports Network) - UCLA fired head football coach Karl Dorrell on Monday. Dorrell, a 1987 UCLA graduate, was dismissed despite a rather successful five- year tenure that included a bowl trip each season. "This was a very difficult decision for me," said UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero. "Karl has represented this program with dignity and class. He is a true Bruin and I respect what he has accomplished in his five years as our head coach, particularly off the field. But, at the end of the day, the focus has to be on results and I felt...

Still, there will still be more than bragging rights at stake Saturday when eighth-ranked USC plays UCLA at the Coliseum in the 77th meeting between the crosstown rivals. Much more. Both teams have a shot at playing in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. This will be the 36th time the Trojans and Bruins will meet with the Rose Bowl on the line for one or both teams. (Cut) USC, 9-2 overall and 6-2 in the Pacific 10 Conference, can clinch its sixth consecutive league title and make its third consecutive Rose Bowl appearance with a victory over the...

Thomas Jefferson once said, "The only security of all is in a free press." As a former newspaper reporter, I believe in a news media free from censorship. At their best, the news media help promote our democracy.Like many Americans, though, I am increasingly concerned about a bias in the mainstream news media. To me, there is a significant liberal slant in news reporting that prevents the American people from getting facts about critical issues facing our country. Without facts, Americans cannot make informed decisions about issues, and our democracy is threatened. Evidence of unfair reporting is abundant. In 2004,...

Earlier this year, the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. It was founded in 1957 by Gustave E. Von Grunebaum, a scholar at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute and the first president of the Middle East Studies Association. Grunebaum sought to establish at UCLA a groundbreaking Middle East and Islamic Studies program featuring an array of experts in languages, culture, and history. Unfortunately, the best-known UCLA professors specializing in the region today, far from embodying the classical approach to the discipline in which knowledge is the overriding goal, exemplify...

Receivers coach Eric Scott arrested after complaint in Norwalk; he has been lauded for his success as a recruiter. Eric Scott, the UCLA football assistant arrested on suspicion of felony residential burglary, had been sentenced for three other crimes before being hired in March to coach Bruins receivers. UCLA put Scott, 32, on paid administrative leave Wednesday, one day after his arrest. Coach Karl Dorrell also acknowledged in a statement that the school knew about the former Crenshaw High player and coach's criminal background when it hired him. Scott's record includes two incidents of illegally carrying a concealed weapon and...

THE HOME OF DR. ARTHUR ROSENBAUM isn’t hard to find. He lives a few blocks south of Sunset Boulevard, near the UCLA campus, in a white two-story house with a front yard jammed with aspen trees. There is a short driveway on the side of the home, and during the evening, a bright, white light illuminates the carport. If someone wants to sabotage the doctor’s car under the cover of night, a flashlight isn’t needed. On Sunday, June 24, just that kind of person struck. Rosenbaum, a highly regarded pediatric ophthalmologist who had been regularly harassed by animal-rights activists for...

The FBI and the Los Angeles Fire Department are investigating an anonymous claim that animal rights extremists placed an unexploded incendiary device found under the car of a prominent UCLA eye doctor last weekend. The incident was similar to one last year in which another UCLA researcher was the intended target. A gasoline-filled device was discovered Sunday by the car outside the Westside home of Dr. Arthur Rosenbaum, who is chief of pediatric ophthalmology at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute. The device did not ignite despite evidence of an attempt to light it, authorities said Thursday. An e-mail on Wednesday...

LOS ANGELES – Tung-Hua Lin, a civil engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who designed China's first twin-engine airplane, has died. He was 96. Lin died Monday of heart failure at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, the university announced. A university faculty member since 1955, Lin studied the soundness of metal structures in airplanes, buildings and bridges. His research on earthquake stress in construction materials led to a fellowship at the prestigious National Academy of Engineering. Born in 1911 in Chongqing, China, Lin studied engineering in his homeland, then earned a master's degree at the Massachusetts Institute of...

Yesterday, I published an essay indicating that the basic fabric of America is holding despite the efforts of the hate-America crowd to unravel it. I didn’t mean to say that we should all relax, or that the dangers weren’t still out there. The multiculturalists are still hard at work trying to destroy the concept of an American experience and an American culture – born and sustained by the melting pot.

Commencement weekend is hard to plan at the University of California, Los Angeles. The university now has so many separate identity-group graduations that scheduling them not to conflict with one another is a challenge. The women’s studies graduation and the Chicana/Chicano studies graduation are both set for 10 AM Saturday. The broader Hispanic graduation, “Raza,” is in near-conflict with the black graduation, which starts just an hour later. Planning was easier before a new crop of ethnic groups pushed for inclusion. Students of Asian heritage were once content with the Asian–Pacific Islanders ceremony. But now there are separate Filipino and...

Commencement weekend is hard to plan at the University of California, Los Angeles. The university now has so many separate identity-group graduations that scheduling them not to conflict with one another is a challenge. The women’s studies graduation and the Chicana/Chicano studies graduation are both set for 10 AM Saturday. The broader Hispanic graduation, “Raza,” is in near-conflict with the black graduation, which starts just an hour later. Planning was easier before a new crop of ethnic groups pushed for inclusion. Students of Asian heritage were once content with the Asian–Pacific Islanders ceremony. But now there are separate Filipino and...

Commencement weekend is hard to plan at the University of California, Los Angeles. The university now has so many separate identity-group graduations that scheduling them not to conflict with one another is a challenge. The women’s studies graduation and the Chicana/Chicano studies graduation are both set for 10 AM Saturday. The broader Hispanic graduation, “Raza,” is in near-conflict with the black graduation, which starts just an hour later. Planning was easier before a new crop of ethnic groups pushed for inclusion. Students of Asian heritage were once content with the Asian–Pacific Islanders ceremony. But now there are separate Filipino and...

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's opinion article that we published with pleasure in yesterday's Daily News was a stunning piece of work. To call it a spirited defense of the NYPD would be to undersell it. This was Kelly playing offense against a collective of civil liberties lawyers who have trumpeted accusations that the department is an overbearing, extra-legal, discriminatory behemoth. Here is the heart of what Kelly had to say: "Frustrated, perhaps, by an era of post-9/11 goodwill toward the police, some of the usual critics have come back with a vengeance recently to smear the NYPD with unfounded charges...

Lila Rose, the young student at UCLA who took on the abortion establishment, has agreed to take her expose off YouTube and turn the tape over to Planned Parenthood L.A. PPLA had threatened a lawsuit and claimed that what Rose did was illegal. The gutsy, pro-life student had posed as a 15-year-old girl who was pregnant. She caught on tape an employee of the clinic advising her to claim she was 16 so that her "23-year-old boyfriend" would not have to be reported to the police for statutory rape. Rose was not entirely clear whether her taping a crime without...

Planned Parenthood Threatens Lawsuit Against Pro-Life UCLA Student By Doug Huntington Christian Post Reporter Wed, May. 16 2007 07:22 AM ET Planned Parenthood, the leading provider of surgical abortions, has threatened to file a lawsuit against an 18-year-old student journalist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Lilia Rose, who is the student editor and founder of the student pro-life magazine The Advocate, was contacted by the pro-choice organization after she recorded herself going into a clinic in Santa Monica, Calif., posing as a 15-year-old pregnant girl. She went in for an “abortion” with a man named James O’Keefe,...

Take your love for books to new depths. Welcome to the 12th Annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the country’s largest celebration of the written word. For one weekend in April, people who love books will gather with people who love to write, publish and sell books. And, there’s nothing like it anywhere.