Free Republic

Hereditary, recurring governor Jerry Brown, 85, wants California’s supreme court to remove from the November ballot a measure that would give the people final say on tax hikes. That invites a look at Brown’s past dealings with the state’s high court. In 1977, Brown’s choice for chief justice was Rose Bird, 40 years old and without judicial experience. In 10 years as California’s chief justice, Bird heard 64 capital cases and never voted to uphold a death sentence. For staunch death-penalty opponents, even those on the court, it defied belief to think that every case was unfounded. Consider, for example,...

When Texas intervened to protect vulnerable children against transgender child mutilation, Google was one of the companies to sign a letter warning that preventing child abuse was "against the values of our companies." A recent lawsuit provides a small insight into just what the Big Tech giant’s “values” might be. Recently a former Google employer filed a lawsuit accusing the company of discrimination. “I was fired from my team there in February of 2021 because I raised alarm about a cult within Google, a group called the Fellowship of Friends. The group is well-documented: There are allegations of child abuse,...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A suspect arrested in connection with last weekend’s mass shooting outside bars in Sacramento served less than half his 10-year sentence because of voter-approved changes to state law that lessened the punishment for his felony convictions and provided a chance for earlier release. Smiley Allen Martin was freed in February after serving time for punching a girlfriend, dragging her from her home by her hair and whipping her with a belt, according to court and prison records. Those count as nonviolent offenses under California law

This is an obituary about a dead communist lawyer, not particularly thrilling; but you must read it to see who interned at his radical firm back in 1971. Amazing what gets printed in the New York Times: December 2, 2001Robert Treuhaft, Lawyer Who Inspired Funeral Exposé, Dies at 89 By PAUL LEWIS Robert Treuhaft, a crusading radical lawyer who inspired his wife, Jessica Mitford, to write her best seller "The American Way of Death," died in New York on Nov. 11. He was 89. As a union lawyer representing longshoremen in the San Francisco area in the 1950's, Mr. Treuhaft ...

California is a neo-Confederate state with a “sick fixation” on ethnicity and race, historian and professor Victor Davis Hanson said in an interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow. California’s hemorrhaging of residents to states with more freedom and prosperity is exacerbating the state’s social stratification in terms of wealth, Hanson stated. He said the state’s volume of illegal aliens further amplifies the wealth divide. “The middle class has left,” he said. “About ten million people left California in the last 40 years, and we know where they went. They went to Nevada, Idaho, Texas, Florida, Tennessee. We have half...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When then-California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the nation’s first law requiring women on boards of publicly traded companies, he suggested it might not survive legal challenges. Three years later, a judge will begin hearing evidence Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court that could undo the law credited with giving more women seats in boardrooms traditionally dominated by men. The California law has spurred other states to adopt or consider similar laws. The conservative legal group Judicial Watch brought the lawsuit that claims it’s illegal to use taxpayer funds to enforce a law that violates the equal...

The campaign to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom has collected 1,950,000 signatures, Katy Grimes of the California Globe reports, far more than the 1.4 million signatures needed to qualify the recall for the ballot. A full 1.6 million signatures were collected entirely by volunteers, and according to organizer Orrin Heatlie, 31.5 percent of the signers were “other than Republicans.” As the recall effort surges, Democrats turn up the volume against it. “Right-wing Republicans in CA are trying to recall Gavin Newsom for the crime of telling people to wear masks and for listening to scientists during COVID,” tweeted Sen....

Newly-released documents from Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden's ex-business partner, show Hunter worked on a business adventure involving Joe Biden and prominent Democrats. The goal was allegedly to obtain contracts for projects across the country, the New York Post reported. Jim Biden, Joe Biden's brother, allegedly sent a memo on May 15, 2017 to Hunter and three other partners about a limited liability company (LLC). The LLC was to be used "to partner with another firm on 'global and/or domestic' projects involving 'infrastructure, energy, financial services and other strategic sectors,' the documents show." Bobulinski, who served as CEO of the joint...

It's peak summer and hotter than the blazes up and down California. In some places it is the blazes. And with the state's greenie mandates, instead of nice air conditioning like other people have, rolling blackouts have begun, same as you find in third world countries. It's hot as hell, the Sahara has nothing on this California heat: On Sunday, the mercury potentially hit 130F (54.4C) in California’s Death Valley National Park – a temperature that could become the hottest ever recorded on Earth. And it's very bad in places where people actually live, too, such as in San Diego County: Borrego Springs...

The Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) casts itself as a spontaneous uprising born of inner city frustration, but is, in fact, the latest and most dangerous face of a web of well-funded communist/socialist organizations that have been agitating against America for decades. The Black Lives Matter movement claims that only whites can be racists. And while justifying violence to achieve “social justice,” the movement’s goal is to overthrow our society to replace it with a Marxist one. Many members of the black community would be shocked to learn that the intellectual godfathers of this movement are mostly white Communists, “queers”...

Nancy Pelosi has long been a thorn in the side of not just conservatives but the House itself. For reasons no Republican could ever grasp, she is a heroine to the left, despite her many serious failures. She is a traitor to her own district; she has never lifted a finger to deal with San Francisco’s catastrophic homeless disaster. She does not even admit it exists! She seems to think she is some kind of monarch, a queen bee. In fact, she is a vicious elitist. She and her husband, like Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband, are the ultimate...

Every year, Rachel Bronson, President and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who has a degree in political science from Columbia, gets up in front of a fake clock to announce that the world is doomed. And the media eagerly covers the annual imminent warning of doom as if it came with an open bar. Bronson is not an atomic scientist. Or any kind of scientist. Unless you believe politics is a science. And if politics is a science, then Bronson is the Lysenko of the field, predicting doom out of bias and ignorance. This year, the Doomsday...

California Gov. Jerry Brown to lead Doomsday Clock group By Associated Press Published: 12:17 EDT, 25 October 2018 | Updated: 12:27 EDT, 25 October 2018 SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California Gov. Jerry Brown has been named executive chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group that measures manmade threats to human existence. The group manages the Doomsday Clock. It's a visual representation of how close the Bulletin believes the world is to catastrophe brought on by nuclear weapons, climate change and new technologies. The group announced Thursday that the Democratic governor leaving office in January will take over...

California's New Dystopian Laws Californians, are you ready for the twelve-hundred new progressive laws that take effect this year? Get ready because many of these new rules come with stiff penalties. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8FhWH4uSdk&feature=emb_title  

I'd like to see everyone have a happy and prosperous New Year. But I'm afraid a lot of freelancers and independent contractors in California are going to have it tough in 2020. Thanks to Democrat lawmakers in Sacramento, in fact, hundreds of thousands of part-time Uber drivers and freelance writers like me could lose their jobs or face drastic cuts in their incomes. The culprit is Assembly Bill 5, the "progressive" new state law that rewrites the rules for part-time "gig" workers and forces companies to reclassify their independent contractors and turn them into full-time employees. As of Jan. 2,...

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new California labor law from impacting more than 70,000 independent truckers. The law, passed late last year, makes it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors instead of employees, who are entitled to minimum wage and benefits such as workers compensation. U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego on Tuesday granted a temporary restraining order sought by the California Trucking Association while he considers imposing a permanent injunction. He said the association is likely to eventually prevail on its argument that the state law violates federal law. He also ruled...

A nonprofit legal foundation is suing California on behalf of freelance workers who say the state's recently passed Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) will destroy their livelihoods. Set to take effect on January 1, 2020, AB5 will make it illegal for contractors who reside in California to create more than 35 pieces of content in a year for a single company, unless the outlet hires them as an employee. "By enforcing the 35-submission limit, Defendant, acting under color of state law, unconstitutionally deprives Plaintiffs' members of their freedom of speech as protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S....

California's governor on Wednesday signed sweeping labor legislation that aims to give wage and benefit protections to rideshare drivers at companies like Uber and Lyft and to workers across other industries. The closely watched proposal could have national implications as lawmakers, businesses and unions confront the changing nature of work and the rise of the so-called gig economy. "California is now setting the global standard for worker protections for other states and countries to follow," Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, the bill's author, said in a statement. The legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom makes it harder for companies to classify...

Rather than spending the holidays relaxing, Will Griffith needs to decide whether he should immediately leave the freelance gig he's had for the past five years or stick around until his contract is terminated in March. Griffith was one of 200 Vox Media freelancers in California who lost their job on Monday. The company nixed freelancers because of a new state law that defines some positions previously filled by freelancers or gig workers as full-time roles with benefits. The law takes effect January 1. California lawmakers meant for the new law, Assembly Bill 5, to help Uber and Lyft drivers...

Vox Media rooted for the passage of a California gig economy bill that is now forcing Vox to lay off hundreds of its own freelance workers. * Vox Media is laying off hundreds of freelance workers as California’s gig economy rights bill takes effect. * Vox cheered for the gig economy bill on its own news pages. Now it’s letting freelance workers go because of the new law. * This is a painfully ironic, cautionary tale against the broader labor movement represented by politicians like Sen. Elizabeth Warren. California AB-5 takes effect in 2020 after passage by the California state...