Free Republic

After the spate of left coast celebrities and pop culture entertainers who were making videos trying to overturn the Electoral College, campaigning for Hillary Clinton and boycotting the inauguration, there was at least one bright side to the aftermath of the 2016 election for conservatives. Once and for all the entire world could, at a minimum, agree on the entrenched, transparent, liberal makeup of Hollywood. I mean, at this point there’s no sane person left who could argue that point, right? Enter LA Times television critic Mary McNamara. I felt it was worth a moment during the NFL wildcard weekend...

Trump ...................45.1 Hillary..................41.7

Melvin Durslag, a sports columnist who covered the Los Angeles scene for decades beginning in 1939, died Sunday at a convalescent home in Santa Monica after a brief illness, according to friend and former colleague Larry Stewart. He was 95. Durslag was said to string “together words like Nolan Ryan strings together strikeouts,” in the words of former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.

The Rauzi realm’s dietary and voting decisions make plain that nuts abound in our nation today — and all of America is descending into anaphylactic shock. It’s funny that liberals try to advance the caricature of the stuffed-shirt conservative. It’s projection, actually, because “killjoy” could be synonymous with “progressive.” From demonizing toy guns to banning dodgeball and sweets to stigmatizing innocent jokes as “racist” to, generally, ensconcing everyone in bubble wrap, never was a rainbow born the libs couldn’t turn gray (except, you know, for the rainbow cause they’re obsessed with). A good example of this is a recent Lost...

The entire Los Angeles metropolitan area and most of Southern California can expect blackouts this summer. The power grid is under direct threat as a result of the unprecedented, but little reported, massive natural gas leaks at Alisco Canyon that was ongoing for four months as an intense summer heat wave sets in. According to Reuters: California will have its first test of plans to keep the lights on this summer… With record-setting heat and air conditioning demand expected in Southern California, the state’s power grid operator issued a so-called "flex alert," urging consumers to conserve energy to help prevent...

President Barack Obama used his visit to Yosemite National Park on Saturday to tout his administration’s environmental record and to warn Americans about the dangers of climate change — albeit with false information. “Fires are raging across the west right now … all while it’s still really early in the season,” he said in a speech at the park, according to the Los Angeles Times. Obama joins California Governor Jerry Brown in making a spurious connection between wildfires and climate change that scientists have long since rejected.

Councilman John Duran and his gay colleagues on the West Hollywood City Council never expected a backlash when they voted recently to remove the rainbow flag from above City Hall. For Duran, who is gay, taking down the flag wasn't about slighting gays but sending a message about the city's diversity. "It's not just a city of gay men. It belongs to heterosexual people as well," he said. http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-weho-gay-identity-20140307,0,7458432.story#ixzz2vNq2Uy21

Violent crimes — from homicides and rapes to robberies — have been on the rise in many major U.S. cities. But experts can't point to a single reason why, and the jump isn't enough to suggest there's a trend.

When she discovered she was pregnant, the 22-year-old aspiring veterinarian started calling abortion clinics in her home state of Oklahoma. It was a short list – there are only two, and neither could get her an appointment quickly. Unemployed, no car, and still living with her parents, Pearl thought about trying Texas, but knew the state had also recently tightened restrictions on clinics. ...

With the California primary fast approaching, the media are rolling out their favorite fairy tale about how Republican Pete Wilson’s support for Proposition 187 in 1994 was a historic, game-changing error for the GOP, driving Hispanics from the party for good! Both CNN and MSNBC retold this completely bogus narrative this week. NPR rolls it out once every two weeks. I — along with other people capable of reading election returns — have written about this forever. I did most recently in “Adios, America,” in a chapter titled, “I Wrote This Chapter After Noticing How Stupid Rich People Are,” inspired...

With dire shortages of basic goods, a looming foreign debt payment, horrific street crime and intransigent political divisions, Venezuela is in danger of collapsing into waves of deadly violence, U.S. intelligence officials warned Friday. Venezuela, which controls the world's largest reserves of crude oil, is in the throes of a potentially explosive political stalemate after opposition parties gained a majority in the national congress in elections late last year. President Nicolas Maduro, a leftist, faces a possible recall vote sponsored by the opposition that he is maneuvering to block.

A yearlong investigation into whether Clinton administration aides left the White House in fraternity-party disarray as they vacated the presidential premises has turned up about $15,000 in damage, according to a government report released Tuesday. Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) asked the General Accounting Office last June to look into allegations that Clinton staffers had ripped phone cords from walls, left obscene voicemail messages, defaced bathrooms and vandalized computer keyboards by removing the "W" keys when they left the White House. A number of items, including a 12-inch presidential seal and several antique doorknobs, were assumed stolen. "The Clinton administration treated...

Ted Cruz, in his outsider’s bid for the White House, has depended heavily on the largesse of just three wealthy donors to establish credibility and stay afloat amid a chaotic nominating process that killed off most of his rivals. Now, at perhaps the most desperate moment in his quest to win the Republican nomination, Cruz is learning the perils of relying on strong-willed magnates who carry their own agendas and have demanded an unprecedented level of control in how their money is spent. ...

The cave, declared a UNESCO World Heritage site two years ago, was discovered in the south of France in 1994... Now, scientists have assembled more than 250 radiocarbon dates made from rock art samples, animal bones and the remains of charcoal used by humans... The newly synthesized data suggest the first period of human occupation lasted from 37,000 to 33,500 years ago. The second prehistoric occupation began 31,000 to 28,000 years ago and lasted for 2,000 to 3,000 years, the researchers wrote... The two groups, separated by millenniums, had no connection with each other, they said. The first round of...

... Under an obscure provision of the city's wage hike, unionized hotels were granted an exemption allowing them to pay their employees less... ... a series of loopholes that cut union workers out of the very pay increases their leaders have championed... San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and Santa Monica have all adopted union waivers in their most recent minimum wage laws... At the Sheraton Universal Hotel, a longtime union property, bellhops, waiters and banquet servers make California's current minimum wage: $10 an hour... Those doing the same jobs at a non-union Hilton less than 500 feet away make at...

Donald Trump's hyperbolic rhetoric about Mexico apparently has claimed a victim. Mexico abruptly replaced its low-profile ambassador to Washington with an experienced, well-traveled diplomat and put a public relations expert into its Foreign Ministry’s top spot for American affairs. {snip} Named to replace him is Carlos Manuel Sada Solana, who has been consul general in Los Angeles for three years and previously served at Mexican consulates in New York, Chicago, Toronto and San Antonio. A Mexican Foreign Ministry statement announcing the changes emphasized Sada’s “broad experience … protecting the rights of Mexicans in North America, as well as defending the...

Hunkered behind a MacBook decorated with stickers that read "This laptop was brought to you by capitalism" and "TRUMP 2016," Jake Lopez bounces T-shirt slogans off his friend Ian McIlvoy. "Trumplicans," he says, nodding with satisfaction. "I think it'll take off." Lopez is the California director of Students for Trump. Working from his dorm at Westmont College, he helps marshal the thousands of students who are pounding out phone calls, taping up fliers and blanketing Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat in an effort to persuade their peers that Donald Trump is the man. Although vastly outnumbered nationwide by left-leaning classmates chanting...

Controversy over Trump has failed to dent his standing with his core supporters in the Republican primaries, but his image among the rest of the electorate has plunged. The share of Americans with an unfavorable view of Trump is extraordinary: 68% in the most recent Bloomberg poll, 67% in the CNN/ORC survey, 67% in the ABC/Washington Post poll, 65% from Gallup. The 57% unfavorable rating he received in the most recent CBS/New York Times survey looks mild by comparison.

....But among the voters most likely to turn out, the poll shows the race between Trump and Cruz is nearly tied, with Trump at 36% versus Cruz at 35%. The difference illustrates how a low turnout in the June 7 primary could hurt Trump and boost Cruz....

Riding a rebellion fueled by opposition to illegal immigration and pessimism about the nation's future, Donald Trump leads a scrambling duo of competitors less than three months before California's Republican presidential primary, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times statewide poll has found. Yet the party whose nomination he is seeking has fractured because of his candidacy, with ominous prospects for Republicans if the New York businessman emerges victorious after the party's summer convention.