California

Colin Kaepernick is a free agent and the chirping of crickets is deafening amid the silence among NFL general managers. One anonymous GM, quoted by The Mercury News, suspects the lack of interest shown in the controversial quarterback stems from the fear of fan backlash or hate for the former 49er who refused to stand for the national anthem last season.

Thomas Fuller's New York Times piece pushed for a public works program in La La Land that comes with a big promise and a $64 billion price tag: A high-speed railway that will one day, theoretically, connect San Francisco and Los Angeles in less time than in takes to watch The Dark Knight Rises. The story’s headline and tone pit stingy, stick-in-the-mud conservatives against sunny, striving…

In his opening monologue and first guest conversation Monday evening, Fox News's Bill O'Reilly sharply criticized the national and local press coverage of the past week's immigration raids. In his Talking Points Memo opener, O'Reilly observed the press's utter failure to headline the fact that the raids targeted criminal illegal aliens, describing that failure not as press bias, but as "blatant…

New York Times Emily Badger dominates all of page 3 of Thursday’s print paper, with “Immigrant Shock: California Offers Hint of Nation’s Future,” a long “Upshot” analysis operating under the unspoken assumption that Donald Trump voters were prejudiced and skitterish of different-looking people invading their neighborhood. She even roped Rush Limbaugh’s 1980’s Sacramento radio show into her essay…

A January 24 item in the East Bay Times, which serves the San Francisco East Bay area, wondered: "What’s behind the spate of recent restaurant closures?" While it didn't ignore the problem, the article made only glancing references to current and planned increases in state and city minimum wages. Preliminary year-end statistics at the U.S. government's Bureau of Labor Statistics show that Bay…

The image of America as “a shining city on a hill” (or a similar phrase) has been a staple of conservative political rhetoric for several decades. In a Tuesday piece for The New Republic, Matthew Pratt Guterl, a professor at Brown University, adapted the metaphor for leftist domestic use: “The nation as a whole seems no longer interested in celebrating any vision of equity, justice, and mutual…

In a disturbing story first reported by the Los Angeles Daily News on Monday, a woman was arrested and charged with battery for allegedly spitting on a Trump supporter outside CNN’s LA bureau at an event originally aimed at protesting liberal media bias. Reporters Anita Bennett and Matthew Carey reported that the individual was taken into custody after having fled the media bias rally and fled to…

Three police officers were shot by a gang member Saturday afternoon in Palm Springs, California. Two of them have died. The third suffered nonlife-threatening injuries and was expected to leave the hospital Sunday. Once again, the deadly motivation seen in Dallas and Baton Rouge just three months ago, the desire "to shoot police," emerged. With the exception of one local newspaper, the press is…

New York Times economist-turned-liberal-hack-columnist Paul Krugman has a habit of accusing his political opponents not of being misguided, flat wrong, or even dumb, but actively wicked. Cruel rule is what Krugman thinks is going on in the red states of Texas and Kansas, as their limited-government approaches make them “States of Cruelty.” The text box: “Some ugly politics is local.” Krugman also…

The establishment press is thrilled over the City of Philadelphia's enactment of a 1.5 cents-per-ounce "soda tax" last week. Monday morning, Mayor Jim Kenney signed the legislation which its City Council passed last week. Especially unseemly is the virtual euphoria over how so-called "public health" advocates gained their long-sought foothold into using the tax system to dictate personal…

The Associated Press is still the king of the wire services, used by most newspapers and TV stations (and even radio stations, if you can find news on them). So when it acts like Associated Partisans, it still packs a political punch. When Democrats plead guilty of taking bribes in California, somehow today the AP couldn’t use the word “Democrat” anywhere in the piece (and The Washington Post…

 Univision anchor Jorge Ramos recently sat down for an interview with the Los Angeles Times, which was later rebroadcast in podcast format. Part of his responses are more of the same, but there are statements that should raise a huge red flag.

Another major employer has decided to join the long list of companies moving jobs from California to more business-friendly states. This time, it's $12 billion titan Jacobs Engineering, which is moving its "corporate operations," almost definitely meaning its headquarters, from Pasadena to Dallas, Texas. Press reaction, especially outside of business-oriented outlets, has ranged from nonexistent…

The press is really trying to put the Democratic Party nomination to bed, on the eve of what might be a tricky vote in California for likely party nominee Hillary Clinton. At a press conference in Emeryville, Calif., Monday, New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor actually asked Bernie Sanders if he was being sexist for staying in the race. Alcindor jumped in with this gem: “What do you say to…