California

My wife, Gena, and I discovered this past week that in her small mountain hometown in Plumas County, California, our pastor's church was kicked out of the county building it had been renting for Sunday church services. What's disgusting is that the eviction is engulfed in political moves to stop the church from meeting there.

HBO Real Time host Bill Maher, a self-proclaimed atheist, is often viewed as controversial among conservatives. Recently, however, it’s not conservatives who are up in arms over Maher’s latest comments. Instead, it's one of the most liberal colleges in the country – the University of California, Berkeley. Maher is expected to speak at a graduation ceremony at Berkeley in December.  It is this…

Via Weasel Zippers, we learned the Los Angeles Times has a new term for illegal aliens in the work force: they’re “informal workers,” and that doesn’t mean they don’t arrive on the job in a tuxedo. Times reporter Tiffany Hsu (a "UC Berkeley grad") began her Saturday story with the new I-word (and illegal immigrants also “labored unofficially” in "gray employment"):

Not wanting to let a good crisis go to waste, Tuesday's NBC Nightly News exploited California wildfires to push climate change. Correspondent Miguel Almaguer declared: "The fire season not just expensive, but historic. Nationwide so far this year, more than 32,000 wildfires have burned. 1.6 million acres charred, most of them in the west. Feeding the fires, drought crippling 60% of the west....…

The New York Times knows just how to rebuild the Republican Party in California...in the image of The New York Times. In Thursday’s paper, correspondent Norimitsu Onishi highlighted the Republican nominee for governor, Neel Kashkari, “a social moderate backed by the Republican establishment.” “Social moderate”? In the next paragraph, we learn Kashkari “is of Indian descent and supports same-…

Yesterday the Toyota Motor Corporation announced it would move its U.S. headquarters from Torrance, California, to Plano, Texas. Closing his report on the development, Tim Reid of Reuters noted the reaction of a Torrance business owner who doubtless counts many Toyota employees as loyal customers. "The taxes are lower in Texas. There are fewer regulations. It's cheaper for a company there. Why…

On Friday, University of California Feminist Studies Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young pled not guilty to misdemeanor theft, battery, and vandalism. To bring those who missed the two previous related posts up to speed: A video at the YouTube site of the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust (warning: profanity) shows Miller-Young taking a sign away from a participant in a campus pro-life…

In a 72-word Cheat Sheet item on their website today, Daily Beast editors failed to note California Democratic State Senator Leland Yee's party affiliation nor the fact that the alleged gun-running politician was an outspoken advocate of more gun-control laws. To be fair, the Associated Press article that the Cheat Sheet item linked to mentioned both facts, but casual readers of the Daily…

In another development most of the establishment press, with the usual exception of Fox News and the unusual exception of Reuters, has thus far predictably ignored, Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce Dudley announced on Friday the indictment of University of California-Santa Barbara Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young on charges of "theft from a person, battery, and vandalism."…

California Governor Jerry Brown apparently thinks he's some kind of comedian. I would suggest that he not quit his current day job, but many readers would probably prefer he do that. At a union-organized joint legislative conference on Monday, as reported in the Sacramento Bee, Brown told the following knee-slapper in connection with the high-speed rail project which is on track (excuse the…

On Thursday's CBS This Morning, co-host Charlie Rose described how most of California was suffering from "extreme or exceptional drought" but fretted that "the crisis is turning into a political football." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] In the report that followed, correspondent Bill Whitaker explained: "House Republicans passed a bill to divert water to California's…

The PJ Tatler recently reported on the case of Larry Brinkin, for many years an “icon” on the Human Rights Commission in San Francisco: “A former high-ranking San Francisco government employee convicted of felony possession of child pornography will continue to receive his government pension because, according to city regulations, evidence of ‘moral turpitude’ is required to revoke a pension…

A small but vocal band of critics has forced an actress to bow out of a stage production purely because of her political views. It's a brand of McCarthyistic bullying that the national media would (rightly) condemn if the politics of principals in the controversy reversed. But don't hold your breath for a firestorm of outrage in the case of Maria Conchita Alonso, a conservative/libertarian…

The Los Angeles Times decided, as one of California’s leading arbiters of political correctness, that they would skip the ironic headline of “Illegal alien wins license to practice law.” That kind of direct language is a bit too honest. The use of the I-word will be banned in all civilized and "inclusive"  forums in the future, and this may mark the beginning. “California court grants law…