Fewer than 14% of Californians smoke cigarettes or other tobacco products. They have the right to choose the health risks of smoking for themselves. But they do not have the right to impose their smoke involuntarily on others. That is why California has statewide laws that ban smoking in workplaces, restaurants and bars. Now legislators […]

I LIVE in a 420-square-foot studio. I sleep in a bed that folds down from the wall. I have six dress shirts. I have 10 shallow bowls that I use for salads and main dishes. When people come over for dinner, I pull out my extendable dining room table. I don’t have a single CD […]

Each year some 47,000 women around the world die as a result of unsafe abortions. Efforts to reduce that toll are severely hampered by the Helms amendment, which was originally enacted in 1973 and restricts the use of United States foreign aid money to finance abortions overseas, even in places where abortion is legal. President […]

Los Angeles is at a disadvantage competing with Las Vegas, New York and Miami for tourists who want a lively nightclub scene because of a California law that cuts off alcohol sales at 2 a.m., a state lawmaker contends. State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) has introduced legislation that could extend the last call for […]

With shorter stories and scarce coverage of politics and government, local television newscasts in the United States, like local newspapers before them, are suffering from “shrinking pains,” according to the Pew Research Center. The diagnosis comes in the center’s 10th annual State of the News Media report, which will be published on Monday. The report, […]

The first in a series of bills challenging the state’s prison realignment received a cold reception today in the Assembly Public Safety Committee as members rejected legislation that would send sex offenders who violate their parole back to state prisons instead of county jails. The 4-2 vote fell along party lines on Assembly Bill 2, […]

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck hasn’t come through on a promise to provide a new truck for two women injured by officers in pursuit of fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner, an attorney for the women said Monday. Beck pledged to provide the truck to Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71, who were […]

Surprise, surprise. California lawmakers are increasingly exploiting a legal loophole to skirt campaign finance limits. Does this have a familiar ring? Somewhat restrained by a $4,100 per election restriction on what they can solicit from individual contributors for their campaign accounts, lawmakers are taking advantage of “campaign measure” committees. That allows them to raise unlimited […]

In 1976, Jo Freeman published an essay in Ms. Magazine titled, “Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood,” which described how groups of women within the feminist movement attacked and ostracized those seen as too visible or ambitious. “To do something significant, to be recognized, to achieve, is to imply that one is ‘making it off […]

A Catholic priest has been arrested on suspicion of child molestation, according to a press release from the Diocese of Stockton. The Rev. Julio Guarin-Sosa, a visiting priest from Columbia, was arrested on suspicion of sexual battery and molestation of a minor in Yuba City. He is being held in the Sutter County Jail and […]