Subject: California

• Queer Town: The Unexpected Twists of Gay Marriage

  Whenever the accepted norms of society are changed, something unexpected always seems to pop up. With gay marriage in California, this truism of sorts is already starting to play out. According to a report in the Sacramento-based Capitol Weekly, the California Department of Corrections has now given the green light for gay prisoners to wed their same sex partners. The new policy is undoubtedly the kind of thing that few gays and lesbians foresaw when they were celebrating the legalization of sa

  August 28, 2008

• Schwarzenegger may make history with a budget veto

  Staffers to the governor are giving media outlets strong indications that Arnold Schwarzenegger will tonight go on the air to announce that he is vetoing the California state budget — which was approved weeks late by Sacramento legislators — because it is filled with accounting tricks and contains the seeds of even more overspending in 2009 and 2010. If the governor issues a budget veto, it will be a historic first in California. It will also be a huge embarrassment to an extremely unpopul

  September 16, 2008

• Caltrans Proposes Plan for "Vegetative Advertisements" along the Freeways

  What would you think if you saw a Fed Ex logo made out of tulips as you were motoring along one of California's freeways? How about the Golden Arches made from yellow roses or buttercups along the shoulder of the road? It turns out that putting "vegetative advertising" - a logo or advertisement made out of flowers, shrubs and other plants - along California's freeways is Caltrans latest plan to raise funds towards the financially strapped highway fund.

  September 29, 2008

• Recall's Side Effects

  September 11, 2003

• Consecration

  March 17, 2005

• Arnold Schwarzenegger calls for massive tax increases

  November 6, 2008

• Don't Swerve and Drive

  What to do in Los Angeles this week

  September 27, 2007

• Letters: Don’t Stomp the Music

  Our readers write

  October 4, 2007

• Ballot Bull

  Republicans and Dems get down to dirty business as election nears

  November 8, 2007

• Stephin Merritt Undistorted

  An interview with the Magnetic Fields frontman

  February 28, 2008

• Allegiant Air to Offer Cheap Flights to Nowheresvilles

  The L.A. Times carries a story that Vegas-based Allegiant Air will begin cheap nonstop flights from LAX to small cities in California and other Western states. Allegiant plans to start service May 1 from Terminal 6 to a dozen destinations that would expand later in that month. These include Medford, Oregon,  Wichita, Kansas and, to sweeten the deal, Billings, Montana. Actually, while some of Allegiant's stops may sound like tank towns, they have traditionally been almost impossible to reach

  February 18, 2009

• The Fuzzy Underground: A Clandestine Meeting With Ferrets Anonymous

  Hundreds of thousands of illegal ferrets allegedly hiding out in California

  March 12, 2009

• Oh Sandra, You Came and You Gave Without Taking

  December 11, 2008

• Turning Back the Clock

  October 23, 2008

• In Their Own Words

  September 18, 2008

• Save Water: Deport the Wetbacks

  April 16, 2009

• How Not to Fight Global Warming

  Will Sacramento’s “ready, fire, aim” approach backfire?

  April 17, 2008

• Propositions 94, 95, 96 & 97

  Engorged with money, four tiny tribes spend a king's ransom to get more

  January 31, 2008

• Attacking Indian Gaming, Defending LAUSD's Superintendent

  Our readers write

  January 24, 2008

• Voters’ Guide

  Making sense of the ballot measures L.A. City Measures:

  November 2, 2006

• Voters' Guide

  Making sense of the ballot measures

  November 2, 2006

• Best Spot Online to Meet a Pushmi-Pullyu

  October 5, 2006

• The City I Found

  Best remnants of hardboiled L.A.

  October 5, 2006

• Light On the Roof

  The reincarnation of Arnold’s solar initiative

  January 19, 2006

• Rolling Back Gay Rights

  Initiatives attack same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships.

  August 4, 2005

• Enron Forgotten

  Congress may stick us with a natural-gas rip-off

  May 5, 2005

• Leaving Bush Behind

  March 3, 2005

• New to the List: By the Sea

  January 20, 2005

• To Succeed, Must We Secede?

  January 20, 2005

• Global Warming

  Five Studies and Five Actions

  December 23, 2004

• Women in the Kitchen

  August 19, 2004

• Foul Justice

  March 25, 2004

• It’s Democracy, Stupid

  August 21, 2003

• An Unexpected Stay of Execution

  July 10, 2003

• Eternity in an Hour

  May 29, 2003

• Comfort Cuisine

  September 19, 2002

• Fanboys and Cheesecake

  April 4, 2002

• Justices Face IQ Test

  March 7, 2002

• Class Wars

  April 26, 2001

• Queer Town: Let the Gay Times Roll...

  "Ring them bells St. Catherine/ From the top of the room, Ring them from the fortress/ For the lilies that bloom. Oh the lines are long/ And the fighting is strong And they're breaking down the distance/ Between right and wrong." "Ring Them Bells," Bob Dylan Gay marriage is a reality in California this coming week, and it has apparently made a whole bunch of queer lawyers and activists nervous. Boutique hotel owners, tuxedo rental shop managers, and any other proud capitali

  June 15, 2008

• Queer Town: June Weddings For Gays

  This morning, the California Supreme Court denied a request to rehear its May 15 ruling that legalized same sex marriage. Gay and lesbian couples can now wed, starting on June 17--the date set by the state. Now it's only a question if county clerks throughout California can quickly change the fine print on marriage licenses from a "husband" and "wife" to "spouse" and "spouse."

  June 4, 2008

• California Supreme Court Legalizes Gay Marriage!

  Citing the 60-year-old landmark case Perez v. Sharp, which struck down California's ban on interracial marriage, the California Supreme Court ruled today that denying same-sex couples the right to marry is unconstitutional. The Court's decision nullified Proposition 22, the statewide referendum outlawing gay marriage passed by California voters in 2000. From the court's ruling: Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a lo

  May 15, 2008

• Queer Town: Hollywood Protest Slams Schwarzenegger's Cuts to HIV/AIDS Services

  With L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks, L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein in attendance, a crowd of more than1,000 people gathered in front of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Friday afternoon, shut down Santa Monica Boulevard and protested Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to "eliminate general funding for virtually all of California's HIV/AIDS care and prevention work from the state's fiscal year 2010 budget," according

  June 8, 2009

• Os Mutantes to Launch U.S. Tour in Los Angeles

  Legendary Brazilian tropicalia group Os Mutantes, whose work in the late 1960s fused Brazilian samba rhythms with Beatle-esque baroque pop, will perform at the Echoplex on August 28. The band, who recently signed to the LA-based Anti- imprint, are getting ready to release their first studio album in 35 years, called Haih or Amortecedor. Full tour dates after the jump.

  July 23, 2009

• State Budget Debacle: California Descending

  July 30, 2009

• New CA Budget Cuts Williamson Act Funding, May Affect Local Farmers

  As you probably know by now, last week, after a long political stalemate, the Governor finally signed a new California budget, but not before slashing another $489 million to create what we home budgeters might call "a cushion." Along with more cuts to K-12 and higher education, child welfare services and health care for the poorest among us, Schwarzenegger used his blue pencil to all but eliminate funding for the 44-year-old Williamson Land Conservation Act, which preserves agricultural land an

  August 6, 2009

• Why They Hate Us: The Life of L.A. Stereotypes

  File under Too Good to Be True: Jacksonville.com, the Florida Times-Union Web site, has a Dare to Ask column and today's question came from a 21-year-old Angeleno seeking to learn why the rest of the country "think[s] we're all a bunch of jet-setting, fast-talking, unfriendly, shallow, flaky yuppies?" By "us," he meant 37 million Californians. The fast, shallow and unfriendly reply would have been, "Turn on your TV." Throwing the floor open to the rest of the California-hating world, however, br

  August 18, 2009

• Dairy Crisis Sends 101,000 Cows To Slaughterhouse

  If lush, green, rolling hillsides dotted with healthy cows chomping on grasses seems like some kind of pastoral fantasy, the reality is turning into a nightmare for California dairy farmers.

  July 8, 2009

• CALPERS corruption: A plan to make New Yorkers homeless, and $50M to blowhard Al Villalobos

  California taxpayers unknowingly handed a cool $50 million to braggart Al Villalobos, and now the inept leaders of the California Public Employee Retirement System are arguing that they encouraged this possible pay-to-play debacle because they needed Al Villalobos to suggest places for Calpers to invest its vast portfolio of public money. Christ almighty, people. Calpers has an ENTIRE STAFF paid solely to find places for Calpers to invest its vast wealth. Too bad Calpers is so obscure to most

  October 15, 2009

• California Nurses' Strike Threat: Is It Really About Swine Flu?

  California nurses have threatened a major walk-out on Oct. 30. Judging by the headlines in the press -- "Nurses Plan Strike Over Swine Flu Conditions at Hospitals," says the L.A. Times -- you'd almost believe that 16,000 nurses' biggest concern is that they might be infected with H1N1.Score one for the California Nurses Association, which has managed to convince the media that swine flu preparations -- and not salary and health benefits -- are driving the strike. In fact, the union has been call

  October 20, 2009