Sacramento Observer
SACRAMENTO – California should receive at least $20.6 billion from a settlement with the nation’s major mortgage lenders, the largest share of any state and about $2 billion more than expected when the agreement to assist homeowners was announced last year, according to a report released Thursday. The money from five banks will help an [...]
WASHINGTON – Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says President Barack Obama’s campaign was “eight, maybe 10 years, ahead” of the Republican Party last year in understanding the rapidly changing face of the American electorate. Gingrich tells “CBS This Morning” that GOP strategists have failed to respond effectively to the new demographic landscape. Gingrich, who ran [...]
SACRAMENTO — All California schools will receive at least the same amount of money as they currently do, and poorer ones will receive significantly more, under Gov. Jerry Brown’s sweeping proposal to change K-12 education funding, according to district-by-district estimates released Wednesday. Last month, the Democratic governor released a budget plan that proposed drastic changes [...]
WASHINGTON – Facing heightened expectations from gay rights supporters, the Obama administration is considering urging the Supreme Court to overturn California’s ban on gay marriage – a move that could have a far-reaching impact on same-sex couples across the country. The administration has one week to file a friend-of-the-court brief with the justices outlining its [...]
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies in the Senate are unveiling legislation to avoid a looming set of sharp, across-the-board spending cuts set to strike the Pentagon and domestic agencies in just two weeks. The measure would impose a minimum tax rate on million-dollar incomes and replace the automatic cuts, known as a sequester [...]
LOS ANGELES – A Superior Court judge has reduced sentences of five three-strikes inmates as a first step in carrying out a voter-approved initiative to soften the state’s tough sentencing law. Proposition 36 was overwhelmingly approved by voters. It provides for reducing sentences for relatively minor crimes under a law that sent inmates to prison [...]
SAN FRANCISCO – It has been slightly more than nine years since prosecutors and grand jurors alike grilled a defiant Barry Bonds for hours about his relationship with performance enhancing drugs. One rambling answer about being a “celebrity child” to a question about injections led directly to a jury finding him guilty of obstruction of [...]
WASHINGTON – Seeking to focus on nation-building at home, President Barack Obama will use his State of the Union address to call for more spending on infrastructure and manufacturing, while also announcing the withdrawal of 34,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan within a year. The highly-anticipated announcement on the next phase of the troop withdrawal will [...]
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown has begun aggressively challenging federal court oversight of California’s prison system by highlighting what he says is a costly conflict of interest: The private law firms representing inmates and the judges’ own hand-picked authorities benefit financially by keeping the cases alive. How much are they making? A tally by The [...]
WASHINGTON – The Republican Party’s problems with minority voters have preoccupied strategists since November, and it’s possible those difficulties will persist or worsen. But an opening for marked improvements in GOP-minority relations may be at hand, or at least close by. Republican leaders would have to make some timely decisions and get a few breaks, [...]
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