Tag: california

California Quietly Repeals Restrictions on Doctors’ COVID-19 Advice

California legislators last month quietly repealed a 2022 law that authorized disciplinary action against doctors, including loss of their medical licenses, when they share COVID-19 “misinformation” with their patients. The law, A.B. 2098, defined that ambiguous and highly contested category of speech as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”

Not sure what that means? Neither were the California physicians who challenged the law on First Amendment grounds in two separate lawsuits. They argued that the state’s amorphous definition of prohibited medical advice was bound to have a chilling impact on constitutionally protected speech.

In McDonald v. Lawson, which the Liberty Justice Center (LJC) filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on October 4, 2022, Judge Fred Slaughter declined to issue a preliminary injunction, concluding in a December 28 order that A.B. 2098 was probably constitutional. Four weeks later in Høeg v. Newsom, which the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on November 2, Judge William B. Shubb reached the opposite conclusion.

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California just created the ‘Ebony Alert’ to find missing Black children

California’s newly enacted “Ebony Alert” law is the first of its kind in the nation to prioritize the search for Black youth gone missing. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 673 into law on Sunday, making California the first state to create an alert notification system — similar to an Amber Alert — to address the crisis of missing Black children and young women.  

The law, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, will allow the California Highway Patrol to activate the alert upon request from local law enforcement when a Black youth goes missing in the area. The Ebony Alert will utilize electronic highway signs and encourage use of radio, TV, social media and other systems to spread information about the missing persons’ alert. The Ebony Alert will be used for missing Black people aged 12 to 25. 

“Data shows that Black and brown, our indigenous brothers and sisters, when they go missing there’s very rarely the type of media attention, let alone AMBER alerts and police resources that we see with our white counterparts,” state Sen. Steven Bradford, also a Democrat and creator of the legislation, told NBC News earlier this year. 

He added: “We feel it’s well beyond time that we dedicate something specifically to help bring these young women and girls back home because they’re missed and loved just as much as their counterparts are.”  

About 141,000 Black children under the age of 18 went missing in 2022, and Black women over 21 accounted for nearly 16,500 missing persons cases that year, according to the most recent data from the National Crime Information Center. More than 30,000 Black people in the U.S. remained missing at the end of 2022, according to the center. Although about 38% of the people who went missing i in 2022 were Black, according to the Black and Missing Foundation, missing Black people are less likely than white people to have their stories highlighted in the media. Also, missing persons cases for Black people remain open longer than those for white people. Derrica Wilson, co-founder of the foundation, told CNN that a majority of the 6,000 cases of missing Black people in her database remain unsolved. 

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US state that’s ‘overrun’ by UFOs with more than 16,000 sightings

Unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings aren’t uncommon across America — the recent congressional hearing on the fascinating objects has proven their prevalence and brought them back into the spotlight. One state in particular, however, seems to be seeing a lot more UFOs than other states.

With the earliest reported sighting in 1928 and the most recent this past September, California has over 16,000 reported UFO sightings, according to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). UFOs are also commonly referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), their technical name.

Most of the reports detail a string of lights in the sky or several balls of light, many of which were reportedly orange. A large chunk of the sightings were reported by individuals who were out camping or on Navy ships docked in nearby harbors — places with clear views of the sky. That’s why many initially thought the lights they saw were shooting stars.

But many also reported seeing UFOs in broad daylight as they walked to work, drove their kids to school or simply went about their days. Several sightings fall between the hours of 10am and noon. A lot were also reported on airplane radars and from pilots looking out as they flew across the sky.

One particularly intriguing entry from 1953 detailed the experience a camp worker had with the kids she had been supervising at a summer camp near a lake. As the group chatted, a strange flying object came and landed near them to observe them.

The woman who reported it wrote: “It was silver, and looked like two saucers glued together with windows where they joined. It was so close, we could see figures at the windows that surrounded the middle seam. This was 1953, and none of us had ever seen anything move like this craft did.”

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California Governor Newsom Vetoes Psychedelics Legalization, But Calls For New Bill On Therapeutic Access Next Year

The governor of California has vetoed a bill to legalize certain psychedelics and create a pathway to regulated access—a move that comes at a time when two states have already enacted comprehensive psychedelics policy reform and as two campaigns are working to put the issue on California’s 2024 ballot.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D)—who was one of the most prominent and earliest lawmakers to call for an end to the war on drugs as mayor of San Francisco and later push for the legalization of cannabis as lieutenant governor of California—vetoed the bill, SB 58, from Sen. Scott Wiener (D) on Saturday.

In a veto message, the governor caveated that he wants the legislature to send him a new bill next year establishing guidelines for regulated therapeutic access to psychedelics and also consider a “potential” framework for broader decriminalization in the future. But at this stage, he’s unwilling to let the reform be enacted with his signature.

“Both peer-reviewed science and powerful personal anecdotes lead me to support new opportunities to address mental health through psychedelic medicines like those addressed in this bill,” Newsom said in a veto message on Saturday. “Psychedelics have proven to relieve people suffering from certain conditions such as depression, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and other addictive personality traits. This is an exciting frontier and California will be on the front-end of leading it.”

“California should immediately begin work to set up regulated treatment guidelines—replete with dosing information, therapeutic guidelines, rules to prevent against exploitation during guided treatments, and medical clearance of no underlying psychoses,” he continued.  “Unfortunately, this bill would decriminalize possession prior to these guidelines going into place, and I cannot sign it.”

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Lawyer, 81, who advised judge in Charles Manson trial shoots dead his wife, 75, before turning the gun on himself in murder-suicide in their $3.5 million Long Beach homes

A lawyer who was the legal advisor in Charles Manson’s murder trial shot dead his wife before turning the gun on himself.

Police in Long Beach, California, are probing the deaths of Lawrence Eric Taylor, 81, and Judy Strother Taylor, 75, as a murder-suicide.

Authorities responded to a welfare check at their $3.5million home in Naples on Wednesday, after the couple stopped answering their phone and front door.

Taylor set up his own legal firm after serving as the trial judge’s legal advisor in Manson’s trial and was Supreme Court counsel in the Onion Field murder case.

His wife worked under President Richard Nixon at the now-closed White House Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention.

Long Beach Police Department found the couple dead in their home, with Judy suffering from ‘gunshot wounds to the head’ according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office

Taylor also suffered a ‘gunshot wound’ to the head, with cops recovering a firearm at the scene.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Taylors’ death as a suicide and Judy’s as a murder.

Cops confirmed that the Medical Examiner will conduct an independent investigation. 

The couple were both pronounced dead at the scene, and the motive for the shooting is currently unclear. 

Judy worked as a youth mentor  and within the juvenile justice system for more than 20 years,

She teamed up with Mentor Management Systems President Jerry Sherk to bring an employee-to-employee mentoring program to the US Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and Colorado Springs.

Taylor was retained by the Attorney General of Montana as an independent Special Prosecutor to conduct a one-year grand jury probe of governmental corruption.

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California cop who won award for ‘most DUI arrests’ is arrested for DUI

A Sacramento police officer arrested for driving under the influence had previously been given an award for arresting drunk drivers, KCRA 3 reported Wednesday.

Raymond Barrantes was arrested last weekend after California Highway Patrol pulled him over. He has since been bailed out of the San Joaquin County Jail.

According to the report, the West Sacramento Police Department confirmed that in 2015, Barrantes was given an award by the national organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), along with a Facebook post with the caption that Barrantes and another officer had “the most DUI arrests for our Agency in 2014.”

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California State Guidelines Discourage Schools From Offering Advanced Middle School Math

A small but growing number of American schools are reducing or delaying access to advanced courses. Most often, these changes have been enacted in the name of reducing achievement gaps between demographic groups. However, rather than helping marginalized students, these policies deny educational opportunities for gifted students of all backgrounds.

“Detracking” is an increasingly popular proposal among educators that attempts to reduce the degree to which students are separated by academic ability. It typically takes the form of removing advanced course offerings or delaying the introduction of these offerings. Supporters claim that marginalized students are often wrongly placed—or place themselves—in less advanced courses and that these students often stay on a less advanced curricular path.

In San Francisco, public schools have eliminated accelerated math courses in middle and high school since 2014, and several Seattle schools had rolled out detracking efforts by 2016. Earlier this year, a Detroit-area school district eliminated middle school honors math classes, while schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts, began phasing out advanced middle school math in 2017—though the district announced it would reverse course in August. Outrage erupted in February when one Los Angeles–area school eliminated honors English courses for ninth- and 10th-grade students.

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The predators’ playground

Clara didn’t think much of it when the social science teacher gave her his phone number.

She’d met Alex Rai in her fifth-period journalism class. He was friends with the journalism teacher, Eric Burgess, and often stopped by Room 16 during his prep period to kill time. Burgess introduced Rai to Clara, telling her that Rai had been his student a decade before. Burgess thought they’d get along.

In the weeks that followed, Rai would perch on Clara’s desk, leaning over as he asked about her day and who she hung out with after school. He’s only a few years older than my sister, Clara thought when Rai texted her one day after volleyball practice. It was a hot Southern California afternoon in 2008, the kind where dry heat radiates off the asphalt. She was bored. Why not pass the time by chatting with the cool teacher?

Soon, Rai was texting her regularly. At first, the messages were flirtatious. Before long, he was calling Clara late at night. She recalled him asking whether she’d had sex yet with any boys her age. Halfway through her senior year, Clara dropped her humanities class so she could become his teacher’s aide.

She loved her humanities class. But Rai had encouraged her to make the switch. They could spend more time together, she recalled him telling her, and he could make her truancies from ditching other classes disappear.

Clara remembers her sister warning her not to get too close. She’d heard stories about Rai from girls who’d attended Rosemead with him, when he was a wrestler on a team known as much for its aggressive pursuit of teenage girls as its state champions. But Clara brushed the concerns aside. She didn’t show her sister the texts Rai sent, teasing her — “you wish you were sleeping next to me” — and asking if she missed him.

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California Governor Signs Bills To Let Doctors Prescribe Psilocybin And MDMA If They’re Federally Rescheduled And To Change Marijuana Testing Rules

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has signed a bill that would allow doctors to immediately start prescribing certain currently illicit drugs like psilocybin and MDMA if they’re federally rescheduled, and he also approved separate legislation to amend THC variance testing requirements for marijuana.

The governor signed off on the measures—which are just two of more than a dozen cannabis and drug policy reform proposals on his desk—on Saturday.

AB 1021, sponsored by Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks (D), Isaac Bryan (D) and Corey Jackson (D), says that, if the federal government reschedules any Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), California health professionals will automatically be able to legally prescribe and dispense it.

This could be especially relevant to the psychedelics psilocybin and MDMA, which have been designated as breakthrough therapies by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are expected to be approved for medical use as early as next year.

Following a recent Phase 3 clinical trial, a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Nature last month found that treatment with MDMA reduced symptoms in patients with moderate to severe PTSD. The findings mean federal regulators could consider approving the drug for wider use as soon as next year.

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California Looking To Restrict Travel For Classic Cars

The state of California is looking seriously at instituting or allowing local governments to institute zero-emission zones in the near future. In preparation for such a move, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) reportedly is gathering information about classic cars and how their owners use them. We knew something like this was coming to the US and California would likely be first, but this is still concerning.

According to a Daily Caller report, on August 2 CARB sent a survey to owners of classic cars from model year 1978 or earlier. The questions were aimed at ascertaining how those classics are used and store, as well as where they’re driven. It even asks about how many miles show on owners’ odometers. Knowing how increasingly authoritarian many government agencies seems to be trending, this is concerning to many car enthusiasts who still live in the Golden State.

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