Speaking to reporters in Houston on Wednesday night in Houston, new MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred may have stirred up a hornet’s nest with one idea he broached: reverting to the 154-game schedule that baseball featured from 1904 through 1960 in the American League and 1904 through 1961 in the National League. From 1900-1903, MLB featured a 140-game schedule.
Baltimore had another rough day on Thursday, as nine shootings were reported across the city, with two of the shootings proving fatal.
On Wednesday, a Vatican panel approved the scheduled canonization of Father Junipero Serra when Pope Francis visits Washington D.C. in September. Widely disparate reactions followed the announcement, with some Californians thrilled and others bitter about conferring sainthood on the 18th century churchman largely responsible for the mission system in California.
Jeb Bush, who is lagging behind other prospective GOP 2016 presidential candidates in recent polls, attempted to regain momentum lost among conservative Jews stemming from his naming former Secretary of State James Baker as one of his advisors. Jeb cited his brother President George W. Bush as a trusted advisor regarding the state of Israel.
On Tuesday, a meeting of the Oakland City Council was disrupted–and taken over–by radical demonstrators. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that after the mayor’s 5 p.m. budget presentation began, protesters led by the groups Black.Seed, and Asians4BlackLives crowded into the building, shouting their anger over a proposal to sell public land adjacent to Lake Merritt so housing developer UrbanCore can build an apartment tower.
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck is in hot water with police unions after commenting on the police shooting of an unarmed homeless man in Venice Tuesday evening. Beck said, “Any time an unarmed person is shot by a Los Angeles police officer, it takes extraordinary circumstances to justify that. I have not seen those extraordinary circumstances,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s agent, Don Yee, bitterly lashed out at the NFL and the Wells Report that insinuated that Brady lied about DeflateGate.
According to Joyce Barr, the State Department’s assistant secretary for the Bureau of Administration, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was wrong for transmitting information from her personal email account through a private server.
On Wednesday, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor of Baltimore, reversed herself; she now wants the Department of Justice to conduct a civil rights investigation of her city’s police department.
Democratic Congressman Ami Bera, who represents California’s tightly-contested 7th district in eastern Sacramento County, has been accused of plagiarizing in an op-ed he wrote for the Sacramento Bee on Sunday, according to the Bee. In the column, Bera supported a Trade Promotion Authority bill giving Barack Obama “fast-track” authority to negotiate a trade deal.
The hard leftists in the California Democratic party, panicked at the thought of labor-supporting Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, losing the race for the seat in the 7th State Senate District to Orinda Mayor Steve Glazer, have pointed out that a group supported by the establishment GOP Koch brothers has created an ad attacking Bonilla.
Buffalo Bills running back LeSean McCoy, traded to Buffalo in March after six stellar seasons with Philadelphia, essentially accused Eagles coach Chip Kelly of racism in an interview with ESPN.
A new CBS News/New York Times poll conducted between April 30-May 3 shows 61 percent of Americans now believe that relations between the races are bad.
On Tuesday, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg finally made a public appearance, four days after the mysterious death of her husband David Goldberg in Mexico.
On Tuesday, the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo will be celebrated in California, and despite the spate of drinking parties that will ensue, some want the holiday to return to a more sober celebration of Mexican independence from France.
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by environmental activist Middlebury College professor Bill McKibben in which he attacks California Governor Jerry Brown’s support for fracking, calling fracking during a drought an “obscenity” because of its use of water.
On Monday, the California State Assembly passed Assembly Bill 30, which, beginning in 2017, bans California high schools from using the nickname “Redskins.”
Louisville police arrested a man, his girlfriend, and her brother for the murder of a Canadian bartender visiting city for the Kentucky Derby.
Now that the Obama administration has subtly encouraged critics of police to vent their fury, California legislators have initiated a flurry of at least 20 proposals–according to a count by the Los Angeles Times–to shackle the police and ensure that they are being zealously scrutinized.
On Monday, the NBA named Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors its Most Valuable Player.
Ilya Ponomarev, the lone figure in Russia’s Duma to vote against Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in 2014, thus opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin, cannot return to his wife and children in his native country after he visited San Jose nine months ago. Putin has effectively barred Ponomarev from returning, as the Russian government accused him of using $750,000 in public funds for his own benefit and he could be arrested if he travels back to Russia.
On Saturday at South Carolina Republican Party’s annual convention, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who recently won two straw polls in two of South Carolina’s biggest counties, forcefully attacked big business for its collusion with the Democratic Party in attacking Indiana’s religious liberty law. He also slammed the Obama administration for its intrusion on Americans’s liberty.
A report from the Urban Institute has some disturbing implications for the future of the United States, asserting that birth rates among women 20 to 29 years old between 2007 and 2012 reached historic lows.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, a former aide to Jerry Brown, is facing strong criticism over her handling of riots in Oakland this week. Because Oakland police allegedly delayed calling for help until roughly 15 minutes after a protest turned violent, Oakland’s Auto Row took a terrible beating on Friday night, with scores of vehicles’ windows smashed as well as the windows of banks and stores
On Saturday, Pope Francis, doubling down on the Vatican’s decision to canonize controversial Father Junipero Serra next September. Francis delivered a homily to an audience at Rome’s American seminary, the Pontifical North American College, in which he said that Serra was “one of the founding fathers of the United States.”
