A TV commercial, shown above, appearing statewide this week has ignited a debate on whether it is a political ad or not. Political ads must disclose donor names. The makers, Let California Ring, say it's not, but Prop 8 proponents say "it is a campaign ad," according to the LA Times. The ad, which backs gay marriage, never mentions Proposition 8, the current ballot initiative that proposes to eliminate gay marriage in California. Lawyers......

Photo by stevendamron via Flickr The US Dept. of Transportation released its report (.pdf) on miles driven in the country for June 2008. It found that Californians drove more than billion fewer miles this year when we drove 28.8 billion miles than June 2007. That's a 3.7 % drop. Still, California topped the nation in miles driven. But as Dan Walters at SacBee's California by the Numbers The Numbers blog notes, "we're more than......

Hot and dry air is spreading across the West. "The jet stream is in retreat into western Canada and high pressure is building over the West, allowing the hot dry air to spread from the Desert Southwest as far north as central British Columbia and Alberta," alerted Accuweather in an e-mail. Triple digits are expected for some parts of California, but the Los Angeles area should be around 86 today and hover in the low......

Daily Kos writer, tenayaca, dug deep into the contributions and expenditures of Prop 11, a November proposition that will allow the redrawing of state district boundaries overseen by an independent commission after the 2010 census. Simply put, if passed, it will turn the state into a very Republican place, according to her. And while that may or may not be true (it's kinda hard to tell), she does point out who is contributing and receiving......

Photo by joebeone via Flickr For over a year now, Los Angeles resident Jacob Soboroff of Why Tuesday? has been traveling the country asking one eponymous question: Why Tuesday? It's to prove that the reason we vote on Tuesdays is outdated and may not be the strongest day for voter participation (the long answer is below). Currently, the Weekend Voting Act is in both the House and the Senate, introduced by Representative Steve Israel......

Prop 11 on November's ballot will allow the redrawing of state district boundaries overseen by an independent commission after the 2010 census. Currently, state politicians create their own boundaries, something proponents of the prop say guarantees their reelection. Redistricting propositions don't go without a fight. But with that said, it is not a sexy and easily understood topic. In a Ventura County Star editorial, Joe Howry nicely lays it out from his point of view.......

Short waits at the DMV are once again a thing of the past | Photo by SteveLyon via Flickr Governor Schwarzenegger's budget has called for many job losses and service cuts, and the Department of Motor Vehicles has been one of the most prominent in recent days to be on the chopping block. With many DMV employees already out of work and reduced hours announced at several locations statewide comes the news that there......

That's what the Sacramento Bee is asking today after a private poll came out showing that the U.S. Senator would beat Governor contender Attorney General Jerry Brown by 26%. In other polls, Brown is shown beating San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, LA Mayor Villaraigosa and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi. "If she does get in, it's over, at least on the Democratic side. Everybody, and I mean everybody, else steps out," former San Francisco Mayor Willie......

Rendering of high speed trains in the Pacheco Pass | Photo by NC3D for the California High Speed Rail Authority When state planners completed the last bit of the proposed High Speed Rail route between LA and San Francisco last month, some environmentalists like the Sierra Club and Planning and Conservation League were and and still not sure with that portion, citing that a train from the Central Valley to Northern California through the......

One person, one vote. | Photo by HEI ! via Flickr As it stands right now, in November, we vote on 12 state propositions, which is quite a handful for our minds to wrap around. But it's nothing compared to the 47 state props Californians had to deal with back in the 1914 general election (should boxing be outlawed on Memorial Day?). The Santa Barbara Independent has nicely collated and summarized each prop under......

Photo by Señor Codo via Flickr After suing the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year, California Attorney General Jerry Brown is at it once again over the agency's lack of regulation over greenhouse gas pollution from ships, aircraft, and construction and agricultural equipment. “Ships, aircraft and industrial equipment burn huge quantities of fossil fuel and cause massive greenhouse gas pollution yet President Bush stalls with one bureaucratic dodge after another,” Attorney General Brown said......

"Running is one of the most dangerous things you can do," explained Brian Humphrey, Spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department and a previous Community Emergency Response Team instructor. "People can lose their lives when they run, especially when windows or glass mirrors are near. You should duck, cover and hold." Various videos surfaced yesterday on TV and online of people doing the exact opposite. People ran, something that could be disastrous in a larger......

Metrolink service was restored to normal speeds at 4:00 p.m. this afternoon, according to Denise Tyrrell, Public Information Officer for the transit agency. "Afternoon commuters are cautioned to anticipate 15-30 minutes delays as we recover from earlier service delays," she said in an e-mail. Interruptions and delays occurred earlier today because all tracks had to undergo mandatory post-earthquake inspection.......

Glad I wasn't in that aisle when this happened. This is from a security camera inside Incycle Bicycles in San Dimas. In the below video, watch at least 7 people sprint to and out the door. In most cases, going outside is not recommended, but in a bicycle shop where things don't seem very secure in the first place, that might have been the best sort of action. Thoughts?......

Ralph Tollett looks at the damage to his son's building in Pomona, Calif. on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 (AP Photo/Dan Steinberg) We can't emphasize enough that this earthquake is considered a "moderate" one and caused relatively little damage throughout the region. However, with that said, some damage and a handful of minor injuries did happen. Today's quake, a 5.4, was just one percent of the energy of the 1994 Northridge 6.7 earthquake, according to......

A sidewalk is closed off because of debris that fell as the result of an earthquake (AP Photo/Ric Francis) All still minor damage being reported throughout the Southern California region after this morning's earthquake, but here's a photo of some cement bricks fallen on a sidewalk in downtown Los Angeles in the 300 block of South Broadway. It appears they may have been swept up into a pile.......

At the South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, there was some damage to what looks like lighting and tables on two floors after this morning's 5.4 earthquake in Chino Hills. Flickr user, Jason Sherwin, quickly snapped photos and uploaded them to the web.......

Air Traffic Controller Stuart Smith adjusts a runway traffic monitor from the tower at Los Angeles International Airport, in Los Angeles | AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File Acting Mayor Wendy Greuel (Mayor Villaraigosa is on vacation in London) spoke to the press at 1:50 p.m. today updating what was happening within the city limits of Los Angeles after this morning's earthquake. At the same time, the LA Fire Department reported, in an e-mail alert,......

Google Trends provides insights into broad search patterns by users on Google. A look into what is being searched nationally this afternoon is obviously the earthquake. Today's 5.4 magnitude quake was only considered "moderate," which is big enough to knock things off shelves and cause minor damage to buildings. However, Google searches across the country are intensely focused on the incident. The majority of top 100 trends ("hot trends") are quake-related. U.S. Google Trends......

Screenshot by K. Moriarty via Flickr Whether it was the shaking or a surge of readers checking the LA Times' website, it was shut down temporarily after the 5.4, 11:42 a.m. earthquake in Chino Hills.......

"I am totally serious. My Ob/Gyn was IN my vagina and an earthquake started rattling the room!" tweeted MissRFTC. She was later interviewed about the experience: "Was just interviewed via phone by senior writer at CNet about my vaginal earthquake experience." On a more serious note, VentureBeat cited Twitter's importance in instances as such. "Well before the information was anywhere on the major news outlets, tweets (Twitter messages) were flowing in at a rapid clip.......

Did you feel that? Yes you did. That was a 5.4 magnitude earthquake (preliminary reports stated that it was a 5.8 and then 5.6) out of the Chino Hills area that struck at 11:42 a.m., according to the USGS, who considers this to be a "moderate" earthquake. Chino Hills is 29 miles southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. It was a nice and long one too. 10 seconds? 20 seconds? (or maybe out time perspective was......

So this is how the Princeton Review gets press. University of California, Santa Barbara made the Princeton Review's top 20 schools for partying. Coming in at number 9, they also earned a position as the 4th best school for use of hard liquor. Other California schools making some kind of partying (or lack thereof) list was Claremont McKenna College for wide use of beer consumption (#13), UC-Santa Cruz in the "Reefer Madness" category (#6), Thomas......

So it's not a million dollar lottery ticket, but $174,575 is still good money. A Mega Millions lotto ticket purchased on January 29 at a 7/11 store in Corona still has not been claimed and today is the last day to do so. However, it's not a first. The state says it has donated as much as $50 million a year in unclaimed lotto ticket prizes to California's educational funds.......

Los Angeles' top cop donated money to Equality California, an organization that is trying to stop Proposition 8, which seeks to ban same-sex marriage, from winning on the November ballot, according to the LA Times. "The Constitution guarantees life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," Bratton said. "I see no reason why gays can't pursue happiness through marriage." The donation was a wedding gift for his friends, celebrity publicist Howard Bragman and Chuck O'Donnell (fun......

This week, supporters of defeating Proposition 8 before it even hit November's ballot lost the battle. If approved, it will have the state only recognize marriage between a man and a woman, therefore making same-sex marriage a thing of the past. They argued the prop "involves a constitutional revision that can't be adopted through a ballot vote," says CNN, who also says they "contended that petitions circulated to qualify the proposition for the ballot contained......

Bicycle advocate Alex Thompson wrote on his blog that he ran various red lights last night in Santa Monica. He explains his actions. "Because the decrepit signals wouldn’t change for me. Every time I visit Santa Monica City Council I run the light in front of the Police Department. I wait and wait and wait before I realize that the signal is not going to change for me. Then I look around, make sure there......

California and Weed | Anti/LAist We had a very big story on LAist, that got a lot of people excited about the potential for a new system that would legalize weed for all adults to be put on the ballot this November. The excitement was fueled with the hope of many that the nearly 700,000 signatures by Sept. 5, 2008 appeared very likely. The only question that was at the front of everyone's mind......

Yesterday, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley wrote a letter to President George Bush asking him to consider taking a stand against car idling in Washington D.C. "While people across the country are looking for ways to reduce their fuel burden by using less, the federal government doesn’t appear to be taking the same steps to reduce wasteful energy consumption and save taxpayer money," he wrote. "Each and every day, there are likely dozens, if not hundreds......

What High Speed Rail could look like in Burbank | Image by CHSR The California High-Speed Rail Authority announced the completion of the route yesterday. The project has been some 10 years in the making and this November, Proposition 1 (pdf) on the ballot will help determine the future of the project that would take passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in about 2 hours and 40 minutes by 2030. The last step......