CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Longtime politics oppo research specialist Joe Rodota has lately turned his skills toward historical events and storytelling, first with a book on the Watergate complex, The Watergate: Inside America’s Most Infamous Address, and now with a new podcast, Hillside: The Investigation and Trial of the Hillside Strangler.
A scientist at work in a biomedical laboratory. (Photo: Tom Robertson, via Shutterstock)The California stem cell agency says it is doing “everything” it can to move forward on a gene therapy that has saved the lives of more than 50 persons but which has been pushed aside by the company that has exclusive rights to it. The issue has raised questions about the ethics of withholding care from babies and children suffering from a fatal disease.
Examining a liquid nitrogen bank containing suspended stem cells. (Photo: Elena Pavolvich)You might say it is a case of “self-control” involving the test of a stem cell therapy for an infamous and terrible disease. Not self-control in the usual sense, but in the sense of controls during a clinical trial for a treatment prior to its release to the general public.
Federal prosecutors asked a judge to allow three FBI undercover agents to testify in disguise with the public excluded in the upcoming corruption trial of former Sen. Ronald Calderon, who is accused of taking more than $80,000 in bribes. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles said the three agents – who were at the heart of an investigation that spanned several years – would be placed at risk if they were forced to testify in public.
The figure at the center of a corruption scandal involving the California Public Employees’ Retirement System apparently shot himself to death at a Reno gun club, just weeks before his trial was scheduled to begin in federal court.
State Sen. Rod Wright, an Inglewood Democrat who once headed the powerful Governmental Organization Committee, was sentenced Friday to three months in jail and banned for life from holding public office for lying to the public and election officials about his true place of residence.
OPINION: Advances in technology are changing the way we live, work and play. By simply going online, a bed and breakfast in San Luis Obispo can book rooms, a salon owner in Pasa Robles can market her team of stylists, and farmers in Watsonville can let buyers around the world know when to expect their shipments of strawberries.
Sen. Rod Wright, D-Inglewood, at a 2013 conference on online gaming. (Photo: Scott Duncan/Capitol Weekly)Sen. Rod Wright, the chair of the powerful Governmental Organization Committee and the Legislature’s leading expert on online gaming, was convicted of eight felony counts of perjury and voter fraud in a case spanning nearly seven years. He was convicted of lying about his true address — which under California law must be in the district he represents — and lying on registration and candidacy documents. (Above: Rod Wright at a Sacramento conference, 2013. Scott Duncan/Capitol Weekly)
State Supreme Court Tani Cantil-Sakauye says Gov. Brown’s draft budget doesn’t provide sufficient funding for California’s sprawling court system, which has been battered by years of cuts and complaints about its spending. The chief justice on Tuesday unveiled a proposed three-year plan to fund the courts. (Above: State Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. (Photo: Samantha Gallegos/Capitol Weekly)
But a series of state court rulings are widely believed to mean that the pension offered current workers on the date of hire becomes a vested right, protected by contract law, that can only be cut if offset by a new benefit of comparable value. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Patricia Lucas said in her ruling the question before her court is “one of law, not of policy,” referring to a state Supreme Court response to city and county briefs on an Orange County attempt to cut retirement costs.