CALIFORNIA – The former mayor of Bell, California, was too stupid and uneducated to know his $100,000 salary for the part-time city job was illegal, his lawyer argued today.

Oscar Hernandez is illiterate, has no high school degree and didn’t even finish elementary school, defense attorney Stanley Friedmand told jurors.

Hernandez and five former members of the Bell City Council are on trial, accused of stealing $1.3million in exorbitant pay from the working-class city of 35,000.

All six elected officials drew salaries of up to $100,000 for serving on boards that seldom met and accomplished little. (more…)

For the same reason it is unlawful NOT to hire illegal immigrants, the Obama administration is now claiming it is unlawful not to hire criminals.

When you pre-screen job applicants based on legal work eligibility status you are adversely impacting job seekers based on race/origin/nationality (disparate impact), a federally protected category.  So too, when you pre-screen eligibility based on criminal record you adversely impact blacks.

Not hiring someone because they are illegally in the United States is unlawful by EEOC standards. They are applying the same logic to criminals.

WASHINGTON DC – Criminal background checks have become all the rage in Washington, D.C., as politicians scramble to try to ensure that anyone who ever even thought of owning a gun is subjected to a thorough electronic proctology exam.

However, one group that appears immune to background check fever are the ever helpful Obama officials at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).

The EEOC and OFCCP have each determined that employers who use background checks as one of the determinants of whether to hire a prospective employee may be engaging in prohibited discrimination. (more…)

Teacher says “whoops, I didn’t read the lesson”…   how much do you want to bet this is a tenured union teacher just phoning it in now…..

ARIZONA – Arizona fourth grader Kyera McCloskey got an accidental lesson in infidelity earlier this week.

According to ABC15, McCloskey and her fellow students at the Playa Del Rey Elementary School in Gilbert, Ariz. were given a very grown-up homework assignment on Monday. The students were prompted to read about various situations, describe what was happening in them and then offer a response or solution. One such “situation” was about a woman finding a hair clip underneath her bed with another woman’s hair in it.

McCloskey suspected the question had to do with cheating, but consulted her mother for clarification.

“I kinda had my mom help me with the answer a little bit because I didn’t want to go too deep into what it was trying to ask me,” she said. (more…)

The media is hiding portions of the LAPD shooter’s manifesto because it highlights his love for the left-wing media and political ideology.   The media version is available from Clear Channel Communications pdf. CLICK HERE

But here is the full unedited version (links at bottom) where he adores MSNBC and CNN and Piers Morgan etc.  He talks of Trayvon Martin and Hero Obama etc.    If this was the opposite side of the political spectrum, if he were a conservative, this guy on the loose would be live 24/7 on every TV channel….. but, because the leftists are his heros the media is trying to bury it.

“Feb 4, 2013 9:14:04 AM Last Resort
From: Christopher Jordan Dorner /7648
To: America
Subj: Last resort
Regarding CF# 07-004281

I know most of you who personally know me are in disbelief to hear from media reports that I am suspected of committing such horrendous murders and have taken drastic and shocking actions in the last couple of days. You are saying to yourself that this is completely out of character of the man you knew who always wore a smile wherever he was seen. I know I will be villified by the LAPD and the media. Unfortunately, this is a necessary evil that I do not enjoy but must partake and complete for substantial change to occur within the LAPD and reclaim my name. (more…)

(CNSNews.com) – The number of Americans not in the labor force grew by 169,000 in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest jobs report.

BLS labels people who are unemployed and no longer looking for work as “not in the labor force,” including people who have retired on schedule, taken early retirement, or simply given up looking for work. There were 89 million of them last month.

The number of people not in the labor force had declined in December to 88.8 million from 88.9 million in November. (more…)

(Hat Tip WZ – VIA BREITBART )  President Barack Obama and for that matter, most of America, seem woefully ignorant about a scandal unfolding at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As hard as it is to believe, outgoing Administrator Lisa Jackson actually appears to have had agency personnel create a fictitious employee by the name of “Richard Windsor” so that Jackson could appropriate the Windsor email address for her own purposes.

We’re not talking about some alias to be used for personal correspondence but a totally false identity in whose name official business was allegedly conducted created specifically to avoid federal record-keeping and disclosure requirements. And none of this would ever have been uncovered were it not for the courage of a still anonymous whistleblower and the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Christopher Horner, an attorney with the legal smarts and experience needed to unravel it all.

Earlier this week, thanks to Horner’s good work, the EPA was supposed to produce the first installment of some 12,000 secret, previously undisclosed emails. Not because it wanted to but because a federal court order required it to. (more…)

We have watched the horizon for this over two years now.  HERE and HERE –  The best view is through the comparative prism between Illinois and neighboring Wisconsin and Indiana (more following article).   In July of 2011 Illinois Governor Quinn signed the largest tax increase in history, raising state income taxes by 60%.   Now the state bond rating is the worst in the nation….

ILLINOIS – Illinois’ credit rating has taken another hit.   Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service downgraded the state from an “A” rating to “A-minus”, making it the worst in the country.

The New York ratings firm’s ranking means taxpayers may have to pay tens of millions of dollars more in interest when the state borrows money for roads and other projects.

The downgrade is the latest fallout over the $96.8 billion debt to five state pension systems.   The downgrade now ties Illinois with California, but California has a positive outlook.

Illinois’ fragile overall financial status netted it a negative outlook, putting it behind California overall.   The ratings came out now because Illinois plans to issue $500 million in bonds within days.   (article link)

(more…)

UPDATE:   NLRB responds by telling the court they will ignore their decision.

Mark Gaston Pearce, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, issued the following statement in reaction to today’s DC Appeals Court decision that President Obama use of recess appointments to install three people on the NLRB last year was unconstitutional. The action renders the board without a quorum to act and potentially invalidates a year’s worth of actions and rulings by it. […]

Pearce, in short, is indicating that the NLRB’s strategy is to act as if the court’s ruling that the appointments were unconstitutional somehow only applies only to the particular case that went before the Appeals Court and hope that the White House can get the Supreme Court to quickly review the case.  (link)

Finally, a court steps in to bring Dictator Obama back a notch or two.   President Obama is by far the most overreaching chief executive we have ever encountered.

AP NEWS ALERT: Federal appeals court in DC has ruled that Obama recess appointments to NLRB were unconstitutional

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) January 25, 2013

WASHINGTON DC – In an embarrassing setback for President Barack Obama, a federal appeals court ruled Friday that he violated the Constitution in making recess appointments last year, a decision that would severely curtail the president’s ability to bypass the Senate to fill administration vacancies.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board because the Senate was officially in session – and not in recess – at the time. If the decision stands, it could invalidate hundreds of board decisions made over the past year. (more…)

Last week the New York unionized School Bus Drivers went on strike. The city currently pays an average of $6,900 per student for transportation. Yes, that’s right, $6,900.00 per student, a rate that is totally unsustainable.

So the city wants to put the bus contract up for bid. The drivers are beside themselves because their employment will not be guaranteed by the next contract bidder(s).

NEW YORK [excerpt] – […] The nationwide attention that strikes, rooted in very local fights, tend to receive now is another indication of how unions have weakened in recent decades. “It’s sad that it’s seen as a novelty,” says Zev Eigen, associate professor of law at Northwestern University.

It also means that unions have to pick their fights carefully, he says, because public sympathy will go down if a strike is not tied to a substantial issue of fairness.

At the heart of the bus strike is a dispute over the bidding process for a bus contract to replace one due to expire in June.

The school district currently spends an average of $6,900 per year for each bused student, more than double the cost of the next most expensive district of Los Angeles. (more…)

Via GWP
(Washington Examiner)  Maryland’s largest teachers union wants school employees who aren’t members of a union to pay union fees.

Del. Sheila Hixson, D-Montgomery County, will introduce a bill on behalf of the Maryland State Education Association to require nonunion educators to pay a so-called fair share fee to unions equivalent to about 68 percent of the local dues. (more…)