The Capitol offices of Sen. Ron Calderon weren't the only areas the FBI searched in their investigation -- they also searched two businesses linked to the Calderons.
From the Bee's Laurel Rosenhall, Melody Gutierrez and Amy Gebert: "The FBI recently has raided at least two California businesses with connections to former Assemblyman Tom Calderon and his brother, Sen. Ron Calderon, whose offices were searched by federal investigators this week."
"In April, federal agents executed sealed search warrants at Pacific Hospital of Long Beach and Industrial Pharmacy Management in Newport Beach seeking "evidence of criminal allegations," FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said."
"Both businesses are listed as clients of Tom Calderon on a disclosure statement he filed during his unsuccessful run for Assembly last year."
"Robert Cagen was one of four members of the state legal team who refused to sign the commission's final brief to a pair of administrative law judges considering potential penalties against PG&E. All the attorneys were reassigned to other legal duties."
"The final brief, signed by the head of the utilities commission's safety division, urged that PG&E be penalized $2.25 billion for the San Bruno explosion - but that the money that the company is spending to fix up its natural gas system constitute the penalty."
A positive side effect of the new health care reform law is employment -- the thousands of new jobs that are being created.
From the LA Times' Ricardo Lopez: "Before it rolls out its health insurance marketplace, called Covered California, the state is hiring hundreds of people at three call centers set to open this fall when enrollment begins Oct. 1."
"The state also needs an additional 20,000 enrollers across the state to inform consumers about their new health insurance options and the new penalties under the federal law if they don't get coverage starting in January. Those enrollers, who will earn $58 for each sign-up, will primarily work for nonprofit and community groups assisting the state."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, long one of California's most popular politicians, says the government's tracking of millions of Americans' telephone records has been going on for years and that it's no big deal.
From Politico's Tim Mak and Burgess Everett: "As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years,” Feinstein asid. “This renewal is carried out by the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] under the business records section of the PATRIOT Act. Therefore, it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress.
(PHOTOS: Pols, pundits weigh in on NSA report)"
"Feinstein said she could not answer whether other phone companies have had their records sifted through as Verizon has."
“I know that people are trying to get to us,” she said. “This is the reason why the FBI now has 10,000 people doing intelligence on counterterrorism. This is the reason for the national counterterrorism center that’s been set up in the time we’ve been active. its to ferret this out before it happens. “It’s called protecting America.”
"At about the time Feistein and her colleague were speaking, it was reported that the National Security Agency and FBI were gleaning the servers of major internet companies in a search for data.
From the Washingtopn Post's Barton Gelman and Laura Poitras: "The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post."
"The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley."
"Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”
The leader of the Senate says Jerry Brown's controversial education reform package is shaping up but more work needs to be done.
From the Bee's Annalise Mantz: "With just nine days of budget negotiations left, Senate leader Darrell Steinberg called the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown "basically aligned" on publiceducation funding."
"In a conversation with Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California, on Thursday, Steinberg credited Brown for including "significant augmentations" to public education in his version of the budget. Steinberg noted only a few points on which he differed from the governor."
"The governor suggested an equity formula that to me was about 80 percent there, but I still object to about 20 percent of it," Steinberg said.