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Florida Man Awakens in California, Can Only Speak Swedish (+video)

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Photo Credit: Mark CogginsWhen Michael Boatwright woke up in the emergency room at Desert Regional Medical Center, the nurses began asking him questions for which it became clear he had no answers. The gray-haired, soft-spoken man looked at his identity card and didn’t recognize his own face. He answered only to Johan Ek.

He walked up to the sink, stared at the reflection of the 61-year-old man facing him in the mirror and said he was going to throw up.

Though his driver’s license said he was born in Florida, he spoke only in Swedish and said he remembered nothing about his life before…

The man was found unconscious in a Motel 6 room on Palm Canyon Drive at noon on Feb. 28, said Lisa Hunt-Vasquez, the social worker assigned to track down next-of-kin information and help to piece Boatwright’s story together.

He had with him a duffel bag of casual athletic clothes, a backpack, five tennis rackets, two cell phones, some cash, a set of old photos and four forms of identification: a passport, California identification card, veteran’s medical card and a Social Security card. Each of them identified him as Michael Thomas Boatwright.

DHS Chief Janet Napolitano Resigns; Rewarded With Presidency of 10 Campuses, Huge Salary (+video)

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Photo Credit: LA TimesJanet Napolitano, the U.S. secretary of Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, is being named as the next president of the University of California system, in an unusual choice that brings a national-level politician to a position usually held by an academic, The Times has learned. Her appointment also means the 10-campus system will be headed by a woman for the first time in its 145-year history.

Napolitano’s nomination by a committee of UC regents came after a secretive process that insiders said focused on her early as a high-profile, although untraditional, candidate who has led large public agencies and shown a strong interest in improving education.

UC officials believe that her Cabinet experiences –- which include helping to lead responses to hurricanes and tornadoes and overseeing some anti-terrorism measures — will help UC administer its federal energy and nuclear weapons labs and aid its federally funded research in medicine and other areas.

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California Senate Passes Bill to Allow Non-Citizen Poll Workers to Help Non-English-Speaking Citizens to Vote

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe state Senate on Monday approved legislation that would allow immigrants who are not U.S. citizens to assist voters casting a ballot.

The measure from Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, would allow for up to five non-citizens to serve at a particular polling site. Those poll workers must be permanent U.S. residents who legally entered the country.

Those residents could provide much-needed help to voters with limited English skills, said Sen. Norma Torres, D-Pomona, who presented Bonta’s bill. There are 2.6 million eligible California voters who are not fully proficient in English, she said.

“These individuals have the absolute right to make fully informed voting decisions on Election Day,” Torres said.

More than three dozen organizations involved in elections and immigrant advocacy have signaled their support for AB817.

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Saudi Princess Arrested in California Human Trafficking Probe

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Photo Credit: APA Saudi princess was charged Wednesday with human trafficking for allegedly holding a domestic worker against her will and forcing her to work at an Orange County condominium, prosecutors said.

Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas identified 42-year-old Meshael Alayban as a Saudi princess who was charged with one count of human trafficking. If convicted, she faces up to 12 years in prison.

Alayban was arrested after a Kenyan woman carrying a suitcase flagged down a bus Tuesday and told a passenger she believed she was a human trafficking victim. The passenger helped her contact police, who searched the Irvine condo where Alayban and her family were staying, authorities said.

The 30-year-old woman told authorities she was hired in Kenya in 2012 and her passport was taken from her on arrival in Saudi Arabia. She was forced to work excessive hours and was paid less than she was promised and not allowed to leave, authorities said.

“This is not a contract dispute,” Rackauckas told the court during a bail hearing Wednesday afternoon, likening the case to slavery. “This is holding someone captive against their will.”

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California Assembly Passes Bill to Distribute Condoms to Prisoners

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Photo Credit: Sharon MollerusThe proposal from Oakland Democratic Assemblyman Rob Bonta comes despite a law prohibiting any sex between inmates, which creates a conflict that concerns both supporters and opponents of the legislation.

“It’s a felony for prisoners to have sex while they’re in prison, so I don’t think it’s good government for the state to encourage inmates to break the law,” said Republican Assemblyman Dan Logue of Marysville.

Bonta’s proposal would require the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to make condoms available in five prisons by 2015 and expand the program to each of the state’s 33 adult prisons no later than 2020.

The bill, AB999, passed the Assembly and is awaiting consideration in the state Senate. If it becomes law, California would be the second state behind Vermont, which has a fraction of the inmate population, to provide condoms to all prisoners. Canada, most of the European Union, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa already take that step, according to legislative researchers.

Currently, condoms are contraband in California prisons, though the state has tried a distribution program before but on a temporary and limited basis.

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Bill Awaiting Gov. Brown’s Signature Will Allow Boys to Use Girls’ Public School Bathrooms, Locker Rooms (and Vice-Versa)

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Photo Credit: mgrayflickrTransgender students in California would be able to choose which school bathrooms and locker rooms to use and which sport teams to join based on their gender identity under a measure approved this week by the California Legislature.

The proposal now awaits the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown, whose office has declined to comment on whether he will sign it.

The proposal would be the first state law in the nation that specifically requires equal access to public school facilities and activities based on gender identity, though some states have general policies to the same effect, said Shannon Price Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, one of several groups backing the legislation.

But enactment of the measure would “simply mean that California will be catching up with other states that already have enacted regulations based on a general prohibition of gender identity discrimination in schools,” Minter told CNN.

“Our view is that California’s existing law should already require schools to provide transgender students with equal access to facilities and activities, but in practice, many schools are not complying with that requirement and will not do so unless the Legislature provides specific guidance on this issue,” Minter said.

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Justice Kennedy Denies Request to Halt Gay Marriages in California

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has denied an emergency request by opponents of same-sex marriage to halt gay weddings in California.

The decision means same-sex marriages can resume in the state. Gay marriage foes had filed the motion Saturday asking the high court to step in, less than 24 hours after the state started issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling earlier in the week.

That ruling, on California’s Proposition 8 gay marriage ban, was expected to clear the way for the state to resume issuing gay marriage licenses.

But in their filing, attorneys with the Arizona-based group Alliance Defending Freedom argued that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acted prematurely and unfairly on Friday when it allowed gay marriage to resume by lifting a hold it had placed on same-sex unions amid the lawsuit.

“The Ninth Circuit’s June 28, 2013 Order purporting to dissolve the stay … is the latest in a long line of judicial irregularities that have unfairly thwarted Petitioners’ defense of California’s marriage amendment,” the application states. “Failing to correct the appellate court’s actions threatens to undermine the public’s confidence in its legal system.”

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Homosexuals Flock to California City Halls for Marriages; Last Minute Appeal Filed to Stop Ceremonies (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Same-sex couples dressed in jeans, shorts, white dresses, and the occasional military uniform filled San Francisco City Hall on Saturday as clerks resumed issuing marriage licenses one day after a federal appeals court removed the last obstacle to making gay marriage legal again in California.

But lawyers for the sponsors of California’s same-sex marriage ban have filed an emergency motion asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule the federal appeals court.

Attorneys with the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom said they submitted the petition on Saturday to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who handles motions dealing with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Senior Counsel Austin Nimocks says a three-judge 9th Circuit panel acted prematurely and unfairly when it lifted the hold on same-sex marriages it had put in place while a challenge to the ban made its way through the courts.

Nimocks says the Supreme Court’s consideration of the case is not done yet because his clients still have 22 days to ask the justices to reconsider their decision holding that Proposition 8′s backers did not have legal authority to defend the ban.

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School District Receives Grant for Students to Indoctrinate Parents About Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Heartland

Photo Credit: Heartland

The Los Angeles Unified School District will use a state grant to train teens to promote ObamaCare to family members. Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, announced grants of $37 million on May 14 to promote the nationally unpopular law.

LAUSD will receive $990,000. The district listed as a primary outcome for its project, “Teens trained to be messengers to family members.”

Covered California spokeswoman Sarah Soto-Taylor said staff have not questioned this goal.

“We have confidence that the model LA Unified brought to the table will be successful in reaching our target population, which includes family members of students,” she said.

LAUSD will also use tax-paid staff to promote ObamaCare through phone calls to students’ homes, in-class presentations, and meetings with employees eligible for ObamaCare’s taxpayer-covered healthcare, the grant award says.

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License-Plate Readers Let Police Collect Millions of Records on Drivers

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Photo Credit: Michael Katz-Lacabe

Photo Credit: Michael Katz-Lacabe

When the city of San Leandro, Calif., purchased a license-plate reader for its police department in 2008, computer security consultant Michael Katz-Lacabe asked the city for a record of every time the scanners had photographed his car.

The results shocked him.

The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police cars, can log thousands of license plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. Katz-Lacabe said it had photographed his two cars on 112 occasions, including one image from 2009 that shows him and his daughters stepping out of his Toyota Prius in their driveway.

That photograph, Katz-Lacabe said, made him “frightened and concerned about the magnitude of police surveillance and data collection.” The single patrol car in San Leandro equipped with a plate reader had logged his car once a week on average, photographing his license plate and documenting the time and location.

At a rapid pace, and mostly hidden from the public, police agencies throughout California have been collecting millions of records on drivers and feeding them to intelligence fusion centers operated by local, state and federal law enforcement.

With heightened concern over secret intelligence operations at the National Security Agency, the localized effort to track drivers highlights the extent to which the government has committed to collecting large amounts of data on people who have done nothing wrong.

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