Incumbent Loses Runoff

The oldest congressmen has become the first incumbent to lose a primary election in 2014. Former U.S Attorney John Ratcliffe edged 17-incumbent Rep. Ralph M. Hall in a Republican runoff in Texas. This year many veteran lawmakers have been leaving on their own however, Hall was hoping to serve one final term. He wanted to represent voters in northeastern Texas, but with the combination of his age and a motivated core of tea party voters in the low-turnout race has proven to make it difficult to overcome. His defeat will leave the New Congress next year without a World Was 2 veteran since Rep. John D. Dingell will be retiring. The reason that he was defeated was because of three reasons. One was his age, the second was the fact that he was a former democrat, and three his longevity in Congress. It was said that Washington needed a new face in Congress. Plus he had previously failed to get a win when he led the GOP in the initial March 4 primary. The main factor that people were talking about was his age. On Tuesday Ratcliffe got 21,539 voted while Hall got 19,000. His victory marked the first triumph for outside conservative groups over incumbent Republican lawmakers this year.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-texas-primary-runoff-20140527-story.html

Official Identified by White House

The White House has accidentally identified the CIA's top official in Kabul. This was done in an email that has circulated thousands of journalists. The White House has deny to say anything and all the media outlets did not release the official's name for his and his family's protection. The email consisted of a list of names that would go with Obama on his trip to Afghanistan. He was going on this memorial day weekend to thank the soldiers for their service. The official was identified by "chief of station" which is the job title of the CIA's top official in a foreign country. All foreign operations are usually kept a secret. This s not the first time this has happened in 2003 the same thing occurred.

  http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-white-house-cia-name-afghanistan-20140526-story.html 

Arkansas Ban on Same-Sex Marriage

On Friday the Arkansas Supreme Court without any explanation stopped the issuance of marriage license to same-sex couples by granting a request to stay lower court ruling that had invalidated all laws banning gay marriage. There have been millions of gays and lesbians that have gotten married already. Judge Chris Piazza ruled that the ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional. With this said he left 75 county clerks confused, leaving some with the will of issuing marriage license to same-sex couples, however others refused to do so. Now that Arkansas is off the table only 17 states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage. Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said he will defend the desire of voters who established the same-sex marriage ban in the state constitution despite his own personal belief that marriage occurs between a man and a woman. The courts have issued a stay however, people didn't like this because it would take the lgbt community a longer time to gain the same rights as opposite-sex couples. To this day it's still unclear what Arkansas will decide.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-arkansas-gay-marriage-stay-20140516-story.html

Alley Clean Up

Meredith Watts has been calling the city's Bureau of Sanitation to clear up the alley of her home where she once lived. If she doesn't call the people don't come to clean up. She says she remembers being able to play in the alley when she was a kid. But now all the alleys are piled up with trash and not sanitary. Now there is a plan to spend more money to try to clean the alleys up. Mayor Eric Garcettie proposed to spend $5 million to try to straighten the alleys up. However, people believe that this amount of money won't be enough to do so. So Los Angeles lawmakers want a systematic citywide solution to help do the work. The City Council on Wednesday set up crews that will go clean up the places that are in the most need. They alleys before used to be cleaned up by the Bureau of Street Servies, but money was eliminated for them. The estimated amount to clean most of the trash is between $25-$30 million, however, money is still tight so they plan to only use a small portion of this.

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-alley-cleaning-20140501,0,1247352.story#axzz30aQIafGs

Medical System In Prisons

For many inmates that were/are serving a sentence in jail don’t really get any medical treatment. The jail system had a poor medical system for these inmates however; the state’s prison did something about this so the federal people would get off their back. California has a $840 million medical system which would provide care to more than 1,800 inmates. In July they opened the state-of-the-art California Health Care Facility. However, there was miscommunication and mismanagement between the medical staff and the prison. It wasn’t only that they weren’t getting medical care, but also not shoes, soap, or towels. Many complains arose and the inmates lawyers were the ones to voice them out. Prisoner’s advocates were fighting to help the inmates because some weren’t even allowed to shower. Now there has been change for these inmates and now have some kind of medical care. The state Corrections Department is in charge of the general custody and Kelso is in charge of the $1.7 billion a year prison medical care system.

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ff-prison-hospital-20140413,0,7414773.story#axzz2ypfqduU5

Supreme Court

California’s Supreme Court is expected to have some change. For many years the Supreme Court has been dominated by Republicans. However, this might change because Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to change this if he is reelected. Two of the most powerful judges who are conservatives are now in their late 70’s. Gov. Brown of replacing them with the people he wants although it’ll take a couple more replacements to fully change the court around. Brown faces political pressure and many people are saying that he will pick a Latino. The court has never had an African American or Latino judge before. Some say that it wouldn’t be a surprise if he elected lawyer James Humes who is openly gay. For more than two decades the court has only had one democratic appointee. Brown may want to create a court that is interested in the ideas behind the laws as well as practical results.

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-brown-court-20140405,0,4034285.story#axzz2y5G7mO00

Affirmative Action

The issue of Affirmative Action started coming up in January. Senators passed a measure that if approved would ban the affirmative action California has on higher public education. However, there were worries from the upper class that there will be no more space for their children because of the minority groups. In 1996 a law was passed that forbids the state to consider race, ethnicity or gender in hiring, contracting or admissions to public institutions of higher education. People say that there are some groups that are not well represented because they don’t make that much of the population. The Chinese community is the ones who are talking more about the whole affirmative action situation. The senator wanted to make sure that the concerns of Asian Americans before doing anything. Several lawmakers in the assembly opposed the proposal. None of the proposals of Hernandez have never been enacted, he has only talked about them.  
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-affirmative-action-20140331,0,2270777.story#ixzz2xc4vmq5o