With the bleak outlook of some California cities, are you getting ready to leave the state?

How bad and widespread are California cities' fiscal problems?  "Virtually ubiquitous and massive,'' says Rod Kiewiet, professor of political science at California Institute of Technology.

In April, Stockton became the fourth California city — and the nation's largest — to go into bankruptcy protection since the recession began five years ago. The move by the Central Valley city to reorganize its wrecked finances under court protection has triggered a guessing game over which hard-pressed cities might be next.

Despite signs of economic recovery, many parts of the nation's most populous state are feeling a hangover from the collapse of housing prices, prolonged high unemployment and resulting declines in revenue.

Read more at USA Today

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to review a petition by a former Fullerton police officer charged in the death of Kelly Thomas, paving the way for the former officer's trial in Orange County.

This was Manuel Ramos' fourth attempt to keep the case from going to trial. The case now heads back to Superior Court Judge William Froeberg's court, where trial is set for June 28.

Thomas, who was mentally ill, died July 10, 2011, when his life support was turned off five days after a confrontation with six Fullerton police officers at the Fullerton Transportation Center parking lot, an altercation captured on camera. He was 37.  Ramos faces second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter charges.

Read more at the OC Register

Do you think that political operatives kept this news out of the reach of the president?

President Obama insisted Thursday that he knew nothing about the internal investigation into the IRS' practice of singling out conservative groups for special scrutiny before it was made public, as he moved to name a new director for the embattled agency. 

"I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the (inspector general) report" beforehand, Obama said Thursday. 

The president, though, did not say whether he was previously aware of the IRS' actions, which allegedly started as early as 2010, well before the inspector general's office began to investigate. Republican lawmakers were inquiring about the alleged targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS more than a year ago. 

Read more at Fox News

Do you think Eric Holder was right to call Darrell Issa "shameful"?

Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday lashed out at Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif), calling his conduct “unacceptable and shameful.”

In a tense moment at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Holder berated the lawmaker who led the successful effort in the House to hold him in contempt of Congress.  Holder said Issa’s questioning at the hearing was “too consistent with the way in which you conduct yourself as a member of the Congress. It’s unacceptable, and it’s shameful.”

Issa, who seemed to brush off the rebuke, was questioning Holder about a deal the Justice Department’s top civil rights enforcer made with the city of St. Paul, Minn., to drop a False Claims Act case in exchange for the city ditching an unconnected appeal to the Supreme Court.

Read more at The Hill

Do you think all the teen girls rooting for Dzhokhar will change their minds now that his note claiming responsibility has been found?

Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left a note claiming responsibility for the April 13 attack on the Boston Marathon, reports CBS News senior correspondent John Miller.

Sources tell Miller that Tsarnaev wrote the note in the boat he was hiding in as police pursued him, and as he bled from gunshot wounds sustained in an earlier shootout between police and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It reads as part manifesto, part suicide note, and part justification for the killing and maiming of innocent civilians.

The note -- scrawled with a marker on the interior wall of the cabin -- said the bombings were retribution for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims "collateral damage" in the same way Muslims have been in the American-led wars. "When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims," Tsarnaev wrote.

Read more at CBS News

One of the cops who helped free three women from their Cleveland hell said he "felt evil in the house."

"When I heard there were people in the house, I ran up to the door, but it was locked from the inside," Officer Michael Simon said. "So I grabbed the hand rail by the stairs to use as a prying tool ... but the other officers kicked the door in.

"Once inside, I felt evil in the house."

Simon and the other officers who took part in the rescue of Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32, on May 6 recounted the frantic moments when they arrived at Ariel Castro's shabby house - and began closing a case that had bedeviled authorities for over a decade, the Plain Dealer reported Thursday.

Read more at the NY Daily News

As more and more details come out about Ariel Castro, it begs the questions, why wasn't he caught earlier?

Ariel Castro's ex-daughter-in-law never felt comfortable around the man who police say kept three young women trapped in a Cleveland home for a decade.

Monica Stephens -- who was once married to Castro's son Anthony -- said she never developed a close relationship with Castro, primarily because of the stories her ex-husband and ex-mother-in-law had shared with her.

"I never had the desire to get to know him personally or very closely," Stephens told CNN's Piers Morgan on Tuesday night. "Both my ex-husband and his mother had shared with me stories of how he had beaten them, locked them in the house, just treated them like hostages, so I never had a desire to get to know him. He didn't have that like, you know, father-in-law appeal."

Read more at CNN

Do you think that the new plan to install 1,600 miles of bike lanes is a good idea?

Two wheels, handlebars and a seat.  The humble bicycle has been around since the 1800s, beloved as a treasured staple of childhood transportation for generations.

Now, a cycling revival of sorts is sweeping across America's cities, especially among adults seeking a healthier alternative to the automobile. And maybe a bit more fun in their lives.

Over the next 30 years, the city of Los Angeles plans to install 1,600 miles of bikeways.  The goal?  To connect the sprawling, car-loving metropolis and make it more bike-friendly.

Read more at the Daily Breeze

Do you think that OJ Simpson has a right to take back his old sports memorabilia?

An attorney who has attempted to collect a multimillion-dollar judgement from OJ Simpson for years after the former NFL Hall of Fame player's 1995 murder trial acquittal claimed Thursday that some of the items taken during a Las Vegas hotel room raid did not belong to Simpson.

Attorney David Cook said his client, Fred Goldman, still has ownership rights to football mementos that were the subject of a 2009 civil judgement in connection with the 1995 slayings of Nicole Brown Simspson and Goldman's son Ron. The ruling came one year after Simpson was convicted of robbery and kidnapping in an effort to the retrieve sports memorabilia and other items from the Las Vegas hotel.

"We have some right to the footballs if they appear on the market,'' Cook said.

Read more at NBC Los Angeles