California Forum

At last count, the California state prison system housed 33,777 inmates diagnosed with significant mental illness, including 6,051 with severe conditions such as schizophrenia.

Ever since Congress failed to agree on budget actions to avoid the "sequester," naysayers have scoffed at the notion that across-the-board cuts would inflict real harm.

Should Hearst Castle be in the California state park system?

Even as California governments say they don't have enough money, they keep throwing it away – on information technology.

It's finally happening. There's been a lot of talk in recent years about Sacramento capitalizing on its natural geographic advantage in the heart of one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the world, but it hasn't gained much traction beyond local foodie circles.

Along with the rest of the country, America's ever-vigilant editorial cartoonists were watching the Supreme Court debate on California's Proposition 8 (our Blue State's odd defeat of something on the left of the spectrum), and the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by Hero of American Liberalism Bill Clinton in 1996.

Opening Day. Baseball owns that term. The regular season starts tonight. It means spring is here, and it recalls wistful childhood memories that seared our love for the game into our minds forever.

Jonylah Watkins died on a Tuesday.

When the U.S. military wanted to add more low-level training flights over Joshua Tree National Park, it first undertook an environmental review to assess the impact on the park's 1 million annual visitors, who were already complaining about fighter jets roaring over campgrounds and picnic areas.

Last month, I completed a ritual done every five years: the farm census.

State and federal agencies plan to build 35 miles of water tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. As we recently learned, this would produce a serious volume of "tunnel muck" – material bored from beneath the Delta.

The criticism of CalPERS by The Bee's editorial board, "CalPERS isn't a white knight in Stockton's bankruptcy" (March 27), demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Chapter 9 bankruptcies and the relationship between the city of Stockton, its employees and CalPERS.

All eyes will be on Sacramento's own Justice Anthony M. Kennedy this week when the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral argument in two important cases dealing with issues of fairness and equality under the law. These cases ask whether our Constitution allows same-sex relationships to be treated differently than their opposite-sex counterparts.

Hundreds of Stockton children – their faces a sea of brown, black and white – sit quietly on the floor of their elementary school cafeteria, eyes fixed intently on the prosecutor speaking in impassioned tones about the evils of cyberbullying.

Should a reporter disclose to readers that an interview was done via text, instead of in person or on the phone?

As a presidential candidate, Mitt Romney was pretty much a weenie.

This is Ann. … She drinks blood! Her full name is Anopheles Mosquito and she's dying to meet you!

Showing rare bipartisan determination, Republicans and Democrats after the November election vowed to fix the nation's obsolete immigration system, aiming to have a bill drafted by March.

In early 2008, the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. in Chino issued a recall for more than 143 million pounds of raw and frozen beef products, following the release of video footage showing that plant workers were abusing "downed" cows, including using forklifts to prod the animals to their feet.

Up here in Siskiyou County we're launching a 3-year-long celebration of poet and novelist Joaquin Miller. It's not surprising he's getting all this attention. Miller was a fascinating character, with large and contradictory impulses: a gun-toting desperado who wrote lyrical poetry, a gold miner who railed against the pollution caused by gold mining. He fought Indians and married the daughter of a Wintu Indian chief. Not for him a life of humdrum consistency.

"There you go again." That famous phrase was uttered in a debate by presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in response to his perceptions of incumbent Jimmy Carter's mischaracterizations. More than 30 years later, it can just as easily be applied to the latest round of health insurance increases by California companies.

No matter what Barack Obama does, he cannot escape the shadow of his former political opponent.

In Stuart Leavenworth's "Scope and impact of Delta twin tunnels is starting to hit home" (Forum, March 17), we were happy to see his growing concern regarding the extreme damage that will be done to Delta communities if the tunnels are built. His descriptions of the extraordinary impact of all the "tunnel muck" these tunnels will generate should give everyone pause.

Fewer than 14 percent of Californians smoke cigarettes or other tobacco products.