It's not just California.  Fox News carries this story, which begins:

Hundreds of illegal immigrants with criminal records were released earlier this year as the Obama administration prepared for budget cuts, according to newly released data that challenged claims the program involved "low-risk" individuals ****Of the 2,226 detainees that were released in February, the department revealed, "622 have been identified as having some type of criminal conviction."

Nelson Peacock, assistant secretary for legislative affairs, said ICE focused on [releasing]  those that "posed no significant threat to public safety."

I've been blogging about a lot of serious and heart-wrenching stuff.  Time for something on the light side.  This headline should do:

Woman Calls 911, Asks Police for Help Getting

Refund from Her Drug Dealer

After handing over her last $50 to a drug dealer for cocaine and marijuana, a Florida woman suffering from buyer's remorse called 911 and asked cops for help in securing a refund.

Katrina Tisdale, 47, explained to St. Petersburg police that she would be penniless until her next Social Security disability check arrived. Hence the pressing need to recover her $50 from the unnamed narcotics salesman.

Despite Tisdale's explanation for her two calls to 911 Monday evening, officers arrested her for misusing the police emergency system...Tisdale was booked into the Pinellas County jail, where she is being held on $100 bond.

According to jail records, Tisdale has been arrested many times over the past several years, including six arrests for cocaine possession. Tisdale was convicted in mid-2011 of calling 911 to falsely report that she had been robbed by her drug dealer.   

You probably think no one would be crazy or perverse enough to name a school after a murderer, right?  Certainly not after the massacre of 20 children at their school became one of the biggest, and most horrible, stories of 2012, right?

The San Francisco Chronicle has this editorial on a bill that is too far out even for the City by the Bay:

California is getting its first nonstarter idea for a new legislative session: a "Homeless Persons' Bill of Rights" that targets curbs on behavior and conditions on cash welfare payments to people living on the streets.

The bill, introduced by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat, is an absurd reaction to restrictions on homeless conduct and tough-love ideas such as San Francisco's "Care Not Cash" program that substitutes housing and counseling services for welfare checks.

The CBS News Bureau in San Francisco carries this report:

Oakland Crime Rate Soaring as City Loses Officers

OAKLAND (KCBS) - Burglaries are up a startling 43 percent in Oakland this year compared to last, part of an ever-growing crime problem in the city.

According to the latest numbers from the Oakland Police Department, more than 11,000 homes, cars or businesses have been broken into so far this year - translating to about 33 burglaries a day. The most popular targets have been cars with more than 5,700 burglarized so far this year.

One of the most likely reasons for the sharp uptick in crime - city officials said they believe it's the gradual loss of police officers from the force.

The city could be down to a little more than 600 officers by February, which would be 200 fewer than in 2008. Even with another 40 expected to graduate from Police Academy, they will be rookies and there is already talk of trying to contract with outside agencies for support.

Neal Riley reports in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Undressing in public will likely no longer go unpunished in San Francisco, as the Board of Supervisors voted by the barest of margins Tuesday to ban public nudity.

Derided by nudity defenders as an attack on personal expression and supported by others who've had enough of seeing those who let it all hang out, the legislation bans genital exposure on all city sidewalks, plazas, parklets, streets and public transit.

As for the outdoor venues, I would have thought that San Francisco's permanently chilly weather would be a sufficient deterrent.  I wear a sweater there in August.  But some nudists are determined.

You know what comes next, of course:

Matthai Kuruvila reports in the SF Chron:

People who've e-mailed Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan over the past year about Occupy Oakland probably didn't get much of a response.

Heather MacDonald has this article in the City Journal, subtitled "Reforming marijuana laws is one thing; demonizing the NYPD is another."

New York governor Andrew Cuomo has introduced a bill into the state legislature that drastically reduces the penalty for the public possession of small amounts of marijuana. The law represents Cuomo's entry into an escalating controversy over the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk practices: anti-cop advocates charge that racially biased stop-and-frisks are producing racially biased marijuana arrests. Neither charge is true, and Cuomo's failure to say so has done the city a disservice. Nevertheless, Cuomo's bill is a change the city can live with, one that may even produce public-safety benefits. Predictably, however, the NYPD's opponents have already made clear that the proposed marijuana law will have no effect on their crusade to decimate proactive policing once and for all.

Jean Valjean is the saintly hero of Victor Hugo's immortal novel, "Les Miserables."  He stole a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family, and was sentenced in pre-Revolutionary France to cruel imprisonment.  His soul was rescued from a lifetime of bitterness by the loving act of a bishop, who, after Valjean's release, had given him a night's shelter, only to have Valjean sneak away before dawn with the bishop's silverware.  The ensuing story of the bishop's candlesticks is the most poignant and moving passage of fiction I have ever read. 

The Georgia woman, 26, was so determined to shoplift beer, bacon, cheese, and chicken wings from a Piggly Wiggly that she punched, spit at, and pepper-sprayed store workers who confronted her as she tried to flee the supermarket Wednesday afternoon, according to cops....

Appling kept [pepper-]spraying as several workers tried to keep her from fleeing. The 340-pound Appling also allegedly punched [a store employee] in the face and spit on the 28-year-old employee. As she successfully bolted from the Athens store, Appling "was dropping beer cans out of her purse."

While in police custody, Appling told a cop to add whatever charges he wanted

because she was going to plea bargain and half of the charges would be dropped anyway," according to the report. She also asked Officer Nathaniel Franco if her arrest would make the police blotter, requesting that the cop make his report "more interesting so that her arrest would make" the department's compendium of notable incidents.

Rudy Giuliani has this article in the City Journal.

Wilson's idea [Broken Windows, with George Kelling] was a revelation and a reversal of the conventional wisdom up to that point. The dominant liberal theories told us that if we provided more social services to the poor, perhaps crime would get better. But Wilson suggested that instead we turn our attention to providing a better and cleaner place to live, raising the expectations of the community by improving the quality of life--and that then crime would decline.

And it did.

Last October, I noted in this post on the occupy movement, "I actually agree with a few of the protestors' positions....   But why does anyone think extended occupation of public spaces is an effective way to achieve anything?"

Today the USA Today editorial page, which I don't often agree with, has this:

When the "Occupy" movement was launched last year, it garnered considerable attention and enthusiasm. Labor unions, in particular, were amazed at how Occupy managed to put Wall Street institutions on the defensive, something the liberals had been trying to do for years.

But with the recent clearing of encampments in Washington, D.C.-- one of the last cities in which they still existed -- a movement that came in with a bang appears to be going out with a whimper. Future political operatives might view it as a case study in how not to organize a lasting movement.

SF Chrontrarian Debra Saunders has this column on the further degeneration of Occupy Oakland:

Occupy Oakland protesters broke into City Hall on Saturday, sprayed graffiti, toppled a historic model of City Hall and children's artwork, stole and then burned an American flag, sprayed graffiti and otherwise trashed the people's building. Police arrested about 400 people. Mayor Jean Quan likened the activists' behavior to "a tantrum," as she complained Occupy activists have been treating the city "like a playground."

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hear from District of Columbia officials and the National Park Service next Tuesday during a subcommittee hearing titled "McPherson Square: Who Made the Decision to Allow Indefinite Camping in the Park?"

Full announcement is here.

Well, if neither rain nor sleet nor pepper spray nor common sense is enough to convince the occupiers that long-term occupation of public places is a bad idea, maybe this will do it.  Annie Gowen writes in the WaPo's Post Now Blog:

The rat population around the two Occupy D.C. camps at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza has "exploded"since protesters began their vigil in October, according to Mohammad N. Akhter, the director of the District's Department of Health.

Akhter said in an interview Monday that city health inspectors have seen rats running openly through both camps and spotted numerous new burrows and nests underneath hay-stuffed pallets occupiers are using for beds. Both campsites had working kitchens for weeks until last week, but protesters at McPherson Square voluntarily closed down theirs after health inspectors pointed out unsanitary conditions during an informal monitoring visit.

I generally look with disdain on the Black Friday shopping madness and make a point of avoiding it, but this year it did have redeeming social value in, of all places, San Francisco.  Kevin Fagan reports in the Chron:

Bargains and a pretty holiday tree trumped politics Friday night.

Occupy SF activists had hoped to keep shoppers out of downtown San Francisco stores to protest corporate greed, but no matter how hard they yelled, shoppers shoved right on by.

You can defy police, mayors, and assorted other authority figures and sometimes get away with it, but try to stand in the way of Black Friday shoppers, and you just get swatted like a fly.