TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

Recent Stories

1. 

   ROBERT PRICE: Rubio will be spending some quality time with Chevron

   Excuse my cynicism, but I have yet to meet a politician whose abrupt resignation to "spend more time with my family" has had much to do with spending more time with his family. Experience tells me that if we haven't already heard about...

2. ROBERT PRICE: Mentor and protege, six years later

   Remember when Kevin McCarthy was regarded as a dutiful lieutenant likely to follow in the political and ideological footsteps of his mentor and long-serving predecessor, Bill Thomas? McCarthy served on Thomas' staff for a decade, so he...
3. 

   ROBERT PRICE: Young mother didn't want her baby -- but somebody did

   A full moon lit the sky over Bakersfield one night last April when a young caucasian woman, perhaps 20, picked up the phone just outside the front door of City Fire Station 8. She was carrying a newborn baby girl. A newborn she intended...

4. ROBERT PRICE: McCarthy needs to lead on immigration reform

   Kevin McCarthy is in a position of power right now, even more so than one would normally expect of the third-ranking Republican in the GOP-dominated House. The nature of McCarthy's congressional district -- conservative but also heavily...

5. ROBERT PRICE: Commas have a lot of say-so in gun debate

   I'm one of those punctuation nerds who gets mildly irritated when people who should know better place apostrophes in places they shouldn't. The world is full of punctuation police like me; how else do we explain the success of books like...

6. ROBERT PRICE: Scapegoat for gun violence: mental illness

   This gun control stuff is tricky business. Without Thomas Jefferson around to help sort things out, regulating a well-regulated militia in a judicious manner turns out to be pretty daunting. The NRA, with its singular focus on the words...
7. 

   ROBERT PRICE: Our great restaurants would be nuts to miss this

   A telling convergence of seemingly inconsequential Bakersfield food news has taken place over the past few days. Yes, food news. On Jan. 8, in his weekly live Web chat with readers, "It's Lunchtime With Jonathan Gold!," the Los Angeles...
9. 

   ROBERT PRICE: Once in a while, we get to be friends

   Jana Warren Byers died the other day. Maybe you knew her. Wife, mother of five, grandmother of 10, enthusiastic cookie baker, voracious Facebooker, and just 49. I'd known her for 10, maybe 12 years. And I met her right here, in these pages...
10. 

    ROBERT PRICE: Register your predictions for 2013 here

    It's been a bad year for predictions, as any ancient Mayan priest can tell you. Despite  this fact, I've developed, in consultation with world leaders and the spinner-thing on my Twister board, some very real possibilities for 2013. You're...

11. ROBERT PRICE: In America, sanity has its work cut out

    An armed madman burst into an elementary school Friday and attacked dozens of children, creating a chaotic scene of panic and terror. Maybe you heard about it. And how many died? Zero. No, I'm not referring to the abomination that took...

12. ROBERT PRICE: How to bring more doctors to Bakersfield

    Newcomers to the medical profession are walking into a buyer's market. The demand for doctors and other health care professionals far outstrips the supply. That means young doctors, nurses, physician assistants and assorted technicians...
13. 

    ROBERT PRICE: Advice from the world's worst shopper

    My most memorable holiday shopping trip was probably the Christmas Eve I burst into Macy's an hour or so before closing. Scrambling through the aisles at a half-trot, I scooped up the first gender-appropriate garments for my intended...

14. ROBERT PRICE: Abe would frown on this secession, too

    Just in time for the opening weekend of Steven Spielberg's highly anticipated "Lincoln," the Union has a new secession crisis. Well, "crisis" is probably not the right word, certainly not in comparison to what the 16th president faced 150...