TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

Recent Stories

1. 

   CONNECTING CALIFORNIA: The state pinches its pennies in one regard

   "What a dump," says Brad Pitt near the end of the 2011 film "Moneyball," channeling his inner Bette Davis. Pitt is talking about the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, home stadium of baseball's Oakland Athletics. (It's now known as the O.co...

2. DANA MILBANK: Stirred by a message from the heart

   In Washington, D.C., a city where David's righteousness almost never beats Goliath's might, what Nicole Hockley and the other Sandy Hook families did to the gun lobby last week was nigh unto miraculous. Gun control legislation had appeared...
3. 

   MICHAEL GERSON: Margaret Thatcher, moralist

   Post-World War II Great Britain was the full, fearless application of modern liberalism -- what Margaret Thatcher called "those banal and bureaucratic instruments of coercion, confiscatory taxation, nationalization and oppressive...
4. 

   ESTHER CEPEDA: Unfortunately, we are what we eat

   People don't know how to eat right. Almost from birth, the food we take in and the way it is marketed conspire to make us addicted and even sick. As a result, all but a few of us will face an early grave because of our indulgences. This...
5. 

   CONNECTING CALIFORNIA: Harris is one hot AG, and that means trouble

   I don't care what our elites say. No one is going to stop me from speaking the truth to power. And here's a truth about power that a lot of people can't handle: the attorney general of California is hot. Very hot. But when the most...

6. DANA MILBANK: President Obama's feeble pay-cut gesture

   "President Obama plans to give up 5 percent of his salary this year to draw attention to the financial sacrifice of more than 1 million federal employees who will be furloughed." -- The Washington Post, April 4 *** "Here's the plan....

7. ESTHER CEPEDA: Hollywood still doesn't get it

   Unbelievably, the entertainment industry's dearth of ethnic diversity and surplus of stereotypical Latino portrayals have devolved into something unsettling. We've gone from seeing poor representation in films and TV shows to wanting that...

9. JOE MATHEWS: Perceptions about our state can vary wildly

   California is a famously volatile place -- lurching from boom to bust and from sunshine to natural disaster -- but it's nowhere near as volatile as the perceptions of California. Only last year, the state was being routinely compared to...
10. 

    MICHAEL GERSON: Victory for school choice

    The school choice movement -- which germinated 50 years ago in free-market economist Milton Friedman's fertile mind -- recently counted its largest victory. The Indiana Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the state's...
11. 

    LOSING OUR RELIGION: We are becoming a nation polarized by faith

    Part 2 of 2 At the Normandy American Cemetery on the cliff above Omaha Beach, there are rows and rows of crosses and Stars of David. Certainly, many buried there were not religious. But the overwhelming majority of Americans in the...
12. 

    ESTHER CEPEDA: Staying together to get ahead

    Thank you, US2010 Project, for stating the so-often misunderstood obvious: "Hispanic" is not synonymous with "Mexican." The project, based at Brown University and dedicated to researching changes in American society, has released a report...
13. 

    LOSING OUR RELIGION: More Americans profess lack of affiliation

    Part 1 of 2 There is a close relationship between culture and cult -- between the shared attitudes and values of a people and their religious views and practices. American culture is increasingly shaped by men and women who would rather...
14. 

    MICHAEL GERSON: The GOP's strategic failure

    Recent brutal attacks on the GOP have claimed that minorities often think that "Republicans do not like them or want them in the country." That younger voters are "rolling their eyes at what the party represents." That former Republicans...