The nation’s state officials say they’re hurting.  As California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency, calling legislators into a new special session that won’t end until they agree on a way to trim the state’s $11.2 billion budget deficit, New Jersey’s governor says he’ll press President-elect Obama for a $600 billion stimulus package for states. Gov. Jon S. Corzine says he’ll make the case for the federal government to spend $600 billion-plus to stimulate growth in states across the country when he and other governors meet with President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday, reports Newsday. Corzine is among a group of governors set to meet with Obama in Philadelphia on Tuesday to discuss their financial woes. “Without immediate action, our state is headed for a fiscal disaster,” in which California could run out of money to pay its bills by late February, Schwarzenegger said in a news conference in Los Angeles on Monday. Meanwhile, the federal government has problems of its own. There’s talk that the U.S. Postal Service may soon lay off 5,000 workers.

Gay marriage not yet dead in Calif. In the latest showdown over the California Gay marriage measure known as Proposition 8, the state Supreme Court moved to consider three lawsuits that challenge the legality of the measure. But the court rejected a bid to put Prop 8 on hold while the legal challenges continue. Get the rest here.

Oprah’s California mansion is safe. Firefighters are finally getting a handle on wildfires, which destroyed hundreds of homes in Santa Barbara hills where a number of celebrities live and threatened the mansion of Oprah Winfrey. Fire came close to Oprah Winfrey’s mansion, but managed to miss the sprawling structure and the homes of many of the talk show host’s friends, whom she called on Friday to see whether they were ok after wind-driven fires forced them to flee with little more than their pets. Winfrey told her TV audience that had her estate actually caught fire, her main concern would have been her dogs, since she didn’t have any children. Wild fires spread to the northern edge of Los Angeles, cutting power to a hospital, which was force to operate on backup power Monday. They also forced firefighters to evacuate 5,000 people from the town of Sylmar just north of Los Angeles. Officials say the wind-blown blazes scorched more than 20,000 acres over the past four days and destroyed nearly 1,000 homes, including 500 homes in a trailer park. But no injuries have been reported. Winds eased by Monday morning, allowing firefighters to put in firebreaks and lift evacuation orders for about 25,000 people.

California says no to gay marriage. Supporters of same-sex marriage have filed at least three lawsuits challenging a ban on gay marriage in California after the state approved an initiative Tuesday to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples. California residents voted to amend the Constitution in Tuesday’s general election by a vote of 52 percent to 48 percent in near complete results. Voters in Arizona and Florida also approved amendments to ban gay marriage in their respective states.

A U.S. Marine and his wife apparently were killed by his own. California authorities are holding four U.S. Marines they say tortured and killed a bi-racial couple from Brooklyn, N.Y., in their San Diego-area home. The Marines apparently served under the command of Brooklyn-raised  Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak, of  Bensonhurst, who, with his wife, Quiana, were found bound and gagged in the ransacked house, each shot in the head execution-style, reports The New York Daily News.  Pietrzak was the suspects’ sergeant at Camp Pendleton, according to Quiana’s mother. Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak, 26, worked for the county’s Black Infant Care Center. Pietrzak’s mother, Henryka Pietrzak-Varga, said she had prepared herself “for the possibility that my son could die in Iraq.” “But to die like this, in their own home?” she told the News.  Read the rest here.

California mayor wants reporter’s death re-investigated

. Oakland Mayor Ronald Dellums said Monday he will ask for an outside investigation by either the state or federal Justice Department into city homicide Detective Sgt. Derwin Longmire’s handling of journalist Chauncey Bailey’s 2007 murder, the Chauncey Bailey Project reported early Tuesday. The lead detective assigned to investigate journalist Chauncey Bailey’s killing ignored evidence linking Yusuf Bey IV, former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, to a role in the killing and interfered in two other unrelated felony cases involving Bey IV, according to an investigation by the Project’s Thomas Peele, Bob Butler and Mary Fricker. The Chauncey Bailey Project is a joint venture between the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and more than 20 other news organizations that came together to complete the work of Bailey, an Oakland editor and writer who was gunned down in August 2007. The Bailey Project’s reporting has led to a police internal affairs investigation of that detective, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, and whether his close relationship with Bey IV may have compromised the case, according to InsideBayArea.com. Law enforcement officials said the investigation of the Bailey killing is in crisis. If Longmire is charged with administrative or criminal wrongdoing, the chances of convicting the one person charged, Devaughndre Broussard, might be jeopardized.

Presidential politics get ugly in California.

Sacramento County Republican leaders finally took down material from the party’s official Web site that encouraged people to “Waterboard Barack Obama.” The site also sought to link the Democratic presidential candidate to Osama bin Laden – material that even offended state GOP leaders. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s been pushing the party to appeal to more people, chastised party officials for its handling of the site –  that included materials that ranged from depicting Obama in a turban to attacks on his wife, Michelle Obama. “In the governor’s view, it’s completely and totally inappropriate,” said Julie Soderlund, a Schwarzenegger spokeswoman. Hector Barajas, a California Republican Party spokesman, said that while the Democrats weren’t innocent when it came to dirty politics, in this case the party might have gone too far. Barajas said the campaign should be about who is ready to be the nation’s commander-in-chief, that Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has never questioned Obama’s patriotism, that he’d ask local leaders to take down the offensive content. By Tuesday night, much of the questionable material had been removed, replaced with political cartoons attacking Obama.

Feds sweep up hundreds of illegals.

In what officials are calling the largest sweep of its kind in California history, federal immigration authorities Monday said they arrested nearly 1,600 immigrants who have eluded deportation orders. The massive sweep was the culmination of a three-week initiative targeting fugitive immigrants from San Diego to the Bay Area. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested 1,157 men and women — 436 in Northern California alone. Authorities arrested some 420 in the Los Angeles area and 301 in the San Diego area.

The university found a way around a state anti-affirmative action law

UCLA seems to have found away around a voter initiative that made it illegal to consider race and gender when deciding college admissions – but some believe the university’s policies are being manipulated in a way that cheats the voters of California . Twelve years ago, voters passed Proposition 209, which bars the state’s public universities from using race as a criterion in admissions. In the decade following the passage of the anti-affirmative action initiative, Black enrollment in the University of California system plummeted, and by 2006, only 103 of UCLA’s entering freshmen and 108 of its transfer students were African American – the shallowest level in 30 years. So UCLA got creative, adopting a “holistic” approach to admissions it says is much fairer. Under this plan, university officials began evaluating academic achievement, extracurricular activities and other criteria in context with applicants’ personal experiences. UCLA says it has struck pay dirt, as Black enrollment has crawled upward. For this school year, 230 of the 4,889 freshmen are African American – plus 100 transfer students. But critics, including political science Professor Tim Groseclose, say that UCLA isn’t as slick as it thinks. Last week, Groseclose quit the university’s Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations after accusing the campus’ top brass and his colleagues on the committee of a coverup. He had been denied the opportunity to officially study the rise in Black enrollment. “A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions,” he wrote in an 89-page report posted on a UCLA Web site. The university calls his claims bogus, saying he is drawing a false conclusion based on the increased diversity. What he fails to notice, officials say, is the university’s aggressive outreach, which was employed to counter an anti-minority law. “He’s taking an outcome and from that deducing a cause,” said Tom Lifka, associate vice chancellor for student academic services.

He says that the media and police are transfixed on finding White females.
Nine months have passed since a 16-year-old Black girl was reportedly kidnapped from her southern California high school, but there has been no massive public outcry from law-enforcement agencies or the media like that afforded missing White females, an NAACP official said Thursday. Find out more about her disappearance and what you can do at BET.com/News. Anyone with information about Chimoa should contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST.