And just like June, he walked off his home floor with the MVP trophy in his hands.

Shining brightest again among the stars, Bryant brought Showtime back to the All-Star game, scoring 37 points and tying a record with his fourth MVP award in the Western Conference’s 148-143 victory over the East on Sunday night.

“I feel like we have a sense of responsibility and we are voted in for what we do during the season, which is play hard,” Bryant said. “And we come here, that’s what the fans want to see. They want to see us go at it and see us compete and that’s what I try to do and that’s what I try to tell my teammates to do.”

Returning to the game he dominates after a one-year absence, Bryant added 14 rebounds in a spectacular performance in front of the usual celebrity-filled crowd that turns out to see his Lakers at Staples Center.

“It was like playing in a playground. It was like a pickup game almost,” Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant said. “Just to watch it, I see it on TV all the time, I play against him all the time. But to be on his team and see the things that he was doing out there is just amazing.”

Here is an example of societies finest citizens in action. I truly feel for the family of Chester Jackson, but the news crew was just doing their job. All the family had to do was say “back off”. Senseless violence. The photo shows the reporter being confronted.  Track em down and lock em up…

From FOX40.com:

NATOMAS —A FOX40 reporter and photographer were attacked while covering a murder investigation in Natomas.

Early this morning, a man who friends identify as 27-year-old Chester Jackson was shot and killed in a parking lot outside an IHOP in the 2900 block of Advantage Way. Sacramento Police say it started as a fight inside the restaurant.

Friends and family gathered at the scene Sunday and set up a memorial with candles and balloons.

When FOX40 reporter Joe Lobertini and photojournalist Rebecca Little approached around 4 p.m.  to see if anyone wanted to talk about what happened, they were attacked.

The attackers pulled Little to the ground by her hair and kicked her in the face. Lobertini was also punched in the face.

Both are shaken up but are doing okay.

Early this morning, a man who friends identify as 27-year-old Chester Jackson was shot and killed in a parking lot outside an IHOP in the 2900 block of Advantage Way. Sacramento Police say it started as a fight inside the restaurant.

Friends and family gathered at the scene Sunday and set up a memorial with candles and balloons.

When FOX40 reporter Joe Lobertini and photojournalist Rebecca Little approached around 4 p.m.  to see if anyone wanted to talk about what happened, they were attacked.

The attackers pulled Little to the ground by her hair and kicked her in the face. Lobertini was also punched in the face.

Both are shaken up but are doing okay.

Test

If Berkeley names this guy a hero, they should lose ALL Federal dollars! There is a huge difference between exposing bad calls or decisions by the government and giving out classified details that could jeopardize our troops.

BERKELEY, Calif. — Some consider a soldier’s alleged release of classified information to WikiLeaks an act of treason.

The City Council in Berkeley is deciding whether to proclaim him a hero deserving of a medal.

The council in this famously liberal city is considering a resolution Tuesday night bestowing hero status on Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier at the center of the Wikileaks fury. Manning has become a hero to some groups on the anti-war left who believe the soldier performed a valuable public service.

It’s the latest in a long line of provocative political statements by leaders in Berkeley, a city of 100,000 across the bay from San Francisco that was the epicenter of the anti-war movement in the Vietnam era.

The city put a measure on the 2006 ballot calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and more recently tried to declare Marine recruiters “unwanted intruders.”

The resolution proposed by the city’s Peace and Justice Commission praises Manning for exposing “war crimes” by allegedly leaking a 2007 video of a laughing U.S. Apache helicopter crew gunning down 11 men in Baghdad, Iraq, including a Reuters news photographer.

“The United States Army covered up the evidence and declared this war crime ‘justified’ and now claims that exposing the massacre is criminal,” the resolution reads. “Blowing the whistle on war crimes is not a crime.”

Military investigators also suspect the 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified Afghan and Iraq war reports and an untold number of secret U.S. diplomatic cables onto a Lady Gaga CD and a computer memory stick while stationed in Iraq. Wikileaks published the war reports earlier this year and began releasing the cables late last month.

The 22-year-old soldier has not commented publicly on whether he is the source of the leaks. But anti-war groups have rallied behind him and are raising money for his defense.

“We obviously think Manning’s a hero,” said Jeff Manning, a project manager for Courage to Resist, the group that authored the resolution as part of its mission of supporting anti-war members of the U.S. armed services. “If he’s going to have a shot at justice in a military courtroom we have to move more people to think the same way.”

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has won similar support from anti-war groups, including documentary maker Michael Moore, as he appeared before a British judge Tuesday in hopes of getting released on bail on a sex-crimes warrant.

The Wikileaks controversy is reminiscent of the uproar in Berkeley over Marine Corps recruiters in the city’s downtown. A resolution declaring them “unwanted intruders” also was proposed by the Peace and Justice Commission, which is described on the city’s website as advisers to the council.

The council reversed itself on the Marine Corps resolution following protests by conservative and veteran groups.

At least one such group has already condemned the resolution in support of Manning.

“It’s tragic that the same rights and liberties afforded to Berkeley’s citizens through the sacrifices of our service members and veterans can be manipulated and exploited for such an absurd purpose,” Ryan Gallucci, a spokesman for the veterans’ service group AMVETS, wrote on the organization’s blog.

Berkeley officials have argued in the past that the city government’s penchant for tackling major geopolitical issues alongside potholes and traffic is in keeping with the diversity of the city’s residents, who come from around the world to attend the University of California, Berkeley.

But the city is also not shy about taking up causes that don’t deal with foreign wars.

For example, when the Rev. Jerry Falwell attacked the purse-toting Teletubby “Tinky Winky” as a homosexual role model in 1999, Berkeley passed a proclamation that read “Long live Tinky Winky.”

VACAVILLE – “Something just wasn’t right. I didn’t feel good about him,” Salvation Army Capt. Jonathan Harvey said.

It’s a feeling that eventually led to the arrest of 47-year-old Maurice Van Buren of Vacaville, for posing as a Salvation Army bell ringer and stealing money.

Van Buren is also a convicted sex offender.

The Salvation Army had initially put him to work on Monday, as a bell ringer. Results of a background check hadn’t come back yet.

But when Capt. Harvey checked up on Van Buren outside of Big Lots on Monday…

“… leaning up against the wall which we don’t like,” the captain said.

Harvey took back the Salvation Army kettle and apron from Van Buren.

“We had chosen to not put him to work this week, and await for that background check. And when we received that, it was a decision that definitely wasn’t the person for us,” he said.

Copyright © 2010, KTXL-TV

Tomorrow is the official Santa Parade in Sacramento.  We’ll be there, will you?

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s race is finally over and Jones comes out on top!

Captain Jim Cooper called Captain Scott Jones to congratulate him on his victory and wish him the best of luck. Cooper also offered to help Jones in his new position.

As of 4 p.m. Monday, Jones was up by nearly 5,000 votes.  Cooper’s total vote-count was 173,674, while Jones held 178,636 votes.

For those of you that can’t tell, I’m pretty happy right about now.  If you remember, I was pretty irritated when my daughter received a “Sex Crimes” pamphlet from under my front door.  up until that point, Cooper had my vote.

Next time Captain Cooper, monitor your campaign a bit closer…

A California school has done a U-turn after it forced a student to remove an American flag attached to his bike, saying the Stars and Stripes could spur racial tensions on campus.

Cody Alicea,13, had been flying the flag on the back of his bicycle for almost two months to show support for veterans like his grandfather, Robert Alicea.

But just in time for Veterans Day, school officials at Denair Middle School told Cody he would no longer be allowed to display the flag, citing complaints from other students.

Now, after a public outcry, the school has decided that the grand old flag can come back.

Superintendent Edward Parraz says the school was trying to avoid racial tensions that stemmed from a “little issue” that arose when Hispanic students brought Mexican flags to school on Cinco De Mayo.

“That’s when it all kind of started, and I think it carried through so that when Cody started doing his flag everybody said well why isn’t he getting in trouble?” Parraz told Fox40.com.

So the school asked Cody to remove the flag, both to keep the peace and for his own protection.

“It was a safety concern that that particular campus supervisor called at that particular time based on information she had heard,” Parraz said.

Cody says he complied with the request to avoid trouble, but he asked the school to reconsider because he believed the decision was wrong.

“I’m supposed to be free in this country and I should be able to fly the flag wherever I want to,” he told Fox40.

Apparently, he wasn’t alone.

Parraz says the school got flooded with so many complaints from upset parents both inside and outside of Denair that he was called into to “handle the situation.”

“It was crazy” he said.

Parraz says the school decided on Friday to allow Cody to display his flag again, and now it will be shifting its focus to the students who complained.

“In no way did we want to take that right away from Cody,” Parraz told Fox40 on Friday. “…We think we know who the instigators are that were trying to do that and we need to meet with their parents and those students to just kind of explain that this isn’t what we want to have. We want to make sure that our kids can appreciate a safe environment and be able to have the American flag.”

This is a few months old, but still just another example of problems in our schools…

A Cumberland County high school student says a homework assignment violated her Christian beliefs, so she took a stand. Tieanna Trough is an AB honor roll student at Gray’s Creek High School. The junior potentially sacrificed her good grades over her Christian faith. Trough refused to write an essay on making a deal with the Devil. Trough says when the teacher told students to write an essay on how they would sell their souls – or what trade they would make with the Devil – she refused, saying that compromised her Christian values and her parents agreed.

It’s not appropriate to to bring god in the classroom, but’s it ok for the devil?!?

Heeeeeeeer’s Jerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry…