By Susan Ferriss, Sacramento Bee

Budget-cutting changes to California's In-Home Supportive Services program began Monday, affecting thousands of low-income seniors and disabled people and their caregivers.

Budget-related legislation requires the Department of Social Services to cut $82.1 million in program costs this year.

Q: Does a federal lawsuit stop the cuts and program changes?

Frustrated California voters think a state government overhaul is needed, but a majority believes it shouldn't be so easy for them to change the state's constitution at the ballot box, a new Field Poll has found.

Raising the ballot box threshold for approving a constitutional amendment from a majority to two-thirds was favored by 56 percent in the poll and opposed by 36 percent.

The '60s aren't dead. They're in an archaeological site north of San Francisco.

An old commune where the Grateful Dead and other bands used to romp is being excavated and items catalogued by state park archaeologists at Olompali State Historic Park in California.

A proposed law to recognize a growing number of same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries is winding its way through California's Legislature.
Opponents of gay marriage say California Senate Bill 54 violates Proposition 8, a voter initiative approved last November that amended the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

California's legislators were gay-rights trailblazers when a majority passed the first same-sex marriage bill in the United States in 2005.
But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill, and voters passed a ban on gay marriage with Proposition 8. Now gay activists in the Golden State find themselves looking East for fresh inspiration.

In a major legal win for immigrant workers, thousands of California construction workers will start receiving checks April 15 to compensate for unpaid wages and other alleged labor violations committed during California's housing boom.

At California's historic hearing on Proposition 8 earlier this month, Supreme Court Justice Ming Chin briefly imagined a scenario that might solve the legal conflict over a gay marriage ban.
What if the government were to get out of the "marriage business," Ming asked, and issue civil-union licenses to both straight and gay couples?

Flor Gutierrez has a bird's eye view of how immigrants - 37 percent of California's labor force - are reacting so far to a punishing recession.

Despite an economic downturn and fear of drug-trafficking violence gripping Mexico, officials there say they expect up to 1 million Mexican nationals and their children to return to their homeland to be with family for the Christmas break. It's about the same number as last year, officials estimated.

Crescencio Acevedo, 86, said he could still use the wages he believes were stolen from him more than 60 years ago, during World War II.He needs new dentures.