California State Senator Mark Leno never intended to enter the political arena. A Wisconsin native who spent two years in rabbinical studies at the Hebrew Union College in New York, his focus was on running the small sign business he owns in San Francisco. But in 1998, then-Mayor Willie Brown appointed him to fill a vacancy on the Board of Supervisors, and a new career was born. Now approaching his final year in the Legislature, we sat down with him to discuss raising the minimum wage, regulating the sharing economy and LGBT rights.

California State Sen. Mark Leno is often at odds with his Republican counterparts in the Legislature. But there is one area where Leno, a San Francisco Democrat, has regularly found bipartisan agreement: protecting consumers’ digital privacy.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia argued last year that there was something wrong with having a Supreme Court composed entirely of people who had studied at Harvard and Yale law schools.

We hear a lot about the bad news: Fewer than 8.2 percent of eligible voters ages 18–24 turned out in the 2014 general election; most Americans cannot name the three branches of government; many young people do not think their civic involvement is worthwhile. But there are pockets of good news all around us. More schools are building on the old adage, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” We call this “action civics,” and we know it works.

California Governor Jerry Brown proposed a $123 billion general-fund spending plan for the next fiscal year, a 6 percent increase over the current budget and the largest ever as state coffers overflow with surging tax revenue.

I am looking into assisted living facilities for my mother. What is the difference between assisted living facilities, residential care facilities, retirement homes, and board and care homes? What agency oversees these facilities and how are they licensed?

The University of California at Davis and Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida have suspended a planned drug trial sponsored by KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc. following the arrest of Chief Executive Officer Martin Shkreli on securities fraud charges.

From small businesses to big chains and state agencies, no system is 100-percent hacker-proof. But in September, Gov. Jerry Brown took another step to prevent cyberattacks that cause data breaches with an order to create the California Cybersecurity Integration Center (Cal-CSIC).

As Governor Jerry Brown is in Paris urging other political leaders to follow his lead in curbing global warming, the chief executive of California’s largest oil company said the state’s policies “unambiguously raise energy costs and do nothing about greenhouse-gas emissions.”

Dino Cortopassi, who lives near Stockton, watched as the California city loaded up on debt for amenities like a waterfront ballpark, only to slash services after the community went bankrupt. So he’s spending $4 million in an effort to give the state’s voters more power to curb bond sales.