A.M. Splash: 3 Federal Immigration Agents Shot in Petaluma; John Yoo Torture Suit Tossed Out

Three federal agents were wounded early Thursday in Petaluma serving a high-risk search warrant that may have ties to the Peninsula. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents' injuries weren't life threatening and one person was taken into custody, according to federal officials. The connection wasn't immediately clear, but federal, state and local police were expected to launch early Thursday a large scale gang sweep in the region in connection with a 2010 triple homicide in South San Francisco, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

...By 11 p.m., police had made dozens of arrests; most of the fight had gone out of protestors. Yet unlike prior protests, which resulted in hundreds of peaceful demonstrators being tear-gassed and/or arrested in retaliation for the actions of a few cowardly individuals using Black Bloc tactics, OPD didn’t appear to violate its own crowd-control policies. There were a few unconfirmed reports of excessive force, however; one reportedly against a 65 year-old man who was allegedly injured while attempting to videotape police.

California is on the verge of becoming one of the first states to bar companies from asking job applicants and employees for their user names and passwords on Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites. In the wake of national reports of employers doing just that, the Assembly Labor Committee on Wednesday unanimously approved a bill that would make the intimate details behind password-protected "walls" off-limits to employers. The measure is expected to sail through the Legislature with little opposition.

California State University trustees say they are finally getting the message that they can't afford to pay campus presidents ever higher salaries. On Tuesday, the trustees will consider axing a policy adopted in January that let them pay new presidents 10 percent more than outgoing presidents. Instead, new salaries would be the same as the old ones - at least until 2014.

The San Francisco Unified School District has violated more than 100 special education regulations in the past year, according to a recent report by the California Department of Education. The violations include failing to properly assess students’ disabilities, implement federally mandated services and employ qualified staff to work with special-needs students.

John Yoo, the UC Berkeley law professor who advised President George W. Bush on interrogation of terror suspects, can't be sued for allegedly authorizing a prisoner's harsh treatment even if it amounted to torture, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

California State University faculty announced Wednesday that they have approved a measure to give their union leaders the power to authorize a strike next fall that could delay the beginning of school for thousands of students across the 23-campus university system.

District Attorney George Gascón, a major supporter of the proposed ballot initiative to reform California’s perennially controversial three-strikes law, calls the proposal “conservative” and claims it will save the state billions of dollars without turning soft on crime.