A California judge has overturned the conspiracy conviction in connection with Anna Nicole Smith's death. Howard K. Stern is free again.

A federal appeals court has asked the California Supreme Court to help answer a question about who has standing to fight same sex marriage in the courts.

Delightful young actress Drew Barrymore recently paid a sweet $6.9 million for this Santa Barbara County home, an 11,000 square-foot behemoth that was originally built for a baroness and comes complete with a tower and 40-foot reflecting pool.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger took up the time-honored tradition of hooking up friends on the way out of office by reducing the prison term of political ally Fabian Nuñez's son, Esteban, who participated in the murder of a college student.

Flooding and mudslides have been reported in San Diego County, while we hear a tornado warning has been issued in LA, as another round of wild storms wallops the area. Hopefully valuable celebrities will be the first to be evacuated.

As repayment for unemployment benefits he collected in 1964, retiree Dennis Ferguson is helping California close its "massive" deficit with a check made out to the state for $10,000. Just 2.5 million more old guys and they're all set!

The most exciting part of the USC-UCLA matchup last weekend had nothing to do with the game itself, because it was all about this red sweatsuit-clad granny who got her freak on—repeatedly!—at a pre-game tailgate party. Watch inside.

A nationwide shortage of key execution drug sodium thiopental has put several death row cases on hold this year. Documents show that California prison officials obtained some from Arizona, making them very happy: "You guys in AZ are life savers."

Retired tennis great Pete Sampras had a "majority" of the memorabilia from his days as a champion stolen from a California public storage facility, including rings, medals and trophies. It's very sad, but why was that stuff in public storage?

Just in time for Christmas, Beverly Hills' high-end Golden Triangle shopping area is under a relentless bedbug assault, and one entomologist describes the PTSD-like horror of dealing with a bedbug infestation: "There's a huge emotional impact that can't be underestimated."

The constitutional challenge to California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage begins tomorrow, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and cameras will be allowed in the courtroom for the first time. The proceedings are scheduled to last an hour. [NBC]

The LA County Coroner's office gift shop has seen lackluster sales over the years, so auditors suggested they hire a marketing firm. The office's chief knows they have a cash cow: "There is a mystique about the LA County coroner."

Yet more evidence that Northern California is the Chillest Place on Earth: City-sanctioned pot farms and "gardens" should soon be springing up in a handful of super laid-back municipalities. In Oakland, they're processing applications for four "industrial sized pot farms."

[Paris Hilton painted over MS-13 gang graffiti (uh oh) wearing high heels in Los Angeles yesterday as part of her community service for a drug conviction or something. Image via Pacific Coast News]

Government counter-terrorism officials gamed out a very likely terrorist scenario in a Northern California drill this week: That of marijuana growers setting off bombs, taking hostages, and laying siege to a strategically critical dam. We are so prepared for this!

Losing California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman will pay back wages to her former housekeeper. Guess she had some money left over.

L.A. County has banned plastic grocery bags. That's six billion bags a year, unrealized.

In 1997, Pacific Gas & Electric paid $333 million in settlements to residents of Hinkley, California over groundwater laced with cancer-causing chromium. Today, the same town from Erin Brockovich is under threat from a "plume" of chromium in the groundwater.

Police in California are trying to figure out how a 94-year-old woman wound up locked inside a walk-in freezer in her swanky nursing home, Silverado Senior Living. Silverado is best known for a former employee who's serving life for torture.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger this summer declared a "fiscal emergency" over the state's $19 billion budget deficit, and they finally passed a new budget last month. But now that budget is another $6 billion in the red. Poor Jerry Brown.