Here's the root issue: A lack of familiarity with California's laws and basic legal concepts.

For example, the law doesn't specify whether residence restrictions apply to all convicted sex offenders or only to those who were convicted or paroled after it passed.

The inference there is that because the law doesn't discuss retroactivity, that voters left that open to debate. In other words, that it could be retroactive. Well, first, California has statutory prohibitions against "presumptive retroactivity" in its laws. That is, California law says that if another law doesn't declare itself retroactive, it's not retroactive. That's a basic tenant of statutory construction: expressio unius est exclusio alterius, if something's omitted, it's excluded from the meaning and interpretation of a statute.

This is a time-honored, bedrock legal principle that even every law student would be aware of. And those aren't my words, they're Justice Rehnquist's in U.S. v Security Industries Bank.

Of course, nothing is ever quite that black and white. There was a federal court case addressing the retroactivity. Several anonymous sex offenders asked the court to prevent the state from enforcing the law's residency restrictions on them. The judge applied California's rules of statutory construction and found the law couldn't apply to sex offenders released before voters passed it in 2006. In fact, this case was actually held against those sex offenders because they'd asked for an injunction against the state. The court said the statute is so plainly not retroactive that they don't even need the injunction.

Here, reading the SPPCA retroactively would raise serious ex post facto concerns, and the court is obligated to avoid doing so if it can reasonably construe the statute prospectively...

(ex post facto means "after the fact" and the U.S. Constitution generally prohibits laws that criminalize behavior or increase punishment for a criminal offense after its committed)

Some, including Ms. Hearn, the Watchdog's editor, have argued that the federal court case isn't important because the State Supreme Court is free to ignore that decision in an upcoming case about the law differently if it so chooses. Hardly. While that the State Supreme Court is not bound by the federal court's decision, a federal court is generally obliged by various legal precedents and doctrines to not get involved in a dispute over state law if it can't easily predict how the state high court will rule. "Plainly, that is not the case here," the court wrote in its decision.

There are other problematic statements in the story.

Attorneys for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation say voters intended to create "predator-free zones," so the law applies to all registered sex offenders.

Ms. Hearn and others have cited this as a defense of their piece, saying that it represents the state's current position on the law. Indeed, this argument was put before the federal court. The judge shot it down, noting the phrase "predator free zone" comes from the official ballot summary. The court called it "sloganeering" of the type expected in an argument in favor of the law and said it's "not to be taken literally" because the law doesn't prevent any sex offender from actually entering those zones, just from living there. So, in other words, how could it really be a "predator free zone"? It can't.

Astoundingly, the Watchdog Institute didn't even mention the federal case in its story. They did, however, write about a current challenge to the law pending before the State Supreme Court. But they got the issues in the case a bit wrong, or at least, incomplete.

The plaintiffs have asked the court to stop the state from enforcing the law as "a parole condition." Each is a registered sex offender who was released before the law was passed and each was jailed and subsequently paroled for non-sex offenses after the law was passed. California then said, because you're currently on parole, we're going to hold you to the residency restrictions in the law, too. The plaintiffs argue that making the law a parole condition for those paroled for non-sex offenses is the same as applying it retroactively.

Could the court deny the petition and rule the law applies retroactively to all sex offenders based on the facts of this particular case? Assuming California's laws allowed presumptive retroactivity (which they don't), that's possible, but it's a huge stretch. The court usually rules as narrowly as it can to effect the relief it deems necessary (or not necessary). The plaintiffs have only asked for injunctive relief and in the unlikely case that the court chooses to deny that, it'll probably do so without reaching any legal conclusions that it doesn't have to in order to support its ruling.

But, as I said, anything's possible. Still, the mere possibility of a court ruling in one particular way two months from now doesn't begin to justify the Watchdog's sensational claims. And the story doesn't even mention the unique facts of this case, or the potential for the court's ruling to only affect a narrow subset of sex offenders. Instead, they use it to imply that there's real uncertainty about if the law applies to those released before it took effect. It doesn't.

What's most troubling about this issue is the Watchdog's silence. Despite one half-hearted, almost incoherent response from the story's editor on Citybeat's blog, those responsible for this story haven't addressed what are valid concerns. That in and of itself is an ethical lapse. "Journalists should clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct," according to the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics. Instead, we've mostly received silence.

We have been accused of "picking just to pick" by the sole Union-Tribune employee bold enough to talk publicly about the story. It's not clear what his role is here or why he's inserted himself in the controversy because he insists he's not a spokesperson for the company, despite vigorously defending the story. I'm at least happy to know someone cares enough to do so, even if his role is so far undefined.

Still, he seems generally not happy with us over this issue, views our concerns as petty and seems to take them as a personal attacks. They're anything but. The same code that holds the Watchdog's reporters to a standard they're not currently meeting requires that we, as their colleagues, "expose" their "unethical practices."

I won't apologize for doing that.

Currently, the state's top prosecutor, the department of corrections, CDCR Adult Parole (the ones charged with enforcing the residency restrictions) and the senator who wrote the law have all said that the Watchdog simply got the story wrong.

But that's not been enough. The non-spokesman has repeatedly told me that the story addressed all of the questions surrounding it. We've been told "CityBeat's articles appear to highlight differences in interpretation of the law and how it is applied, but that does not mean the institute's article is wrong."

Actually, Citybeat highlights how the federal court--the only court to rule on the issue so far--has interpreted the law. The Watchdog Institute might disagree with that interpretation, but if so, they should air that in an opinion piece, not a news story.

We've heard "... it appears about 70 percent of San Diego County's registered sex offenders live in areas the law says they cannot live - based on a strict reading of what the plain language of the law appears to say."

If it appears that way to the Watchdog Institute (though the story doesn't use the word "appear"), then perhaps they can take over the responsibilities of presiding over the Eastern District of California, because that "appearance" is a direct contradiction of the district court's ruling. Calling it based on a "strict reading of the plain language" is disingenuous (and in legal speak, actually means something different than I think was the real intent), because as I've already said above, that reading presumes no mention of retroactivity means that one is free to presume retroactivity. That's simply not the case in California and anyone who believes that is only demonstrating their ignorance of basic legal concepts.

We've heard "In the story, the institute's reporters wrote the law is 'nearly impossible to enforce.' If courts have ruled this law cannot be applied retroactively, that would appear to be one major reason why it is "nearly impossible to enforce."

We've heard "In the story, the institute's reporters wrote the law is 'nearly impossible to enforce.' If courts have ruled this law cannot be applied retroactively, that would appear to be one major reason why it is "nearly impossible to enforce."

It is nearly impossible to enforce, but because it's hard to find reasonable places for sex offenders to live that don't violate the law. But that it's not retroactive wouldn't make enforcement harder, would it? It would make it easier. There are fewer sex offenders to track, and few to find places where they can live that don't violate the residency restrictions. This is also another disingenuous claim, as it tries to twist the story into saying something it didn't. The report never even addressed the federal court's ruling.

We've heard "CityBeat appears to take the position that convicted sex offenders cannot violate a law that it says doesn't apply to them."

Well, duh. How could someone violate a law that doesn't apply to them?

But, he goes on "But again, that doesn't mean the institute's story is wrong."

Actually, the story says in clear, plain and unambiguous terms, that those sex offenders are violating a law that they're not even subject to. In what reality can that be correct?

We've heard, "Which interpretation of the law and facts of this case are correct? I believe readers are smart and they can weigh all sides of this issue and then come to an informed decision."

They could come to an informed decision if the Watchdog provided them with correct information. What matters is not one's opinion about whether a person is violating a state law, but whether that person actually is. When the top legal authority in the state says they aren't, when a federal court says they aren't, and you write a story baldly declaring that they are, is that okay? No.