San Francisco City Hall's vast machinery went into overdrive after police questioned Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi about a Dec. 31 argument during which he bruised wife Eliana Lopez's right arm. A neighbor videotaped the bruise and later contacted the police. District Attorney George Gascon filed three misdemeanor charges against Mirkarimi for domestic violence battery of his wife, child endangerment (because the couple's son was present) and dissuading a witness (presumably Lopez). San Francisco ...
Mitt Romney on Wednesday night turned in the finest debate performance of any candidate of either party in the 52 years since Richard Nixon faced John F. Kennedy, with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan's demolition of Jimmy Carter in 1980.
There are a lot of differences between Obamacare and Romneycare, even though President Barack Obama said that the two plans were based on an "identical model" during the first presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday night.
Are Republican women politicians more "feminine" than Democratic women politicians?
As an exasperated Casey Stengel asked the bumbling 1962 New York Mets baseball team he managed: "Can't anybody here play this game?"
Would you believe that 45 million adult Americans still smoke? That's about one in five of us grownups. Worldwide this killer habit ends about six million lives each year. But what's most disturbing - 10 percent of victims never even took a puff. They got their cancer from second-hand smoke.
From electricity to earmuffs, once you buy a product or service from a company, it shouldn't be any of its business how you choose to use it. Your power company doesn't say you can't use the energy-saving features on your new refrigerator unless you buy more electricity. And your grocer doesn't make you buy an extra loaf of bread if you stop purchasing potato chips.
Arnold Schwarzenegger comes across a lot better in his memoirs, "Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story," than he did during a "60 Minutes" TV interview broadcast Sunday night.
Seated in the upper deck at San Francisco's AT&T Park, during a Giants-Rockies game, you wouldn't know millions of Americans are underwater and unemployed, or that the 2012 elections were less than two months away. The large man seated next to me cups his hand over his mouth to scream, "Colorado, you suck!" and other such sagacious slogans as the game creeps on, and the sun sets over San Francisco Bay.
After watching the national media's performance since the party conventions, one can only hope that college students are out on a summer safari or some Third World Peace Corps mission. Anything to avoid this mess. Sean Hannity is right. The establishment news media is dead. Whatever remains has only one standard. If it helps Obama, it's "news." If it doesn't, reporters should move on. There's nothing to observe here.
Mark Hanna, the Karl Rove of the old Robber Baron era, explained a century ago that, "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember the second."
The University of California has reached a $1 million settlement with UC Davis students who were pepper sprayed at an Occupy-inspired Nov. 18 demonstration to protest rising tuition. UC will pay student plaintiffs $30,000 each, and the American Civil Liberties Union will pocket up to $250,000. Everything that is wrong in California resides in this story.
If "journalism malpractice" were a crime, Nancy Grace would not be able to keep track of all the trials.
You can put earrings on a hog… but it won't hide the ugliness. A huge coal conglomerate learned this lesson the hard way in Eastern Kentucky's sixth congressional district, represented by Democrat Ben Chandler. In Mid-September, a TV ad suddenly appeared featuring a coal miner denouncing Chandler on behalf of the Republican lawyer running against him. The miner was decked out in bib overalls, T-shirt, and a hard hat – but the outfit was nothing ...
Candidate Barack Obama made this promise to Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos in May 2008: "What I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support and that I'm promoting. And I want to move that forward as quickly as possible." Didn't happen. When Ramos interviewed Obama on Thursday, he brought up "the Obama promise." "At the beginning of your (presidency)," Ramos said, "you had control of ...
President Obama's Father's Day speech included one provocative, yet very declarative, sentence: "We should reform our child support laws to get more men working and engaged with their children." Obama didn't elaborate, but we can build on what he said because, yes indeed, child support laws urgently need "reform."
When Prince Harry visited Seaside Heights, New Jersey, the authorities faked a return to relative normalcy for the Sandy-struck beach town.
Barack Obama has just taken his first baby steps into a war in Syria that may define and destroy his presidency.
It has become evident that Barack Obama's definition of "fundamentally transforming the United States" includes Big Brother harassing selected conservatives while monitoring everybody's email and telephone traffic. These seem to be among the surprising duties of the Internal Revenue Service and the National Security Agency (NSA), respectively.
Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote that Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former intelligence analyst who leaked information on huge U.S. data mining operations, "will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers." House Speaker John Boehner called Snowden "a traitor." Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein railed that he had committed "treason."
Next year should be a banner year for the GOP, and may yet be.
The scandals surrounding the Obama administration come down to one common theme - that the ever-growing size and scope of our federal government gives it enormous power over virtually every aspect of our lives, power that in the wrong hands can be used to reward supporters, exact revenge and punish enemies. In education, health care, transportation, energy, disaster relief, welfare, commerce, work and salary rules, and on and on, the federal government plays an outsized ...
The unfolding story of the Obama administration monitoring not just telephone records but Internet usage has drawn media coverage with adjectives like "astonishing." No doubt about it, even the pro-Obama press acknowledges it is a scandal. Still, it is laughable that the media would label him a "dictator" or discuss the "I word."
Before President Barack Obama took a question on intelligence surveillance and stepped on his message in an odd and hastily put-together event in San Jose on Friday, the president made a few scheduled remarks about California's implementation of his Affordable Care Act.
"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," said Secretary of State Henry Stimson of his 1929 decision to shut down "The Black Chamber" that decoded the secret messages of foreign powers.
SAN JOSE - "Nobody's listening to your phone calls," President Obama proclaimed at a Friday event that was supposed to be about California's implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
The specter of school shootings has brought a too-typical staple to local newspaper sections: the boys disciplined at (or suspended from) grade school for bringing a toy gun or anything resembling a gun.
Tupac Shakur, the rapper killed in an unsolved and possibly gang-related murder, once said: "I know for a fact that had I had a father, I'd have some discipline. I'd have more confidence." Tupac admitted he began running with gangs because he wanted structure and protection: "Your mother cannot calm you down the way a man can. Your mother can't reassure you the way a man can. My mother couldn't show me where my manhood ...
Ruth Asawa's "San Francisco Fountain" owes Apple big time. Before the tech behemoth announced its plans to plop a slick, glassy Apple Store where Levi's and the fountain plaza reside, many locals were blithely unaware of the bronze landmark. Mayor Ed Lee apparently forgot about it when he cozied up to Apple execs announcing their plans to bulldoze (in effect) and build over the northeast corner of San Francisco's Union Square.
Sen. Carl Levin was aghast.