Free Republic

Vandals desecrated a Catholic church, destroying a cross, defacing statues and spray-painting graffiti with satanic symbols -- acts discovered on Ash Wednesday that police have classified as a hate crime. The vandalism was discovered at St. Anne Catholic Church around 7 a.m., about an hour before services were scheduled for the first day of Lent, a 40-day season of fasting and prayer before the Easter holiday. "This is terrible and very disturbing," said the Rev. Geoffrey Baraan, the church's pastor for the past six years. "I'm still shaking with fear and wonder and disbelief." Peter Petit, a longtime parishioner, discovered...

Early risers Saturday will see a total eclipse of the moon low in the western sky, and if the Bay Area's clear weather persists, the sight should be spectacular. "The full moon should appear even larger than normal when the eclipse is total because it will be so low in the sky that Earth's atmosphere will magnify it into a blood-red monster," said astronomer Andrew Fraknoi of Foothill College in Los Alto Hills. The partial eclipse will begin at 4:45 a.m. and will become total at 6:05 a.m., Fraknoi said. Totality will last until 6:57 a.m.

When President Obama announced his $4 billion initiative to finance energy efficiency programs at the White House on Friday, a number of Bay Area allies were, literally, right behind him. There were senior executives from San Francisco's Metrus Energy, which committed $75 million of private capital to the initiative, and from Sunnyvale's Serious Energy and Santa Rosa's Ygrene Energy Fund, both contributing $100 million. They're among the 60 private companies and other entities "stepping up," in Obama's words, in an effort to retrofit public and commercial buildings nationwide, pitching in approximately half of the $4 billion needed. The rest of...

Gusts up to 70 mph Wednesday are forecast for the Bay Area in "a potentially damaging and prolonged wind storm," the National Weather Service. The high-wind warning issued by the weather agency says the strongest winds will be in the hills above 1,000 feet; sustained winds of 20 to 40 mph with frequent gusts over 50 mph are expected through most of the Bay Area. The warning is in effect from 6 a.m. Wednesday to 6 a.m. Thursday. Even fiercer winds are expected in Southern California, with northeast gusts to 80 mph in the mountain passes. Weather service forecasters are...

Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, an Alameda County judge since 2008, was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday for the U.S. District Court in Oakland, where she will become the first Latina federal judge in the Bay Area. The Senate voted 89-6 to approve President Obama's nomination of Gonzalez Rogers to fill the vacancy created by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's retirement in February. There was no debate, and the opponents, all Republicans, did not say why they voted against the nominee, who had not drawn any opposition in her committee hearing. Gonzalez Rogers, 46, a Texas native and Princeton honors graduate,...

Communist/Anarchist OWS Demonstrators have been taunting the local police for HOURS on end to provoke them into a fight, and now the police in Oakland, with support by many other local agencies, appear to have had just about enough and appear ready to restore order to the streets of the city.Live Leftist Link Here6:00 a.m. Pacific/9:00 a.m. Eastern.

OAKLAND -- The Bay Area has fewer concentrations of extreme poverty than a decade ago, according to a report released Thursday. That may not console the people living in the Bay Area's five poorest neighborhoods. In five census tracts, four of them in the East Bay, more than 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line, according to the Brookings Institution report. The neighborhoods are in downtown Berkeley, uptown Oakland, Alameda Point and parts of West Oakland and San Francisco's Hunters Point. Two are business districts where many homeless congregate; one, the area around Oakland's Frank H. Ogawa Plaza,...

A paratransit bus driver intentionally rammed a Hells Angels biker on Interstate 580, and then dragged him about a mile, killing him, a CHP spokesman said. The biker, who has not been identified, was traveling eastbound on I-580 in San Leandro near Grand Avenue with a small group of Hells Angels members before 4 p.m. when an altercation began, said CHP Sgt. Trent Cross. After being hit, the motorcyclist and his bike were dragged for about a mile, said San Leandro police Lt. Greg Lemmon. Eventually, the biker was released from under the East Bay Paratransit bus, but the driver...

SAN FRANCISCO -- An estimated half-million illegal immigrants live in the Bay Area, according to a study that is one of the first to try to measure the number of local residents living in the U.S. illegally. The report by the Public Policy Institute of California used tax returns, previous national estimates and mathematical models to determine that 563,000 illegal immigrants live in the Bay Area, about 8 percent of the region's total population. Santa Clara County leads the Bay Area with 180,000 illegal immigrants, followed by Alameda County with 124,000 and Contra Costa County with 79,000, the study found....

The Fourth of July sky will be a little darker this year as lean economic times force cities across the Bay Area to snuff out a favorite all-American tradition: fireworks shows. In past years, the East Bay shoreline was ablaze with exploding, booming, multicolored pyrotechnics on Independence Day. But this year only Berkeley and San Pablo will light up their waterfronts with fireworks. The others are too far in the red for the red, white and blue. Livermore and Hercules dropped their fireworks and parades this year. Oakland and San Leandro canceled their fireworks a year or two ago. Other...

RENO, Nev. (CBS/AP) — Authorities plan to look into the driving and medical records of the semitrailer driver who died when the truck slammed into an Amtrak train, killing a train crew member and injuring dozens of passengers. Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said they also will look at autopsy results to determine whether the driver had consumed any drugs around the time of the collision Friday. The big rig plowed into the California-bound train at a crossing in a rural area about 70 miles east of Reno. Knudson said federal investigators would make sure...

President Barack Obama will visit the Bay Area Thursday to meet with high tech business leaders -- a session that will stress jobs, innovation, green tech and education themes, White House sources tell the Chronicle. So far, no information on where the meeting will be held -- or whether any part of it will be public -- but here's what we know from a White House official: the session is "a part of our ongoing dialogue with the business community on how we can work together to win the future, strengthen our economy, support entrepreneurship, and get the American people...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS/AP) – Bay Area residents are hoping for a warmer weekend after a Thanksgiving cold snap broke or tied cold-temperature records — some more than a century old — up and down the state. The National Weather Service reports that San Francisco’s low of 42 degrees on Thursday tied a record set back in 1892. Across the bay in Oakland, 36-degree daytime temperatures shattered the old record of 42. The mercury in Los Angeles dropped to 42, tying a 1946 record.

THE LIBERTY & FREEDOM FOUNDATION is proud to announce that we will be bringing former Alaska Governor SARAH PALIN to the Bay Area. Thursday October 14, 2010 - San Jose, CA 3PM - 8PM At the FORUM you’ll have an opportunity to hear Governor Palin’s remarks discussing a variety of issues that are important to, and currently affecting, the people of the greater Bay Area. There will be a Q & A session posing questions from locals, as well as questions from school kids. We believe in our youth perspective and know you all will enjoy their insight into America....

The criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service is looking into the finances of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate... ... Agents for the criminal division of the I.R.S. interviewed a former employee of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate on Tuesday at the Oakland field office, in response to a complaint he had lodged. That informant, who declined to be named for fear of how it might affect his future job prospects, said he raised concerns about the financial relationship between the organization and its political arm, as well as about accounting practices. ... [Author's email} kmieszkowski@baycitizen.org

Police search for more victimsThere's your run-of-the-mill bad boyfriend, and then there's Simon Gann. A 32-year-old Menlo Park woman suspected that the man she'd been dating was not who he said he was, despite his claims of being a math savant and purchasing a multi-million dollar San Francisco home. Since "Saleem Dutante" was talking her out of money, the identity confusion set off alarm bells. After she found he had an I.D. card bearing a different name, a quick search of the Internet justified her misgivings. Turns out his real name is Simon Gann. Far from being the wealthy doctor...

The Bay Area's newest rock star is Jeremy Lin, an undrafted rookie guard from Harvard whose primary résumé item until recently was being the first player in Ivy League history to record 1,450 points, 450 rebounds, 400 assists and 200 steals. The Dallas Mavericks were the only team to extend Lin an invitation to summer league to play behind highly touted guards Roddy Beaubois and Dominique Jones. Then something phenomenal occurred in Las Vegas: Lin matched No. 1 overall draft pick John Wall possession for possessio down the stretch of Lin's fourth summer league game. How important is the [Asian-American]...

My mother is preparing to sell the home that she and my late father have lived in for more than thirty years. Luckily, the housing market hasn't affected her that much since the area she lives in has become a hotspot for real estate over the years (Bay Area, CA). The realtor she has been working with is, in my opinion, being pushy. He wants her to sell the house as soon as possible (within the next two months) and I'm of the opinion that she needs to wait given the depressed market and current economic situation. She also doesn't...

OAKLAND, Calif. – Hundreds of protesters condemning Israel's recent raid on an international flotilla bound for Gaza are picketing at the Port of Oakland, where an Israeli ship is due to arrive. The demonstrators gathered Sunday to prevent the incoming ship from being unloaded. The dock's day shift of longshoremen agreed to not cross the picket line. Meanwhile Sunday, Israel said it will immediately allow all goods into Gaza except weapons and items deemed to have a military use under its decision to ease its three-year-old blockade of the Palestinian territory. Israeli officials had decided last week to ease the...

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