Free Republic

The First Daughter is checking out colleges in the Bay Area.Another Democratic president, another daughter educated in the Bay Area? Malia Obama, the oldest daughter of President Barack Obama, is about to turn 16 and is looking at colleges -- and she's looking at the best the Bay has to offer, according to reports. A "source" tells the San Francisco Chronicle that Malia toured the campus of the University of California Berkeley recently. Malia is already West Coasting, working as a production assistant on a television show in Los Angeles. Apparently, she also visited Stanford, the alma mater of Chelsea...

At Berkeley Bowl, the nuts are off the shelf Brothers Juno, 20 months, left, and Cyrus Soltani, 5, sample fruit at the Berkeley Bowl market, famous for its exotic produce. For those caught tasting food or beverages without paying, the penalty is severe: a lifetime ban. By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 22, 2008 BERKELEY -- As most veteran customers know, it takes a pretty thick skin to successfully navigate the Berkeley Bowl, this strident city's most popular grocery store. Outside, petitioners seeking signatures for ballot measures have come to blows with opinionated residents. In the...

The Berkeley City Council kicked off its 2006-2007 term Tuesday night by doing something it hadn't done for 364 days -- reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. But the council members gave it a Berkeley spin, changing the ending to "with liberty and justice for all -- some day." . . .

How's this for chilling -- the night before she was shot in Berkeley over the summer, Dartmouth College student Meleia Willis-Starbuck handled the very gun that was used to kill her. That's the story Willis-Starbuck's friend and accused killer Christopher Hollis is telling authorities, and it's one of several new details emerging from the tragic shooting. The 19-year-old Willis-Starbuck, who graduated from Berkeley High School and had just finished her freshman year at Dartmouth, was arguing with a group of UC Berkeley football players and their friends on College Avenue early July 17 and reportedly used her cell phone to...

After three weeks of infighting that almost scuttled the Berkeley Veterans Day ceremony, the man whose role as a proposed speaker started the dispute has decided not to speak after all. On Monday, Bill Mitchell, co-founder of Cindy Sheehan's group, Gold Star Families for Peace, notified Mayor Tom Bates that he has decided to instead attend an anti-war rally in Santa Monica that day. Mitchell's name had been proposed by the chairman of the organizing committee, singer/songwriter Country Joe McDonald, causing dissension within the committee. The local chapter of Disabled American Veterans, which has participated in past Berkeley Veterans Day...

Berkeley's Veterans Day ceremony, scheduled for Nov. 11, was abruptly canceled on Monday because the volunteer organizing committee split over the political content. At issue was a proposal by the chairman, singer/songwriter Country Joe McDonald, to have Bill Mitchell, a co-founder of Cindy Sheehan's organization, Gold Star Families for Peace, as the keynote speaker. Mitchell's and Sheehan's sons were killed in Iraq the same day. Some committee members worried that Mitchell would inject an unwelcome note of partisanship into the event, which has been scrupulously non-political in years past. "If you want to have an anti-war rally, count me in,"...

BERKELEY - What's in a name? If we're talking about the Berkeley post office, we're talking a Category 5 storm of petty partisan politics, compliments of congressional Republicans. But liberal-minded Berkeley may get the last licks in this brouhaha, which has city leaders and citizens alike spitting mad. First, a little history. In case you missed it, our fearless leaders in Congress outdid themselves last week with their thumbs-down vote on a normally routine matter: the naming of a post office. According to Roll Call, measures to name post office buildings make up 12 percent of the laws Congress passes...

BERKELEY - Mike Tepper rode along Telegraph Avenue, past the spot where he nearly was killed early Sunday morning. He noticed that blood stains remained on the street along with the skid marks made by the Chrysler used to run him over.Those were sobering reminders of a harrowing incident that left Tepper, a freshman offensive tackle for Cal's football team, with a broken fibula, severe ligament damage and a dislocated tibia in his right leg.The injuries seemed minor considering that Tepper had been run over twice. Berkeley police arrested Berkeley's John Ray Smith and Oakland's Calvin Kelly and charged them...

BERKELEY — A tree beat out a former slave-owning president in the long-running campaign to change the name of a Berkeley elementary school, according to results released Wednesday. Students, parents and staff members voted 239 to 177 to change the name of Thomas Jefferson Elementary School to Sequoia Elementary School. "It was pretty close," said district spokesman Mark Coplan. The Berkeley Unified School District's Board of Education must approve the name change at its meeting Wednesday, Coplan said. "They could say no. ... I think it will bring out some pretty interesting discussion," Coplan said, adding that some fear a...

Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who provoked a national tempest by referring to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as "little Eichmanns," has been invited to speak at UC Berkeley on Monday. Churchill will be featured speaker at a noon public forum on academic freedom and the furor ignited by his views. "I am pleased to invite Professor Churchill to the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in higher education," said panel organizer Ling-chi Wang, an associate professor of ethnic studies at Cal. "He will present his case for the first time to the Berkeley community." Churchill,...

Parents, students and teachers at Berkeley's Thomas Jefferson Elementary School will soon vote on whether to rename their school because the nation's third president was a slave owner. The question of whether to rename the school has been debated for more than two years -- since several teachers, including an African American mother of three former Jefferson students, said Jefferson's moniker offended them and suggested a name change.

More than 1,300 college students will meet at University of California, Berkeley this weekend for a national conference for students involved in service, activism, politics and socially responsible work. The COOL Idealist National Conference is the largest national meeting of college students involved in activism. The event includes a dozen daylong forums and 165 workshops, as well as an opportunities fair and an awards conference. The conference is all day Friday through Sunday at various locations on campus. Visit www.idealist.org/ioc/conference for more information. Event highlights include an opportunities fair from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Friday and 12:30 to 2 p.m....

The wreckage of Jerusalem's bus 19, its seats mangled and charred from a suicide bomb a year ago, stopped in downtown Berkeley on Sunday, in testimony to terrorism and as a symbol of the 1960s civil rights struggle embodied by the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sponsors said. "Martin Luther King stood with the buses that were bombed by the Ku Klux Klan," said the Rev. Rosemary Schindler, speaking at a rally in Martin Luther King Park sponsored by Israel Action Committee of the East Bay. Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who marched with King,...

When the homeless lose or abandon stuff, it gets frozen Berkeley tolerates its homeless people, and takes good care of their stuff when they abandon it in shopping carts. Not only does the city pack carts and other belongings into a huge container in case folks want it back -- it also deep-freezes them for as long as 90 days. About a year ago, Berkeley bought a 40-foot-long, 8-foot-wide refrigerated container for $8,200 after public works officials complained about vermin infesting carts stored at the city's outdoor corporation yard. The city signed a five-year, $61,500 lease with Caltrans for land...

<p>BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - Breast-feeding advocate Ellen Sirbu wants to create a lactation sensation.</p> <p>Sirbu and other city officials have invited hundreds of mothers and their babies to Berkeley on Saturday to try for a world record in simultaneous suckling.</p>