Free Republic

Claim: San Fran killer called himself 'terrorist' 14 injured, 1 dead, in hit-and-run rampage by man recently returned from Afghanistan Posted: August 30, 2006 2:22 p.m. Eastern By Art Moore© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com   Omeed Aziz Popal in wedding photo believed to be two weeks old (San Francisco Chronicle) A woman claims she heard the man who drove into 14 people, killing one, in a violent hit-and-run rampage in San Francisco yesterday refer to himself as a terrorist. KTVU-TV San Francisco reporter Rob Roth told WND the witness at the scene of Omeed Aziz Popal's arrest heard the 29-year-old man say, to...

HAYWARD, Calif. (AP) -- New cracks appear in Elke DeMuynck's ceiling every few weeks, zigzagging across her living room, creeping toward the fireplace, veering down the wall. Month after month, year after year, she patches, paints and waits. "It definitely lets you know your house is constantly shifting," DeMuynck said. So do the gate outside that swings uselessly 2 1/2 inches from its latch, the strange bulges in the street and the geology students who make pilgrimages to her cul-de-sac. DeMuynck could throw her paint brush from her front stoop and hit the Hayward Fault, which geologists consider the most...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Voters approved ballot measures to ban handguns in San Francisco and urge the city's public high schools and college campuses to keep out military recruiters. The gun ban prohibits the manufacture and sale of all firearms and ammunition in the city, and makes it illegal for residents to keep handguns in their homes or businesses. Only two other major U.S. cities _ Washington and Chicago _ have implemented such sweeping handgun bans.

The back of a dump truck delivering 20 tons of dirt to businesses on Sixth Street in San Francisco tipped and crashed into an adult video arcade this morning, narrowly missing three patrons. "It was close," said a video clerk at the Liberty Bookstore, who identified himself as Jersey Dog. "One guy was near the inside of the wall, but no one was hurt." The incident happened at 9:10 a.m. when Sukhdev Singh of Economy Trucking was dumping dirt to be used to fill in several businesses' sub-basements on the 100 block of Sixth Street, said Sheri Costa, a spokeswoman...

I thought you would be interested in the following message. =============================================== Dear Friend: Protecting our oceans makes good economic and environmentalsense.  Our oceans not only provide food and recreation butalso help to regulate our water quality and climate.  Someareas of our ocean are particularly vital, supporting anabundance of fish and marine mammals.  One of these areas isfound just off the coast of Mendocino, Sonoma, Marin, and SanFrancisco counties. I recently joined Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey at a pressconference to highlight our legislation to provide greaterprotection to a larger portion of California’s coast.  Her billin the House, and mine in the Senate,...

ETA WARN OF BOMB IN VALLE DE LOS CAIDOS, FRANCO'S BURIAL PLACE NEAR MADRID-POLICE

LISBON, PORTUGAL - Sister Lucia Marto, the last of three children who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in a series of 1917 apparitions in the town of Fatima, has died, Portuguese media reported. She was 97. Sister Lucia, a Roman Catholic nun, had been ill for the past three months and died Sunday at the Convent of Carmelitas in Coimbra, 120 miles north of Lisbon, TSF radio reported, citing family sources. Lucia and two of her cousins, siblings Jacinta and Francisco, said in 1917 that the Virgin Mary had been appearing to them once a month and predicting...

SAN FRANCISCO — Frustrated by a 28 percent increase in homicides during the past year, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has proposed a sweeping measure banning handguns, injecting the city into the national debate over gun control.

SAF Blasts Proposed San Francisco Handgun Ban: 'We Beat That In 1982' 12/16/2004 5:07:00 PM To: State Desk Contact: Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation, 425-454-7012 BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 16 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Calling it an "ill-considered return visit of anti-gun bigotry," the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) today blasted plans to put a handgun ban on the November 2005 ballot in San Francisco, Calif. reminding proponents of the measure that such a ban was declared illegal when first tried in 1982. "This issue was decided by the California courts more than 22 years ago, and the gun ban extremists...

Democrats shoot themselves in the foot again City residents will vote next year on a proposed weapons ban that would deny handguns to everyone except law enforcement officers, members of the military and security guards. If passed next November, residents would have 90 days to give up firearms they keep in their homes or businesses. The proposal was immediately dismissed as illegal by a gun owners group. The measure — submitted Tuesday to the Department of Elections by some city supervisors — would also prohibit the sale, manufacturing or distribution of handguns, and the transfer of gun licenses, according to...

Frédéric Desagneaux, consul general of France for San Francisco, is not happy with the light being shown on his country’s involvement with U.N. corruption in Iraq. Poor thing. Yesterday, the independent committee investigating corruption in the U.N.’s “oil-for-food” program for Iraq made public the names of 3,545 companies that sold goods to Saddam. Also published were the names of 248 companies which received Iraqi oil under the program. Through oil-for-food, Saddam stole “$10.1 billion through oil smuggling and kickbacks from suppliers.” Leave it to the U.N. to pull off one of the biggest scandals in world history. Evidence is emerging...

SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco voters will have a chance to express their views on the U.S.-led war in Iraq (news - web sites) in November with a ballot initiative calling on the federal government to end the conflict. The toughly worded statement, which will appear on the city's November ballot, says the war has cost more than 850 American lives and bled the nation of billions of dollars.

<p>David Knight, son of the state senator who was the author of the California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, defied his father's law and wed his partner of 10 years Tuesday in a quiet ceremony attended by just two friends in San Francisco City Hall.</p>

<p>IT'S FUNNY that, in a city that prides itself on its nonconformity, so many people make the exact same argument exactly the same way. To wit, after I write that Mayor Gavin Newsom was wrong to flout state law by authorizing same-sex marriages, a legion of readers write comparing gay and lesbian newlyweds with civil-rights legend Rosa Parks. To say that Newsom should have more respect for the law, they argue, is like saying Rosa Parks should not have engaged in her landmark act of "civil disobedience."</p>

<p>The woman in white go-go boots sported a Boston Red Sox jersey over a lacy white wedding gown and held hands with her lesbian partner to lead 200 cheering people in a march down Market Street Tuesday evening.</p> <p>San Francisco commemorated the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision Tuesday legalizing same-sex marriage with all the diversity of its gay-lesbian community on display -- from drag queens to soccer moms -- and lots of Red Sox caps and Boston cream pie.</p>

Bil Clinton was damn sexy. Oh yes he was. This is a given. He had The Appeal. Magnetic, charming as hell, a man who you knew actually had sex and enjoyed it and possessed a highly active all-American libido and knew what all the body parts did and where they went, Hillary notwithstanding. And yet he was president and that made it all a little weird and unusual and refreshing and then of course it turned ugly, and he was vilified and attacked and sneered at from all corners for overusing this libido, but still, there it is. And women...

<p>SUISUN CITY -- He's a 5th-degree black belt, a registered Republican, a whiz with computers, a gadget geek and a big Tom Clancy fan. He dotes on his nieces and nephews. He admires Colin Powell and Abraham Lincoln. In his holster is a Walther PPK, James Bond's preferred pistol.</p>

Big quake 'certain' in San Francisco by 2032 By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles 23 April 2003 San Francisco is almost certain to suffer a severe earthquake in the next 30 years, which could uproot tens of thousands of buildings and kill hundreds of people in California's densely populated Bay Area, a detailed study by the United States Geological Survey predicts. The study, compiled by 100 geologists, disaster management experts, politicians and academics, said there was a 62 per cent chance of a devastating quake with a magnitude of 6.7 or greater on the Richter scale between now and 2032....

SAN FRANCISCO, March 4 — The police chief was on medical disability today, apparently suffering from high blood pressure, and no one knows when he might return to work. The Police Department was being run by a little-known deputy chief, Heather J. Fong, whose rise to the top was so unforeseen that the personnel office scrambled to pull together biographical information on her. Ten members of the department —including the chief, Prentice E. Sanders; the assistant chief; and two deputy chiefs — pleaded not guilty today in Superior Court to criminal charges ranging from conspiring to obstruct justice to felony...

"Francisco's Money Speech" An Excerpt from Ayn Rand's Novel Atlas Shrugged (August 31, 2002) [CAPITALISMMAGAZINE.COM] The following is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand. It is reprinted with permission from the Estate of Ayn Rand. "So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one...