Free Republic

A popular San Francisco restaurant called Bacon Bacon must shut its doors Friday after failed negotiations with neighbors who complained about the smell of bacon. The restaurant serves burgers, grilled cheeses, breakfast sandwiches, and more, all served with bacon. It also runs a food truck, which roams the city providing San Franciscans with bacon. But now that’s over, the San Francisco Examiner reports: But now a popular pork-focused restaurant in the Upper Haight must close its doors Friday following months of failed negotiations with neighbors over neighborhood concerns about porcine aroma and grease disposal. Department of Public Health officials say...

Abstract: Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar...

Vatican newspaper compares marriage equality to communism Vatican City • Faced with recent setbacks in the United States and Europe, the Roman Catholic Church has intensified its increasingly uphill battle against gay marriage. The latest salvo came this week, with a front-page article in the Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. Historian Lucetta Scaraffia compared proponents of gay marriage, with their championing of “marriage equality,” to 20th-century communists who wooed millions with their promise of perfect social and economical equality. Scaraffia, a 64-year-old former feminist activist who later became a fervent Catholic, has often written in the Vatican newspaper on the...

Let’s face it, it would’ve been weird if everyone’s clothes stayed on for the entirety of Monday’s hearing on legislation that would ban public nudity in San Francisco. For two hours, speakers tussled over whether the Castro “naked guys” were a few harmless individuals just expressing themselves, or a growing public nuisance that San Franciscans should no longer have to tolerate. Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents the Castro, is proposing legislation forbidding genital exposure on city sidewalks, plazas, parklets, streets and public transit while exempting street fairs, festivals and parades. “Over the past two years, the situation on our streets...

Tacoma, Wash. -- If you believe the polls, and many people here are wary even when they're favorable, then Washington voters are poised to legalize two things Californians haven't: same-sex marriage and marijuana. With ballot measures on both issues before Washington voters Tuesday, the lessons learned from California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in 2008, and Proposition 19, which would have made marijuana legal but was shot down in 2010, have been echoing across Washington for months. Some voters are noticing a different tone to the campaigns, with the issues being framed differently in a state where, in the...

Nobody in Hollywood has been clamoring to make “Ishtar 2.” Or re-imagine “Howard the Duck.” Why? Because they were BOMBS, that’s why. So why in the name of “Gigli” would Mitt Romney’s campaign — er, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads superPAC – dust off Clint Eastwood to make a campaign commercial touting Mitt? All it does is remind people of the great Eastwood’s royal bomb at the RNC just two months ago. Yes, his ad-libbed “conversation” with a chair. But in politics, attention spans are Tweet-short these days. So here’s Clint coughing up his full-throat-of-gravel Clintyness backing Mitt. . . .

SAN FRANCISCO -- A woman backing out of her garage in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood drove over and killed a man sleeping outside her home, police said Wednesday. The man was sleeping on the ground outside the 28-year-old woman's garage on Third Street near Bryant Street at 7 a.m. Tuesday when she backed out in her sedan and rolled over him, . . .

There was a time when the far left wing of the Democratic Party in San Francisco stood for something. Sure, they could be shrill, exasperating and self-righteous, but they took a stand. [snip] Because right now it looks as if their only commitment is to whatever is politically expedient. Ross Mirkarimi and District Five supervisor candidate Julian Davis have some serious defects. Each has been accused of mistreating women. But, hey, progressives say, they're our bad guys.

A stagehand working for a gay pornography company has sued his employers in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging he was forced to inject performers with a controlled drug to prolong their erections. According to the lawsuit, which was filed Friday, Ronald Baker of San Francisco claims he suffered emotional distress and anxiety-induced health problems when he accidentally pierced his finger in January after injecting a performer in the penis with TriMix, a prescription medication . . .

In a shocking end to the melodrama that has consumed San Francisco City Hall for the past nine months, the Board of Supervisors bucked Mayor Ed Lee late Tuesday night by giving suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi his job back. Four members of the board rejected Lee's call that Mirkarimi be permanently removed for committing official misconduct, an allegation that stemmed from a New Year's Eve fight with his wife for which he later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of false imprisonment. Lee needed nine of the 11 supervisors' votes to oust Mirkarimi. Supervisors John Avalos, David Campos, Jane Kim...

More than 2,000 worshipers filled St. Mary's Cathedral on Thursday to see Salvatore Cordileone assume his role as Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, as several dozen protesters angered by his leading role in the fight against same-sex marriage demonstrated outside. "I know in my own life God has always had a way of putting me in my place - little and sometimes big ways of reminding me of my need to depend upon him and to attend to the work of my own rebuilding from within," Cordileone told the congregation. "I would say, though, that with this latest episode...

Supervisor Scott Wiener never wanted to propose a ban on public nudity. But support for his ordinance, which was introduced Tuesday, has become so widespread that even those who were reluctant to complain publicly are speaking up. And that means everybody. "I went to a brunch for the Folsom Street Fair," Wiener said. "And I was a little nervous. This was a full-leather crowd. Were they going to yell at me? But I had these big old leather daddies coming up to me and saying, 'Please do something about this.' " ...George Davis, a former nude candidate for mayor, sees...

In a lively and unusually civilized debate Wednesday, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney clashed on who would be the better champion of the middle class - a match that provided high drama but no critical game-changers. The former Massachusetts governor delivered a confident, often aggressive and energetic performance. It was among the best of his campaign and in clear contrast to the president, whose delivery was more muted, measured and, at times, meandering. The first of three presidential debates offered Americans their first side-by-side comparison of Obama and Romney and came at a pivotal moment in the 2012...

SAN FRANCISCO, September 27, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - A pro-life billboard advertisement placed in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood was taken down following numerous acts of vandalism mocking the pro-life message, comparing the unborn to animals, and urging their murder. The billboard, which has been displayed in various cities, shows a black man holding a newborn baby and declaring “A Father’s Joy,” followed by a quote from the Gospel of St. Matthew: “And whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.” At the bottom left of the display the logo of Pro-Life Across America is displayed, with a...

A San Francisco police officer shot and wounded an armed 22-year-old parolee in the city's Mission District late Thursday, prompting a protest by dozens of people hours later, authorities said. Another group gathered in the area Friday night, vandalizing banks and a restaurant. A plainclothes officer, part of a curfew enforcement team, shot the man after he allegedly pulled a Tec-9 assault-style pistol in the 200 block of 14th Street at 8:06 p.m. Thursday, police said. The wounded man, whose name was not released, was taken to the hospital. Police said his injuries were not life-threatening. Police described him as...

Janet Sluizer knew she was taking a bit of a chance when she turned to Craigslist this summer to find a tenant for her apartment in the Mission.What she didn't expect was that she'd be spending thousands of dollars in a struggle to evict a roommate who she says hasn't paid rent beyond the first month. "This is a nightmare,"Sluizer said. It's a nightmare that landlord advocates say is all too common in SanFrancisco, where 64 percent of residents rent. .....According to [Janan]New[executive director of the San Francisco Apartment Association], a combination of confusing rent ordinances and an abundance of...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman and congresswoman from Florida, was at ease this morning among a group of Democrats from deep-blue California. "Let me just tell you how much I appreciate the oasis of Democratic politics that California is," she said at a delegation breakfast on the final day of the Democratic National Convention. "I know that you all feel like you live in heaven."

UPDATE: In response to the uproar over his (below) comments Monday, California Democratic Party Chair John Burton issued this statement: “To correct press reports of my recent comments about Republican lies, I did not call Republicans Nazis nor would I ever. In fact, I didn’t even use the word. “If Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, or the Republicans are insulted by my describing their campaign tactic as the big lie – I most humbly apologize to them or anyone who might have been offended by that comment.”Charlotte – Greetings from the California delegation breakfast at the DNC where before he had...

The balance sheet on Barack Obama stands at zero right now. The country is evenly divided about his performance as president. And he’s tied in the polls with Republican Mitt Romney.“It’s a neck-and-neck race,” said Rick Snyder, Michigan Republican governor, in an opinion widely shared across the political spectrum.Let’s take a look at the Democratic incumbent’s assets as he heads into his party’s national convention in Charlotte this week — and his liabilities.Which way do you think the ledger of public opinion will eventually tip?ASSETS1. Most Americans still like him.Although the president’s personal approval rating has slipped from 79 percent...

<p>The speeches are over. The road blocks are dismantled. The delegates are heading out of town. As the debris of the week that was is swept away, let’s savor some of the high points and low points of the Republican National Convention.</p>