Free Republic

Day 587. Today, we bring you the latest news from the battlefront and discuss Ukraine and the EU. Plus we have a double bill of interviews, from Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, chair of the UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and Dmytro Natalukha, People’s Deputy of Ukraine from Sluha Narodne, the Servant of the People party.

California cities are losing local control as state-mandated housing to battle what officials call the state’s “housing crisis” sweeps the Golden State, experts say, with some afraid of losing their small-town feel. The state’s housing department requires local jurisdictions every eight years to plan for housing, including that which is deemed “affordable” sold at or below market rate, as part of what’s known as a Housing Element. Of concern to some is that squeezing in high-density affordable housing may not suit every city the same. Sebastopol—an apple farming town of 7,500 people in Northern California east of Santa Rosa—is just...

The Biden administration’s War on Modernity is death by a thousand regulations. It’s no secret that the Biden admin wants to ditch gas stoves as well as impose harsh regulations on washing machines, dishwashers, water heaters, refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, and anything else they can think of under the guise of “saving the planet” from climate change. These regulations make things more expensive and people either shell out more of their hard-earned dollars for a basic necessity or do without because the appliance has been priced out of reach. It’s also a direct attack on the freedom of the consumer...

A former Sebastopol mayor, Robert Jacob, was convicted of six felony crimes involving the sexual abuse of a child this month. Jacob, 45, pleaded no contest to the half-dozen counts in Sonoma Superior Court on Jan. 20, capping a decade-long descent for the onetime cannabis entrepreneur and local politician, who was selected mayor by his colleagues in 2013.... ...The Press Democrat reported that the victim, age 16 by the time of the preliminary hearing last March,testified that he met Jacob on the Grindr dating app...

The former Democrat mayor of Sebastopol, California, has pleaded no contest to child sex crime charges and will spend seven years in prison. Robert Jacob, a 45-year-old Democrat who served as Sebastopol’s mayor from 2013 to early 2016 after serving on the city council, pleaded no contest after he was charged in 2021 with six counts of child sex crimes.

When a Sebastopol man locked himself in his house after a family dispute Wednesday and ignored commands to surrender, police there decided a forced entry might “incite a violent response.” Instead, the officers left. However, they returned with an arrest warrant about four hours later. With the help of another resident of the Juniper Avenue home, they gained entry and arrested Alexander Moser without incident. Police responded shortly before 1 p.m. to the home after a resident there reported that her grandson, Moser, was making threats to kill his brother, according to a Sebastopol Police news release. Officers later learned...

A priest at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital was praying over a woman critically injured by gunfire after she rammed three deputies with a car at the end of a 20-mile pursuit, her mother said Friday. Although the chance of survival was not good for Karen Janks, 46, a former San Francisco resident who recently moved to Santa Cruz, she was still holding on and “has a very strong heart,” said her mother Gail Janks, 73, of San Mateo.

Did residents of this idyllic wine country town illegally plant an endangered flower to sabotage a proposed housing development? That's the question at the heart of a quarrel folks here have dubbed "Foamgate." Bob Evans, a 72-year-old retired elementary school principal, says he was walking with his dog last year when he came upon the tiny white flowers of Sebastopol meadowfoam poking from shallow pools of water in a grassy field. The former bean farm happens to be the chosen site of the 20-acre Laguna Vista housing development. Evans and other opponents seized on the discovery of the federally protected...