Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has had a trying week, what with the surfacing of a video in which he appears to dismiss 47 percent of Americans as government freeloaders. So he was probably looking forward to being among friends at a high-dollar fundraiser in Hillsborough Friday evening. But in the solidly Democratic Bay Area that meant he first had to experience an enthusiastic greeting from about two dozen protesters as his motorcade drove through the wealthy neighborhood where the event was held. Some of those protesters carried signs reminding him of the video, in which Romney appears to denigrate...

A seemingly ordinary day at the Transbay Transit Center construction site became a mammoth day of discovery Monday when a mild-mannered crane operator reached deep into the earth and pulled out a tooth. This was no ordinary tooth. The 10-inch-long brown, black and beige chomper, broken in two and missing a chunk, once belonged to a woolly mammoth, an elephantine creature that roamed the grassy valley that's now San Francisco Bay 10 million to 15 million years ago in the Pleistocene epoch. Other woolly mammoth fossils have been found in the Bay Area, including in San Francisco about 2 miles...

If you didn't get enough of President Obama this past week at the Democratic National Convention, he'll be in the neighborhood Oct. 8 for one more fundraising pitch before the election. While details have yet to be worked out, we're told the fundraiser - Obama's eighth money-raising trip to the Bay Area since April 2011 - will be similar to an appearance he made at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in February. That event drew hundreds of small and high-end donors, and was part of a three-day California fundraising blitz that took in $8 million. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Obama-to-be-in-Bay-Area-on-Oct-8-3850301.php#ixzz260AORmV1

Memorial Day is an occasion to remember the men and women who went off to war and never returned. But it is also fitting on this day to recall the soldiers, sailors and Marines who served in World War II and came back. Those men and women and their families set off a huge postwar boom that completely changed the Bay Area - and produced the region that today's residents have inherited. World War II had a huge impact on the Bay Area. It resulted in major changes in the area's racial makeup, its economy, even its physical appearance. The...

Young women in four Bay Area counties can now test themselves at home for sexually transmitted infections, and then get the results and any needed prescriptions without ever visiting a doctor's office or clinic. The home tests are part of a pilot project designed to give women who have had unprotected sex, or are just curious about their health status, a convenient, cost-effective and potentially less embarrassing way to get screened for STDs, public health officials said. The women will be able to test themselves for chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis, which are among the most common STDs. Those infections often...

Occupy Redwood City has announced they are working with the Tea Party to shine the light on the One Bay Area process. Occupy Redwood City has to date never spoken with anyone from this tea party group about this issue. We want to point out that the Tea Party adamantly opposes the ONE BAY AREA plan as entirely unconstitutional. We agree with OWS that the public input process and the regional bodies pushing it have been less than transparent and there is no accountability to the tax payers. However, we do not think having more rigged workshops is the answer....

The privileged Occupy kiddies of U.C. Berkeley were back in action again yesterday, play-acting at revolution to entertain their professors. The purported thesis of this particular Occupation is “more money for secondary education,” but that’s just a veneer (a very very thin veneer, as the above photo shows) for a more radical agenda....

A clique of privileged U.C. Berkeley students, upset that they’re the top 1% of elite students in the state and thus disqualified from participating in the Occupy movement, could no longer contain their frustration on Wednesday and threw an Occutantrum, attempting to “occupy” a few square yards of the 1,200-acre campus. The police dutifully played their roles in the street theater performance, showing up in riot gear and looking scary so the privileged students could shout at them and feel properly revolutionary, as instructed by their professors. Following the script, the police repeatedly removed the handful of occupation tents so...

Since we started the Let's Go to the Morgue! series, the most frequent request has been BART photos. I've received separate suggestions to search the archives for Transbay Tube assembly images, photos of construction on Market Street and confirmation of the legend that Richard Nixon once rode on BART during a campaign stop. You can see all of the above in this week's special Let's Go to the Morgue! extended BART edition -- the perfect way to kill 19 minutes while you wait for the next Dublin/Pleasanton train! Thanks to Chronicle photo editor Rick Romagosa for cleaning up the photos...

BART...and you're there. Whether you're headed to work or meeting friends, catching a flight or catching a game, BART brings the Bay Area together.

OAKLAND — Skeletal remains found Nov. 7 behind Skyline High School have been identified as an 18-year-old woman who was a former student at the school, authorities and relatives said Friday. But how Johnikka Jackson died has not yet been determined and homicide Sgt. Lou Cruz said police are still "trying to determine if foul play was an element of her death." Her remains were found in a canyon behind the school by some students who took some of the bones to the principal's office before police were called. The bones were found near a crude shelter made of wood...

OAKLAND -- Bay area longshoremen were up in arms Friday night when they were denied work at one of Oakland's cargo terminals. The cargo ship, the Zhen Hua 19, pulled into Oakland's Pier Seven and on board was tons of steel slated to be used for the new Bay Bridge. Caltrans decided not to hire the ILWU Local 10 longshoremen to unload the vessel, a decision that angered some local union members.

OAKLAND — An emaciated-looking California sea lion that wandered to the edge of an Oakland International Airport runway was sent to a marine animal hospital Tuesday.

This is a famous quote of JFK which media seems to have forgotten: “The level of crime in a City is in direct proportion to the will of its citizens and Law Enforcement Officers to tolerate it” - President John F. Kennedy. Today I see our police officers out in force, and I want to thank them all for their services and the duty they hold to help our citizens. They are my heroes. I love all of them, and wish them a very, very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, Hannukah and Holy Days. God bless our police officers.

An Oakland woman who reluctantly lured her illicit lover to his execution-style shooting death at the request of her jealous gang-leader husband was sentenced today to 15 years to life in state prison for her second-degree murder conviction.

Utility’s cable television and Internet service has been sold to Comcast by the city council of Alameda, California. The reason for the sale was due to a listless growth of the company due to decline in cable subscription. The sale will help to clear off the Alameda Power & Telecom’s debt of $33 million.

When I tell people who don't live in Oakland that I live here, they often ask me, "Is it safe there?" When I talk to people who do live in Oakland, I often hear, "I don't feel very safe these days." A quick conversation and I discover the root of that fear: the daily headlines screaming homicide and crime. It doesn't help that newspaper columns, neighborhood forums, cocktail party chatter and mothers' groups spend a fair amount of their time figuring out who's to blame for all this. And in the midst of all this, there's a group of people...

OAKLAND — Police internal affairs detectives investigating the handling of journalist Chauncey Bailey's slaying will have state investigators present when they interview members of their department's command staff. Investigators from the attorney general's office will be there to monitor the interviews, according to a letter the Department of Justice sent to Mayor Ron Dellums in November. But the Justice Department won't take over the whole investigation — which is apparently what Oakland internal affairs investigators wanted, the letter stated. "We do not believe, as has been suggested by the Police Department's Internal Affairs investigator, that the Police Department investigation be...

Shhhh. What's the big secret? When it comes to Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' deliberations on matters of grave importance - they are cloaked in more secrecy than an illegal CIA counterterrorist operation. When Dellums ran for mayor in 2006, he pledged to run a transparent government. Yet at a time when Oakland needs a strong leader to deal with budget cuts and lack of leadership in several key departments, Dellums is missing in action and his decision- making process is one of the best kept secrets in Oakland City Hall. I don't think even the mayor knows what's going on...

OAKLAND, Calif. -- A judge ruled Monday that there's sufficient evidence for the reputed leader of Oakland's worst drug gang to stand trial on attempted murder charges for allegedly shooting a member of a rival gang at 31st Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way on June 30, 2006. At the end of a preliminary hearing that stretched over three weeks, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Vernon Nakahara also ordered 34-year-old Marc Anthony Candler of Castro Valley, the reputed leader of the Acorn gang, to stand trial on a street terrorism clause, possession of assault weapons and being an ex-felon...