Free Republic

California’s war on the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution took a dramatic new step on Tuesday, as the city of Berkeley declared itself a “sanctuary city” for marijuana-related crimes. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: The Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to become a sanctuary city for legal adult-use marijuana, prohibiting city agencies and employees from turning over information on legal cannabis activities and assisting in enforcing federal marijuana laws. “I believe we can balance public safety and resisting the Trump administration,” Mayor Jesse Arreguin. “Berkeley is a sanctuary for people in our community.” The measure doesn’t prevent the...

San Francisco supervisors Tuesday voted 10-1 to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples' Day despite a last-minute effort to delay the vote in response to objections from some members of the city's Italian-American community. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who represents the North Beach neighborhood, where the annual parade on Columbus Day has long since been renamed as the Italian Heritage parade, asked the board to postpone a vote on the resolution after receiving a large number of emails from constituents. "I would like some time to figure out a path forward that works for our indigenous native peoples as well as...

The UC Berkeley administration’s reaction to undocumented junior Luis Mora’s detainment by Border Patrol proves that the campus doesn’t give undocumented students the support they need. Within days of Mora’s detainment on Dec. 30 in San Diego, campus immigrant rights organization Rising Immigrant Scholars through Education, or RISE at Berkeley, launched a massive social media campaign to call for Mora’s release. Now is the time for public action, and the UC Berkeley administration — which has repeatedly expressed support for the undocumented community — should proudly lead the charge. Mora’s detainment isn’t an isolated incident; under President Donald Trump’s administration,...

Humanities professors say organization evading moral, professional duties Dozens of humanities scholars cancelled their membership with their field's leading professional academic organization ahead of its annual convention, in retaliation for the group refusing to impose boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. The defecting professors wrote to the Modern Language Association—published in the days leading up to the conference being held this week in New York City—that they will not be renewing their membership, due to the organization "disgracefully" voting in June against BDS and in favor of a statement denouncing academic boycotts. Timothy Reiss, a professor emeritus of comparative literature...

The court determined that Antifa leader Yvette Felarca's legal claim "was not brought in good faith." Hayward, CA – Antifa leader and middle school teacher Yvette Felarca was ordered to pay over $11,000 in damages to former Berkeley College Republicans President Troy Worden on Thursday, following an Alameda County Superior Court ruling. Felarca, a national organizer for antifa-aligned group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), filed a civil harassment restraining order against Worden in September, 2017, and alleged that he stalked her by appearing at BAMN events, the San Francisco Gate reported. BAMN also led protests against conservative speakers who came...

The Pacifica Foundation, a Berkeley-based community radio network that includes the progressive radio station KPFA, is in financial crisis because of mounting debt — and is now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Pacifica, a nonprofit founded in 1946 by conscientious objectors from World War II, is the mother of America’s alternative radio, pioneering decades of left-leaning public affairs programs and community-based music.

3km ESE of Berkeley, CA 2018-01-04 10:39:37 (UTC)

Contra Costa County - felt like a 4.x - anyone else awake?

New FBI/Clinton Scandal — FBI Deputy Director McCabe Delayed Recusing Himself from the Clinton Email Case Conservatives Excluded as Leftists Got $1 Billion from Companies Sued by DOJ Antifa Attacks Judicial Watch in Court New FBI/Clinton Scandal — FBI Deputy Director McCabe Delayed Recusing Himself from the Clinton Email Case Often overlooked amid the shenanigans of two former FBI Directors – James Comey and Robert Mueller – are questions about FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was actually acting director for a time after Comey was fired. Consider the news we broke today. We uncovered Justice Department records showing...

Protests broke out at U.C. Berkeley Tuesday to shut down Patriot Prayers’ free speech rally, landing at least three protesters in jail, among them prominent “By Any Means Necessary” (BAMN) leader Yvonne Felarca. Felarca, 47, is a teacher at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School and was arrested for battery and resisting arrest after the Antifa-BAMN “Victory March” celebrating Berkeley’s cancellation of “Free Speech Week.”

You may remember Yvette Felarca, the middle school teacher who is also the leader of an Antifa Communist group in California. She made a bizarre appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show earlier this year. Felarca was arrested on Tuesday for battery and resisting arrest. There are photos online of Yvette Felarca being led away by police in handcuffs.

A member of the Black Student Union at the University of California-Berkeley recently penned an op-ed complaining that she felt “violated” by Ben Shapiro’s appearance on campus. “If your perceived definition of violence is limited to the confines of physical contact, that’s probably because you’ve never had to experience the psychological trauma that comes along with being a Black person in America,” declares Shelby Mayes, who serves as Membership Development Director for the BSU, in an op-ed for The Daily Californian. “I didn’t need to be physically harmed to feel violated by my school [on September 14]

This is a livestream of Milo Yiannopolous marching in Berkeley. The streamer is switching on a regular basis to different streams at the event.

At Berkeley, there are both unequivocal voices championing the importance of free speech, no matter how inflammatory, and professors who say lines need to be drawn on campuses. These professors argue that the First Amendment needs to be reassessed for reasons that include the rise of internet trolling and cyberbullying and that some scientific research now shows that hateful speech can cause physical pain.

BERKELEY, Calif. — The class is called symplectic geometry, a high-level course in mathematics that provides elite graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, a better understanding of, among other things, planetary motion. But symplectic geometry will not be meeting for its scheduled session on Tuesday because the professor, Katrin Wehrheim, is one of dozens of faculty members who have canceled classes ahead of a series of scheduled appearances by right-wing speakers next week in the latest round of Berkeley’s free speech wars. “It’s just not safe to hold class,” Professor Wehrheim said. “This is not about free speech....

Last week, I visited the University of California, Berkeley. The preparations for the visit were patently insane. First, the school charged the sponsor group, Young America's Foundation, a $15,000 security fee. Then, the school blocked off the upper level of the auditorium, fearful that radicals from the violent far-left-leaning group Antifa would infiltrate the speech and begin hurling objects from the balcony onto the crowd below. Finally, the school ended up spending some $600,000 on additional policing, including the creation of cement barriers and hiring of hundreds of armed police officers for a prospective riot. All this so that I...

“This is a clear threat to public higher education.” A faculty letter addressed to the UC Berkeley campus and the Berkeley community at large is calling for a complete boycott of classes and campus activities during the upcoming “Free Speech Week," which will feature conservative speakers whose very names inspire college students to seek safe spaces and therapy. The Berkeley paper called The Daily Californian reports that the letter was co-written by seven faculty members, including Michael Cohen, a campus associate teaching professor of African American studies. The letter urges fellow faculty members to take three steps: cancel classes and...

Milo Yiannopoulos- Berkeley “Free Speech Week,” an event organized by student group the Berkeley Patriot and underwritten by MILO Inc., will occur as scheduled, running from September 24 to September 27 on the campus of UC Berkeley, despite attempts by the university to use bureaucratic maneuvers and strategic media leaks to disrupt the event and dissuade headline speakers from attending. The paperwork was filed on deadline, and MILO, Inc. transferred the required $65,758.76 to UC Berkeley to arrive at 8 AM ET Monday. Nevertheless, the University has not yet indicated it will grant access to Wheeler and Zellerbach. This move...

The city of Berkeley was on alert. Barriers were erected to stop violent protesters. Bank of America boarded up windows. Police were authorized to use pepper spray if merited. Traumatized UC Berkeley students were offered counseling if needed. A campus crowd chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, white supremacists have got to go.” And a large sign read, “We say no to white supremacist b-s.” What was causing this disturbance? Why the massive disruption? As tweeted by Tariq Nasheed, “Suspected white supremacist Ben Shapiro, who tries to mask his racist rhetoric by claiming to be jewish, is in Berkeley now #BenAtBerkeley.”...

I’d like to thank social justice warriors for drawing my attention to Ben Shapiro’s excellent speech at UC Berkeley Although I’ve watched plenty of brief clips of Ben Shapiro at YouTube in the past, I’d never before watched an entire speech of his.However, after social justice warriors tried to prevent him from speaking at UC Berkeley, I decided to watch the entire thing.And here it is:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP_9cRUzqMwThe speech itself makes up only the first 28 minutes of the video. I watched the entire 28 minutes. And I loved it. (The rest of the video is a Q&A, which I did not watch.)So...