Free Republic

Palladino was robbed and critically injured just outside his San Francisco home San Francisco police have arrested a suspect in connection with a robbery and assault that left Jack Palladino, the famed private investigator who once worked for former President Bill Clinton, on life support this week, according to local reports. Authorities were also on the hunt for at least one other assailant, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday evening, citing a source familiar with the investigation. The 70-year-old gumshoe reportedly cracked his head on the pavement outside his Haight-Ashbury home when muggers yanked a new camera from around his...

During her speech to the first ever National Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Saturday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin discouraged the very idea of a national organization, urging the movement to stay leaderless and decentralized. This was the most important and valuable part of Palin’s speech. As for the rest of it–Sarah sounded pretty much like the same old Republican Party. Despite the many independents that make up the movement, the tea parties in large part represent a long overdue reexamination of conservative principles. A big-spending Democratic president seems to have awakened grassroots conservatives enough to finally lament the...

Last week Congress passed the war supplemental appropriations bill. In an affront to all those who thought they voted for a peace candidate, the current president will be sending another $106 billion we don’t have to continue the bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq, without a hint of a plan to bring our troops home. Many of my colleagues who voted with me as I opposed every war supplemental request under the previous administration seem to have changed their tune. I maintain that a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war. Congress exercises its constitutional...

There is nothing that captures the yin and yang of San Francisco today like the inexorable pull of change in the neighborhoods. As young families and empty nesters move in, they push to raise the standard of living. And inevitably, there is pushback from those who like things the way they are. If there's a perfect test tube for that kind of neighborhood conflict, it is the Haight, where bong shops meet trendy new clothing shops. Longtime residents like to say that Haight has been a district in transition for years, but it seems that now it has reached critical...

Summer of love: 40 years later Hippie Hippie Shakedown: But where was love? BY DAWN EDEN, Guest Columnist LA Daily News WHEN it comes to inappropriate names, "Summer of Love" has to be right up there with "Joy Division," the name the Nazis reportedly gave to the sections of concentration camps that housed the guards' sex slaves. For one thing, it was not just a summer event. The countercultural happening that swept through San Francisco and beyond began with an April1967 planning announcement by concert promoter Chet Helms, aka Family Dog, creating the "Council for the Summer of Love." It...

When I called the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute, whose chairwoman gives speeches on topics with titles like "The Failures of Feminism", and told the gatekeeper there that I wanted to do an interview with Ann Coulter solely about the Grateful Dead, there was a small pause. Then she recovered and politely told me to send her an e-mail, which she would forward to Ann. That, I expected, would be the end of it.When I got home that night, and saw an e-mail in my box from Ann Coulter, I thought "how polite of her to send a rejection letter...

Ok, it has been a real pleasure chatting with everyone here on FR (well, just about everyone anyways) but it's time for me to move on. I've got some work to do that is going to require 110% effort from me for extended period of time and I can't have any distractions whatsoever. I'll stop by from time to time but am afraid if I still have my account I will be tempted to post and then - as is my wont - get into silly, useless debates about things I a) don't really care about, or b) don't know...

Up to six days ago my post automatically carried my tagline. Abruptly that stopped. If I do not enter it manually, it does not post. Clues as to why? And I can't seem to figure out to fix it. This is apparently one of my duh days.

Arriving home from the hospital after being treated for a heart attack, 84-year-old Carol Barnes inched up the steps into her Sunset District home and headed straight for her absentee ballot. "She said, 'That ... Bush, I can't allow him to be president again,' " said her son, Bo Barnes. " 'I want to vote for Kerry to make the world safe.' " Too exhausted to do more than cast votes for president and two propositions, the widow of an Army major signed the ballot and told her son they'd complete the rest later. Three days later, on Oct. 17,...