Free Republic

When a catastrophic earthquake hits California, buildings will topple and potentially hundreds could be killed. But what gets less attention is the wrenching aftermath of such a huge temblor, which could leave whole neighborhoods torched by fires uninhabitable and hundreds of thousands of people without a home. Officials are grappling with where all these quake refugees would go. In the San Francisco Bay Area, more than 400,000 could be displaced in a magnitude 7 earthquake on the Hayward fault, which directly runs underneath cities like Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward and Fremont, said Ken Hudnut, the U.S. Geological Survey’s science advisor for...

In the San Francisco Bay Area, more than 400,000 could be displaced in a magnitude 7 earthquake on the Hayward fault, which directly runs underneath cities like Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward and Fremont, said Ken Hudnut, the U.S. Geological Survey’s science advisor for risk reduction. And it’s possible that more than 250,000 people in Southern California could be forced out of their homes after a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault, Hudnut said. Not everyone will need to stay in public shelters — many will stay with relatives, friends and hotels. Still, more than 175,000 people may have no other...

Standing on the front steps of First Congregational Church of Oakland late last month, Nichola Torbett issued a declaration. "We can no longer tolerate the trauma inflicted on our communities by policing," Torbett, a white church volunteer, said in front of churchgoers who held photos of African Americans shot dead by law enforcement. The church, she promised, would never call the cops again in nearly every circumstance. Dozens of members had agreed to do the same. "How do police help? They often don't," Torbett later said in an interview. "So, especially as white people, why call them?"

By 11:30 a.m. Sunday, a meaty, righteous aroma wafted up from hundreds of grills set up around the northeastern shore of Lake Merritt. Oakland barbecue stalwart Everett & Jones was flipping yard-long racks of ribs to give away. Vendors of skateboard decks airbrushed with the greats of African American history set up next to political organizers calling out for registered voters. BBQ’n While Black was barely getting started.

New bill named after Oakland mayor who tipped illegal immigrants to ICE sweepTipping illegal immigrants off to a looming immigration sweep could net sanctuary city leaders jail time, under a new bill announced Monday by Rep. Steve King. The Iowa Republican dubbed the bill the Mayor Libby Schaaf Act, after the Oakland mayor who alerted California’s bay area to an impending sweep earlier this year, in a move that immigration officials said helped hundreds of people escape detection.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting the Democratic mayor of Oakland, California, over her February heads-up to illegal immigrants about a federal enforcement raid.

What does it mean to stop asking for police intervention?

As BART’s ridership surged three years ago, along with the number of homeless people lingering inside its downtown San Francisco stations, the transit system doubled down on custodial work — and some of its janitors started cleaning up paywise. One system service worker, BART’s title for janitors, made a little more than $271,000 in 2015, with $162,050 of that in overtime. A year later, two other BART janitors joined him in collecting more than $100,000 in overtime pay in a year. Three years later — after the tale of the high-earning BART janitor became legend and the transit system, and...

Sean Manaea of the A's no-hits the Bosox. The A's won 3-0!

Behind the Headlines by Justin RaimondoAntiwar.com April 8, 2002 WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA POSTREL?Post-9/11: Who speaks for libertarianism – the Old Right or the Neocon Clones? A note from the author: I apologize, in advance, for the sheer length of this column, but since it addresses the sell-out of basic libertarian principles by people and institutions who purport to speak in its name, I thought it important to address these questions thoroughly, with extensive quotations from those I name. Too bad, in attacking Antiwar.com, these pathetic losers didn't do the same – but then what can one expect from craven...

Some movie goers may still be reeling after seeing some very rare footage of San Francisco around the time of the 1906 earthquake. A small crowd of people turned up at the Edison Theater in Fremont Saturday to view the premiere of a nine-minute film of the devastation. The footage from the San Francisco-based Miles Brothers film studio was discovered at the Alemany Flea Market last summer after being missing for more than a century. Anniversary of the quake, which destroyed much of Santa Rosa too, is Wednesday.

The sky-high rent and cost of living that we've come to expect from the Bay Area might have finally taken their toll on a large proportion of residents. A huge wave of people are considering more affordable cities outside of the tech capital of the world, and they're taking their startups — and investors — with them, as Kevin Roose reported in The New York Times. San Francisco lost more residents than any other city in the country in the last quarter of 2017, according to data from real estate website Redfin, which sampled a million users. The data factored...

Amidst division among his fellow Democrats over his campaign to see President Donald Trump impeached, billionaire left-wing environmentalist Tom Steyer held a rally attended by approximately 400 anti-Trump activists in Oakland Wednesday night to help garner support for his impeachment efforts. According to the East Bay Times, Steyer said Trump “is a malignant narcissist who’s deteriorating” while speaking alongside Amy Siskind, an anti-Trump Wall Street executive-turned-blogger, at the Impact Hub, a community center in uptown Oakland. “Today is the best day of the rest of the Trump administration,” Steyer said. Siskind, who is a liberal self-described “Jewish, gay woman,” used...

The Wall Street Journal reports that ExxonMobil petitioned the court yesterday to allow it to depose and obtain documents from public officials involved in the various climate change lawsuits recently brought by several California communities against the energy industry, as well as #ExxonKnew campaigner Matt Pawa, who is representing San Francisco and Oakland in their lawsuits. The legal filing accuses the communities of either exaggerating the risks of climate change in their lawsuits against energy companies or downplaying the risks of climate change when issuing municipal bonds to investors. Although the plaintiffs claimed in their lawsuits that climate change poses...

Full Title: Illegal immigrants, who dodged California ICE raid after Dem mayor's tip-off, re-arrested for new crimes Three illegal immigrants, who avoided capture after Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf blew the whistle on a raid by federal immigration authorities last month, have since been re-arrested for new crimes including robbery and spousal abuse, ICE officials said. snip ICE officials eventually caught 232 illegal immigrants, many of them criminals, in the four-day sweep but said that hundreds more escaped because of Schaaf’s warning. But on Tuesday, officials said that at least three of those who were targeted in the raid, but were...

Complete Headline: Illegal immigrants, who dodged California ICE raid after Dem mayor's tip-off, re-arrested for new crimes Three illegal immigrants, who avoided capture after Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf blew the whistle on a raid by federal immigration authorities last month, have since been re-arrested for new crimes including robbery and spousal abuse, ICE officials said. [Snip] On Tuesday, officials said that at least three of those who were targeted in the raid, but were not apprehended, had since been arrested for additional crimes. One was a Mexican national arrested for robbery and gun crimes, who was released back into the...

**SNIP** Since then, a number of California Democrats have backed Schaaf, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., slammed the raid as "unjust and cruel." The Department of Justice is reviewing Schaaf’s actions. As for those who have lost children due to the actions of illegal immigrants -- so-called Angel Families -- they say it’s vital that the administration do something. Don Rosenberg, an "Angel Dad" whose 25-year-old son, Drew, was killed in San Francisco in 2010 when an illegal-immigrant driver from Honduras hit his motorbike, says that Sessions’ DOJ needs to have Schaaf prosecuted.

A California coffee shop is under fire for refusing to serve uniformed law enforcement officers, claiming it’s to protect the “physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves.”

FULL TITLE: Kamala Harris: ‘I Support’ Oakland Mayor Who Helped Criminal Illegal Aliens Evade Deportation ‘100 Percent’ Senator and potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-CA) says she “100 percent” supports Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s (D) decision to help criminal illegal aliens evade deportation ahead of a raid by federal immigration officials. During a fundraiser for the YMCA’s “Y for Youth Luncheon,” Harris defended Schaaf, who made national headlines last month when she warned criminal illegal aliens of a coming raid in Oakland by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Subsequently, Schaaf helped many criminal illegal aliens with...

President Donald J. Trump used his weekly address to discuss the rampant problem of liberal public servants defying federal immigration law in hopes of protecting illegal aliens from deportation. In reality, these actions committed by mostly Democratic office holders endanger the community and American citizens. “Protecting the safety and well-being of American Citizens is my highest duty as President. Yet, lawless sanctuary jurisdictions are nullifying federal law, obstructing immigration enforcement, and releasing thousands of criminal aliens into U.S. communities to prey on innocent victims. Its absolutely terrible,” the president said. The 45th commander-in-chief then went on to highlight notable examples...