Free Republic

New documents raise questions about the integrity of the steel rods that hold together the Bay Bridge eastern span and point to potentially widespread problems that experts warn could lead to premature failure.

As most of you have read or seen by now, a journalist and NBC/MSNBC media consultant named William “Bill” Arkin has created quite a stir by viciously insulting American soldiers in Iraq. He wrote at his Washington Post blog, “Early Warning: William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security” column (1/30/07), that “… this NBC (Nightly News) report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer force that thinks it is doing the dirty work” re Iraq. The “report,” according to Arkin, featured “a number of soldiers (who) expressed frustration with...

(06-22) 18:26 PDT OAKLAND -- Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums offered a budget proposal Tuesday that would lay off 53 of the Police Department's 776 officers, a plan he unveiled just two days before the City Council is scheduled to reckon with the city's downward-spiraling finances. Dellums' proposal, similar to one option that the council was already set to consider Thursday night, is ultimately a gamble. It assumes voters will temporarily suspend a mandate in November that the Police Department employ a certain number of officers in order to receive the proceeds of a parcel tax. If voters don't go along...

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums doesn't seem to do much on the job these days -- but he went into meltdown Monday when veteran KTVU political reporter Randy Shandobil had the temerity to ask why he's been missing in action as one of the most crime-challenged cities in the nation faces a devastating layoff of a quarter of its police force."Who the (blank) are you to decide what my role is?" a raging Dellums told Shandobil in a phone call Monday, after the Oakland-based reporter showed up at City Hall to ask why Dellums has been seen at high profile boxing...

Despite his pledge last year to join other Oakland elected officials in taking a 10 percent pay cut, Mayor Ron Dellums has continued to collect his full $183,000-a-year salary, a spokesman for the mayor confirms. The spokesman, Paul Rose, declined to say precisely why the mayor took the extra $18,300 in pay this past year -- but there is speculation that he needed the money to help deal with his troubled personal finances.

AHMADINEJAD: 'YEP, I'M NUCLEAR!'February 17, 2010 The only man causing President Obama more headaches than Joe Biden these days is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who, coincidentally, was right after Biden on Obama's short-list for V.P.). Despite Obama's personal magnetism, the Iranian president persists in moving like gangbusters to build nuclear weapons, leading to Ahmadinejad's announcement last week that Iran is now a "nuclear state." Gee, that's weird -- because I remember being told in December 2007 that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Iran had ceased nuclear weapons development as of 2003. At the time of that leak, many of...

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and his wife, who already have a lien on their property for failing to pay more than $239,000 in taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, are now facing a second lien for more than $13,000, records show. Dellums, 73, and his wife, Cynthia, 55, who acts as his unpaid adviser, are named in an IRS lien filed with the Alameda County recorder's office Dec. 23 in the amount of $13,638. The lien, which says it is for tax year 2008, comes two months after the couple were slapped with a lien in Alameda County for failing...

(11-03) 15:20 PST OAKLAND -- Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and his wife failed to pay more than $239,000 in taxes over a three-year period and have had a lien slapped on their property by the Internal Revenue Service, public records show. ... Yeah yeah yeah, another Democrat politician didn’t pay all his taxes. But Dellums isn’t your typical “the rich aren’t paying their fair share!” Democrat. He was among the luminaries of the 60’s New Left and was the first traveled in April to Cuba to meet with their hero Fidel Castro. Now that’s its been discovered that Dellums has...

ACORN, which former members are now trying to have investigated for racketeering (see earlier blog entry), is planning a party for March 12 in Oakland, California. The guests of honor include comedian Roseanne Barr and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California), a Marxist who once betrayed her country. Lee, a former social worker and chief of staff to Rep. Ron Dellums, was first elected to Congress in 1998 to replace Dellums. In 2001 she was the sole lawmaker to vote against authorizing the president to use military force against any group or nation involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001....

Barack Obama's chief campaign strategist David Axelrod, once worked for a man who was an identified member of the Communist Party USA, a registered agent of the Soviet Union and a paid disseminator of Soviet black propaganda. This man went on to become a key Chicago political fixer who helped elect communist linked politicians including the late Chicago mayor Harold Washington and former US Senator Carol Moseley Braun. This man knew Barack Obama and was a key member of an organisation which endorsed Barack Obama in his 2004 US Senate race. Barack and Michelle Obama were active members of this...

OAKLAND, Calif. -- A 2-month investigation into the expenses of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums has found a pattern of what appears to be extravagant spending at taxpayer expense, even as the mayor suggests shutting down City Hall for a dozen days and raising taxes. The expenses include stays at 5-star hotels in Washington D.C. such as the Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton, on his many travels away from Oakland, although Dellums owns a luxurious home in the nearby exclusive enclave of Georgetown. The data obtained though the California Public Records Act also shows expensive meals, limousine services and even hundreds...

North Oakland shopkeeper Scott Silvera tried for months to get Mayor Ron Dellums' attention about the explosion of crime in his neighborhood. Finally, fed up, he vowed to stop paying sales taxes until he heard from the mayor's office. Silvera is still waiting. But he did get an official visit the other day - from a representative of the state Franchise Tax Board, who warned the storekeeper to pay up the taxes he owes.Or else.Silvera, who runs Scout Home Hardware at 5026 Telegraph Ave. in the Temescal neighborhood, says he intends to pay the $3,000. The funny thing is, he...

<p>Haiti's government, while controlled by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his party, spent $7.3 million between 1997 and 2002 lobbying the U.S. government as more than 80 percent of the country was impoverished.</p> <p>During this time, U.S. funding to Haiti — a typical measure of lobbying success — declined, and its economy foundered, fueling his opposition's successful effort to depose Mr. Aristide last week for the second time in 15 years.</p>

Making the transition from almost 30 years on Capitol Hill to the daily grind of an urban mayor has not been an easy one for Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, who stepped into his new job in January. In his first eight months, Dellums' new role has compelled him to drop the hammer on union workers to end a garbage lockout and call in more police in an attempt to restore law and order after a crime wave claimed nine lives in the last two weeks. The mayor made the decisions reluctantly, said City Hall sources. That's not surprising, given that...

The "Central Committee of Conscientious Objectors" is an organization which "supports and promotes individual and collective resistance to war and preparations for war", according to its website. Among the resources available on the website are How-to guides on being AWOL, various reasons for getting out of the military, as well as a list of reasons one should not join the US military. The following picture on its website illustrates the goal of the organization: This organization lists among its sponsors former Democratic congressman Ronald Dellums of California. Dellums was an anti-war, anti-military radical who created a stir during the Vietnam...

Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Party that ruled Cambodia from 1976-1979. "Khmer Rouge" (or Khmer Reds) was the French rendering of the organization’s official name: the "Communist Party of Cambodia," later the "Party of Democratic Kampuchea" and also the "Communist Party of Kampuchea," or CPK. (Kampuchea is the local name for Cambodia.) Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar in what is now the province of Kompong Thong, Cambodia in 1925. He came from a prosperous farming family that in 1931 moved to the capital, Phnom Penh, where the young Pol Pot learned some of...

On January 18 Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, told a placard-waving anti-war crowd: "The greatest patriots of this country are here today...The president said it'd be a cold day in Washington before this country turns against this war, but it is a cold day in Washington and here we are." Apart from Conyers nasty insinuation people who disagree with his leftwing views about war against the genocidal Saddam are not patriotic, what can we deduce from his presence? Well, for one, Rep. does not like America and prefers the company of totalitarians to that of genuine democrats. And how...

You could hardly find a more problematic time for pacifists who do not want their taxes spent on the military. But the recent wave of patriotic fervor has only reinvigorated the efforts of one tiny, determined group. "On the Friday after Sept. 11, I was told I should lay low for a while," said Marian Franz, executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. "Now I have been told this is the time. As the war grows, so does the antiwar movement." For more than three decades, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund has petitioned...