Free Republic

When San Francisco middle school principal Lena Van Haren saw which kids on her campus had been elected to the student council, she was disturbed at the lack of diversity among the winners. There were no Latino or black candidates chosen for the top four spots. Her concern for a representative student government, given the preponderance of students of color at Everett Middle School in the Mission District, may have been understandable. What she did about it, however, swiftly raised a different kind of alarm. Van Haren decided to withhold the results of the Oct. 9 election for more than...

Because the most important thing to a 5 year old is having a ‘gender neutral’ bathroom at school right? Put this in the ‘adults pushing their ideology onto small children’ category. A San Francisco school has made their Kindergarten and 1st Grade bathrooms into ‘all inclusive’ bathrooms. From Breitbart: The first San Francisco elementary school to make bathrooms gender neutral has proudly removed the circles, triangles, and stick figure signs from the kindergarten and first-grade bathrooms that delineate the differences between the sexes. Principal Sam Bass of Miraloma Elementary said the change at the beginning of the school year was...

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — KCBS has learned that Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the principal church of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, has installed a watering system to keep the homeless from sleeping in the cathedral’s doorways. The cathedral, at Geary and Gough, is the home church of the Archbishop. There are four tall side doors, with sheltered alcoves, that attract homeless people at night. “They actually have signs in there that say, ‘No Trespassing,’” said a homeless man named Robert. But there are no signs warning the homeless about what happens in these doorways, at various times, all through the night....

February 14 has rolled around again, and we all know what that means — right? No, you silly, not Valentine’s Day. That’s heteronormative and has thus been condemned to the dustbin of history. And no, it doesn’t even mean V-Day, the rape-themed anti-holiday invented to promote Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues. V-Day has gotten stale. Instead, February 14 is now 1 Billion Rising day, Ensler’s new dance-oriented hijacking of her own V-Day which was itself a hijacking of Valentine’s Day. The thesis behind 1 Billion Rising is that if the world’s one billion rape victims all rose up en...

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- San Francisco may be getting ready to shed its image as a city where anything goes, including clothing. City lawmakers are scheduled to vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would prohibit nudity in most public places, a blanket ban that represents an escalation of a two-year tiff between a devoted group of men who strut their stuff through the city's famously gay Castro District and the supervisor who represents the area. Supervisor Scott Wiener's proposal would make it illegal for a person over the age of 5 to "expose his or her genitals, perineum or anal...

San Francisco must have taken a chapter out of Laer Pearce’s new book “Crazifornia.” The city’s new CleanPower SF plan garners subsidies from U.S. taxpayers for green-power purchases. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But you would have to be crazy not to shift your green power purchases onto U.S. taxpayers if laws provide for it. And what city wouldn’t want to do it if it could cover it up as part of their compliance with AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006? San Francisco is “gaming the system,” just as Enron supposedly did in the 2001 state energy...

Thirty major U.S. public companies, including San Francisco's PG&E Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co., paid no federal taxes over the past three years, according to a report released Thursday. A number of them, notably Wells Fargo, also benefited greatly from various tax subsidies.

Are you tipping enough when you go out to eat? The San Francisco restaurant industry apparently doesn’t think so. A column from Ed Arnow of the Contra Costa Times reports that “there’s a move on” among local restaurant workers to “make 25% the standard tip in San Francisco.” Arnow says that several “high-class restaurants” have signed on to the idea, though he doesn’t list which ones—or, for that matter, how the restaurants would impose this new standard.

Does San Francisco have a serious problem with birds flying into tall buildings? Was there a good reason the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a "bird-safe" building ordinance last month? I asked Supervisors David Chiu and John Avalos on Saturday why they supported the measure, at a mayoral candidates debate hosted by the West of Twin Peaks Central Council. Their answers were instructive. Chiu seemed put out that he had been asked such a trivial question. The board has spent about "40 seconds" on the measure, he assured me, less time than during Saturday's debate. Avalos answered that he knows...

San Francisco mulls ban on all pet sales, including goldfish and hamsters San Francisco, a city named after the patron saint of animals, is considering banning sales of all pets including goldfish and hamsters in a sweeping attempt to end cruelty. By Nick Allen, Los Angeles 4:37PM BST 27 Jun 2011 The ban would cover everything from dogs and cats to snakes, lizards, guinea pigs, parrots, mice and rats. All mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish would be banned from sale in pet stores in what would be the most radical measure of its kind in the Unite States. Those...

Here's one advantage to being a caretaker mayor: You can make tough decisions without worrying about their repercussions at the ballot box. That's exactly what Mayor Ed Lee has in his quiver as he prepares to make the difficult calls to balance the budget for 2011-12, which now has a $380 million deficit because of a recent $20 million increase in projected pension costs. "I have an opportunity to actually make some long-term reforms, reforms that will last," Lee told The Chronicle's editorial board on Tuesday. "I'm not speaking about any particular politician, but what I generally have felt is...

A transgender woman who used to run a sex toy company called Good Vibrations reportedly is being labeled as the "conservative" candidate in a local San Francisco race. SF Weekly reports that Theresa Sparks, a candidate for a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors, is being criticized as the insider, conservative pick. Sparks is backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and held a seat on the city's Police Commission. She allegedly drifts "conservative" by opposing a hotel tax and, according to one local paper, declining to put pressure on the city's police officers while serving on the disciplinary panel....

JACKSON (AP) — A teen who challenged a ban on same-sex prom dates will get a second chance to don a tuxedo and dance at an event in San Francisco often referred to as the ‘‘lesbian prom.’’ The National Center for Lesbian Rights has invited Constance McMillen and Ceara Sturgis, a Mississippi student who fought to wear a tuxedo in a yearbook photo, to its 33rd anniversary celebration on May 1. The event is often referred to as the ‘‘lesbian prom,’’ said NCLR Executive Director Kate Kendell. Nearly 2,000 people are expected to attend the celebration in San Francisco, Kendell...

San Francisco - Over the last two years, three-quarters of San Francisco's uninsured adults have enrolled in a public program that guarantees access to medical services, an effort that is being touted as a national model during the rancorous debate over healthcare reform. More than 46,000 adults have enrolled in Healthy San Francisco since it was launched; this first-in-the- nation, city-run universal healthcare effort has received high marks in recent independent studies. The program is funded in part by an employer mandate, a controversial component of the plans under discussion in Washington. One analysis has concluded that this mandate on...

A light hearted video poking fun at "San Fran." This is not showing the east bay so you will not see Van Jones in any of this. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVNoqpMZ9Lg&feature=fvhl

A homeless man is on trial in San Mateo County on charges that he smacked a fellow transient in the face with a skateboard as the victim was engaged in a conversation about quantum physics, authorities said today.

t was a bizarre and abrupt way to die for a man who, by all accounts, went at life full-bore and was fit and agile from riding his bicycle everywhere he went ... Doctor killed in mysterious elevator shaft fall It was a bizarre and abrupt way to die for a man who, by all accounts, went at life full-bore and was fit and agile from riding his bicycle everywhere he went. But as San Francisco police combed over the evidence Tuesday, investigators said this is what appears to have happened: Dr. Daniel J. Kliman, an Alameda physician and one...

On Nov. 18, 1978, more than 900 men, women and children - many of them poor African Americans from San Francisco - died after drinking a cyanide-laced potion in Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones' compound in the jungles of Guyana. Then, while San Francisco struggled to grasp the enormity of that tragedy, on Nov. 27 a fiercely conservative ex-supervisor named Dan White assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, one of the nation's few openly gay politicians. White was a former police officer and firefighter who had campaigned against the city's "social deviates." With the bullets he fired, White...

VIDEO HERE. Barack Obama stated his intention to bankrupt the coal industry in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. That would throw countless people out of work, devastate the economy of many coal producing states, and send electricity prices skyrocketing for everyone. Sarah Palin opposes Barack's bankrupt plan and pledges to fight with everything she has for working Americans! Please ask everyone you know to vote for her Tuesday November 4th!!!