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Things got a little heated Monday when a group of young immigrants confronted House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at a pro-DACA press conference in San Francisco. Several dozen young immigrants shouted down the top House Democrat, following her recent conversations with President Donald Trump over the future of a program that grants many of them legal status. "We are immigrant youth, undocumented and unafraid," they chanted, taking over a scheduled press conference Pelosi, along with Reps. Barbara Lee and Jared Huffman, organized to call for the immediate passage of the Dream Act, a federal proposal that offered many of the...

SACRAMENTO — California will beef up protections for undocumented immigrants beginning in January under a controversial new law Gov. Jerry Brown signed Thursday to create a statewide sanctuary policy. Brown signed the bill and 10 other immigration-related bills on the same day as a critical deadline for immigrants aided by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, who must file by Thursday for a final two-year extension before the program is phased out.

San Francisco police officers are being asked to combat racism in the ranks and take a pledge to turn in colleagues displaying intolerant behavior, such as slurs and jokes targeting people of color, gays and women. The pledge is part of a broader public relations campaign by the embattled police department to repair frayed relations with minority neighborhoods and community activists. The campaign comes amid growing tensions between police and black communities that are shaking up departments across the country and have led to the dismissal of top brass in some cities, including Chicago. Politically progressive San Francisco is not...

Let's examine the issues rationally, and see who actually understood the Age of Reason.Last March, California Governor Jerry Brown declared that those who wished existing federal immigration law to be enforced — in the manner that would have saved the late Kate Steinle from a five-times deported, seven-times released felon illegal alien – were: [A]t best … troglodyte, and at worst … un-Christian. In California, if one assumes that the law as written should be followed, one is dubbed either a cave-dweller or an apostate. Meanwhile, sophisticated non-troglodytes in San Francisco have a sheriff — with a criminal record of...

During a July 9 discussion on a spending bill, Democrat members of the House—led by House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)—began pushing a vote to ban all "Confederate symbols from the Capitol." This was a continuation of a push that began Tuesday, wherein Democrats sought to ban Confederate flags from all federal cemeteries. On Thursday, Pelosi supported such bans as necessary, saying it "is about our morals." According to Politico, on Tuesday, Democrats not only pushed to ban the flag from federal cemeteries, but also “to stop the U.S. Park Service from doing business with enterprises that sell the...

Oakland high schooler and gender-identity activist whose skirt was set ablaze on an AC Transit bus was scheduled to begin a series of surgeries Wednesday as Alameda County prosecutors weighed potential charges against a 16-year-old boy arrested on suspicion of assault.

The perfect companion vid to Jay Cost’s analysis this morning of how unusually, relentlessly partisan The One’s rhetoric has been as president, especially in his weekly YouTube messages. Oh, and also to Politico’s round-up of Democrats wondering why someone who’s so often touted as a brilliantly eloquent orator can’t seem to sell the public on anything except his own personal awesomeness. (Headline: “The ‘meh’ of a salesman.”) As usual, Nancy is eye-to-eye with reality. Silver lining: A reporter asking a big-name Democrat why righties dislike Obama is almost always bait to accuse them of racism. She doesn’t take it. Second...

A popular San Francisco restaurant called Bacon Bacon must shut its doors Friday after failed negotiations with neighbors who complained about the smell of bacon. The restaurant serves burgers, grilled cheeses, breakfast sandwiches, and more, all served with bacon. It also runs a food truck, which roams the city providing San Franciscans with bacon. But now that’s over, the San Francisco Examiner reports: But now a popular pork-focused restaurant in the Upper Haight must close its doors Friday following months of failed negotiations with neighbors over neighborhood concerns about porcine aroma and grease disposal. Department of Public Health officials say...

Abstract: Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar...

Vatican newspaper compares marriage equality to communism Vatican City • Faced with recent setbacks in the United States and Europe, the Roman Catholic Church has intensified its increasingly uphill battle against gay marriage. The latest salvo came this week, with a front-page article in the Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. Historian Lucetta Scaraffia compared proponents of gay marriage, with their championing of “marriage equality,” to 20th-century communists who wooed millions with their promise of perfect social and economical equality. Scaraffia, a 64-year-old former feminist activist who later became a fervent Catholic, has often written in the Vatican newspaper on the...

Let’s face it, it would’ve been weird if everyone’s clothes stayed on for the entirety of Monday’s hearing on legislation that would ban public nudity in San Francisco. For two hours, speakers tussled over whether the Castro “naked guys” were a few harmless individuals just expressing themselves, or a growing public nuisance that San Franciscans should no longer have to tolerate. Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents the Castro, is proposing legislation forbidding genital exposure on city sidewalks, plazas, parklets, streets and public transit while exempting street fairs, festivals and parades. “Over the past two years, the situation on our streets...

Tacoma, Wash. -- If you believe the polls, and many people here are wary even when they're favorable, then Washington voters are poised to legalize two things Californians haven't: same-sex marriage and marijuana. With ballot measures on both issues before Washington voters Tuesday, the lessons learned from California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in 2008, and Proposition 19, which would have made marijuana legal but was shot down in 2010, have been echoing across Washington for months. Some voters are noticing a different tone to the campaigns, with the issues being framed differently in a state where, in the...

Nobody in Hollywood has been clamoring to make “Ishtar 2.” Or re-imagine “Howard the Duck.” Why? Because they were BOMBS, that’s why. So why in the name of “Gigli” would Mitt Romney’s campaign — er, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads superPAC – dust off Clint Eastwood to make a campaign commercial touting Mitt? All it does is remind people of the great Eastwood’s royal bomb at the RNC just two months ago. Yes, his ad-libbed “conversation” with a chair. But in politics, attention spans are Tweet-short these days. So here’s Clint coughing up his full-throat-of-gravel Clintyness backing Mitt. . . .

SAN FRANCISCO -- A woman backing out of her garage in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood drove over and killed a man sleeping outside her home, police said Wednesday. The man was sleeping on the ground outside the 28-year-old woman's garage on Third Street near Bryant Street at 7 a.m. Tuesday when she backed out in her sedan and rolled over him, . . .

There was a time when the far left wing of the Democratic Party in San Francisco stood for something. Sure, they could be shrill, exasperating and self-righteous, but they took a stand. [snip] Because right now it looks as if their only commitment is to whatever is politically expedient. Ross Mirkarimi and District Five supervisor candidate Julian Davis have some serious defects. Each has been accused of mistreating women. But, hey, progressives say, they're our bad guys.

A stagehand working for a gay pornography company has sued his employers in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging he was forced to inject performers with a controlled drug to prolong their erections. According to the lawsuit, which was filed Friday, Ronald Baker of San Francisco claims he suffered emotional distress and anxiety-induced health problems when he accidentally pierced his finger in January after injecting a performer in the penis with TriMix, a prescription medication . . .

In a shocking end to the melodrama that has consumed San Francisco City Hall for the past nine months, the Board of Supervisors bucked Mayor Ed Lee late Tuesday night by giving suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi his job back. Four members of the board rejected Lee's call that Mirkarimi be permanently removed for committing official misconduct, an allegation that stemmed from a New Year's Eve fight with his wife for which he later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of false imprisonment. Lee needed nine of the 11 supervisors' votes to oust Mirkarimi. Supervisors John Avalos, David Campos, Jane Kim...

More than 2,000 worshipers filled St. Mary's Cathedral on Thursday to see Salvatore Cordileone assume his role as Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, as several dozen protesters angered by his leading role in the fight against same-sex marriage demonstrated outside. "I know in my own life God has always had a way of putting me in my place - little and sometimes big ways of reminding me of my need to depend upon him and to attend to the work of my own rebuilding from within," Cordileone told the congregation. "I would say, though, that with this latest episode...

Supervisor Scott Wiener never wanted to propose a ban on public nudity. But support for his ordinance, which was introduced Tuesday, has become so widespread that even those who were reluctant to complain publicly are speaking up. And that means everybody. "I went to a brunch for the Folsom Street Fair," Wiener said. "And I was a little nervous. This was a full-leather crowd. Were they going to yell at me? But I had these big old leather daddies coming up to me and saying, 'Please do something about this.' " ...George Davis, a former nude candidate for mayor, sees...

In a lively and unusually civilized debate Wednesday, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney clashed on who would be the better champion of the middle class - a match that provided high drama but no critical game-changers. The former Massachusetts governor delivered a confident, often aggressive and energetic performance. It was among the best of his campaign and in clear contrast to the president, whose delivery was more muted, measured and, at times, meandering. The first of three presidential debates offered Americans their first side-by-side comparison of Obama and Romney and came at a pivotal moment in the 2012...