Free Republic

A man in Berkeley was beaten to death while confronting a protester. And according to reports, police were too busy dealing with Occupy protesters to respond. The San Francisco Chronicle has the story explaining how an unidentified victim savagely beaten by a trespasser — suspected to be a mentally ill 23-year-old named Daniel Jordan Dewitt — attempted to call the police regarding his assailant. The call was ignored because Berkeley police were too busy dealing with Occupy Oakland protesters: The victim had called police on a nonemergency line after first seeing Dewitt, according to sources familiar with the case. But...

Over the weekend, Berkeley resident Peter Cukor, 67, was killed during an assault in front of his home. He had called police, but as the Chronicle reported, Berkeley police were busy monitoring an Occupy Oakland march to UC Berkeley, and officers were dispatched only to high-priority calls. After the weekend of Jan. 28, during which authorities arrested 400 Occupy Oakland activists, there were five homicides in Oakland. Police Chief Howard Jordan makes no bones about his belief that the protests have thinned the force in Oakland’s most dangerous neighborhoods. So while Occupy Oakland activists and the ACLU are complaining about...

The whole bizarre incident started, as usual, in front of the Caffe Mediterraneum—center of the universe, where a tall man who resembles Jay Leno had attracted a crowd. Saying, "never trust a man in white shoes," he carried on like a Southern Baptist preacher, a white-suited version of Johnny Cash, as a Berkeley Poet Laureate, Julia Vinograd, later symbolized him for her next poem. For the past forty years Berkeley has hosted scores of entertaining street performers, such as Moon Man (selling lots on the moon), Polka Dot Man, Ricky Starr, Stoney Burke, Bubble Lady, the Nude Duo, Naked Man,...

People are back in the streets because of Pacific Steel Casting Company. In the past, it has been the issue of pollution. The workers have struck over the issue of health and safety (the same issue, as seen from inside). And now, some 200 workers are protesting unjust job termination, owing to intervention by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), in violation of the spirit of Berkeley as a sanctuary city. This factory remains a problem. There will be a march to publicize this problem on Friday, Feb. 17. Here's a bit of the story (aka history). The factory is a...

UC Berkeley, in an apparent attempt to stave off any association with, well, sexy co-eds doing naughty things on camera has bought a handful of .xxx domain names that could link to the school. In other words, domains like goldenbears.xxx, uc-berkeley.xxx and calbears.xxx won’t offer any titillating bits, just a dark screen that says “this domain has been reserved from registration.” “We wouldn’t want to be associated with the kind of industries that would use that domain name,” . . .

BERKELEY -- A longtime Berkeley tree sitter has been convicted of illegal lodging and pointing a laser at a police officer. Fifty-five-year-old Matthew Dodt received a 60-day suspended sentence and three years of probation . . .

Berkeley considers closing its multimillion dollar Wells Fargo account over bank's handling of foreclosure crisis Berkeley is considering closing its Wells Fargo account worth $350 million and entrusting the money to a community bank or credit union, saying the bank is partly to blame for the financial crisis of the last four years.The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to study cutting ties with the bank and rewarding "responsible financial institutions" with its business. The city manager will return with a report in May on the feasibility of ending the 8-year-old contract, which is up for renewal at the end...

BERKELEY -- Why in the world does the University of California employ an armed police force on its campuses? That question, and the anger implied in its wording, was asked repeatedly Wednesday night by UC Berkeley students and faculty of top UC brass. Berkeley was a whistlestop on their tour of campuses before they prepare UC's official response to the use of batons and pepper-spray against peaceful protesters last November. ... Everyone sat in concentric circles waiting for the chance to influence recommendations being prepared on behalf of the university system by Charles Robinson, UC's general counsel, and Chris Edley,...

“The Bay Area Occupy Movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground,” said Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, speaking at a press conference Saturday evening after a day of demonstrations called by Occupy Oakland that saw approximately 400 arrests, multiple injuries and numerous confrontations with police. She ticked off the damage that had been done when a group of protesters broke into City Hall, overturning a scale model of the building, vandalizing a children's art exhibit, and burning an American flag. The next day in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she returned to her talking point: "It's...

Progressive observers treat the Tea Party’s forays into land use planning as the work of paranoid reactionaries. The March-April 2011 issue of Mother Jones ran an article by Stephanie Mencimer that portrayed Tea Partiers as “nutters” whose opposition to increased density and mass transit is rooted in “a hostility to what it sees as elites” and a pro-sprawl, suburban lifestyle. Last December, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s Anthony Flint riffed off of Mencimer’s piece in a post on the Atlantic magazine’s “Urban Wonk” blog that decried Tea Party disruption of planning efforts from California to Maine to Florida. The...

I miss Robin of Berkeley. She hasn't posted anything since October. No articles on American Thinker or on her site. She was publishing quite steadily for a good long time and then - nothing. I truly hope she is OK. There are people who would make her life miserable if they could figure out her real identity. I sent an email to the editor of AT yesterday and this is the reply I received: "She is busy with other matters. We share your feelings, and are hoping she will return to writing." - editor@americanthinker.com That's all I've been able to...

After Rick Santorum’s surprising showing in the January 3rd Iowa caucuses, many observers asked, “Why didn’t Mitt Romney win? What explains Santorum’s late surge?” The answer lies at the core of contemporary Republican politics: they don’t have one candidate that appeals to their fractured base. A recent Pew Research poll revealed the remarkable diversity in the US electorate. In 2012, Pew projects that 10 percent of potential voters, mostly young people, will not vote; Pew allocates the remaining 90 percent to three groups: “Mostly Republican,” 25 percent, “Mostly Independent,” 35 percent, and “Mostly Democratic,” 40 percent. (This reflects ideology not...

Sitting at the bar in Paolo’s Restaurant at 92nd Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan Saturday afternoon, December 10th, I was shocked by the tone the conversation with my old ABC News colleague Lowell Bergman had taken. He was heading to London and had urgently requested that we get together before his afternoon flight from JFK. I remembered Lowell as a brave, competent, but hugely self-righteous old school investigative reporter, who famously produced the Mike Wallace expose of the major tobacco companies for ’60 Minutes.’ Al Pacino played him in the movie version of the saga, ‘The Insider.’ Although I...

Imagine opening up your copy of the Constitution one day and finding these words: Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure. Federal, State and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.  On January 7th, Occupy Berkeley's ruling authority, its General Assembly, somehow came to endorse an upcoming protest called "Occupy the Courts". The protest is in response to the Citizens United...

In November, Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz traded his $250,000-a-year job for retirement with a starting pension of about $266,000 annually. The deal highlights the city's generous pension program, which is one of the better plans in the state but by no means unique. The costly program is also $420 million underfunded, a shortfall equal to more than three years of city payroll, according to the city's latest actuarial reports. Kamlarz's hefty retirement pay was predictable. Three years ago, Mayor Tom Bates successfully persuaded his City Council colleagues to grant the city manager a series of raises to keep him...

The University's recent bulldozer "maintenance" in the Park is problematic in several ways. First, it is a violation of trust and respect. The University snuck into the Park in the early hours with no notice to the community and long time Park volunteers. The Pergola, or trellis in the West End, which UC rather mysteriously decapitated, was designed and agreed upon during almost a year of meetings with University architects and the volunteers who built it. And the information that the University is providing for their recent attack is misleading, if not outright falsehood. I'll eat my hat if the...

Berkeley, the leftist city whose University of California campus erupted in protest this week as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, has the widest gap between rich and poor in the Bay Area, according to recently released data from the Census Bureau. The city that features famous restaurants like Chez Panisse and hilltop mansions with breathtaking views of San Francisco Bay is also one where 10 percent of households subsist on less than...

Bulldozers ploughed through the west end of People’s Park today turning decades of community garden into rubble. Dozens of police watched as crews tossed mountains of healthy plants and a community-built arbor into dumpsters, leaving behind stripped earth. A young student who claimed to be volunteering as a police assistant handed out university fliers which stated, “In response to park users and neighbor concerns, we are doing maintenance work to address the rat infestation and safety issues in People’s Park.” A UC press release described the activity as "an effort to provide students and the broader community with safer, more...

BERKELEY, Calif. — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the University of California, Berkeley filed by two Jewish students who claimed the school fostered an atmosphere of anti-Semitism by not doing enough to curb harassment during pro-Palestinian protests that included mock checkpoints. Plaintiff Jessica Felber claimed in the lawsuit that a leader of a pro-Palestinian campus group rammed her with a shopping cart as she staged a counterprotest to “Apartheid Week,” an annual event that compares Israel’s policies to the institutionalized racism of South Africa’s former white government. Ms. Felber, who graduated last year, and current undergraduate Brian...

Being out and about in Berkeley in the week before Christmas provides a good window on the world in 2011. A lot of fuss has been made, rightly so, about the major divide between the 1% super-rich and the 99% others, but the old distinction of the haves versus the have-nots is still valid. Berkeley has recently been certified as the center of this split. We have the biggest gap between the rich and the poor of any city in the Bay Area. Of course, the simple explanation is that we’re the rich city most tolerant of also including some...