Free Republic

If police chiefs send armed officers to a journalist's door because he didn't like what was written abut him, would you feel just a tad uncomfortable as an American at the audacity? This is no academic discussion because it really happened. Not in what liberals may claim is the dangerous, intolerant south but instead in the heart of liberal land itself, Berkeley, California. Worse, one of the reasons this whole situation arose is because police were too distracted by an Occupy Berkeley protest to respond to an incident that ended up in the murder of a 67-year-old resident. But first,...

The city of Berkeley has hired a law firm to investigate the police chief's decision to send an officer to a reporter's home after midnight to push for changes in a story, officials said today. Interim City Manager Christine Daniel issued a statement confirming the independent investigation shortly after the police union called for an outside probe, saying the top cop should be held to the same standard as the rank and file. Chief Michael Meehan has apologized for what he has described as an "error in judgment." Any officer under his command who did what the chief did would...

BERKELEY -- A growing chorus of voices is calling for the firing of a UC Berkeley administrator who helped triple her secret sex partner's pay over five years. Calling Diane Leite's punishment "an affront" to the university, several UC Berkeley professors have asked the school's provost to investigate how the matter was handled. They are aghast that, instead of firing her, the university reassigned Leite from her assistant vice chancellor post and will still pay her $175,000 a year. "It's an outrage," said engineering professor Samer Madanat, one of at least 13 professors who signed the letter to Provost George...

Amid controversy, Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, delivered a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley. During Saturday's speech, Farrakhan made a number of anti-semetic and racist remarks. Farrakhan told the audience that they "like to sugarcoat things so you can get along with your former slave masters . . . This is what you call an education in white supremacy. So when you come out, you come out bowing to them." He later adopted a fake Asian accent (see video below), mocking their race, saying "Can you imagine Ching Lee Joong with a picket sign?

A longtime UC Berkeley administrator has been demoted and docked in pay for improperly giving several raises to an employee with whom she was having a sexual relationship -- but she will still make $175,000 a year. Diane Leite, a former assistant vice chancellor, "should have known better" than to push through five raises in two years for a purchasing manager, university investigators concluded. The scandal in UC Berkeley's office that provides administrative services for campus research is detailed in a report obtained by the Bay Area News Group using the California Public Records Act. Jonathan Caniezo, 30, who earned...

Berkeley victim's call for help went unheeded Thirteen critical minutes elapsed between the time a Berkeley hills homeowner called police about a trespasser and an attack by the intruder that left the man beaten to death, sources close to the investigation said Tuesday. Berkeley police have acknowledged they were keeping officers on standby for a lightly attended Occupy Oakland march, meaning no officer was dispatched when Peter Cukor, 67, first called at about 8:45 p.m. Saturday on a nonemergency line to report a suspicious person "hanging around" his property near Tilden Park. After phoning police, Cukor walked 160 feet from...

Panhandling has always been an important part of human existence, ever since people were put in poverty by a society that sometimes lacks mercy. It is not fair or accurate to say that you should never give money to a panhandler. There are people who would perish without the generosity of strangers. We can not presume to know that they created their own problems and should reap the results. There are plenty of people who became poor largely due to circumstances that weren't under their control. I have given coins out of my pocket to panhandlers under certain circumstances, and...

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...