Free Republic

Maggots found in Whole Foods meat case, health officials say they’re not moving fast enough to fix the problem Whole Foods claims to be “America’s Healthiest Grocery Store,” and that they, “maintain the strictest quality standards in the industry.” Such claims might start to be questioned, however, after a disgusting discovery at one of their San Francisco locations on Monday, April 21. Last week, KRON 4 News exclusively reported that maggots were found in a meat case. Now, KRON 4 News is reporting that the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) claims Whole Foods hasn’t worked quickly enough to...

Let’s not get crazy. Let’s not take the NBA’s rather surprising and (cautiously) encouraging smackdown of racist billionaire team owner Donald Sterling – a member, mind you, of the most inbred, powerfully entrenched clubs in history, humans who’ve quite literally gotten away with murder since the dawn of American capitalism (hi, Koch Brothers) as anything other than what it likely is – as rare as an abortion clinic in Texas, as precious as a good book in Idaho.

<p>Arriving now in the mailboxes of more than 10.6 million California voter households: Sen. Leland Yee’s pledge to fight corruption.</p> <p>Yee, indicted earlier this month on corruption and conspiracy charges, paid $6,250 for a statement touting his secretary of state candidacy in the voter information guides that began going out Thursday for the June 3 primary.</p>

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is firing back at Mark Zuckerberg and his pro-immigration reform group, calling the Facebook CEO a "liberal billionaire" who should "go back to San Francisco." Earlier this month the Zuckerberg-backed super PAC FWD.us released ads in Iowa and online attacking King for his controversial remarks on immigration, such as when the congressman compared granting veterans citizenship to handing out "M&M's or Tootsie Rolls" at a parade.

The final football game ever in San Francisco's Candlestick Park will be played this summer by a team of 49ers greats, led by four-time Super Bowl winner Joe Montana. Montana, who played quarterback on the 49ers from 1979 to 1992, will suit up once again on July 12 to take on an all-star team led by famed Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino, organizers said at a news conference in the waterfront restaurant Epic Roasthouse this morning. The 49ers played their last game at Candlestick in December and will debut at the under construction Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara for the...

Gov. Jerry Brown took the stage at a downtown San Francisco luncheon Saturday to tout his legislative record, plug some upcoming projects and note the changing demographics of California.

n 1999, my wife and I saw a For Sale sign on a small house on Nob Hill, two blocks away from the apartment where we’d been living for years. We went to look at it. Large sections of Nob Hill are basically extensions of Chinatown, and this house and the connected three-unit apartment building behind it were essentially run-down tenements. About a dozen people were living in the front house, squeezed into rooms that had been crudely subdivided by sheets and plywood partitions—doors sealed off, the staircase drywalled over, an illegal kitchen installed upstairs. The rear apartments were in...

And, as one reader noted: he's not on his cellphone! This is a pretty good example of how pedestrians should be on the roadways in San Francisco -- even if the example is a coyote. Jennifer Anwaya snapped this image which we spotted on Richmondsfblog.com this morning. Apparently, the prairie wolf was seen casually making his way across Geary Boulevard at 37th Avenue earlier this week. No word on where he was headed that evening. Perhaps it was just an urban stroll.

A high-dollar Obama donor who was caught on video brutally beating his girlfriend got off with 25 hours of community service last week after he pled guilty to domestic battery charges. CCTV footage caught Gurbaksh Chahal, the CEO of San Francisco tech startup RadiumOne, kicking his girlfriend 117 times, including blows to the head, and trying to smother her with a pillow during a vicious 30-minute assault. He faced 45 felony charges until the footage was deemed inadmissible. As a result, Chahal has managed to avoid jail time, the Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

The Democratic National Committee says it has returned $20,000 donated by a wealthy San Francisco Internet entrepreneur recently convicted of domestic violence. DNC spokeswoman Rebecca Chalif said Friday the organization has returned Gurbaksh Chahal’s 2014 contribution after discovering he pleaded guilty last week to misdemeanor domestic violence battery and battery charges. Chahal was sentenced to three years’ probation and faces no jail time. …

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The California State Senate held an "ethics refresher course" for its members after federal indictments were issued against two senators and a third was convicted. Senate leaders are hoping to regain the public's trust. The purpose of the course is to teach members and their staffs to avoid potentially compromising situations. It's the latest in a series of moves by senate leaders aimed at putting political distance between them and their colleagues facing criminal charges. The leader of California's state senate stopped all regular business on Wednesday so everyone could go "back to school" in a...

Why do our well-meaning elites so often worry about humanity in the abstract rather than the real effects of their cosmic ideologies on the majority? The dream of universal health coverage trumped the nightmare of millions of lives disrupted by the implementation of it. Noble lies, with emphatics like “Period!” were necessary to sell something that would hurt precisely those who were told that this was going to be good for them. A myriad of green mandates has led to California’s having the highest-priced gasoline and electricity in the continental United States, a fact that delights utopians in San Francisco...

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That adage has more application than usual in California, where Democrats hold all of the statewide offices and supermajorities in the legislature. They can enact any policies they want, with only the judicial branch offering belated checks on their power. And when I say belated, that’s literally the case with state Senator Rod Wright, whom a jury found guilty in January of committing eight felonies regarding his residency and eligibility for the office he held.Normally, politicians who get that kind of a verdict have the decency to resign. If not, the body in...

Beginning in early 2011, state Sen. Leland Yee repeatedly solicited bribes to fund his San Francisco mayor and California secretary of state campaigns, according to the FBI agents who brought him down last month. But he appears to have devoted more time and energy to a far more lucrative pursuit: crafting or carrying legislation benefiting special interests who supply campaign contributions. It's a practice that's all too common in Sacramento, but Yee was a master. :snip: Yee introduced 20 bills from 2011 to 2014 that advanced a special interest over the public interest, according to this newspaper's review of his...

Crowds gathered early Friday in San Francisco - as they have done every year for 108 years - to remember the great quake of 1906. Children and grownups gathered at 5 a.m. around Lotta's Fountain to lay a wreath and sound sirens remembering the moment the quake struck. The gold-painted fountain on Market Street served as a meeting point during the earthquake and its aftermath. The early 20th century earthquake struck at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906 in San Francisco, leading to a devastating fires that lasted for several days. In the end, about 3,000 people died and more...

Original Title:Pelosi Assists in Holy Week Foot-Washing Ritual To "honor the dignity and work of immigrants," Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi helps Bishop Marc Andrus wash the feet of two children Thursday at Saint John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Pelosi also used the occasion to talk about passing HR15 - bipartisan immigration legislation that her office says would "reduce the deficit by nearly $1 trillion, secure our borders, unite our families, protect our workers and provide an earned pathway to citizenship." The Democratic leader's ceremony coincides with Pope Francis' similar ceremony in Rome to mark Holy...

A man walking his dog in San Francisco’s Mission district early Friday morning was threatened by two men with a knife, who police said ended up stabbing his pet to death. According to the San Francisco police, one of the suspects grabbed the dog, sparking a street fight between the three men at the intersection of 22nd and Bartlett streets about 3 a.m. After the two suspects, both in their 20s, ran away, the owner realized his dog had been stabbed. The dog later died of its injuries at a nearby animal hospital. The motive for the attack remains unclear.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce is “outraged” over a ballot measure to raise San Francisco’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, saying in a statement on Monday that it “flies in the face of collaboration and partnership.” The measure would lift base pay about 40 percent from its current $10.74, making San Francisco’s minimum wage the highest in the country. Activists were expected to file papers on Monday for the November ballot. The measure, designed by SEIU Local 1021, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and other activist groups, would give companies with fewer than 100 employees until...

The express train hurtling to return racial preference admissions to California — in the form of State Constitutional Amendment 5 [1], which if placed on the ballot and approved by voters would have overturned Prop. 209 —has just been derailed [2] by an outburst of opposition from Asian Americans.The eruption of opposition caught SCA 5’s Democratic sponsors by surprise and caused a crucial three Asian American senators to withdraw their support, depriving the measure of the two thirds senate majority required to place an initiative on the ballot. “Prior to the vote on SCA 5 in the Senate,” Senators...

SACRAMENTO — When my family moved from northwest Ohio to pricey Southern California, we could afford an entry level house but couldn’t also spring for private-school tuition for the kids. So we scoured the test-score databases, looking for those neighborhoods where home values were reasonable and public schools were tops. Given the focus on schools, it will surprise no one that we settled in a city with a majority Asian-American population.