Free Republic

The sheriff of San Mateo County, Carlos Bolanos, has come under fire for allegedly sending a four-man team to Indiana to raid the garage that produces Batmobiles as a favor for a friend who can’t wait for his order, as reported by ABC News. “Your public money paid for the trip last week by the sheriff’s investigators – four round-trip plane tickets, three nights of hotels, meals, rental cars, and a lot of overtime, all because of a friend of the sheriff who can’t wait for his batmobile,” the news outlet reported. Sam Anagnostou, a real estate agent from Atherton,...

ATHERTON (CBS SF) – The town of Atherton is sending a bill to the White House, asking the Obama Administration to pay up after a fundraising visit earlier this month. On April 4th, President Obama attended a morning brunch hosted by Liz Simons and Mark Heising, then a luncheon at the home of Marcia and John Goldman. Those stops were to benefit the Democratic National Committee. Town leaders want someone to pick up the nearly $8,000 tab for police and other security services required during the visit. . .

ATHERTON, Calif. — A California school teacher was placed on paid administrative leave after he rattled a table to get the attention of his math students, startling an eighth-grade girl who used her cell phone to call police.

The tree-lined Atherton street where Meg Whitman lives was overrun Thursday afternoon by roughly 1,000 nurses clad in red scrubs, who staged a rally and political skit in front of the Republican gubernatorial candidate's home to demonstrate their opposition. As curious neighbors watched, nurses from around the state arrived in dozens of buses and marched along Edge Road for a 1 p.m. demonstration organized by the California Nurses Association. Whitman wasn't home — she was at a campaign event in Southern California — but the rally still attracted local print and TV media and three dozen police officers from around...

Man issued jaywalking ticket after hit by car WASHINGTON A former secretary of the U-S Commission on Fine Arts has gotten a five-dollar ticket for jaywalking even though, at the time, he was lying critically injured in the street, having been hit by a car. D-C Police tell The Washington Post that 73-year-old Charles Atherton was conscious when he was issued the ticket before being taken to the hospital Thursday night. But witnesses report that Atherton was unresponsive and struggling to breathe. They say he had been knocked out of his shoes and was bloody from hitting his head on...

The real estate brochure advertising an Atherton home promised the buyer would own a part of local history. But at $3.5 million, Manuel Henriquez wasn't interested in the history. All he really wanted was the dirt: nearly one acre of land where he and his wife planned to build their dream house. But now the history part of the deal -- a massive, century-old fountain in the middle of the property Henriquez wants to buy -- has become his white elephant in the garden. Even before closing the deal, he's spent thousands of dollars on legal fees, consultants, landscapers and...

Fauquier County supervisor Harry Atherton (I) had to be pressed hard to tell a few tales about his prep school days with Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Kerry was a year ahead of Atherton at the tony St. Paul's School, in Concord, N.H. "He and I were not close," Atherton said yesterday, explaining that being a class apart was like being an ocean apart. Atherton remembers Kerry as being "a good athlete, a good student." He was "very transparently ambitious." Atherton said competition and ambition were not things you wore on your sleeve at a New England prep school in...