Free Republic

It’s hard to believe, but it seems that the clueless owners of the commercial buildings in downtown Berkeley and on Telegraph are pressing on with their campaign to ban sitting down. It appears that their proposal is still on the fast track for passage in mid-summer, in that convenient sweet spot when most students and many other residents are out of town and the Berkeley City Council can do its dirtiest deeds relatively unnoticed. Since there are already many well-organized opponents, passing an ordinance like this would be a guaranteed recipe for disruption: certainly demonstrations, possibly calls for boycotting businesses...

When Rep. Hilda Solis inserted remarks in the Congressional Record praising Los Angeles activist John Pérez as "an asset to the labor movement," she was recounting the life story of a man who would later become California's Assembly speaker. "After graduating from the University of California Berkeley, John began working on designing and organizing education programs," Solis, then a Los Angeles congresswoman and now U.S. secretary of labor, wrote in 2004. But the record is wrong: Pérez dropped out of UC Berkeley and never returned. For a decade, Pérez's designation as a UC Berkeley graduate went unchallenged in newspaper articles,...

When President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, his demeanor was properly restrained. It is hard to imagine George W. Bush issuing a similar pronouncement without cracking a grin and making a disparaging remark. The killing of bin Laden, Obama reflected, said much about America: “We will be true to the values that make us who we are.” Sadly, the media showed too many Americans greeting the news of bin Laden’s death with fist-pumping elation. Raucous, shouting mobs gathered outside the White House and at New York’s “Ground Zero” to wave US flags and chant “USA! USA!”...

Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue responded Monday to U.S. killing of Bin Laden with a big ho-hum and grave respect for the dishonored dead. Mon. evening, Chris Hedges, a leading critic of U.S. government policies covered much of the street's ground. Many street people surveyed were less than ten years old when the World Trade Center crashed in 2001. Also interviewed were shop clerks, businessmen, and passers-by. They were all asked to comment on the death of Bin Laden Monday evening Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning former journalist turned best-selling author and minister to progressives, sermonized at Berkeley's First Congregational Church on...

Hungry students and their supporters sit for the seventh day in front of University of California at Berkeley’s California Hall, after a futile meeting with University Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. The students asked Birgeneau yesterday to reinstate fired ethnic-studies staff members. “We're still here, we're still fighting and basically, we're not going anywhere," said a weary-looking, third-year Native American studies major, Zoila Lara-Cea. They are protesting cuts resulting from a comprehensive audit of university operations conducted by the consulting firm Bain and Company. The auditors recommended trimming two-and-a-half staff positions from the Ethnic Studies Department. Even though cuts are distributed university-wide,...

There was a message on my machine on Monday: “I’m just sort of stunned by the news, and I wouldn’t mind having a friend’s take on it. I feel some…relief, frankly.” Well, yes. Full confession: I haven’t gotten back to her yet, because I don’t know exactly what to say. I find myself having heretical ideas, hard to process, harder to disclose. . . . Radical idea: maybe if G.W.B. had simply ordered the assassination of Saddam Hussein in 2002, how many lives, both American and Iraqi, both combatant and civilian, might have been saved? And extrapolating from that heterodox...

In an era of fiscal austerity when cities all over the Bay Area are reducing library hours, shedding library staff or closing libraries altogether, a small band of preservationists is actually fighting to stop a new library from being built in Berkeley. The Concerned Library Users is using the language in a 2008 voter-approved bond measure as the basis for a lawsuit filed last fall to halt the city from tearing down the south branch library on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Because Measure FF, a $26 million library bond measure, makes no mention of demolition, the group contends that...

A doctor who worked for UC Berkeley's health center for more than 20 years has been charged with sexually assaulting patients, authorities said today. Robert Martin Kevess, 52, of Oakland assaulted at least six male patients since 2006 while working at the Tang Health Center at 2222 Bancroft Way just south of the campus, according to Alameda County prosecutors. . . . A 19-count complaint filed Wednesday accuses Kevess of sexual exploitation of numerous patients, along with several charges of sexual battery with false professional purpose and sexual penetration with a foreign object. If convicted, Kevess could face a lengthy...

Berkeley officials say a lawsuit by residents could prevent the demolition and rebuilding of two aging libraries in the poorest areas of town. The officials took their case to Berkeley residents Tuesday night, publicly urging the plaintiffs to drop the suit at a rally before a City Council meeting. The suit, brought by five residents calling themselves Concerned Library Users, contends language in a 2008 ballot measure that secured money for the renovation of the libraries does not contain the word "demolish" and that doing so would be illegal. At issue are plans for demolition and construction of the west...

California is being looked at as the rare alternative to Tea-Party rule these days. Jerry Brown’s direct style and transparent budget strategy as governor have led to a waning in people’s longtime pessimism about state government. Yet, with the extreme policies of other new governors dominating the news -- and with Meg Whitman remaining in the public eye-- one must wonder how it would have been if California had voted the other way in 2010. It was certainly significant that voters went to the polls and beat back Whitman's $178 million candidacy. This is further relevant because in California elections...

Do you love love love Cheese Board pizza? Is your idea of heaven standing in line for a slice and then eating it picnic-style with friends on the grassy strip down the middle of North Shattuck in what’s called “The Gourmet Ghetto” in the New York Times Style Section? Well, think again, because the clueless merchants of North Shattuck are scheming to make it illegal. Or maybe it’s not actually you and your lunch buds that they’re out to get, but if equal protection is still the law of the land you’ll have to be on the radar too if...

In the middle of a meeting called to discuss guns and safety at Berkeley High School, the deputy district attorney in charge of Alameda County's juvenile division stood up and announced that the community is not being realistic about how dangerous a place it is. . . .

Berkeley’s deteriorating finances were the subject of the council’s work session last Tuesday. The proceedings should make citizens sad and mad. Sad, because the people who will be hit the hardest by the $12.5 million deficit forecast for Fiscal Year 2012 are among those in our community who are most in need of support—the aged, the mentally ill and the poor. Mad, because City officials blamed the looming debacle wholly on “outside forces,” when in fact the budget crisis results in good part from their own fiscal imprudence. First, a few more numbers. According to the staff report, the $12.5...

This morning the news on NPR, which at our house is turned on right after the alarm goes off, was vigorous backpedaling on the part of management. This followed an earlier story of how a bigtime fundraising guy for the organization had been trapped in a sting by far right activists, and had admitted to the faux donors sent to ensnare him that he was contemptuous of the tea baggers and wished NPR didn’t have to depend on federal funding. The shills even caught the exchange on video, it seems. For a change, let’s just quote Fox News: “Embattled NPR...

UC Berkeley police arrested one of nine people who walked out on a fourth-story ledge of UC Berkeley's Wheeler Hall at around 1:45 this afternoon, protesting budget cuts to higher education and campus layoffs. Police said the protester left the ledge and entered a classroom, but protesters claim police pulled him down. Some of the remaining eight protesters continued to be chained to the building's stone pillars as hundreds of students gathered on the steps below shouting the now-familiar mantra, "No cuts, no fees, education must be free!"

UC Berkeley police arrested 17 people who refused to leave Wheeler Hall on campus Wednesday night following a day of protests against education budget cuts, a police spokesman said. All 17 were taken to the Berkeley city jail and cited for misdemeanor trespassing, said UC Berkeley police spokesman Alex Yao. Fourteen were released after being cited, but three, who had extra charges of obstructing police officers, were held overnight to appear in court this morning, Yao said. Protesters at UC Berkeley are commonly issued citations and released on site and not taken to the jail Yao said, but in this...

The Berkeley city council has approved a resolution calling for the "immediate end to the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" of an Army private accused of leaking classified documents.

Today's AP story on the Gate on the Berkeley vote not to pass a resolution to resettle Gitmo detainees reports: The resolution singled out two Guantanamo detainees who have been cleared of wrongdoing but don't want to return to their home countries because they fear persecution -- Ravil Mingazov, a Russian ballet dancer, and Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian chef. That is just plain wrong. As I wrote Sunday, these detainees have not been cleared. On another note, the Center for Constitutional Rights has put together profiles on Guantanamo detainees, including this one for possible Berkeley-transplant, Djamel Ameziane. Languages: French, Arabic,...

The Berkeley City Council was set to consider a resolution Tuesday night that would offer refuge to released Guantanamo Bay detainees. Cynthia Papermaster, a Berkeley resident who heads Berkeley No More Guantanamos, first proposed the resolution to the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission late last year. "The U.S. government-under President Bush and President Obama-- cleared the majority of Guantanamo prisoners for release, but many cannot safely return to their home countries because of the risk of persecution, torture or death,” she said. “Berkeley is a compassionate and caring community, like Amherst and Leverett, Massachusetts, which passed similar resolutions in 2009...

On Tuesday, on the recommendation of its Peace and Justice Commission, the Berkeley City Council is set to vote on a resolution to invite "one or two cleared" Guantanamo Bay detainees to resettle in Berkeley. Peace and Justice Commissioner Rita Maran told me that the idea was to invite to Berkeley "the kind of people you'd like to have living next door to you or dating your cousin." While the resolution doesn't name the one or two detainees, her panel presented material that cites two - Russian-born Ravil Mingazov and Algerian-born Djamel Ameziane - whom it claims have been "cleared."...