Free Republic

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi looks like he’ll be updating his resume after suffering a landslide loss in his re-election bid last night. \ Mirkarimi was in office when Kate Steinle was shot and killed by Francisco Sanchez, a five-time deported illegal alien. It set off a national debate about sanctuary cities, San Francisco becoming one of them in 1989. In July, Mirkarimi defended the policy, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that the policy makes the city “safer.” Nevertheless, there were other reasons why Mirkarimi was booted. His tenure was dotted with controversy, one of them, as Katie mentioned, being a...

Mayor of San Francisco and major sanctuary city proponent died "suddenly" in hospital, surrounded by family.

President Donald Trump lashed out at Democrats on Twitter on Friday, the morning after a Mexican man who illegally entered the US six times was acquitted of murder in the death of a young woman walking on a San Francisco pier with her father. "The Kate Steinle killer came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border, always committing crimes and being violent, and yet this info was not used in court," Trump tweeted. A jury cleared Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 45, of murder and manslaughter charges on Thursday in connection to the fatal shooting of Kathryn Steinle, with...

Author, founder of Salon.com, and Bernal Heights resident David Talbot recently made a speech at Stanford which was then published in 48HillsOnline.com decrying “Stanford douchebags”, gentrification, and Mayor Ed Lee. Talbot’s strong words for Stanford students have struck a chord up north in San Francisco, and his speech is rapidly going viral.

First, police fatally shot two minority suspects carrying knives. Then transcripts surfaced showing officers using racial slurs in text messages. Finally, a young black woman was shot dead as police tried to pull her from a stolen car. The woman's shooting death Thursday was the tipping point for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who forced Police Chief Greg Suhr to step down after months of mounting pressure. The new chief inherits the daunting task of turning around a troubled department in a city deeply divided by race — and doing it fast. "Reforms, reforms, reforms," acting Police Chief Toney Chaplin...

San Francisco became the first place in the country Tuesday to require businesses to provide fully paid leave for new parents in what was hailed as the latest move to address income inequality in the nation. The measure approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors will give new mothers and fathers six weeks of fully paid time off, a rarity now offered to some government sector workers and some private employees, particularly those who work in the tech industry. […] The measure requires another formal vote by the board next week as well as approval by Mayor Ed Lee, who...

Chinatown crime boss Raymond 'Shrimp Boy' Chow - the man at the heart of a federal corruption case that brought down former state Sen. Leland Yee and engulfed City Hall with allegations of 'pay to play' politics, took the center stage in U.S. District Court this week to deny the murder and racketeering charges against him. But anyone expecting his testimony to blow the roof of City Hall or cause Mayor Ed Lee further embarrassment would be sadly disappointed. The trial has largely boiled down to unpacking the nearly decade-old murder of businessman Allen Leung, and whether Chow - who...

The San Francisco sheriff who over the summer became embroiled in a national debate over 'sanctuary city' policies on Tuesday lost his bid for re-election amid a host of local controversies. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, 54, was defeated by Vicki Hennessy, a former sheriff's official who had the endorsement of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and the sheriff deputies association. As of early Wednesday morning, Hennessy had received 62 percent of the vote to just 31 percent for Mirkarimi. Mirkarimi was the subject of national criticism after Mexican illegal immigrant Francisco Sanchez allegedly shot and killed 32 year old Kate Steinle...

There’s something strange going on in the City by the Bay after yesterday’s municipal elections, but I suspect that it’s far too early to get very excited about it. San Francisco voters went to the polls and rejected their sheriff who had become something of the face of the so called “sanctuary city” and they did so by a wide margin. (Fox News) Embattled San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi convincingly lost his bid for re-election Tuesday after spending months in the national spotlight as the face of his city’s controversial “sanctuary city” policy on illegal immigration.Mirkarimi, 54, was defeated...

San Francisco is known for its Golden Gate Bridge, world class cuisine, panoply of cultures, striking skyline, frigid fog, and homeless. More specifically, aggressive panhandling and homeless defecating and urinating in public. And sometimes doing even worse things. With the holiday shopping season coming, and Super Bowl 50 right behind, the city by the bay will be in the national spotlight once again, and so will images. While Mayor Ed Lee announced this week that "the homeless must leave the street" for Super Bowl 50, it's more what they leave behind on the street that is a concern for the...

In a court filing Tuesday, Chow’s legal team alleged that this time around, he was being “selectively prosecuted” by federal authorities ... FBI reports and wiretap evidence that suggest San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and others participated in public corruption schemes but were spared prosecution “due to their political affiliations.”

San Francisco’s mayor was accused by the FBI of taking bribes in exchange for favors, attorneys for a defendant in an organized crime case centered on San Francisco’s Chinatown said Tuesday. In a court filing, Curtis Briggs, an attorney for Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, cites as the source of the FBI’s allegation documents turned over to him by the government as part of the process of mounting a defense for his client. Briggs is seeking to dismiss the indictment against Chow on the grounds that the government is selectively prosecuting him while letting other people caught in its probe go....

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee is the latest to weigh in on the immigration debate centered around Kathryn Steinle’s fatal shooting at Pier 14. In a statement released Monday, Lee described feeling "deeply saddened" by the "tragic and senseless death," adding that his "thoughts and prayers" are with the 32-year-old Pleasanton woman's family. "I have spoken with Kathryn’s family, and they would like everyone to remember their daughter for the wonderful person that she was," he said. Lee endorsed San Francisco's so-called sanctuary city policy, which has received a lot of flak in the aftermath of Steinle's death, but offered...

"Even after repeated attempts by President Obama and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to reform our immigration laws, Republicans in Congress have blocked those efforts, unfortunately, leaving cities and local municipalities to act upon immigration issues that affect its residents. I will continue to work with the Obama Administration on Comprehensive Immigration Reform to ensure cities aren’t forced to make and enforce immigration law."

People will gather in San Francisco this weekend to mark the 109th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake. SNIP The only survivors are believed to be 113-year-old Ruth Newman and 109-year-old William Del Monte. It was not known Friday if they would attend the early-morning ceremony Saturday. Mayor Ed Lee, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr and Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White will attend.

An undercover FBI agent gave campaign donations to an unnamed Bay Area politician during a yearslong undercover investigation into a Chinatown gang and alleged political corruption that culminated in the arrests of state Sen. Leland Yee and Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow earlier this year. This is according to the latest filing by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the federal case against the two men and about 20 others. Besides indicating that a politician other than Yee allegedly took money from undercover FBI agents in exchange for favors, the filing further lays out the relationship between former school board member and...

San Francisco politicians, eager to showcase their democratic credentials in their liberty-loving city, traditionally have not shied from taking stances on human rights, checking in on everything from apartheid in South Africa to Burma’s military junta. But on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of peaceful democracy demonstrators who had already been tear-gassed marched in Hong Kong, Mayor Ed Lee was on his City Hall balcony hoisting the flag of the target of those protests — the autocratic government of China.

Supervisor David Chiu wants San Francisco to become the first American city to oppose any ban on sex-selective abortions. It apparently has not occurred to him why no other city has chosen to do so. Journalist Mara Hvistendahl, author of "Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men," estimates that sex-selective abortions have "claimed over 160 million potential women and girls -- in Asia alone." Thus, it is rather disturbing to watch one of the most liberal politicians in liberal San Francisco grandstand in defense of a practice that devalues -- destroys, actually...

As state Sen. Leland Yee aggressively campaigned in the 2011 San Francisco mayor's race, he blasted interim Mayor Ed Lee as beholden to City Hall power brokers with "selfish interests" and vowed to "throw them out" if elected. At the same time, Yee was allegedly soliciting $10,000 from an undercover FBI agent posing as a real estate developer who had already illegally funneled $11,000 to Yee's campaign, telling the agent to "cover your tracks," and boasting that "there's tremendous opportunity in local levels ... because whoever's gonna be the mayor controls everything." **SNIP** Instead, it's of a man driven by...

Mayor Ed Lee is floating the idea of tearing down the stub end of Interstate 280 in San Francisco in hopes of creating a new neighborhood and speeding up the arrival of high-speed rail service downtown. The idea, laid out by the mayor's chief transit planner, Gillian Gillett, in a memo to the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission, would be to knock down I-280 before 16th Street - eliminating the ramps both at Sixth and Brannan streets and at Fourth and King streets. It would be replaced by a street-level boulevard akin to those built after the Embarcadero and Central freeways...