Free Republic

Imagine driving along a four-lane elevated causeway above the brackish San Pablo Bay, shaving more than an hour off the normal Highway 37 commute. Transportation planners have for years envisioned remaking the 20-mile route from Novato to Vallejo into the North Bay’s most important east-west corridor. Now, they are ready to act. Officials in Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties have been meeting for several years, pondering solutions to Highway 37’s notorious bottlenecks, where 45,000 cars per day stretch the normal 20-minute commute to as much as 100 minutes. They have also acknowledged that traffic improvements will be irrelevant without...

NOVATO — Northern California authorities arrested a man suspected of tossing a bag full of feces, urine, paint and rubbing alcohol at a grocery store's meat counter. Police said Monday that officers arrested 45-year-old Charles Nishi at a homeless encampment in Novato, which is about 30 miles north of San Francisco. Novato police said a hazardous material crew responded to the Harvest Market at about 5 p.m. Sunday to clean up the mess, which prompted the store to close earlier than usual. Police are investigating whether Nishi is the same person who got into a dispute with store workers Saturday....

This is exciting: a meteorite from last week’s fireball over northern California has been found! NBC is reporting a small chunk, 4-5 centimeters across and weighing about 60 grams, struck a house in Novato, California shortly after the fireball was seen. They’re reporting Peter Jenniskens, a SETI astronomer and meteorite expert, confirmed the find. That’s critical: a lot of rocks are mistaken for meteorites by people (and the media) who aren’t familiar with them. This chunk is small, though, and given how bright the fireball was and how it was seen to fragment, I’d think bigger pieces must have fallen....

(07-27) 16:22 PDT SAN QUENTIN STATE PRISON -- A man newly arrived at San Quentin State Prison after being convicted of murder and drunken driving in the death of a 9-year-old Novato girl was fatally stabbed by another inmate, authorities said Tuesday. Edward John Schaefer, 44, of Novato was stabbed in the chest and neck at about 10:35 a.m. Monday in the prison's reception center yard and died that night, said Lt. Sam Robinson, prison spokesman.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal today by Novato school district officials who confiscated a student newspaper because of an editorial urging that any Latino who couldn't speak English be detained as a probable illegal immigrant. A state appeals court in San Francisco ruled last May that the Novato Unified School District had violated the rights of Andrew Smith, who wrote the editorial in the Novato High School newspaper, the Buzz, in November 2001. The court relied on a California law that protects free expression by public school students more strongly than the constitutional rights guaranteed under the First...

A federal judge has ruled against a former student columnist who claims he was reprimanded and disciplined by his California high school for writing two opinion editorials opposing illegal immigration and affirmative action. A lawsuit filed by former Novato High School student Andrew Smith alleges the district violated his free-speech rights by confiscating copies of his articles and publicly apologizing for them. The case went to trial earlier this month, and in his ruling Marin County Judge John Sutro said he found no evidence Smith's rights were violated. According to Judge Sutro, Smith's articles were equivalent to something from "a...