Free Republic

There's a new battle plan for bringing the battleship Iowa to San Francisco. The battleship's supporters now hope to gain the support of city leaders by turning part of the vessel into a museum about the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and the contributions of gays, lesbians, ethnic minorities and women to the military.

NRA-ILA Launches New Website To Defeat Proposition H-- San Francisco Gun Ban Monday, September 05, 2005 As you've been reading in the Grassroots Alert for months, on November 8, San Francisco voters will go to the polls to vote on Proposition H--a citywide gun ban. To educate and mobilize Bay Area pro-gun supporters, NRA-ILA has unveiled a new website dedicated exclusively to exposing the truth about Proposition H. The website-- www.StopSanFranban.com --is designed to provide you with one-stop-shopping for the information and tools you will need to ensure Proposition H is defeated on November 8. Among the many features at...

The California State Automobile Association, a San Francisco fixture since 1900, will begin moving most of its operations outside the city by the beginning of next year and sell off more than half a million square feet of commercial property near the Civic Center. An internal memo issued to CSAA's almost 1,500 employees the other day said the move is necessary because "San Francisco is an expensive place to do business" and because current facilities "don't support the collaborative culture we want to build." San Francisco is the birthplace of the American Automobile Association, or AAA. At the turn of...

San Francisco schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's recent demand that the school board guarantee its support of her in writing was prompted largely by the district's testy labor negotiations and Ackerman's fear for her own safety. The deteriorating atmosphere in the school district, which has included a sick-out of union members on the first day of classes Monday and an earlier attempt by workers to storm her office, prompted Ackerman to contact Police Chief Heather Fong to request tighter patrols of the district's headquarters. School district sources said police had advised the superintendent to take volunteer escorts with her when she...

99 years apart, disasters that devastated both cities share strange similarities. The old New Orleans is dead, drowned in the worst natural disaster in an American city since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. There is an eerie sense of parallel between the two catastrophes 99 years apart. Both cities were destroyed. Both cities had to face an uncertain future. San Francisco recovered and became the city it is today. The story of New Orleans is yet to be written. New Orleans in 2005 was about the same size as San Francisco in 1906 -- 484,000 people lived in...

The San Francisco Young Republicans (yes, they do exist!) are holding an event on Sunday, September 11th, to honor our men and women in uniform. We would like to invite 10-15 enlisted men and women to join us for a free Giants/Cubs baseball game along with free food and drinks before the game on Sunday, September 11th, at SBC Park. The game starts at 1:05 PM, and we will meet at another location at 11:00 AM for tailgating. Please pass this along to any soldiers you know in the Bay Area who might be interested. This is a non-partisan event,...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- As the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle's datebook section, 58-year-old David Wiegand has pretty much seen it all. But when he met Sean Penn, Wiegand had the same reaction that a lot of us would have if we ever encountered the Oscar-winning actor. "You can't help but admire him," Wiegand said, reflecting on Penn's memorable performances in such powerful films as "Mystic River," "I Am Sam" and "Dead Man Walking." At the same time, Wiegand smiled and stressed that he "wasn't star-struck." That's good, because Wiegand couldn't afford the luxury, anyway. He edited Penn's ambitious...

The back of a dump truck delivering 20 tons of dirt to businesses on Sixth Street in San Francisco tipped and crashed into an adult video arcade this morning, narrowly missing three patrons. "It was close," said a video clerk at the Liberty Bookstore, who identified himself as Jersey Dog. "One guy was near the inside of the wall, but no one was hurt." The incident happened at 9:10 a.m. when Sukhdev Singh of Economy Trucking was dumping dirt to be used to fill in several businesses' sub-basements on the 100 block of Sixth Street, said Sheri Costa, a spokeswoman...

Every U.S. president in the last 75 years has visited the city of San Francisco, with one exception: George W. Bush. Now in the fifth year of his presidency, Bush has yet to set foot in San Francisco and has no plans to do so. He’s scheduled a visit to California in the near future, and the city is not on his itinerary, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. San Francisco is the only city among the nation’s 25 largest that Bush has not visited during his presidency. The last president to be a no-show in the City by the Bay...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a former San Francisco mayor, helped secure $3 million to tow the Iowa from Rhode Island to the Bay Area in 2001 in hopes of making touristy Fisherman's Wharf its new home. But city supervisors voted 8-3 last month to oppose taking in the ship, citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military's stance on gays, among other things. "If I was going to commit any kind of money in recognition of war, then it should be toward peace, given what our war is in Iraq right now," Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said.

President not expected to return to city after 5-year absence on upcoming trip to California. Washington -- Presidential visits to San Francisco have been a tradition since Rutherford Hayes lunched at the Cliff House in 1880. Presidents arrived by stagecoach and jet. One was shot at. Another died. In all, 20 presidents have visited the city, including every chief executive for the past 75 years. Except George W. Bush. Now in the fifth year of his presidency, Bush has yet to set a foot in the city that was home to his childhood baseball idol, Willie Mays, and shows no...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The USS Iowa joined in battles from World War II to Korea to the Persian Gulf. It carried President Franklin Roosevelt home from the Teheran conference of allied leaders, and four decades later, suffered one of the nation's most deadly military accidents. Veterans groups and history buffs had hoped that tourists in San Francisco could walk the same teak decks where sailors dodged Japanese machine-gun fire and fired 16-inch guns that helped win battles across the South Pacific. Instead, it appears that the retired battleship is headed about 80 miles inland, to Stockton, a gritty agricultural...

(08-19) 11:11 PDT San Francisco (SF Chronicle) -- An explosion at Kearny and Post streets this morning blew off a manhole cover, shattered windows on nearby stores and sent at least one woman to the hospital with serious burns on her hands. Authorities did not know the cause of the explosion, but they were speculating that a transformer below the street may have blown up. Kearny Street from Howard to California streets was closed to traffic after the explosion, which occurred shortly before 10 a.m. "I know that people were taken out in ambulances," said San Francisco police Officer Gary...

Big bang near Crocker Galleria in SF, Post St. closed down, smell of gunpowder.

When it comes to Sean Penn's latest journalistic experiment, it's a case of better late than never. The actor, dispatched to cover the Iranian elections two months ago, will finally see his byline in the San Francisco Chronicle come Monday, according to editor Phil Bronstein. The Chronicle Executive Vice President and editor confirmed to E! Online Wednesday that Penn's long-in-the-works report will likely be divvied up into five segments, with one running each day next week. Bronstein added that Chronicle staffers are "still laying the piece out" and that "the number of days could change." Asked why it took so...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A San Francisco man who says he was devastated after he was identified as gay on a national Spanish-language radio show will be paid $270,000 by Univision Radio, an arbitrator has ruled. Roberto Hernandez, 45, was driving to work in 2002 when he received a phone call from a man who said that he met Hernandez at a San Francisco gay bar. The caller then announced that the conversation was being broadcast live on the "Raul Brindis and Pepito Show," based in Houston. Hernandez worked for the local station that broadcast the show, and sold advertising for...

America’s Most Liberal Cities Rank-City,State 01-Detroit,Michigan 02-Gary,Indiana 03-Berkeley,California 04-District of Columbia 05-Oakland,California 06-Inglewood,California 07-Newark,New Jersey 08-Cambridge,Massachusetts 09-San Francisco,California 10-Flint,Michigan 11-Cleveland,Ohio 12-Hartford,Connecticut 13-Paterson,New Jersey 14-Baltimore,Maryland 15-New Haven,Connecticut 16-Seattle,Washington 17-Chicago,Illinois 18-Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 19-Birmingham,Alabama 20-St. Louis,Missouri 21-New York,New York 22-Providence,Rhode Island 23-Minneapolis,Minnesota 24-Boston,Massachusetts 25-Buffalo,New York 26-New Orleans,Louisiana 27-Ann Arbor,Michigan 28-Jersey City,New Jersey 29-Portland,Oregon 30-Daly City,California 31-Atlanta,Georgia 32-Dallas,Texas 33-Hayward,California 34-Madison,Wisconsin 35-Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania 36-St. Paul,Minnesota 37-Los Angeles,California 38-Rochester,New York 39-Memphis,Tennessee 40-Milwaukee,Wisconsin 41-Vallejo,California 42-Dayton,Ohio 43-Bridgeport,Connecticut 44-Springfield,Massachusetts 45-Syracuse,New York

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today voted 3-8 against a resolution urging the San Francisco Congressional Delegation to support the permanent berthing of the USS Iowa as a museum at the Port of San Francisco. The congressional delegation secured $3 million in 2000 to move the USS Iowa, which was present at the signing of the treaty between Japan and the U.S. in 1945, from Rhode Island to the Bay Area, the proposed resolution says. A study commissioned by the Port of San Francisco concluded that the ship would attract more than 500,000 people during its first year at...

The title carries punch: "World Mayor 2005.'' And for the second year in a row, San Francisco's own Gavin Newsom has made the list of finalists in the Web-based, international competition in which constituents nominate their favorite mayor. Although Newsom hasn't been campaigning for the title, his administration's liaison to the gay community who works in the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services used his city e-mail Tuesday to drum up support for his boss. James "Jimmer'' Cassiol wrote to people on the e-mail list "gays4gavin" that now that Newsom has made the finals, "we need folks to take a minute...

SAN FRANCISCO — For decades, panhandling and homelessness have been as much a part of the San Francisco (search) landscape as the bridges and fog. But now the nation's "Homeless Czar" is looking toward the Bay Area for possible solutions to America's homelessness problem. In 2002, an estimated 8,640 homeless people were residing in San Francisco, often living in such decrepit conditions that their existence threatened the city's tourism industry. However, the situation has improved. According to a study conducted by the city earlier this year, the number of homeless in San Francisco dropped by around 28 percent. City officials...