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Politics Blog

SockPuppetGate redux

01.31.07 - 9:54 am | Steven T. Jones |
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By Steven T. Jones
SFist has a nice wrap-up on the fallout from its outing of Newsom flack Peter Ragone as a liar, but the Chron's Matier & Ross not only buried the story halfway through today's column, they also missed the point. Read more »

So clean you can eat off 'em

01.30.07 - 6:42 pm | Amanda Witherell |
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by Amanda Witherell

Hey Mission residents: there's a public hearing tomorrow morning at 9 am, Room 400 in City Hall about street cleaning. The city is planning on having a lot more of it in the neighborhood, which means more sweeping up of newspapers and broken glass, but also more moving of your car and more getting of parking tickets. It affects everyone from Cesar Chavez to 19th Street and everything east of South Van Ness. If you have a Department of Public Works poster saran-wrapped to the street pole or tree in front of your house, they're talking to you. Read more »

Who's the poseur at City Hall?

01.30.07 - 5:51 pm | G.W. Schulz |
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By G.W. Schulz

San Francisco has always been notoriously behind statewide on skatepark construction, despite the relatively small monetary investment they require and the high civic value they produce. One spot already exists at Crocker Amazon Park, but it’s largely regarded as mediocre. Conservative states years ago were funding the construction of skateparks through their public works departments and allowing young skaters to participate in the designs. Shit, rural Kansas was doing it a long time ago.

Peter's principles (or lack thereof)

01.30.07 - 1:40 pm | Steven T. Jones |
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By Steven T. Jones

Before hitting the latest news of ethics problems in the mayor's office, and the brilliant segment that KGO-TV's dogged investigative reporter Dan Noyes has done to highlight them, it's important to offer some context and perspective.
Mayor Gavin Newsom imported veteran Democrat Party flack Peter Ragone to be his press secretary upon taking office three years ago. Read more »

Unkinking the Armory

01.30.07 - 11:09 am | Amanda Witherell |
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by Amanda Witherell

Looks like you can't just set up a porno film studio in San Francisco anymore. Neighborhood groups are looking to have more say in how kinky the Armory building at 14th and Mission is going to be now that it's been purchased by kink.com for filming fetish flicks. So the Mayor's office and the city's planning department are scheduling some meetings to hash it all over in fine San Francisco style. Read more »

Wired magazine wins

01.29.07 - 5:26 pm | G.W. Schulz |
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By G.W. Schulz

As we’ve reported online, federal Judge Susan Illston has largely ruled in favor of the Guardian and Media Alliance and has opened several documents originally filed under seal in Clint Reilly’s civil suit alleging that the Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group are conspiring to monopolize the Bay Area’s newspaper market. Read more »

CoCo Times editor moves on

01.29.07 - 5:12 pm | G.W. Schulz |
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By G.W. Schulz

Looks like former Contra Costa Times editor Chris Lopez has at least found some part-time work blogging for NewAssignment.net. His most recent entries highlight technological innovations at some of the nation's big dailies, including a video obituary of Art Buchwald that appeared on the New York Times Web site.

An early January post notes that the McClatchy chain of newspapers, which owns the Sacramento Bee, has purchased the "Famous" blogs, including FresnoFamous.com and ModestoFamous.com. Read more »

Putting the Sixties to rest

01.29.07 - 4:27 pm | Tim Redmond |
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By Tim Redmond

I'm been meaning to write something for a while now about the recent Black Liberation Army arrests, but it's tricky: I don't believe in shooting anyone, and killing a cop is a heinous crime, and there is no statute of limitations on murder, nor should there be.

But somehow, I feel the same way about this case as I did about the Sara Jane Olsen case and all these other efforts to get criminal indictments for things that happened i Read more »

Fiber: A big fat pipe all the way into your home

01.29.07 - 3:49 pm | Sarah Phelan |
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By Sarah Phelan
If you’ve read the 196-page study of fiber-to-the-premise that was posted online by he City's Department of Telecommunications and InformationServices the same week that Mayor Gavin Newsom was whooping it up in Davos, Switzerland, you’ll know that the report concludes that municipal fiber-to-the-premises is the most visionary way for San Francisco to go. Read more »

Jealous!

01.29.07 - 2:38 pm | Amanda Witherell |
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by Amanda Witherell

I was in seventh grade when the Gulf War started and I remember watching news coverage of the bombs over Baghdad from the back row of my history class and having no clue what it meant. Welcome to the vast and sometimes disturbing plateau that is American public education.

Which is why I'm jealous of all the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders at San Francisco's public schools who will have Addicted to War as a supplemental text in their history classes.