Newsitem List

Under fire for being a disengaged Mayor who governs by press release, Gavin Newsom gave a presentation yesterday at City Hall on what his Administration has accomplished over the past three years. Sponsored by SPUR, a pro-business think tank, the talk was designed to assess how much the Mayor has lived up to his original campaign pledges. Newsom’s 90-minute speech covered a wide range of goals that the City had set, and included an impressive number of issues. If a listener knew nothing about...

Today Ralph Nader joined a newly formed citizen advocacy group, Pelosi Watch, at the foot of the Phillip Burton Federal Building where Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi keeps her district office. His message: Force Nancy Pelosi to listen to her constituents at home....

Attorneys for I. Lewis Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who is facing perjury charges, rested their case Wednesday after declining to call either Cheney or Libby himself as defense witnesses. The result was a nearly uncontested prosecution case demonstrating that Libby repeatedly lied to the grand jury investigating the leak of the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson....

Rockridge Library, 5366 College Avenue (at Manila) in Oakland, CA 94618...

Is there a single honest or original thought in Barack Obama’s new book? If so, it does not immediately come to mind. The Illinois junior senator and Democratic Party presidential hopeful’s The Audacity of Hope is a calculated effort, from its title to its final page, designed to demonstrate his readiness to take the reins of political power in the US. That is to say, while Obama directs portions of his book toward sections of the more well-heeled and complacent Democratic Party faithful, ...

Lytton Plaza, University & Emerson Downtown Palo Alto...

Barack Obama, the junior US senator from Illinois, formally announced his candidacy for US president in a speech in Springfield, Illinois on Saturday. Obama, who has emerged as a leading contender for the Democratic nomination in 2008, has already attracted a coterie of leading Democratic strategists, and insiders say there is little doubt that he can raise the tens of millions of dollars required to mount a “serious” campaign....

The welfare state is exposed to serious shocks. Working life is essentially changed. the welfare state protects from the injustice of the free market and creates an identity for those who must claim its benefits. Recipients are treated as legal persons and not as petitioners....

Every four years, in two very lucky cities, big money gets thrown around while look-alikes from opposite ends of a closed circle step up to their podiums and spout nonsense. RNC. DNC. Whatever. The point is that once the conventions are over, once November is come and gone, once the inauguration is only an unpleasant memory, people across this stolen land find themselves in pretty much the same place as before: a bad one. And we’d like to offer up a movement- some real, tangible change. Un...

John Howard, known internationally as a Bush lackey, shameless coward, racist and abandoner of Australian citizens in trouble, today levelled a criticism at U.S. Presidential candidate, Barak Obama. The ‘aluminium tubing’ Prime Minister stated that Obama’s Iraq policy would “completely destabilise and destroy Iraq”. Howard seems ‘completely’ oblivious to the FACT that his participation in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has ALREADY COMPLETELY DESTABILISED AND DESTROYED Iraq!...