Free Republic

Bigfoot, the legendary hairy man-like beast said to roam the wildernesses of North America, is not shy, merely so rare it risks extinction and should be protected as an endangered species. So says Canadian MP Mike Lake who has called for Bigfoot to be protected under Canada's species at risk act, alongside Whooping Cranes, Blue Whales, and Red Mulberry trees. "The debate over their (Bigfoot's) existence is moot in the circumstance of their tenuous hold on merely existing," reads a petition presented by Lake to parliament in March and due to be discussed next week. "Therefore, the petitioners request the...

Here's what politicians don't say when they boast about cutting income taxes: Every trim forces more Americans to pay the dreaded alternative minimum tax instead. "It is the great American bait and switch," said Claudia Hill, owner of a Cupertino tax-preparation firm and editor in chief of the Journal of Tax Practice & Procedures. "They say, 'We're going to give you tax breaks' -- and then you find out you don't qualify." This parallel tax system was created two generations ago to take away tax breaks from about 150 wealthy taxpayers who had piled up write-offs to erase their tax...

If there is a consensus in America about college education, it’s that every young person should get one. Census figures show that college graduates enjoy an average income 40 percent higher than that of workers with only high-school diplomas, which is largely why almost 70 percent of every high-school class now goes on to higher education. Conventional wisdom suggests that a high-tech economy will need these better-educated workers, and that rising rates of college enrollment are a reassuring sign that America remains a meritocracy, a land of opportunity. However, these same trends—the widening income gap, the mounting legions of college...

Texas Prof.: 'We're Breeding Our Brains Out'Talk radio and blogs are taking aim at a University of Texas biology professor because of a published report suggesting he advocates death for most of the human population as a means of saving the Earth. However, Eric Pianka says his remarks about his beliefs were taken out of context, that he was just raising a warning that deadly disease epidemics are a threat if population growth isn't contained. "What we really need to do is start thinking about controlling our population before it's too late," he said Monday. "It's already too late, but...

The Knox County school system has reprimanded the principal and attendance secretary at Whittle Springs Middle School for violating policy when they allowed a 12-year-old student to leave with an older man claiming to be her uncle. The girl, Ashley Bushue, and the man, Seth Lee Mitchell, 37, left Whittle Springs together on March 3, and police found them March 7 in good health in North Carolina. Mitchell has been charged with especially aggravated kidnapping, according to Darrell DeBusk, spokesman for the Knoxville Police Department. Three days after the alleged kidnapping, Steve Griffin, the chief of security for Knox County...

A San Francisco judge has ordered the University of California to pay $33.8 million to tens of thousands of students whose fees were unfairly raised. In an opinion released Monday, Superior Court Judge James Warren called the university's breach of contract "clear and unambiguous." The case involved at least 9,500 graduate students who claimed UC officials broke their promise to freeze fees at the amount students paid when they first enrolled. Plaintiffs also included as many as 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students who enrolled at UC Berkeley and UCLA in the spring and summer terms in 2003 whose fees were...

High school senior Aksonexay Ratanasith arrived in the United States from war-torn Laos at age 3. The Richmond boy excelled in elementary school, but in junior high was placed in classes with recent immigrants. He scored well on fluency tests, he said, but remained in English development classes until his sophomore year at Kennedy High School.Now a senior, he takes database applications and leadership class. He still doesn't understand why he wasn't allowed out of the English learner program sooner."ELD was holding me back," Ratanasith said.For the past two years, nearly half of the state's 1.3 million English language learners...

IT WOULD BE easy to dismiss the bombastic, error-ridden screed union boss J.J. Jelincic recently penned for this page as a self-parody were its subject, the growing crisis in public employee pensions, not such a serious matter. Yet the mere fact he felt compelled to write it means those who care about the fiscal health of state and local governments are making progress in addressing this critical issue that threatens California's future. First, I want to make one point very clear -- I have never criticized public employees for wanting more pay, generous benefits or a better retirement package. Nor...

The Palestinian Authority has agreed to a US request for the return of $50 million that had been earmarked for infrastructure projects in the territories, the State Department said Friday. The US request is part of a review of American assistance programs to the Palestinians ordered after Hamas scored a surprise victory in legislative elections last month, spokesman Sean McCormack said. Beyond that, McCormack said, the United States feared the funds might "potentially make their way into the coffers of a future Palestinian government that might not recognize the right of Israel to exist." That is a tenet of the...

The Professors: The 101 most dangerous academics in America by David Horowitz Coming to a Campus Near You: Terrorists, racists, and communists— you know them as The Professors. We all know that left-wing radicals from the 1960s have hung around academia and hired people like themselves. But if you thought they were all harmless, antiquated hippies, you’d be wrong. Today’s radical academics aren’t the exception—they’re legion. And far from being harmless, they spew violent anti-Americanism, preach anti-Semitism, and cheer on the killing of American soldiers and civilians—all the while collecting tax dollars and tuition fees to indoctrinate our children. Remember...

ARTURO GONZALEZ is a formidable attorney. The son of unschooled immigrants, he graduated from the UC Davis, then Harvard Law School. Today, he is a partner at Morrison & Foerster. Last week, he told The Chronicle editorial board, "If (state superintendent of public instruction Jack) O'Connell had been my superintendent," when he was going to high school, "I would not have gotten a diploma." González represents parents and students who are suing the state of California to put off -- once again -- the year when California students must pass an exit exam in order to receive a high-school diploma...

SACRAMENTO - A moderate salary raise for new teachers boosts the chances they'll stay in the profession, but mentoring programs and training are even more effective, according to a new report. Providing just $4,400 more in annual pay increases the chances an elementary teacher would stay by 17 percent, according to the report released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California.Teachers who were part of the state's Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment program were 26 percent more likely to stay in teaching, according to the study, "Retention of New Teachers in California." The program costs the state about $3,370...

IBM just did it. So did Verizon. Within the past two months, the two corporate giants froze their workers' pensions. Employees learned that future years on the job wouldn't increase their pension checks.More and more firms are trying to cut costs this way. So, if it's good for private companies, why hasn't the public sector jumped on board?Answer: It can't.Public agencies across California, including Contra Costa County, are facing soaring pension costs that threaten to wipe out money desperately needed for public services.But the state Constitution's contracts clause and two key court decisions lock in the retirement benefits. Once a...

SAN FRANCISCO - A former University of California chancellor will not have to pay back the $355,000 salary he earned while on a year-long leave even though he broke an agreement that he would return to teaching for the same amount of time, university officials said. Robert Berdahl, who resigned in 2004 as the chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, said Monday he would leave the university after teaching just one semester to run an academic trade group. Berdahl plans to take over in May as president of the Association of American Universities, a nonprofit industry group representing 62...

SAN FRANCISCO has too many schools. It needs to bring operations, staff and budgets in line with reality. Yet it won't. As an indecisive school board demonstrated, the reasons are plain and unpleasant. Facing hundreds of angry parents and children waving homemade signs, school leaders took the easy -- but wrong -- route. The panel closed or merged more than a dozen schools on a staff-suggested list of 26. It was a half-step that means a rerun next year. For years, the schools have shed students as families have left the city. In 1998, there were 62,115 pupils; now it's...

A Woodside High School girls basketball coach charged with molesting a teenage girl had two prior "peeping Tom" convictions that school officials said they did not know about, authorities said. Guy Hayman, who was Woodside's coach from 1997 until he was fired last week, was convicted in 1991 and again in 2000 of peering into homes occupied by women. But a background check required for school employment failed to raise a red flag about Hayman, school officials said. Hayman, arrested last week, has pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of child molestation and 41 misdemeanor counts of annoyance of...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to unveil a multibillion-dollar transportation bond tonight that could jump start long-delayed road projects in the East Bay. The new largess -- anticipated to provide $25 billion for roads, levees and schools -- could help pay for new interchanges along Interstate 80, merging lanes on Interstate 680, a wider Highway 4 and a fourth bore through the Caldecott tunnel. "I think what the bond would enable us to do is fund those projects already on our to-do list but haven't been able to get to," said Janet Abelson, president of the board for the Contra...

The centerpiece of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's State of the State address Thursday is expected to be a call for a mega-bond paying for infrastructure improvements statewide -- and if a recent poll is any indication, he may finally have a winner on his hands. The poll conducted just before the holidays for the California Alliance for Jobs -- the state's powerful road-building lobby -- found that 58 percent of respondents would support a state infrastructure bond of up to $40 billion, while 38 percent would oppose it. State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch,...

PHOENIX -- A federal judge Friday ordered the Legislature to spend more money on education for students learning English and said he will impose fines starting at $500,000 a day late next month if deadlines aren't met. U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins also ruled that the estimated 160,000 Arizona students learning English will be able to get high school diplomas without passing the state's graduation test until they've had time to prepare in adequately funded programs. Plaintiffs claim the state's AIMS test is unfair to students learning English because of shortcomings in programs intended to improve their skills in...

Police chief lifts suspensions -- disciplinary action still possible. All 24 San Francisco police officers suspended for their roles in a video production that city leaders called highly offensive have been reinstated, including the officer who produced the skits, officials said Thursday. Although the officers have returned to work, they still could face disciplinary action for the video scandal, said Police Chief Heather Fong. "It will be premature to speculate on what will happen," Fong said. "There is an active administrative investigation that continues in spite of the officers being returned to duty." Fong, who along with Mayor Gavin Newsom...

WASHINGTON - Programs serving immigrants and low-income families in California could be among the hardest hit by federal budget cuts that are working their way through Congress. Under a spending-reduction bill that cleared the House just before the Thanksgiving break by a bare 217-215 vote, legal immigrants could lose food stamps, thousands of working mothers could lose child care subsidies, and federal support for collecting child-support payments from non-custodial parents could be slashed, forcing more families toward public assistance, where eligibility rules are being tightened. All these changes add up to between $500 million and $1 billion a year in...

Mexican drug lords find it easier to grow in state than import - Washington -- Hikers in national parks such as Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon are encountering a danger more hazardous than bears: illegal marijuana farms run by Mexican drug cartels and protected by booby traps and guards carrying AK-47s. National Park Service officials testified in Congress on Thursday that illegal drug production in national parks, forests and other federal lands had grown into a multibillion-dollar business in recent years -- mostly concentrated in California. "These activities threaten our employees, visitors and our mission of protecting some of the nation's...

NOW THAT California taxpayers know that the $3 billion ($6 billion with debt service) that they voted in 2004 to spend on stem-cell research may possibly be an outright grant of money for research rather than an investment, does it make a difference? Does it matter that Robert Klein, the author and chief promoter of Proposition 71, knew while he was promising the voters a return on their investment that the state might be forbidden to collect royalties from the biomedical research it invests in because of an arcane federal tax law? What was voters' intent in approving a plan...

Firefighters sued Metro Nashville over mold in their Fire Station and won $76,000. Lawyers for the Firefighters assert that this was never about the money.

CORONA, Calif. - Police arrested a student for investigation of raping a classmate during school hours. Richard Michael Zwiercan, 18, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges of rape by force and sexual penetration with a foreign object, according to court records. He remained in custody with bail set at $50,000. Corona police Sgt. Jerry Rodriguez said Zwiercan followed a 17-year-old classmate into the girls bathroom at Buena Vista High School Monday morning, forced her into a stall and raped her. The girl returned to class and told a friend what had allegedly happened, he said. The two had known...

San Francisco's Department of Human Services wants to fire a child welfare supervisor accused of downloading and passing around gay S&M porn pix -- hot shots that starred a psychiatrist from the city's foster care program. Higher-ups in the welfare division are also facing possible discipline for moving too slowly to stop the photo pass-around, and for failing to report the supervisor's actions to the proper authorities. The department's director, Trent Rhorer, declined to discuss details of the case, saying it was a personnel matter. He did, however, confirm that an internal investigation was under way "into all aspects of...

Talk about getting soaked. The San Francisco Unified School District is about to be forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make gym showers in middle and high schools accessible to people in wheelchairs, even though the showers have hardly been used in years -- by anyone, disabled or not. The reason: The recent settlement of a long-running disabled-access lawsuit, which calls for the district to spend as much as $1.5 billion in the next six years to bring schools into compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act and similar laws. Now once upon a time, students used...

A blue-collar University of California program is tangled in some red tape. UC officials have yet to decide how they will pay nearly $4 million for a two-campus program in the Center for Labor Research and Education that was cut from the state budget by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month. Union leaders, many of whom serve on the centers' advisory boards, reacted angrily to the veto, accusing Schwarzenegger of punishing organized labor. Dozens of union workers and leaders protested the cut at last month's UC Board of Regents' meeting in San Francisco. Administrators say at least 30 jobs at UC...

OAKLAND, Calif. - The city of Oakland has agreed to pay half a million dollars to settle a lawsuit filed by an anti-war protester who was injured when police fired wooden dowels and rubber balls during an April 2003 demonstration. The Oakland City Council also signed off on two other injury claims from the 500-person protest at the Port of Oakland that took place during the early days of the war with Iraq. A man who said his fingers were broken will get $85,000, while another demonstrator who suffered cuts and bruises is set to get $7,500, according to city...

OAKLAND - A November trial has been scheduled for Tanda Rucker, the former Encinal High School basketball coach and East Bay prep star, who is charged with 26 felony counts of unlawful sex with four teenage girls. Today, Judge Thomas Reardon set a Nov. 7 trial date for Rucker, 31, who is free on bail. Rucker was a standout basketball player at Berkeley High School who later played two seasons at Stanford. Prosecutors contend that Rucker met three of the teens when she was the basketball coach at the Alameda high school from 2000 until 2002. Rucker was excused from...

CONCORD - Carole Engler shook her head in disbelief at the thought of paying nearly $6,000 in back rent on the land where her mobile home has sat for 14 years. The City Council on Tuesday weighed her fate and that of about 150 others who face a $38 monthly rent hike retroactive to 1996 for living at Concord's Adobe Mobile Lodge and Diablo Mobile Lodge, near Buchanan Field and Monument Boulevard, respectively.An angry crowd hissed and hollered at city leaders Tuesday evening and bent the council's ear late into the night. As of press time, the council had yet...

WASHINGTON - It's home to Big Bird, Arthur, Bill Moyers and Jim Lehrer - and not normally a source of great controversy. But these days, PBS finds itself at the center of a political uproar over whether public television promotes a liberal agenda. The man alleging the bias is Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, a Republican who heads the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB provides federal funding to public broadcasters including the Public Broadcasting Service, which receives about 15 percent of its operating budget, or $48.5 million, from the corporation. PBS has denied the charges of a liberal slant. But following the...

In the 24 years since Nancy Dobbs founded Rohnert Park public television station KRCB, facing federal funding crises has been a regular part of her job. But this year the KRCB president and CEO says the news is potentially worse than ever, arriving like an ambush and threatening the future of public television and radio stations across the nation. The House Appropriations Committee less than two weeks ago proposed a 45 percent cut in federal funds to public broadcasters -- and the full House of Representatives could vote on the spending bill as early as today. Dobbs and other public...

WASHINGTON - Public television stations and National Public Radio would lose 25 percent of their funding next year under a bill cleared by a House committee Thursday night, although some of their funding for future years would be restored. The moves came as the House Appropriations panel approved a tightly drawn spending bill for labor, health and education programs. For the first time since the early days of GOP control of Congress 10 years ago, the measure, taken as a whole, makes actual cuts to the programs funded by the bill. The bill is perhaps the most controversial spending bill...

Across public and private sectors, health care costs are soaring -- except for a few lucky retired Richmond firefighters who enjoy a sweetheart deal with the city. Records, memos and letters obtained by the Times show controversial firefighters union political consultant Darrell Reese and a handful of union higher-ups finessed a special deal for themselves wherein they pay $25 a month for benefits that cost most retirees nearly $600. Reese and three others, including the widow of Henry Hornsby, the former International Association of Fire Fighters Local No. 188 president, also enjoy a health plan with no caps on reimbursement,...

WASHINGTON -- Rebuffing President Bush's wishes, a Republican-led House panel slashed the administration's request for a program that aids global development. Under the Millennium Challenge Account, countries are eligible for extra aid only if they control corruption, invest in health and education and encourage trade and private investment. In 2002, Bush called for "a new compact for global development, defined by new accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developing nations." He requested $3 billion in the fiscal 2006 budget, but the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee on...

<p>BARCELONA, Spain (CNN) -- The average annual cost of treating HIV-positive patients in the United States can vary from about $34,000 to $14,000, depending on the stage of the virus, according to a study released Wednesday at the 14th International AIDS Conference.</p>