Debra Saunders

Former Vice President Al Gore is on the cover of November's The Costco Connection, the "lifestyle magazine for Costco members." It's hard to figure who looks worse in this odd coupling--the global-warming guru or the supersize warehouse store, which would not be a retail powerhouse were it not for…

State of Fear

IT IS AN ARTICLE OF FAITH among political journalists that Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative approved by California voters to deny illegal immigrants state benefits, was poison to the Republican party. Somehow the measure, though endorsed by 59 percent of voters and many GOP candidates, is bad…

San Francisco

WEAR YOUR TRENCH COAT, your coolest shades, dab your gorgeous self with a scent that suggests of mystery and intrigue. You're going to a museum that's more fun than museums are supposed to be: Washington's new International Spy Museum.

San Francisco SOMETHING went terribly wrong on the way to last week's Republican revolution: California. While the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives were lining up Republican, Sacramento was looking like Washington, D.C., in reverse: The governor's mansion, the…

SAN FRANCISCO California is the last place that ought to be embroiled in the slave reparations controversy. Slavery was never legal in the state. There were no plantations. Its ports were not slave trade centers--wrong coast. Nonetheless, California has become the first state to step into the…

Oakland, California

BEING A QUADRUPLE MURDERER who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize means never having to say you're sorry to your victims' families. At least that's what some journalists and one particular Swiss politician seem to believe.

THE ELITE MEDIA BELIEVE that the much-used Texas death penalty may hurt governor George W. Bush in his bid for the White House. They paint the Texas criminal justice system as draconian, cavalier when it comes to due process, unfair to minorities, and excessively swift and unyielding. They take…

Since Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit appeared in 1992, Al Gore's environmental manifesto has been the source of considerable praise -- and considerable ridicule. Time hailed it as "a labor of statesmanship" and Bill Moyers praised it as "a powerful summons for the politics of…

Oakland, Calif.

In June 1985, two former Marines turned would-be survivalists -- Leonard Lake and Charles Ng -- were caught shoplifting a $ 75 vise from a hardware store in South San Francisco. Ng managed to flee. His friend Lake, while in custody, wrote a note to his exwife, then killed himself, swallowing a…

THE SAN FRANCISCO Unified School District has a lesson plan for teaching kindergartners and first-graders about homosexuality. It is called "My Family" and is disseminated through the district's Support Services for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth Department.

TODAY'S LESSON, BROUGHT TO YOU by the California Teachers Association: When you flunk a test, sue.

SAN FRANCISCO'S "PRE-ELECTION symposium" on Oct. 9 -- not a debate, please, that's too tacky -- was everything you might have expected: politically correct, unapologetically liberal, and occasionally bizarre. The incumbent sheriff told the crowd that one reason he should be re-elected was the great…