SEVERAL YEARS AGO, I HAD A FRIEND WHO LIVED in a trailer park next to the freeway here in Benicia. She had just come through a divorce and lived there with her daughter. One day I stopped by with her ex-husband to pick up his daughter for the weekend. The girl wasn’t ready when we […]

IT IS A SEMINAL FOUNDATION OF the Republican political bible that taxes are too high and that without tax relief the business community is being crippled and the economy stalled. The nation is indebted to Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform for “The Pledge” that backed this conviction: In 2011 and 2012, all […]

MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN AND SAID about the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, and about Zimmerman’s subsequent trial and acquittal by a Florida jury. Of the finer points of law and of the verdict itself, or of the possibility of federal action in the wake of the acquittal, I have no comment. […]

“A man just can’t take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurting everybody in the world … because then he’s not just breaking one law, but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you put in a book … or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry […]

By Roger Straw REGARDING VALERO’S PROPOSED “CRUDE-BY-RAIL” PROJECT, it seems the cities of Fairfield, Suisun, Vacaville, Dixon, Davis, West Sacramento, Sacramento, Roseville and beyond will be affected — for better or worse — by the decision of our Planning Commission, expected Aug. 8. Evidently, like Benicia, these “up-rail” communities have no authority over rail shipments […]

TODAY I THOUGHT TO SPEND A LITTLE TIME AND SPACE on the thriving denial industry — that band of enterprising and well-funded folks whose task it is to defy (and defile) science in the name of commerce; to so persuade or, at the least, so confuse the general public that ignorant bliss and corporate profit […]

IT WAS JULY 21, 2008 — at the peak of Obama’s race to become the most powerful person in the world. There on the front cover of the New Yorker Magazine was the cartoon image of Barack Obama in Muslim garb fist-bumping with his Afro-coifed and AK-47-toting wife Michelle. Other in-your-face details included a fireplace […]

This project will be presented for a vote at the Planning Commission meeting July 11. The proposal and project will be discussed at a community public informational meeting Tuesday, July 9 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Benicia Community Center, 370 East L St. The Natural Resources Defense Council will present findings of expert research on […]

By Dennis Lund “The public has been bombarded with misinformation about the oil that will go through Keystone XL.” — Vern Meier, vice president of pipeline safety and compliance at TransCanada DURING RECENT TRAVELS, a few stories in local papers caught my attention, the first being: The transportation of tar sands oil was examined in […]