A campaign executive for Gavin Newsom's governor's race said I was "scraping the bottom of the barrel" when I posted a photo of the mayor's green recycling bin in connection with a column about the city's new mandatory composting regulation. Point and shaky pun taken. But, despite my own best... ... MORE

Lots of response -- slams and support -- for my Monday column here on SFGate and in The Chronicle about San Francisco's new mandatory composting regulation. Sorry to report that Gavin Newsom did not offer to come personally weed out anyone's leftovers to kick the thing off on a note of high civic... ... MORE

By the time Jimmy Carter weighs in, with all due respect to the former President, home builder and Nobel Laureate, you can bet that's pretty much the end of the news cycle for that story. When I watched Mr. Carter offer an opinion about South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson the other day, his... ... MORE

South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson, it turns out, was just the red-faced canary in the coal mine of anger toxicity poisoning our national psyche. Fury is being unleashed across the land and don't say you weren't warned: it's all been astrologically predicted . While you've been burying... ... MORE

It's not fun to criticize Barack Obama anymore now that everyone's doing it . Even cautionary blog posts used to feel like a wonderfully lonely place, particularly if you live around San Francisco or on HuffPo. I warned early on about the dangers of over-stimulating the public expectation ... ... MORE

Civility in public discussion these days is as rare as a bald-headed Kennedy -- the last of that mane now lionized by Ted's passing . But damn if John McCain didn't have a bunch of citizens at his Arizona health care reform town hall meeting yesterday behaving like the Mormon Tabernacle choir... ... MORE

Criticizing the recently deceased is as rude as punking the Queen of England at an official event: it's bad form both in terms of timing and reasonable respect. As a journalist, I know I should revere Bob Novak, whose death from brain cancer was announced this morning, almost as much as the... ... MORE

Good Vibrations has always been the place where the x-rated rubber meets the merchandising road in uniquely San Francisco fashion. No whiff of disinfectant in there, nothing scarier than a 9-volt battery or more threatening than sage how-to manuals for after hours. No trench coats necessary. ... ... MORE

I am NOT HIM! Hear me roar! The loose lips parade of outbursts has replaced swine flu as the national epidemic of the moment. And there's no vaccine in sight for this 223-year-old unruly American problem . But even Arlen Specter's gamely stiff spine in the face of spittle on his coat... ... MORE

In a secret meeting last week at a Denny's outside Squamish, British Columbia, Barack Obama's chief strategists David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett shared coffee and a plate of donuts with Palin steering committee chairman, Levi Johnston . The purpose of the improbable session: to come up with a... ... MORE

Gavin, there's someone I'd like to introduce you to. Meet Gavin. I know climate change can be a bitch, but is the barometric political pressure so different from here to San Diego that the mayor just turns into two different people? In Southern California last March, stumping Green for... ... MORE

I'm not faking this blog post! Just don't tell anyone. It's been a pig-in-poop week for nut jobs, conspiracy theorists and just plain, square-minded skeptics . The faked-moon-landing fans came out of a nearly 40-year eclipse to light up the digital call board, incentivized, as they say, by... ... MORE

Who's the better decider now, sucka? When I heard Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn tell Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, " You'll have a lot of splainin' to do ," if she went home, got a gun and shot him, my first sensation was the warm wash of memory watching "I Love Lucy" when I was a kid.... ... MORE

New England Zoo officials have the right idea : if you want to solve the relentless, intractable, choking monster of balancing public budgets, you have to do a little killing. That bothersome SF Public Defender, Jeff Adachi, who keeps hounding the city for money to defend indigent clients,... ... MORE

There's a new N-word permeating our culture and it has nothing to do with racial epithets. The warm bath of public narcissism is getting as crowded as the rooftop hot tub at SF's kink.com on a Friday night. Instead of luxuriating in it, or watching a few privileged porn performers sudsing... ... MORE

Let me just say it before a commentator on Fox does: This whole Mark Sanford mess is a Barack Obama conspiracy. The sad spectacle of Mr. Sanford's teary confessional is designed, at least in some part, to make the President look even better by comparison than he already does. You think... ... MORE

All Twitter needed this last week was for Ashton Kutcher to be named the compromise president of Iran. Then the perfect circle of social networking, information gathering, and real-world events would have been balled up tighter than a Microsoft intellectual property-rights case. But in actual... ... MORE

How many flashy, technicolor buzzwords does it take to blind a voter? We'll be finding out the answer in the 2010 California governor's race. Bullet-riddled bodies, eviscerated budgets, and the physical accessibility of a public official are such pre-Web concepts that only wonky Tom... Presented By: You Need the Speed of Norton 2009 Introducing the ... MORE

How many flashy, technicolor buzzwords does it take to blind a voter? We'll be finding out the answer in the 2010 California governor's race. Bullet-riddled bodies, eviscerated budgets, and the physical accessibility of a public official are such pre-Web concepts that only wonky Tom... Presented By: You Need the Speed of Norton 2009 Introducing the ... MORE

Craigslist is saving newspapers! I respectfully disagree with Arianna Huffington's claim this week that Craig helped her kill print journalism . Just as Prohibition handed over the lucrative liquor trade to the Bronfmans and the Kennedys , rabid law enforcement agents are chasing the ... ... MORE

Craigslist is saving newspapers! I respectfully disagree with Arianna Huffington's claim this week that Craig helped her kill print journalism . Just as Prohibition handed over the lucrative liquor trade to the Bronfmans and the Kennedys , rabid law enforcement agents are chasing the ... ... MORE

When Barack Obama decided that questions from the German press about his trip agenda in that country were too pesky, he told the reporters , "So, stop it all of you!" He just wanted them to ask things he wanted to talk about. Well, what politico wouldn't want that? OK, dad. We'll behave. And... ... MORE

Empathy is our newest cultural celebrity, now that Susan Boyle has collapsed in the face of the unrelenting beast of huge and instant fame. (But we really feel for her and understand her let-down and nervous exhaustion as if it were our own. Honest.) Like "networking" years ago or "creating... ... MORE

Republicans may be struggling in the dunk tank since the last national elections, holding onto each other for warmth and flotation in the Senate and House and fractiously searching for a new overarching identity to avoid being the outlying party for the next several decades. But, don't be... ... MORE

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I thought cockfighting was illegal in this country. But there, right on TV and web stream, was the President of the US and his now archrival, the former Veep, in an unrestrained rooster pecking match over the most serious of topics, including enhanced interrogation (speaking of euphemisms, Mr.... ... MORE

Social networking isn't just for the warm and fuzzy any more. (Never was.) The web is a sharing and neutral place -- maybe that's what all those perspiring newspaper publishers mean by the cliche "platform agnostic" -- where new-agers and neo-Nazis share the same bandwidth. A Reuters story this... ... MORE

Carrie Prejean didn't lie to beauty pageant officials even though she'd appeared semi-nude in photos a few years back, so let's just get off that high Godiva horse right now. Here's the thing: Since the old pictures were of her real breasts, she never actually exposed the new breasts she's... ... MORE

There's something about former Vice President Dick Cheney that's been struggling to get out like a rare bald eagle chick ready to hatch. After listening to his remarks this weekend about Rush Limbaugh (loves him) and Colin Powell (doesn't), and his jut-jawed "I don't regret anything" moment on... ... MORE

Nothing is sacred or safe in SF these days, apparently. Unless you're a carbon credit or another green wonky wonderland plan waiting to ease someone's guilt. Even the annual, feel good, tourism-friendly, home-town-hero cable car bell-ringing championship in Union Square is being threatened... ... MORE

Nothing is sacred or safe in SF these days, apparently. Unless you're a carbon credit or another green wonky wonderland plan waiting to ease someone's guilt. Even the annual, feel good, tourism-friendly, home-town-hero cable car bell-ringing championship in Union Square is being threatened... ... MORE

John Kerry wants to save newspapers. Or something like that. Anyway he's holding DC hearings on the subject today, presumably goosed by the fact that his hometown Boston Globe has been teetering on the brink of oblivion . Getting as testifiers Arianna Huffington , never dull, and David... ... MORE

When great satire can't make it anymore in the printed newspaper world, that's not so funny here in the belly of The Chronicle and at other publications. The Onion, which blew into San Francisco a few years ago with its hilarious headlines and endless news parodies -- there was a big party... ... MORE

In a very tight, tented-off square upstairs at the Castro Theater, a photographer had handed Robert Redford the small pyramid crystal award he'd be getting the next night from the SF International Film Festival . "Just do something with it," the shooter said a little gruffly to the man who... ... MORE

If everyone is wearing surgical masks, what's Michael Jackson going to do? It's an important question for Neverland fans, but about as useless and untimely in the swine flu panic of '09 as the debates about closing the border door with Mexico after the virus has already galloped through. ... ... MORE

What's the difference between these two couples: Mr. And Mrs. Gavin Newsom and Benjamin Bratt and his wife, Talisa Soto Bratt? They're all unquestionably very attractive people, as the Chronicle noted about the "beautiful (mayoral) couple" Sunday. But after seeing the Bratts in their movie,... ... MORE

Note to Bill O'Reilly: Iowa is the new San Francisco. I can barely write that sentence without my hands shaking at the thought of the city I grew up in losing its punch line status on right-leaning talk shows and slightly more sympathetic late night comedy hours. But with an absentee... ... MORE

Every news anchor, hyperactive money reporter, and sputtering financial pundit is trying to read the economic bird droppings to tell us when this national nightmare will begin to think about trying to be over. What's the sign we've bottomed out? Is it the stock market? Home sales ? Unemployment ?... Presented By: You Need the Speed of Norton 2009 Introducing ... MORE

I say let Rod Blagojevich go to Costa Rica for the reality show, "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" which probably aptly describes the former governor's (and other celebrities') view of life at the moment. He's already gone from political appointment sales and services to perpetual... ... MORE

We need Timothy Geithner. His two-places-at-once magic press act this weekend just confirms it. It's not because the Treasury Secretary was on George Fluffalupagus' show and "Meet The Press" at the exact same time, though he gets a Ubiquitous Obama award for that. And it's not because the... ... MORE