The emerging battle over whether San Francisco should allow private parties at Coit Tower is really part of a much larger political debate: How do we fund public parks? Is public space something that resources are put into, something that's paid for by tax money and preserved and made available for everyone -- or should part of the role of parks be to generate cash?Read more »

The Obama Administration is thrilled with the new employment figures, and it's clear the president will use this as a key part of his campaign (as long as the recovery keeps going and doesn't sputter again). Read more »

There's only about a month left before the Redistricting Task Force starts to finalize a new map for supervisorial districts in San Francisco. You can look at the draft map the task force is working on here. The Guardian held a forum on the topic Jan 26 and that's lead to an alternative community map, which is here. Read more »

The Sierra Club and the Presidio Historical Association have filed suit in federal court charging that the Presidio Trust violated environmental laws when it approved a new luxury hotel for the Main Post area.

The suit reflects the essential problem of the semi-private trust: When you force a national park to make enough money to pay its own way, and you stock the governing board with people who think like real-estate developers, then you create the near inevitability of serious problems.Read more »

So Facebook is going public, and a homeless artist is going to get $200 million. Nice. And a company that has spent eight years spying on your private life (with your consent, of course, although admit it, you didn't know exactly how the data mining worked and how much these folks now know about you) is going to pick up a few billion dollars for selling your secrets to advertisers. Read more »

I love Bad Lip Reading. And the Rick Santorum ad is the best one ever.

We are all homosexuals.

The big fat chick stunk ... like beef.

I hold it like it's a fancy fist for joy.

I had some porn, and I swore, and some weird witch gagged me.

I'm living for donuts and venison.

The first time I drank I had my shoes under my arm.

Diarrhea is OK.

Check it out.

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I was eating my (late) breakfast as I was listening to Gavin Newsom on KQED's Forum this morning, and at first it was just the usual lofty rhetoric about education ... and then Michael Krasny asked the lieutenant governor about the Occupy movement, and I almost threw up my whole wheat bagel and peanut butter.Read more »

The development agreement for the America's Cup comes out next week, although the project is already under way. But there's some concern that the number of visitors (and thus the revenue to the city) might not be as high as projected.Read more »