Last week the New Yorker posted an article that credited Kamala Harris for blazing the trail for today's "progressive" district attorneys. In a letter that won't get published I went into press-secretary mode for my old…
Posts published by “Fred Gardner”
The New Yorker posted a piece Nov. 20 that reduced Terence Hallinan to a non-person. It had an odd title, "Kamala Harris and the Noble Path of the Prosecutor." The author was a Harvard Law School…
On a typical morning in Department 10, one of the four municipal courts on the first floor of the Hall of Justice, 26 people wait patiently as the proceedings get underway at 9:20 a.m. From…
The Tran case had been on hold for more than three years when it finally went to trial in the fall of 2000. The corporate media used the occasion to remind readers that Terence Hallinan…
The Beatles serenaded Lovely Rita in 1960s Liverpool, but Y2K San Francisco was choking with cars, tickets were costly, and outbursts of rage against Parking Control Officers were increasingly frequent. When a spate of attacks…
Defrocked Monsignor Patrick O’Shea had been the pastor for many years at the Holy Name of Jesus Church in the Sunset and St. Cecelia’s in the Parkside District. The scourge of the altar boys, he…
Hardly any subject is more than two degrees of separation removed from marijuana. This week Bruce Jenkins of the Chronicle picked an all-star team of baseball players from Oakland and proposed a toast to his…