Have you guys seen all those "Click It Or Ticket" signs they've had up on the LED signs on the highway about how they're enforcing the seat belt laws this month? Well, Oakland City Attorney John Russo didn't, and got nabbed on Piedmont Avenue for going beltless. We pretty much always wear a seat belt now because that dinging noise that the dashboard makes if you don't have it on drives us mad. Russo says......

A recent wave of immigration sweeps (or, as Indy Bay calls it "Gestapo Immigration Raiders") is creating a bit of a fuss not only in San Francisco but throughout the Peninsula and East Bay. There's talk of protests, organizing, sending out nasty press releases, and even the creation of new laws. In Redwood City, there's talk of creating an "Immigration Sanctuary" in San Mateo County and in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors will debate a resolution tomorrow condemning the sweeps. That'll show them. Hell, even Gavin's jumped into the fray with his very own press release tut-tutting the raids. All of this has brought the Minutemen into the action as they held a rally in Castro Valley to call for closing the border. It wasn't until a few days ago when we realized the Minutemen were named after our Revolutionary soldiers and not their sexual dysfunctions, although one could probably explain the other. ...

-Coit Tower might be getting an Extreme Makeover. -There were dueling immigration rallies in Castro Valley. -Straight people are moving more and more into the Castro-- there goes the neighborhood. -When squirrels attack. -Is the phrase "that's so gay" when said by a 15-year old girl so wrong? And is she being targeted because she's Mormon? -Foreign exchange student hit by a hit-and-run driver when he pulls over to work in his car. -Woman who......

With Rita's blessing, we bring you a brand new column called "We Read the Glossies." It's just like "We Read the Weeklies" only with monthly glossies. Here we review the February issues of Diablo, San Francisco Magazine, San Jose Magazine, and 7x7....

The story about Rex Farrance, the PC World editor shot to death in a home invasion robbery gets more complicated, as his 19-year-old son tells the media that the "drug trade" alluded to by the police was in fact a stash of licensed medicinal marijuana that the son was keeping at the father's house with the father's knowledge. Farrance's wife, who was pistol-whipped in the attack, strongly denies any drug dealing in the house --......

A flat fee for BART? -- And speaking of BART, a new BART stop is about to be built, the first one since the SFO extension in 2003. It'll be called the West Dublin/Pleasanton stop and will be built between the ten minute gap in stops between Dublin/Pleasanton and Castro Valley ...

Your occasional roundup of protests around the Bay. Photoblogger Thomas Hawk passed along this gorgeous shot of ferry workers protesting the National Park Service's decision to launch a ferry service to Alcatraz with anti-union Hornblower Yachts. Go to the Indybay site and check out their pictures of the ferry drill team! Extra bonus: Frank Chu in the background. Two strikers outside Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley were injured in protests today -- one striker was pepper-sprayed and another struck by a car. The strikers claim that the injuries were caused by security workers, but the hospital claims that a cleaning woman trying to get to work was the pepper-sprayer (but say nothing about the getting hit by a car thing.) No one was injured enough to need to go to (presumably another) hospital, though. And SF children's advocates rallied outside City Hall yesterday, with suitcases as props, to protest how San Francisco pressures middle class families to move out. Only 14.5% of the city is under 18 (from 25% in 1960. Children make up 27% of the state), 62% of families leaving the city are poor or middle-class, and 64% of families leaving SF are families of color. Picture of the ferry workers by Thomas Hawk...

Watch out for that 16th hole -- it's a doozy! The sandtrap and rotating windmill take on a sinister tone now at San Jose's mini golf haven Golfland, as authorities discovers that the fun park was listed as a potential terror target on a list submitted to the Dept. of Homeland Security. Was it the skeeball that might have attracted jihadist attention? (And why wouldn't the Goflands in Castro Valley or Sunnyvale attract the same kind of Al Qaida attention?) Rep. Zoe Lofgren from San Jose is annoyed about this -- noting that while the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and certain check-cashing facilities in LA were included on the homeland security list, no one bothered to put down the area where all of the Internet's servers are stored (is that Cisco?). Homeland Security will not comment, but it sounds like someone's gone ahead and taken Golfland off the list. Golfland manager Bob Kenney is pleased, saying, "I just hope nobody was upset or scared away by us being on the list. I heard we were 17 on a list of 18 sites, in order of the terrorists' favorite targets. We're small potatoes. They'd probably rather go for the Winchester Mystery House.'' Picture of Golfland off Golfland's website...