On Monday night, the Marriott Hotel in Walnut Creek hosted the 2012 East Bay Women's Conference featuring feminist and political icon Gloria Steinem. During the conference, which culminated in her standing ovation-causing "The Progression of Feminism and Social Equity" speech, Oakland Tribune's Angela Hill caught up with Steinem for a one-on-one interview. When asked to give her thoughts on the recent political battle over contraception, Rush Limbaugh's slut-gate, and the conservative "war on women." Behold: more ›

Besides being wildly inappropriate and wholly inaccurate, Rush Limbaugh's attempt at slut-shaming Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke set the political blogs on fire last week. While Limbaugh himself caught plenty of backlash and lost a slew of advertisers, it seems some of his sympathizers on the Right thought they could seize the moment and engage in a little slut-shaming of their own. Enter Jennifer Kerns, a political consultant currently serving as the California Republican Party's spokeswoman, who decided to jump on the slut bandwagon with a cheap shot at another East Coast gal with political aspirations. more ›

Sen. Leland Yee received some sort of death threat today - a faxed death threat, no less - after performance artist Rush Limbaugh's humor-free tirade about the Chinese language. more ›

After a menacing political battle -- which, before President Obama's speech on Saturday, included Tea Party protesters shouting "faggot" and "nigger" to members of Congress, like Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and John Lewis (D-Ga.) outside the Capitol... more ›

• Southwest grounds over 100 flights. [SFGate]
• List of the most annoying people in San Francisco in annoying .pdf format. [SF Weekly]
• Finally, someone brings up Lista's ginormous sideburns. Which...really, David? [Spots]
• Did you know that chef/personality Tyler Florence has a blog? He does. (We heard that Joanne Weir does as well. Y/N?) [Tyler Florence]

Well, frankly, neither had we. That is, until we read this crazy -- yet, not so crazy -- article on Republicans in Ohio switching party alliances and voting Democratic. 16,000 Republicans, to be exact. more ›

The nicer the weather gets, the busier we get across the Ist-A-Verse. But we like being busy. Here's a peek at what we've been up to since last week! more ›

Here's todays roundup of the news more ›

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. more ›

As you might imagine, Bill O'Reilly's comments about our fair city deserving a terrorist attack managed to raise a few hackles. Including from Chris Daly who was so angered by Bill's hot-headed comments that he got hot-headed himself and called on Fox News to fire him (editor's note-- wouldn't you love to see a Celebrity Death Match type battle go down between O'Reilly and Daly? Wouldn't that be Awesome? Our money would totally be on Daly too 'cause nobody puts Daly in the corner) . And Aaron Peskin said something along the lines about Bill being hyped up on Oxycontin, just like Rush Limbaugh. So O'Reilly went on the radio and tried to set the record straight. more ›

Schwarzenegger's political poll numbers are still down, there is one poll in which he is doing very well. Turns out, Arnie is Ubersexy! According to Men's Vogue, Arnie is the Fifth Ubersexiest man in the world, making him ubersexier than Ewan McGregor andr Pierce Brosnan, but not as ubersexy as George Clooney, #1 Ubersexiest male Bono, or Donald Trump (blogga, please). Not on the list was Rush Limbaugh, who has been whining about it ever since. As for his propositions' in the Very Special Election, we turn to the Prop. 77, the redistricting initiative because if politics make for strange bedfellows, this one is causing TomKat-like couplings. Besides the support of Mr. Campaign Reform himself, John McCain, the initiative got the support of well-known political reform organization, Common Cause. Well, sort of. Seems there was a bit of a disagreement over supporting it and it's rumored several board members threatened to resign in protest of aligning with a politician whose pro-business stand would earn the plaudits of Montgomery Burns. Also supporting the proposition is consumer rights group, CalPIRG. more ›

One of Rush Limbaugh's pet pundits Michelle Malkin has been invited by California Patriots, the politically conservative campus group at Cal, to speak about her book In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror. Her talk is likely to focus on criticism of her book from the left, the role of racial profiling in our current War on Terror and her experiences as an author, New York Post columnist and television personality. Some readers may remember the heated exchange between Ms. Malkin, Chris Matthews and our own Willie Brown on MSNBC's Hardball, which Ms. Malkin posted about on her site. 1115.org has made their feelings known by featuring Ms. Malkin in one of their biting STFU pieces, and Ana Marie Wonkette has also weighed in on the issue. EssEffist also wants to point out that the children and grandchildren of interned Japanese Americans will have a hard time swallowing some of her arguments - and Muslim students at Cal, who by her own account should be viewed with suspicion as potential terrorists based on their ethnic background, are probably none too pleased with her appearance. EssEffist remembers reading Farewell to Manzanar in grade school and thinks the camps and their justifications were truly regrettable. We thought we were all clear on this when Reagan apologized for it, but Ms. Malkin disagrees. The speech will be tomorrow night at 7:00pm in 145 Dwinelle Hall on campus. more ›