Author: Debra Saunders

When is it a crime — punishable with time behind bars — for citizens to access a company’s database with someone else’s password? For years, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has wrestled with that question. This month, a three-judge panel ruled that under a 1986 federal law, using other people’s work […]

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are about to choose running mates. I don’t know whom they’ll pick, but I hope that one or both picks a military veteran. The next president will inherit war zones in the Middle East and Afghanistan, yet neither major party’s front-runner can boast military chops. In the last century, military […]

Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democratic Legislature have a unique plan to enhance public safety in California. They have reduced the state prison population from close to 150,000 in 2010 to 113,000 now by downgrading what crimes put an offender in prison. Now they are pushing a ballot measure that would enable repeat serious and […]

FBI Director James Comey was right to assert that “no reasonable prosecutor” would press criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. No reasonable prosecutor, former federal prosecutor William Otis, now a Georgetown University law professor, told me, wants to try a criminal case with the potential to tilt a national election. Comey’s remarks were damning. He noted […]

Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson sees a path to the White House. The former Republican governor of New Mexico can boast a running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, who also is the former Republican governor of a blue state. When they were Republicans, they won in blue states not just once but also when they […]

The New York Times headline said it all: “House Benghazi Report Finds No New Evidence of Wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton.” The headline doesn’t say there was no wrongdoing, just no (SET ITAL) new (END ITAL) evidence of wrongdoing. Both Hillary and Bill Clinton have a genius for convincing the media that their miscues and cover-ups […]

Everyone expects neo-Nazis to be thuggish and simpleminded. They’re losers who need a movement that tells them they are winners, so they troll for grievances and battles from which they can emerge as both morally superior and victims. They hate freedom. Traditionalist Worker Party leader Matthew Heimbach even wrote a piece, “I Hate Freedom,” in […]

Los Angeles Assistant District Attorney Michele Hanisee was gobsmacked when California lawmakers raged against the light sentence meted out to a former Stanford student convicted of sexually assaulting a woman while she was passed out behind a campus trash bin. Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Brock Turner, 20, to six months in jail — […]

Showtime’s “Billions” probably is 2016’s most intriguing dramatic series precisely because its nastiest villain is Chuck Rhoades, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Played by actor Paul Giamatti, Rhoades is a ruthless bully who wants to bury hedge fund big shots, whether he has the goods on them or not. Rhoades is […]

“I pledge allegiance to (omitted) may God protect him (Arabic), on behalf of (omitted),” said the man who killed 49 innocent people in an Orlando gay bar on June 12. Or so reported a redacted transcript of phone conversations between the shooter and police. The transcript airbrushed all reference to Islam and the Islamic State. […]

The victim fought back with words of rage. “I thought there’s no way this is going to trial; there were witnesses, there was dirt in my body, he ran but was caught,” she wrote in a 12-page statement at the sentencing of Brock Turner, the former Stanford student convicted of sexually assaulting her. “He’s going […]

A terrorist shot and killed 49 innocent Americans in Orlando Sunday morning. After the carnage, the political food fight started. On the right, people fault Islamic extremism. When President Obama refuses to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” that gives conservatives a chance to pounce. I know — I’ve been one of them. We argue […]

Former Attorney General Eric Holder has come out against proposals in Chicago and New Jersey to require fingerprint background checks of drivers for ride-hailing platforms such as Uber and Lyft. Why would President Obama’s onetime top lawman come out against regulation that is supposed to protect the riding public? Credit the intersection of two forces. […]

“My nose is broken. I have bruises and scratches all over. I got knocked in the head a lot,” Santa Clara’s Juan Hernandez, 38, told me. He suffered a mild concussion. That’s the price Hernandez paid for attending the infamous Donald Trump rally in San Jose last week at which protesters were seen burning flags […]

As usual, the GOP primary was sewn up before California’s June 7 primary. By late May, Donald Trump had the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nod. Nonetheless, I voted for Ohio Gov. John Kasich by absentee ballot, even though Kasich suspended his campaign last month. Kasich is a solid conservative with a record of […]

San Francisco resident Kathryn Steinle, 32, her father and a friend were strolling in July along Pier 14, when a bullet struck Steinle in the chest. Two hours later, Steinle died. For Jim Steinle and Liz Sullivan, the shooting presented every parent’s nightmare. For the city of San Francisco, the shooting devolved into bad press. […]

California lawmakers seem intent on making Sacramento the place where reasonable reforms, much like runaway trains, jump the tracks. In that no-speed-limit spirit Tuesday, the California Assembly voted 41-37 to allow convicted felons to vote in jail. (Yes, you read that correctly.) If Assembly Bill 2466 becomes law, the American Civil Liberties Union estimates that […]

Speaking in San Francisco Thursday, Hillary Clinton told supporters that Donald Trump is not fit to be president. “He roots for himself,” the former Secretary of State proclaimed, “and that’s the type of person who should not be president of the United States.” By that standard, Clinton herself has no business running to win the […]

There is no doubt in my mind that Bill Cosby did a great deal of what his female accusers say he did — i.e., drug and sexually assault them. There are dozens of accusers with similar stories, and the tales go back for decades. I confess, I didn’t pay much attention to the story until […]

“It’s as hard right now to be a cop maybe as it’s ever been,” San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr to The Chronicle Editorial Board Tuesday. At the time, Suhr was resisting calls demanding that he resign. Five local protesters had given up their hunger strike to force his departure to atone for officer-involved shootings […]

On Wednesday, Bernie Sanders had lunch at the Chieftain, a cozy pub near the San Francisco Chronicle. In days gone by, it served as a lunch spot for parched journalists. Earlier, Sanders had addressed a rally in San Jose; he had another scheduled in Vallejo, California, that night. When he exited the Chieftain by a […]

If Donald Trump supporters had booed a Republican senator at a state convention over the weekend, if they threw chairs because they did not like a delegate count, if Trump’s goons published a state party vice chairwoman’s private phone number — which unleashed a torrent of abusive, obscenity-drenched voice messages that described the acts of […]

Running to replace Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate, Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., is not backing down from comments she made in December about the percentage of Muslims in the world who support a holy war. After the San Bernardino terrorist attack, Sanchez appeared on “Politicking with Larry King.” King asked her about President Barack […]

The death of Prince, who apparently had a Percocet problem, and a 2016 presidential primary peppered with New England town halls that delved into increased heroin overdoses and prescription drug abuse have converged to create what CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta calls “a public health epidemic.” Drug addiction is 2016’s big nonpolitical story. CNN aired a […]

Of course I had to ask Sen. Bernie Sanders about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email account when he came to a San Francisco Chronicle editorial board meeting Tuesday. When Sanders famously offered that he didn’t want to hear about those “damn emails” — the focus of an FBI investigation — during the […]

Last June, when he said he was running as a Republican for president, billionaire Donald Trump famously called out Mexico for sending “people that have lots of problems” across the border. Quoth the Donald: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Many were offended to hear Trump […]

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is flirting with the idea of letting 16- and 17-year-olds vote in local elections. Last year, Supervisor John Avalos floated the notion, but it didn’t go anywhere. But this is an election year — and in election years, noxious proposals carry extra currency. So expect City Hall to pass […]

When Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas announced Tuesday night, after losing Indiana, that he was suspending his presidential primary campaign, it was not a fatal blow to the stop-Trump movement. Many Republicans who oppose Donald Trump — because he’s a self-serving, unreliable conservative likely to alienate huge swaths of the American electorate — weren’t particularly […]

Cable news pundits often warn that Republicans have to respect the righteous anger of Donald Trump supporters. They forget the other angry Republican voters — the many folks I saw at California’s Republican convention in Burlingame over the weekend who have been loyal GOP votes. They’ve gone to the lunches and supported candidates for down-ticket […]

Donald Trump had to squeeze through a hole in a fence to speak at the California Republican Convention on Friday. He said it felt like “crossing the border.” Meanwhile, his supporters swaggered into the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport banquet hall as if they owned the place. Maybe they know something I don’t, I shuddered. […]