Author: Debra Saunders

I am starting to feel really sorry for Jeb Bush — almost as sorry as Jeb! (his campaign nom de plume) apparently feels for himself. He’s the son and the brother of former presidents, yet last week’s RealClearPolitics polling average put Bush in fifth place for the Republican nomination for president, behind billionaire Donald Trump, […]

Thursday’s House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing delivered what oversight hearings so often do. One party was on the offensive; the other party was cheerleading the politician on the hot seat. As the questions kept coming, there was no smoking gun; in between bipartisan bloviating, however, there were some damning revelations about what former Secretary […]

Is there such a thing as being too politically correct in San Francisco? Yes — but a public official has to overreach drastically to hit that mark. Everett Middle School principal Lena Van Haren did just that when she chose to withhold the results of her school’s Oct. 9 student council election because students had […]

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, speaking in San Francisco, a town infamous for its sanctuary city policies, said last month that sanctuary city rules are “not acceptable” and “counterproductive.” Where, then, does Johnson stand on the Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act, introduced by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., to withhold some federal grants […]

Both proponents and opponents of San Francisco’s “Airbnb measure” — Proposition F — see the November ballot initiative as a David vs. Goliath contest. Both sides also see themselves as David. And both sides have a point. The measure would impose additional restrictions on short-term rentals. Supporters can claim to be the little guys because […]

Elections change how Americans think and talk. Nowhere was the shift in the conversation more evident than in Las Vegas on Tuesday night at the Democrats’ first debate for the 2016 presidential campaign. Since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, federal immigration law has been pretty much what it was under President George W. […]

As he runs for re-election in November, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon faces no opposition. The cozy position was unlikely, when you consider that Gascon arrived in the city as a pro-death penalty Republican from Arizona in 2009 after then-Mayor Gavin Newsom picked him to be chief of police. Today he’s the rare prosecutor […]

Rep. Tom McClintock of California is about as conservative a Republican as you can find in Congress. As a state legislator in Sacramento, he was a well-known budget hawk. In the House, writes The Almanac of American Politics, he has been “a faithful conservative vote, though an occasionally nettlesome one to GOP leaders seeking to […]

The smart folk at Grammarly — an online grammar checker — examined Facebook posts written by supporters of the 2016 presidential candidates in a savvy bid to garner free press. It helped that the grammar site’s findings confirmed the left’s most treasured conceit — that liberals are more learned than conservatives. Specifically, the study found […]

After America learned of the latest mass shooting at an Oregon community college, President Barack Obama delivered remarks in which he lamented the loss of good, innocent people and then added: “Somehow this has become routine. … We’ve become numb to this.” By the next day, Obama had a remedy: “Be a single-issue voter.” If […]

“Crime drops to new lows,” read Tuesday’s San Francisco Chronicle headline for a story about historic lows in crime statistics, nationally as well as in the Bay Area. I hope you enjoyed that headline, because it could be the last time you will read it for at least a decade. Though violent crime rates dropped […]

California has a new death row; it’s called Virginia. Anti-death penalty advocates, federal judges and defense attorneys have been so successful at blocking capital punishment in California that a San Quentin death row inmate has more to fear from being extradited for a capital murder to another state than seeing his sentence carried out here. […]

I am going to miss John Boehner as speaker of the House. The GOP looks like the fun party with its ring-a-ding leader and his dash of Dean Martin. Boehner even sauntered into his resignation news conference Friday while crooning, “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay. My oh my, what a wonderful day.” The speaker chose not to cling […]

“I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,’” quoth Carly Fiorina at the Republican presidential debate last week. “This is about the character of our nation, […]

Democratic partisans have been rubbing their hands with glee as billionaire Donald Trump’s antics have dominated the Republican primary. I hope they’re enjoying themselves, because they soon may find themselves in their own world of hurt. While pundits have been shaking their heads at Trump’s many gaffes, Gallup released a poll that found presumptive Democratic […]

Who is this Carly Fiorina? In the press filing center at the CNN Republican debate, journalists from around the country were asking reporter Carla Marinucci and me because we covered the former Hewlett-Packard CEO for the San Francisco Chronicle in 2010 when she ran for the U.S. Senate against California Democrat Barbara Boxer — and […]

“Anything could happen over the next few hours,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper announced at the prime-time Republican presidential debate. Anything did happen. Billionaire Donald Trump made faces and rolled his eyes. He mugged as a petulant little boy would mug. He insulted his opponents for no apparent reason. When Tapper asked the reality TV star […]

California Gov. Jerry Brown convened a special session of the Legislature to fix a $1 billion shortfall in health care funding — and the bill the Legislature sent to his desk would legalize physician-assisted suicide. Supporters of the measure made this argument last week: The Legislature needed to pass the End of Life Option Act […]

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee complained on ABC’s “This Week” that both Gavin Newsom and Kim Davis broke marriage laws but there’s a double standard. The GOP presidential hopeful put it this way: “You’ve got Democrats who ignored the law when it was the law to have traditional marriage. Gavin Newsom, in San Francisco as […]

“We’re here not only for Kate, to keep her memory alive, but to have something done,” a shellshocked James Steinle pronounced at a Tuesday news conference on the steps of San Francisco City Hall. On July 1, Steinle, his daughter, Kate, and a friend were taking an evening stroll on Pier 14. Kate Steinle, 32, […]

“All I ask is fairness,” Donald Trump has told the media. He was the only GOP presidential hopeful to raise his hand and refuse to pledge not to run as a third-party candidate at the Fox News debate. Now he faces a deadline — Sept. 30 — to make that pledge or forfeit the opportunity […]

Why is New York so much cleaner than San Francisco? It’s a question you hear all the time, even as some New Yorkers swear that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s lighter approach to law enforcement has undone some of the gains made under former Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg. I spent three days walking at […]

I get paid to listen to people (mostly politicians) talk at length while saying as little as possible. They often hide behind mind-numbing words to obscure what they really mean. When I hear a politician promise “transparency,” he or she most likely means it as much as Barack Obama meant that his vaunted “most transparent […]

The Obama Department of Justice argued last week that a Boise, Idaho, law against “public sleeping in a city without adequate shelter space constitutes criminalizing homelessness itself, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.” In a statement of interest filed in federal court, the Obama administration asserted that banning sleeping and camping in public places constitutes […]

“The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act” isn’t living up to its promise. Also known as Proposition 47, the California ballot initiative, which was approved in November 2014 with 60 percent of the vote, downgraded drug possession and many property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor. Proponents argued that lesser punishment for low-level offenders would […]

“I am not remiss to say that from Washington, D.C., to Sacramento, there is a blood trail to Marilyn Pharis’ bedroom,” Santa Maria, California, police Chief Ralph Martin charged last week. On July 24, two burglars allegedly broke in to Pharis’ home as she slept. They sexually assaulted and beat her. Pharis, 64, a U.S. […]

“Conservatives Furious at Fox, Say Trump Wasn’t Treated Fairly,” read the Newsmax headline Friday. Talk-radio show host Mark Levin told Breitbart News it was “outrageous” that moderator Megyn Kelly questioned Donald Trump about his coarse language — “fat pigs, dogs, slobs” — referring to women. Levin complained it was “a National Enquirer debate, not a […]

How bad is the urine situation in San Francisco? This is not a joke: Monday night, a light pole corroded by urine collapsed and crashed onto a car, narrowly missing the driver. The smell is worse than I have known since I started working for The Chronicle in 1992. It hits your nose on the […]

Donald Trump won some applause in Cleveland, but Thursday night spelled the beginning of his inevitable decline. It’s fun for his fans to watch Trump flout convention, but eventually they figure out that this man will betray anyone. From the opening, Trump showed what kind of Republican he truly is — the snake variety. Fox […]

More than 200,000 people have signed a petition asking the White House to cooperate with efforts to “extradite Walter Palmer” — the Minneapolis-area dentist who killed Cecil the lion — “promptly at the Zimbabwe government’s request.” According to reports, Palmer and/or his hunting guides lured the beloved lion out of a game reserve. Palmer then […]