It took more than two years for questions surrounding criminal activities in the Berkeley Police Department to reach the City Council, but when the Police Review Commission report on Evidence Theft was before them Tuesday evening, councilmember reactions were heated. -more-

Berkeley’s Traffic Bureau came across a few snarls on the city’s streets this week. Not all were caused by clogged lanes and reckless driving. -more-

The question of dedicating space—a parking space—for Code Pink’s weekly demonstrations in front of the downtown Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center (MRC) raised hackles at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, when Councilmember Gordon Wozniak likened the demonstrations there to protests at abortion clinics. -more-

At a rally that attracted some 50 supporters outside the Marine Recruiting Center in downtown Berkeley on Wednesday, the Regulating Military Recruiting Coalition launched a drive to collect 5,000 signatures for a ballot initiative aimed at regulating where public and private military recruiters can locate offices in Berkeley. -more-

When 60 Minutes tackled the FBI investigation of the mortgage implosion Sunday night, producers looked to Stockton, “ground zero for the current financial crisis and a microcosm of everything that went wrong.” -more-

The remnants of a red and yellow toy train mark the spot where the redwood building housing the King Child Development Center at 1939 Ward St. used to be. -more-

Superstars and locals are gearing up for “super-duper” Tuesday, Feb. 5. -more-

Of 20 commissions listed in Title 3 of the Berkeley city code, stipulations that declare the “City Council shall appoint one of its members to act as a liaison representative to the commission” are found in the statutes creating only three commissions: Aging, Planning and Zero Waste. -more-

The potentially volatile Oakland Unified School District teacher contract negotiations—in the midst of a state budget crisis and as the district transitions from state takeover to local control—bubbled to the surface Wednesday night when shouting Oakland teachers forced a brief but tense administrator-board meeting recess while demanding that their contract proposal presentation not be bumped down lower on the agenda. -more-

Saying that “the governor dropped a bombshell on the education community,” Oakland Unified School District interim Chief Financial Officer Leon Glaster painted a gloomy picture Wednesday night of the potential financial effects on OUSD of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed 10 percent across-the-board budget cuts. -more-

UC Berkeley this week revealed the companies picked to bid on a new $56 million law school building and called for an architect to plan major changes to Haas School of Business. -more-

ADIOS, BERKELEY! -more-

The Peralta Board of Trustees, faculty and staff urge voters to support Prop. 92, the Community College Initiative, which will appear on the Feb. 5 statewide ballot. Its passage is vital to our Peralta colleges—Alameda, Berkeley City, Laney, and Merritt—as well as to the 109 California community colleges and 2.5 million students. -more-

In her Children’s Hospital’s Expansion Tax Measure commentary, Joyce Roy concluded with a question: What are our community’s priorities? As an Oakland resident and child advocate, I am compelled to list a few: -more-

As Super Tuesday looms, mail boxes across California have been stuffed with slick fliers, plus a thick Voter Information Guide, about Propositions 94-97, which ask voters whether or not they approve new gaming compacts that would triple the slot machines—by 17,000—at the casinos of four Southern California tribes. I can imagine the head-scratching over the claims and counterclaims: Is so much gambling capacity healthy for the state? How big a tax windfall? How adequate the accounting safeguards? What kind of impact on poorer tribes? On the environment? Then my eye spied a paragraph by the legislative analyst about labor relations at the casinos. And on that, fellow citizens, I can shed some light. -more-

A great change is now happening, one that’s only now beginning to bubble up in the national consciousness, and this change is shaking our established institutions to their very roots. Yet this fact is barely registering among the so-called mainstream media, or for that matter, even the progressive one. Put simply, the old political definitions of left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, are eroding away. They are indeed becoming irrelevant as the new concerns of this new Century trump the politics of the past. It’s now no longer the right against the left, but rather: “Wall Street against Main Street.” -more-

If you love the University of California, you may be interested in a study released Jan. 15 by the Center for Labor and Community Research, titled, “Failing California’s Communities: how UC’s low wages affect surrounding communities.” -more-

Fighting Measures A and B on next Tuesday’s ballot has pushed me over the edge. I’ve lost weight, acquired more wrinkles and lost my sense of humor. Sometimes I don’t even speak in coherent sentences. I’ve put my clothes on inside out, forgotten to zip my fly, backed out of the driveway without looking left or right for oncoming traffic. -more-

I am a longtime supporter of public transportation, and have been so since my youth when I used to ride around Oakland on AC Transit, often getting off and walking the last 10 blocks home along East 14th only because I thought it extravagant to pay the extra 10 cents it used to cost to go past 73rd Avenue. I was born too late to ride on the old Key System, but I fell in love with light rail when I worked, for a time, in San Jose, and thereafter thought that its reintroduction into Oakland would help ease the city’s traffic and parking problems in our city, and might also help to reinvigorate the downtrodden parts of International Boulevard east of High Street as well as West Oakland’s floundering business and commercial districts. -more-

Some 10 years ago I was out in my backyard pulling up ivy. My next door neighbor was doing the same. As we both neared the fence he muttered, “Gardening in California—it’s all about killing things.” He was right. -more-

Speaking truth to power is all very well. Sometimes, though, I just lose my temper and feel the need to speak truth to cockamamie. -more-

Murphy must be in the contracting business. You know, the one who wrote that famous law: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. He (or she, we’ve never met in the flesh, although I’ve fallen victim to his/her epistemology a time or two) was either a contractor or the client of one for enough time to codify the law and its corollaries. -more-