Opinion

So, the dust has finally settled around here. Mike O’Malley (heretofore “The Publisher”, now “Chief Technical Officer”) and I are more or less smoothly ensconced in the routine of online publishing.Because we have been advised by our lawyer to wait and see what taxes the Berkeley Daily Planet LLC might owe (after our payroll service absconded with payments intended for the state and federal governments) we’ve been working for free (which is fine with us) without employees (somewhat harder).. In the past couple of months, we’ve been gratefully publishing work contributed by public-spirited Berkeleyans, both professional journalists and passionate amateurs, who haven’t been paid either. Now it’s time to ask the readers for their help in improving what’s here. -more-

Walgreens Wants to Sell Beer and Wine; Supreme Angst;Wall Street Reform;Corporate Takeover; Take Down the Wall;Measure C Vote Explained; -more-

Memorial Day is trumpeted as a day “to honor the memory of America’s Fallen.” But rather than live up to that lofty goal, the Pentagon routinely falls short, lapsing into cosmetic rituals and empty rhetoric with volleys of ceremonial gunshots followed by volleys of commemorative clichés. -more-

Ordinarily it would suffice to allow the Michael Vick case to recede into a state of distant memory except that a Forbes magazine poll and the surfacing of a horrific video of a 2002 police murder of an African American youth insist that we revisit both incidents. -more-

Latest issue of the Pepper Spray Times. -more-

Keds’ new-fangled line of sneakers called 'Tibetan Buddhist Shoes' bearing images of the Dalai Lama, the Buddha, holy mantras, Tibetan national flag and other sacred images is a gross denigration of the faith which has millions of followers around the globe! -more-