Politics

Will Durst here, wishing Mitt Romney the heartiest of welcomes home. He's got to be more relieved than a Midwestern corn farmer in the middle of a thunderstorm to be back on American soil. The GOP nominee embarked on a goodwill trip designed to raise his foreign policy bonafides, but the six-day charm offensive proved to be a bit light on the charm and rather heavy on the offensive. 

It’s been nearly 100 years since Congress authorized the City of San Francisco to build the O’Shaughnessy Dam in Yosemite National Park. This is the dam that turned Hetch Hetchy Valley into Hetch Hetchy reservoir, providing water and electricity to San Francisco and surrounding cities. John Muir and a emerging Sierra Club fought against this project proposal for nearly 12 years before Congress passed the Raker Act in 1913, giving San Francisco the authority to build the dam, power generators, and delivery system to the Bay Area.

It’s been a busy season for immigration issues. In June, President Obama announced that he would halt the deportations of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors. A week and a half later, the Supreme Court struck down most of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070.