I have a difficult time imagining the city of San Francisco allowing a Christian school to operate on city land -- especially not one that hews to orthodox Christian teachings. And I certainly cannot imagine the city doing so if the group operating it were one with a long and well-documented history of racist and anti-Semitic teachings coming out of its top leadership.

But that is happening in San Francisco right now. Except the religious school in question is operated by the racist, anti-Semitic Nation of Islam -- and it has been allowed to operate on city land RENT FREE for five years.

The Nation of Islam school in San Francisco's Hunters Point, now at the center of a controversy over whether asbestos-laden dust from a neighboring development is sickening residents, has quite a history - not to mention a curious lease arrangement with the city.

It sits on city land, and the school was supposed to pay rent - but in the five years since it opened, it hasn't been billed a dime.

It's a classic example of how the patronage politics that defined the Willie Brown era at San Francisco City Hall still rattle around to this day.

Read the rest of the story -- it is sickening.

Oh, and by the way -- it appears that the organization's mosque may also have been paid for with city and federal state tax dollars. I wonder if San Francisco would cut such a deal for a Baptist Church in the city's Castro District?

Seems to me that the Nation of Islam has become the officially established religion of San Francisco -- without a word of outcry from the ACLU or others that these mosque-itos have been sucking the taxpayers dry for years.