Free Republic

The capital of New York State has joined other cities in restricting the ability for gun owners to store them in their own home. A law has come into effect passed by the City Council requiring all guns to be locked in safes or using a gun lock at home. The police is handing out free locks, but stiff penalties are planned for anyone that does not comply. The Albany Times Union reported on the new law. First offenses will be violations carrying a fine of $250 or up to 15 days in jail so long as no one is...

I’ve written glowingly in the past about the altar servers at my parish--and even posted some advice from an expert about how to launch a thriving program--but I’m pleased to see some attention being given to our neighbors upstate, who are having similar success.From The Evangelist in Albany: Immaculate Conception parish in Glenville is bursting at the seams with altar servers.While some parishes struggle to get girls and boys to volunteer as altar servers, Immaculate Conception currently has more than 50 young people trained to assist Rev. Jerome Gingras, pastor, at Masses.Ministry coordinator Tom Bigos told The Evangelist that...

Sheldon Silver has gone from one of Albany's famed "three men in a room" to one of 198,000 people in federal lockup. A jury found the 71-year-old former Assembly Speaker guilty on all seven corruption charges Tuesday, sending a powerful message to politicians in New York's capital. Judge Valerie Caproni will set the date of his surrender. He faces a maximum of 130 years behind bars, though he is expected to face a sentence more in the range of 20 years. The verdict is a major victory for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who slammed Albany as "a cauldron of...

Small businesses are already struggling to survive the spate of minimum wage increases to $15 per hour in parts of California. Last month, the small Bay Area town of Emeryville, California, (population 10,000) decided to act as flag-bearer for raising the minimum wage in California, hiking its minimum wage to $14.44 per hour. Even though businesses with less than 56 workers are exempt from the $14.44 rate and do not have to raise their wages to $15 until 2018, Vic Gumper, who owns Lanesplitter Pizza, with outlets in Berkeley, Oakland, Albany and Emeryville, decided not only to bite the bullet...

Has Bill de Blasio gone bonkers? The mayor chose to give voice to the rage he and his people have felt over the past month because they think Gov. Cuomo’s budget and policy negotiations with the state Legislature were designed to disempower de Blasio. Which is certainly true. De Blasio wanted to be given control over the city’s schools for the balance of his term; he got it for only a year. He didn’t want new charter schools; he got 25 more shoved down his throat.

Mayor de Blasio lit Gov. Cuomo up Tuesday with a double-barreled blast of political payback. In stunningly frank language, the mayor accused the governor of deliberately thwarting his Albany agenda out of political pique and revenge — and hurting New Yorkers in the process. Hours before leaving on a vacation out West, de Blasio called reporters into his office and spoke calmly in a calculated decision to take off the gloves and reveal the “frenemies” were really enemies.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, unleashing months of frustration on Tuesday, said Gov. Andrew Cuomo undermined his Albany agenda and wasn’t focused on New York City residents but instead cared about “deal making” and “revenge.” Mr. de Blasio said he expected more retribution from the governor, a fellow Democrat, for expressing his views Tuesday afternoon, but he said he was prepared to handle it. Mr. de Blasio also said the governor had been disappointing since the mayor endorsed him last year for re-election. ... Melissa DeRosa, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Mr. Cuomo wished the mayor well on his coming...

Who's afraid of Mayor Bill de Blasio in Albany? Not state Senate Republicans, who denied his request for permanent mayoral control of New York City schools, granting him one year instead. Not Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who didn't deny he and his team were the unnamed officials in news reports who belittled the mayor as "incompetent" and clueless on influencing the legislative process. Not advocates for charter schools, who won a lifting of a cap for new schools over de Blasio's opposition in the three-way agreement last week among Cuomo, state Senate Republicans and the Democrat-led state Assembly. "There isn't...

this is bouncing around facebook today. confirmed as real by the gm @ cbs 6 news in albany. they will have a story about it tonight this seems to be more of the same as ferguson and baltimore. agitators paid $5k+/mon to spread civil unrest like the compton riots in the summer of '68 the part that jumped out for me was: 'if our FUNDING goes well' spread the word to police, fire, and any other govt workers in uniform. stay vigilant, even at home (more so then normal).

A Berkeley, California man died last December after paramedics were delayed nearly an hour because of an unruly protest against police brutality, recently released records show. Berkleyside, a self-described “independent news site” serving the Berkeley area, reports that the 62-year-old Alvin Henry Jones Jr. would have normally received treatment in minutes. However, due to a nearby #BlackLivesMatters protest, paramedics were instead ordered to go to a local fire station and await a police escort before attempting to rescue Jones. It took 52 minutes to get Jones to a hospital, after which he died two days later. Paperwork filed by the...

The contest to succeed longtime New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was supposed to be an open process, giving lawmakers two weeks to mull their options. Instead, it's looking increasingly likely that the decision will be made before Silver’s resignation from the post takes effect Monday night, an outcome that would dash the hopes of some lawmakers and reformers who pushed for a departure from Albany’s usual backroom politics.Assemblyman Carl Heastie of the Bronx has emerged as the clear favorite from a field that just a few days ago featured five contenders. Three of them quickly backed out and threw...

I will apologize in advance to our readers if this looks like coverage of a “local story” but it actually may be a harbinger for the kind of state and local level change which is required for real progress in America. The New York Times is reporting that today an arrest will be made in Albany, the state’s capital. The suspect is question is none other than the Speaker of the state Assembly, Sheldon Silver. Federal authorities are expected to arrest Sheldon Silver, the powerful speaker of the New York State Assembly, on corruption charges on Thursday, people with...

Federal authorities are expected to arrest Sheldon Silver, the powerful speaker of the New York State Assembly, on corruption charges on Thursday, people with knowledge of the matter said, in a case that is likely to throw Albany into disarray. The investigation that led to the expected charges against Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who has served as speaker for more than two decades, began after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in March abruptly shut down an anticorruption commission he had created in 2013. Details of the specific charges to be brought against Mr. Silver...

Feds subpoenaed Manhattan Democrat Silver's records in a probe of undocumented payments he received from a law firm. He is reportedly to be charged via an investigation sparked when Gov. Cuomo abruptly shut down his 2013 anticorruption commission.....Silver's arrest was related to money he received from a small real-estate tax law firm that Silver failed to list on his official financial-disclosure form. The FBI and Manhattan US Atty's office are looking into exactly what Silver did to earn the money. Silver is a personal-injury lawyer associated with the high-profile law firm Weitz and Luxenberg. Goldberg & Iryami, w/ only two...

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was taken into custody Thursday in Manhattan on corruption charges, The Daily News has learned. The impending arrest of Silver, who has been one of the most powerful men in Albany for more than two decades, was first reported overnight by The New York Times. While it’s unclear exactly what charges Silver could be facing, The Times reported the rap is linked to payments the powerful Manhattan Democrat received from New York City lawfrim Goldberg & Iryami that he did not disclose publicly, as required by law.

Syracuse’s Nation of Islam representative Mark Muhammad will join the city’s school board at the mayor’s request ... Muhammad’s ties to the Nation of Islam – he’s Louis Farrakhan’s local representative – that have some questioning how the group’s radical views on education and race will play into his new role. And it doesn’t appear that they will get any easy answers. A Post-Standard reporter questioned Muhammad about his affiliation with the Nation of Islam, and how the group’s beliefs, such as the needed segregation of black and white students, will guide his leadership. ... he doesn’t want the public...

New York’s top court handed a victory to opponents of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas Monday by affirming the right of municipalities to ban the practice within their borders. The state Court of Appeals affirmed a midlevel appeals court ruling from last year that said the state oil and gas law doesn’t trump the authority of local governments to control land use through zoning. […] The court in a 5-2 decision stressed that it did not consider the merits of fracking, but only the “home rule” authority of municipalities to regulate their land use. The court said the towns of...

Bishop Edward Scharfenberger leads Albany's Walk for Life. (Photo creidt: Michael Schweigert / Citizens Concerned for Human Life) ALBANY, NY – Albany’s new bishop led about 1,000 pro-life activists in a Walk for Life around New York’s state capitol building June 17. Catholics from the diocese, which had been directed for nearly four decades by a bishop known for his progressivism, see the new bishop as a “springboard of new energy” for the pro-life movement in the city. “It's just wonderful to have someone in our corner who is committed to the cause." Organized by local Catholics Jason and...

ALBANY, New York — The cathedral filled with applause as New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan placed the bishop's miter on the head of the Rev. Monsignor Edward Scharfenberger, ordained Thursday as the 10th bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Albany.Hundreds of white-robed priests and 34 bishops from across New York and New England participated in the Ordination Mass at the red-stone neo-Gothic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception near Albany's capitol complex.Scharfenberger, 65, of New York City, was appointed by Pope Francis to succeed Bishop Howard Hubbard, who was the longest-tenured bishop of a single diocese in the nation when...

When Andrew Cuomo was running for governor in 2010, he claimed time and again that he wanted to represent and fight for all the people of New York – all, that is, except Catholics.Since taking office in 2011, Cuomo, who was baptized a Catholic, graduated from Archbishop Molloy H.S. in Queens County and Fordham University, has been hell-bent on offending Catholics and dismissing their beliefs in the public square.Cuomo’s first assault was on Catholic teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman. He was embarrassed that his state had been “surpassed by many other countries which have legalized...