Free Republic

New Jersey Turnpike Authority officials approved a $10 million agreement to rebuild two Garden State Parkway service areas, including one that has been criticized by Bloomfield officials for including a Chick-fil-A restaurant. The agreement, approved by a unanimous vote by the board of commissioners Tuesday, would reimburse Applegreen Ltd. and Sunoco for $10 million the companies would spend to build new facilities at the Vauxhall service area on the Parkway north in Union and at the Brookdale Service area on the Parkway south in Bloomfield. The Turnpike authority runs the Garden State Parkway. A Shake Shack, Popeyes, Dunkin’, and a...

A Newark Police Officer struck and killed a nurse with his car and then drove the body to his mother’s house seeking advice before returning to the scene with the body, officials said on Wednesday. Louis Santiago, 25, of Bloomfield was arrested and charged with reckless vehicular homicide, desecrating human remains and other charges after he hit and killed 29-year-old nurse Damian Dymka, of Garfield, on the Garden State Parkway, according to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.

Rain or shine, cold or warm, false information or not, the Columbus Day parade will take place Saturday morning in Bloomfield. The event was never in question. But there was certainly some confusion. That’s because someone went around Bloomfield’s business district this week passing out flyers falsely claiming that the parade had been canceled. The flyer, which included an official Pittsburgh Columbus Day parade logo, said “it has been brought to our attention that this is an offensive holiday. “Columbus’ arrival to America caused the mass murder of Native American people,” the letter read. “There are plenty of other ways...

Halal slaughter in a public parking lot, while a kid witnesses a cow getting its throat cut – something that non-Muslims apparently need to get used to, judging by the account “Suddenly, Musaed whipped out a foot-long knife and slit the cow’s throat as other Saba employees wrangled the animal. The officer was stunned over the disturbing act. “You know this is a big — this is a problem. This is not something that can be done,” the cop said. How many years will that kid have nightmares? Respect it! The gory scene prompted the closure of the Saba meat...

On June 10, 2007, less than five minutes remained in the final episode of “The Sopranos.” After eight years with Tony Soprano, his family and the Family, viewers of the landmark series sat keenly alert to the final action as Tony waited for his family at Holsten’s in Bloomfield: The bell that sounds each time someone walks through the door. Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” playing on the jukebox. The onion rings that Tony, Carmela and A.J. pop in their mouths as Meadow attempts her maddening parallel parking job outside. Then, nothing. Cut to black. Those final seconds hit Tony’s native...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with a lower court that ordered a New Mexico city to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lawn outside City Hall. Civil liberties advocates behind the case called the decision involving the city of Bloomfield a victory for the separation of church and state. ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson said it sends a “strong message that the government should not be in the business of picking and choosing which sets of religious beliefs enjoy special favor in the community.” However, David Cortman, a senior counsel and vice president of...

<p>Six people were shot by gunmen at a New Jersey restaurant this weekend that "riddled" the place with bullets, police say.</p>

BLOOMFIELD, NJ (WABC) -- The tale of the police dashcam video has now helped clear a Bloomfield, New Jersey man who faced a multitude of criminal charges, including eluding police and assault. Investigative Reporter Sarah Wallace obtained the dashcam tapes, and has spoken exclusively with the 30-year old DJ who was looking at years in prison. It was quite a turnabout, all the criminal charges against Marcus Jeter have been dismissed, and two Bloomfield police officers have been indicted for falsifying reports, and one of them, for assault. A third pleaded guilty early on to tampering. It's all thanks to...

Liberal, aloof, and ugly no way to go through life son Left-wing moonbat Henry Waxman is one of just two surviving members of the large Democratic freshman class of 1975... unfortunately, he has come to be one of the most influential members of the US House of Representatives....Serving an out-there liberal Beverly Hills-West LA-Malibu-Santa Monica-SF Valley-South Bay district in various forms over the years, he never won re-election with less than 61% of the vote. Waxman has been re-elected 16 times, never facing substantive opposition. He faced no major-party opposition in 1986, and even ran completely unopposed in 2008.  Waxman's beloved pup...

It’s been a bit of a puzzle as to why the owners of Zuccotti Park that the Occupy Wall Street gang has taken over have allowed them to stay. They’re angering residents and pretty much stinking up the place. The owners have mentioned that the park is normally cleaned every night, but they have not been able to clean it in three weeks. Sanitation was “becoming an issue” a few days ago. Lord knows what it’s like now, I hear it’s pretty bad. Could the fact that the parent company of Brookfield Properties received a “green energy” loan guarantee from...

BLOOMFIELD - A generation ago, Bloomfield was heralded as the all-American community. Blacks and whites lived side by side, chasing the American dream of middle-class stability without regard to skin color. There were trimmed lawns and good schools. Now, Bloomfield operates one of the most racially segregated school systems in the state. Minority students, mainly black children, account for 95 percent of public school enrollment. And when results were released recently on the state's annual 10th-grade achievement test, this quiet, middle-class suburb found itself confronting a question more often associated with the nation's poorest urban school systems:

BLOOMFIELD, N.J. -- When it comes to filming the final scene of the acclaimed mob drama "The Sopranos,'' this North Jersey town has told HBO to fuhgeddaboudit. The town this week denied the show's producers a permit to shoot here because the mayor and council members say the show depicts Italian-Americans in a poor light. The owners of an old-fashioned ice cream parlor selected for the scene said the personal opinions of Bloomfield Mayor Raymond McCarthy and the council shouldn't stand in the way. "He should do what's good for the town and not let his personal feelings dictate his...

Romanticized and persecuted, celebrated and shunned, Gypsies have become a growing presence in the world music circuit since the fall of Communism -- yet the everyday prejudice they face across Europe has persisted, and sometimes worsened. Even the word "Gypsy" is a misunderstanding, based on the notion that they are descended from Egyptians, though their ancestors actually migrated in the 11th century from Rajasthan in northwestern India. In recent years, the name they call themselves in the Romani language, Roma, has been increasingly embraced. By the 15th century, there were Roma communities in Eastern Europe, as well as the Iberian...

OPERATION HERO ALERT: Funeral Services for Army Major Gerald M. Bloomfield, IICounter-Protest of WBCFriday, 11/11/2005*Stemm-Lawson-Peterson Funeral Home - Elkhart, IN OPERATION HERO is spreading word of a planned picket by Westboro Baptist Church during the visitation for Army Major Gerald M. Bloomfield II. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church will be picketing during the visitation for Major Bloomfield on Friday, November 11 in Elkhart, IN. This anti-Troops/anti-war "liberal" hate group will be protesting at 12:45pm - 1:30 pm* outside the Stemm-Lawson-Peterson Funeral Home, located at 1531 Cobblestone Blvd. *Please note there are conflicting times posted at the WBC website....

The U.S. military will stop using always-armed, live landmines after 2010 under a new government policy announced by senior officials at a State Department news briefing today. The United States will become "the first major military power to adopt a policy ending use of all persistent landmines and maintaining the international standard of detect ability for landmines of any kind," said Lincoln Bloomfield, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. American military de-miners, as well as those from other nations, Bloomfield said, already are involved in marking, monitoring and clearing live minefields left at the end of hostilities in at...