Free Republic

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams on Friday named his younger brother as a deputy NYPD commissioner, police sources said — a move that immediately raised conflict-of-interest questions. Bernard Adams was assigned to the office of new Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, sources said. The post — which comes with a yearly salary of around $240,000, according to SeeThroughNY.net — is believed to be temporary. Sources expect Bernard Adams to be transferred elsewhere once other high-level personnel moves are finalized.... ...The appointment by Adams, who won office on a tough-on-crime platform, raised eyebrows among government watchdogs....

Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann – a member of Pfizer Inc.’s Board of Directors – previously served as the Lead Independent Director at social media giant Facebook. The site has routinely censored posts relating to COVID-19 vaccines, with Pfizer in particular eliciting support from major corporate outlets. Hellman was appointed to the social media platform’s board in March 2013 and served as it Lead Independent Director from June 2015 until October 30th 2019, shortly before the first reported case of COVID-19. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, said “Sue has been a wonderful and thoughtful voice on the board for six years,...

(IsraelNN.com) According to a report on Middle East Newsline, President-elect Barack Obama has dispatched his "senior foreign policy adviser", Robert Malley to Egypt and Syria to outline Obama's policy on the Middle East. Malley reportedly relayed a promise from Obama that the United States would seek to enhance relations with Cairo and reconcile differences with Damascus. "The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests," an aide to Malley was quoted as saying. The aide said Obama plans to launch a U.S. diplomatic initiative toward Syria. Malley met both Egyptian...

LANSING, Mich. - After his preacher problems, Barack Obama doesn't need another association with a charismatic, radioactive public figure. Still, Kwame Kilpatrick, the tarnished mayor of Detroit, is a hard man to avoid completely. That places the Democratic presidential candidate in a bit of a dilemma when he campaigns in Michigan this week and later in the race. Obama meets voters Monday in Troy, a Detroit suburb, just when his party needs to ease wounds from its internal fight over the renegade Michigan primary. The party's rules committee decided Saturday to seat the state's delegates at the convention but hold...

Politics: It's good to see Democrats put country above politics, as many did in repudiating Hugo Chavez's lunatic attacks on our president. But too many are still in the thug's debt and must dissociate with more than words. That's important because Chavez's crazed speeches this week, declaring President Bush "the devil," leave the scent of political blood in the water for plenty of Democrats. They know their own anti-Bush ravings could come back to haunt them on Nov. 7, given the enormous wave of public revulsion at Chavez's words in the U.S. After all, potential GOP TV ads featuring Democrats'...

In a vote that was scarcely noticed at the time but today is drawing scrutiny from federal investigators, the City Council quietly approved extraordinary retirement benefits for three politically powerful individuals – the presidents of the police union, the firefighters union and the white-collar workers union. All three are current or former city employees and vested in the municipal pension system. Under this highly irregular arrangement, the union chiefs were allowed to add their union salaries to their city salaries in calculating their retirement benefits, thus substantially boosting their taxpayer-financed pensions. This unique perk, extended exclusively to the three incumbent...