Free Republic

Do you support Ron Paul? Three categories: President Congressman Governor

TRENTON, N.J. - The mayor of Passaic City resigned Friday after he pleaded guilty to attempted extortion and admitted he accepted $5,000 in cash to influence government contracts. Samuel Rivera, a former police officer, is the latest of about 130 public officials to be found guilty of corruption in New Jersey since 2002 in a federal probe. "By his own conduct, Mr. Rivera added himself to the growing roster of corrupt public officials in New Jersey," U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said. "The citizens of Passaic deserved better."

FDU Public Mind Poll Finds New Jersey Doesn't Care How Nation Views Us Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - Millennium Radio New Jersey [Fairleigh Dickinson Univ., Madison, NJ] -- 54% of New Jersey voters think the Garden State is a better place to live than other states. 20% say it's worse, and 17% say it's just the same. Jersey voters agree on something else: pollution. A sizable majority--62%--say our state is more polluted than others. Perhaps worse, 42% of people around the country agree, and just 17% around the country say New Jersey has the same amount of pollution or less...

What does it take to change light bulbs on the 75-foot rotunda ceiling of the massive Secaucus rail station? First, crack a hole in the roof big enough to drive a crane through. Then, hoist a crane onto the roof using, well, another crane. Build a ramp, widen a doorway and protect the interior floor with some plywood. Then you can start thinking about unscrewing a light bulb. The $700 million Secaucus Junction station was built with no easy way to change the bulbs that surround the rotunda skylight. And as more and more lights have grown dim over the...

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...

I spent part of the day today with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. He is, of course, a very impressive guy: a physician, a heart and lung transplant surgeon, an upstart politician, a hands-on doctor in places like Sudan and New Orleans, and one of the most powerful people in our government. Despite those obvious accomplishments and Frist's skills as a legislator, I've always felt that he lacks the executive persona necessary to be a strong Presidential candidate. Maybe. But I was impressed by the close-up contact I had today. Frist is deadly serious about the war on terror, the...

Who's laughing now? New Jersey, the state that spawned a thousand wise-guy bumper stickers and became the butt of a million late-night jokes, is actually a nice place to live. The research group Morgan Quitno crunched the numbers this year and yesterday ranked New Jersey the fifth-most-livable state. As for its neighbors? Pennsylvania finished 30th, New York 32d. "The people we talk to say they wouldn't live anywhere else, and I have to go along with that," said Mark Moran, a Bloomfield resident and one of the editors of Weird New Jersey magazine. "Whether it grows on you or people...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - New Jersey announced a new tourism slogan on Thursday in an effort to shrug off the state's grim reputation for traffic jams, mobsters and toxic waste dumps. "New Jersey: Come See for Yourself," was the winning entry in a statewide contest that attracted some 7,800 entries. The public was asked for suggestions after Acting Gov. Richard Codey rejected "New Jersey: We'll Win You Over" -- a slogan devised by an image consultant at the cost of $260,000 -- as too negative. State officials earlier rejected sardonic entries including: "Come Out to New Jersey: It's Not as Bad...

TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey: We're Not So Good With Slogans. The state has jettisoned "Come See For Yourself," its second attempt at a tagline in less than a year. It was the product of a statewide contest set up by then-acting Gov. Richard J. Codey last fall, after he rejected a consultant's offering: "We'll Win You Over." State tourism officials said legal issues led them to scrap the latest slogan, explaining that West Virginia and other states previously used "Come See For Yourself." "We are proceeding without the slogan. We will revisit the next steps at the end of...

I see by the papers, as Mr. Dooley would have said, that Crazy Uncle Junior tried to put Tony Soprano down. The paper was in fact what Jimmy Breslin is pleased to call New York Times Newspaper. Since there apparently are no serious national or world problems about which the wise men and women of the Times could pontificate, they decided to discuss Tony's apparent downfall. Surely, they would not use the space to admit how drastically they have reversed (waffled) their stance of three years ago on the war in Iraq -- just as their predecessors had never admitted...

This weekend ends the longest hiatus in recent memory for a television series as The Sopranos returns for its sixth and final season on HBO. Having watched the series since its inception -- and maintaining my subscription to HBO largely because of it -- the anticipation of the final season and the resolution of its many story lines has created a strong possibility of creating almost impossible expectations for the creators and cast to meet. According to the New York Sun, however, the last twenty shows deliver in every way on the promise built up over the series' first five...

"Oy vey" was too meshuga for the city Transportation Department. The department said Monday it rejected a request from Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz for a sign on the Williamsburg Bridge reading Leaving Brooklyn: Oy Vey! The agency felt the sign, featuring the Yiddish phrase for "oh, woe," would be more distracting than helpful to Manhattan-bound motorists. "Oy vey was originally a Jewish phrase, but everyone knows what it means and it's now a common Brooklyn expression: part of that Brooklyn attitude," said Markowitz, a Brooklyn native. "All I'm trying to do is put a smile on people's faces. I'm...