Free Republic

Kevin McGrath, who currently sits on the Troy City Council, testified yesterday at the upstate New York voter fraud trial, that he was concerned about running for public office because of his history of substance abuse, and 'the fact that he is a convicted felon'. These days it seems, McGrath is far less concerned about public perception, at one point cracking a joke about his lack of drug-peddling business savvy - a comment that forced him to apologize to the judge. During his testimony, McGrath stated that he was not convicted of distributing 220 lbs. of pot, but rather, he...

Kevin McGrath, who currently sits on the Troy City Council, testified yesterday at the upstate New York voter fraud trial, that he was concerned about running for public office because of his history of substance abuse, and 'the fact that he is a convicted felon'. These days it seems, McGrath is far less concerned about public perception, at one point cracking a joke about his lack of drug-peddling business savvy - a comment that forced him to apologize to the judge. During his testimony, McGrath stated that he was not convicted of distributing 220 lbs. of pot, but rather, he...

Investigators say a New York City teacher had her students make Christmas cards for an incarcerated felon. The special commissioner of investigation for city schools says Queens public school teacher Melissa Dean asked her fifth-graders to make holiday cards for someone who was lonely. The commissioner’s report was issued Wednesday. It says Dean mailed the cards to a friend serving time at the upstate Groveland Correctional Facility for weapons charges and violating an order of protection. Some of the cards included students’ names and addresses. The package of cards was intercepted by prison officials, who called the school principal. That...

Is it time for Newt Gingrich to drop out? In an editorial published yesterday, National Review, the leading organ of the conservative movement, said the time has come for the former House speaker to leave the GOP presidential race. This editorial is a gut punch to an already staggering campaign. In the three weeks since the South Carolina primary, Gingrich’s stock has plummeted. Coming out of the Palmetto State, he “sounded really bad” in the two debates that preceded Florida, according to GOP analyst and Daily Beast contributor Rich Galen. The veteran pol may have been “sick, tired, or [just]...

During a "Morning Joe" discussion on how "the media is far ahead of the rest of America on gay marriage," MSNBC commentator Donny Deutsch said "the country is not caught up to New York and L.A." "There are other social issues about women, such as women in the workplace, and to your point, and I agree, the country is not caught up to New York and L.A.," Deutsch said on Wednesday morning.

On Monday, Israeli embassy workers in the capital cities of India and Georgia were targeted in terrorist attacks that Israeli officials believe were planned and carried out by Iran and its client, the militant group Hezbollah. The bomb in Tbilisi was defused, but the bomb in New Delhi, planted in an embassy worker's car, exploded and injured at least two. Iran's next target could well be on American soil. In Senate testimony last month, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated that Iranian officials "are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real...

The trouble with situational ethics is that it leaves you with no morals and without morals it is difficult to be morally superior to anyone. This reduces liberals to whining about hypocrisy all the time by holding the other guy to his high standards and being smug about it. The irony is that in order to apply those higher standards liberals must admit that those higher standards are meaningful. If indeed adultery were nothing, they would not mention a 40-year-old affair by Henry Hyde. But cries of hypocrisy are all that is left to them. They sound a lot like...

n his New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer revealed how members of Congress enrich themselves and their relatives using earmarks and insider information. Now, the Washington Post, following in Schweizer’s footsteps, has conducted a study that found 16 members of Congress have used their power of the purse to benefit companies, colleges, and community groups tied to their relatives. *snip* Among those cited in the Washington Post report were the following (below):

The Detroit Tigers were a few wins short of going to the World Series last year. Team ownership signed All Star first baseman Prince Fielder to a 9-year, $214 million deal in the hopes that he will help push the team over the top as well as continue strong attendance at Comerica Park. Since the club has all that extra revenue available and expect more from higher attendance, will they consider repaying Michigan taxpayers for the hundreds of millions of dollars that were used to subsidize the team's stadium? Comerica Park opened in 2000 after three years of construction and...

Although the New York State Senate has passed an amendment that would reverse the New York City Board of Education and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's decision to evict nearly 70 churches from the public school spaces they have been renting, many of them for years, most of these congregations are already packed up and prepared for an exodus as the deadline for departure is this Sunday, Feb. 12. The state Senate overwhelmingly voted Monday 52-7 in favor of Bill A8800A/S.6087A but the NY State Assembly also has to approve its own version of the bill to successfully block the City and...

Reid’s floor maneuvers leave some Senate Democrats frustratedBy Alexander Bolton - 02/07/12 05:15 AM ET Some Democrats are grumbling over how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has run the floor this year. The frustration is felt mostly among junior lawmakers, who want more of a role in decision-making and have yet to resign themselves to the traditional pace of the Senate, where seniority rules and lawmakers often have to wait years to have significant influence. They say Reid’s style leaves them feeling out of the loop. Colleagues have second-guessed Reid’s decision to greenlight a deal with Republicans on the...

The entire New York State Inspector General's Office has now been granted the authority to snoop into the tax returns of not only the state employee workforce, but anyone they deem to be relevant to an investigation. This level of investigative power is unprecedented, and is something even the State Attorney General has not been granted. Let me reiterate... The entire staff of the IG's Office can now look into your taxes in New York State. If you're a state employee, look around your office right now. Now imagine, there are similar levels of riffraff in the IG office that...

She always called him “Mr. President” — not Jack. He refused to kiss her on the lips when they made love. But Mimi Alford, a White House intern from New Jersey, was smitten nonetheless. She was in the midst of an 18-month affair with the most powerful man in the world, sharing not only John F. Kennedy’s bed but also some of his darkest and most intimate moments. In her explosive new tell-all, “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath,” Alford, now a 69-year-old grandmother and retired New York City church administrator, sets...

Below is a link for the anti-gun Superbowl ad.... .....despicable.

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman sued three of the nation's largest banks over a private national mortgage registry system, contending it has resulted in a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings. The lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, names units of Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo Corp. as defendants, as well as MERSCorp., which owns and operates the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, known as MERS. In his complaint, Mr. Schneiderman alleges that MERS has effectively eliminated the public's ability to track property transfers because those...

What's the best way to make sure a family member in the Armed Services gets his/her vote counted? My son is at Air Force basic training right now and will be out of his "home" state right through July/August.

Is it possible that evidence against Democrats in Troy, New York,has finally hit rock bottom? When they weren't paying off college kids with their vote, they were apparently tricking mentally impaired voters into signing absentee ballots, telling them "the city made it easier to vote this year." A witness who testified in the upstate New York ballot fraud case explained that she would frequently visit two brothers, both of whom had 'mental disabilities'. Three men allegedly paid a visit to the family home of Michele Ziglitt one day. Two of the men were identified as Gary Galuski, and Anthony DeFiglio....

I am totally in touch with Newt's call for PEOPLE POWER, since as an American Citizen and resident of liberal New York State, I feel helpless. NY State needs many reforms, but our representatives fail to deliver. For example, NY needs to be a Right to Work State and it needs to get rid of the Tri-borough Amendment which guarantees Teachers and Municipal Union employees the present day contract remains in effect until a new contract is agreed to (causes ever-escalating union contracts). These 2 union perks in NY State have caused NY State to be last or close to...

Did the New York Times learn nothing about rushing to judgement and presumption of innocence from its Duke lacrosse “rape” hoax debacle? More than any other media outlet, in 2006 the Times trumpeted black stripper's Crystal Mangum's rape accusations against three white Duke lacrosse players, accusations that quickly fell apart in a mass of contradictions and shifting stories. Yet even as the case fell apart and other liberal media outlets backed away, the Times issued a now-notorious, error-riddled 5,000-word lead story by Duff Wilson, concluding that there was enough evidence against the players for Michael Nifong, the soon-to-be-disgraced-and-jailed local prosecutor,...

In a court decision from 1990 called Employment Division v. Smith, the Court allowed the government greater latitude to restrict the free exercise of religion. The Court held in Smith that if a law was neutral as to religion and if it was generally applicable to all people, then the government was allowed to burden the free exercise of religion. The Smith case marked a drastic departure from the Supreme Court’s earlier precedents which uniformly held that any law, even if that law was neutral and generally applicable, could not burden the free exercise of religion unless the law was...

BROOKLYN— A revised New York State Senate map released yesterday would, if approved, put the Orthodox and Chassidic neighborhoods of Boro Park and Flatbush into a single exclusive district, guaranteeing to shake up the political landscape. (Snip) The proposed district is the second most conservative in the state. During the 2008 presidential campaign, for example, Republican John McCain won 60 percent of its vote.

Exiting Occupy homeBy CANDICE M. GIOVE and KENNETH GARGER Last Updated: 7:23 AM, January 29, 2012 Don’t let the door hit you in the collective butt on the way out. Occupy Wall Street squatters have finally begun moving out of an East New York home after their bungled takeover of the vacant property became a major embarrassment for the movement. “I told them that if I see anybody there, I’m going to call the cops,” said the home’s rightful owner, Wise Ahadzi, 27, a struggling single father of two. The occupiers assured him Friday that most of the group had...

A down-on-his-luck soap-opera actor took his own life this week after he was forced to put his beloved dog to sleep under pressure from his New York City condo, friends said. Nick Santino euthanized his dog, Rocco, on Tuesday, on Santino's 47th birthday. That night, his guilt over the gut-wrenching decision became too much to bear. "Today [Tuesday], I betrayed my best friend and put down my best friend," he wrote in a suicide note, according to close friend Stuart Sarnoff. "Rocco trusted me, and I failed him. He didn't deserve this." Santino -- a struggling actor whose TV credits...

CLIFTON PARK - The year 2012 starts with a renewed firestorm over an old controversy -- sex education -- at Shenendehowa schools. The district pulled Planned Parenthood experts from its health curriculum after 20 years. But the group of parents that wanted Planned Parenthood out is now asking the district to go a step further by implementing Sexual Risk Avoidance Education. This type of program, advocates say, would include state-mandated information on AIDS, sexually transmitted infections and contraception, while encouraging abstinence.

After some confusion, it’s finally been decided when Republican and Democratic candidates will be voting for their nominees in 2012. A judge’s ruling set the primary date for June 26th, but only for federal offices: U.S. House and Senate races. There will be pressure for the other 2012 primaries, outside of the April 24th presidential primary, will follow suit. It is still possible for Albany to keep a later primary date for state legislative races, but that would cost money and such a plan could face opposition from a governor that prides himself in fiscal restraint. The issue had been...

Because of a court’s ruling against one particular small church in the Bronx, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has now decreed that come February 12, 2012, all churches and fellowships meeting in public schools – 160 in total - have to be evicted. This terrible decision against religious freedom could impact the souls of thousands of people in New York City. And if this precedent is allowed to stand, the cancer could spread to other cities as well. These churches generally have great relationships with the community. They provide services and revenue for the city. But it seems that is trumped by...

Searching the Internet to further expose the internal threat of Islam, I found another Islamic school which is not happy with Muslims living in the “un-Islamic environment” of America. Other Mosques/schools that have echoed that call are in Philadelphia, and Houston. Ones in Buffalo and NJ have stated they have created their own Islamic environments. Like I have said, Muslims are not in non-Islamic countries to assimilate, they are in them to dominate. Tonight we take a look at Al-Ihsan Academy, which is located at 130-08 Rockaway Blvd South Ozone Park NY. History Founded in 1989 by immigrant Muslims who...

U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a Hurley Democrat who has served in the House since 1993, will not seek re-election this fall, his office announced on Wednesday. On the eve of his retirement press conference, Hinchey's wife was charged with her second DWI in just eight months in Albany.... She was charged with driving while intoxicated, driving while using a mobile phone, aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle and following too closely.... Mrs. Hinchey, a lobbyist for DKC, was arrested for drunken driving last May in the Ulster County town of Hurley, where she and her husband live, and ultimately...

Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes , paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and "frisk" people at distance. The way terahertz waves are absorbed and emitted can also be used to determine the chemical composition of a material. And even though they don't travel far inside the body, there is great hope that the waves can be used to spot tumours near the surface...

Now this is a real stickup! The owner of a discount store in Brooklyn says the city is holding him up for $30,000 in fines he can’t afford — all because he stocked six toy sheriff sets that included plastic guns. And now the .44-caliber fines for the orange-tipped, obvious fakes are forcing him to close for good. “It doesn’t make any sense,” said Khaled Mohamed, 23, manager of 99¢ Target in Flatlands, which has been ordered to pay a staggering $5,000 fine for each gun offered for sale — the maximum under the law. The rule is designed to...

They’re occupying his home. Occupy Wall Street protesters announced with great fanfare last month that they moved a homeless family into a “foreclosed” Brooklyn, N.Y., home — even though they knew the house belonged to a struggling single father desperately trying to renegotiate his mortgage, The Post has learned. “They’re trying to take a house and say the bank is robbing the people because the mortgage is too high — so contact the owner!” fumed Wise Ahadzi, 28, who owns the home at 702 Vermont St. in East New York. Occupiers “reclaimed” the row house on Dec. 6 and ceremoniously...

If elected in November, Love would be the first black Republican woman in Congress and Utah's first black representative. She said she would join the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C., should she win. "Yes, yes. I would join the Congressional Black Caucus and try to take that thing apart from the inside out," she said.

Many States are scrambling to build new casinos. They mistakenly believe that this is a surefire prescription for more tax revenue and jobs. They’ve bought into the false Las Vegas Myth–that if you build it and it has a blackjack table, a roulette wheel and a craps table–they will come. However, Vegas is looking more and more like Detroit, yet another failed US city. Do politicians believe that encouraging and subsidizing these parasitic industries is going to build wealth? As libertarians we are not against citizens starting and running gambling enterprises. They’ve been doing it since the before the Babylonians...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Sir, I would ask that you would reconsider your decision to evict the houses of worship from public schools in New York City. Do you have any idea of what is going on in your city – let alone the rest of the country? This is not the time to be evicting churches, the lifeline of worship and hope, from the people of your community. Are you deliberately trying to sabotage your own community and increase the crime? Why would you take away something positive, that brings money into your system, when you have nothing to replace...

The New York City Housing Authority has extended the lease of a Bronx church that uses one of its facilities after the congregation accused authorities of trying to evict them in the context of an alleged clampdown on worship groups in government buildings. Infinity NY Church, a nondenominational ministry led by Pastor Dimas Salaberrios, has been fighting to keep its space at the Bronx River Community Center after it received a notification from NYCHA that its lease was going to expire, and that the church would need to move by February. A number of congregants staged a protest in front...

Federal law authorises state and local governments to divest from companies whose interests in Iran's energy sector directly or indirectly support its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The New York state legislature has passed a bill prohibiting companies doing business with Iran's energy industry from entering into contracts with the state. The bill called the 'Iran Divestment Act' was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos. It would prohibit companies that provide goods, services or credit worth USD 20 million or more to Iran's energy industry from entering into or renewing state and local government contracts. "The Senate's swift action shows...

The inimitable, quintessentially monikered CHARLES M. BLOW That didn't take long. As we’ve gotten around to casting votes to select a Republican presidential nominee, the antiblack rhetoric has taken center stage. You just have to love (and despise) this kind of predictability. On Sunday, Rick “The Rooster” Santorum, campaigning in Iowa, said what sounded like “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” At first, he offered a nondenial that suggested that the comment might have been out...

So, Jennifer Epstein wites a breathless puff piece about a breathless puff piece written by Jodi Kanter about the magnificent Michelle and the God like Obamas. New York Times "reporter" gets 7 figure advance to write this drivel, after one interview with the Obamas, to come out just in time for the election season.

*snip* “She feels as if our rudder isn’t set right,” Mr. Obama confided, according to aides. Rahm Emanuel, then chief of staff, repeated the first lady’s criticisms to colleagues with indignation, according to three of them. Mr. Emanuel, in a brief interview, denied that he had grown frustrated with Mrs. Obama, but other advisers described a grim situation: a president whose agenda had hit the rocks, a first lady who disapproved of the turn the White House had taken, and a chief of staff who chafed against her influence.

Michelle Obama was privately fuming, not only at the president’s team, but also at her husband. In the days after the Democrats lost Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat in January 2010, Barack Obama was even-keeled as usual in meetings, refusing to dwell on the failure or lash out at his staff. The first lady, however, could not fathom how the White House had allowed the crucial seat, needed to help pass the president’s health care legislation and the rest of his agenda, to slip away, several current and former aides said.

The Crazy Department-Wide Emails That Everyone at NYU Is Talking About At around 3:17 on Wednesday morning, every student in NYU's Department of Social and Cultural Analysis received a bizarre "open letter" to NYU President John Sexton, from a student who claimed she'd been "forced" to do an ethnographic assignment on Occupy Wall Street. It was 2,800 words long, oddly typeset, and quickly followed up by another five equally eccentric emails. Someone sent us the full set of emails, which everyone at NYU—and elsewhere—was talking about. Want to read them?

New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, in a book to be published Tuesday, portrays a White House where tensions developed between Mrs. Obama and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and former press secretary and presidential adviser Robert Gibbs. Among the book's most provocative anecdotes, Kantor recounts a scene in which Gibbs, frustrated after tamping down a potential public relations crisis involving the first lady, exploded when presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett told him the first lady had concerns about the White House response to the flap. The initial commotion had been over an alleged remark by Michelle Obama...

The First Lady reportedly believed that Mr Emmanuel's willingness to cut backroom deals during the battle over health care reform was tainting Barack Obama's image as a new kind of American leader. The Obamas paints a picture of a presidential inner circle divided between Mrs Obama's idealistic belief in what the administration could achieve and the grittier pragmatism of Mr Emmanuel. The book, written by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, claims that the chief of staff refused to allow the president's wife into high-level morning meetings, leading a brooding Mrs Obama to berate other senior advisers by email. She...

NEW YORK, New York, January 5, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – With the highest abortion rate in the nation, nearly double the 23% national average, New York continues to be a place that babies in the womb cannot love. New York City Department of Health released data that shows that 83,750 abortions were performed in New York City in 2010, which translated to 40% of all pregnancies, down from 41% in 2009. The Bronx saw a staggering 48% of pregnancies end in abortion. The city lost 38,574 African-Americans babies to abortion, a dumbfounding 60% of the city’s African-American pregnancies. New York has...

Officials with the revamped ACORN office in New York -- operating as New York Communities for Change -- have fired staff, shredded reams of documents and told workers to blame disgruntled ex-employees for leaking information in an effort to explain away a FoxNews.com report last week on the group’s involvement in Occupy Wall Street protests, according to sources. NYCC also is installing surveillance cameras and recording devices at its Brooklyn offices, removing or packing away supplies bearing the name ACORN and handing out photos of Fox News staff with a stern warning not to talk to the media, the sources...

I don't think there are any real articles written about this yet. Seems to have occurred about 11 months ago and is just coming to light. The action occurs at exactly the 1 minute mark.As many of you know, I'm a cop. I complain about the anti-cop posts and posters, but I also have the responsibility to bring things like this to light. If this went down, this guy needs to be fired and sent to prison. I have also heard that one of the cops is the son-in-law of the new Mayor.

In this Pop Culture update we've got two Presidents partying. An actual video of Dubya, drunk and the Bill Clinton bday party which never ends. Naomi Campbell in trouble again, Madonna adopts a child, Ellen Barken cries a river, and McCartney's divorce papers. You will never believe this guy's resume. How Canada Dry got its name, blind items and media nuggets.

What happens when mogul and a movie star get married? Contracts get signed, and the drama begins . . Ronald Perelman was born on New Year’s Day, 1943, and celebrates the occasion in extreme style. His annual New Year’s Eve–birthday party in St. Barts is one of the world’s most exclusive social events. The billionaire takeover artist hosts the gathering on Ultima III, his multi-million-dollar, 188-foot yacht, which he keeps docked in Gustavia harbor. In past years, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Jerry Bruckheimer have attended the event, and for Perelman’s 60th, Barry Manilow sang “Happy Birthday.” This year,...

Hollywood, CA (LifeNews.com) -- Actress Ellen Barkin, who stars in the film "Palindromes," startled those attending the Venice Film Festival this week by saying she would force her daughter to have an abortion. "I am the mother of a 12 year old. If she was pregnant, I would take her kicking and screaming to have an abortion," Barkin said at a press conference Tuesday to publicize her new movie. In the film, Barkin, who starred in "The Big Easy" and won an Emmy in 1997 for her role in "Before Women Had Wings," plays the mother of a teenager girl...

Ellen Barkin lashes out at Fox News in a recent interview, accusing the network of "blatant lying." The outspoken Barkin has a reputation for candor, whether in person or on her Twitter account, and her take on the News Corp. entity is no exception. She tells the Los Angeles Times magazine, "Well, we’re experiencing divisiveness in terms of our politics. Like, the Religious Right has identified themselves because of the propagandizing and illiteracy of...I don’t know...News Corp, maybe? "They have identified themselves with this extremist, right-wing insurgency of a party—this Tea Party. They call it a grassroots movement. Grassroots? You’re...