Free Republic

The Obama’s Star-Studded New York Night Tonight is the Obama campaign’s “New York Night” of star-studded fundraisers, with a much-advertised event at actress Sarah Jessica Parker’s home and a ritzy gala-concert at The Plaza Hotel featuring a performance by Mariah Carey. Both President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will attend. The Parker event, which is co-hosted by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, will raise an estimated $2 million for the Obama Victory Fund from ticket sales — plus millions more from an online grassroots sweepstakes, campaign officials said. The contest was pushed heavily online, through social media and in the...

Watch out, moviegoers -- Nanny York City is taking aim at yet another of life's gluttonous pleasures. On the heels of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's call for a ban on jumbo-sized sodas and other sugary drinks, city officials are now considering restrictions on treats ranging from popcorn to milkshakes. At a meeting Tuesday, members of the New York City Board of Health expressed support for Bloomberg's proposal. They then started brainstorming other ways to cut the fat, according to MyFoxNY.com. Member Bruce Vladeck proposed limiting movie-theater popcorn containers. "The popcorn isn't a whole lot better than the soda," he said. Another...

While life expectancy in many parts of the United States is dropping, it has increased by 10 years in Manhattan since 1987. Researchers largely attribute that rise — the fastest in the nation — to a crackdown by the New York City health department on unhealthy behaviors. Manhattanites can now expect to live to the ripe old age of 82, and the average life expectancy across all five New York City boroughs is 80.6 years. That's three years beyond the national average, and a striking turnaround since the city's low point in 1990, when life expectancy there trailed the U.S....

The San Francisco Examiner calls it a “dirty secret:” Groups of black people targeting Asians for violence, robbery and even murder. “In 85 percent of (300) physical assault crimes, the victims were Asian and the perpetrators were African American,” the newspaper said recently, citing a police study. In Philadelphia, secrets may be even more violent and widespread. Over the last three years, the Philadelphia Daily News found “at least 15 home invasions or other attacks on Asian business owners outside their businesses in Philadelphia, Delaware and Montgomery counties in 2008, followed by another spike of at least 19 actual or...

Both can’t be telling the truth. One is lying. The New York Times says that the national-security leaks that exposed our cyber-war against Iran and how our drone strikes against terrorists operate came from “aides” to the president and “members of the president’s national security team who were in the [White House Situation Room]” during key discussions, as well as current American officials involved with the program who spoke anonymously because “the effort remains highly classified.” The author of one of the Times stories, David Sanger, writes that some of his sources would be fired for divulging classified material to...

The quotation of the week last week had to be that of Harvard professor Daniel E. Lieberman in an opinion piece for the New York Times. Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology, was among those who publicly defended New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to ban the sale of sugared soft drinks in cups larger than 16 ounces. And he did so using, of all things, evolution. Now, we all know that humans have always needed — or evolved to need — carbohydrates for energy. So how could evolution argue for Mayor Bloomberg's ban on sugar, a pure...

A Coney Island [Brooklyn, New York] principal has pulled Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” from a kindergarten “moving up” ceremony, out of concern that Greenwood’s patriotic song was age-inappropriate and potentially offensive. “We don’t want to offend other cultures,” teachers quoted Greta Hawkins, the principal of the Edna Cohen School, as saying to defend her decision to nix “God Bless the USA” from the ceremony, the New York Post reports. Greenwood’s song had been sung at previous school functions, and students in five classes reportedly spent months rehearsing for the moving up ceremony. Department of Education spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti...

Students at New York City’s Stuyvesant High are unhappy with a dress code that bans girls from wearing Daisy Dukes and tank tops to school along with other such inappropriate clothing. To protest the restriction on their supposed right to wear as little as possible to school, the girls held a so-called “Slutty Wednesday” demonstration this week. They complained that Stuyvesant’s dress code is unfair, particularly to well-endowed girls. Lucy Greider, a Stuyvesant freshman, told the New York Post she’s been sent to the principal’s office 10 times this school year for showing off too much cleavage, midriff or shoulder....

SKIERNIEWICE, Poland -- Chinese companies have wowed the world with superhighways, high-speed trains and snazzy airports, all built seemingly overnight. Yet a modest highway through Polish potato fields proved to be too much for one of China's biggest builders. The A2 highway between Warsaw and Berlin was supposed to be an opportunity for Chinese construction to shine on a European stage after years of megaprojects at home and in the developing world. Poland badly wanted the project completed before the European soccer championships starting June 8, which Poland is hosting for the first time with Ukraine. Instead, a key 30-mile...

GOP Attacks Celebrity Support For Obama By David Nakamura June 4 President Obama dined last month with 150 guests at George Clooney’s California cottage. He exchanged quips in January with Spike Lee in the director’s New York City townhouse. Last fall, Obama entertained megastar Lady Gaga, who was seated in the front row of a Silicon Valley fundraiser in six-inch heels and a towering blond bouffant. Obama’s popularity with Hollywood glitterati is again on display as his campaign mobilizes its vast fundraising apparatus to amass cash in a campaign that is shaping up to be the most expensive in U.S....

Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to ban sugary soft drinks larger than 16 ounces. He believes that by this measure he can reduce obesity. But plenty of evidence indicates that he will fail. The ban will inconvenience people and waste their time, but it will not make them thinner. Bloomberg didn’t originate this type of idea. Public schools, which hold their students captive for much of their day, have tried a similar approach to making students lose weight. And some have gone further than Bloomberg’s limit on cup size and have banned such drinks completely. But even complete bans haven’t worked....

Mayor Bloomberg is a wretched human being. He’s an ultra-rich limousine liberal who wants to impose his views on ordinary people. I’ve previously written about his statist efforts to ban bake sales, and I’ve noted with mixed feelings his proposal to tell food stamp recipients what they’re allowed to buy.Now he wants to criminalize large sodas. Holman Jenkins writes about this silly idea in the Wall Street Journal. Mike Bloomberg’s move to regulate the size of sodas sold in his city illustrates why it’s a good thing he is a mayor of New York and not the czar of all...

NEW YORK CITY -- A 12-year-old boy harassed by school bullies about his intelligence, his height and his deceased father killed himself in the New York City apartment he shared with his mother, according to relatives and those who knew him, NBCNewYork.com reported. "I want to remember him as a happy kid," his anguished sister told NBC 4 New York on Thursday. Joel Morales, of East Harlem, moved to a different school after enduring incessant taunting for months, but the bullying persisted, the fifth-grader’s family said. Advertise | AdChoices Kids chased Morales, threw sticks and pipes at him and teased...

According to Metsblog, Bill Maher has ponied up $20million to buy an interest in the New York Mets. Any Mets fans here, like myself, may be thrilled that Santana pitched that first Met no hitter before this news went public. Being a Mets fan just became infinitely difficult.

As San Francisco and other Bay Area cities prepare for gay pride celebrations this month, Gov. Jerry Brown issued a proclamation Saturday declaring June 2012 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month. In a statement issued Saturday, the governor called June 28, 1969 a “historic turning point” — a day when LGBT citizens in New York City resisted police harassment stemming from discriminatory laws during the Stonewall Riots. He noted that “California has been a leader in advancing the rights of its LGBT citizens”, including a San Francisco federal appeals court’s February ruling that found Prop 8, California’s ban on...

By the time President Obama took the stage at the Fox Theater here, he was in the 18th hour of a 19-hour day. His tie was still knotted to the top as he launched into his stump speech, attacking his opponent’s record and defending his own. “I still believe in you,” he said, “and I hope you still believe in me.” SNIP The protesters waiting outside a campaign fund-raiser in Denver last week were probably never supporters. But some of their signs cut close to the bone. “Out of Hope, Ready for Change,” one read. “Obama’s Blvd. of Broken Promises,”...

Camp David has been an historic presidential retreat since World War II, but according to New York Times White House correspondent Helene Cooper, Barack Obama "hates it" because there isn't any golf. Such was revealed on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show this weekend (video follows with transcript and commentary): NYT White House Correspondent: Obama 'Hates' Camp David Because There's No GolfHELENE COOPER, NEW YORK TIMES WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Alright, for something totally superficial, I have figured out why President Obama does not like Camp David. CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: He doesn’t like it? COOPER: He hates it. We were up there...

Ex-NY Times CEO clashed with chairman's girlfriend-reportReuters – 6 hours ago REUTERS - Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s new girlfriend and the New York Times Co's declining business led to the ousting of Janet Robinson as the newspaper company's chief executive in December. A New York magazine article published this week reconstructs the events that led to Robinson's departure after 28 years of service, working her way up from advertising sales to the corner office in 2004, becoming Sulzberger's most trusted lieutenant in the process. http://tinyurl.com/6oameoz The article is based on interviews with more than 30 sources described as "intimately familiar with...

A uniformed NYPD sergeant was caught on video unleashing a vulgar tirade against a group of Brooklyn men — threatening them with his gun even while condoning their criminal behavior, The Post has learned. * * * “I have the long [expletive]. You don’t,” the cop bragged. “Your pretty face — I like it very much. My [expletive] will go in your mouth and come out your ear. Don’t [expletive] with me. All right?”

You get to be the sex you think you are (and everybody else has to acknowledge it). I am used to surprises from the New York Times—a newspaper so far from me culturally and politically it might as well be a daily bulletin about life in a parallel universe—but last August I read a personal essay in the “Modern Love” space of the “Styles” section that really brought me up short. “My Husband is Now My Wife” (quite a tabloidy title for this genteel newspaper) was about the deeply ambivalent day the author escorted her husband to a hospital for...