Free Republic

Yanks deduct meals — and more — from rent MANHATTAN. Maybe that $444 steak dinner was brain food. The New York Yankees counted this meal ticket as part of a food-and-bar tab it deducted from the rent it pays to the city, using a clause inserted into its Parks Dept. lease by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on his last day in office. That provision allowed the team to deduct all “planning costs” for a new stadium up to $25 million through Dec. 31, 2005. Since the deal was inked in 2001, the Yanks have subtracted at least $22.5 million from...

Right before Giuliani took his "impromptu" call during the NRA speech, he was discussing the second amendment. However, when discussing the second amendment's language, he mistakenly began to paraphrase the fourth amendment instead! Then he answered the phone and changed the subject. Here's the transcript, followed by the video: "After all the second amendment is a freedom every bit as important as the other freedoms in the first ten amendments. Just think of the language of it -- 'the people shall be secure' --let's see, this is my wife calling..." (talks to and about his wife) (then he resumes with...

Manchester, N.H. -- Another key supporter of Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani suffered an embarrassment when he admitted the "serious sin" of at one time calling an escort service accused of being a prostitution ring. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who is Giuliani's most prominent Southern conservative supporter, was implicated when the so-called "D.C. Madam" disclosed that his phone number was found among the telephone records of the escort service, Pamela Martin and Associates, in a period before he was elected to the Senate in 2004. "This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course,...

New Yorkers, for the first time in nearly three decades, will be allowed to possess and use self-defense sprays like Chemical Mace under a law signed today by Gov. George E. Pataki, over the objections of New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and law enforcement officials across the state. The new law brings New York into line with every other state by allowing people 18 and older to use a variety of pocket-size chemical sprays to repel, but not kill, an attacker. Mr. Pataki said in a statement that the sprays would give average citizens a powerful new tool...

As Jonathan Martin points out, there's a pattern emerging of top Giuliani supporters leaving the campaign, whether for better gigs or because of scandal. Today, we learn that Sen. David Vitter (La.) is one of the names on the so-called D.C. Madam's client list. Vitter was the first senator to endorse Giuliani and serves as his Southern Regional campaign chair. Back in March, National Journal's Hotline expressed the sentiment of many: "Let's give Giuliani his due: having Vitter will help whip support among Southern conservatives, and qualifies, to us at least, as a major and important endorsement." Indeed, a nod...

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani played Mr. Smith when he came to Washington today to push President Clinton's $33 billion crime package. He won rave reviews from Democrats, a polite nod from House Republican leaders, but harsh public jeers from several New York Republicans for his pleas to both parties to drop their partisan bickering for the benefit of the nation's cities. -snip- Several New York Republican members said they were still angry over his trip to Minneapolis on Friday with President Clinton criticizing the House action, and they warned that his standing in the party had suffered lasting damage. But...

Behind Rudy Giuliani's impressive lead in the polls is one fact that puzzles the pundits: Many cultural conservatives are backing a pro-choice, pro-gun control candidate. But what should be equally surprising is the strong support Giuliani is finding among libertarian-leaning Republicans, who also make up a big slice of the GOP base. Here's why: Throughout his career, Giuliani has displayed an authoritarian streak that would be all the more problematic in a man who would assume executive powers vastly expanded by President Bush. As a U.S. attorney in the 1980s, Giuliani conducted what University of Chicago Law Prof. Daniel Fischel...

The best one-liner of the Republican debate was surely Tom Tancredo’s jab about believing conversions “on the road to Damascus, not the road to Des Moines”. It must have hit too close to home for conservative pundits who declared the winner to be Mike Huckabee, who said congress spent money like John Edwards in a salon. There were many conversions in evidence that night. McCain changed his mind on immigration; Romney changed his mind on… everything; and Huckabee’s governorship of Arkansas made congress look like Dick Cheney in a hair salon by comparison. Yet the most spectacular conversion was Rudy...

The greatest love affair of Rudy Giuliani's life has become a sordid scandal. His monogamous embrace of the Yankees as mayor was so fervent that when he tried to deliver a West Side stadium to them early in his administration, or approved a last-minute $400 million subsidy for their new Bronx stadium, New Yorkers blithely ascribed the bad deals to a heaving heart. It turns out he also had an outstretched hand. Sports fans grew accustomed to seeing Giuliani, in Yankee jacket and cap, within camera view of the team's dugout at every one of the 40 postseason home games...