Free Republic

NEW YORK – Mayor de Blasio has had a tough year with an ongoing federal probe into his administration, resignation of his press secretary and public feud with Gov. Cuomo, but now voters are saying they're not happy with him either. In a new poll, 51 percent of voters disapprove of his job performance. While only 41 approve of his work. Quinnipiac University conducted a telephone survey with 1,310 New Yorkers from July 21 to 28. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points. This new poll is in line with the one Quinnipiac...

As the party prepares to convene in the birthplace of democracy, it faces dangers from within and without that threaten to destroy its chances to govern at a time of uncertainty, upheaval and unpredictability. The nation’s attention has just been focused on four days of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, capped by a speech in which Donald Trump told us we were unsafe and could only be saved by a strong leader unbound by political correctness, unafraid to confront the world. Democrats have already begun focusing on the excesses of that convention but they risk missing the very important...

President Barack Obama told a gathering of law enforcement officials on Monday that he was critical to their efforts to reconcile with the black community: “I’m your best hope,” he declared, according to a police official quoted by the Washington Post. The gathering took place as Obama prepares to visit Dallas, where five police officers were murdered Thursday at a Black Lives Matter protest. Obama has spoken out in defense of law enforcement, but has also echoed criticisms of racial disparities in policing. While some fault Obama for worsening relations between law enforcement and the black community — dating to...

Authorities: Tennessee highway gunman motivated by police shootings A man accused of shooting indiscriminately at passing cars and police on a Tennessee highway told investigators he was angry about police violence against African-Americans, authorities said Friday. One woman died and three others, including one police officer, were injured in the rampage. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a news release that initial conversations with the suspect, 37-year-old Lakeem Keon Scott, revealed he was troubled by several incidents across the U.S. Scott, who is black, was wounded in the shootout with police, remains hospitalized and has not yet been charged....

Morning Joe did a very decent job today of covering the shooting of police officers in Dallas and the issue of police shootings of African-American. The remarks were generally even-handed. Even Al Sharpton was cautious and balanced in his comments. And so it was surprising that of all people, Chuck Todd made the most tendentious remark. Speaking of the shooting of Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minnesota, and discussing the need for better police training, Todd said: “how do you train prejudice and hate out of somebody’s heart? That’s a tough thing.” Is there racism among police? Of course, as...

Reports indicate that a supporter of the anti-Israel BDS movement and a self-proclaimed radical who has supported numerous anti-American initiatives has been named the host of a new late night talk show on VH1. Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN commentator, will launch VH1 Live which will begin airing weekly on the Viacom-owned cable network on Sunday, July 17 at 10 PM. Would a supporter of segregation be rewarded with a talk show? How about someone who is fiercely anti-LGBT? It seems that bigotry is only OK if it is directed at Israel. Hill is a staunch opponent of Israel, a...

Ticking the LGBT box on her weekly campaign checklist, Hillary Clinton made a “surprise” appearance at New York City’s Gay Pride parade on Sunday. With close aide Huma Abedin at her side, Clinton walked with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Al Sharpton. Bill Clinton was nowhere to be found. Multiple videos show the chaotic security scene as Secret Service agents, police and campaign staffers yell and push to keep the perimeter around Clinton moving. (Watch video of Hillary and Huma at link) One chap is looking forward to Bill serving as “first...

Firefighters and medics will take their first “Trans 101” course on Tuesday, learning the correct way to interact with transgender people — and even getting a lesson in what LGTBQI actually stands for, a city official said. The two-hour sensitivity training was launched in March by the city Commission for Human Rights after Mayor de Blasio signed an executive order allowing people to use any public bathroom or locker room they identified with, regardless of their sexual anatomy.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is facing at least a half-dozen federal, state, and local investigations into his fundraising, accompanied by ugly headlines and the lowest approval ratings of his tenure. Last week’s arrest of Norman Seabrook, the powerful head of the city's corrections officers’ union, on federal corruption charges in a case involving a de Blasio fundraiser, only crystallized what more and more New York Democrats are starting to believe: With next year’s election looming on the horizon, the progressive mayor is becoming vulnerable to a primary challenge. While a few prominent local politicians are toying with the idea, it’s...

Former Attorney General Eric Holder has come out against proposals in Chicago and New Jersey to require fingerprint background checks of drivers for ride-hailing platforms such as Uber and Lyft. Why would President Obama's onetime top lawman come out against regulation that is supposed to protect the riding public? Credit the intersection of two forces. First, Holder's tony corporate law firm, Covington & Burling, represents Uber. Also, as Holder sees it, requiring drivers to submit fingerprints may "have a discriminatory impact on communities of color." I was surprised to read about Holder's opposition, as I have trouble seeing Holder as...

Cenk Uygur, host of 'The Young Turks,' discusses the results of an unscientific (but large) poll of his audience showing that about 80% of his mostly-Sanders-supporting audience would NEVER vote for Hillary Clinton. "I don't want to speak for you guys," Uygur said of his audience -- the largest single online news show on YouTube -- "It was not a small amount of people voting. Over 20,000 votes on our app and @YouTube - over 80% of our audience saying they'd never vote for Hillary. I'm shocked by that result.

A group of anti-cop dissenters burned an American flag outside a Staten Island police station house in protest of the NYPD’s investigation into the death of a black teenage boy who police said suffered a fatal asthma attack after a gang-related street fight last month, video shows. In a video posted to YouTube, demonstrators can be seen gathered outside of the 121st Precinct station house for the staged flag burning on Saturday. “We light fire for the ancestors who have gone before us who were lynched,” a woman can be hearing saying in the video as another person attempts to...

New reports indicate the Cuomo administration tried to subvert information about a cancer-causing chemical in the water supply of the town of Hoosick Falls … and nobody seems all that concerned. Documents obtained by Politico show the New York State Department of Health dismissing warnings from the EPA, and refusing to alert residents of the very dangerous situation. Over a year ago, health department officials issued a ‘fact sheet’ indicating that “health effects are not expected to occur from normal use of the water” within days of a contradictory declaration by the EPA which advised residents not to drink or...

Going Inside The Chicago Police Department’s ‘Strategic Subject List’ May 31, 2016 7:58 AM Audio CHICAGO (CBS) — Chicago suffered through an especially bloody holiday weekend, with 69 people shot over the Memorial Day weekend, including six fatalities. Police said the vast majority of the victims were on a watchlist of sorts – what the department calls its “strategic subject list.” CBS 2’s Mai Martinez sat down with the Chicago Police Department’s top brass to talk about how the list works. The strategic subject list uses an algorithm to try to predict who is most likely to be involved in...

MSNBC national correspondent Joy-Ann Reid has yet to pay off her still open nearly $5,000 tax warrant that attracted a good bit of attention last year. Ditto for the nearly $600,000 for two tax warrants that New York lists for MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton. Here is the backstory. National Review contributor Jillian Kay Melchior created a stir on April 22, 2015 that Reid and then afternoon host Touré Neblett were in the hock with the Empire State for thousands of dollars. Melchior was apparently following up on a well-circulated report that then-host Melissa Harris Perry was just slapped with...

We learned this week that Hizzonor Bill de Blasio has yet another plan to entrench the city in “transgender” warfare and make sure that business owners are made to toe the line on political correctness. Under this latest scheme, any business which greets someone using a pronoun not matching the gender (or lack thereof) the customer “identifies” as could face a stiff fine in court.

Garbage bags could help bring down the Blasio administration. Of many revelations about City Hall’s pay-to-play culture, the case of how New York came to buy a certain brand of trash bags caught the prosecutors' attention . Joseph Dussich, tried for nearly a decade to get the city to buy his Mint-X bags, which he says deter rats and squirrels. But he got the brush-off until he contributed $100,000 to Campaign for One New York, a slush fund de Blasio created. Presto, Dussich got a meeting with the mayor, a trial contract for $15,000, and then a deal worth nearly...

These are the guns and knives Mayor de Blasio doesn’t want you to see. A surging tide of weapons — including loaded revolvers, 9mm handguns, meat cleavers and daggers — has been confiscated this year from students in city schools, most of which do not have metal detectors.

Racism is to blame for Puerto Rico’s dire fiscal situation, Mayor de Blasio charged Saturday. “The backs of the United States government turned on them, while a health-care crisis grows, a humanitarian crisis grows, the Zika crisis grows,” he said in a speech at the National Action Network in Harlem.

As Bob Dylan told us long ago, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” These days, a foul wind blows from City Hall. With subpoenas issued, investigations spreading and at least one federal grand jury at work, the question isn’t whether Bill de Blasio’s administration has a corruption problem. The questions are how big is the problem, how many agencies are tainted and how high up the pecking order does it go? […] The two biggest and most recent scandals involve lucrative gifts and cash given to current and former top officers in the NYPD,...