Free Republic

The evolution of the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City this month, as well as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s position on it, has come full circle. The original decision to honor convicted FALN terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera as a hero of the people or whatever honorific they had in mind immediately sent sponsors scurrying and resulted in many prominent figures refusing to march with him. Not the Mayor, however, who claimed to understand the nuances of the situation, even though he “disagreed” with some of the things the bomb maker had done. But as the list of those...

Police arrested a prominent Democratic leader and staff member for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on child pornography charges, according to the New York Post. On Friday, the Post said that court documents stated that Jacob Schwartz allegedly kept thousands of photos and nearly one hundred videos on a laptop depicting horrifying acts with “young nude females between the approximate ages of 6 months and 16, engaging in sexual conduct… on an adult male.” Schwartz, 29, faces charges of “possession of a sexual performance by a child and promoting a sexual performance by a child,” according to the...

The de Blasio administration, an administration plagued with corruption and poor policy, can now add one more item to their laundry list: child porn. Jacob Schwartz, 29, was a de Blasio administration staffer and a rising young Democratic figure before revelations came out about his obsession with child porn. Schwartz was popped for having over 3,000 images and 89 videos on a laptop. Some of the material discovered involved baby girls aging as young as 6 months old, court documents revealed Friday. NYPD computer-crimes investigators accepted Schwartz’s surrender Thursday morning. Schwartz has been under investigation since March 29, 2017, when...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's popularity is mounting. His approval rating hit an all-time high in a poll released Wednesday, and he has, for the first time, raised more money than his best-funded Republican challenger in his bid to seek re-election.

First rule of politics (that Repubs seem to have neglected) Never attend a town hall meeting you can’t control. That’s what Comrade de Blasio did with great aplomb. The NYPD, NYC Councilmen, the local progs, who remain loyal to the mayor, packed the meeting with loyalists who understood they were there to make nice with the mayor, or else. Even the so-called “hard questions” were asked with respectful voices. No shouting. No screaming. No chanting. No signs (nothing like that was permitted). No way, no how...

Mayor de Blasio won’t face criminal charges related to his campaign fundraising practices, the acting US attorney in Manhattan announced Thursday. In tandem with his federal counterpart, Manhattan DA Cy Vance Jr. also announced he wouldn’t prosecute de Blasio or his team — even though they violated the “spirit” of the election law. Acting US Attorney Joon Kim said making a case against the mayor and his aides would have been difficult since there was “no evidence of personal profit.”

An ongoing investigation by the highly respected U.S. attorney for Southern New York, Preet Bharara, apparently is targeting the top levels at City Hall, and there are reasons to expect that if a case is brought, it will be under the leadership Jeff Sessions, President-Elect Trump’s designee for attorney general. Michael Goodman of the New York Post reports on some serious clouds on the leftist mayor’s horizon, as the mayor desperately tries to hide emails that have been subpoenaed: Mayor de Blasio, calling questions about his shady dealings with political consultants and lobbyists a “distraction,” says from now on. he will release...

The next citywide election is 16 months away, but with polls showing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s support at an all-time low, potential challengers have been clamoring for attention. Yet perhaps the most viable one has managed to keep her name out of the speculative talk: Christine Quinn. The former City Council speaker has clearly learned a lesson from peaking too early in a campaign. At this time four years ago, Quinn had a 10-point lead on the pack of Democrats looking to succeed Michael Bloomberg. When the only poll that counts closed on primary day, she came in third.

Rudy Giuliani attack current Mayor Bill de Blasio for the way he responded to the bomb attack in New York City over the weekend. Rudy Giuliani, who earned the title of America's mayor for his handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, on Monday excoriated current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for looking like he was "kind of on Mars" during the early reaction to a weekend bomb attack. "He looked like he didn't know what he was doing," Giuliani told Circa in an interview when asked about de Blasio's initial response to an attack that wounded 29...

<p>Early in de Blasio’s stint, the rise in public vagrancy was a flashpoint, with many residents and visitors complaining about being harassed and attacked. Asked why they slept in the streets or parks instead of going to shelters, street people usually answered that the shelters were crowded and dangerous.</p>

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...

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...

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.

The NYPD is supporting gay pride with a new rainbow colored patrol vehicle. The SUV was apparently painted for the city’s gay pride parade Sunday in Manhattan and carries a message of support for Orlando in the wake of the country’s largest mass shooting incident earlier this month.

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...

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...

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...