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Muslim leaders Saturday attacked as "bigoted" comments made by Rep. Peter King involving mosques and terrorism, although King shot back that he believes there is a "real problem" involving some mosques on Long Island. In response to a recent Department of Homeland Security report about right-wing extremism, King told MSNBC Friday the department "has never put out a report talking about look out for mosques. Look out for Islamic terrorists in our country. Look out for the fact that very few Muslims come forward to cooperate with the police. If they sent out a report saying that, there would be...

Regardless of who wins the presidential election, one outcome of the 2008 campaign is decided: This year, major media outlets by and large dropped the pretense of objectivity and fairness to support the Democratic presidential candidate. Historically, the major media organizations claimed some form of objectivity or at least balance. Not anymore. (On the other side, Fox News, despite its marketing slogan, is just as bad, although more upfront about its bias.) In some ways, it’s the nature of the beast. Taxing, spending and redistribution are falsely interpreted as charity: giving comfort and aid to people who have the least....

Gaffe-prone Joe Biden put his foot in his mouth again today, mistakenly excluding millions of Americans from his running mate's tax-cut proposal. The Delaware senator's latest blunder came while discussing Republican tax policies during a television interview in his home town of Scranton, Pa. "What we're saying is, that $87 billion tax break doesn't need to go to people making an average of $1.4 million," Biden said. "It should go to middle-class people, people who make $150,000 a year." Actually, Barack Obama has promised to cut taxes on households earning less than $200,000 a year while raising taxes on those...

NEW YORK, Oct 27 (Reuters) - The government may have doled out billions of dollars to banks and a revolt over Wall Street excesses may be mounting, but a new survey finds that many U.S. financial professionals still expect to get fat bonuses at year end. Despite a ferocious bear market and thousands of layoffs in their beleaguered industry, some Wall Street pros expect an even bigger payout than last year's, according to the survey. The survey, by eFinancialCareers, a unit of specialty jobs site operator Dice Holdings Inc, found 67 percent of Wall Street workers who responded expect a...

As the presidential race heats up and Democratic nominee Barack Obama is forced to respond to increasingly tough attacks from the Palin-energized GOP ticket, his campaign style is coming under growing scrutiny. Some feel the candidate has too often been more head than heart, more intellectual than passionate, less a leader than a lecturer. Will his style survive the rough-and-tumble of a modern media-saturated presidential campaign? Yet balancing the two personae — professor and politician — has been key to Obama's success. Much of his style can be traced back to his dozen years as an academic, at the University...

For the past sixty years, whenever a presidential candidate is down in the polls days before Election Day, Harry Truman's victory in 1948 inevitable comes up. Of all the comebacks, Truman's still ranks as the most startling, down to the premature headline published by the staunch Republican media mogul Robert McCormick's Chicago Tribune the day after the election: "Dewey Defeats Truman!" A month before the election, Thomas Dewey, the Republican governor of New York, had a double digit lead over Truman. Most pollsters simply stopped polling, believing that voters made their minds up well before Election Day. Of the 50...

The most reliable surveys put McCain five to seven points behind Obama as we enter the last week of this interminable campaign. But in a race that will be famous for years afterwards for its volatility, it is not too late for the Republican to pull out a victory. SILVER: McCain's Long Road To Victory MORE: How Truman Won In 1948 For Harry Truman in 1948, the presidential race shifted dramatically in the final week, and it's happened three more times in the past 30 years. In 1980, Reagan came from eight points behind to a solid victory by winning...

Twenty-one years ago today, a cabal of liberal senators prevented one of the greatest legal minds of the 20th century from sitting on the Supreme Court. Robert Bork, then a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and a former solicitor general, lost by a vote of 58-42 - an outcome Sen. Joseph Biden praised in his recent debate with Gov. Sarah Palin. Mr. Biden boasted he led the fight against Judge Bork after realizing the "ideology" of nominees should be a considerable factor. But what Mr. Biden hails as a great "intellectual change" of his own has served...

Barack Obama stares silently at a wall of fading black-and-white photographs in the muggy second-floor offices of the Harvard Law Review. He lingers over one row of solemn faces, his predecessors of 40 years ago. All are men. All are dressed in dark-colored suits and ties. All are white. It is a sobering moment for Obama, 28, who in February became the first black to be elected president in the 102-year history of the prestigious student-run law journal. The post, considered the highest honor a student can attain at Harvard Law School, almost always leads to a coveted clerkship with...

Barack Obama does not say much about his years in New York City. The time he spent as an undergraduate at Columbia College and then working in Manhattan in the early 1980s surfaces only fleetingly in his memoir. In the book, he casts himself as a solitary wanderer in the metropolis, the outsider searching for a way to “make myself of some use.” He tells of underheated sublets, a night spent in an alley, a dead neighbor on the landing. From their fire escape, he and an unnamed roommate watch “white people from the better neighborhoods” bring their dogs to...

The Treasury Department has released its contract with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. It turns out the firm will make $300,000 over the next six months for its work as Treasury's lead adviser in the bailout. (A link to download the full contract is below). ADVERTISEMENT As The American Lawyer has previously reported, Treasury reached out to six law firms, requesting proposals for the work. Four declined: Davis, Polk & Wardwell, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, and a mystery firm. Lawyers at those firms have said they turned down the work because they were not sure...

Terry Tate, office linebacker, returns in style The 2004 Super Bowl featured a great game between the Patriots and Panthers with Adam Viniateri kicking a game-winning field goal with seconds left on the clock. But the true star of the telecast was Terry Tate -- office linebacker. The Reebok commercial featuring Tate harassing lazy office employees in order to increase production was one of the finest Super Bowl commericials in recent history. And now Tate is entering the political ring in a series of new skits featuring Sarah Palin.

Receiving support and praise from students and professors, Barack H. Obama was named the 104th president of the Harvard Law Review, becoming the legal journal's first Black leader. The election, which drew national media attention, puts Obama in charge of a staff of 80 which edits and publishes articles by legal authorities eight times per year. While many said yesterday that they believed the election was of historical significance, Obama downplayed its importance. "It's a significant change from the Harvard Law School of the past," said Obama. "[But] for every one of me, there are a whole bunch of young...

Candidates Bash Each Other Some More On Thursday, But Then Arrive In Manhattan For Classy Political Event After a fiery and final debate, presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain will be together again Thursday night in Manhattan. The two archrivals will be sitting at the same dinner table, just 19 days away from the election. It's the event no politician wants to miss. The candidates will be at the Waldorf Astoria for the annual Al Smith Dinner, but Thursday morning they were out on the campaign trail playing tit for tat in an escalating series of attacks. With less...

Bah humbug to puny Christmas tree BY NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON nia.henderson@newsday.com 7:36 PM EST, December 5, 2007 Apparently, when it comes to holiday symbols, size does matter. At least it did to some folks in Long Beach, who were none too happy with the elfin Christmas tree planted next to a 20-foot-high menorah at Kennedy Plaza infront of City Hall. They called, they sent letters, they testified at a public hearing at City Hall. Long Beach resident Rick Hoffman put it this way: "What's up with the giant menorah and the Charlie Brown Christmas tree?" he asked. "We wish it would...

NEW YORK -- A plane headed for London has been diverted to John F. Kennedy airport in New York due to a suspicious passenger on Thursday, according to a Transportation Security Administration spokesman. A member of an American Airlines flight crew reported a suspicious passenger on flight 136, which took off from Los Angeles' LAX airport and was bound for London's Heathrow airport, according to TSA spokeswoman Andrea McCauley. McCauley said the flight was canceled and all passengers have been off-loaded in New York. A passenger boarded the plane after getting off an employee bus without proper identification, according to...

A battle of footnotes in Monday's Supreme Court global warming decision Massachusetts v. EPA makes it clearer than ever how crucial Justice Anthony Kennedy's vote is to the outcome of big cases. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the five-member majority, and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., writing for the four dissenters, crossed swords over the meaning of Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Company, a completely obscure decision written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. just shy of a century ago. Holmes ruled that Georgia had standing to complain about the Tennessee company's noxious emissions that resulted in a "wholesale destruction...

A plaintiffs lawyer attempting to recoup his losses after reversal of a landmark $105 million dram shop verdict will not be able to add new corporate defendants in the retrial of the case. A Bergen County, N.J., judge ruled on Wednesday that there was no basis to join Aramark Corp., the parent company of the Giants Stadium food and beverage concessionaire that allegedly served alcohol to a drunken fan in the hours before he crashed into a family's minivan. Retrial is to begin on July 23 in the case of Antonia Verni, who at age 2 was left paralyzed in...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Just seven days after Pat Tillman's death, a top general warned there were strong indications that it was friendly fire and President Bush might embarrass himself if he said the NFL star-turned-soldier died in an ambush, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press. ADVERTISEMENT It was not until a month afterward that the Pentagon told the public and grieving family members the truth — that Tillman was mistakenly killed in Afghanistan by his comrades. The memo reinforces suspicions that the Pentagon was more concerned with sparing officials from embarrassment than with leveling with Tillman's...

One of the nation's largest firefighters' unions has accused Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, of committing ``egregious acts'' against firefighters who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In a letter to its members Friday, the International Association of Fire Fighters, excoriated Giuliani for his November 2001 decision to cut back the number of firefighters searching the rubble of Ground Zero for the remains of some 300 fallen comrades. The 280,000-member union accused him of carelessly expediting the cleanup process with a ``scoop-and-dump'' operation after the recovery of millions of dollars in gold, silver...