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Calling her actions “an outrageous breach of trust,” a judge sentenced Diane M. Gordon, a former state assemblywoman from Brooklyn, to two to six years in prison on Thursday for offering to help a developer acquire city land if he would build her a house free. Ms. Gordon, a four-term Democrat from East New York, will be eligible for parole after 20 months. Prosecutors had sought a longer sentence — the maximum was 10 years — arguing that not only had Ms. Gordon tried to get a free house, not even in her district, but that even after her indictment,...

It's been two years since Hurricane Katrina and Rita ripped through the belly of the South, and survivors, along with various scholars and activists, are seeking to hold the US government responsible in a tribunal court hearing scheduled for this August. On Tuesday (July 17), New York City Councilman Charles Barron and former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney met at Manhattan's Center for Constitutional Rights for a press conference to discuss the upcoming trial. The tribunal will target President Bush, the US government, State of Louisiana, State of Mississippi, and various other agencies who were involved in the Katrina and Rita...

Understanding fellow, that Jonathan Alter. On this afternoon's "Tucker Carlson" on MSNBC, the eponymous host mentioned that Barack Obama had travelled to NYC to seek the support of Charles Barron of Brooklyn. Carlson knows Barron well, the NYC Councilman being a frequent guest on Tucker's show. Carlson described Barron as a "pretty straightforward racist, pretty straightforward black nationalist, anti-white character, exactly the kind of person you would not expect Obama to be courting." He then asked guest Jonathan Alter: "What is Obama doing?SENIOR NEWSWEEK EDITOR JONATHAN ALTER: "Well, I think Obama wants the support of everybody, and I think the...

The reporter in question being Adam Housley, who’s been covering the protests in Caracas all week, and the apologist being NYC Councilman Charles Barron, whom you’ll remember more recently from his violent threats towards the NYPD and less recently as host to Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe. Here he gives us a glimpse of what the western left must have sounded like during Stalin’s heyday. Don’t call him a useful idiot. He’s not an idiot; he’s just on the other side. The dispute here is over Chavez’s shutdown of RCTV, the opposition television station in Caracas whose closure inspired the street...

New York’s anti-cop forces have roared back to life thanks to a fatal police shooting of an unarmed man a week ago. The press is once again fawning over Al Sharpton, Herbert Daughtry, Charles Barron, and sundry other hate-mongers in and out of city government as they accuse the police of widespread mistreatment of blacks and issue barely veiled threats of riots if they do not get “justice.” The allegation that last weekend’s shooting was racially motivated is preposterous. A group of undercover officers working in a gun- and drug-plagued strip joint in Queens had good reason to believe that...

IT appears no one can persuade City Councilman Charles Barron to honor his country, not even his own spiritual leaders or constituents. Barron was one of a number of elected officials on stage at the St. Paul Community Baptist Church in East New York yesterday during a celebratory groundbreaking for a major, 227-acre affordable housing development, when the Rev. Johnny Youngblood announced that he had wanted everyone to join in singing "America the Beautiful." Youngblood was so intent to have everyone join in - and there were about 1,000 people on hand - that he distributed fliers with the...

NEW YORK -- Autum Ashante, a 7-year-old black girl who caused a stir at two Westchester schools by reciting a poem she wrote about white nationalism, received support from some New York City leaders on Tuesday. First, she stood on the City Hall steps with Councilman Charles Barron, who denounced what he described as attacks and harassment since Autum spoke last month at a middle and high school. Barron said he planned to ask Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office to look into whether the girl's free speech rights were violated. Later, she had an appearance scheduled with the Rev. Al...

Black Dem Blasts 'Plantation' Hillary Clinton A high profile black Democrat in New York City is blasting Hillary Clinton for playing racial politics with her Martin Luther King Day tribute, saying her use of the term "plantation" was "condescending" to African Americans. "I think her speech was contrived and condescending," City Councilman Charles Barron told ABC Radio's Sean Hannity on Tuesday. "I don't like the idea that she used 'plantation' with a black audience," Barron complained. "I think that's a very serious analogy and I understand when we [blacks] use it from time to time. But that has been a...

October 05, 2005, 8:12 a.m. Grand Wizard Bush "Bull Connor" Katrina crap. As levees crumbled in New Orleans after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, so, too, tumbled any sense of decorum among key black Democrats. Officials and activists alike are re-submerging the Crescent City in a fact-free torrent of vitriol. "George Bush is our Bull Connor," Rep. Charles Rangel of New York told cheering Congressional Black Caucus conventioneers on September 22. "If you're black in this country, and you're poor in this country, it's not an inconvenience. It's a death sentence." Rangel equated Republican President Bush to Theophilus "Bull" Connor, Birmingham,...

Infuriating law-enforcement organizations and his colleagues, a City Council member, Charles Barron, introduced a resolution yesterday urging clemency for a convicted and escaped cop-killer, Assata Shakur, formerly known as Joanne Chesimard. On May 2, 1973, Chesimard was involved in a roadside shoot-out with New Jersey State Police after the vehicle in which she and two companions were traveling was pulled over because of a malfunctioning taillight. During an exchange of gunfire, a New Jersey state trooper, Werner Foerster, was wounded. Chesimard, then a member of the Black Liberation Army and the Black Panther Party, was convicted of first-degree murder in...

With freedom on the move across the Middle East and beyond, aggrieved anti-war protesters here in the United States have nothing better to do this weekend than what they have always done: stand in the way. The most unhinged of left-wing activists, from breast-exposing pacifists to the conspiracy-mongers of MoveOn.org, will descend on New York, Washington and other major media markets to "mark the two-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq." They will do so by clogging the streets, tying up police resources and leaving behind a trail of anti-Bush propaganda litter. Who says the left doesn't...

The intense courtship of black voters for the 2005 mayor's race begins today, when Mayor Bloomberg and all those wishing to unseat him head uptown to the Rev. Al Sharpton's annual Martin Luther King Day celebration to stump for votes.

The Times had to make a decision. The story could not be ignored, but how should it be played? President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who has impoverished his country, while suspending the rule of law and doing his best to incur a famine, was cheered last week by members of the New York City Council. A dozen or so Council members, mostly black or Latino, attended a reception for the old tyrant at City Hall. If the Times had put that on page one, it might have been seen as an expression of disapproval, and opened the exquisitely sensitive Times...

In 2001, New York Times... liberal columnist Anthony Lewis was asked: "Have you changed your views on socialism?" Lewis' answer: "I'm still for it. But it doesn't work." ...Never underestimate "the power of bad ideas." No matter how successful some of the policies... since the early '90s have been, they'll always have critics on the left who treat accountability, self-reliance and high standards as the enemies of the downtrodden.... Welfare reform: One of the biggest successes of the Giuliani administration was its program of welfare reform, launched long before the federal Welfare Reform Act of 1996. When Giuliani came into...

Anyone hear this short conversation between Leo Terrell, Sean Hannity, and some NYC councilman who said he would like to slap a white man so he could feel better? The councilman hung up, and Terrell is on Hannity's side!

After listening to Air America for a week, I now know what liberal radio is. It is Janeane Garofalo bantering with her co-host about swallowing her own saliva, and then dismissing the American victims of the Fallujah lynch mob as a pack of mercenaries. It is a woman named Randi Rhodes talking dirty and cracking on Condoleezza Rice's "plastic hair." It is an announcer intoning: "The station Rush Limbaugh would listen to if he hadn't lost most of his hearing to drug abuse" - followed, without irony, by an empathetic public service announcement aimed at drug abusers. It is, in...

A handful of City Council members and anti-war activists gathered at City Hall yesterday to promise a “massive” campaign against the Republican National Convention, planned for New York next year. “We say, ‘Keep your convention, George,’” Brooklyn Council Member Charles Barron said.“Send us a check.” Mr. Barron and his allies argued that the Bush administration hasn’t done enough to help New York, called the war a “fraud,” and demanded that the $87 billion committed to Iraq and Afghanistan be spent closing state budget deficits. Though the arguments against President Bush and the Republicans may ring true to many New Yorkers,...

Cop, Mike aide: Barron cussed at us City Councilman Charles Barron cursed at a cop and an aide to Mayor Bloomberg as mourners at City Hall filed past the body of slain Councilman James Davis, the mayor's office and police union officials charged yesterday."Get the f--- away from me. I don't give a f--- about the mayor's office," the Brooklyn Democrat allegedly yelled at the two women Monday when they asked him to conduct an interview in a designated area. Bloomberg spokesman Ed Skyler said the mayor filed a complaint with City Council Speaker Gifford Miller (D-Manhattan), as did police...

A New York city councilman arrived in Zimbabwe at the weekend for a controversial "fact-finding" trip, but just one out of 50 other council members agreed to go with him. Councilman Charles Barron earlier predicted a dozen council members would accept President Mugabe's offer to pay for a free luxury week-long trip. But faced with an outcry over Mugabe's crackdown on the opposition and violent seizure of white-owned farms, only one other councilman - James E Davis of Brooklyn - agreed to go on the junket. "We're not disappointed," said Paul Washington, Barron's chief of staff. "There were a lot...

Dear Reader, On August 17, 2002, a rally was held by Millions For Reparations on the mall in Washington, D.C. The rally called for the payment of reparations to blacks for the crime of slavery from both the government and businesses. The following in italics are verbatim quotes, selected for their importance and significance related to the rally. The rest of the following is our commentary... Ron Daniels, Institute of the Black World President It’s about what you do every morning when you look in that mirror and take responsibility for organizing your block and your family. It’s a shame...

Dear Reader, On August 17, 2002, a rally was held by Millions For Reparations on the mall in Washington, D.C. The rally called for the payment of reparations to blacks for the crime of slavery from both the government and businesses. The following in italics are verbatim quotes, selected for their importance and significance related to the rally. The rest of the following is our commentary... Ron Daniels, Institute of the Black World President It’s about what you do every morning when you look in that mirror and take responsibility for organizing your block and your family. It’s a shame...