Free Republic

“The people have spoken,” said former New York City Mayor Ed Koch after the Democratic mayoral primary of 1989, “and they must be punished.” The understandably bitter Koch had just been defeated by David Dinkins and was bidding his farewell to politics. And in fact, the people were punished: The one-term Dinkins, who defeated Rudy Giuliani in the general election that year to become the city’s first black mayor, saw crime soar on his impeccably tailored watch, with murders hitting a high of 2,605 the following year. Four years later, even the Upper West Side had had enough and called...

Former New York City mayor David Dinkins says he was never aware he had struck a bicyclist with his car earlier this summer. Dinkins made the claim in response to a lawsuit filed Friday that says Dinkins left the scene after striking a bicycle deliveryman June 30. …

In his inaugural address Wednesday, incoming New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to establish an intellectual pedigree for his focus on economic inequality. He invoked Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Al Smith, Frances Perkins, Fiorello La Guardia, Jacob Riis, David Dinkins, Mario Cuomo, and Harry Belafonte. It reminded me of when Democrats, eager to prove their national-security bona fides, tell audiences they hail from the party of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. As if there wasn’t some other Democrat after Kennedy who dabbled at war and peace, some guy from Texas. De Blasio’s speech was a bit...

Former Mayor David Dinkins was a special guest on Campaign Closeup this week and he had some strong words for Joe Lhota. “The man’s desperate,” Dinkins said of Lhota’s controversial attack ad on Bill de Blasio. Dinkins defended his administration, saying crime in the city began to fall well before Rudy Giuliani took over as Mayor. The former Mayor also offered up advice for de Blasio, who was a staffer of his.

Today’s New York Times features an in-depth look at the radical background of Bill de Blasio, the man poised to become the next mayor of New York. De Blasio is a longtime admirer and supporter of Nicaragua’s Marxist Sandinistas. He helped raise funds for the Sandinistas in the 1980s, subscribed to the party’s newspaper, Barricadda (Barricade), and unlike many others, remained supportive even after the Sandinistas lost power. To this day de Blasio speaks admiringly of the Sandinistas (while offering some token criticism of their handling of dissent), and remains interested in the Latin American left. De Blasio honeymooned in...

Chirlane McCray’s 1979 Essence essay “I Am a Lesbian,” broke boundaries, marking the first time a Black gay woman shared her sexuality openly. RELATED: Chirlane McCray Controversy Proves It’s Time To Get Out Of People’s Bedrooms Today, McCray is married to N.Y.C. Public Advocate and Mayoral Candidate Bill de Blasio (pictured right), sharing with Essence how she transitioned into a “traditional marriage.” According to McCray, her shift to a heterosexual union was natural, happening “by putting aside the assumptions I had about the form and package my love would come in. By letting myself be as free as I felt...

NBC News 'Punk Faggot' Scandal Erupts By JEFFREY LORD on 3.16.12 Phil Griffin, Brian Williams, Al Sharpton, and Comcast: Nightly News anchor and "Reverend Al." The cast. Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, NBC's cable sibling. Brian Williams, anchor of The NBC Nightly News. Brian Roberts, the Chairman and CEO of Comcast, owners of NBC Universal. The Reverend Al Sharpton, host of MSNBC's Politics Nation. And Quicken Loans, one of the original seven national sponsors of The Rush Limbaugh Show that pretentiously dropped Rush's show. That would be the same MSNBC host Reverend Al Sharpton -- hired by MSNBC president...

Nineteen years after he knifed a Hasidic student to death in the notorious Crown Heights race riots, Lemrick Nelson was stabbed in the head with an ice pick in Manhattan early Sunday.

Mika Brzezinski: back on the crime beat with another loopy liberal take on reality . . . Yesterday, the resident lefty on the Morning Joe panel -- defying the facts of the volunteer guard who stopped the Colorado church shooter -- labeled as "the most inane thing" she'd ever heard the notion that one armed citizen could make a difference. Today, in a breathtaking bit of revisionist history, Brzezinski tried to credit notoriously lax former Mayor David Dinkins rather than Rudy Giuliani for making NYC safe. So fierce was the firestorm she received from Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough in...

President's Immigration Plan Unworkable Edward I. Koch Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004 President Bush is proposing legislation to legalize the status of an estimated 8 to 11 million foreigners who now live and work illegally in the United States. The president’s idea is to turn these undocumented aliens into legal, tax-paying guest workers, with a right to participate in the Social Security system and to travel to their home countries on temporary visits. At the end of three years and a possible three-year extension, these guest workers would be required to return to their countries of origin and would be barred...

How Profiling Saved My LifeBy Nicholas StixToogood Reports | December 16, 2003 Gettin’ PaidIt was just after 9 p.m. on a school night, and Dennis, Steve, Michael, maybe another guy and myself were on the corner, by the parking garage of a fancy apartment building a block away from our slummy neighborhood. Dennis, the ringleader was 14, Steve was 15, I was 13 and Michael was 12.Along comes an unmarked car, and Det. Kevan and some other plainclothes guys jump out, and hassle us. Stupid Det. Kevan, the jerk. Father of Jimmy, the bully, who was my age, and Jimmy’s...

Send In The Clowns The Jayson Blair story is over. As New York cops might say to crime-scene spectators, ‘Move along, there’s nothing to see.’ I know this, because Times columnist Frank Rich told me so. On June 15 (six-and-a-half weeks after Blair’s resignation), in an essay entitled “15 Minutes Became 5 Weeks,” Rich described the Blair scandal as a “mediathon,” not unlike the coverage of Martha Stewart, for whom Rich suddenly had great sympathy. Rich defined a mediathon as "a relentless hybrid of media circus, soap opera and tabloid journalism we have come to think of as All...