Free Republic

A man yelling “I want to kill cops” tried to run down two Port Authority Police officers with his car near the entrance to the ­Holland Tunnel Wednesday night in the latest attack on officers. Matthew Christian Cash, who has an extensive criminal record, was barreling down a restricted fire lane near Varick and Watts streets when he barely missed cops patrolling the tunnel and smashed his silver Audi right into their ­police cruiser at about 8 p.m., authorities said.

Is this Christmas 2014 — or 1974? A stark reminder of New York City’s bad old days appeared on the streets of Manhattan Thursday , as three-card monte dealers turned out in force on Fifth Avenue. An army of the shady gamblers — offering both crooked card and shell games — set up between West 53rd and 56th streets, fleecing Christmas tourists like hapless rubes in an old-time movie.

A union operative generously praised New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman when he announced he was taking a Papa John’s pizza franchisee to court on behalf of workers who claim they were underpaid. The state attorney general, like the unions, called it “wage theft.” The thing is, the union official knew about the government’s lawsuit before the pizza franchise did. “Fast-food workers all across the city and country are organizing for higher pay and union rights,” said Kendall Fells, organizing director for Fast Food Forward, a group dedicated to increasing wages and benefits for fast-food workers. Fells added: "This suit...

McDonald’s and its franchisees illegally retaliated against employees for participating in union-related activities, the National Labor Relations Board’s top lawyer alleged Friday in a case with sweeping industry implications. NLRB general counsel Richard Griffin announced Friday he will issue 13 complaints involving 78 charges against franchises and McDonald’s USA, LLC. Though many of these alleged labor violations were committed by independent franchise owners, Griffin ruled earlier this year that McDonald’s can be held liable for those actions as a so-called joint employer, leaving the corporatrion — and potentially other franchisors — exposed to such claims. McDonald’s said the decision will...

During Saturday´s protests about the lack of indictments in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, CUNY adjunct professor and creator of erotic poetry Eric Linsker picked up a trashcan and tried to throw it at police officers. Two police lieutenants were attacked by the crowd when the officers tried to arrest Linsker. Newsday described the incident: They were on the roadway of the [Brooklyn] bridge about 8 p.m. when they heard reports of "debris being thrown on the walkway" at police officers who were walking alongside demonstrators involved in Saturday´s New York City rally against police shootings of...

A part-time CUNY professor faces a slate of charges accusing him of sparking a violent run-in with police during Saturday's protest demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge. Eric Linsker, 29, was allegedly spotted by police carrying a large garbage can on walkway of the bridge above the traffic lanes during the protests against the police killings of unarmed black men. Protesters had been tossing debris at police on the bridge's lower level at the time, police said. Police Lt. Philip Chan ordered Linkser to put down the trash can and attempted to arrest him, according to court records. A small group...

In 2009, Jud Parker got a West Village landlord to give him a ­duplex apartment on tony Minetta Street for $10 a month — for 50 years! Now new landlord Pari Dulac is challenging the sweetheart deal and claiming the old owner, who died in 2010, had dementia when it was allegedly signed. “When I saw the lease, I couldn’t believe it,” said Dulac, a longtime Village resident. “I thought it was a joke.” Wilfred Schuman, a German-born ballet dancer, had owned a pair of three-story town houses at 12 and 14 Minetta St. since 1993. He lived in the...

A new report being released today by the Census Bureau finds that Manhattan has the highest level of income inequality in the United States. That is not entirely surprising, though it would also not have been surprising if it had been San Francisco or another progressive fiefdom. For all the rhetoric about wicked 1 percenters and inequality, progressivism is a luxury good, and progressive-dominated enclaves are generally pretty okay places to live if you have a fair amount of money, but sort of stink if you’re in the middle or at the lower end of the earnings curve. Because most...

'In July 2010, amid the gargantuan rebuilding effort at the site of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, construction workers halted the backhoes when they uncovered something unexpected just south of where the Twin Towers once stood. At 22 feet (6.7 meters) below today's street level, in a pit that would become an underground security and parking complex, excavators found the mangled skeleton of a long-forgotten wooden ship. Now, a new report finds that tree rings in those waterlogged ribs show the vessel was likely built in 1773, or soon after, in a small shipyard near Philadelphia. What's more,...

Roughly 50 people lined up in front of Hobby Lobby’s new Totowa store Saturday to protest the company’s role in a recent Supreme Court decision that says the company can choose not to cover contraception for its employees through the Affordable Care Act.The Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain is owned by a Christian family that says it tries to run the business applying its religious beliefs. One of the parties in the decision by the high court, the family had argued that the Obamacare requirement that all contraception be covered violated a 1993 federal law that protects religious...

As the Rev. Justin Wylie took the pulpit at the Church of the Holy Innocents in Manhattan last month, anger and anxiety emanated from the pews. The church is the only one in New York City to offer a daily traditional Latin Mass, but an archdiocesan panel had recommended that it be closed. Father Wylie, a visiting priest, urged parishioners to be obedient but also to speak up, as traditionalist Catholics, for a place in the church, saying they should not be “turned out like squatters.”

Hillary Clinton drew a "Harry Potter" sized line of fans waiting to get an autographed copy of her new memoir "Hard Choices" at a Manhattan bookstore today. Hundreds of Hillary fans have camped out for hours, many overnight, outside the Union Square Barnes and Noble store to get one of the coveted wristbands which would allow them access to her first book tour stop today. By the time people were allowed to inside the store around 8:30 a.m., the line was wrapped around an entire city block -- up Park Avenue, around 18th Street, and all the way to Broadway.

A cousin of the unsecured subway grate in the taxonomy of New York City nightmares — see also: crumbling scaffolding, falling air conditioners, getting pushed onto the train tracks — the threat of the open sidewalk cellar has been legitimized on tape. This poor man, though, obviously suffering from a chronic case of the Mondays and with something else on his mind, just walked directly, almost deliberately, into the abyss yesterday in East Harlem. He was not even on his cell phone. "He didn't see what was going down. He just went right down, head first," a witness told CBS...

‘Knockout game’ suspect chased down by victim’s friend By Philip Messing A Brooklyn fare-beater allegedly punched a young woman in the face while apparently playing the “knockout game” in a Manhattan PATH station — and her friend chased him down, put him in a chokehold and forced him to apologize, sources said. Ibrahim King, 36, allegedly slugged 21-year-old Elizabeth Mejia, breaking her orbital bone, in the Ninth Street station around 3:40 a.m. Sunday. “He looks at her for a very short moment and then he pulls his right fist back and lunges across the railing and punches her in the...

Kimes, who involved son Kenneth in her devious plots, passed away Monday evening about 7:30 p.m., according to a New York state Corrections Department spokeswoman. She was convicted for murdering Upper East Side widow Irene Silverman and a Los Angeles businessman.Convicted murderer Sante Kimes is shown in court in 2004 awaiting the guilty verdict in her trial for the murder of Los Angeles businessman David Kazdin. She died Monday in a New York prison. Sante Kimes, the mastermind of a murderous mother-son grifter team in which he killed on her command, has died of natural causes at the Bedford Hills...

Belgian beer and waffle-wrapped burgers are on the way to a new Hell's Kitchen bar. The Jolly Monk, a Belgian craft beer spot, is opening this summer at 701 Ninth Ave., the space that was formerly home to the controversial bar Traffic. Hell's Kitchen Hospitality — which owns House of Brews, the New York Beer Company and Oliver's Astoria — envisions the new 74-person bar as a bastion for all things Belgian, from beer to snacks like freshly made waffles. "It's going to be a relaxed atmosphere," said co-owner Patrick Schmidt, who lives in Hell's Kitchen. "We're going to be...

With a budget of about $1 million, Patricia Marx began looking for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in Manhattan last fall. She soon realized just how limited her options were. ****** As Ms. Marx quickly learned, rising prices and an ongoing scarcity of listings mean that buyers in the million-dollar price range are increasingly out of luck or forced to make major compromises. Low inventory, high demand and a shift toward larger units in new luxury developments pushed the median sale price for a Manhattan apartment to $972,428 in the first quarter of the year, up 18.5 percent over the same...

It is the most important question being asked of dozens of New Yorkers lined up as potential jurors for the trial of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street activist accused of assaulting a police officer: what do you think of her protest movement? Unfortunately for those keen on the swift procession of justice, a series of Manhattan residents who presented themselves at the criminal courthouse this week declared that they strongly disagreed with it – and could not promise to be impartial about one of its members. “I’m involved in Wall Street things. I’m on the Wall Street side, not...

No inheritance for Anderson! CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who comes from the Vanderbilts, one of the wealthiest families in American history, said Monday, March 31, that he will not be receiving any fortune from his mother Gloria Vanderbilt. "My mom's made clear to me that there's no trust fund," Cooper told Howard Stern on his radio show. "There's none of that." Cooper's mom is the great-great-granddaughter of railroad and shipping mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt. Still stunning at 90 years old, the Manhattan socialite and former denim designer is reportedly worth a whopping $200 million. Gloria's equally-successful son, however, told Stern he...

Imagine if a former Republican presidential candidate and U.S. senator had called a current Republican president a delusional liar whose programs are wasteful. Would the mainstream media not be all over the story? Such a person would be interviewed at length by Wolf Blitzer on CNN as well as made the rounds of the morning talk shows and the Sunday news programs as well. The media buzz would be red hot on this topic for days extending into weeks. Well, there is such a person but because he is a Democrat saying these things about President Obama, we can expect...