Free Republic

On Morning Joe today, the Reverend Al Sharpton agreed with Mike Barnicle that anti-Semitism explains the opposition to Mike Bloomberg in his gun control campaign. H/t NB reader cobokat. If ever there were an expert on anti-Semitism in America, it could be Al Sharpton, he of Freddie's Fashion Mart and Crown Heights riot infamy. The spectacle of Sharpton lamenting the supposed anti-Semitism of others was ironic, if not repulsive. Note that Dan Senor, who might also know something about anti-Semitism, being Jewish and having attended university in Israel, rejected the notion. View the video here.

You'd think someone who works for "Fortune" magazine would have more have more respect for free people and free markets. But on Morning Joe, today, there was "Fortune" editor Leigh Gallagher boosting Michael Bloomberg's nanny state. Gallagher approvingly quoted Mayor Mike to the effect "sometimes you have to do not what people want you to do. You have to take people by the hand and lead them." Gallagher also, incredibly, confused the ability of entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs to offer products that people, exercising their free will, find appealing with the ability of politicians to use the force of law...

As Michael Bloomberg begins the last year of his third and final term as New York City mayor, the 70-year-old shows no sign of slowing down. Bloomberg, who founded Bloomberg L.P. in the early 1980s, is considering another big splash in the media business by acquiring The Financial Times, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, USA Today reports that the New York Times itself is a Bloomberg acquisition target, but the New York paper has refrained from reporting that. …

Bloomberg is currently accepting proposals for the apartments, which will be located on E 27th Street and First Avenue in Kips Bay. The apartments would help young professionals find appropriate housing in the city while they start their careers. The craziest thing about these 300-square-foot apartments (which are about the size of half a subway car) is that they will cost around $2,000 a month to rent. Under current zoning laws, all apartments must be at least 400 square feet, but Bloomberg said he plans to change the zoning laws to make the new micro-units legal.

Mayor Bloomberg is a wretched human being. He’s an ultra-rich limousine liberal who wants to impose his views on ordinary people. I’ve previously written about his statist efforts to ban bake sales, and I’ve noted with mixed feelings his proposal to tell food stamp recipients what they’re allowed to buy.Now he wants to criminalize large sodas. Holman Jenkins writes about this silly idea in the Wall Street Journal. Mike Bloomberg’s move to regulate the size of sodas sold in his city illustrates why it’s a good thing he is a mayor of New York and not the czar of all...

Mayor Bloomberg struck a tougher tone with the Occupy Wall Street protestors Wednesday - and said the city might be forced to "take actions" at Zuccotti Park. Bloomberg said the city must listen to the residents and business owners near the protest site who are starting to loudly complain about the demonstrators. "This isn't an occupation of Wall Street," Bloomberg told reporters. "It's an occupation of a growing, vibrant residential neighborhood in Lower Manhattan and it's really hurting small businesses and families." Bloomberg's harsh assessment came a day after he received a letter from Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, Rep. Jerrold...

You might have thought that Mike Bloomberg—with his trans fat and smokes snatching—was the epitome of nanny staters. But the Big Apple mayor's got nothing on another New Yorker--Nicholas Kristof. In his New York Times column of today, Equality, A True Soul Food, Kristof preaches the urgent need for income redistribution as a means of . . . improving our souls. According to Kristof, "the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul." And hey: what says soul improvement more than . . . raising taxes?! More excerpts and analysis after...

This article in the NY Observer indicates Michael Bloomberg, Mayor and businessman, just may have broken the law in his last campaign.

The Mosque planned for Ground Zero is expected to pass a major hurdle Tuesday. Board members at the Landmarks Preservation Commission intend to vote unanimously against granting protected status to the 152-year-old building that would be knocked down to make way for the project, the Daily News has learned. The Italianate building on Park Place, two blocks north of Ground Zero, simply does not meet architectural criteria for protection from the city, sources with knowledge of the issue said. "The building is not worthy," a source said. "It does not rise to the level of an individual landmark." Opponents of the...

It is surely one of the most unusual pitches in this year's gubernatorial elections -- a Tony Soprano-like figure defending New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's recent efforts to close the gun show loophole and warning Virginians not to get too attached to their Second Amendment freedoms "if ya know what's good for ya." Bloomberg underwrote a commercial in April that attacked former Virginia Atty. Gen. Bob McDonnell for his pro-gun positions and pushed for the closure of the state's "gun show loophole." Now Bloomberg is running for re-election, McDonnell is running for governor and the nation's larger gun lobby --...

Commenting about the recent shooting at a fitness center near Pittsburgh in which three women were killed and nine others wounded by a gunman who then killed himself, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes: We’ve seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter. ... Herbert is right about one thing: Men are much likelier to commit violent crimes – as well as gun homicides – than women. ... Unfortunately - and predictably -...

Liberals know best, and they'll tell you so.Liberals profess that it is a subjective morality that decides whether to rip the life from a woman's womb is right or wrong, yet they are quick to call the act of smoking as a universal immorality. Liberals gripe about wanting government out of their bedrooms, but have no problem if it shows up in the kitchen ... or at work.Nanny-statism is alive and well.If you could take a time machine back to, say, 1980 - or even 1990 - and sit down to talk with someone from that time about some of...

The issue came up yesterday, when the mayor mentioned on his weekly WOR radio show that he had spotted someone exiting the subway with a bicycle just as he was getting on that morning for his commute to City Hall. "I don't run the subway system, I don't run the MTA, but if I did - if I had total power - I guess I'd say it's too crowded for bikes," the mayor said. -snip With an ambitious agenda to stave off climate change, the city is promoting pedaling by adding numerous bicycle lanes in all five boroughs. But the...

Yes, yes, yes, it's much too early to start thinking about running mates. Too bad. People are doing it anyway. And even though they won't admit it, odds are that Sens. John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are giving it at least some thought. So, too, are people who turn up their noses at the suggestion they might be a good fit, yet secretly harbor ambitions of getting the nod. Veepstakes speculation - always an undercurrent with a presidential election afoot - intensified this past week after Mitt Romney dropped out of the race, helping to clear McCain's...

What does it say about the secular state of the MSM that a liberal media member has to defensively clarify for the record that she doesn't object to a candidate having "a moral grounding"? During the opening half-hour of today's Morning Joe, a clip was played of Mike Huckabee describing to a South Carolina gathering how he found his faith as a 10-year old attending a vacation Bible school, and hoped that others had experienced that joy and would share it with others. JOE SCARBOROUGH: The thing that I found is, if people don't get too down in the weeds...

Would a Mike Bloomberg presidential candidacy be the Dems' worst nightmare? Yes, according to Bill Schneider. The CNN Senior Political Analyst described the NYC Mayor in terms that should make Hillary Clinton's blood run cold: "a Ralph Nader, with money." Schneider offered his analysis at 4:40 PM ET today on the Situation Room. View video here.

After picking a legal fight with gun dealers down South, Mayor Bloomberg could soon come under fire in courtrooms in South Carolina and Georgia. Two recent court rulings — one from yesterday — suggest that Mr. Bloomberg may want to reserve a few days on his calendar next year in case he is called to face a jury over allegations that he defamed two gun dealers by speaking ill of them in the press. "He's going to get a reception that's very different than the one he gets from his handpicked audiences across the country," a former congressman who is...

In his most detailed comments on the Iraq war, Mayor Bloomberg last night suggested the United States was in the same difficult position as the British in the Revolutionary War - facing a determined band of insurgents. Bloomberg said the comparison occurred to him when he visited his mother recently and was driving through Lexington, Mass., where a scrubby group of farmers rose up against a well-trained militia more than 200 years ago. "We're the British," the mayor said during an interview with Tom Brokaw at Cooper Union, part of a series featuring potential presidential contenders hosted by former Gov....

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PR- 302-07 August 17, 2007 MAYOR BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCES MORE THAN HALF OF GUN DEALERS NAMED IN NEW YORK CITY LAWSUITS HAVE SETTLED Two More Gun Dealers Enter into Settlements Consistent With Prior Agreements Judge Finds City Has Right to Hold Dealers Accountable for Harm Caused To New Yorkers Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced that two additional gun dealers named in the New York City's lawsuits against 27 dealers caught selling illegally have agreed to settlements with the City, bringing the total number of gun dealer settlements to 14. The settlements were announced two days after Judge...

A key Congressional committee dealt a major blow to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign against illegal firearms yesterday, refusing to allow police departments broader access to data that tracks guns sales. The bill restricting release of the information, approved by the House Appropriations Committee, must still be passed by the full House and reconciled with a similar Senate measure. But since the Senate bill is considered even more beneficial to the gun industry, the Bloomberg administration appeared resigned to defeat. A statement from Mayor Bloomberg called the vote “a profound disappointment.” “While I was hopeful that the Congressional committee would...