Free Republic

Interviews with architects, engineers and energy experts on Wednesday suggest that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal to place wind turbines atop the city’s skyscrapers and bridges, as well as off the coastline of Queens and Brooklyn, would be complicated and expensive and barely begin to meet the growth in demand for electricity that is expected in the coming years. “The smaller turbines that he’s talking about almost don’t pay in terms of kilowatts per hour produced,” said Daniel Karpen, a Long Island engineering consultant who has studied the feasibility of wind power. “He’s going to need money to build them,...

Members of the carpenters union in New York City have ruined any chance that authorities there will take their union out of government oversight by beating unconscious William Davenport, a union dissident running for office in the union. After an August 5 candidates forum, the candidate was beaten by members of the carpenters union audience outside a church. Outside a CHURCH! This thuggery along with continued Mob involvement, indictments and convictions on corruption of union members convinced Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr. not to release the union from government oversight.... Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

Bloomberg has publicly said he intends to leave when his term ends on Dec. 31, 2009, but has privately expressed interest in undoing the city's cap of two four-year terms with a legislative change, not a public referendum, sources said.

SOME FAMILY MAN: Asse Sam Hoyt ALBANY - A married assemblyman got caught with his virtual pants down - busted by XXX-rated e-mails to a 19-year-old intern.....In one sex message Hoyt made it embarrassingly clear they shared not only an interest in the people's business, but in lusty sex and personal hygiene. Titled "what i wish," the Democratic assemblyman's list included: ". . . that i could be painting your toenails right now . . . that i could see you do that little cheerleader move . . . that i could be your human lollipop . . ....

Anti-war protestors win $2 million settlement from the city BY TAMER EL-GHOBASHY DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU Tuesday, August 19th 2008, 4:21 PM Anti-war activists who claim they were wrongly locked up by the NYPD during a 2003 protest won a $2 million settlement from the city Tuesday.Led by plaintiff Sarah Kunstler - the daughter of famed civil rights lawyer Bill Kunstler - the 52 protestors claimed victory."We hope our victory helps convince the city to stop violating people's rights as a matter of policy and stop wasting taxpayers' money doing so," Kunstler said. City lawyers said the deal was...

Planners seeking to rebuild the World Trade Center have always envisioned that the 16-acre site would have a vibrant streetscape with distinctive buildings, shops and cultural institutions lining a newly restored street grid. From the destruction of Sept. 11, 2001, a new neighborhood teeming with life would be born. But now, the Police Department’s latest security proposal entails heavy restrictions. According to a 36-page presentation given by top-ranking police officials in recent months, the entire area would be placed within a security zone, in which only specially screened taxis, limousines and cars would be allowed through “sally ports,” or barriers...

Embattled Rep. Charles Rangel has become an albatross around the necks of congressional candidates across the country. In at least a dozen contests, Republican challengers are demanding their Democratic rivals return donations from Rangel, who is under fire for having four rent-regulated apartments. In Montgomery, Ala., Republican hopeful Jay Love has made Bobby Bright's refusal to give back $14,000 in Rangel contributions a campaign centerpiece. "If Bobby Bright is attempting to be a clean-cut, conservative candidate with Christian values, his association with a liberal, unethical person like Charlie Rangel is going to hurt him," said Alabama GOP spokesman Philip Bryan.

In conjunction with the entire slate of Westchester County Republican State Assembly candidates, Assemblyman Greg Ball (R, C, I - Patterson) is inviting Conservative activists fed up with taxes in New York to join the "Tax Cap Express" headed to Albany for the Governor's special emergency session on August 19. The “Tax Cap Express” is an eco-friendly biodiesel fuel bus that will be transporting the delegation and tax reform advocates to Albany to rally for enactment of a property tax cap. The bus will be leaving from YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NEW YORK from the home of a resident crushed by the...

Ex-Gov. Mario Cuomo 'helped' target of probe By Kenneth Lovett Daily News Albany Bureau Sunday, August 17th 2008, 9:44 PM ALBANY - An investment firm doing business with the state pension fund sought out former Gov. Mario Cuomo to help it get more business, the Daily News has learned. Mezzacappa Management LLC contacted Cuomo months after his son, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, requested information from the company as part of a probe into a possible pay-to-play scam during former Controller Alan Hevesi's tenure. Mario Cuomo said he had recently received a call from a longtime acquaintance, famed lawyer Philip...

John Yancey leans against his truck in a field outside his home, his face contorted in anger and pain. John Yancey doesn't like the Maple Ridge Wind Farm turbines and the deal his father signed for them. "Listen," he says. The rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of wind turbines echoes through the air. Sleek and white, their long propeller blades rotate in formation, like some otherworldly dance of spindly-armed aliens swaying across the land. Yancey knows the towers are pumping clean electricity into the grid, knows they have been largely embraced by his community But Yancey hates them.

NYPD's 'Operation Sentinel' To Track EVERYTHING Radiation Censors, Surveillance Cameras Used To Screen & Follow Every Vehicle Entering Lower Manhattan Plan Aims To Provide Security Blanket Against Terrorist Attack Reporting Deborah Garcia NEW YORK (CBS) ― The NYPD is working on a plan to track every single vehicle that enters Manhattan. The initiative, called "Operation Sentinel," is aimed at preventing terror attacks. With the use of cameras and radiation censors, police plan to track anything and everything that enters the Big Apple. The New York Police Department wants to photograph the license plates of every vehicle coming into Manhattan and...

Since the late 1990s, more than 18 police commanders have left the New York City police department to run their own agencies elsewhere. This unprecedented migration has spread the Compstat revolution—the data-driven transformation of policing begun under New York police commissioner William Bratton in 1994—across the nation. Some of the transplants are well-known: Bratton himself now heads the Los Angeles Police Department; and his former first deputy, John Timoney, has led both the Miami and the Philadelphia forces. But the diaspora also includes lesser-known young Turks who rose quickly through the NYPD’s ranks during the paradigm-shattering 1990s. Now, as chiefs...

State Troopers Tim Gawronski and Gary Nuessle, along with several Wayne County Sheriff's Deputies, responded to a reported fight between five females at the apartment building at 8364 Ridge Road in Sodus on Thursday at 8:59 p.m. According to police, an ongoing feud erupted when a mother and daughter team attempted to enter an apartment. During the melee that followed, Maybelle Currington, age 47, of Apartment # 2 reportedly bit Kristy L. Holtby, age 33, in the breast and stomach. An ambulance was called and it was determined Holtby now needs to get a tetanus shot. Maybelle was charged with...

He calls himself "Jimmy Justice," a self-styled "cop-arazzi," armed only with a video camera as he prowls the streets of New York looking for law enforcement officers who are breaking the law. His targets are illegally parked city government vehicles -- particularly cars of traffic cops blocking bus stops, sitting in "no parking" zones or double-parked. Cop cars blocking fire hydrants make him particularly incensed. "Something like that is just despicable," Jimmy fumed, pointing to a police enforcement vehicle parked next to a fire hydrant on 33rd Street on Manhattan's West Side on a muggy July afternoon. "They're never allowed...

New Yorkers have been in the throes of sticker shock since this spring when the Big Apple became the first city in the country to implement a law forcing chain restaurants to post the calorie count of each food in the same size and font as the price. Restaurants have not exhausted their legal challenges, but the city will start fining violators up to $2,000 beginning Friday, say officials with the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. While some sit-down chains and fast-food eateries are waiting until the last minute, coffee shops like Starbucks — home of the 470...

American Sexpress Card: Don't jump in bed without it, founder says BY CAITLIN MILLAT DAILY NEWS WRITER Friday, August 1st 2008, 12:26 AM Monaster/NewsSTFree Certificates founder Eli Dancy is one of 15,000 cardholders. Monaster/NewsDancy displays a card. Monaster/News Call it a license to thrill.Sexually active New Yorkers looking to wise up before turning the lights down can verify their partners' sexual health status with a simple glance in their wallet. Manhattan-based company STFree Certifications provides its health-conscious customers a sexual history "license" with a phone number on the back that enables them to prove their testing backgrounds to potential...

If New York's strict antigun laws are overturned in the near future, it may be the work of a hot dog vendor. The vendor, Daniel Vargas, is due next month in court to fight misdemeanor charges that he kept an unlicensed revolver loaded on a basement shelf in his apartment. The case, which has generated 23 hearings and been heard by no fewer than 10 different judges as it winds through Brooklyn's lowest criminal court, would be of little general interest, except for the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the Second Amendment protects a right to...

"I'm like Obama. I want change"

Yonatan Stern, the "Sgan Mefaked Hakita" (deputy squad commander) of Kitat Konenut New York, insists his "paramilitary emergency armed response team" is no "group of vigilantes or a JDL [Jewish Defense League]." "The goal of the organization is to have a competent and professional group of armed volunteers ready to respond to a threat at a moment's notice in any area where Jews reside," explains the Israeli combat veteran. "We do not carry out demonstrations or political activity of any kind as we have no political agenda. Our agenda is to protect Jews wherever and whenever necessary and by any...

New York Jihad… It could be a hoax but it could also be an actual terror threat. At this time, no one is sure but investigators are not taking any chances. Cards that look like birthday invitations, sent to seven New York residents including a Fox News producer contained a serious terror threat and are now being tested for fingerprints and DNA. The story bears some similarity to the Jihad Boom postcard story followed last year. In September of 2007, investigators in Marion County, Fla., announced that they were searching for the author of nine postcards sent to different schools...

Racial slur? So what! Two police officers say black chief didn't care BY JOHN MARZULLI DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Sunday, July 27th 2008, 11:11 PM Pace for News Cops Shelron Smikle (l.), 28, and Blanch O’Neal, 38, pictured here at their lawyer’s office, plan to sue NYPD. Cairo for News The cops say when Assistant Chief Gerald Nelson (above) found out they had lodged a complaint about a black sergeant’s N-word-laced rant, Nelson repeated the N-word. Two black cops who reported a boss for using a racial slur say they were viciously chewed out by an African-American chief in the...

Three senior aides to a former governor, Eliot Spitzer, and a former state police superintendent violated state ethics laws by plotting against a former Republican majority leader of the Senate, Joseph Bruno, the state's top ethics body has concluded. More than a year after the Spitzer administration was hit with allegations that it improperly used the state police to dig up travel records that could prove damaging to the former Senate leader, the State Commission on Public Integrity handed down the first formal charges related to the scandal. It did not find evidence linking Mr. Spitzer to the scandal. The...

New York City subway to host Muslim recruit campaign Siraj Wahhaj has defended convicted would-be bombers and labeled FBI and CIA agents "real terrorists," according to a report by the New York Post. He is now attempting to convince New York City residents that Islam is a religion of peace by promoting advertisements for the Islamic Circle of North America. The campaign has been approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and is set to run four weeks in September during Ramadhan. Wahhaj, a former member of the Nation of Islam, was named by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White as one...

NEW YORK — A Muslim group, in collaboration with a Brooklyn imam once investigated as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, paid $48,000 to run Islamic advertisements on the city's subway cars this September. The ad campaign — known as the "Subway Project" — was designed to inform people about Islam and dispel common misconceptions about the religion, a representative for the Islamic Circle of North America told FOXNews.com. The story was first reported Monday in the New York Post. But the effort to plaster 1,000 subway cars with pro-Islamic messages has given new life to...

Welcome to your Monday morning blood-boiler. The NY Post reports that a jihadi group in NYC planning on running a series of subway ads is led by a Muslim imam tied to the terror plot to bomb the city’s landmarks. Submission: Allah board!An Islamic group plans to blitz 1,000 subway cars with advertisements this September in a campaign being promoted by a Brooklyn imam whom federal officials have linked to a plot to blow up city landmarks.The group says its mission is to explain the true nature of Islam to non-Muslims who believe the religion is bent on acts of...

MUSLIM SUBWAY ADS LINKED TO TERROR PLOTS - New York Post Jul 21, 2008 ... An Islamic group plans to blitz 1000 subway cars with advertisements this September in a campaign being promoted by a Brooklyn imam whom ...

Randi Weingarten has delusions of grandeur. She thinks she should be given the power of a dictator instead of those of a teachers union president. Instead of just teaching kids, Weingarten imagines that she should become doctor, nanny, nutritionist, psychologist, and mother to every kid in America. She imagines that she should be given the care and feeding of all the nation's kids. Parents? Who need 'em when we've got Mother Weingarten to trot them off to re-education camps where they will be fed and cared for on a daily basis? Catch the arrogance, see this nanny-state despot lining...

Prostitution Raid links Communist Tax Lawyer, leftist voter project, and 9/11 Truther Movement You just can't make this stuff up. Louis Posner, a National Lawyers Guild affiliated Tax Attorney, is arrested for running a Strip Club, which was a front for prostitution. What makes this case unique is that the funds were laundered through Voter March, a leftist election reform organization. ABOUT VOTER MARCHBackground: Voter March began on November 14, 2000, as four founding members organizing people who wanted to express their opposition to the irregularities and egregious conduct of Election 2000 and the direction in which an illegitimate administration...

Migration: Who Cares? by: Ben Giles, July 17, 2008 Coming to the conclusion that migration should not be thought of as a distinctly national issue, authors Marie Price and Lisa Benton-Short presented data on their research of metropolitan cities experiencing and influx of foreign-born immigrants. Their new book, Migration to the Metropolis: The Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities, reveals that 20 major cities across the globe account for 37 million of foreign-born residents. Or, one in five immigrants will choose one of those cities as their end destination. Audience reception to the authors’ July 15 presentation of their book was...

TIM Robbins' and Susan Sarandon's mission to protect the poor and needy doesn't apply to their Greenwich Village neighborhood. The Oscar-winning liberals recently attended a Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing to oppose St. Vincent's plea to build a new, larger hospital on West 12th Street, three blocks from their home.

For decades, the proud seal of New York City, with its depiction of a sailor and a Manhattan Indian, of beavers and flour barrels and the sails of a windmill, has celebrated 1625 as the year the city was founded. There’s just one problem: Most historians say the year has hardly any historical significance. The first settlers arrived in what would become part of New York City on a Dutch ship as early as 1623; some say 1624. The Dutch “purchased” Manhattan in 1626. The first charter was granted in 1653. And the most notable event of 1625? Dutch settlers...

The FAA has offered an unprecedented $100,000 bonus to air-traffic controllers throughout the country to lure them to the New York area's five understaffed radar centers - and has even begun trolling local high schools to recruit for the jobs. The FAA began its recruitment efforts in high schools and through online ads on MySpace and Craigslist because of a severe staffing shortage and lack of experience among workers at its air-control towers.   (edit) By 2011, 59 percent of all controllers will have less than five years on the job.  

Federal officials aren’t supposed to cause bank runs. In fact, much of the New Deal bank regulatory apparatus was set up for the purpose of eliminating such panics. When FDR was hit with a massive set of bank runs shortly after taking office, he gave an address in order to calm terrified depositors, assuring them that the banks would reopen shortly, and that everything would be fine. But Chuck Schumer is no FDR. He doesn’t stop bank runs; he starts them. Or, at least, has started one. The collapse of Indymac bank, the second largest bank failure in American history,...

Times climb - again! Man scales paper's headquarters to protest Al Qaeda BY WIL CRUZ and JILL COFFEY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS Updated Wednesday, July 9th 2008, 4:34 AM Taggart for NewsDavid Malone keeps climbing after hanging a banner on the Times building early Wednesday morning. Another climber with a cause has gone up the side of The New York Times Building in midtown.But unlike the two men who made it to the top of the 52-story structure June 5, David Malone only made it to about the 11th floor early this morning.Malone called the Daily News and acknowledged...

The Red Sox beat the Yankees on Friday in the Bronx, but that didn't seem to satisfy a group of rowdy young people in Falmouth who attacked a family driving home from a Fourth of July fireworks display. Their reason, police said: The car had New York plates, and their attackers presumed they were Yankee fans. As the annual beachside fireworks show was letting up about 10 p.m., traffic congestion turned side streets into parking lots as thousands tried to leave. The New York family was stuck on Worcester Court when police say a group started yelling at them, accusing...

Man held in Fourth of July attack By Ira Kantor Sunday, July 6, 2008 A 20-year-old man was arrested Friday night for allegedly attacking a New York Yankees fan with a baseball bat after a Fourth of July fireworks display in Falmouth. According to police, officers responded to 153 Worcester Court after receiving a report about a fight in progress. On arrival, officers noticed several youths, including Robert Donald Correia of Falmouth, bothering a family in its car because the vehicle had New York license plates. Police said Correia and others accused the family of being Yankees fans. The family...

City EMS crews were hit with a surge in call volume last week leading up to the Fourth of July, forcing some 911 callers to wait as long as 80 minutes for an ambulance, EMS sources told The Post.

Drug dens, homeless shantytowns and prostitution are rampant in New York City's parks, a Post investigation found. Comparing the manicured lawns of Manhattan's Central Park to the barren, rat-infested eyesore of Spring Creek Park in Brooklyn, the disparity is shocking. While the Bloomberg administration boasts that parks are in better shape than they've been in four decades, an investigation of 70 parks over the last nine months found: * Clusters of homeless living in tents and small shantytowns in 10 parks, including Riverside Park near 148th Street in Manhattan. * Hookers brazenly plying their 24-hour trade, including at Printers Park...

New York is having a cannoli conundrum. The shell-encased treats at two of the city's top bakeries tested well above the Health Department's trans-fat limit that went into effect Tuesday, according to lab results commissioned by the Daily News. Veniero's, the popular East Village eatery where one cannoli contained trans-fat levels four times above the city limit, vowed Friday to pull the shells from the shelves until the supplier it deals with bans the bad-for-you fat. "I want to thank you for alerting me," owner Robert Zerilli said. Veniero's wasn't alone. The taboo fat was also found in a cannoli...

This vicious mugger has attacked six women and one man since April on the Upper West Side and West Harlem, police said yesterday. The thug targets his victims randomly and strikes in the early evening or early morning. He first punches his victim in the face, then demands cash and valuables.

Spitzer "actually enjoyed destroying people," said a former NYSE managing director, Richard Riker. "Spitzer's legacy is tarnished and trashed because of [the prostitution scandal that led to his resignation] and the Richard Grasso lawsuit suit." "[The Court of Appeals decision upholding Grasso's pay package] becomes part of the realization that Spitzer was no more than a legal lightweight who bullied and slashed his way through Wall Street using the power of his office," Riker said. Spitzer's personal reputation was already in tatters. Revelations that Spitzer had a years-long addiction to high-priced prostitutes - and that he might be indicted himself...

A teenager was fatally shot on the lower East Side during a bloody 12-hour stretch that left four other people in the city murdered, cops said Tuesday. Vincent Cruz, 17, of Washington Heights, was shot once in the head at about 2:10 a.m. Tuesday on Eldridge St. during a fight with a group of men, police said.

The city's murder rate is up nearly 8 percent this year - with surges in rapes and robberies as well, police statistics show. Nevertheless, the NYPD said the city's overall crime has dipped 3 percent so far this year. Through Sunday, there were 238 murders, compared with 221 during the same period last year - a 7.6 increase. Five additional murders have been reported since Sunday. The rise in deadly violence has been accompanied by a troubling 6.2 percent increase in rapes, as well as a 4.4 percent rise in robberies.

An antique cherry wood chair scorched to its springs by a fireball inside a Battery Park City apartment. Family letters and wedding invitations miraculously recovered from the rubble. A $2 bill pulled from a victim's bruised wallet that finally convinced his wife he was never coming home. These are the everyday objects of Sept. 11, 2001, all of which will end up in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

New blood: Violent gang life is passed down from parent to child BY VERONIKA BELENKAYA DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Sunday, June 15th 2008, 2:13 AM Warga/NewsA longtime member of the Lating Kings, here with his 4-year-old, says he wants to be a peacemaker and hopes his son follows suit. Newborn Blood, known as a Blood drop, is draped with beads and flanked by guns. Police later seized the pistols from the parents.  The images as chilling as they are heartbreaking: An infant with a semiautomatic handgun next to each tiny shoulder. A child no more than a year old...

Rev. Al Sharpton plans Bell protest at Yankee Stadium for All-Star Game BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Monday, June 9th 2008, 4:00 AM The Rev. Al Sharpton threatened Sunday to disrupt baseball's historic All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium next month unless the state passes new laws to curb police misconduct.A month after protesters blocked bridges and tunnels during rush hour, Sharpton said he wants to bring the outrage over the Sean Bell shooting to the national stage July 15 by targeting the midsummer classic. "We have plans to do the same at the All-Star Game," Sharpton said. "We...

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...

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The New York state Legislature has given final passage to a bill that would charge $250 for pet owners who don't pick up after their dogs in some parts of the state. That would more than double the current fine. Dog owners currently have to pay $100 if they don't pick up the poop. The change would apply to the five boroughs of New York City, Albany and Yonkers. The Assembly passed the bill Wednesday and the Senate had already passed it. A spokesman for Gov. David Paterson said the governor will review the measure.

Four New RFAs Issued Governor Paterson on May 8, 2008 announced the availability of $109 million in funding for stem cell research initiatives, with the issuance of four new Requests for Applications. excerpt http://stemcell.ny.gov/about_NYSTEM_staff.html

A Johnson Road resident has periodically been confronted with a bag of trash deposited in her driveway and it appears crows may have helped identify a culprit. Fed up, the resident called the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department this week and reported the latest unwelcome gift. The resident reported that trash has been deposited in her driveway several times over the years... Arriving at the residence on Wednesday, Dow said he picked up a trash bag that had been dropped off and when he did so, part of a court summons fell out through a hole pecked out by crows. The...