Free Republic

Officer’s vital signs plummet after being shot in the head By Larry Celona, Shawn Cohen, Jamie Schram and Bruce Golding The distraught family of NYPD Officer Brian Moore was preparing for the worst Sunday as his condition deteriorated from a bullet wound to the head that left him on life support. Moore’s parents, including his retired-cop dad, Raymond, were joined by his police partner and dozens of other officers at Jamaica Hospital after he began bleeding uncontrollably and his blood pressure plummeted early Sunday, sources told The Post. At one point, a police chaplain was called to the hospital after...

New York Times Co. shares leaped 10.7 percent in after-hours trading after Fox Business Network reported billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg had expressed renewed interest in buying the paper. The former New York City mayor was prepared to pay up to $5 billion to acquire the Gray Lady — more than double the $2.3 billion market cap of the company. Bloomberg LP completely dismissed the FBN report as untrue. “There is no truth to this rumor,” Ty Trippet, a spokesman for the data and business news service, said in an e-mail. Mike Bloomberg has in the past expressed interest in buying...

GRIN clink on link http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/business/media/new-york-times-company-q1-earnings.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

An NYPD cop was shot in the head and chest and critically wounded in Queens on Saturday. The anti-crime officer worked out of the 105th Precinct in Queens Village and was on duty when he was hit at around 6:15 p.m. It was not clear whether he was in uniform – anti-crime officers often do plainclothes patrols. A suspect was initially believed to be holed up in a nearby building at 212th Street and 104th Avenue. Police sent hostage negotiaters to try to talk him out – only to discover it was a false tip. The search has now expanded....

Over the past decade or so as $10 million apartments have prevailed in New York and more and more neighborhoods have been given over to the kind of luxury shopping required to fill them, it has been common to say that the city has turned into a “playground for the rich.” At the same time, of course, New York has turned into a playground of the more literal kind, with a child-centric ethos bearing well-established variants of urban nuisance: stroller gridlock in gentrifying areas, car services that cater to 5-year-olds, sidewalk whining that in some cases becomes its own source...

This NYT story, an obvious attempt at a gotcha that’ll damage Cruz among his base, will do more damage to the two businessmen within their own circle of allies, I suspect. It’s one thing for Ted Cruz, social conservative, to socialize with gay friends. It’s another for gays to socialize with — gasp — Ted Cruz, social conservative. During the gathering, according to two attendees, Mr. Cruz said he would have no problem if one of his daughters was gay. He did not mention his opposition to same-sex marriage, saying only that marriage is an issue that should be...

Hillary Clinton delivered the first important speech of the 2016 presidential campaign in New York on Wednesday, kicking off what she pledged would be an honest conversation about race and justice in America, and, beyond that, a period of meaningful reform. As the speech drew to a close, she acknowledged “a leader we can look to” on issues of policing and public safety, a man who helped make his city “both good and great”: David Dinkins. Some long-time New Yorkers cocked an ear: David Dinkins? The mayor whose tenure saw the highest homicide rates in the city’s history? The one...

Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the Senate’s No. 3 ranking Democrat, is turning to the head of the Catholic Church for a little help with policy. “If they won’t listen to @SenateDems maybe they’ll listen to @Pontifex when it comes to #equalpay #FairShot,” Mr. Schumer tweeted Wednesday. Schumer also linked to an article from The Washington Post in which Pope Francis said Wednesday the fact that a pay disparity exists between men and women is “pure scandal.”

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Some feel it is oppressive when police officers in New York arrest people for seemingly minor offenses like cycling on a sidewalk. And although these types of arrests are down dramatically, there is a move in the City Council to decriminalize low-level offenses like littering, fare evasion, public drinking, public urination, cycling on a sidewalk and loitering after hours in a city park. Supporters of the plan say they should be treated like parking violations, not crimes. In Park Slope, just eight people were arrested for sidewalk cycling from 2008 to 2011, but there were more...

The immediacy of social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, offers us a window into the prejudices of others that is unprecedented in the history of our society. Not a day passes in the United States when some person does not commit career suicide, achieve viral fame, or both by posting to Twitter or Facebook. A hundred and forty characters or less can make a hero or freshly mint a villain. All it takes is an ill-chosen word or, perhaps more accurately, a moment of honesty. We are all creatures of prejudice to one degree or another; we all harbor likes,...

CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin had choice words for President Obama last night when she appeared on “The Lead” with Jake Tapper. ...“Both Mayor Rawlings-Blake and President Obama, today, using the word “thug,”” Tapper said after showing a clip of Mayor Rawlings-Blake speaking. “Sunny, you take issue that?” “I do,” Hostin responded. “It’s not a word, certainly, that I’m comfortable with. It’s not a word that I use. I think that we can all agree that that word, that term has been racialized, and I think what I saw during the riots was, I saw a lot of crimes being...

Scott Walker enters the Republican presidential race with far stronger ties to the party’s biggest fund-raisers than any other candidate besides Jeb Bush.Roughly half of the nation’s top 250 Republican donors have given money to Mr. Walker in his campaigns for Wisconsin governor, according to an Upshot analysis of Federal Election Commission records and state records. By comparison, 30 percent have given to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, 20 percent to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and 10 percent to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.A presidential campaign is a chance for candidates to introduce themselves to top fund-raisers, and...

New Yorkers familiar with Baltimore say tensions between police and residents—especially young people in that city—have been at a boiling point for years. "Many of them are not really heard. Their future of course in a place like Baltimore is very tenuous towards success. And I believe they acted out," says retired NYPD Chief Kevin Clark. Kevin Clark is a retired NYPD Chief and was Baltimore's Police Commissioner. He says factories have left Baltimore, creating poverty and despair. "It is probably some of the roughest neighborhoods in America. Baltimore has probably one of the most drug-addicted city's in the United...

More New Yorkers are keeping their nests empty. The city’s birth rate is the lowest since 1936 — having steadily declined over the past decade, according to data obtained by The Post. “This is a very troubling trend,” said Conservative Party state chairman Mike Long. “The economy is hurting families and the development of families.” “If we don’t produce enough young people, society won’t be able to pay for Social Security and Medicaid,” he warned.

BATON ROUGE, La. — THE debate over religious liberty in America presents conservatives and business leaders with a crucial choice. In Indiana and Arkansas, large corporations recently joined left-wing activists to bully elected officials into backing away from strong protections for religious liberty. It was disappointing to see conservative leaders so hastily retreat on legislation that would simply allow for an individual or business to claim a right to free exercise of religion in a court of law. Our country was founded on the principle of religious liberty, enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Why shouldn’t an individual or business...

New York City-based gay businessman Ian Reisner recently hosted a “fireside chat” with Sen. Ted Cruz in Manhattan. You read that correctly: a successful LGBT community member invited one of the most notoriously anti-LGBT politicians in the U.S. to his home. His business partner, Mati Weiderpass, even posted a photo of the two together on Facebook (seen above). Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass are called “pioneers in the gay hospitality industry” by The New York Times. The piece talks about how “opposition to President Obama,” the single best president on LGBT issues, was a focal point of the evening in...

It’s hard not to feel sympathy for Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass, the gay businessmen who invited a dozen people to dine with Senator Ted Cruz, the presidential poser, at their New York home. Mr. Reisner and Mr. Weiderpass had evident good intentions. There is certainly a shortage in this country of sensible political communication. It is, however, equally hard to understand what on earth they thought they were doing. There is not a Republican on the national scene who supports the right of Americans to marry whomever they choose. Very few of them truly believe in protecting the civil...

NYSUT is promising that they "will win the war" that is being waged against them by "well-funded, aggressive, cold blooded radical extremists." The front cover of a new flier released by NYSUT shows fists raised with the headline "WE WILL WIN THE WAR" written above: Inside the flier, the union promises states, "We will win the war on teachers and working families!" A war is being waged by "extremists" all over the US, according to the flier, and "a tsunami of tenure attacks, voucher schemes, privately owned charter schools and funding cuts" is washing "across the country and the tidal...

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio once again refused to endorse his former boss, Hillary Clinton, in remarks today. "This is a different country we’re living in right now, and I think we need to hear a vision that relates to this tim," de Blasio said.

Despite repeated claims to the contrary, Mayor de Blasio is positioning himself to be the leftist “progressive” alternative to Wall Street-friendly Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president, a national party operative told The Post. De Blasio’s hope, the operative said, is a “draft de Blasio’’ movement will develop among progressive activists over the next several months that will lead to the mayor being able to defeat Clinton in the primary elections next year in much the same way leftist Sen. George McGovern successfully challenged the initially front-running establishment Democratic candidate, Sen. Edmund Muskie, more than 40 years...