Free Republic

ALBANY – Hours after his office received a subpoena as part of a criminal probe of the Buffalo Billion program, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Friday ordered a review of his own signature economic development program, which is anchored by the massive SolarCity project along the Buffalo River. The governor’s counsel, Alphonso David, said Friday that the investigation begun last year by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has “recently raised questions of improper lobbying and undisclosed conflicts of interest by some individuals” that may involve cases in which the state was “defrauded.” The revelation by Cuomo comes after months in which...

BURLINGAME, Calif. — Donald J. Trump got a taste on Friday of what his next month of campaigning in California could be like. He was forced to exit his motorcade and walk through a field, climbing an embankment with Secret Service agents helping him, to avoid angry demonstrators on the street. “We went under a fence and through a fence, and oh, boy, it felt like I was crossing the border, actually,” Mr. Trump said when he finally made it to a ballroom to speak at California’s Republican Party convention. For the next 25 minutes, though, Mr. Trump spoke little...

President Obama has proposed granting Israel the largest package of military aid ever provided by the United States to another nation, but he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remain deeply at odds over a figure for the assistance despite months of negotiations. American officials have balked as their Israeli counterparts insisted on more generous terms for a new 10-year military aid package that could top $40 billion. The divide, which could have broad national security implications for both the United States and Israel, is exacerbated by the pent-up animosity between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, which has been stoked by...

At ease in a Manhattan hotel ballroom filled mostly with Democratic women, Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday made a broad appeal for women to support her Senate campaign, casting her Republican opponent, Representative Rick A. Lazio, as a bully in last week's debate and dismissing his tax plan as misleading and mathematically unsound. (snip) Most pointedly, however, Mrs. Clinton exploited an opportunity before a friendly audience of women to make a concerted attack on Mr. Lazio's debate tactics. Many supporters of Mrs. Clinton said they found Mr. Lazio to be pushy and disrespectful during the debate in Buffalo -- bullying her...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — More than a hundred people have been arrested in the Bronx in what authorities are calling the largest gang takedown in New York City history. Authorities are expected to announce charges Wednesday against 120 alleged members and associates of two rival street gangs.

n this case, however, the Google search on the slogan or hashtag allows the Propaganda Man to verify for himself that Al Sharpton did indeed tell his listeners, "I don't believe in marching! I believe in offing the pigs! Well, they got pigs out here! You ain't offed one of them!" and "I'll off the man. Well, off him! Plenty of crackers walking around here tonight!" The Propaganda Man can also verify independently that Hillary Clinton has made at least two appearances at Sharpton's National Action Network, where she praised Sharpton and essentially solicited his support for her candidacy. This...

Rudy Giuliani: My thought is that Trump is the nominee. I supported him before. I support him now. I fully endorse him 100% and I urge other Republicans to get behind him. We may have preferred somebody else but he is going to be the candidate. And now we have to do the best we can to make sure we defeat Hillary Clinton. The fact that Cruz and Kasich had to get together in this backroom deal, is devastating. The American people on both the Republican side and Democratic side are telling us something. They’re telling us they don’t like...

PARIS — Ten young Muslim men, bored by a mundane life in France and haunted by a “feeling of uselessness,” as one put it, were seduced by a leading Islamic State recruiter in Europe in 2013. Within months, they were in Syria under the watchful eyes of hooded, Kalashnikov-wielding militants, doing push-ups, fiddling with weapons and imbibing the ideology. But the harsh regimen, most have since told investigators, was not to their liking, and it was not long before they hastened back to their families in the Strasbourg area, where they were almost immediately picked up by the French authorities....

The reparations movement, which calls for compensating the descendants of generations of enslaved Americans going back 250 years, has failed to gain traction in this country for a variety of reasons. Most Americans see slavery as an artifact of the distant past that has no bearing on the nation’s present. And even people who are sympathetic to the reparations idea — and who acknowledge the continued imprint of slavery on society — have often argued that there is no way to distinguish descendants who have provable claims to compensation from those who do not, partly because enslaved people usually went...

ALBANY — The head investigator for the state Board of Elections probed the 2014 fundraising efforts by Mayor de Blasio and his team on behalf of the Senate Democrats and found enough “willful and flagrant” violations to warrant a criminal referral to the Manhattan DA’s office. The Daily News obtained a bombshell memo state Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Officer Risa Sugarman sent to the board’s four commissioners on Jan. 4 recommending the referral. “I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place,” Sugarman wrote. “The violations discovered by this investigation can...

ALBANY — The head investigator for the state Board of Elections probed the 2014 fundraising efforts by Mayor de Blasio and his team on behalf of the Senate Democrats and found enough “willful and flagrant” violations to warrant a criminal referral to the Manhattan DA’s office. The Daily News obtained a bombshell memo state Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Officer Risa Sugarman sent to the board’s four commissioners on Jan. 4 recommending the referral. “I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place,” Sugarman wrote. “The violations discovered by this investigation can...

An investigation by the New York State Board of Elections found evidence of flagrant violations of campaign finance law by a team of people that Mayor Bill de Blasio created to raise money for Democrats running for the State Senate in 2014, according to a confidential board report. The board sent the report to Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, three months ago, prompting a criminal investigation into the fund-raising. The mayor’s Senate effort, which failed in its goal to wrest the legislative body from Republican control, has proved damaging to him in multiple ways. Democrats remained in...

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday that he will impose mandates on the commercial real estate sector to achieve dramatic greenhouse gas emissions among the city's building stock — by far the city's biggest contributor to global warming. In an announcement tied to Earth Day, the mayor's office said the requirements, along with city programs and incentives, would help kickstart the mayor's goal of cutting building emissions dramatically over the next 35 years. The mandates are a significant development for the city's real estate world. When de Blasio announced a plan two years ago to cut building emissions, he threatened...

On Capitol Hill, Representative Chris Van Hollen is, literally and figuratively, a Democratic fair-haired boy. An American son of diplomats born while his parents served in Pakistan, he has used his fund-raising savvy, policy smarts and easy manner to position himself, party elders assumed, as a potential Democratic speaker of the House. Instead, Mr. Van Hollen, now running for the Senate in his home state of Maryland, is fighting for his survival in an identity politics primary that raises an explosive question: Should a white man, or a black woman, inherit the seat held for 30 years by Barbara A....

When Donald Trump’s political credentials as a Republican and/or conservative are challenged, he likes to remind people that Ronald Reagan was a Democrat once and managed to evolve over time. Except that Reagan’s conversion was real and he had two terms as governor of California to prove his bona fides before he ran for president as a conservative Republican. As Reagan campaign manager Stu Spencer and speechwriter Ken Khachiagin note in a Real Clear Politics piece: Yes, Ronald Reagan migrated from being a liberal Democrat to the gold standard for conservative Republicans. But Reagan’s views evolved over four decades’ worth...

According to Kerick, who by the way spent a great deal of time down at Ground Zero, Donald Trump displayed incredible generosity and concern towards the volunteers and first responders who worked down at “The Pile” sifting through debris for body remains. Bernie told me without hesitation, “Trump instructed hundreds of his hotel workers to head down to Ground Zero and offer a hand doing whatever needed to be done. Be it hand out water, food, etc, etc.” I asked if the cameras caught any of this? Kerick explained there were no cameras permitted in the area, and Trump knew...

Three government officials were charged Wednesday in the lead-tainted water crisis that terrorized Flint, Mich. Two officials with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Flint’s laboratory and water quality supervisor were slapped with a slew of criminal charges, the state’s attorney general announced Wednesday. Mike Glasgow, a supervisor at Flint's water plant, is charged with tampering with evidence and willful neglect of office. Prosecutors alleged he meddled with water tests so the results showed less lead than was actually present, MLive reported. Stephen Busch and Mike Prysby — a district supervisor and a district engineer respectively in the state...

Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple reports that The New York Times is getting very serious about diversity goals in recruiting, hiring, and promoting. Chief Executive Mark Thompson raised eyebrows at a gathering of managers on the business and news sides of the newspaper. According to three Wemple sources, “Supervisors who fail to meet upper management’s requirements in recruiting and hiring minority candidates or who fail to seek out minority candidates for promotions face some stern consequences: They’ll be either encouraged to leave or be fired.” …

If the opinion polls are correct, Sen. Ted Cruz will be shown a thing or two on Tuesday by the New York voters he’s been insulting by going on about fellow Republican presidential contender Donald Trump’s “New York values.’’Everyone knows what values he meant, Cruz says. We sure do. Cruz meant freedom, respect, diversity and striving. But he disdains those values when it means gays are free, women are respected, and immigrants strive. Unfortunately for Cruz, those all-inclusive values help build prosperity — and win national elections.Here are some of our New York values:Hard work. If you can do the job,...

This year’s singularly perverse presidential race -- on both sides -- perfectly illustrates Mr. Dooley’s observation that “Politics ain’t beanbag.” In fact, in almost makes action in the Roman Coliseum seem gentle by comparison! AT contributor Jack Cashill describes this race succinctly in his compelling article here: “The respective campaigns are vulgar, crass, sleazy, and dishonest ….” However, having looked away from the gore and closed my ears to the cacophony, I am supporting Donald Trump given the alternatives. but I think a look at the current state of play is in order before I attempt to justify my acceptance...