Free Republic

What are parents to do when their child comes home from school with stories about "this creepy guy in my class" – and it turns out to be the teacher? That’s a very real concern for parents with children in New York City public schools, where 14 teachers of highly dubious character have been reinstated to the classroom – and two others have been given "desk duty" – thanks to appeals by their powerful teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers. NYDailyNews.com reports that 16 teachers "kept their jobs after being brought up on egregious charges, some sexual, some involving...

The report by the NY Times that it would take up to 27 years for Chevy Volt buyers to save enough money in gas costs to make up for the high price of the car must be very confusing for apologists of the vehicle. The normal defense for any criticism is to accuse sources of having a right wing hate of the car. But the NY Times? The very vocal Volt defenders, who are quick to attack anyone who doesn't agree that the car is a technological marvel worthy of billions of dollars of taxpayer largess, will have to...

Today's front-page article in the New York Times on the Trayvon Martin case repeated NBC's attempt to cast George Zimmerman as a racist by selectively editing his 911 call. Here is the 911 call transcript: ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about. 911 DISPATCHER: Okay. And this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic? ZIMMERMAN: He looks black. And here is what the Times reported: “Hey, we’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood,” Mr. Zimmerman said to start the conversation with the...

Sixteen New York City public school teachers have been singled out by education officials for pervy classroom behavior — but they can’t be fired, the Daily News has learned. One instructor allegedly bent a kid over a chair and thrust into him from behind, saying “I’ll show you what is gay.” Another couldn’t stop calling girls in his gym class “sexy.” And yet another is accused of telling a student: “I slept with your mother last night.” Fourteen of the shady instructors are still working with city kids — and two of them have been yanked from the classroom after...

I was not planning on doing any reporting tonight, but while walking through the city something caught my eye, and it was not this: The Village Voice dispenser and a few others are a common site in NYC. What caught my eye was this one: Walking near the halal invaded area of Madison Square Garden, I spotted the Pakistan Post dispenser. This was the first time I had noticed one of them. Since then I saw another one about a dozen locks away, and was told one has been located in Queens. The about page of the publication states they...

The Manhattan-based madam, Anna Gristina, arrested last week for running a high-end escort service was warned of an impending crackdown on escort services by her client Attorney General Elliot Spitzer in 2005. Kristin Davis, who ran a Manhattan call-girl service used by disgraced former Gov. Spitzer, said she shared a booker, Winnie Wong, with Gristina. Davis said she once spoke to Wong, who told her that Spitzer alerted Gristina to a 2005 investigation. Davis has taken and passed a lie detector test regarding her conversation with Wong in which Wong declared that Spitzer had given Gristina the warning.

NEW YORK (AP) — An undercover police detective who fired the first bullets in a 50-shot barrage that killed an unarmed New York City man as he left his bachelor party has been fired and three other officers involved in the slaying will resign, ending a disciplinary process that dragged on for nearly 5 ½ years. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly made the decision to push the four officers out Friday, four months after a department administrative trial judge concluded that detective Gescard Isnora acted improperly in the 2006 killing of the would-be groom, Sean Bell. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said...

Police say an Occupy Wall Street protester dumped a tub of human waste down a public stairwell and inside a bank vestibule, and got caught on video. Police said Occupy Wall Street protesters were captured on surveillance video dragging a large receptacle of human urine and feces to an open-air plaza at the corner of Nassau and Cedar streets last Wednesday evening, just before 8 p.m. They then poured the waste down a set of stairs there, police said. SNIP (Rest of the story plus video of the dirty deed at sourcelink.)

#SD27 PERCENTAGES: 50.28% David STOROBIN, 49.72% Lew FIDLER. Stand by for more updates! NYDN Daily Politics ‏ @DNDailyPolitics Close PER BOARD OF ELECTIONS: #SD27 PAPER: 2090 ABSENTEE BALLOTS DISTRIBUTED, 1194 RETURNED, 437 INVALID, 757 VALID

NEW YORK — New York police ramped up security at synagogues and other Jewish institutions citywide on Monday following the deadly attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. "Although there is no known specific threat against New York City, the NYPD has taken the precaution of stepping up coverage of Jewish neighborhoods and institutions in the city," Browne said in a statement. "The NYPD's counter-terrorism posture is informed by events abroad, including the fatal attack on the Jewish school in Toulouse today," he said. New York, home to more than 1.4 million Jews, has the largest Jewish population of...

Alexandra Pelosi debuted a video she made for HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" last night. The video shows multiple welfare recipients in New York City proclaiming they were at the welfare office to get their "Obama bucks" and that they supported Obama because he "gives me stuff." Pelosi reported that people at the HBO headquarters in New York had said to her "you can't show this" even though just last week the ran a controversial video showing Mississippi voters saying inflammatory things against the president.

Cops are hunting this brute who beat down and abducted a woman outside the Long Island Rail Road Ronkonkoma station Sunday morning, in a sickening assault that was caught on video. The man slugged the woman just after she got off the train at 7:40 a.m., knocking her down. Later, the suspect confronts the woman in the station’s taxi office, drags her outside and strikes her again.

Governor Cuomo caved. Our lawmakers lied. After more than a year of fresh air in Albany — led by a governor who passed gay marriage, reformed ethics laws and capped property taxes — the state capitol again stinks. After midnight on Thursday, and behind closed doors, the proverbial three men in a room — Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos — cut a deal carving legislative election districts that virtually assures the lawmakers who approved it will be running things for years. Instead of forming an independent panel to create districts that actually represent the...

The rocky, rickety boat that is the New York times has long been in peril of sinking. Now the Times staffers have sent a letter to publisher Arthur Sulzberger expressing "profound dismay" at the direction the company is headed. Huffington Post: The letter calls attention to several grievances. Last week, Times brass notified foreign citizens employed in the paper's overseas bureaus that their pensions would be frozen. In the letter, Times staffers dismayed by this decision point out to Sulzberger that some of these foreign employees, working alongside Times reporters in war zones, have "risked their lives so that we...

"As a result, the NYPD deemed it prudent to get a better handle on what was occurring at MSAs," Browne said in an email. He said police monitored student websites and collected publicly available information in 2006 and 2007.But documents show other surveillance efforts continued for years afterward. "I see a violation of civil rights here," said Tanweer Haq, chaplain of the Muslim Student Association at Syracuse University. "Nobody wants to be on the list of the FBI or the NYPD or whatever. Muslim students want to have their own lives, their own privacy and enjoy the same freedoms and...

Jihad Watch NYPD monitored Muslim students all over Northeast, Muslim Brotherhood-linked MSA and media enablers in uproar The Muslim Students Association is a Muslim Brotherhood group. The NYPD was monitoring it. So what? As long as no Constitutional protections were genuinely violated, the NYPD is just doing its job. The purpose of articles like this is to stop them from doing that job, which will have the effect, intended or not, of allowing the jihadist and Islamic supremacist activities of the MSAs to advance unimpeded. Discover the Networks here has documentation of the MSA's ties to the Brotherhood, as...

Sometimes zero tolerance makes zero sense. Take the case of former Marine Ryan Jerome, an Indiana jeweler arrested last September at the Empire State Building for carrying a .45-caliber handgun — legally purchased and licensed in his home state. It’s not as if Jerome was trying to hide the gun. He volunteered to security personnel that he was carrying it, and actually tried to check it. Nor is he a notorious gangster; he was carrying some $15,000 in jewelry, and needed the gun for protection. Yes, he did misunderstand New York’s gun laws; possessing an illegal pistol in the Empire...

Getting prosecuted under New York’s gun laws is a nonsensical crapshoot, where gangsters get their cases expunged and thugs can turn in illegal weapons for $200 — but a weapon that’s legally registered elsewhere can brand a citizen as a criminal for life. That’s the view of a retired Marine who is facing criminal charges after unwittingly trying to check his Indiana-registered handgun at the Empire State building... --snip-- Prosecutors have offered Ryan Jerome a no-jail misdemeanor plea... --snip-- And Jerome took it upon himself to offer the gun to security as he and his girlfriend stood in line for...

On Monday, Israeli embassy workers in the capital cities of India and Georgia were targeted in terrorist attacks that Israeli officials believe were planned and carried out by Iran and its client, the militant group Hezbollah. The bomb in Tbilisi was defused, but the bomb in New Delhi, planted in an embassy worker's car, exploded and injured at least two. Iran's next target could well be on American soil. In Senate testimony last month, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated that Iranian officials "are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real...

The trouble with situational ethics is that it leaves you with no morals and without morals it is difficult to be morally superior to anyone. This reduces liberals to whining about hypocrisy all the time by holding the other guy to his high standards and being smug about it. The irony is that in order to apply those higher standards liberals must admit that those higher standards are meaningful. If indeed adultery were nothing, they would not mention a 40-year-old affair by Henry Hyde. But cries of hypocrisy are all that is left to them. They sound a lot like...