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With the Super Bowl XLVIII just days away, you’d never know it from the New Jersey side of this two-part equation. Some lawmakers say the NFL hasn’t endorsed any of its events, leaving New Jersey out of the spotlight and in the cold, CBS 2’s Emily Smith reported Monday. While the big game is being held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., some Jersey leaders said they are worried that the league hasn’t gotten the memo that this is not New York City’s Super Bowl. “It’s just not a feeling of … it’s almost like not wanting to be...

Instead of getting to the truth of the Bridgegate affair, the new Legislative Select Committee on Investigation is looking more likely to obscure or distort the facts. **SNIP** But the Democratic majority structured the committee in ways guaranteed to cast doubt on its findings. Moreover, it has no mechanism for public input, no ceiling on costs and no limits on its scope or methods. For starters: With eight Democrats and four Republicans, the group’s extreme partisan imbalance undercuts any sense of shared purpose. Such a brazenly stacked deck sets the stage for unproductive bickering instead of thoughtful debate. The lack...

VINELAND, NJ (CBS) — Police in Vineland are searching for the suspects who vandalized statues outside two churches overnight. According to the Vineland Police Department, officers were dispatched to the Sacred Heart Church at 922 E Landis Avenue for reported criminal mischief. An investigation revealed that sometime during the night, the suspects had vandalized several religious statues on church property. The vandals hacked off the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary. In addition, the vandals also chopped a statue of Joseph in half. A few hours later, officers were dispatched to St. Francis of Assisi Church at 23...

The man who spent several hours trapped in a pipe at a United Water facility on Wilson Avenue was rescued Friday morning and then promptly arrested. Capt. Michael Fountain of the Manalapan Police Department said the man was 26-year-old township resident Asaf Mohammad, who was arrested for fourth-degree criminal trespass United Water spokesman Rich Henning told NBC that workers “heard cries for help” coming from an area that has a wellhead with a storage tank when they arrived at the facility on Friday morning. Jim Mastrokalos, director of operations for United Water, said the man was found in a decommissioned pipe that is 20...

Hoboken Mayor: 'It's True' Christie Administration Withheld Sandy Funds By Leigh Ann Caldwell, Chris Frates and Cassie Spodak, CNN Zimmer tells CNN that Christie played politics with Sandy recovery funds Christie team denies funds were held hostage for backing of redevelopment project (CNN) -- In another controversy surrounding New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said Sunday that Christie directly ordered the withholding of Superstorm Sandy recovery funds unless she backed a redevelopment plan he favored. Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Zimmer said she was told by a member of Christie's administration that Sandy relief funds...

What a bizarre spectacle. Assuming he did not lie during his marathon news conference last week, the feeding frenzy surrounding New Jersey governor Chris Christie will be remembered as one of those incredibly odd moments of elite journalistic hysteria that are difficult to explain to people who weren’t there or didn’t get it. I’m not referring to the scandal itself; that’s easy enough to understand. What Christie’s team did was outrageous and deserves as much foofaraw and brouhaha as the New Jersey media can muster. What’s harder to grok is the hysteria at the national level. For starters, there have...

One unmentioned irony of the Chris Christie road-revenge scandal is that the powers-that-be finally found a traffic jam they didn't like. Now, don't get me wrong, having always lived in the NY metropolitan area and often having wanted to split a vein while in the midst of the NY/NJ road experience, I think that anyone who purposely exacerbates traffic problems should be confined to a small cell and forced to listen 24/7/365 to Nancy Pelosi's nails-on-blackboard speeches. But I have to tell you: it has always seemed that NY and NJ public officials have utter disregard - if not contempt...

**SNIP** Demand for prostitutes surges ahead of the Super Bowl and officials warn trafficking gangs are likely to cash in on the influx of football fans, forcing people they have often bought into the country illegally to work in the sex trade. New Jersey's ports, freeways and major airports make it a "destination state for human trafficking," said Melanie Gorelick of the New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking. "They are preparing to have as many arrests as possible during the Super Bowl and to make it as difficult as possible for traffickers to bring women and labor to the area."

Chris Christie to 81% of voters: "♪You're a cold-hearted snake♫..."- by John Urban | Top Right NewsJust hours before he became embroiled in a mega-scandal over political dirty tricks in Fort Lee by his office and staff that threatens to derail his presidential ambitions, NJ Gov. Chis Christie made a well-publicized appearance to promote his signing of in-state tuition for illegal aliens. As unpopular and controversial as was that decision, Christie as usual couldn't help but throw his (ample) weight around, accusing of heartlessness those who opposed giving a tax-payer funded handout to those breaking our laws just to be...

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner says he believes Chris Christie remains a serious contender for the Republican 2016 presidential nomination, despite the traffic jam scandal engulfing the New Jersey governor. Reporters asked Boehner about Christie's problems on Thursday, even as the governor was holding a news conference in Trenton, N.J.

Emergency responders were delayed in attending to four medical situations – including one in which a 91-year-old woman lay unconscious – due to traffic gridlock caused by unannounced closures of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, according to the head of the borough’s EMS department. The woman later died, borough records show. In at least two of those instances, response time doubled, noted EMS coordinator Paul Favia, who documented those cases in a Sept. 10 letter to Mayor Mark Sokolich, which The Record obtained.

The controversial lane closures at the George Washington Bridge last September delayed emergency responders from attending to at least four medical situations in Fort Lee — including helping a 91-year-old woman who lay unconscious and later died, according to a report by The Record. Democrats have long accused Republican Gov. Chris Christie of ordering the lane closures as political retribution for Fort Lee's Democratic mayor refusing to endorse his re-election bid last year. Today, newly unveiled e-mails show that one of Christie's top aides knew about the closures in advance. The governor himself has denied being involved and today issued...

Veteran New York radio personality Bob Grant — widely credited with inventing the conservative talk-radio format — has died at the age of 84. Grant, who lived in Toms River, N.J., passed away on New Year's Eve, according to the Branchburg Funeral Home. Grant began his career as a controversial talk show host in 1970 when he joined WMCA in New York and quickly bucked the liberal slant of many of the other hosts. The gravel-voiced talker's in-your-face opinions and regular telling off of callers often got him in hot water. He opened his show stating: "Good afternoon, ladies and...

St. Lawrence Council 10281 in South Amboy, NJ. Credit: Knights of Columbus. New Haven, Conn., Dec 16, 2011 / 03:03 am (CNA).- The Knights of Columbus' annual campaign reminding millions of Americans to “Keep Christ in Christmas” is in full swing with radio ads, signs, billboards, Nativity scenes and Christmas cards.“In a society where Christmas has often become shorthand for shopping, many who celebrate Christmas can lose sight of its true meaning,” Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson said Dec. 15. “Those who celebrate Christmas give gifts to each other because it is the day on which we celebrate the...

The zone of state toll systems that are part of E-ZPass now stretches far beyond the New York metropolitan area where it began. Now you can use your E-ZPass in toll-zapping booths in 14 states, a vast road-trip zone stretching from Virginia to Illinois to Maine. It’s all a compatible system, but different states set their own fees to issue the transponders and maintain your account. What not all consumers know is that you don’t have to buy your pass from the state where you live, and you can save money by ordering from across the border. Whether this is...

Drivers approaching the Lincoln Tunnel this holiday season will be the targets of an atheist advertisement that its sponsors describe as a strike against Christmas. A billboard sponsored by the American Atheists and posted in North Bergen, on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel, reads: 'You KNOW it's a Myth. This season, celebrate REASON.' A billboard scheduled to be displayed near the New Jersey entrance to the tunnel until the end of the holidays shows a silhouetted manger scene with the message, “You KNOW it’s a Myth. This Season, Celebrate REASON.” The $20,000 campaign, sponsored by a national...

<p>A group called the American Atheists has paid for a huge billboard on Route 495 outside the Lincoln Tunnel in North Bergen, N.J., that is raising some eyebrows.</p> <p>The billboard shows a silhouette of the Three Wise Men approaching the Nativity, with the words: "You KNOW it's a Myth / This Season, Celebrate REASON!"</p>

The story of Joseph Pelleteri and others like him create one of the biggest obstacles to "commons sense" gun legislation -- the fear that otherwise law abiding citizens will be snared in a law enforcement nightmare.  It is that fear, embodied in the prosecutions of people attempting to navigate a labyrinthine system of regulations that dooms most gun control measures. Imagine winning a brand new sports car with a V8 engine in a contest hosted by your local police department.  You keep the car in your garage, never driving it, and one day while the cops are at your home...

We’ve seen so many police abuse lawsuits settled before making it to trial where cops admit no wrongdoing while guiltily dishing out thousands of taxpayer dollars that it’s surprising to see one actually make it to trial.And it’s absolutely flabbergasting to see it result in a cop ordered personably liable.The cop is none other than Sterling Wheaton of the Atlantic City Police Department, whom we became familiar with back in September when he drove up to a group of five fellow officers beating on a suspect and sicced his dog on him in an incident caught on surveillance video.Then we...

Two teenagers were killed and another seriously wounded in a shooting late Christmas night in Newark, according to law enforcement authorities. A 13-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl were shot dead, Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio and Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray said in a statement to the Star-Ledger.