Free Republic

NEW YORK — As Congress remains gridlocked by the partisan wrangling over the issue of illegal immigration, New York City this week approved two separate plans that advocates say could signal a sea change in the ways cities handle undocumented workers and their families. On Wednesday, the New York City Council earmarked $4.9 million of the city budget to give legal assistance to foreign-born New York residents facing deportation. This makes New York the first city in the US to provide lawyers for low-income immigrants detained by federal authorities. The city will provide such aid both for undocumented immigrants and...

the state’s ability-to-function-in-a-modern-economy rate among graduates hovers at a dismal 37 percent. That is, according to the state Department of Education, only 37 of every 100 students who entered high school in 2009, and stayed long enough to graduate, learned enough by last June to do college-level academic work — or to enter the workforce in any meaningful way. And in New York City, the ratio was one in four. So let’s cut to the chase: If 75 percent of New York high-school seniors get diplomas, but only 37 percent are academically or economically functional ... Per-student spending — just...

Poor New York City immigrants who otherwise would have faced the complicated immigration system with its threat of deportation on their own will now get legal representation to help them in a program advocates say is the first of its kind in the country and one they hope the federal government will ultimately take on. The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project will cover all eligible immigrant city residents detained in the system and appearing in immigration courts in New York City or the New Jersey cities of Elizabeth and Newark. Lawmakers approved $4.9 million for the initiative as part...

In one case, a mentally ill New York City inmate hanged himself from a shower pipe on his third try in three days. During that stretch, orders to put him on 24-hour watch were apparently ignored, along with a screening form that said he was “thinking about killing himself.” Another inmate hanged himself with a bedsheet from an air vent in a solitary-confinement cell after repeatedly telling guards he was suicidal.

A Bronx woman who has accused an NYPD cop of breaking into her apartment during a drunken early morning attack told investigators that he viciously beat her in her bed, punching her more than 20 times. Officer Eugene Donnelly, clad only in his underwear, eventually fled — but not before taking a drink of milk from her refrigerator, a source familiar with the woman’s account told the Daily News. The woman told investigators she was awakened at 5:30 a.m. by a boom — the sound as Donnelly busted her front door open, according to the source familiar with her account....

Charlie Rangel won re-election Tuesday, despite the ethical cloud still shrouding him, because all politics is local. Rangel’s censure by Congress in 2012 has been all but forgotten by his voters, and those who recall that embarrassing episode believe that “Charlie was shafted by Congress” for doing what other members have long gotten away with. (SNIP) If Puerto Rican pols backing Espaillat couldn’t move their bloc to him, one has to question their utility as endorsers. Former Bronx state Sen. Israel Ruiz says, “Puerto Ricans voters do not like Dominicans — especially Dominican politicians . . . perceived as cocky...

Outwardly, they put on a show of unity — but privately, the Obamas and Clintons, the two power couples of the Democrat Party, loathe each other. “I hate that man Obama more than any man I’ve ever met, more than any man who ever lived,” Bill Clinton said to friends on one occasion, adding he would never forgive Obama for suggesting he was a racist during the 2008 campaign. The feeling is mutual. Obama made ­excuses not to talk to Bill, while the first lady privately sniped about Hillary.

The Bloomberg big-soda ban is officially dead. The state’s highest court on Thursday refused to reinstate New York City’s controversial limits on sales of jumbo sugary drinks, exhausting the city’s final appeal and dashing the hopes of health advocates who have urged state and local governments to curb the consumption of drinks and foods linked to obesity. In a 20-page opinion, Judge Eugene F. Pigott Jr. of the New York State Court of Appeals wrote that the city’s Board of Health “exceeded the scope of its regulatory authority” in enacting the proposal, which was championed by former Mayor Michael R....

No Koch Bros wanted at B.C. Brooklyn College, part of the disastrous and dysfunctional City University of New York sinkhole, has a $60 million endowment. A drop in the bucket compared to CUNY’s horrifying $3 billion budget.46% of its wildly inflated budget comes from New York State. New York City taxpayers kick in another 10%.With so much taxpayer money, involuntarily extracted, they just aren’t in need of any dirty Koch Brothers cash. Brooklyn College’s liberal politics are keeping grants and progress from faculty and students, one frustrated CUNY professor told the Observer.The CUNY college has turned down a $10 million...

.... Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer seemed to hit hard in December 2012 when he announced that global banking giant HSBC would pay the government a fine of $1.9 billion.... In March 2013 Breuer’s boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, went before the Senate Finance Committee to explain why HSBC wasn’t indicted for these crimes. He said some banks may be too large to prosecute without wrecking the economy. Holder’s “too big to jail” comments caused an immediate uproar. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said “big bankers know that if they commit financial...

Julius Rudel, the Austrian-born conductor who raised the New York City Opera to a venturous golden age with highbrow music for the masses and a repertory that, like him, bridged the Old and New Worlds, died on Thursday at his home in New York. He was 93. His death, announced by his son, Anthony, came eight months after his beloved and financially struggling City Opera filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors.

Hillary Clinton has a “secret deal” with her top aide Huma Abedin to keep her troublesome husband Anthony Weiner out of the spotlight, sources tell Page Six, as the former secretary of state mulls a run for president. Clinton aides have insisted Weiner “stay out of public life for two years,” and that he “avoid causing any further embarrassment to Huma or Clinton,” according to our sources.

Hillary Clinton has a “secret deal” with her top aide Huma Abedin to keep her troublesome husband Anthony Weiner out of the spotlight, sources tell Page Six, as the former secretary of state mulls a run for president. Clinton aides have insisted Weiner “stay out of public life for two years,” and that he “avoid causing any further embarrassment to Huma or Clinton,” according to our sources. The former sexting pol has been noticeably absent at recent public events attended by Abedin, including the Gordon Parks Foundation Awards Dinner in Manhattan earlier this month. Nor has he appeared at the...

A three-course lunch hosted by an eccentric Chinese millionaire for 250 homeless New Yorkers in a posh restaurant degenerated into fury when guests were denied $300 cash handouts.

A Veterans Affairs nurse who spent 28 years at the embattled agency's facility in Albany, N.Y., says when she came forward to report abuse including stolen drugs and mistreatment of patients, her supervisors turned on her instead of trying to fix things. Nursing manager Val Riviello, 55, was considered an outstanding employee at the Albany Stratton VA Medical Center until last November, when she reported that doctors had restrained a patient for seven hours in violation of VA rules. Now she has been banished to an office cubicle, stripped of her nursing duties and supervisory role and faces a 30-day...

Nearly 275,000 New Yorkers were eiligible for more than $700 million in federal tax credits to help them pay for health insurance, according to a new report from the state Department of Health. That's roughly $2,500 per person, and demonstrates how expensive health care coverage can be in New York even after the Affordable Care Act reduced rates on the individual market. Wednesday's report is the fullest picture yet of exactly who enrolled in the state's health insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act. Most New Yorkers were eligible for a federal subsidy that helped them defray the cost...

“I will set no base thing before mine eyes; I hate the doing of things crooked; it shall not cleave unto me.” (Psalms 101:3) he New York Metropolitan Opera has decided to cancel the simultaneous broadcast of controversial opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” during its upcoming season but has agreed to host the show in the upcoming season. The American opera, by composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman, portrays the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro passenger liner by the Palestine Liberation Front, during which Jewish-American hostage Leon Klinghoffer was murdered and thrown overboard. The English-language opera has been...

UPDATED: Muir will take over Sept. 2, while George Stephanopoulos becomes chief anchor at ABC News. After five years in the World News anchor chair, Diane Sawyer will step down at the end of the summer, clearing the way for David Muir, who anchors the program's weekend edition, to assume her role on Sept. 2. Sawyer, 68, an ABC News star who previously anchored Good Morning America and newsmagazine Primetime and who has conducted some of the news division's most-watched interviews, will head her own unit and continue to produce and anchor specials. Additionally, George Stephanopoulos, once thought to be...

A BAD NIGHT FOR DEMOCRATS If you can divine a national trend from a runoff election in Mississippi, be our guest. But rather than pondering the motives of 3,188 Mississippi voters who made the difference in a bitter, hyper-local election, there’s a more useful consideration today. What’s at stake nationally this year is control of the U.S. Senate, and Republican chances of taking the majority went up significantly Tuesday night. [During New York Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel’s victory speech, the stage nearly collapsed. Rangel asked “heavier people on the stage… to take safety over ego” and step down.]

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – It was a harrowing scene at a McDonald’s in Queens after a man walked into the restaurant with a knife sticking out of his back. The incident occurred around 10 a.m. Tuesday at the McDonald’s on Sutphin Boulevard and 91st Street in Jamaica. The victim was stabbed in the back, but managed to walk down the block and into the restaurant, witnesses said. “I heard everybody screaming and it was a lot of commotion,” witness Tromaine Yancey told CBS 2′s Don Champion. “The guy came and he was standing there with a knife in his back...