Free Republic

Taxpayers pay their salaries — but that hasn’t stopped two Bronx public defenders from appearing in a vile online rap video that urges black people to kill NYPD cops. The sickening video, for a rap called “Hands Up,” shows black men holding guns to cops’ heads and features the disgusting lyric, “For Mike Brown and Sean Bell, a cop got to get killed.”

With only weeks before New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first year in office comes to a close, the Big Apple’s voters are starting to sour on their famously progressive mayor. While a majority of voters continue to approve of the job the mayor has done in office (52 percent, according to the latest New York Times/Siena poll), a figure that remains largely unchanged from an April Siena poll, voters are turning on how the city is managed. 52 percent say that de Blasio’s New York City is on the “wrong track.” Only 41 percent disagree. That is a...

Dr. Savage poured over the new $1.2 trillion spending bill, noting the colossal waste and bipartisan "pork barrel" provisions it contains. "Who is going to pay for this?" he asks. "We've just experienced a Republican betrayal of the highest magnitude," Savage announced. In the latest $1.2 trillion dollar spending bill, Obamacare is fully funded. So is amnesty. Boehner is out there, pretending he's concerned. Meanwhile, they gave a billion dollars for the amnesty bill to help illegal aliens. The budget is packed with what we used to call "pork barrel" spending. Now they're called "riders," but it's the same thing:...

--SNIP-- The new fence — constructed just inside an existing red brick wall and a wrought-iron fence ringing the historic property — was actually dubbed a “privacy fence” by de Blasio and first lady Chirlane McCray, sources told The Post. “So much for being mayor of the people. That brick fence was good enough for Rudy Giuliani and his family, and for Ed Koch and all the mayors before him,” a law enforcement source said. “They didn’t need a taller fence. That’s the same house where everybody else lived for years.

New York City’s mayoral mansion has gotten a higher fence after White House fence-jumping incursions raised security concerns. A spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday that the head of the mayor’s security detail decided to raise the fence around Gracie Mansion. It sits in a public park. …

March 30, 2012 Coulter likens Zimmerman ‘lynch mob’ to another Democratic Party ‘outgrowth’: The KKK Jeff Poor The so-called “Justice for Trayvon Martin” movement has had its share of stumbles along the way, from Spike Lee’s tweet of shooter George Zimmerman’s incorrect home address to other social networking vigilantes calling for Zimmerman’s death. On Friday’s “The Laura Ingraham Show,” conservative commentator Ann Coulter, author of “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America,” gave her reaction to the events and likened them to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan as an “outgrowth” of the Democratic Party. “It’s shocking,” she...

After losing a landmark decision on November 20 allowing them to be tried for terrorism charges in a $1 billion case, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have now filed a very rare appeal to the Second Circuit of courts trying to squash the case. Shurat Hadin (Israel Law Center) is leading the legal charge against the PA and PLO. In a press release on Thursday they noted that the appeal, known as a motion for a writ of mandamus, "concerns personal jurisdiction and should have been filed months ago." "This is a desperate attempt by the...

If you’re a New Yorker who is dissatisfied with the original set of chromosomes you were dealt at birth, good news is on the way. Historically, various types of reassignment surgeries involved in switching genders have been considered to be either cosmetic or optional by insurance companies and have generally not been covered. These procedures are not cheap, so they remained beyond the reach of a lot of people. But now, Governor Andrew Cuomo has sent a letter to insurers in the Empire State letting them know that they are going to have to start footing the bill. Now...

Lee Albertorio felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body. After serving in the Air Force, he began taking hormones, which deepened his voice and made his physique more masculine. He changed his passport to reflect that he was male, and last year he decided to have a mastectomy, known as top surgery. But his insurance company told him the operation was cosmetic and refused to cover it, he said Wednesday. Now Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is warning insurance companies that they will no longer be allowed to deny gender reassignment surgery or other treatment to change a person’s...

On Wednesday evening, in the very hall where the University of California at Berkeley had just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, demonstrators shut down a speech by billionaire tech guru--and noted libertarian--Peter Thiel. The activists who broke into Wheeler Hall were protesting the non-indictment of police officers in the deaths of black suspects Michael Brown and Eric Garner in Ferguson, MO and Staten Island, NY for the fifth straight evening.

When you need advice on a subject, you go to an expert. Gov. Andrew Cuomo did just that when he had a policy meeting on the subject of how cops enforce the laws with hip-hop mogul Jay Z — who earned most of his expertise in crime as a crack dealer. The governor’s spokeswoman, Melissa DeRosa, on Wednesday described their confab in Cuomo’s Midtown office as “productive.’’ The two discussed “a top-to-bottom review of the criminal justice system and how we can all work together to pass a reform package,” she said. The rapper built his musical career on songs...

... In Berkeley, Calif., a mob protesting the grand jury decisions in the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases broke the window of a Trader Joe ’s supermarket. They wrecked a RadioShack store and smashed ATM machines. That still wasn’t enough. This Monday, some two dozen New York City Council members went into the street in front of city hall and disrupted traffic. For the people gridlocked in their cars, taxis and delivery trucks, Councilman Andy King explained: “We have a responsibility to wake you up, and the only way people get woken up is if you disrupt their everyday...

In my youth, cheerleaders had a chant that went, “S-u-c-c-e-s-s, that’s the way you spell success.” I don’t know that you would hear that battle cry anymore, because not many public schools teach spelling. One that does has worked the word success into its title, appropriately, as it turns out. The Success Academy opened in Harlem in 2006 with 160 students. It is now a chain of charter schools (32) with an enrollment of 9,000. It is also in the top one percent in the state of New York in math. History, science and literature also figure prominently in the...

With widely watched amateur videos of police killings as a backdrop, New York City police are hoping to arm more officers with stun guns as an option for subduing emotionally disturbed people and other suspects who resist arrest. Preliminary plans call for 450 additional officers to carry the electroshock weapons while on patrol, police officials said Wednesday. The department would first have to find funding and develop more precise guidelines on which circumstance are appropriate to use the devices. …

An electrical engineer from upstate New York has been fined $5,000 and sentenced to 180 hours of community service for accusing his boss of spying for another country. […] Prosecutors say the 39-year-old (Ryan Lechter of Endicott) wrote an anonymous letter to the Defense Security Service in March 2012 accusing his boss at BAE Systems, a defense contractor, of being “foreign intelligence,” which they say means spying. …

Washington (CNN) -- The New York officer involved in the death of Eric Garner should no longer be on the police force, Sen. Rand Paul argued Monday. The Kentucky Republican said Daniel Pantaleo lacked "discretion" when he placed Garner in a chokehold for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes.

I have been out of the country twice this year. The first time, I was in Mexico when protests broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, over the shooting death of Michael Brown; more recently, my two weeks in Argentina coincided with nationwide demonstrations against the lack of grand jury indictments in the cases of Brown and Eric Garner, the Staten Island police chokehold victim. Witnessing a nascent anti-police brutality movement from a distance has given me a different perspective on it, because the novelty of getting out in the streets in America and demanding justice stands in stark contrast to the...

MONTICELLO - An accident on Route 17 claimed the life of a female driver early Tuesday morning, according to Sullivan County emergency officials. According to Sullivan County Public Safety Director Dick Martinkovic, an accident involving five tractor trailers and two cars occurred at approximately 3:30 a.m. because of two jackknifed tractor trailers. State Police has not yet identified the deceased driver, but said she was from New York City. Martinkovic says the driver of the second car was able to get out of its vehicle. The accident closed down the portion of Route 17 between exits 107 and 109. At...

A 22 year old Israeli Jewish man was stabbed Tuesday morning (roughly 2:00 am EST) in Crown Heights, outside the Chabad-Lubavitch building at 770 Eastern Parkway in New York City. The man’s condition is defined as stable, but serious; he was reportedly stabbed in the neck. The public has been asked to pray for him; his Hebrew name is Levy Yitzhak ben Raizel. Police arrived at the scene and apprehended the perpetrator, now revealed to have been a 40-year old African American man. He may have also been Muslim, but this has yet to be confirmed. The attacker died after...

Gangs appear to have grown more politically emboldened this past year, as protests have sprouted in response to police shootings of young black males. Gangs organizing with local politicians is not new, as some will point to New York’s Tammany Hall corruption in the early 20th century. Only two years ago, Chicago Magazine wrote about the “unholy alliance” between the city’s local pols and violent street gangs. New York City Councilman Jumaane Williams, a Brooklyn Democrat, tweeted that he was approached by members of the local Bloods gang about getting involved with recent protests relating to the death of Eric...