Free Republic

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday that cigarette prices in the city would go up $2.50 to $13 which, de Blasio bragged, would be "the highest price in the country." . . . Council Member Fernando Cabrera, who introduced the bill to create the licensing requirement for e-cigarette retailers, described the proposal as "a major step to limit the use of e-cigarettes, which are dangerous nicotine delivery systems that can lead to nicotine and potentially drug addiction."

The media were thrilled when a statue of a defiant little girl was placed opposite Arturo Di Modica’s famous “Charging Bull” on Wall Street. To the networks, it became a “symbol,” a “sensation” and female empowerment. “Symbols spoke volumes,” NBC Chief Environmental Affairs correspondent Anne Thompson said of the statue “facing down Wall Street’s famous bull,” on March 8. The networks didn’t seem to mind that “Fearless Girl” was really a clever corporate advertisement for “SHE” — an exchange traded fund offered by State Street Global Advisors. Fortune reported that until April 2, a plaque at the girl’s feet read...

Tucker Carlson (Fox News screen grab) With the massive news this afternoon that Bill O’Reilly is officially out at Fox News, Fox has now announced that Tucker Carlson will be taking the coveted 8 pm slot. Tucker Carlson Tonight will be moving up from 9 pm, which will now be the home of The Five, co-hosted by Kimberly Guilfoyle, Dana Perino, Bob Beckel, Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watters, and Juan Williams. Also on Mediaite Positive Sign for O’Reilly?: Factor Promos Continue on Fox News Eric Bolling will be getting the 5 pm slot on May 1st. Next week Fox’s Special Report...

Caving to pressure from the public and advertisers, as well as reportedly frustrated employees, Fox News has fired host Bill O'Reilly following the revelation of multiple settlements made by him and the network of claims of sexual harassment. "After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the Company and Bill O'Reilly have agreed that Bill O'Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel," says a statement from Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of parent company 21st Century Fox, and his sons James and Lachlan, respectively the company’s CEO and co-executive chairman. Fox News simultaneously announced that Tucker Carlson's...

Pedro Hernandez, the bodega clerk convicted for the 1979 murder of New York first-grader Etan Patz was sentenced on Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison, CNN reports. Hernandez, 56, was convicted of kidnapping and murder in February, nearly 40 years after the six-year-old disappeared on May 25, 1979. Etan left home to walk to a school bus stop and was not seen again. In the early 1980s, his photo appeared on milk cartons across the country, the first time the method was used to try to locate missing children. Hernandez was previously tried for the same charges in...

Good Afternoon And Welcome!

WASHINGTON -- The Upstate New York congressman who faced overflowing crowds of protesters at town hall meetings managed to raise a record amount of money after the protests gained national attention. U.S. Rep. Tom Reed raised $585,282 in the first quarter of the year, a personal high for the fourth-term Republican from Corning. Reed's cash haul more than doubled the amount raised by each of the other members of Congress from Upstate New York, according to new disclosure reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. "We are off to our best start ever with more than a half-million dollars in...

Academics are always mystified that the lumpenproletariat (i. e., us working stiffs of all income levels) don't join them in the class struggle. It turns out that the one place in America that has a class system is in the institution where they teach them. "In a one-on-one meeting with the school's provost/interim president, I asked if the administration believes that adjuncts share the same academic freedom as full-timers," Larry Jaffee an adjunct assistant professor at the New York Institute of Technology in Manhattan, wrote on the Academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). "He was...

New York liberals recently celebrated the realization of a long-held dream: giving a free college education to anyone who wants it.Well, not quite "free" as in nobody has to pay for it. It is one of the primary conceits of the liberal welfare state that they can refer to a taxpayer-funded benefit as "free." Hence, we have "free" public housing, "free" food via the SNAP program, and "free" medical care for those on Medicaid.Ah, would that it were so.We all know that there is no such thing as "free" when it comes to government benefits. The money to pay...

The deranged gunman who randomly executed an elderly Cleveland resident and posted footage of the killing on Facebook has possibly fled the city — and may be on the loose in another state, cops say. Police warned early Monday that residents in Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana and Michigan should be on the lookout for 37-year-old Steve Stephens, who is driving a white Ford Fusion and is believed to be armed and dangerous. “Suspect may be out of state at this time,” officials said in a statement. “Those outside of Northeast Ohio: Contact Local Authorities.”

A student at a private Muslim school in Queens, New York called the Boston Marathon bombers Jews, a former teacher says. The New York Post reported Sunday that Nina Kossman, a former English teacher at the Razi School in Woodside, asked her students at one time: “Do you know what happens when people start hating each other for their differences?” One student replied, “My parents said they [the Boston bombers] were bad people. They were Jews.” […] “I was shocked,” said Koss­man. Kossman was removed from the private religious school last month after she told students the Adam and Eve...

CENTRAL ISLIP, Long Island (WABC) -- The four men who were found brutally murdered in a Long Island park Wednesday night have been identified, as their devastated families mourn the loss of their loved ones. Their mutilated bodies were found at the intersection of Lowell Avenue and Clayton Street in Central Islip, and authorities say one of them was so badly disfigured that he could only be identified through a tattoo. The youngest victim was just 16 years old. "He had a plastic bag over his head in order to suffocate him," said Yensi Fuentes, victim's cousin. "And from what...

ALBANY — Thanks to the new state budget, electronic cigarette users can puff away without the tax man taking a drag. Despite an alarming surge in e-cigarette use by high school students, state lawmakers — at the urging of the GOP-controlled Senate — rejected Gov. Cuomo’s plan to tax the liquid used in the devices and tighten restrictions on their use, advocates charged Monday. Cuomo’s proposals were mysteriously left out of the budget approved by the Senate and Assembly over the weekend. “The Senate Republicans picked big tobacco over public health,” said Bill Sherman, vice president for government relations at...

A day after Mayor de Blasio criticized Wall Street’s Charging Bull statue as an ode to “unfettered capitalism,” Gov. Cuomo said “I never found it particularly offensive.” “I’ve gone past it many times,” Cuomo told reporters at the governor’s mansion, where he hosted an Easter egg roll Saturday.

The share of US companies that do not provide health insurance spiked this year, to nearly 55 percent. After next year, many New York firms may have to join them — or risk downsizing. Thanks to a 2012 state law, many mid-sized firms — those with between 51 and 100 insured employees — may have to drop their health plans, beginning in 2019. Wittingly or not, the state is pushing employers to purchase much more expensive and often less comprehensive insurance. Absent changes to the law, businesses and employees could collectively lose millions of dollars — and companies would have...

The award for the worst public policy idea of the year goes to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo presides over a state with a rich diversity of educational institutions. But he also presides over a state, like all states, where many students don’t complete college and where many are unprepared for the information economy. For example, fewer than half of the African-American and Hispanic students in New York public colleges graduate within six years. Cuomo could have done many things to improve New York’s higher ed system. He could have poured all available money into the Tuition Assistance Program,...

A mob of Penn Station travelers fled the transit hub in hysteria after Amtrak police officers used a stun gun on a man. The busy Penn Station was already a mad house from a NJ Transit train that stalled in a tunnel, backing up service for more than two hours ahead of the Friday rush on a holiday weekend. By 6:30 p.m., shortly after the stalled train was taken to Penn Station, riders stampeded away from the site where the man was hit with the stun gun. Luggage food and clothes were strewn across the floor.

With hopes of dispensing the "perfect antidote" to the stock market crash of 1987, Italian-born sculptor Arturo Di Modica spent two years welding a 7,000-pound bronze bull statue designed to capture the resilience of the American people. Under the cover of night and without a permit, he installed his massive Charging Bull directly before the New York Stock Exchange, a gift New Yorkers loved but New York City initially hated. Authorities removed it, but later reinstalled it under pressure at a small public park in the financial district. In the 18 years since, it has become an institution. Then last...

Noted liberal Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe claimed without evidence in a series of tweets Thursday that a recently deceased New York judge was the victim of a racist murder. Sheila Abdus-Salaam was the first Muslim-American judge and the first black woman to serve on the New York Court of Appeals. Late Wednesday, her body was found in the Hudson River after she was reported missing. Abdus-Salaam was 65 years old.

--SNIP-- The discovery of the bodies comes about a month after the arrest of eight MS-13 gang members in connection with the September killings of two teenage girls in nearby Brentwood. Meyers declined to comment on whether the killings of the four men were gang-related. Gang violence has been a problem in Central Islip, Brentwood and other Long Island communities for more than a decade, but Suffolk County police and the FBI began pouring resources into a crackdown after the killings of the girls, along with two other Brentwood High School students involved in separate killings, sparked outrage. Brentwood and...