Free Republic

<p>A federal judgeon Wednesday backed the city's Department of Education, ruling that the display of the nativity scene, unlike Christmas trees and menorahs, was not secular and has no place in classrooms.</p> <p>Judge Charles Sifton in Brooklyn dismissed the lawsuit brought forth by Andrea Skoros, 34, of College Point, saying the city's holiday displays policy banning non-secular symbols from schools did not violate her right to free exercise of religion.</p>

Gun control advocates won a major victory Tuesday, but the fight over New York’s SAFE Act is far from over. An appeal of Chief U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny’s decision upholding most of the new law is all but guaranteed. And that appeal may come from supporters of the law, as well. “I think there’s going to be appeals on both sides,” said Brian T. Stapleton, a lawyer for the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, one of the groups fighting the law. Stapleton’s prediction is based on Skretny’s decision to uphold two key elements of the law,...

ALBANY – Nearly a year after passage of the state’s new gun law, dealer sales of popular AR-15 semiautomatic rifles have ended in New York, and arrest data shows that more than 1,000 gun-possession charges in New York City were boosted from misdemeanors to felonies because of the changes. Meanwhile, 59 people have been charged statewide with misdemeanors for possessing large-capacity magazines or having more than seven bullets loaded in a magazine, both outlawed by the law passed last January in the aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. A report from the Division of Criminal Justice Services shows...

FORT EDWARD, New York — When General Electric moves jobs from its capacitor plant in this Hudson River town next year, worker Mark Rock figures he might have to leave, too. About 200 jobs will head south as soon as September when GE sends local operations to Florida to cut costs. While New York has had successes in the constant geographical tug of war for jobs, manufacturing jobs like these have been dwindling for decades. People in this area south of the Adirondack Mountains are the latest to wonder what comes next.

He socked it to her. Eliot Spitzer lusted after violence, a former hooker says in a new tell-all book — revealing in graphic detail how the love gov pinned her to a bed inside a posh, Murray Hill apartment and then gripped her by the neck until she feared for her safety. The violence was scripted by Spitzer, who wanted his hooker to follow a role-play dialogue in which she would pretend she had just taken a self-defense class. The kinky politician would then pretend to test her skills by announcing, “Well, then, let’s see if you learned anything,” and...

I grew up thinking guns were dangerous but now I think they are an important tool for self defense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ymFuWrrd_fY

WASHINGTON — A group of New York doctors is suing insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, charging that it booted doctors from its network to avoid cost hikes imposed by ObamaCare. The company’s decision to kick more than 2,000 docs from its Medicare Advantage network threatens to harm elderly and disabled patients, according to the filing in Brooklyn federal court. “By terminating numerous physicians from the . . . network, United seeks to stem financial losses occasioned by reduced federal payments under the Affordable Care Act,” the suit launched by the Medical Society of the State of New York claims.

Eliot Spitzer’s feisty girlfriend Lis Smith and GOP strategist Roger Stone got into a knockdown Twitter fight Thursday night. Stone, 61, fired the first salvo at 8:15 p.m. with a crude tweet about Smith and Spitzer in the sack.

Families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks today celebrated a federal court's ruling that allows relatives of people who died in the 9/11 terror attacks to sue Saudi Arabia. Most of the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 were from Saudi Arabia, and the complaint states that much of the funding for the al-Qaeda terrorists came from Saudi Arabia. An attempt to Saudi Arabia in 2002 was blocked by a federal court ruling that said the kingdom had sovereign immunity. That ruling was reversed Thursday by a three-judge federal panel.… The ruling...

Bill de Blasio is standing by his flack – for now at least. The mayor-elect on Monday praised his spokeswoman Lis Smith despite revelations in The Post that she is shacking up with her married former boss — disgraced-ex Gov. Eliot Spitzer. “I respect Lis as a professional but I also respect her right to privacy. So I’m not going to get any further into it,” de Blasio said during a news conference in Brooklyn to announce two new appointments to his administration.

A winter storm bringing ice and whipping winds to upstate New York and northern Vermont knocked out power to thousands of customers as officials urged motorists to avoid traveling in dangerously slick conditions. More than 95,000 utility customers woke up without power Sunday morning in New York, Vermont and Maine because of widespread ice accumulations. In New York’s St. Lawrence County, almost 2 inches of ice had accumulated early Sunday, coating tree limbs and power lines, county dispatch operations supervisor Jim Chestnut said. …

Move over, Vito “Gropez” — yet another Albany politician has been accused of outlandish sexual harassment by young female staffers. Married-with-children Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak, 62, tormented three workers with lewd antics such as sending a video of himself supposedly receiving oral sex, suggesting they shack up with him in hotels and talking about a tattoo on his penis, new court documents charge. **SNIP** “You’re so hot, you know what I want to do with you,” he allegedly said.

Link to the video of Aaron Weiss address the Dutchess County legislature in New York on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.“You see, if it was really so courageous a bill, and it took so much courage to pass it, then why was it done in the middle of the night when no one could see it or read it? That’s not courage. That’s a mafia style sit-down to divvy up what’s good for the bosses.”

This month a 72,000-square-foot Tudor mansion, completed in 1920 and containing eighty-seven rooms and a magnificent chapel (in which many notable Catholic clerics, including Bishop Fulton Sheen and Francis Cardinal Spellman, celebrated Mass), is being demolished.Known as Inisfada – Gaelic for “Long Island” – the house is located in the Nassau County “Gold Coast” village of Manhasset and was the home of Nicholas and Genevieve Brady, America’s leading Catholic couple in the early decades of the twentieth century. The most prominent guest ever to visit Inisfada arrived in 1936: the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli – the...

Federal law enforcement authorities have charged nearly 50 past or present Russian diplomats and their spouses in a $1.5 million Medicaid fraud scheme, an unusual twist in what has become a familiar criminal story line in New York. An F.B.I. investigation revealed “the systemic fraudulent submission of falsified applications for Medicaid benefits” by the diplomats and their spouses, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday in United States District Court in Manhattan. The diplomats and their spouses obtained the benefits for pregnancies, births and first-year-of-life medical needs, generally applying at the same New York hospital, which was not identified,...

by John UrbanTop Right NewsNew York City authorities aren't waiting for their new Marxist mayor Bill DeBlasio to take office in order to issue totalitarian gun-grabbing edicts. New York City last week started sending out dire notices to residents who own guns that now violate new ammunition capability laws, demanding they relinquish their weapons — and even though the notifications may just be standard police procedure, the text will come as a shock to most Americans aware of our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. At issue: Weapons that hold more than five rounds of ammo. That's right...FIVE! One such...

“Nearly 1,000 people have been charged under the NY Safe Act in the eight months since the tougher gun control law was passed, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services,” syracuse.com reports. “Nearly 90 percent were accused of a crime that pre-dates the new act – including having a sawed-off long gun or an unregistered pistol – but was elevated to a felony when the Safe Act went on the books Jan. 15. The arrests dealing with the more controversial portions of the Safe Act, including possession of a large capacity magazine or a newly defined ‘assault weapon,’...

The two sides of the issue are firmly entrenched. The New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, or NY S.A.F.E. Act, was quickly approved by the State legislature in January following the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Besides its new definitions on what constitutes a banned assault weapon, and limits on number of rounds of ammunition permitted in a weapon’s magazine, the law also targeted ammunition purchases by dealers and gun owners. Before it was even passed, gun owners, and others opposed to the law, banded together. Rallies in Albany, letters to state legislators and...

<p>Due to glitches in New York’s health care exchange website, citizens attempting to navigate the Obamacare enrollment process are winding up at a cupcake shop in Brooklyn, the New York Post reported.</p> <p>Brooklyn Cupcake has been erroneously listed as one of 288 locations where New Yorkers have been directed by the state Health Department for assistance seeking medical coverage.</p>

A coalition of religious groups and activists took to the streets in Wyandanch Sunday to call on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The marchers, who stepped off at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Roman Catholic Church and stopped half a mile away at the U.S. Post Office branch in Wyandanch, carried signs that read "Stop the Deportations" and "Immigrants are all God's children." The march, organized by Long Island Jobs With Justice, which advocates for workers and immigrants, aimed to call on Congress to pass "sensible immigration reform," according to organizers.A comprehensive immigration reform bill passed the Senate...