Free Republic

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...

From the In My Backyard Desk, some sensational news, via The Brooklyn Eagle: The Most Reverend Nicholas DiMarzio, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, will ordain 13 men to the priesthood on Saturday, June 28. This group of men, who have served for the past year as transitional deacons, composes the largest class of new priests in the United States. The diocese is thus helping to reverse a long decline in vocations that has led to a shortage of priests within the Roman Catholic Church.The ordination liturgy will take place at the Brooklyn DioceseÂ’s newly renovated...

Hillary Clinton is still riffing off her claim that she and Bill aren't really that rich, and now daughter Chelsea is also insisting she is so selfless that she just can't dredge up enough interest to "care" about money.

More at Reaganite Republican...

Subway rider: I helped take perv down after being sexually assaulted on train Nicola Briggs recounts how a man exposed himself and rubbed against her in a packed subway train — and how she called on other passengers to help detain and shame him until he was arrested. Briggs, whose confrontation with the man went viral on YouTube, says the shame of sex abuse should be put back on the shoulders of the perpetrators. WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE IN VIDEO. I was on a southbound No. 4 train en route to Chinatown, where I was going to meet a friend for...

One by one, the children at Public School 30 on Staten Island dumped their uneaten bananas into a bin in the back of their raucous cafeteria, each greenish-yellow missile landing with a thud. Thud. Thud. John Sullivan, 9, a fourth grader, said bananas “make my stomach hurt.” Julianna Delloso, 6, a first grader, said “they taste funny.” And Joseph Incardone, 7, also in first grade, was almost gleeful as he explained why he, too, had chucked his unpeeled banana. “I didn’t like it,” he said. The sad voyage of fruits and vegetables from lunch lady to landfill has frustrated parents,...

In 2012, the average New York Jew looks a little less like Jerry Seinfeld and a little more like Tevye the Milkman. New York’s Jews are poorer, less educated and more religious than they were 10 years ago, according to a landmark new study of the city’s Jewish population. They’re also less liberal: More than half of the Jews in New York City live in Orthodox or Russian-speaking homes, both of which lean heavily conservative. The study, conducted by UJA-Federation of New York, counted 1.5 million Jews in New York City, Long Island and Westchester, up from 1.4 million just...

Bill Bratton has destroyed his reputation in a short amount of time by becoming a mouthpiece for Bill de Blasio. Taking the job was a poor idea since crime rates had dropped so low that they were bound to rebound, especially under a pro-criminal mayor like De Blasio. All that Bratton had done is set himself up to take the blame and join the ranks of failed NYPD commissioners like Lee Brown who did what a liberal mayor wanted instead of fighting crime. So now it’s time to pander to Islam.

Controversial billionaire Chen Guangbiao placed a full-page advertisement in Monday’s New York Times and a half-page advertisement in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, inviting 1,000 underprivileged Americans to dine with him. “I want to spread the message in the US that there are good philanthropists in China and not all are crazy spenders on luxury goods”. Chen said he was “teaming up with a famous American charity to host a charity luncheon for 1,000 poor and destitute Americans, who each will receive 300 dollars”. The underprivileged will be invited to the Boat House restaurant in New York’s Central Park, where Chen...

I've been posting about Manhattan's homosexual parish, St. Francis Xavier run by the Jesuits. (See here, here, here, and here.) It's a scandal, but Cardinal Dolan seems to have no problem with it. No discipline for the priests there promoting homosexual acting out. In fact, he cheered them on at the parish rededication. Nope! Cardinal Dolan saves discipline for orthodox priests like Fr. Justin Wylie of Holy Innocents parish who dared to say in a Sunday homily that the diocese appears to be the abandoning the flock who desire the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). Holy Innocents is the only parish...

To the list of bygone New York City pleasures, add one more slice of life — the sausage pizza.

The world was a beautiful place as Bill de Blasio folded himself into the front passenger seat of a black SUV. The late-afternoon sun was shining on Park Slope, and a grand political breakthrough was within reach. Sure, it had been a complicated few weeks as Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Working Families Party, bitter codependents, tried to agree on a deal that would give Cuomo the WFP’s ballot line this fall in exchange for the governor’s publicly pledging to get behind a progressive policy agenda. Now, though, thanks in part to de Blasio’s mediation, a compromise was falling into...

Do you dread your work day or some task in your life? Maybe the sole purpose of your eight or twelve hour “cross” is simply a moment or two when you can lift someone’s spirits and steer them towards Jesus, who will then steer them towards heaven. This opportunity happened to me twice in one night.A Little Kindness in HasteA grey-haired man and his teenage daughter frantically hailed me in front of Grand Central Station on 42nd Street and asked me to take them to the Hospital for Special Surgery on East 70th Street. He was trying to make a...

Hundreds of demonstrators are expected to march across the Brooklyn Bridge to call for tougher gun control laws. Saturday's demonstration, which comes after a wave of mass shootings across the US, is being underwritten by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the nation's most visible gun control advocates. The marchers — who will include relatives of some of those slain in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting — will gather in downtown Brooklyn and then march across the bridge to City Hall. They will then hold a demonstration outside the building's gates and chant "Not one more,"...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The great-grandson of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller was killed on Friday when his small plane crashed shortly after taking off from an airport north of New York City, a family spokesman and the Federal Aviation Administration said. Dr. Richard Rockefeller of Falmouth, Maine, was piloting the Piper PA-46 aircraft when it went down about 10 minutes after takeoff from Westchester County Airport in Purchase, 23 miles (37 km) north of New York City, family spokesman Fraser Seitel and the FAA said. He was the only person on board, according to an FAA statement. "This is...

The number of shooting victims has skyrocketed across the city this year — up 43 percent in just the last month — while fewer guns are coming off the streets, NYPD statistics reveal. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has repeatedly shifted the focus from shootings to a steep decline in homicides, and claims he is not worried about the gun violence. But sources told The Post it will only get worse in the hotter summer months, and that the alarming trend is the result of a more “reactive” police force handicapped by the inability to use tactics like stop-and-frisk. “Cops aren’t...

Updates: I have been provided some background and additional info: Ever since the archdiocese learned of his homily remarks, he has been forbidden to offer public Masses in the NY archdiocese. A letter of complaint has been ldged with his home diocese of Johannesburg, S. Africa, as well as with his nuncio in Pretoria. Fr. Wylie has been in NYC as a visiting priest for three years. His term at the Holy See's Permanent Observer Mission to the UN was supposed to end in July. Once his remarks got out, he was sent packing immediately; he no longer works there.

Hillary Clinton drew a "Harry Potter" sized line of fans waiting to get an autographed copy of her new memoir "Hard Choices" at a Manhattan bookstore today. Hundreds of Hillary fans have camped out for hours, many overnight, outside the Union Square Barnes and Noble store to get one of the coveted wristbands which would allow them access to her first book tour stop today. By the time people were allowed to inside the store around 8:30 a.m., the line was wrapped around an entire city block -- up Park Avenue, around 18th Street, and all the way to Broadway.

Like most New Yorkers, I found it pretty nutty when many City Council members and their cohorts demonstrated last week against Walmart’s donations to local New York City charities. But the fact is that the deep, longstanding hostility to any Walmart presence in the city is just as crazy. Why should our local nonprofits turn down sorely needed funding to continue helping people they serve and sustain those they employ? Any drop in funding means downsizing or pay cuts for nonprofit employees, and/or cuts in services to people in need. But some lawmakers — and the special interests that pull...

A startled carriage horse took a jaunt around Central Park without any passengers or its driver. The horse became detached from its bridle on Monday evening and ran into the Manhattan park, following its usual route, the union that represents carriage drivers said. It was unclear what startled it. […] Advocacy agency NYCLASS, which is seeking to end the carriage horse industry, released a statement saying carriage horses and city streets don’t mix. “It’s time to retire the carriage horses and replace them with something that doesn’t spook or dart dangerously through traffic and pedestrians,” it said. …