Free Republic

**SNIP** “If government dependence on welfare is rising in a good economy, what’s going to happen in a bad economy?” wondered study author Stephen Eide, who said the trend was antithetical to data dating back to around 1960. The surprising uptick, reformers say, is partly by design. De Blasio’s pick to head the $10 billion Human Resources Administration, Steven Banks, is a proponent of loosening welfare restrictions. With Banks at the helm, the HRA launched a series of sweeping changes in its state-approved Biennial Employment Plan, including changing requirements for welfare recipients with kids younger than 4 years old. Recipients...

Who's afraid of Mayor Bill de Blasio in Albany? Not state Senate Republicans, who denied his request for permanent mayoral control of New York City schools, granting him one year instead. Not Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who didn't deny he and his team were the unnamed officials in news reports who belittled the mayor as "incompetent" and clueless on influencing the legislative process. Not advocates for charter schools, who won a lifting of a cap for new schools over de Blasio's opposition in the three-way agreement last week among Cuomo, state Senate Republicans and the Democrat-led state Assembly. "There isn't...

Rank-and-file cops are fuming over several “police reform” measures City Council members plan to review this week, including bills that would force cops to get suspects’ consent for searches, imprison police for using chokeholds, and require cops to give out the Civilian Complaint Review Board’s phone number. “These pieces of legislation have been proposed by individuals who have neither the expertise nor the experience to establish policy in the dangerous business of fighting crime,” PBA President Patrick Lynch said in a statement Sunday.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, in a sharp shift from his initial objections, is poised to hire nearly 1,300 additional officers for the New York Police Department, a surprising addition in a $78.5 billion budget deal announced by city leaders on Monday night. The mayor, who has pledged to improve police-community relations, has long been hesitant to hire more officers, saying he felt comfortable with the city’s near-record-low level of crime. But his administration has come under intense pressure in recent weeks after a notable increase in homicides and shootings compared with the same period last year.

ALBANY - Days after getting the right to marry people, Gov. Cuomo will officiate a same-sex marriage Sunday morning an hour before marching in the city gay pride parade. Cuomo will marry David Contreras Turley, 36, and Peter Thiede, 35. "It’s hard to believe everything that’s happened in the last 24 hours,” Turley told the Daily News on Saturday night. “The opportunity arose for us to get married by the governor, and we couldn’t be happier.” Longtime gay rights activist Edie Windsor, who was part of a landmark Supreme Court decision, will deliver the opening remarks at the ceremony, which...

The New York City Police Department unveiled a new policing strategy Thursday meant to keep crime low while also improving the at-times strained relationship between officers and the communities they serve. The program, dubbed “One City: Safe and Fair Everywhere,” is being launched after an 18-month department review by Police Commissioner William Bratton. He declared the plan will give New Yorkers “a more intimate” relationship with police officers by fixing cops in particular neighborhoods, allowing them to get to know local residents. Some officers will now patrol the same beat day after day, building a rapport with residents who would...

Two Muslim filmmakers have filed a lawsuit against the operator of New York subways claiming the agency rejected their advertisements under a rule that prohibits disputed political views. They argue the ads have nothing to do with politics and should not be banned. In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court, the filmmakers, Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah, claim the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is violating their First Amendment right to free speech. The two created the advertisements to help promote their 2013 film, “The Muslims Are Coming.” They say the overall message of both the ads and the film...

The street, which runs through the center of Fort Hamilton, New York City's only US military base, was named in honor of Robert E. Lee, who led the Confederate troops during the Civil War

Four people were shot at a Harlem deli Wednesday afternoon, police said. The gunman opened fire inside the 20 Stars deli on East 132nd Street near Madison Avenue around 3:30 p.m., cops said. A 25-year-old man was shot in the head and a 17-year-old man was shot in the torso. The chaos then spilled outside, with the shooter letting off several more shots

Facebook user Seth Torres-Campbell posted a video to his page early yesterday morning that shows two NYPD officers getting punched multiple times by an angry onlooker during what looks like the arrest of a young woman.The woman getting arrested can be seen trying to grab the female NYPD officer’s gun numerous times during the altercation.

Hip Hop mogul Russell Simmons has started a rap-worthy feud with Mayor de Blasio, calling him a “punk” and a “bitch” for not standing up to Gov. Cuomo and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton on police reform. “Our police commissioner is bullying our punk mayor” into not appointing special prosecutors to investigate police abuses, Simmons said on WQHT 97.1 FM, Hot97, radio Thursday, in remarks first reported by Capital New York. “He got the police commissioner pushing him around like he’s a bitch,” Simmons railed.

Witnesses say the white gunman who killed nine people at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., was quite vocal about his motives: He wanted to kill black people. Sylvia Johnson, whose cousin the Rev. Clementa Pinckney was one of three ministers killed in the church, said a survivor of the horror told her the shooter muttered, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go." In Charleston, a slaughter in the sanctuary In Charleston, a slaughter in the sanctuary Facebook photos and other evidence suggest...

An undocumented immigrant who was cleared by a Brooklyn appellate court to practice law in New York has run into a potential obstacle to joining the bar after an Iowa state judge sentenced him to one year of probation for trespassing during a political rally held on private property. Cesar Vargas, 31, participated in a demonstration over immigration policies at a rally for Republican presidential candidates and others in Des Moines. He and other demonstrators sat among about 1,500 attendees on the private property. At one point, he rose and disrupted a speech by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, asking...

CHARLESTON, South Carolina — During an interview Breitbart News conducted with people gathered outside the Mother Emmanuel American Methodist Church in Charleston, where Wednesday’s deadly shooting left nine black churchgoers dead, a woman called for a “race war” and discussed black anger.

On his blog, the suspect said he's on a mission to find an Asian wife and his many rejections in approaching Asian women in the city have led to his game “Bash Asian Women in the Nose.” The man wanted for attacking four Asian women in Manhattan may be a suicidal artist and blogger who’s confessed to the crimes — claiming that he’s playing a game called “Bash Asian Women in the Nose,” police sources said Thursday. “I had to do it,” Tyrelle Shaw, 25, wrote on his blog “Mr. Talented.”

I realize we’ve been hitting the South Carolina shooting and the disgusting, racist criminal who allegedly perpetrated the murders rather often since yesterday morning. Unfortunately, nothing as serious and tragic as this can unfold in America today without immediately becoming mired in multiple levels of political muck, generally before the first facts are even verified. In this case, the process continued well into the evening and will surely roll forward in the weeks to come. One aspect of the church shooting, however, seemed to offer at least a slim ray of hope in an otherwise dismal day. A consortium of...

A 24-year-old uniformed NYPD officer assigned to transit foot patrol in Coney Island shot and killed a man who attacked him with an 11-inch hunting knife when the cop tried to arrest him for attacking a 78-year-old woman on a street below an elevated subway station Thursday, police said. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said the 58-year-old suspect attacked the elderly woman below the Ocean Parkway Q train station around 1:30 p.m., not long after the woman, a stranger to the suspect, had tried to intervene in a separate dispute the suspect had had with a shop owner in a nearby...

NEW YORK - A man wanted in the attack of a gay couple in the Chelsea section of Manhattan (NYC) last month has been arrested. Bayna-Lehkiem El-Amin, 41, turned himself into police Tuesday. He faced a judge on two counts of felony assault and two counts of attempted felony assault. A judge set bail at $75,000. The May 5 assault at a Dallas BBQ on West 23rd Street was caught on video. The scary and wild attack unfolded as stunned diners looked on, some yelling "Stop!" A man is seen slamming a chair onto a gay couple then running off....

Nine graffiti artists who spray painted creations across the world-renowned 5Pointz building filed a lawsuit Friday in Brooklyn federal court, seeking unspecified damages from the owner who whitewashed away their artwork. [Snip] The aerosol artists say they are owed substantial cash damages because Wolkoff painted over their al fresco works. [Snip] The iconic buildings had more than 350 works of visual art on the walls — inside and out — when Wolkoff destroyed them, the lawsuit said. The colorful, eye-catching creations were torn down for good last summer.

Security Expert: Feds Involved In Day-To-Day Busts Isn't Something Seen Every Day. Bullet-riddled windows, yellow crime scene tape, and evidence markers denoting where shell casings fell on the sidewalk are becoming all-too-familiar sights on New York City streets. Now in an unprecedented move, a federal agency is joining the effort to get gun crimes under control, CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported Monday. Kramer is told it was a collective decision made by the federal government, the NYPD, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Those agencies are mounting a...