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A 30-year-old Long Island man was brutally beaten by a pack of teenagers on a Valley Stream street early Sunday, leaving him in critical condition, police said today. Nassau County cops said the attack took place at about 12:15 a.m. Sunday -- but the man, whose identity has not been released, did not seek medical treatment until later in the day. He was admitted to South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside in critical condition with a concussion, police said. Police said as many as 15 attackers were involved in the fight.

During the campaign, I wrote a piece called "Why Won't Obama Talk About Columbia? — The years he won't discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about." So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign — other than in Wasilla — and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, "Breaking the War Mentality," that Columbia student Barack Obama wrote for a campus newspaper. The article shows that Obama dreaded American "militarism" and its...

NASA's James Hansen became an instant folk hero among global warmists and "journalists" and a poster child for government censorship after he claimed the Bush administration had suppressed and rewritten his research on "climate change." It is unlikely the Environmental Protection Agency's Alan Carlin and John Davidson will be so deified for suffering the same treatment at the hands of their bosses and President Obama. Under the direction of the White House and under a virtual media blackout, the EPA is quashing an internal study by Messrs. Carlin and Davidson that criticizes the agency's warmist agenda as dangerously dated and...

Imagine a city where all the major economic planks of the statist or "progressive" platform have been enacted: * A "living wage" ordinance, far above the federal minimum wage, for all public employees and private contractors. * A school system that spends significantly more per pupil than the national average. * A powerful school employee union that militantly defends the exceptional pay, benefits and job security it has won for its members. * A powerful government employee union that does the same for its members. * A tax system that aggressively redistributes income from businesses and the wealthy to the...

I have been quiet about Sarah Palin for a bit, not needing my comments count to soar into the stratosphere again, but I do want to give her a little bit of free advice. If you see her, pass this on, wouldja? You clearly won the round with David Letterman, but you were sailing a little close to the wind. For anyone, playing the victim is always dangerous, and really being a victim (as you are) does not minimize that risk -- it rather doubles it. This might seem counter-intuitive, but that's how it works. Persecutors hate real victims more...

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's first lady Svetlana Medvedeva has taken Michelle Obama and her two daughters on a tour of the Kremlin. They toured the Kremlin as President Barack Obama held talks with Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev on arms control and other issues. The fortified Kremlin is a leading tourist attraction in Moscow as well as where the presidential offices are situated. Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha toured the Kremlin's Winter Garden and the Cathedral of the Assumption. They also visited the Armory, which boasts a large collection of imperial regalia, and the State Diamond Fund, home to...

Why don't Russian-speaking Jews trust Obama? By Lily Galili In America the Russian romance with Obama died out even before it started. While about 80 percent of American Jews voted for the Democratic candidate, about 80-85 percent of the Russian-speaking Jews there voted for Republican John McCain. Now there are only signs of a further deterioration in relations - Gerstein says that many listeners attribute to Obama and his Jewish staff a conspiracy to destroy Israel. Similar sentiments are heard from Avigdor Eskin, who speaks from Jerusalem with Russian speakers in Chicago. Eskin, who long ago returned to religion and...

WOLCOTT — Thirty years later, the brutal murder of a 60-year-old woman in this quiet, closely knit town still haunts its residents. As Wolcott's only unsolved murder, the case of Anthonia Raibikis hasn't escaped the radar of police, either. They still have evidence from the scene and their hope is that technology eventually will lead them to the killer. On June 9, 1979, a little after 9 p.m., Raibikis and her sister, Gladys Knapik, closed up shop at Liquor Locker, the package store in Waterbury Raibikis owned. Before they left, Raibikis tucked the day's earnings — between $500 and $1,000...

For the past two days, visitors to a park in Staten Island's Fort Wadsworth section have stumbled upon a gory mystery -- a mutilated animal, possibly a dog or a goat, wrapped in a white sheet. Parkgoers found two such animals in Von Briesen Park yesterday and this morning, city Parks Department officials confirmed. The discovery has sparked speculation of ritual sacrifice and cult activity, and has led one Port Richmond woman to douse part of the ground where one animal was found with holy water, in an attempt to ward off what she believes is an evil presence. Several...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Monday he will press the United States and other nations to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius at this week's Group of Eight summit. The United States, Japan, Russia and Canada have yet to be convinced that a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) limit -- favored by European G8 nations Germany, Britain, France and Italy -- is the necessary threshold beyond which climate change will reach danger levels. But Barroso said he would "stress the importance of the science and remaining within a 2...

The same virus that caused the potato blight in Ireland in the 1840s that decimated the population and drove thousands to these shores has been found in potato and tomato crops in Rhode Island. The Providence Journal has reported that the blight has been found in crops in the state and that the Department of Environmental Management (DEM) has warned all growers to be aware of the problem and use fungicides to counter it. The DEM has also warned growers to be vigilant to spot the telltale signs of the blight – brown spots on leaves and a white fungus...

WOODBURY — Chris Ford never worked on a political campaign until 2008. Ford, a Republican, supported U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential bid and was frustrated when he lost to Barack Obama. But only hours after that setback, Ford began to think ahead to 2010 and a new potential target: U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd. Ford is a driving force behind one of the first organized efforts to unseat Dodd in the 2010 election. His fledgling organization, while lacking in professional polish, may offer an early glimpse of the forces gathering against Dodd. Ford said he first became annoyed with Dodd,...

(I'd say "Happy Independence Day", but I haven't checked to see if that is still the official approved name for the holiday.) Today is the day when real Americans light off fireworks (or, in many states, watch the government light off fireworks for them) to celebrate conscription and income taxes, zoning laws and the FDA! Two-flush toilets and government-mandated florescent light bulbs! Seat belt laws and helmet mandates! Hurrah for Old Glory! Hurrah for the Real ID Act and our great national Ponzi scheme! Tomorrow we'll round up all the doctors and assign each and every citizen his or her...

MACON, Ga. — H. Averett Walker used hot money to turn Security Bank from a sleepy Southern lender into a regional powerhouse. Darrell D. Pittard used hot money to jump-start his brand-new MagnetBank, allowing it to lend hundreds of millions of dollars even though it did not have a single drive-up window or even a customer with a checking account. It is a formula being replicated at banks across the United States. Rather than simply wooing local customers, they have turned to out-of-state brokers who deliver billions of dollars in bulk deposits, widely known as “hot money,” from investors nationwide....

The outrage and condemnation that have greeted Robert McNamara's In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam ignore two major scandals of that war which have led to continued pain, anguish, and suffering. McNamara, too, conveniently ignored them in his bloodless account of how he and his colleagues in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations were "wrong, terribly wrong" about Vietnam. A few months after McNamara told Lyndon Johnson that the war was unwinnable, McNamara did his part to make Vietnam America's greatest class war with his brainchild, Project 100,000. At the same time, McNamara knew but remained silent about the...

THE HAGUE (AFP) — The International Criminal Court will bring to book perpetrators of Kenya's worst election violence which claimed some 1,500 lives if they are not punished in their country, the court's prosecutor said Friday. "If there are no national proceedings, we'll do it," Luis Moreno-Ocampo told AFP after meeting with Kenya's Justice Minister Mutula Kilonzo. "The crimes allegedly committed in Kenya after the 2007 elections may fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC and warrant investigations and prosecutions," he said. "There are serious allegations of crimes against humanity committed during the post-electoral" period, he added. Some 1,500 people...

Weekend tally: 10 slayings, 63 shootings July 6, 2009 6:51 AM | 57 Comments The weekend that started violently has ended the same way. Another four people were slain overnight, Chicago police said this morning. Before that, six people had been killed and more than 20 wounded on city streets from Saturday into Sunday. From the start of the holiday weekend midnight Friday until the early hours of this morning there were 63 shootings and one stabbing, according to police sources. The most recent homicides include: • Everette Snow, 18, of the 2200 block of East 78th Street. He was...

Will LA print up its own IOUs to pay for Staples Center security? Read » The scalping has already begun for the big Jacko Basho at the Staples Center tomorrow. It should be quite a riot, as more than 1 million people applied to get just a bit over 10,000 tickets. It was that hot. But while Jackson's crew is paying for the event, LA is stuck with the bill for all the police, security and everything else that the event will cause. AP: ... Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry said she'd "love it" if the Jacksons helped defray...

Justice Ginsburg’s Racial Hypocrisy in Ricci She Never Met a Black She’d Hire in 1993 By Michael P. Tremoglie Tremoglie’s Tea Time Blog During Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s July 1993 confirmation hearing, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R- Utah, asked her about racist hiring practices. He wanted to know if she thought that an employer, located in a city that was predominantly black, would be suspected of racism if there were no blacks on the payroll. Judge Ginsburg replied it would be. Hatch then reminded her that her own payroll did not include blacks even though she was in a city with...