Free Republic

An apartment in Battery Park City that former Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik secured for his personal use after Sept. 11 was originally donated for the use of weary police and rescue workers who were helping at ground zero, according to a real estate executive who has been briefed about the apartment. After the cleanup had settled into a routine that fall, the executive said, Mr. Kerik, who was still police commissioner, asked to rent the two-bedroom apartment for his own use. During his use of the apartment, Mr. Kerik and Judith Regan engaged in an extramarital affair there, according...

Kerik all but admitted having affairs with two women, as the fallout from his failed bid to become homeland security czar continued to explode yesterday. The women - publishing tycoon Judith Regan and Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero - were simultaneously involved in extramarital affairs with Kerik, sources told the Daily News. In the harrowing weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Kerik romanced both women at a secret Battery Park City apartment, according to the sources, who have intimate knowledge of the liaisons. As the women kept silent yesterday, Kerik held an impromptu press conference outside the Times...

Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik looked out at the commanders assembled in his office. He had heard enough. New York City lawmakers were complaining that it was taking too long, 12 minutes, for patrol cars to respond to reported crimes. Mr. Kerik ordered the commanders to deliver a blunt message to the rest of the force: Every crime scene had to be reached within eight minutes, or he wanted an explanation from the precinct commander. Within a few weeks of that warning in 2001, the average police response time fell by more than a minute, and Mr. Kerik saw it...

President Bush has chosen former New York City Police Commis sioner Bernie Kerik to replace Tom Ridge as secretary of Homeland Security, and it's hard to think of a more enlightened choice — for America, or for the city. Who better, after all, than New York's top cop on 9/11 to ensure America's security? On that horrible day, Kerik was right in the thick of things. He watched nearly 3,000 fellow citizens die — including 23 of his own officers. Not only is he super-sensitive to the high price Americans could pay should another strike on U.S. soil succeed,...

...I am voting for George W. Bush because he has shown me that he has the resolve and the strength to fight and win the war against terrorism. In this year's presidential election, the first held since the attacks of 9/11, the most important election in our lifetime, these qualities have never been more critical. I'm voting for President Bush because I was the commissioner of the New York City Police Department on 9/11 and I watched the planes crash into the World Trade Center, and take the lives of 23 of my cops, 37 Port Authority officers, 343 firefighters...