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Officials and various candidates for office joined in the flood of outrage tonight following the not guilty verdict in the racially-charged trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. Former Comptroller Bill Thompson, the mayoral race’s only black candidate, released and tweeted a terse, one-line statement slamming the decision, which was read tonight just before 10 p.m. “Trayvon Martin was killed because he was black,” declared Mr. Thompson. “There was no justice done today in Florida.” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn further slammed the acquittal as “a shocking insult to his family and everyone seeking justice...

The Manhattan-based madam, Anna Gristina, arrested last week for running a high-end escort service was warned of an impending crackdown on escort services by her client Attorney General Elliot Spitzer in 2005. Kristin Davis, who ran a Manhattan call-girl service used by disgraced former Gov. Spitzer, said she shared a booker, Winnie Wong, with Gristina. Davis said she once spoke to Wong, who told her that Spitzer alerted Gristina to a 2005 investigation. Davis has taken and passed a lie detector test regarding her conversation with Wong in which Wong declared that Spitzer had given Gristina the warning.

Here is video of former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer being interviewed this morning on The Today Show by Matt Lauer. This is one of Spitzer's first public appearances since his resignation in disgrace last year over his involvement in a prostitution scandal. Spitzer says there are "no excuses" for his behavior. He is supposedly coming forward now because he also wants to weigh in on the U.S. Financial Crisis. . . . . . (Watch Video)

Michael Savage on now with cogent argument and lots of documentation on why Wall Street wanted Spitzer gone. Info also on Savage's website. Savage will be on just a little while longer, since he's not feeling well today. Savage suggests that either Spitzer be brought back to carry on the investigation he started into who was up to what in the big mortgage companies or that others who can be trusted take Spitzer's paperwork and carry through on Spitzer's investigations and indictments.

Tania Hollander, 36, became the fourth and likely last person to plead guilty in the sex scandal that exposed Ashley Alexandra Dupré as former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer’s high-priced call girl. The scandal led to Spitzer’s resignation and launched Dupre to national prominence. Hollander's lawyer described her as a minor character in the scandal, but she could face up to five years in jail. Hollander, 36, of Rhinebeck, N.Y worked as a booker for the Emperors Club VIP, the high-priced New Jersey-based call girl ring that eventually hired Dupre. Hollander told the court she began looking for work early...

If Gov. Eliot Spitzer thought his illegal immigrant license plan drew heavy opposition, wait until he gets a taste of Billy Dee Williams. It’s likely Williams will taste bitter, too, since he, once a famous actor and malt liquor spokesman, was cast off as a has-been nearly 20 years ago. In fact, after landing an almost insignificant role in Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989, many thought he would never get serious work again. That was before Spitzer announced this week a plan to raise taxes on malt liquor as a source of revenue – $15 million worth in the next...

EXCLUSIVE Democrat Gov. Spitzer is being blamed for siccing the FBI on Republican Sen Bruno - after earlier accusations that Spitzer unleashed the State Police, and tried to unleash the IRS on Bruno as well.

Gov. Spitzer's boast last week that power plants will soon have to pay for the right to emit carbon dioxide is just the latest sign of his unseemly obeisance to over-the-top environmentalism. Spitzer told Congress how New York has joined 10 northeastern states in a Kyoto-style project called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), meant to combat global warming. In 2009, these states will force power plants to buy CO2 "allowances," which will be traded on the open market. Plants will have to get one credit for each ton of CO2 they emit. The supply of credits, to start, will...

New York Governor Spitzer's back-down on drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants just cements illegal immigration as the Great Elite Back-Down Issue. It was noticed years ago that the gap between elite opinion and public opinion on immigration issues is extraordinarily wide, as these gaps go. Some of this is naked self-interest: wealthy business types liking cheap, docile labor forces, rich folk of all stripes appreciating cheap & meek domestic servants. Some part arises from the guilty conscience that rich people always have, even in the U.S.A., known that all wealth and success is to some degree a product of dumb...

Voters oppose driver's licenses for illegal aliens by a nearly five-to-one margin, a new Fox 5/Washington Times/Rasmussen Reports poll finds. As immigration politics explode into the presidential race, polls show Americans are taking a hard line on benefits for illegal aliens, including opposing driver's licenses and such taxpayer-funded benefits as scholarships at state colleges for illegal-alien students. The new poll found 77 percent of the adults surveyed opposed making driver's licenses available to illegal aliens, while just 16 percent supported the idea. Licenses fared poorly across party lines, including near-blanket opposition among self-identified Republicans, at 88 percent. Among independents and...

Summary: At a Democratic debate in Philadelphia, Sen. Hillary Clinton ducked some questions and gave misleading answers to others. She falsely implied that the reason White House documents about her communications with her husband haven't been released is due to bureaucratic delays, and she avoided saying whether she would ask Bill Clinton to clear their release from the National Archives. She avoided a yes-or-no answer to whether she supports giving New York driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and at one point denied saying the idea made sense, when in fact she said less than two weeks earlier that it "makes...

Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) will undergo a presidential campaign rite of passage fraught with both peril and potential positives when he appears this Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Thompson has appeared on Tim Russert’s famed Sunday morning news show nine times, his campaign said, but this will be his first time as a candidate. Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for Thompson, said the ex-senator is grateful for the chance to expand on some issues that warrant more time than debate formats allow for. “Fred Thompson is a thoughtful candidate who has said many times that debates and 30-second sound...

The DMV, says Gov. Spitzer, "is not the INS" (He was referring to the old Immigration and Naturalization).... and his rewriting of DMV rules just adds to the whole mess.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Fugitive political fundraiser Norman Hsu, who skipped out on San Mateo County authorities this week rather than face sentencing in a fraud scheme, was apprehended tonight by federal and local lawmen in Grand Junction, Colo. Authorities said Hsu was taken into custody at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction at 7 p.m. local time. He had been on the lam for almost two days after failing to appear in a Redwood City courtroom Wednesday to surrender his passport. Hsu's attorney told state prosecutors that he had been on a charter flight that arrived at Oakland International Airport...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- The state Ethics Commission has authorized its staff to start a preliminary investigation into the scandal in which top aides to Gov. Eliot Spitzer used state police in a plot to discredit Republican Senate leader Joseph Bruno, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. The letter from the Ethics Commission's executive director states the commissioners have acted and "authorized staff to review facts and circumstances" of the case that has dominated the Albany agenda since state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released an investigative report Monday. Unlike Cuomo, in this case, the Ethics Commission has...

Just three days after starting his new job at Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., shock jock Howard Stern is now able to sell the roughly $200 million in Sirius stock that he received as part of his five-year deal with the company. Sirius' contract with Stern runs through 2010, but the company disclosed last week that it was giving Stern and his agent 34.4 million shares of stock right away because it had already reached certain undisclosed targets for subscriber growth under the deal it signed with Stern in late 2004. On Wednesday, the company made another regulatory filing saying that...

BILL Weld, the former Massachusetts governor who now wants to succeed Gov. George Pataki in Albany, enjoys both chess and pool. Both - obviously - are tactical games. Chess calls for seeing the board several moves ahead and pinning down an opponent. Pool requires execution and a vision of where to leave the cue ball to set up the next several shots. Such maneuvering has long served Mr. Weld well in another game he enjoys - politics. Though he might appear to be a long shot in New York, his latest move is exactly the sort of attention-grabbing challenge he...

August 3, 2005 - Only Giuliani Can Beat Spitzer For New York Gov, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Sen. Clinton Tops Pataki As State's Presidential Choice If he decided to run for New York State Governor next year, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani would top State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer 49 - 42 percent, the only one of several high visibility Republican names to top the likely Democratic candidate, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Spitzer has gained ground since trailing Giuliani 59 - 34 percent in an April 14, 2004 poll by the independent Quinnipiac...

2nd Circuit Upholds New York Handgun Limits Tuesday May 10, 2:59 am ET Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal New York state's handgun licensing scheme does not violate the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. Upholding the dismissal of a suit brought by an out-of-state resident barred from being allowed to carry a handgun under the licensing scheme, the circuit also found in Bach v. Pataki, 03-9123, that the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV "cannot preclude New York's residency requirement in light of the State's substantial interest in monitoring...

Editor's Note: The following article is a satire. New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer shocked the world today -- as well as the state department and the Bush administration -- with his announcement that he is charging terrorist mastermind and al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden with insider trading. At a press conference brilliantly situated on the hallowed grounds where the World Trade Center once stood, Mr. Spitzer outlined an international investment scheme so heinous that, if properly prosecuted, could lead to the eventual capture and incarceration of America’s greatest terrorist threat. Moreover, according to Spitzer, these investment manipulations...