Free Republic

Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11 Joseph Bruno, @fwparker Dean of Students at a Chicago High School caught on camera bragging about providing his students with "dildos and butt plugs": "The kids are just playing with ‘em, looking at ‘em…They're like, ‘How does this butt-plug work?"

Standing in a federal courthouse in a city he long called his political home, former Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the once powerful State Senate majority leader, was found not guilty on federal fraud charges on Friday. The verdict put an end to a legal battle nearly a decade in the making. “This system, it works, sometimes its slow but it works.,” Mr. Bruno, 85, said on the courthouse steps minutes later, flanked by his legal team and family members. Mr. Bruno, a Republican, was one of the three most powerful politicians in the state until his resignation in 2008 amid...

LAST month, Joseph Bruno, the upstate Republican who was the New York State Senate majority leader for more than a decade, announced he was retiring amid speculation concerning a federal investigation of his outside business activities. Democrats in New York City were thrilled by the news — but they are about to find out that Mr. Bruno was their best friend in Albany, and life without him won’t be easy. While New York City is the economic and cultural center of the Empire State, upstate and suburban legislators wield enormous control over the city’s ability to govern itself. That’s the...

State lawmakers are headed for an end-of-year showdown over pay raises. The Republican-led Senate plans this week to pressure Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, whose downstate-dominated members are squeezed the hardest by the lack of a salary hike. "We're going to increase the heat in his kitchen," crowed one Republican senator, adding, "This will drive his members cuckoo right before Christmas!" The Senate's plan: to pass a bill when senators return to Albany on Thursday that would provide immediate raises for judges but no one else, breaking the long-held tradition of coupling judicial and legislative pay hikes. The $79,500 base...

The fallout from a damaging report by Attorney General Cuomo's office detailing the Spitzer administration's use of state police for political attack purposes is likely to spread, threatening to upend Governor Spitzer's agenda and bring down his most senior adviser. After a three-week investigation, Mr. Cuomo's office yesterday released a 53-page report accusing Mr. Spitzer's communications director, Darren Dopp, and a top state homeland security official of ordering state police to take extraordinary measures to track the use of air and ground police escorts by the Republican Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, in an effort to catch him abusing state...

The state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, yesterday accused Governor Spitzer of committing "political espionage," alleging that Mr. Spitzer directed state police to monitor his movements during his recent trips to New York City. The allegations, which were denied by Mr. Spitzer and the New York State Police, plunged relations between the state's top Republican and the Democratic governor to a new low in an ongoing feud fueled by a power struggle over control of the Senate. Mr. Bruno said police logs detailing Mr. Bruno's schedule during trips to New York City that were provided to the Spitzer administration and...

ALBANY - Furious state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno yesterday accused Gov. Spitzer of ordering the State Police to track him for "political espionage" - and called for special grand juries to investigate the governor's possible "criminal liability." Bruno, reacting to yesterday's bombshell report in The Post disclosing that Spitzer had targeted Bruno for an unprecedented State Police surveillance program, also announced that he was "activating" the Senate Investigations Committee to look into whether Spitzer abused the powers of his office. A source said the committee may soon subpoena "internal e-mails and other documents" from the governor's office dealing with...

The majority leader of the New York state Senate announced that the FBI is investigating him and his private consulting business. Joseph Bruno, who will be the state's top Republican in January, said Tuesday he was told by the FBI in late spring that he was being investigated. The 77-year-old lawmaker said he doesn't know exactly what investigators are looking for, but he has cooperated. He was told previously that he was not a target of the investigation, but said he wasn't sure if that had changed. Bruno, who became majority leader in 1994, said he decided to make the...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — State worker unions could get "significant leverage" in contract negotiations with Albany under a bill passed by the Legislature with little notice, a government watchdog group said Wednesday. The bill was one of many agreed to in the waning days of the legislative session that is scheduled to end Thursday. The labor bill passed last week says that if the state is proven to stall or otherwise fail to bargain "in good faith," the state — and its taxpayers — must automatically award a 1-percent raise to union members. If the state continues to stall, an...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The sales clerk at The Gap, the perfume lady at the department store and the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cashier would all get health insurance from their employers under a bill announced Tuesday, shifting the cost of skyrocketing health care in many cases from taxpayers to big businesses. The bill would make New York one of the first states requiring companies to provide health insurance for full-time employees. The legislation, which has bipartisan support in the state Legislature, would apply to businesses with more than 100 employees and could affect 450,000 workers in the state. Scores of...

ALBANY - The second-highest ranking Republican in New York State government, Joseph Bruno, yesterday called on President Bush to pull the troops out of Iraq, warning that the American military is incapable of putting an end to the violence wracking the country. The Senate majority leader's comments against the war stunned and pleased anti-war activists, while Albany observers suspected that Mr. Bruno, a Republican in a predominantly Democratic state, was trying to erect a wall between Mr. Bush and the slender Republican majority in the state Senate before the November elections. Mr. Bruno, who is a veteran of the Korean...

In a heartening advance with national reverberations, the Republican-led New York State Senate approved a bill on Wednesday that will permit local pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception to women who do not have a prescription. The surprising 34-to-27 vote, which followed easy approval by the Democratic-led Assembly, catapults the issue to a noncommittal Gov. George Pataki. Mr. Pataki has no principled course but to sign it. Skip to next paragraph Readers Forum: Today's Editorials The measure is a necessary response to the ideological gridlock at the Food and Drug Administration. The F.D.A. is still stalling over granting all American women...