Free Republic

Peering into spaces that have not seen the light of day for two centuries, architectural archaeologists are dissecting Alexander Hamilton’s country home, the Grange, to figure out how to take it apart and put it back together again. The National Park Service plans to move the Hamilton Grange National Memorial from Convent Avenue and 141st Street, where it is so boxed in by neighboring buildings that two of its porches had to be cut off, to St. Nicholas Park, about 300 feet to the southeast. There, it can be reassembled in a form that Hamilton would have recognized, with porches...

As they push their investigation into the health risks to workers in the recovery and cleanup operations at ground zero, medical detectives are focusing on a group of lung diseases that can lead to long-term disabilities and, in some cases, death. After nearly five years, it is still too early for these doctors, scientists and forensic pathologists to say with certainty whether any long-term cancer threat came with exposure to the toxic cloud unleashed by the trade center collapse. But there are already clear signs that the dust, smoke and ash that responders breathed in have led to an increase...

For decades it waited in secret inside the masonry foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge, in a damp, dirty and darkened vault near the East River shoreline of Lower Manhattan: a stockpile of provisions that would allow for basic survival if New York City were devastated by a nuclear attack. City workers were conducting a regular structural inspection of the bridge last Wednesday when they came across the cold-war-era hoard of water drums, medical supplies, paper blankets, drugs and calorie-packed crackers — an estimated 352,000 of them, sealed in dozens of watertight metal canisters and, it seems, still edible. To step...

A local television station, WNYW/Channel 5, is refusing to run a provocative advertisement promoting a Democratic candidate for Manhattan borough president. And the campaign of the candidate, Brian Ellner, is charging that the station is doing so because the spot takes a swipe at President Bush. The 30-second ad features Mr. Bush's face superimposed upon a middle-aged man's naked torso as Mr. Ellner says of the president that "the emperor has no clothes." Mr. Ellner also introduces his partner, Simon Holloway, in the spot - which the campaign says is the first time in city history that a gay candidate...

Denise Jack and other car owners thought they had it bad when a 75-foot retaining wall in Washington Heights in northern Manhattan collapsed on May 12, burying their parked vehicles beneath untold tons of debris. But their ordeal was actually just beginning. Their cars remain buried there today, and none are expected to be unearthed until the rest of the wall is stabilized and the rubble removed - up to a year from now. Until then, they are caught in the world of insurance limbo. Mrs. Jack's policy, for example, has liability coverage that does not cover landslides. For her...

POLITICAL MEMO Jeanne Shaheen, the former governor of New Hampshire and Kerry-Edwards campaign chairwoman, is the keynote speaker. Faye Wattleton and Robin Chandler Duke, among the best-known women's rights advocates in the country, are chairwomen. And C. Virginia Fields, the Manhattan borough president who is hoping to become the city's first female mayor, is the beneficiary. They will all come together on Thursday at a "Women for Fields Kickoff Mayoral Breakfast" at a Midtown hotel, a fund-raiser for her campaign that is expected to be Ms. Fields's largest so far and one that sends the unmistakable message that she believes...