Free Republic

Democrats in Pennsylvania cheered Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s ouster last week. But winning the governorship may not assuage the loss of their top Republican ally, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, who was deposed in a GOP leadership election on Wednesday. Notwithstanding the Republican governor’s 10-point defeat to Democrat Tom Wolf, Republicans picked up eight seats in the state House and three in the Senate. The gains bolster the GOP majority in the Senate to 30-20 and 119-84 in the House. That’s not strong enough to override a veto, but Democrats will now have a hard time passing legislation merely by...

FORT LAUDERDALE— Police say wealthy retired businessman Ronald Vinci wanted to finally end his long-term relationship with his girlfriend. During a "heated altercation" in the early morning hours of June 28 at Vinci's new multimillion-dollar home, police allege the girlfriend, Catherine Pileggi, unleashed a tremendous fury, fracturing his skull, stabbing him in the chest, slicing his throat and shooting him in the head.

-snip By recreating the pasta sauce that Clemenza taught Michael to make in the Godfather, and pitting it against the sauce that Paulie and Vinnie made while in the slammer in Goodfellas, I could once and for all determine which pasta sauce was better and, by extension, which was the superior film. The first step was to capture the recipes. A ton of information is given out onscreen and in the dialogue, but it takes some digging to get at it. We see two cans each of tomatoes and tomato paste on the counter in Godfather;we hear Vinnie talk about...

Frank "Lefty'' Rosenthal was a Chicago bookie who was sent to Las Vegas by the mob and helped turned sports betting into a billion-dollar business. The manager of several well-known casinos, his life inspired the Martin Scorsese movie "Casino.'' Rosenthal, 79, died Monday after a heart attack at his Miami Beach condo. Born in 1929 in Chicago, Rosenthal got involved in illegal bookmaking and eventually connected with mobsters. His nickname stemmed from a 1961 Senate hearing on gambling and organized crime at which he invoked the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination 38 times. Throughout his testimony, he kept his left...