Free Republic

The federal case against him is so strong that prosecutors had no interest in striking cooperation agreements with the ringleader of Spitzer's hooker-supplier, Emperors Club VIP, and his second in command, sources told The Post's Murray Weiss. Prosecutors have records of Spitzer's transactions, phone records and taped conversations with Emperors Club, and are confident they need little more to nail him on charges that could include violating prostitution laws and money laundering, sources said. Probers are also said to be looking into whether he used campaign funds to pay for his pleasures. The case against Spitzer includes the cooperation of...

Cory Booker and Rosario Dawson seem to be moving fast. Just on Sunday, The Post’s Richard Johnson reported that the New Jersey senator and the movie star had been spotted together catching a movie at the Regal Union Square on Thursday. Now Page Six is told that Dawson was heard saying — or, more specifically, singing — “I love you” to Booker. Spies at Saturday’s performance of Broadway hit “Dear Evan Hanson” say they were left in no doubt that Booker and Dawson — who brought Dawson’s daughter and Booker’s niece to see the show — are a couple.

F. Lee Bailey — one of the lawyers on O.J. Simpson’s “Dream Team” — sounds like an anti-Semite in his dotage. Bailey, 85, claims he has been persecuted since the football legend was acquitted of double murder in 1995 and that the case was never covered fairly in the media.Interviewed for an hour on the “Morano Whenever” podcast, the bitter Bailey said the book publishing industry and Hollywood have a policy of censoring anything favorable to Simpson.The disbarred lawyer seems to blame Jews when he says, “Some of the people who claim that most of their lives they’ve been subjected...

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON, ALLISON HOPE WEINER and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM The New York Post is cooperating with a federal investigation into whether a longtime contributor for the Page Six gossip column — the avidly read daily log of wrongdoing, double-dealing and sexual indiscretions by celebrities both minor and major — tried to extort money from a California billionaire, according to a spokesman for the newspaper. Several people involved in the investigation said the reporter, Jared Paul Stern, had been captured on a video recording demanding a $100,000 payment and a monthly stipend of $10,000 from Ronald W. Burkle in return...

CONSPIRACY theorists are buzzing about John Kerry's connection to Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassina tion. While no one in the lunatic fringe has gone so far as to suggest Kerry helped kill Kennedy — yet — they make much of the fact that a cousin of Kerry's, Michael Paine, was a close friend of Oswald who fre quently had the assassin as a house guest. Paine even stored the rifle Oswald used to shoot Kennedy at his house. Paine's mother, Ruth Forbes, and Kerry's mother, Rosemary Forbes, were cousins.[snip] ...according to documents released under the JFK Documents...

With a voice that sounded as if it was preserved in oak and dark good looks straight out of a Bronte novel, it’s a surprise that Richard Johnson (who died today) never became an A-list film star. However, the career which he carved out on stage and screen was probably far more interesting – and durable – than a life at the mercy of a big studio would have allowed. Certainly his bid for the big time was thwarted early on. MGM, who had been impressed with his performance in Never So Few (1959), signed him to a multi-million pound...

Hillary Clinton has a sneaky plan to become the next president — get a conservative third-party candidate in the race to draw votes away from the Republican nominee. Clinton campaign strategists have concluded Hillary will easily be nominated in 2016, but cannot win the general election in a head-to-head matchup, Richard Turley reports on orbmagazine.com. “They are reaching out to Wall Street allies to do ‘black-ops’ funding for a run by Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum or Herman Cain,” a source told Orb. Hillary’s approval rating is stuck at 43 percent, not enough to win a two-person race for president.

There is at least one Republican who is thrilled with the progressive agenda of Mayor Bill de Blasio — Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick.

<p>ALEC Baldwin isn't suffering from any lack of self-esteem. In A&E's "Biography: Alec Baldwin," premiering tonight, the bombastic actor compares himself to Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, who wrote "Soul on Ice." Baldwin recalls that when he was younger, "My dad said to me, 'If you were black . . . with your personality,' he said, 'Do you think you would be Martin Luther King, or would you be Eldridge Cleaver? Would you be patient and wise, and kind, and peaceful?' He said, 'Or do you think you'd really, really get out there and . . . exert yourself a little more in order to leverage change in our society?' And I knew the answer . . . I knew the answer was the latter."</p>