The New York Post pulled a story offline after New York Mag called them out on the erroneous report that one-time congressman Anthony Weiner got a new job.
“Disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner has landed a job after being unemployed for 18 months, his first gig since resigning amid a Twitter sexting scandal,” the Post story said, claiming that Mr. Weiner got a part-time gig consulting for Madison Avenue brokerage firm Concept Capital Markets. Read More
Having won a (temporary) victory in our now-endless budget battle, President Obama is now free to pursue the agenda that he’s laid out for his second term. As gleaned from various statements and media interviews, this includes: securing our withdrawal from Afghanistan, passing immigration reform, doing something about global climate change, doing something about gun Read More
Al Jazeera, the Arab news network, is reportedly nearing a deal to take over Current TV, the struggling cable network co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore in 2005. According to the New York Times’ Brian Stelter, who was first to report on the potential deal, acquiring Current would give the Middle Eastern news channel access to 60 million of the 100 million American homes that get cable or satellite TV.
Update (8:44 p.m.): Current TV founder co-founder Joel Hyatt confirmed Al Jazeera will purchase the network in an email to staff this evening. Read More
“One day, whole tribe falls off cliff.”
—Chief Wild Eagle, Hekawi Indians
Wow, that was a close one, wasn’t it? We just missed going over that fiscal cliff!
Or did we? Technically, we walked right off it, with no compromise on the budget officially voted on and signed into law before the end of 2012. Read More
In 1995, President George H.W. Bush gave up his lifetime membership in the National Rifle Association via an angry open letter in which he expressed his outrage over a fundraising pitch made by current NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre that described federal agents as “jack-booted government thugs” wearing “Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms.” Though President Bush said he was “deeply” offended and asked the organization to “remove my name from your membership list,” seventeen years later, the NRA is still promoting his past association with the group in its online gift shop. Read More
“What a wonder is a gun!
What a versatile invention!
First of all, when you’ve a gun—
Everybody pays attention.”
—Stephen Sondheim, Assassins
Last year I had the opportunity to review Candice Millard’s excellent history of the Garfield assassination, Destiny of the Republic. President Garfield’s killer, Charles J. Guiteau, has generally been characterized as “a disgruntled office-seeker,” but as Millard makes clear, he was barking mad. His own family was terrified of him and had been for years, but it proved impossible to find him any effective mental health care.
Finding a cheap handgun in the nation’s capital, on the other hand, proved very easy. One murdered president later, attention was paid.
That was 131 years ago. Little has changed. Getting effective, affordable mental health care is nearly as difficult for many Americans as it was in Garfield’s time, while guns are more ubiquitous and deadly than ever. Read More
Friday was a day of horror, Saturday a day of shock and Sunday a day of mourning. President Barack Obama hewed to that script when he showed up in Newtown and gave a stem-winder about God and our duty to our children without uttering the word ‘gun’ or stating exactly how he plans to lead Read More
The Atlantic Yards certainly knows how to get someone else to pick up the tab. It’s like a friend who always manages to forget his wallet when going out to dinner, or the pal who neglects to pony up her share of the group gift you all went in on together.
First, the project scored $305 million in state and city subsidies via the Empire State Development Corporation, then the arena protested a tax assessment for taxes it didn’t even have to pay (an oversight, it claimed), and now it’s literally getting a free ride on the existing transportation infrastructure—an infrastructure that is ferrying a lot of visitors and cash to Barclays, but that Ratner doesn’t want to help finance. Read More
The millennium arrived sometime during the day of December 4, when New York State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein led his spanking new Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) over to the Republican side of the aisle.
Talk about the rapidly approaching Mayan apocalypse! Mr. Klein, a Bronx Democrat, assures us that he and four fellow Democrats will Read More
Pamela Geller is at it again.
The outspoken blogger and Executive Director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative has just purchased a slew of advertising space in several subway stations and on numerous Metro-North platforms in order to display her newest anti-Islam message.
Her latest ads, shared exclusively with The Observer, will feature a panorama Read More
