This comes on the same day that The Washington Post revealed that the Department of Justice had snooped on a Fox News reporter’s private emails, and only a week after the AP reported that the DOJ had surreptitiously obtained their reporters’ phone records, making it an easy addition to the government versus press narrative. Three, after all, is a trend.

But on closer inspection, the situation in Albany seems less All the President’s Men and more Mean Girls. The AP story notes that Mr. Dicker and Mr. Cuomo “have had a rocky public relationship” which is an understatement.

The two were the best of friends for much of Mr. Cuomo’s time in Albany. Mr. Dicker regularly praised Mr. Cuomo in his Post column, interviewed him on his radio show, and even planned to write a his biography. Until earlier this year, that is, when they had a nasty falling out over Cuomo’s support of aggressive gun control measures.

Soon, Mr. Dicker was trashing Mr. Cuomo in the Post and Mr. Cuomo was boycotting Mr. Dicker’s radio show. Then Mr. Cuomo decided to write his own memoir, which killed Mr. Dicker’s planned book deal.

Releasing Mr. Dicker’s email to his competitors is just Mr. Cuomo's latest attempt to humiliate his frenemy.

The plan would basically cut out the four independent Democrats who have indicated their support for the Republicans. According to Mr. Dicker’s report, the GOP believes that by the time the two new Democrats are seated—giving Democrats a majority—it will be too late to overthrow Mr. Skelos.

All of this sounds like Albany politics as usual. Instead of scheming, the Republicans should welcome the support of independent Democrats—and point out to voters that they are more than happy to cross party lines to get the state back on track.

Republicans have a chance to make a point about bipartisanship. They should take advantage.

New York Times profile of New York Post's Fred Dicker includes footage of Dicker getting assaulted. Classic NY moment. [CBS6Albany.com]

Trump: Media can't believe Trump wants to get off birther issue. [Chris Matthews]

Trump: Greta van Susteren won't ask Trump about it. [FoxNews.com]

Trump: Birther issue is coded racism. [Fareed Zakaria]

Trump: Hand-written note says he'll release info sooner than required. [Justin Elliott]

Trump: Not a trusted source on reportings his wealth. [Marcus Baram]

Trump: Outlines what he owns, and he lends his name to, in deposition. Very entertaining. [Via Anna Sale]

Ticket Fixing: Bloomberg says trust the new computerized system. [Diego Ribadeneira]

Consolidation: Layoffs not required, says Krueger. [Liz Benjamin]

Sign Language: Debate about how to get more English onto signs is bubbling up again. [Connor Adams Sheets]

Social Media: Rachel Sterne teaches. [Stacy Blackman]

Police Complaints: Neighbors complain of police sting operation. Newspaper won't say where, to protect the sting. [Stephen Geffon]

Street Renaming: Ruben Wills proposes the honor for the man he replaced, Tom White. [Ann Marie Costella]

New York Post State Editor Fred Dicker gets profiled on the front page of the New York Times this morning. Dicker declined to participate in the interview, but on his radio show, said he thought there were a few errors, but overall, it was fair, and not a "hatchet job." 

My favorite part of the story:

The younger Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has used a beastly metaphor of his own, telling associates that the Post writer should be dealt with at arm’s length, as if feeding a caged animal, according to one person who has heard the governor speak that way and wanted to remain anonymous because the remark was made in a private conversation. But the two are close, and Mr. Dicker has said he has been an intermediary between father and son in old family feuds.

There's no New York reporter who has been profiled as much as Dicker. When Cuomo officially arrived in the governor's mansion, Reid Pillifant looked at his relationship with Dicker. When David Paterson became governor, Ben McGrath hung out in Dicker's office for the day. Back in 2005, Ben Smith's profile called Dicker "The Undisputed King of Albany Press."

And I've tried keeping tabs on him.

2012: Poll shows "abrupt change in attitude" with voters; two year low. [Jim Rutenberg and Megan Thee-Brenan]

2012: The poll. [New York Times]

Media: Unnamed source said Cuomo compared his dealing with Fred Dicker to feeding a caged animal. Dicker declined to participate in the profile. Writing the NY Post a huge part of his influence. [Jeremy Peters]

Trump: He's "a spectacle. He's also not a conservative." [Charles Krauthammer]

Trump: He [has become the Charlie Sheen of the Republican Party." [Timothy Egan]

Trump: Support from a Long Island woman who opposed his real estate development. [Dan Janison]

Ticket Fixing: Rookies expose the scandal; top Bronx official reportedly caught helping "honorary NYPD deputy commissioner." [Larry Celona and Bob Fredericks]

Redistricting: Long Island GOP move up date of vote even though details aren't public. [Celeste Hadrick]

Same-Sex Marriage: GOP operatives Michael Avella and John McArdle working join marriage advocates. [Jacob Gershman]

Waste Management: Bloomberg ditches plan to delay construction of garbage facilities. [Michael Saul]

Waste Management: Squeezing energy from trash. [David Seifman]

Medicare: " '[T]he conservative alternative to the liberal AARP' to run ads supporting House GOP for their vote." [Jimmy Vielkind]

Unions: CSEA sues to lift a salary cap. [Celeste Hadrick]

Crime: 18% increase in grand larcenies on subways, compared to 2010. [Andrew Grossman]

Tim Hetherington: Why the "tribe" of war photographers gather in NY. [Sophia Hollander and Tamer el-Ghobasy]

Donald Trump shot down a report claiming he would announce his candidacy on the final episode of his show, The Apprentice, on May 15.

"I can't announce during the show, I really can't" and "I'm not allowed to" he said, during an interview on Talk1300. "I don't know where it came from."

But Trump -- who has flirted with two previous presidential runs -- said he was serious about it this time. "There's no doubt in my mind I want to run as a Republican," he said. "I've always felt that. Really, never wavered."

"Years ago," he added, "there was a big move to get me to run in the Reform Party. Fortunately I didn't do that; I decided not to do that. And as you know, that was a strange group." He added, "I like the people but I just didn't think they had their act together at that time."

"I haven't really thought about it since," Trump said about running for president.

But now, he has.

The show's host, Fred Dicker -- who is also the New York Post's state editor, read a recent poll showing Obama's sky-high support among African-Americans. 

Trump said the numbers were troubling and pointed to Hillary Clinton as proof that he probably won't get the kind of support among African-Americans that he deserves.

"I tell it like it is," Trump said. "[Y]ou'll hear a political reporter go on and say it had nothing to do with race. But how come she had such a tiny piece of the vote? And you know, it's a very sad thing.

"I have a great relationship with the blacks. I've always had a great relationship with the blacks. But unfortunately, it seems that, you know, the numbers you cite are very, very frightening numbers."

Dicker said, somewhat rhetorically, that votes should always be based on merit, not on race.

"If that were the case, why did Hillary Clinton do so poorly?" Turmp asked.

Oh, and Trump also stood by his claims that Obama has not produced adequate information about being born in the United States

"There's something going on," Trump said. "He either has one [a birth certificate] and there's something on it that he doesn't like, or he doesn't have one."

"I'm amazed that the press gives him such a free ride on that," he said. When told that the Washington Post fact-checked many of his claims on this issue and found them to be inaccurate, Trump held his ground.

He said the paper should have called him for his side of the story.

Some highlights from today's show:

Dicker said the state budget "would have been an early budget if it wasn't for the Assembly Democrats," led by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Later, Dicker asked, rhetorically, if the powerful speaker couldn't have passed the budget in the lower house hours, if not days, earlier.

Dicker dissed the protesters who were in the Capitol yesterday, calling them "disruptive" and "dirty." He then compared them to the better-behaved Tea Party protesters who visited Albany last year.

"If you went outside," said Dicker, "whether you like them or not, last year, last year-and-a-half really, and saw some of the Tea Party rallies here, the anti-big government rallies, that's a grassroots movement. They probably had five or six hundred people. They didn't come into the Capitol screaming, disrupting, completely ignoring the fact that what they're disrupting and screaming about represents our democracy." Dicker went on to say, "Groups like that don't come in to disrupt. Why is it always the groups on the left, or the union groups, come in and scream and yell?"

The "most important outstanding issue" facing Governor Cuomo is, according to Dicker, the property tax cap. "Ethics are very important, of course. I'm not sure legislative redistricting in a 'non-partisan' way is necessarily a good thing or can even be achieved."

On New York City, Dicker said Bloomberg "is probably happy about the loss of state aid because it gives him cover to blame the governor for the layoffs that he's going to do."

The New York Post Editorial Page Editor Bob McManus, who was a guest on the show, chimed in, and said, "Absolutely."

Despite a "dismal" record in office, David Paterson (along with another predecessor, George Pataki) "helped blaze the path that Cuomo followed," wrote the Post's state editor, Fred Dicker, who had previously accused Mr. Paterson of lying about everything from smearing Caroline Kennedy to accepting free World Series tickets.

The ironic circumstances of this minor correction to the legacy of the former governor--who left office with a 32 percent approval rating--by one of his fiercest critics is not lost on Mr. Paterson himself.

"Oh my Lord, there is a God," Mr. Paterson laughed upon being told of Mr. Dicker's grudging praise on Tuesday afternoon.

Last year, long after Mr. Paterson had ceased to be a credible candidate for governor--but while he still had seven months left in the term he was serving as Eliot Spitzer's replacement--he and his budget director stumbled upon a strategy for forcing its budget cuts upon the recalcitrant Legislature: If legislators wanted the money to keep state government afloat while they debated their own budget well past the April 1 deadline--through the so-called "extender bills"--they would have to approve Mr. Paterson's reductions.

For four heady weeks, Mr. Paterson was on the offensive against a Legislature that had taken to ignoring him, and was able to ram through a package of corrective cuts, followed by a big omnibus extender that finally prompted the Legislature to write its own budget, much of which he selectively vetoed.

It was an amazing thing to be a part of, apparently.

"It was a game-changer," Mr. Paterson said. "It really shocked everybody."

And it had come about because of a miscommunication, after his budget director, Robert Megna, suggested that his stopgap measures were already stripped down.

"So one time I said in a radio interview--about a month and a half late--that people shouldn't worry because it's a bare-bones budget and we're getting cuts now," Mr. Paterson explained. "In other words, we're already reducing spending even though we haven't passed a budget yet.

"So Megna calls me up and says, 'You can't say that because that's not exactly what we're doing.' He said, 'We're just not adding anything.'

"So I said, 'In other words, we're continuing the same spending level?'

"He said, 'Yeah.'"

This bothered Mr. Paterson, who would now have to squeeze a year's worth of cuts into almost 10 months.

"I said, 'Well, why can't we put the cuts in?'" he recalled.

Mr. Megna, according to Mr. Paterson, cautioned that the tactic had never been tried before.

"In my interpretation of Albany, when someone says that, it means it's time to do it," Mr. Paterson said.

The administration vetted the idea through their legal counsel, which researched the history of extenders in the context of the broad authority granted the governor under the Silver v. Pataki decision in 2004.

It looked legal enough.

So, emboldened by a prior win in his fight to appoint a lieutenant governor, and having already decided not to run for reelection, Mr. Paterson began including them.

On Sunday, in the Red Room of the Capitol, Mr. Cuomo announced his deal to close a $10 billion budget deficit, an agreement he was able to compel the Legislature to accept in no small part because of the threat of using the Paterson-conceived budget-extender trick to threaten a government shutdown for which the lawmakers would almost certainly be blamed.

"It's almost like [Paterson] snuck in this strengthening of the governorship, right at the end," said Doug Forand, a longtime adviser in Albany, who is now working on behalf of rent regulations. "And this is his legacy item. This is the thing above all else, coming off his tenure as governor, that is going to change how Albany does business, and I'm not sure it was intended to be that."

This year, in the hands of a powerful executive with staggering poll numbers, the game of chicken devised by Mr. Paterson wasn't much of a game.

In private conference meetings, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver urged his members to take the meager restorations Mr. Cuomo was offering rather than test the mettle of the popular governor.

Some legislators objected to the strident focus on such a hard-and-fast deadline.

"I think it's important for people to understand that timeliness is not the most important thing about a budget," said Dick Gottfried, one of the longest-serving members of the Assembly. "I think the substance of the budget is at least as important."

Although Mr. Gottfried said he planned to vote for the budget, he worried about the shifting power dynamic.

"I think 200-plus years ago, the Founders had a pretty good idea about balancing power in the government," he said. "I think the Silver v. Pataki court decision and its aftermath has really undermined the checks-and-balances concept."

Mr. Paterson said he agreed with that kind of criticism, at least in theory.

"I actually think, believe it or not, as the architect of this, that they're right," said Mr. Paterson, who cited the chronically late budgets as a "catalyst" for the public's negative opinion of Albany. "This isn't the best government; I actually think it's a blunt instrument. ... But these critiques are coming out of the mouths of people who were willing to let the budget go until August of last year. And now they're going to give us a lecture on government?"

"It's kind of nuclear deterrence," said Carol Kellerman, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, who said Mr. Paterson would be an "unsung hero" if Mr. Cuomo's budget deal does get certified on time.

Whether history will sing Mr. Paterson's praises is another matter.

"Someone is floating that it's all Cuomo's idea," noted Ms. Kellerman, "which shows how great it is, that now everyone is trying to take credit."

Ms. Kellerman was referring to Monday's New York magazine cover story, which reported that the current governor had been working through Mr. Paterson even before taking office, and had "quietly encouraged" the outgoing governor to set a precedent he could use to balance future budgets.

That was news to Mr. Paterson.

"Nobody knew that we were going to do this," he told The Observer. "Nobody suggested this to us. This is just something we did."

For his part, the former governor says he found Mr. Cuomo's new-and-improved use of his extender tricks to have been masterful.

"He's gone through the entire budget process, which usually cuts everyone down to size and he's still prevailing," Mr. Paterson said.

The two have spoken a handful of times since Mr. Cuomo took office, and Mr. Paterson insisted there are no hard feelings, even though the two were briefly rivals.

Now that the "rumors and innuendo" have faded, Mr. Paterson sensed that people might be able to begin considering his own record as a government official, "rather than as a cartoon character in the newspapers."

"When there's a great deal of scrutiny on a lot of things, as there was with me, it blurs some of the areas that you would like people to focus on," he said. "And you know, perhaps with risking a second glance, there were a number of things that we were able to accomplish that will stand for a long period of time."

Mr. Paterson said he began to feel a growing goodwill even before he left office. In the fall, he was at the Crossgates Mall in Albany with some longtime friends who were surprised at the number of people who wanted photographs and autographs, despite all the governor's bad press.

"This one kid comes up and he's looking at me and he shakes
my hand, and I don't see anybody with a camera," Mr. Paterson said. "And he says, 'Hi, how are you?' And I said, 'I'm fine how are you?'

"And he says, 'You're Mr. Cuomo, right?'"

rpillifant@observer.com

After rattling of a list of Cuomo's goals, Dicker said, "The governor is also committed to same-sex marriage, but there is little I think he can do about that, as long as the Senate just doesn't have the votes to pass the measure."

Cuomo is reportedly looking for a vote on legalizing same-sex marriage by June. It's passed the Assembly by wide margins, twice. It was defeated in the State Senate two years ago, but since then, a number of people who opposed it have left, or signaled a possible shift.

Some of the changes that have taken place in that chamber, since the last vote, include:

George Onorato, a Democrat who retired and was replaced with Michael Gianaris, a progressive Democrat who voted for it in the Assembly. Hiram Monserrate, a Democrat who was expelled and replaced with Jose Peralta, a Democrat who voted for it in the Assembly. Pedro Espada, a Democrat who was replaced by Gustavo Rivera, a progressive Democrat [Correction: Espada voted for the bill]. Joseph Addabo, conservative Democrats who voted no, now says he's reconsidering the issue.

State Budget: "[I]t still fails to address many of the issues near and dear to New Yorkers' hearts, including reforms on property taxes, rent control and teacher layoffs." [Money.CNN.com]

State Budget: Why is NYC even getting AIM money from Albany anyway? [Larry Littlefield]

State Budget: "The mayor has said 6,100 teacher positions would have to be eliminated even if that money came through. Now even more positions could be at risk." [NY1]

State Budget: "Progressive austerity," is one way to describe it. [Jimmy Vielkind]

State Budget: Confessore has deja vu. [Twitter]

State Budget: Bloomberg's "outrage" makes the headline. [El Diario]

State Budget: Expecting to collect cigarette taxes from Indian reservations, which is tricky. [Frank Parlato, Jr.]

State Budget: Pain for schools, despite being on-time, or early. [Jimmy Vielkind]

State Budget: $15 million in state funds for homeless efforts; city says Advantage Program may not be saved. [AP]

Taxing Millionaires: "I didn’t see a stake through its heart yet," says Nolan. [Rick Karlin]

Discretionary Spending: "So Cuomo will direct $30 million of his own pot of capital projects funding, and will get the other $100 million by canceling plans to construct a consolidated data center." [Jimmy Vielkind]

Bike Lanes: Someone's polling. [Ben Fried]

Parking Perks: 3,500 parking placards given out by Cuomo's administration. [Andrea Bernstein]

Media: "Quite a bit of psycho babble, but it also has quite a bit of good stuff in it," Dicker says of New York magazine's story about Cuomo, around the 27:33 mark. [Talk1300]

LGBT: A "blistering" letter to Cuomo. [Joe My God]

Funding: "We weren’t allowed to collect money for UNICEF." [Bill O'Reilly]

Nuclear: More risks at Indian Point. [Elizabeth Dwoskin]

Nuclear: "[T]he NRC must answer questions about the seismic risk to the facility, and the safety of long-term radioactive waste storage," writes Schneierman. [LoHud]

NY1: Readers debate Altschuler's prospects. [NYO]