Fergusonfallout:Missouricalmer,buttheprotestsstill

Ferguson fallout: Missouri calmer, but the protests still having an impact

posted at 8:41 am on August 15, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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The protests in Ferguson, Missouri appeared to be calmer on Thursday night than they had in the past. Some attributed the decline in violence from demonstrators and heavy-handed responses from police to the decision by Gov. Jay Nixon to put Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, an African-American, in charge of the town’s security.

In a tactical U-turn, Johnson, and a handful of black officers without body armour walked among thousands of protesters filling the streets of the mostly black St. Louis suburb, demanding justice for the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

“We just want to be able to come and demonstrate together without the fear of being shot. It’s that simple,” said 53-year-old protester Cat Daniels, an Iraq veteran. “What you see tonight is people coming together. When that kid was killed the hurt and the pain was real.”

But the protests have had an impact across the country, and demonstrators seeking to express solidarity with the protesters in Ferguson have turned on in a variety of places including New York City’s Times Square.

Via American Power blog, CBS News revealed that thousands of protesters flooded Broadway to protest the situation in Ferguson. The city continues to reel from the death of Eric Garner who passed after a police officer used a chokehold in order to subdue him. That death has been ruled a homicide, and New York City lawmakers are petitioning Attorney General Eric Holder to pursue a Department of Justice investigation into that incident.

There was a similar scene playing out last night in Chicago, where hundreds turned out in Daley Plaza to protest the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown where they chanted slogans like “black lives matter” and “no justice, no peace.”

Around the world, reactions to the episode in Ferguson have been passionate. In Russia, supporters of Vladimir Putin are seizing on the events in Missouri as an example of why the United States is in no position to lecture Russia on its foreign or domestic affairs.

“Obama isn’t satisfied killing Libyans, Syrians, and Ukrainians, [so] U.S. officials have sent the police to go kill Americans,” one Russian said in a Tweet directed at former U.S. Ambassador Mike McFaul.

“All in all, it seems that the Americans have started their own Maiden in Ferguson,” wrote Egor Prosvirnin, a supporter of Ukraine’s pro-Russian separatists and editor of the website Sputnik & Pogorm, in reference to the Kiev square where protesters gathered and ultimately ousted former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych. “What do you think? Should Russia grant Obama asylum in Rostov after the Ferguson Maidanites seize Washington?”

They have even seized on statements like Russia watcher and The New Republic columnist Julia Ioffe who some Russian readers marveled had compared the United States response to the violence in Ferguson to how Russia manages domestic affairs unfavorably.

In spite of the fact that the situation in Ferguson seems to be cooling, it is apparently only heating up in cities across America and around the world.

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Tags: Chicago, ferguson, New York, Russia

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USAttorneytoCuomo:Witnesstamperingandobstruction

US Attorney to Cuomo: Witness tampering and obstruction are still illegal, you know

posted at 3:21 pm on July 31, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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The gloves have come off in New York, where Andrew Cuomo’s easy cruise to re-election as governor of New York has hit a major detour. Last week, the New York Times exposed Cuomo’s attempts to interfere with an anti-corruption commission he had established in August 2013, and then abruptly shut down in March. US Attorney Preet Bharara had cooperated with the Moreland Commission rather than press new investigations out of his own office, but got suspicious about Cuomo’s actions and took over the panel’s files. This led to the discovery that Cuomo’s office had demanded the retraction of subpoenas and the end to probes of people in Cuomo’s administration.

After the NYT exposé, several figures in Cuomo’s circle have publicly come out to criticize the Bharara probe, and yesterday the US Attorney’s office issued its response — a warning that Cuomo and his aides had better refrain from tampering with witnesses and obstruction of justice.

Oh, yeah … it’s on (via Jim Geraghty):

In an escalation of the confrontation between the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over the governor’s cancellation of his own anticorruption commission, Mr. Bharara has threatened to investigate the Cuomo administration for possible obstruction of justice or witness tampering.

The warning, in a sharply worded letter from Mr. Bharara’s office, came after several members of the panel issued public statements defending the governor’s handling of the panel, known as the Moreland Commission, which Mr. Cuomo created last year with promises of cleaning up corruption in state politics but shut down abruptly in March. …

At least some of those statements were prompted by calls from the governor or his emissaries, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation who were unwilling to be named for fear of reprisal.

One commissioner who received a call from an intermediary on behalf of the governor’s office said he found the call upsetting and declined to make a statement.

The letter from prosecutors, which was read to The New York Times, says, “We have reason to believe a number of commissioners recently have been contacted about the commission’s work, and some commissioners have been asked to issue public statements characterizing events and facts regarding the commission’s operation.”

“To the extent anyone attempts to influence or tamper with a witness’s recollection of events relevant to our investigation, including the recollection of a commissioner or one of the commission’s employees, we request that you advise our office immediately, as we must consider whether such actions constitute obstruction of justice or tampering with witnesses that violate federal law.”

We often hear presidents and governors say that they have to wait for an investigation to complete its work before offering comment, other than just anodyne expressions of innocence. This demonstrates the wisdom of that policy. This particular example is almost risibly ironic, since it appears that Cuomo and his team did exactly what got them into trouble in the first place — leaned on the commissioners to keep the governor out of trouble. It’s practically a demonstration of how the alleged corruption and obstruction worked. And that would, indeed, risk adding more counts to any indictment that may arise in the future.

Plus, by going public, Cuomo has given Bharara another opportunity to respond in kind. For a man who wants to win another term in office in just three months, provoking prosecutors into reminding the public of suspicions of corruption seems like a rather curious strategy.

Republicans may want Cuomo gone for obvious reasons; they want to win control of the governor’s office, and are hoping that Rob Astorino could knock off Cuomo. But on the Left, rising anger over Cuomo’s battles with Bill DeBlasio in New York City and the treatment given to progressive challenger Zephyr Teachout has the bloc already unhappy with the incumbent. Ryan Cooper says it’s time for Democrats to dump Cuomo as well:

Cuomo has consistently obstructed Mayor Bill de Blasio’s agenda. Six months in, the de Blasio mayoralty looks to be off to a decent start. But the truth is that the mayor of New York simply doesn’t have that much power to institute major policy in the face of opposition from Albany, and getting Cuomo to go along has been like pulling teeth. Instead of raising taxes on the rich, Cuomo wants to cut them. He blocked rental subsidies for the homeless. Worst of all is Cuomo’s atrocious urban policy, particularly on public transportation, whose coffers he wants to raid to alleviate costs for drivers. De Blasio seems to get that New York City is absolutely dependent on its subways and buses, but like most rich people Cuomo is a driving partisan to the bone.

Third is corruption. Obviously, the Times investigation is the major mark against him here, though his campaign has also admitted to rounding up fake protesters to harass Zephyr Teachout while she is campaigning.

The bottom line is that Andrew Cuomo is the worst kind of backstabbing, triangulating “centrist” in the wretched No Labels mold. Better for liberals to beat him now, or at least make his victory as unimpressive as possible, before we have to beat him in a presidential primary down the line.

The presidential aspirations have already dissipated, and now it’s a question as to whether Cuomo can cross the finish line. The problem with Cooper’s advice is that relatively few outside of New York City want a more progressive governor than Cuomo, and the two other options Cooper mentions will have a very difficult time getting traction — especially Howie Hawkins running at the moment on the Green Party ticket. Teachout might do slightly better as the Democratic nominee, but much of New York is Republican, and being to the left of Cuomo is a limiting exercise in statewide races. If Cuomo falls in the September 9 primary because of corruption woes, Republicans will reap the benefit, not progressives. That’s why Democrats will almost certainly stick with Cuomo until it’s impossible to do so.

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Tags: Andrew Cuomo, corruption, New York, Preet Bharara

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DidCuomoobstructhisownanti-corruptioncrusade?

Did Cuomo obstruct his own anti-corruption crusade?

posted at 1:21 pm on July 23, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Last year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared that he’d had enough of corruption in the state capital, and launched a high-profile commission to independently find and root it out. When it got to close to Cuomo himself, the New York Times reports today, the governor had a change of heart and shut it down. Now the feds want to take a closer look at both the corruption and Cuomo’s actions in obstructing his own commission (via Jammie Wearing Fool):

The investigators did not realize that the firm, Buying Time, also counted Mr. Cuomo among its clients, having bought the airtime for his campaign when he ran for governor in 2010.

Word that the subpoena had been served quickly reached Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aide,Lawrence S. Schwartz. He called one of the commission’s three co-chairs, William J. Fitzpatrick, the district attorney in Syracuse.

“This is wrong,” Mr. Schwartz said, according to Mr. Fitzpatrick, whose account was corroborated by three other people told about the call at the time. He said the firm worked for the governor, and issued a simple directive:

“Pull it back.”

The subpoena was swiftly withdrawn. The panel’s chief investigator explained why in an email to the two other co-chairs later that afternoon.

“They apparently produced ads for the governor,” she wrote.

If this scenario had played out in a police investigation, that would be criminal obstruction of justice. As it is, the grant of subpoena power to the supposedly independent commission may end up having the same effect. After all, the executive branch is responsible for law enforcement, and the commission was clearly an attempt to work around any other potential conflicts of interest in the executive branch to perform that function. Granting the commission subpoena power would establish that, as opposed to just a fact-finding commission that reports on issues for the governor and whose operations would be clearly political rather than investigative or the enforcement of law.

Cuomo told the NYT that he created the “independent” commission, and therefore he could run it any way he saw fit:

“A commission appointed by and staffed by the executive cannot investigate the executive,” the statement said. “It is a pure conflict of interest and would not pass the laugh test.”

Yet, The Times found that the governor’s office interfered with the commission when it was looking into groups that were politically close to him. In fact, the commission never tried to investigate his administration.

Besides, that conflicts with what Cuomo told the press last year:

Gov. Cuomo said Thursday his special investigative panel on government corruption can investigate whoever it wants — even him.

“Anything they want to look at they can look at — me, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the Controller, any senator, any assemblyman,” Cuomo told reporters during an event in upstate Oneida. “They have total ability to look at whatever they want to look at.” …

“If this doesn’t give people faith and trust, I don’t know what else can,” Cuomo said.

In March, Cuomo quietly shut the panel down, but US Attorney Preet Bharara was not pleased. The cases that prompted the commission’s formation came out of his office, and Bharara had urged the commission to get aggressive. Suddenly, Cuomo’s initiative looked a lot less like a courageous attempt to clean up Albany on his own, and more like a way to pre-empt the US Attorney from doing his job. He seized the files from the commission and assigned investigators to continue the probes that had gotten shut down — and started a new one about Cuomo’s interference with the commission and its subpoenas.

This has other consequences, too. Cuomo, like his father Andrew, reportedly has presidential ambitions and hoped to use his track record as governor of the second-most populous state as a springboard in the future. This kind of obstruction of a corruption probe, even if it doesn’t prove criminal, will almost certainly hobble those ambitions, especially if Bharara files indictments either against Cuomo’s staff or against lawmakers that his commission let off the hook. For now, this removes one potential Democratic alternative to the stumbling Hillary Clinton in 2016, or at least “pull[s] it back” considerably.

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Tags: 2016 election, Andrew Cuomo, corruption, Hillary Clinton, New York, obstruction, Preet Bharara

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SyracuseNYmayortoObama:Sendthoseimmigrant

Syracuse NY mayor to Obama: Send those immigrant kids up here!

posted at 1:01 pm on July 19, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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Even as Congress struggles with the ongoing crisis at the border and the President plans some sort of meeting with Central American leaders, there seems to be no shortage of elected officials who want to get in on the action. Of course, if you’re looking for help with a huge problem on the Texas border, your first thought might not be to ask somebody in upstate New York. But that won’t stop the city’s mayor, Stephanie Minor. (Go ahead… say “Mayor Minor” five times fast.)

The mayor’s latest pitch came in a letter to President Obama.

“We have a network of people who are used to dealing with refugee issues. And we have, most importantly, a compassionate community that wants to welcome these children and give them a safe place while these issues are worked out,” said Miner.

The Mayor is not alone in offering a helping hand.

“They’re somebody’s children. They’re loved. Parents made a great sacrifice, let them go, sent them here. I think that the parent that sends a child in a situation like that is hoping that their child will be received warmly and welcomed. Treated hospitably, and shown compassion,” said Bishop Robert Cunningham, Syracuse Roman Catholic Diocese.

The general idea is to house any incoming illegal aliens at the vacant campus of Maria Regina College, and the local reporters are eating it up. I’ve dealt with the media up here for some time, having had to work a couple of campaigns for Republicans, so it’s no surprise that the articles give very little coverage to the people who showed up at the proposed site to protest the plan. But they were out in numbers and saw things differently.

“You can tell the community is more behind us just by the honks,” said Carol Lucey, the New York State leader of Overpasses for America.”

Carrying signs and American flags, those opposed to housing the children said they came to protect America.

“We need to take care of our own first,” said Michelle Coon, of Constantia, and an Overpasses member. “There’s hungry children here in Syracuse. There are homeless children here in Syracuse.”

This is clearly not the first case where somebody thought of sending the incoming children to nearly the opposite ends of the continental United States rather than keeping them close to the deportation point. And the media is quick to note that “no local or state money” will be required to house them. (No mention seems to be made of the fact that the federal money which will be used is coming out of the citizens’ pockets also.) One of the oddest claims being made by the Mayor and her media allies, however, is this one:

How long will they stay?
The average stay is less than 35 days.

That seems odd, since one of the most liberal sources on the web admits that the current backlog of cases stands at more than 375,000 and the average wait time is currently 587 days. But Syracuse is going to clear them out in an average of 35 days? Is anyone buying this?

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Tags: Barack Obama, border security, illegal immigration, New York

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MultipleDemocratscomeupwiththesame“surprising”

Multiple Democrats come up with the same “surprising” proposals

posted at 8:31 am on June 28, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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As the mid-terms approach, some Democrats are feeling pretty nervous. But it’s encouraging to see that others are out there getting their hand in the game and developing bold new policy initiatives sure to win over the voters. One great example of this is surely Aaron Woolf who is running for Congress in New York’s 21st congressional district on the D ticket. Check out these bold plans!

No budget, no pay for Congress – for real

-No funding for, nor use of, a taxpayer-funded gym or salon and barber shop by members of Congress on the public dime…

-No funding for, nor use of, taxpayer money to pay for the rent or lease of vehicles.

-No funding for, nor use of, health care “perks” that are not available to the general public…

-No travel under the “charter jet” loophole allowing members of Congress to use political campaign funds to upgrade a privately-funded flight to first class travel.

Say, those are some bold proposals and they should be well received by fed-up taxpayers. I’m sure Mr. Woolf will do well. But wait… what’s this? Another candidate, this one in New Jersey, also has a cracker-jack list of proposals which she is sure will sway the voters.

Aimee Belgard has announced that she will reject the following taxpayer funded Congressional perks and require increased transparency when it comes to support for tax breaks that could directly benefit members of Congress:

Taxpayer funded first class airfare

Taxpayer funded luxury vehicles

Taxpayer funded members-only gym

Taxpayer funded campaign-style mailers to constituents

Hrm.. something seems oddly familiar about this. But hey. that’s probably just me being cynical. I’m sure Michael Wager, on the Democrat ticket in Ohio’s 14th district try to unseat incumbent David Joyce, will come into this battle like a refreshing breath of springtime air.

Wager commits to rejecting the following Congressional extras:

No pay raise until Congress passes a livable minimum wage
No Congressional pension as Social Security should apply to all members of Congress instead of their more generous retirement plan
No taxpayer or privately funded overseas trips except to military bases

No pay raises? No fancy plane travel or top line rental cars? In short, none of the perks that members usually soak up? And to top it all off, the first two of those candidates released these plans on the exact same day. The third was within 48 hours. So what could possibly explain this?

Well, their staff members could be engaged in one of the most blatant cases of copying off someone’s homework ever, I suppose. But they’re an awfully long way apart to be sharing cheat sheets. Or just maybe … could it be that the DNC released a new strategy sheet for the summer and these three jumped on the talking points without bothering to worry about obvious message collision or trying to significantly edit the memo to make it look more original?

But if this is the DNC battle plan of the week, why sneak it out to far flung campaigns under cover of darkness? Why not just announce a national perks reform campaign for the party on the steps of Congress? Could it be that plenty of Democrats already engage in lapping up these perks on a regular basis and they would be instantly called out on their hypocrisy? Naw, that couldn’t be it.

For the record, there are plenty of Republicans lapping up cream from the same saucer. There’s no secret about that. They just don’t seem to be so blatantly phony about it in most cases.

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Tags: 2014 election, House Democrats, New Jersey, New York, Ohio

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Video:CuomovsDeBlasiooncharterschools

Video: Cuomo vs DeBlasio on charter schools

posted at 2:31 pm on May 31, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Will Cain published the third episode of his video series Alise vs The Mayor on the fight over charter schools in New York City for The Blaze yesterday. This episode’s title is “Check,” but it might be better titled as Cuomo vs DeBlasio. Bill DeBlasio shut down several charter schools, including the high-performing Success Academy locations, as part of his payback to the teachers unions that supported him in his bid for mayor. Andrew Cuomo, on the other hand, has come out loudly for charter schools across the state, noting that New York spends the most per student on education but only ranks 30th in results.

Cuomo headlined an Albany rally with 11,000 students, parents, and teachers last March to save charter schools at roughly the same time DeBlasio headlined a union-backed event with 500 attendees. Cuomo demanded a focus on students, while DeBlasio offered expansion of school jobs for unions to fill. The difference is stark, and defining:

This battle between Cuomo and DeBlasio has been brewing for months, and Success Academy is a specific and personal target for DeBlasio as well. Will noted this in one of his earlier episodes, but the New York Times covered it three months ago too:

In New York City, the issue is further complicated by the personal dynamics between the new mayor and one of the movement’s chief proponents, Eva S. Moskowitz, a former city councilwoman.

The two frequently clashed, and Mr. de Blasio singled her out when he voiced his frustration over the educational priorities in the city.

Ms. Moskowitz now runs Success Academy Charter Schools, a nonprofit group, which runs a number of charter schools and was seeking to open more and to expand existing schools.

“She has to stop being tolerated, enabled, supported,” Mr. de Blasio said last year.

The schools that Mr. de Blasio targeted were all affiliated with Ms. Moskowitz’s organization.

On Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo deliberately singled out the Success Academy in his remarks, saying the goal was to change the culture of the schools, even if that meant bucking the teachers’ unions.

“We know that too many public schools are failing,” he said. “We need new ideas.”

That battle will not come cost-free for Cuomo. He may draw a challenger from his left in the upcoming re-election campaign over the issue of charter schools:

Gov. Cuomo is trying to win the endorsement of the Working Families Party for reelection – but he has competition.

The party is considering a handful of people to be its nominee for governor, including Diane Ravitch, a noted education historian, Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham law professor, and Dan Cantor, the WFP’s national director, the Daily News has learned.

Ravitch, 75, expressed interest when approached by the minor party and is mulling the idea, sources said.

A vocal critic of charter schools, Ravitch would present a pointed contrast to Cuomo, who has pushed for charter school protections over the objections of Mayor de Blasio, a darling of the liberal-leaning party.

Watch episodes 1 & 2 of Will’s excellent series if you’re just seeing this for the first time, and be sure to watch my interview with Will — which includes a funny personal exchange at the end — from Tuesday.

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Tags: Andrew Cuomo, Bill DeBlasio, charter schools, New York, New York City, school choice

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Only in NY – School hands 66 lb girl note saying she’s fat

OnlyinNY–Schoolhands66lb

Video:NewYorkNBCaffiliatenotesthat“assault

Video: New York NBC affiliate notes that “assault rifles only look different” after the SAFE Act

posted at 6:41 pm on May 8, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

No kidding. Via NBC4 New York:

Now some critics say one part of the law – the assault rifle ban – is not effective because new models being made to comply with the law are almost entirely the same as those that were banned. …

Under the law, bayonet mounts, flash suppressors and telescoping stocks are banned, and rifles cannot have a pistol grip. …

NYU law professor James Jacobs, who has written extensively on gun control issues, praises portions of the SAFE Act, including expanded background checks.

But he says the the assault rifle ban has resulted in a remodeled gun that is no less dangerous – just less scary looking.

New York hurriedly enacted the SAFE Act in January 2013, a month after the Sandy Hook massacre, and its many provisions — several of which range from pointlessly restrictive to administratively unworkable — have been going into effect over the past fifteen months. The purely cosmetic designation of what is or is not an “assault weapon” might be the most unproductive measure out of all of them, but the gun-control activists are still stickin’ to their guns, so to speak:

“The legal gun looks a lot like the illegal gun,” said Leah Gunn Barrett, the executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. “Does that make this law essentially cosmetic? No. These features all have specific functions.” …

“The gun is still lethal,” Gunn Barrett said. “Yes, it can still kill people. But it is not as easy to manipulate and fire accurately than it would be if you had a forward-leaning pistol grip.”

…Weak. As Charles C.W. Cooke points out at NRO, the only thing that making AR-15s slightly less easy to manipulate accomplishes is making it slightly harder for less robust individuals to use them (like, say, women?) while having absolutely zero effect on their lethality — all of which is practically a moot point anyway, since the vast, vast majority of gun crimes and murders in this country are committed with handguns. This is purely a “feel good” feature of the law, plain and simple.

Anyhow. In somewhat better news, the attorneys general of 22 states just filed an amicus brief in the lawsuit looking to overturn the New York Safe Act, claiming that the law is unconstitutional. Via the WFB:

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange filed the brief in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as part of the lawsuit Nojay v. Cuomo, which was filed by individual gun owners and organizations challenging New York’s gun ban. …

Alabama’s attorney general, the lead author of the bipartisan brief, was joined by attorneys general from Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming. …

“Because New York’s law amounts to a categorical ban of firearms commonly used for lawful purposes by law-abiding citizens, this court should subject the law to strict scrutiny under its tiers of scrutiny framework,” the brief states.

Tags: assault weapon, gun control, guns, New York, progressives, Second Amendment

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Supreme Court: Sectarian prayers before legislative sessions don’t violate the Constitution

SupremeCourt:Sectarianprayersbeforelegislativesessionsdon’t

Breaking:HouseRepublicanarrestedforobstruction,perjury

Breaking: House Republican arrested for obstruction, perjury

posted at 9:21 am on April 28, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

The last we heard from Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), he threatened to throw a reporter off of a balcony. He has bigger problems than anger-management issues today, though. Grimm turned himself in to the FBI today to answer charges of fraud related to a health-food restaurant he owned prior to his election to Congress:

New York Congressman Michael Grimm surrendered to federal authorities today after being indicted on campaign finance violations.

Grimm, a Republican from New York City’s borough of Staten Island, had gained notoriety when he was caught on tape after the State of the Union speech earlier this year threatening to throw a reporter off the Capitol’s balcony and said he would “break you in half, like a boy.”

Grimm, a former FBI agent, was indicted on charges of fraud, obstruction and perjury.

That ABC News report may be slightly inaccurate, at least on the nature of the charges. Grimm had been under investigation for campaign-finance violations, but these charges are not entirely related to that issue, according to the Washington Post:

Grimm spent much of the weekend hunkered down, bracing for the unveiling of the federal charges, which were due to be disclosed after his surrender. He turned himself in to the FBI at an undisclosed location Monday morning and was taken to Lower Manhattan for processing. The charges stem from his ownership of a Manhattan health-food restaurant that has ties to an Israeli fundraiser who served as a liaison between Grimm and a mystic, celebrity rabbi whose followers donated more than $500,000 to Grimm’s campaign in 2010.

While the investigation has focused on Grimm’s fundraising, U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch is expected to announce an indictment centered on his restaurant business, which Grimm launched after leaving the FBI in 2006, according to officials familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the pending charges.

The state fined the Upper East Side restaurant, Healthalicious, $88,000 for not providing workers compensation. In a lawsuit against the company, workers accused the owners of not paying proper wages and sometimes giving out cash payments to skirt tax and business laws.

It is unclear whether federal prosecutors will eventually expand the charges to encompass Grimm’s campaign activities, but investigators have been moving on that side of the case against several key players, some with ties to the restaurant.

Jazz wrote about Grimm’s dilemma on Saturday, and noted that the filing deadline for a primary challenge to Grimm had already passed:

The filing deadline for the race in the 11th has already passed. Should this develop into a situation where Grimm either had to step down or was so exposed and injured that he couldn’t possibly prevail, the GOP might still be forced to either run him anyway or allow the Democrats to run for the seat unopposed. It’s not unheard of that, upon appropriate petition, a court could step in and allow the Republican party leaders from the area to put up another candidate, but that’s not a sure thing.

New York television station WPIX reported that others are now questioning the timing of this indictment in relation to the election. They also report that a woman romantically linked to Grimm has been indicted for strawman donations:

The same day Grimm’s attorney announced criminal charges against the lawmaker were pending, a Texas woman who has been romantically involved with Grimm was indicted in New York on charges of making illegal campaign contributions.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn unsealed the indictment against Diana Durand on Friday.

The indictment said she caused more than $10,000 in donations to be made in the names of other people between November 2009 and October 2010. It says she lied in June 2012 when she told the FBI she didn’t reimburse straw donors for their contributions to Grimm’s campaign.

Durand’s attorney Stuart Kaplan said his client and Grimm became friends before he ran for office. He said she’ll plead not guilty.

When Robert Torricelli turned out to be toxically corrupt, New Jersey courts allowed Democrats to replace him on the ballot with the late Frank Lautenberg, even though the filing deadline for ballot changes had passed. New York Republicans may want to start that process now, but it’s no slam dunk that the court in New York will follow suit even under similar circumstances. Republicans might end up stuck with Grimm on the ticket.

Tags: Congress, corruption, Michael Grimm, midterms, New York

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Dumbnewcontroversy:Shouldthe9/11Museummention

Dumb new controversy: Should the 9/11 Museum mention jihad?

posted at 3:01 pm on April 24, 2014 by Allahpundit

The silver lining in this gray cloud of revisionism is that, if this dispute ends up becoming a partisan flashpoint, it’ll be amusing to watch lefties scramble to denounce references to “Islamism” and “jihad” in their own previous writing about AQ. Potentially it’s a more sinister version of the “Redskins” follies, albeit with a much accelerated timeline towards Enlightenment.

Personally, I think all historical chronicles should leave the audience ignorant of the key players’ motives.

The film, “The Rise of Al Qaeda,” refers to the terrorists as Islamists who viewed their mission as a jihad. The NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who narrates the film, speaks over images of terrorist training camps and Qaeda attacks spanning decades. Interspersed are explanations of the ideology of the terrorists, from video clips in foreign-accented English translations…

Museum officials are standing by the film, which they say was vetted by several scholars of Islam and of terrorism. A museum spokesman and panel members described the contents of the film, which was not made available to The New York Times for viewing…

[F]or Mr. Elazabawy, and many other Muslims, the words “Islamic” and “Islamist” are equally inappropriate to apply to Al Qaeda, and the word “jihad” refers to a positive struggle against evil, the opposite of how they view the terrorist attacks.

“Don’t tell me this is an Islamist or an Islamic group; that means they are part of us,” he said in an interview. “We are all of us against that.”

They’ve already convinced the museum to remove a reference to “Islamic terrorism” inside the building and the museum vows that the film will be screened in a room with some infopanels on the wall about Al Qaeda’s not-all-Muslims fringiness, but officials are drawing the line at excising “Islamist” and “jihad.” How come? Because, I think, even in deeply liberal New York, that’s a whitewash too far. Everyone knows the truth so obscuring it will only make the museum look lame and cowardly. In fact, notwithstanding my jab at lefties up top, I’d be surprised if a majority of them sided with the interfaith group here instead of the museum. It’s one thing to support the Ground Zero mosque in the name of absolving Islam of any connection to 9/11. It’s another to censor Bin Laden’s own words in a building designed as an historical record of what happened and why. Or am I giving them too much credit? Someone should poll this, stat.

Reminds me a bit of the statue that was once planned of three FDNY firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero after the attack. Remember that? The three men in the famous photo of the flag-raising were white but the statue based on the photo would have changed the racial features on two of them to symbolize the shared sacrifice of the day. That was objectionable as historical revisionism and for insinuating that American unity and resolve after the attack couldn’t be captured by three white guys, but the changes wouldn’t have obscured the basic point of the statue. The proposed changes to “Islamism” and “jihadism” would. If you can’t trust a museum devoted to 9/11 to quote the people behind the attack accurately, don’t go. It means you can’t trust anything else there either. We’ll see if they cave.

Exit question: Has anyone thought to interview big-media superstar Brian Williams about his part in the film? It’d be interesting to hear him defend the “jihad” rhetoric.

Tags: 9/11, al Qaeda, attack, Islam, islamist, jihad, muslim, New York, World Trade Center

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RickPerrychallengesAndrewCuomotoadebate

Rick Perry challenges Andrew Cuomo to a debate

posted at 5:21 pm on April 22, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has caught a lot of flak for his outspoken, out-and-about campaign to promote his state’s business-friendly tax and regulatory climate and convince companies from other (and usually bluer) states to move to Texas, particularly from California Gov. Jerry Brown (who so eloquently dismissed his efforts as “barely a fart“) — but it evidently can’t be that ridiculous of a strategy, because it looks like other governors are seeking to emulate his idea. I literally laughed out loud when I saw an ad promoting New York‘s ostensibly pro-business credentials on television this past weekend; true that Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently passed some corporate tax reform that included bringing the rate down from 7.1 to 6.5 percent, but that isn’t nearly enough to put New York into what I’d call the “attractive business destination” category. Taking the changes into account, the Tax Foundation moved New York from its spot as dead last in their overall business-tax climate ranking to merely third to last, just above California and New Jersey.

It’s no secret that Perry has been undergoing his pro-business campaign with the dual purposes of both improving Texas’s already relatively stellar job-growth performance as well as raising his national profile in case he decides to run for president again; he hit his federalism-centric speech out of the park at CPAC, so why not take this opportunity to bring the issue up again?

Now, in a new ad, he sets his sights on New York, but this time he’s also inviting the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo (D), to a debate.

“A debate between the governors of two of the largest states in the country on policy issues such as taxes, government spending, education, regulations and legal reform would be beneficial to our states and our country as a whole,” Perry said in statement Tuesday. He offered a similar invitation during a morning radio interview on Albany’s Talk 1300 AM. Perry is in New York through Thursday meeting with business leaders and touting Texas’s job creation policies. …

In the new ad airing in New York — by Americans for Economic Freedom, a free-market group championing conservative policies — Perry chastises the Empire State for its high taxes and then says: “If you’re tired of New York, there is an option: Texas.”

I might also mention that Gov. Cuomo has yet to do anything about the standing fracking ban that is preventing his state from seeing some of the economic gains Texas is currently enjoying. Ahem.

Update: Not happening, apparently (although one could reasonably wonder why Cuomo would refuse if he has so little regard for Perry’s debating skills, no?).

CNN reached out to Cuomo’s office for a response.

Danny Kanner, communications director for the Democratic Governors Association, mocked Perry’s invite by referencing the governor’s disastrous debate performance from 2011, in which he forgot the third of three federal agencies he would cut.

“A little free advice for Rick Perry: the fewer debates with anyone, the better. Oops!” he said in an email, linking to a clip of the moment when Perry struggled to remember the agency’s name.

Tags: Andrew Cuomo, federalism, jobs, New York, Rick Perry, Texas

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Quotes of the day

Quotesoftheday postedat10:41

Bombshell:NewYorknotinspectingmostabortionclinics

Bombshell: New York not inspecting most abortion clinics

posted at 12:41 pm on April 7, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Remember Kermit Gosnell? The main reason that the serial killer managed to elude detection for so long was that the state of Pennsylvania didn’t bother to inspect his facility for seventeen years, even though state law required it — and even though previous inspections showed significant causes for concern. The grand jury report specifically blamed politics in Pennsylvania for a lack of action. Had federal investigators not started probing Gosnell for his illegal trade in drugs, he’d still be cheerfully murdering babies that survived abortions and a few of their mothers, too.

One might think that other states would have learned a lesson from this grotesque example. Unfortunately, New York hasn’t, as the New York Post discovered:

The state Health Department is failing to inspect many of New York’s abortion clinics — with some facilities escaping scrutiny for more than a decade, bombshell documents obtained by The Post reveal.

Health inspectors regulate 25 diagnostic and treatment clinics and surgery centers that provide abortion services — though pro-choice advocates say there are 225 abortion service providers in New York state.

Eight of the 25 clinics were never inspected over the 2000-12 span, five were inspected just once, and eight were inspected only twice or three times — meaning once every four or six years.

Well, at least we know which clinics passed inspection, right? Women in New York can therefore make an informed choice about which abortion providers to choose with that information. Actually, they can’t, because the state refuses to name the clinics that have been inspected. The FOIA demand from a pro-life group had that identifying information redacted, because the state was concerned about the safety of clinics, rather than women.

Maybe this is a funding issue. New York just may not have the resources to inspect commercial facilities. Or …

By comparison, city eateries are inspected every year and graded, while a new law requires tanning salons to undergo inspections at least once every other year.

The Post points out that 130,000 abortions took place in 2012, the last year for which complete statistics are available. Almost 75,000 of those were performed in New York City alone. It’s a little more significant act than getting one’s skin bronzed or ordering a slice of pizza, and yet New York seems almost entirely disinterested in the safety of women who enter into these clinics.

How many more Gosnells would we find if New York conducted its required inspections? Maybe they’re afraid to find out.

Addendum: Let this serve also as a reminder to donate to the Gosnell Movie project at IndieGoGo. Perhaps if we get that story out, states like New York will face enough pressure to enforce the law.

Tags: abortion, Kermit Gosnell, New York

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Video:TheFreedomTowerBASEjump posted

Video: The Freedom Tower BASE jump

posted at 11:21 am on March 25, 2014 by Allahpundit

Footage that’s simultaneously old and new. The jump happened six months ago but the clip didn’t hit YouTube until yesterday, when the responsible parties finally surrendered to the NYPD to face charges of burglary, reckless endangerment, and jumping from a structure. (“Burglary” in New York is broader than theft committed while inside a building unlawfully.) The cops have been looking for them since September. Partly that’s because the idea of strange men parachuting onto the streets of lower Manhattan with impunity is … problematic, and partly that’s because it’s a staggering security lapse for the city to have missed a bunch of guys sneaking undetected into the tower that replaced the World Trade Center. (According to one defendant, they simply stepped through a hole in the fence around the perimeter that was covered with a tarp.)

So, with nothing left to lose and maybe a little to gain, the BASErs finally put the clip online. Strategy:

The skydivers say that if the video becomes popular on YouTube and pulls in some money, they will donate the proceeds to a charity for families of 9/11 victims, Rossig’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, told The News.

“This was never intended to be a publicity stunt,” Parlatore added. “However, since the police department has turned it into something of a spectacle, the defendants are hoping the video can be used for some good.”

A little charity presumably means a little leniency from the judge. Before you know it, they’ll be back to work, jumping off the Statue of Liberty’s tiara or whatever. But, er, if this is about raising money, why put the clip on YouTube instead of selling the footage to someone? It feels more like a middle finger to the NYPD. I.e. “you may have caught us but you didn’t stop us.”

Anyway, evidently we’re now far enough removed from 9/11 that the idea of people jumping off a tower at Ground Zero for fun raises no hackles at the local tabloids. Here’s your mild content warning for profanity in the clip.

Tags: base, freedom tower, jump, Manhattan, New York, parachute

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