By Ann Coulter | April 24, 2014 | 5:58 PM EDT

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is demanding a quick settlement of the lawsuit brought by the five men convicted of one of the most sickening crimes in the city's history: the attack on the Central Park jogger in 1989.

The plaintiffs are demanding $50 million apiece -- for going to prison for a rape that they committed, as detailed in Chapter 13 of "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Destroying America." Abner Louima got $5.8 million for a shockingly brutal police assault on him, and he was just an innocent bystander.

By Walter E. Williams | March 28, 2014 | 6:19 PM EDT

Some statements and arguments are so asinine that you'd have to be an academic or a leftist to take them seriously. Take the accusation that Republicans and conservatives are conducting a war on women. Does that mean they're waging war on their daughters, wives, mothers and other female members of their families? If so, do they abide by the Geneva Conventions' bans on torture, or do they engage in enhanced interrogation and intimidation methods, such as waterboarding, with female family members? You might say that leftists don't mean actual war. Then why do they say it?

What would you think of a white conservative mayor's trying to defund charter schools where blacks are succeeding? While most of New York's black students could not pass a citywide math proficiency exam, there was a charter school where 82 percent of its students passed. New York's left-wing mayor, Bill de Blasio, is trying to shut it down, and so far, I've heard not one peep from the Big Apple's civil rights hustlers, including Al Sharpton and Charles Rangel. According to columnist Thomas Sowell, the attack on successful charter schools is happening in other cities, too.

By Kyle Drennen | February 25, 2014 | 8:25 AM EST

On Monday, the hosts of NBC's Today invited left-wing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to perform a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly-renovated plaza outside Rockefeller Center's Studio 1A, with Matt Lauer gushing: "And look who stepped in here, the new mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. Mr. Mayor, it's nice to see you....you're here for a great reason....to help us cut the ribbon and usher in a new era on our gussied up plaza here." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

De Blasio gave a resounding endorsement of the morning show: "It's great to be here....It's beautiful, it's beautiful. Let me tell you, people love this part of our town and this makes it even better. And I think it's going to be an exciting addition to New York City. All I can say is come visit. Wherever you are in the country, come visit and be a part of this." Co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: "Thank you. The Mayor said so."

By Tim Graham | February 22, 2014 | 4:57 PM EST

In an utterly typical flourish, the front of the "Thursday Styles" section of The new York Times featured two gay men and a tot over the headline "And Surrogacy Makes 3: Surrogate baby-making, through restricted in many states, has been growing among gay men."

Times reporter Anemona Hartocollis told the utterly unopposed story of New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and his partner David Sigal with their daughter, Silvia Hoylman-Sigal. In New York, Sen. Hoylman is trying to make it easier for gays to use surrogates for their "fundamentally conservative embrace of family values." Their baby story "carries with it an extra frisson of the illicit that seems to them more than a little archaic and unfair in the post marriage-equality world."

By Paul Bremmer | February 6, 2014 | 5:39 PM EST

On Wednesday, Mayor John Tkazyik explained in the Poughkeepsie [N.Y.] Journal that he and almost 50 other mayors have dropped out of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s group Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG).

The reason they left? They all felt Bloomberg was using the organization to trample on the Second Amendment rather than to push for the stricter enforcement of existing laws. Tkazyik complained that:

By Cal Thomas | January 24, 2014 | 6:56 PM EST

Everyone "knows" it is conservatives who are mean-spirited, intolerant, censors of speech with which they don't agree, anti-gay, anti-black and anti just about everything else, right? We know this because the left keeps telling us so.

Which is why in this era of increasingly corrosive language -- note the overuse of the f-word in the film "The Wolf of Wall Street" -- and acidic political discourse, recent comments by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.), ought to shock and outrage everyone, regardless of party affiliation or ideology.

By Scott Whitlock | January 3, 2014 | 3:38 PM EST

 

MSNBC anchor Ed Schultz, who has previously frothed over "bastard," "slut," "dirt hole" conservatives, on Thursday attacked Jake Tapper for offering a mild critique of liberal New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's inauguration. During the ceremony, speaker after speaker slammed the outgoing Michael Bloomberg, comparing the city under his tenure to a "plantation."

On his CNN program, Tapper pointed out that political leaders often use inaugurations to "reach out to critics, to reach out to those who maybe didn't vote for him. This was not that." This innocuous statement caused Schultz to mock, "If Jake Tapper thinks a man who was elected with 70 percent of the vote for making income inequality the centerpiece of his campaign was wrong for talking about it, he can keep on pretending." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

By Ken Shepherd | January 2, 2014 | 1:16 PM EST

Even as he hailed Bill de Blasio's "progressive revolution," The Daily Beast's Michael Daly sought to downplay fears that the newly-sworn-in mayor was a radical leftist intent on soaking the rich. Instead Daly practically painted a picture of the Democratic politician as a drum major leading the "march" to a more "equal" New York.

While noting de Blasio was a "leader speaking much the same language" as the now moribund Occupy Wall Street movement, Daly insisted the left-of-center David Dinkins acolyte "was only asking [wealthy New Yorkers] to pay 'a little more.'" Heck, de Blasio "suggested that the city’s very wealthiest would be paying only $973 more a year," no big whoop:

By Tom Blumer | December 22, 2013 | 9:07 PM EST

Let's get it out of the way up-front, and excuse the "too much information" element via the New York Post: New York State Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak is a Democrat who has been accused of having "tormented three workers with lewd antics such as sending a video of himself supposedly receiving oral sex, suggesting they shack up with him in hotels and ..." — sorry, readers who really want to know the final item will have to go to the link.

At the Albany Times Union, which appears to have been the paper which broke the story, reporter James M. Odato waited until the last of his 20 paragraphs to inform readers that "The Erie County Democrat represents the densely populated town of Cheektowaga." Naturally, the Associated Press's far briefer unbylined report did not note Gabryszak's party affiliation. Party ID-free excerpts from Odato's report follow the jump (HT JWF; bolds are mine):

By Tom Blumer | October 13, 2013 | 5:25 PM EDT

In a keister-covering dispatch at the Associated Press, aka the Adminstration's Press, which, based on its headline, is supposed to be a big-picture look at where recovery efforts from last year's Superstorm Sandy stand ("NORMALCY ELUDES MANY A YEAR AFTER SANDY HIT NJ"), reporter Wayne Parry spent the vast majority of his 900-plus words on problems residents are having with insurance companies.

It doesn't take a great deal of effort to determine that problems originating with the federal government and other government entities are far larger in scope.

By Ken Shepherd | August 27, 2013 | 11:46 AM EDT

Slamming the New York Police Department for its stop-and-frisk policy has been something of a favored sport by the left this summer. So imagine my pleasant surprise to find a positive piece about New York's finest at the Daily Beast this morning.

"Thank the Cops" read a teaser headline in the lightbox dominating the top left column of the page. "They may not have gotten any love at the VMAs, but if the cops hadn't cleaned up that crime-ridden block in Brooklyn, there would have been no red carpet" for the MTV awards program, added an editorial caption. Writer Michael Daly explained not only how smart policing helped "save the city" but reminded readers that dedicated NYPD officers in the 1950s helped save Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and with it, the iconic "I Have a Dream" speech that followed five years later:

By Tom Blumer | August 11, 2013 | 2:06 PM EDT

Just before Christmas last year, the Journal News in New York's Westchester County north of New York City published maps containing "the addresses (and names) of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties," and announced their intention to add Putnam County. A firestorm of outrage ensued, but the stubborn paper's operators held out for almost four weeks before finally pulling the maps — but "somehow" allowed the raw data to get out (more on that later). In the interim, there were reports that criminals had begun using the maps to target homes to rob, and that prison inmates were threatening prison guards identified as gun owners.

On Wednesday, Journal News competitor the Rockland County Times reported that an editor involved in the story and over two dozen others had been laid off as part of a nationwide cost-cutting move by Journal News parent Gannett (bolds are mine; HT to BearingArms.com via Instapundit, Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin's place, and Ace):