Suspicions

I love a good mystery, though I usually stick to old Nero Wolfe novels. Erika wrote about this story last night, but I didn’t get to pay much attention to it until this morning. The object in question turned up in a tiny, 18 inch gap between two buildings in New York City at 51 [...]

Read this post »

Plus: Their motive's "not clear," says ... Saxby Chambliss?

So the carjacking victim didn’t misunderstand what they were saying after all. Next stop: Manhattan. Sources told CBS News on Tuesday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, has admitted that he and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were behind the bombings and that they had plans to go to Manhattan. Investigators said the suspects may have set out [...]

Read this post »

Endgame.

The bad news? Between this and what’s going on in South Carolina, American voters seem to have finally jettisoned any pretense of standards for their political leaders. The good news? We’re still on track for a Sanford-versus-Weiner presidential election in 2028. Cross those fingers. According to the poll, if Weiner entered the Democratic primary today, [...]

Read this post »

New York "scouring" medical records?

Jazz wrote on Saturday about the case of David Lewis, who was ordered to relinquish his firearms because he supposedly once took an anti-depressant, which actually wasn’t the case at all. State police insist that the entire episode was a clerical error, but Lewis’ attorney says this wasn’t just a case of mistaken identity. James [...]

Read this post »

What could possibly go wrong?

We’ve heard it over and over again, particularly on shows like Morning Joe. Anyone who thinks that the government is “coming to take your guns” is a paranoid loon, watching for black helicopters and guarding their sheep from soldiers. Unfortunately for those formerly right leaning, Second Amendment minded folks who bought into this story, reality [...]

Read this post »

Woops.

Ah, the utter folly of trying to impose top-down virtue on the oh-so-unenlightened masses. Bloomberg’s now infamous large-soda ban, ostensibly designed to serve the twofold purpose of both limiting people’s sugary-drink intake and raising awareness of their poor health choices, was put on hold at the eleventh hour by a judge’s ruling last month — [...]

Read this post »

“We are ready to clear the decks on this thing.”

I know what you’re thinking, but per the big Times article out today, sounds like everything’s cool now. Says his brother, “[T]here was definitely a douchiness about him that I just don’t really see anymore.” Weiner 2013: Not as much of a douche. If you’re looking for psychobabble about why he did what he did, [...]

Read this post »

Oof.

While other states have been moving right along with deploying the decades-old hydrofracking technique that’s unlocking access to their hitherto hard-to-reach oil and gas reserves (and enjoying the subsequent wealth- and job-creation that comes with it), the state of New York has been hanging back while Governor Andrew Cuomo decides whether he cares more about [...]

Read this post »

Oh, snap.

While I’m sure there are plenty of Democrats who are amply appreciative of NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s aggressive brand of “I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom”-style governance, the nanny-state progressivism-on-steroids approach is somewhat less welcome to others. Red-state Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, for instance, isn’t too keen on Bloomy trying [...]

Read this post »

Flip. Flop. Flip.

Oh, what next? OFA for the War Powers Act? The reorganized Obama campaign, now called Organizing for Action, is jumping into the New York state legislative effort, pushed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), to pass campaign finance reform that would include public financing of candidates. As first reported by Politico, the nonprofit OFA will send [...]

Read this post »

Hazy.

The most irritating peculiarity of Bloomberg’s petty nannyism is how it gets you thinking like a regulator even if you oppose what he’s doing. The hallmark of Bloombergism isn’t meddling with people’s personal habits, it’s meddling with those habits in a half-assed way such that you’re left wondering, perversely, why he didn’t crack down even [...]

Read this post »

Responsibility

The cruise line industry has taken a few black eyes recently, particularly Carnival Cruises. Between their recent “poop cruise” media fiasco and the couple of subsequent, lesser malfunctions, the company has manged to become seemingly endless fodder for late night jokesters. Mechanical malfunctions and a bored cable media machine have turned it into one of [...]

Read this post »

Awkward.

Hey, remember that one time, when ex-New York Congressman Anthony Weiner left office in the whirlwind of disgrace resulting from his indecent-exposure/Twitter-mishap scandal and subsequent credulity-shattering attempt to sweep the whole thing under the rug? …Yeah, I tried to forget about it, too. Shaking my head, guys. Via Fox News: Disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner [...]

Read this post »

Revolting

What with the recent changes to various regulatory aspects regarding the lives of American citizens I was expecting a bit of backlash against President Obama, but I certainly didn’t see this coming. President Barack Obama’s approval rating in New York fell precipitously in the past month, according to a poll released Monday, and three-fifths of [...]

Read this post »

Dreams.

The news is slow enough today that I’m guessing one or more of the cable news nets will carry his press conference/tantrum live at 5:30. Here’s your thread for commenting if you’re in front of a TV. He’s already vowed to appeal today’s decision because, incredible though it may sound, the outcome of this clusterfark [...]

View the video »

It's come to this.

In a sane world, the moment Bloomberg found himself special-ordering custom-sized government-issued drinking glasses for city bureaucrats would have been the moment the fever broke and he realized that his stunningly successful career in finance and politics had ended in ruin and insanity. But no, apparently this is happening. Tomorrow. Coming next: Size regulations on [...]

Read this post »

Forward

Michael Bloomberg has received more than a few broadsides for his seemingly endless parade of new, nanny-state laws designed to tell you how to live. (You know… for your own good.) And now he’s taking another shot across the bow from New York University professor and nutritionist Marion Nestle. But unlike most of the criticism [...]

Read this post »

Minimal

The President may not be doing well on the gun grabbing or tax re-hiking fronts, but apparently there’s one area where the nation is still backing up his vision. And that’s the idea of “helping” everyone by jacking up the minimum wage. A solid majority of Americans support President Obama’s proposal in his most recent [...]

Read this post »

Gun laws for thee, but not for me.

In Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s haste to be the first out of the gate to Do Something in the wake of the Newtown massacre, he signed into law a slate of new gun-control measures that, in retrospect, are looking awfully ill-thought-out. Cuomo apparently agrees, because he’s looking to add in a very particular exemption to [...]

Read this post »

Am I right, or am I right?

Because curtailing people’s freedom of choice within your own jurisdiction doesn’t amount to nearly enough government overreach for humanity’s self-anointed paternalists, obviously. Bloomberg’s big-soda ban is set to go into effect in just a couple of weeks on March 12, but the law only applies to food establishments regulated by the Health Department; stores in [...]

Read this post »

Pushback

When this first cropped up in the news, I thought it was just some sort of outlier. Here in the Empire State, where one of the nastiest gun grabbing laws in recent memory was passed last month, USA Today reported that some gun companies were refusing to do business with law enforcement agencies, claiming that [...]

Read this post »

Dude?

Allegedly. [Bulman] said when he told Mr. Christie he is from upstate New York, “he said, ‘I’m not much different from Andrew Cuomo. I probably agree with him on 98% of the issues.’ ” Mr. Bulman said Gov. Christie “sees value in the building trades, which are private sector unions. He complimented us and said [...]

Read this post »

Who could have thunk it?

With all the nonsense that’s been going on in the Empire State of late – especially the Governor’s successful gun rantings - I’d begun to worry that New York was doomed for mediocrity. But for better or worse, you just can’t keep the government of this state down. If we can’t lead in freedom, prosperity [...]

Read this post »

Privacy.

A pang of conscience after not one but two homes listed on the map were burglarized, possibly with an eye to finding guns inside? Of course not. The new New York gun law that just passed includes a provision, as a sop to gun-rights supporters, allowing gun owners to restrict public access to their information [...]

Read this post »

Oops.

Via Mark Levin, here’s what happens when Doing Something is more important than knowing what you’re doing. You’ve got a governor here who’s facing reelection in 2014 and may well end up being the national frontrunner for his party’s nomination in 2016 if Hillary doesn’t run. He’s feeling political pressure not just from above, in [...]

Read this post »