Today in comebacks: Anthony Weiner is back on Twitter. It might take him a while to get back to that insidery style a lot of people loved about his old Twitter feed … but on the other hand, that got him in trouble last time. Give him a follow.
I don’t have this burning, overriding desire to go out and run for office. It’s not the single animating force in my life as it was for quite some time. But I do recognize, to some degree, it’s now or maybe never for me, in terms of running for something. I’m trying to gauge not only what’s right and what feels comfortable right this second, but I’m also thinking, How will I feel in a year or two years or five years? Is this the time that I should be doing it? And then there’s the other side of the coin, which is … am I still the same person who I thought would make a good mayor?So Anthony Weiner is thinking of running for mayor of New York City, complete with New York Times Magazine profile announcing his political ambitions. Can he pull off the big comeback?
I stand by everything I did. I did my job and I would do it the same way. … I sleep well at night.Retired New York City Police Detective Louis Scarcella • Speaking in regards to a 1990 case where he helped capture and convict David Ranta, a man who confessed to the murder of a rabbi in a botched robbery. However, in the 23 years since Ranta’s arrest, holes have surfaced in the case, and earlier this week, Ranta was released, complete with an apology from the judge. The release raised questions about Scarcella’s own actions, including whether he coached a witness to pick Ranta out of a lineup. The detective, who retired in 2000, defends his work. ”I caught a lot of cases and I got confessions,” he said of his work in the case. “I was called into cases that weren’t mine to speak to people. I was called in and I did my job and I got confessions.”
A judge invalidated New York City’s ban on large sugary drinks on Monday, one day before it was to go into effect, dealing Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg a major blow.
The decision by Justice Milton A. Tingling Jr. of State Supreme Court in Manhattan blocks the city from putting the rules into effect or enforcing them.
Well, it looks like the first point goes to Starbucks after all. The Bloomberg administration has already announced that it will challenge Judge Tingling’s decision; however, it doesn’t look like the planned 16-ounce restriction will be taking effect on Tuesday after all.
In what could be a huge step for NYC, current City Council speaker Christine Quinn has officially dropped her hat into the ring to become the potential successor to Michael Bloomberg. This is a big deal—if she wins, she would be both the first female mayor of the city, along with the first openly-gay NYC mayor. Here’s her introductory video.
Michael Bloomberg’s next potential regulatory victim? Foam-based packaging, such as trays, cups and bowls. The Soup Nazi would not approve, though the environment might dig the NYC mayor’s move. (photo by Philip Scott Andrews/The New York Times)
Ed Koch, the iconic former New York City mayor who died Friday, has some of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s last words — “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.” — on his tombstone. Koch explained his reasoning for doing this in a 2011 blog post for The Huffington Post: “I believe those words should be part of the annual services on the Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kippur, and should be repeated by the congregants.”
Pearl was brutally murdered by al-Qaeda terrorists after being kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002, with his death videotaped and used as a propaganda tool. He died on February 1, 2002, eleven years ago exactly — making Koch’s usage of Pearl’s words symbolic in another way.
» The inevitable fawning regarding the idea: ”Words can simply not capture the incredible debt of gratitude that we owe to Mike and the amazing sense of fortune that we have in being able to claim him not merely as a graduate but as a graduate who so clearly understands us and has given so much of his time, his passion and his philanthropy,” Hopkins President Ronald J. Daniels said regarding the donation. “We’re just incredibly fortunate.” Yeah, pretty much, bro.
Morgan Gliedman, a 27-year old graduate of Manhattan’s elite prep school Dalton and the daughter of one of New York Magazine’s top doctors of 2012, was arrested along with her Harvard-educated boyfriend, Aaron Greene; both were charged with with felony possession of an explosive with intent to use and felony possession of a weapon, and Gliedman was also charged with four counts of felony grand larceny for credit card theft.
Along with a sawed-off shotgun — a customized 12-gauge Mossberg 500 — police discovered nine high-capacity rifle magazines, a flare launcher and a stash of a powerful powdered explosive called Hexamethylene Triperoxide Diamine, or HMTD, which was same explosive used in at least two prior terrorist attacks. The explosive is so powerful that, according to the New York Post, police evacuated several nearby apartments. Police also found “papers about creating homemade booby traps, improvised submachine guns, and various handwritten notebooks containing chemical formulas.”
Fun detail regarding this story: Morgan Gliedman apparently was nine months pregnant and went into labor not long after her arrest. So yeah, there’s that.
“We haven’t determined whether it was random or if there was some connection yet,” [chief police spokesman Paul J.] Browne said, “but there was nothing from what the witnesses could see to indicate that they knew each other and he did not, according to the witnesses, appear to realize that she was approaching.”
The woman, whom the police described as Hispanic, in her early 20s and heavyset, fled on Queens Boulevard and was being sought by all police officers in the area.
She was wearing a blue, white and gray ski jacket, the police said, and gray Nike sneakers. Outside the elevated station on Thursday night, multiple police vehicles gathered, and local residents braved frigid conditions to huddle on corners and discuss the act of violence in their midst.
We didn’t need a copycat incident. We already had one of these this month. One was enough.
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
Wrote a thing.
Hat tip to this headline writer.
Congrats Tumblr!
Don’t screw this up Yahoo.
In 2007, I was...
I started tumblr when I was at one of the lowest points of...
New York City just approved a pilot program that will allow riders to hail cabs on their smartphones, paving the way for app-building upstarts trying to make the journey as enjoyable as the destination.
This should be a boon to Uber — and stranded cab riders everywhere.
Street Artist Behind Satirical NYPD “Drone” Posters Arrested
“A street artist who hung satirical posters criticising police surveillance activities has been arrested after an NYPD investigation tracked him to his doorstep.” Note the irony of the artist satirizing drones getting tracked.
Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg visited Washington DC joined by Senator Charles Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to ask for fiscal help from the federal government for Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.
In New York City, the public and private losses caused by Hurricane Sandy, which were not covered by private insurance come to $15.2 billion. New York City’s recovery is vital to America’s continued economic recovery and growth.
Read the Mayor’s remarks delivered yesterday at the U.S Capitol Building at http://on.nyc.gov/UdLnVc.
Highlight from the remarks: “We haven’t waited for the help that we hope to get from Washington to come, but given the scale and the impact of the storm, Federal assistance is clearly warranted.”
wnyc:
The subway comes back, in GIF.
Since Sandy left town, we’ve been downloading MTA subway-recovery maps to feed WNYC’s Changing Trains map. Our Steve Melendez put them together in a time-lapse GIF. Click through to the full-size image.
Great graphic — one that shows the speed of the recovery.
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