New York

The New York Times vs. state spending cuts, take three. After the New York State legislature passed a $132.5 billion budget under new Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo that cuts overall spending by two percent, Albany-based reporter Thomas Kaplan went looking for budget victims for Friday’s “After an On-Time Passage of a Pared-Back Budget, Bracing for the Pain to Come.” Not once did the Times…

Coming on the heels of an election in which the people clearly rejected the concept of government intrusion, one New York State Assemblyman has decided to introduce legislation calling for… well … more government intrusion. Meet Michael DenDekker, Democrat from Queens, who recently revealed two measures that would require all bicycles in the state to be registered, inspected, and carry a…

One of the largest Muslim organizations in North America is considering plans to build a summer camp on 114 acres of land in the Adirondacks.  Via the Albany Times Union:  “The Islamic Circle of North America, a Muslim advocacy group based in New York City, hopes to raise money to develop a camp for children and families of all religions on land donated to it last year.” The Islamic…

New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro hyped up on Tuesday the less-than-earth-shattering news that Barbara Bush, one of President George W. Bush’s twin daughters, has made a video in support of gay marriage: “Daughter Of Bush Endorses Gay Marriages.” Barbaro managed to compare the video Bush made for a gay rights group to such “weighty issues” as the Iraq War: The Bush dynasty is no…

Not content with casting doubt on charges made by New York City Councilman Daniel Halloran, Republican of Queens, of a union-authorized work slowdown during the infamous blizzard that hit Manhattan the day after Christmas, New York Times reporters Russ Buettner and William Rashbaum dove into his personal finances to discredit him in Wednesday’s “Evidence Is Elusive on Charge Of a Blizzard Work…

This past summer, I covered a strange new metric popping up in job reports being provided by the Department of Energy; not jobs created or jobs saved, but rather - lives touched. ...(a) GAO report shows that the phrase ‘jobs created’ or ‘jobs saved’ is no longer the term of choice.  They have decided to go with – wait for it – ‘lives touched’.  

From the same organization that gave us the ‘lives touched’ method for calculating stimulus job creation, the Department of Energy (DOE) has now stumbled upon a whole new way to increase employment.  The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced that they are investigating ‘an uncontrolled spread of radioactive material’ at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna, New…

To the national establishment press, this appears to be another one of those "It's at the Politico, so we can ignore it" incidents. Thursday night, before a debate with GOP opponent George Phillips, nine-term New York Democratic Congressman Maurice Hinchey "had a heated exchange with a local reporter ... that became physical." Quite physical, in fact, to the point where Hinchey "pushed ... (…

Well fancy that: The New York Times has learned what Times Watch has been pointing out for weeks: Not even New Yorkers want a large mosque built two blocks from the site of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.New York City residents were previously praised by Times reporters like Sheryl Gay Stolberg as better informed and thus more tolerant of the idea of a mosque at Ground Zero than ignorant outsiders.…

On Thursday's Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann tied together Republican opposition to same-sex marriage, the Ground Zero mosque, and illegal immigration, as he charged that "the Republican method" for electoral success is "hate." The MSNBC host opened the show: "The Republican method for winning elections is hate. Hate somebody. Anybody will do. We have seen it this year with immigrants…

The New York Times offered still more moral support for the controversial Ground Zero mosque on Sunday's front-page profile by Anne Barnard of the man behind the building project, imam Feisal Abdul Rauf -- "For Imam in Muslim Center Furor, a Hard Balancing Act." Among the contributors to the report: Thanassis Cambanis and Mona El-Naggar in Cairo, and Kareem Fahim, Sharaf Mowjood and Jack Begg in…

The front page of Wednesday's New York edition of the New York Times featured the news that a controversial plan to build a mosque two bocks from Ground Zero was approved by the city's landmarks commission: "Mosque Plan Clears Hurdle In New York -- Bloomberg Pleads for Religious Tolerance." But reporters Michael Barbaro and Javier Hernandez actually led with NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's weepy…

Reporters Ray Rivera, Al Baker, and Janet Roberts combined on a front-page Monday New York Times story questioning the frequency of "stop-and-frisk" policing by the NYPD in high-crime sections of the Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn: "A Few Blocks, 4 Years, 52,000 Police Stops." The text box: "Frisk Tactic Draws Questions Where It Is Used Most."It's a quasi-followup to an overheated May 13…