Moe Lane

There’s just something so… anticipatory… about hearing that a state senator was wearing a wire.  Welcome to New York!

Almost a quarter of the state Senate’s Democratic conference was in the FBI’s cross hairs last year, according to a court filing unsealed Wednesday.

Last summer, federal investigators asked state Sen. Shirley Huntley to invite six Democratic colleagues to her Queens home and record their conversations. According to a sentencing memo written by Huntley’s lawyer, the former lawmaker told prosecutors — who had charged her with siphoning money from a nonprofit group for which she secured state money — that she “had knowledge of what she believed to be corruption involving [nine] public officials.”

Huntley, a grandmother and former PTA leader, taped them all.

(more…)

John Podheretz* is infuriated about the recent state-level corruption scandals in New York, and I don’t blame him one bit:

In rich countries and poor countries, dictatorships and democracies, politicians who wet their beaks usually do so in ways that at least seek to close the financial gap between them and the people from whom they’re taking the bribes.

But among the many distressingly low-rent qualities our politicians possess, none is more contemptible than just how cheaply they are willing to sell themselves. People who get caught in what appear to be open-and-shut corruption scandals are doing so for pennies on the dollar — pennies on the dollar, I tell you!

Read the whole thing: it’s depressingly hysterical.  Incidentally, the word is coming down (H/T: Instapundit) that the second wave of corruption revelations that happened Thursday is not really related to the first; the only real similarity between the two is that in both cases apparently New York state legislators are downright eager to drop dimes on their compatriots in exchange for leniency.  With any luck, this will end up scorching the earth of both parties (because God knows the NY GOP can’t really get worse)…

Moe Lane

*H/T…  John Podheretz.

(H/T: Jammie Wearing Fools) Geez Louise.

State Sen. Malcolm Smith and city Councilman Dan Halloran were arrested this morning on charges they were plotting to rig this year’s mayoral election through fraud and bribes.

The pols allegedly formed an alliance built on cash payments and fraud to get Smith — one of the state’s top Democrats — placed on the GOP mayoral ballot, sources said.

FBI agents arrested them both at their Queens homes shortly after 6 a.m.

You may remember Malcolm Smith from last December, when he half-broke from the Democratic party in order to join the Independent Democratic Caucus, which is the organization that is allowing the NY GOP to retain control of the state Senate.  I don’t think that Smith being thrown out on his ear will be enough to flip the state Senate back, but I guess that we’re about to find out! Dan Halloran is the neo-pagan guy (I mention this for identification purposes only: no, seriously, some of my best friends really ARE neo-pagans) who ran for Congress last year, and lost.  There’s a bunch of other people who got arrested, including some top NYC GOP party officials (Joseph Savino and Vincent Tabone) and the (Democratic*) mayor and assistant mayor of Spring Valley: which may explain why this story will be slow getting off the launching pad.  Everybody’s really busy checking first to make sure that none of their people are actually in the blast zone. (more…)

I’d like to think that the NY GOP got something out of their act of corporeal mercy… but probably not.

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s seven-round limit on magazines sold in New York will be suspended “indefinitely” by a measure in his $136.5 billion budget set to be passed this week, Dean Skelos, a Senate majority leader said.

For those who don’t remember: the ban was called into question when it came out that nobody actually made seven round magazines. The NY state government REALLY didn’t want that brought up in front of a court, given that the courts tend to frown on legislatures trying to get overly cute with the federal Constitution; and it’s pretty clear at this point that the Supreme Court feels inclined to spank gun-grabbers.  Particularly the ones that insist on wasting the Supreme Court’s valuable time. So… let the legislation be ‘suspended’ for a while; which probably translates to ‘never.’  Maybe they’ll revisit it when the shouting dies down.  And maybe they won’t, either.

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

PS: The New York state government is generally populated by blithering idiots who could not find their own rear ends in a dark room at night with a flashlight and a sex worker to help.  I just wish to note this for the (somewhat bowdlerized) record.

Governor Cuomo did this epically, admitting that the restrictions on magazine possession that he pushed through and signed into law earlier in the year are too flawed to exist, and need to be repealed.

“There is no such thing as a seven-bullet magazine. That doesn’t exist. So you really have no practical option.” – Andrew Cuomo

So why the [expletive deleted] did you sign it in the first place, you jumped-up, bed-hopping imbecile?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: This [expletive deleted]-head wants to replace the aforementioned impractical law with one that would only make it illegal to load more than seven bullets into a magazine.  Just in case you were thinking that  I was being unkind by calling Andrew Cuomo an ‘imbecile.’

I admit it, I admit it: I’m kind of conflicted, here.

Disgraced pol Anthony Weiner is potentially climbing back into politics after recently spending more than $100,000 on campaign consulting and polling — and sources tell Page Six that one person he’s looking to prove wrong about him is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who urged him to resign in 2011. “Weiner is still fuming over his downfall, and he blames Nancy Pelosi,” said a source. After Weiner’s sexting scandal, he announced he was going to get psychological treatment and take a leave from the House, but Pelosi released a statement calling for him to resign after he’d informed her of his plan to deal with the situation.

(Via JMF & Instapundit)

On the one hand, I don’t want to encourage anybody to think that they should be allowed to avoid responsibility for their own actions, which is what Anthony Weiner is trying to do here. On the other hand, pretty much everything can be ‘blamed’ on Nancy Pelosi, from why the Democrats didn’t take the House back to why FISA was reauthorized.  On the gripping hand, Nancy Pelosi was right.  If Weiner had tried to brazen it out he’d have lost anyway.

So I dunno.

Moe Lane

PS: The NY Post does so love its headlines.

I applaud the efforts of Democratic politicians to ensure that I never run out of things to write about.  Particularly if Weiner runs on an explicit campaign of Shaddap about my past bad life choices and I’ll shaddap about yours. I mean, after three terms of Nanny Bloomberg New Yorkers have no right to complain about how somebody’s mere candidacy is degrading the dignity of the office of Mayor of NYC.  The man tried to ban extra-large Cokes, people.

And New Yorkers let him do that.

Seriously.  What the [expletive deleted] were you people thinking, anyway?

Alternate title: Son, you’re on your own.

The New York state budget currently under negotiation may be remembered years from now as the beginning of the end for many small towns, cities and school districts.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo had tough words Friday for local officials facing fiscal crises and seeking more help from Albany, telling them they should consolidate services or whole governments and school districts rather than looking for relief from Albany.

(H/T: Instapundit) Translation: Andrew Cuomo has made all of the tentative, half-hearted attempts that he dared to rein in public sector unions. Any further shortfalls in revenue will simply have to be borne by the local authorities. If they don’t like that, well, they should have joined a public sector union. (more…)

Glenn Reynolds, while noting just how bad it’s getting out there under Bloomberg for New York City residents who don’t happen to be mega-rich, offers this invitation:

You’re welcome to move [to Tennessee], so long as you don’t start agitating for the same policies that drove you out.

I’m wondering if any state legislatures might decide to try to back up that sentiment with appropriate legislation.  Probably not; it’d be hideously inappropriate and probably unconstitutional.  But remember, Blue state transplants: your new Red state neighbors were smart enough to create the safe place that you’re currently fleeing to.  Learn some humility, Sparky.

…I say ‘alas’ because I wanted the judge to present his judgement by taking out a extra large Coke, drinking the whole thing down in one shot while staring at Nanny Bloomberg – and then burp ferociously in the mayor’s face.

(pause)

OK, that wasn’t going to happen. It probably shouldn’t have happened. It’s highly immature of me to want it to happen.

(pause)

Still.

Moe Lane

PS: If you are advising a GOP candidate or politician, make damned sure that he or she gets on camera taking a swig from a Big Gulp, makes a toast in the general direction of NYC, and cheerfully declaims “Stay thirsty, my friends.” STAT.

Via Instapundit, I’m getting the impression that Andrew Cuomo is apparently very good at turning small PR problems into bigger PR problems.  Short version: guy in the state government (Mike Fayette) talks to the press (the Adirondack Daily Enterprise) when he apparently wasn’t supposed to.  Fayette gets in trouble for it.  Rather than get fired, he retires.  So far, so… whatever, man.  Only the Daily Enterprise on Wednesday published a story on the subject of Fayette’s forced retirement.  And that’s when this story gets a little eyebrow-raising:

On Thursday, livid that an engineer in the Adirondacks was being portrayed as a victim of Mr. Cuomo’s penchant for control, a top aide to the governor, Howard B. Glaser, took to the airwaves. He read aloud Mr. Fayette’s disciplinary history, describing him as a troubled employee who had previously been penalized for having an improper relationship with a subordinate, misusing his work e-mail to send sexually explicit messages and using his state-assigned vehicle for personal errands.

(more…)

Never give an order that you know is going to be disobeyed. It merely makes it easier for people to ignore the next order, too.

New York Governor Cuomo the Junior may have rushed through his new gun control law with such speed that police will avoid its restrictions only through the blessed miracle of selective enforcement, but he may have a little trouble getting the state’s firearms owners to attend his party. The new law requires owners of those scary-looking rifles known as “assault weapons” to register their property (amidst assurances that, oh no, the registration lists will never be used for confiscation), but gun rights activists are actively urging gun owners to defy the new mandate.

Also… check out Reason’s URL link itself.  Surely that’s not intentional.

Surely.

Via Hot Air Headlines.