If New York City is going to ban smoking in parks, it should logically ban it everywhere. The new law was passed to protect the lungs of non-smokers, right?  So why will non-smokers in Central Park be better protected than non-smokers on, say, Fifth Avenue? Pedestrians on Broadway and Steinway Street are in closer proximity […]

Is there anything worse than someone talking loudly into a cell phone while on a train? I think there is.   It’s the people who ssssssh them — the self-appointed train librarians.  The ones with bunched up underpants who feign deep personal offense at something that, at the end of the day,  really isn’t that […]

You feel like an idiot, but oh how you fly. Comes in all flavors.

Constitutionally unrepentant Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D) appears totally obtuse to the reform Zeitgest blowing through the New York State Capital in this video shot by Liz Benjamin late Tuesday. The Senate Democratic conference should take a cue from the protesters in Cairo.  Silver should take his from Mubarak.

I heard this story on CBS Radio last night on my way back from a conference in Albany, just before crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge.  It was one of those news stories that makes you want to plug your ears with your fingers – a 64-year-old Boston pedophilia running an underage sex ring in Thailand, exploiting children […]

For a short time after 9/11, nearly everyone in public office became magically imbued with deep national security expertise. When the Iraq War began, and then soured, those same public officials became experts in Islam and international affairs.  They could roll off their tongues and onto television sets every vowel in the names of cities […]

  Ariel Kaminer of The New York Times today tackled the always-delicate issue of gun laws in New York City by chronicling her effort to actually get one in her hands legally.   After being turned away by a couple of police tactical shops, the intrepid journalist struck pay-dirt at Beretta of Madison Avenue.  There, on […]

My older brother turned 50 yesterday, which came as quite a surprise.  He began life just two and a half years before I did, so, somewhere along the way he has acquired some peculiar aging malady. We’re not going to talk about it; it’s better with these things. A month before hitting the half century […]

Was the US caught napping on this one? The ramifications of U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak falling could be major. Time will tell. And probably not much of it.