New York

A heavily politicized preliminary version of Friday's front-page New York Times story on Pope Francis's visit to New York City was another example of the sudden respect a religious figure garners from the liberal newspaper -- at least when he happens to agree on the Times' pet issue of immigration. Reporters Marc Santora and Sharon Otterman noted that the Pope's "words cut against the current…

Ginia Bellafante's "Big City" column in Sunday's New York Times smacked of a particular brand of star-struck, fact-allergic old-style liberalism in which Bellafante, metro columnist and occasional reporter for the Times, went after an old enemy, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani: "The Dark Ages of Giuliani." Some urban liberals will apparently never forgive Giuliani for cleaning up the…

Fresh off condemning libertarian "freedom" rhetoric as racist, TV producer David Simon, creator of the acclaimed HBO series "The Wire" and others, talked to the non-profit "public interest" news outlet ProPublica about his new miniseries "Show Me a Hero," on the desegregation of Yonkers, NY, after a federal judge ordered public housing projects to be built in white, wealthy parts of town. Simon…

During an interview with David Wallis posted in the New York Observer website on Thursday, Richard Dreyfuss -- best known for his starring roles in such movies as The Goodbye Girl, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Mr. Holland's Opus -- declared he thinks the Second Amendment should be changed because “it's obscurely written.” The liberal actor claimed: “I would have made it clear. I would…

Primates of Park Avenue is a new memoir by Wednesday Martin that purports to examine and explain the preposterously well-off women of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, much like Jane Goodall studied chimpanzees. Martin's prominent pre-publication essay in the New York Times mocked those "poor little rich women" for betraying feminism by being "dependent and comparatively disempowered." Times…

Ruby Cramer, "a political reporter for BuzzFeed News ... based in New York," was on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton a couple of weeks ago in Hampton, New Hampshire. Ms. Cramer was outraged at how "two actual everyday Americans" were "crushed" by the horde of reporters who attempted to ask Mrs. Clinton real questions. What Cramer reported the couple said during the course of the "press…

Well, this is awkward — or rather, it would be if the press cared about the federally-driven tyranny which is in the process of capturing the nation's public and private K-12 schools. Common Core's proponents have insisted and still insist that "it was and will remain a state-led effort" (italics is theirs). Yet when faced with the "problem" of too many parents opting out of its intrusive…

Chris Christie who? Rachel Swarns, who for years fawned over Barack and Michelle Obama for the New York Times, wrote an "open letter" column to actor Adam Baldwin in defense of a left-wing group which tied up traffic in mid-town Manhattan in the name of a $15-an-hour "living wage."

Alec Baldwin, famous liberal actor (and public-radio talk show host at WNYC-FM), started a Twitter battle with fellow liberals about traffic-blocking protests in mid-town Manhattan on behalf of the "Fight for $15" minimum-wage demands. Occupy somewhere else, he seemed to proclaim to more than a million followers at his foundation's Twitter account.

Kudos to our colleague Elizabeth Harrington at the Washington Free Beacon. She offers a familiar old slice of sleaze funded by the federal government. An “investigative theatre” company in New York called “The Civilians” has been granted almost $950,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and believe it or not, the National Science Foundation. Its latest creation is a musical about porn…

Pop star Taylor Swift has donated $50,000 to the New York City public school system. Swift, who was named the world's sixth most powerful celebrity by Forbes magazine, has commendably performed numerous acts of charity since moving into her $20 million Tribeca residence last year, including visits with sick children at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The age and cultural divide notwithstanding (…

See if you can spot the typos on this map, which depict mandatory travel bans in Northeastern states for the overnight of January 26-27. 

During her MSNBC show Now on Monday, Alex Wagner had on guest Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, who took advantage of the blizzard set to strike New York City and New England to invoke climate change and blame the “big oil industry” and Republicans for “voting down science” in a Senate vote last week. Not to be outdone, Wagner took her own swipe at those who don’t subscribe…

During his MSNBC show All In on Monday, Chris Hayes put up his best defense of far-left New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio against criticism from NYPD officers and their union, lamenting that de Blasio has been subject to “brutal attacks” over the past few weeks while praising him for a drop in crime during 2014. At the start of a segment about the drop in crime and a changing of tactics, Hayes…