This just in from Hollywood– Jon Corzine, who until about a week ago was Top Dog in the tanking Wall Street unreality series My Own Private MF Global has been cast as supervillain Two-Face in the next Batman opus. Buzz sez Bat producer Michael Uslan saw the Reuters piece The Two Faces of Jon Corzine […]

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Ah, mortgage fraud. The unsung power tool of the housing bubble. Starting around 1999, the FBI issued repeated warnings that mortgage fraud was surging. Few in government listened. Fraudsters ranged from organized cross-country rings of real estate, banking, and investment professionals, to non-profit profiteers and Joe and Joan Doakes lying on mortgage aps ’cause they […]

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If only I were Edith Piaf. But alas, I can’t say je ne regrette rien. Once upon a wasted time (circa late 1970’s and early 80’s) I hung on New York City’s downtown art/music scene. The scene never fit me, I tried to fit it. Which was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. […]

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Yes, Plum fans, it’s summer, and the latest Stephanie Plum book has been released: Sizzling Sixteen. Think of it as pure Plum the bounty hunter, with a hint of hobbits.
All you intellectuals are now free to log off, because we Plum fans read books where the heroine doesn’t moan about existential angst but worries about […]

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As Summer rolls out its hazy crazy days, pimp hands are blooming all over. From White House plots to the gardens of assorted local governments and/or crime scenes. Though pimp hands are invasive (hence their common name “traveling pimp hands”) and if unchecked, will strangle all other growth, there’s no denying these fleurs du mal […]

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I love the smell of eminent domain abuse in the morning. It smells like land grabs and taxpayers being soaked. A truly fragrant blast of the stuff is wafting up from Brooklyn, where developer Forest City Ratner and the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) have cleared the last man standing in the footprint of […]

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Jersey Shore? Fuhgeddaboudit. Jersey City is the gem of reality TV. Shore is MTV. Jersey City is FBI. Like, how real is that? Killer videos of pols talking trash and passing cash have been unspooling in federal court in Newark at the trial of Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini. Beldini was busted last Summer in an […]

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As anybody who spends time muckraking can tell you, pursuing stories about political corruption can take you to some passing strange places. Particularly in New Jersey…
In July the FBI bagged a passel of Jersey pols on corruption charges. Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini was among the indicted. An intriguing rumor about Beldini surfaced […]

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As reported in the Huffington Post, to focus attention on National Bullying Prevention Awareness Week, Disney star Demi Lovato has gone public.  She was bullied so much in school that she and her parents chose to do home schooling rather than face the bullies at school.  Her story follows Miley Cyrus telling of being bullied, […]

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Last night I dreamed I went to Jersey City again…
I lived in Jersey City, New Jersey for sizable chunks of time during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The experience made a deep impression on me. Which is why I still write about JC when events resonate. In June an auction of luxury condos […]

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In this era of reduced real estate expectations and tighter lending it’s nice to know that taxpayers, via the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), will be helping folks buy luxury condos deep in the heart of Jersey City, New Jersey. With a mere 3.5 percent down “qualified buyers”* can use loans supplied by FHA backed lenders […]

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In early March the mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey was tarred and feathered by a mob of city residents enraged by a gigantic property tax increase. April Fool late! Twas only an effigy of Mayor Dave Roberts that got the T & F treatment. Still, it’s the thought that counts. On May 12th, a mayoral […]

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On Monday, January 26th, the argument over whether algebra II should remain a requirement for all high school students came to the Statehouse in Trenton, New Jersey.
There has been a huge debate on this topic for years and it dominated the discussion held this week.
According to the Press of Atlantic City, “Education […]

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Couldn’t help but ho ho over a Reuters report that New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine was among a group of governors urging the federal government to provide the nation’s states with a $1 trillion special stimulus package. The money would be used for general fund purposes (education, unemployment benefits, etc.) as well as for public […]

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One US soldier’s wife told me that even though the war in Iraq was essentially over, that some of the terror groups left deliberately targeted non combat American troops with mortars out of hatred for the good they did.
So the sad news of the Christmas holidays was that Doctor John Pryor, a Combat surgeon on […]

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John Edwards Affair/Scandal:
Rielle Hunter Back in New Jersey

John Edwards’ mistress, Rielle Hunter and daughter, Frances Quinn, are back on the East coast. After money man, Fred Baron, passed away October 30, Hunter’s hush money payments have stopped and she was forced to trade ritzy Santa Barbara for a more pedestrian setting: New Jersey.

It’s the […]

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In describing the Taliban’s destruction of the two colossal Buddhas of Bamiyan in March 2001, The Wall Street Journal noted:
History has accustomed us to the persecutions that intolerance exercises on those persons whom it intends to subjugate and to the destructions inflicted on the monuments that represent their beliefs and convictions. … The case of […]

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“Wood calls the current law on restraining orders ‘an efficient system.’ We disagree. Yes, the system is efficient in separating men from their children and their homes. However, it is hardly efficient in delivering justice.”
My new co-authored column, Restraining Orders Can Be Straitjackets On Justice (Newark Star-Ledger, 7/28/08), defends a recent New Jersey court ruling […]

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Now and then I have a temper and when I get mad my husband usually prefers not to be around me but I bet after hearing this story he won’t even want to be in the same house as I am.
I am sure 80 year old Robert MacKenzie would have felt the same way about […]

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New Jersey art dealer, George Wieschenberg of Lambertville, was sentenced to six years of prison for being a marijuana “farmer.”
According to MSNBC, Wieschenberg, pleaded guilty to “operating a marijuana production facility,” in which he grew marijuana plants, said State Attorney General Anne Milgrim.
Back in October of 2007, New Jersey State Police officers saw large marijuana […]

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The woman at the center of former NY Gov., Eliot Spitzer scandal, Ashley Alexandra Dupré, has filed suit against Girls Gone Wild founder, Joe Francis and his company.
She claims exploitation of her name and image for profit.
The suit seeks $10 million in damages.
According to People Magazine, the Girls Gone Wild representatives approached and offered Dupré […]

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In New York’s Times Square on Sunday afternoon, Armenians, documentary filmmakers, politicians and historians who refuse to allow the nearly successful genocidal campaign by the Ottoman Turks to be forgotten, gathered to mark the 93rd year of the atrocity and of the Turkish denials.
The two-hour event featured the usual speeches – you know, that quote […]

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The purpose of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been eroded and molded to fit 21st century liberal sensibilities; that is to say, to take it as much out of the public square as possible.  When Thomas Jefferson responded to the Danbury Baptists, he was responding to a specific question — government interfering […]

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Two years ago, Atlantic City, NJ lost its only Supermarket. IGA closed its doors in April 2006 forcing residents and tourists to shop at small markets or outside of the ocean resort.
Since the closing, attempts have been made to convince others to replace IGA, but no new supermarket has yet to open.
In late December […]

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A construction worker in the movie industry killed himself at one of Mel Gibson’s homes in the Agoura Hills, near Malibu.
48-year-old, Michael John Van Dyke, hanged himself on one of the structures under construction on Gibson’s property.
His body was discovered early yesterday morning by the job site foreman. According to TMZ, Mel’s rep says the […]

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A legal opinion issued Thursday in Connecticut may allow lawmakers to extend a state smoking ban to the American-Indian casinos, which claim that smoking restrictions would be a threat to tribal sovereignty.
Lawmakers in Pennsylvania have debated this week to make casinos completely smoke-free or limit smoking to 25 percent of the gaming floor which is […]

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Cecil Suwal and Mark Brener are the masterminds behind the global escort service, Emperors Club VIP, that is linked to New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
The 23-year-old elite, prep school graduate and the 62-year-old widower are the May-December couple who are accused of running the successful prostitution ring.
Neighbors were always wary of the mismatched couple who […]

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A woman from Manahawkin, NJ drove her car off a pier on Friday night near Southwinds Marina.
Around 8:30 p.m. Friday, the township police were called to investigate a woman screaming, from a home across from the marina. Officers David Supsie, Ronald Buxton, and Even Androcy arrived to the marina’s boat ramp, where they saw the […]

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February 5, 2008 may go down in political history as the day Rush Limbaugh lost his grip on Republican voters – and the day Ann Coulter may have lost her grip altogether.
Despite a concerted effort by the conservative chattering class to tar Sen. John McCain as a “liberal” or a “phony Republican,” and Fmr. Gov. […]

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Barack Obama won more than half of the 22 Super Duper Tuesday states (12 to Hillary Clinton’s  8) – but Hillary’s wins came from such delegate-rich states as her adopted home state of NY, as well as CA, MA and NJ. Overall, 49 percent of voters supported Hillary, 46 percent supported Obama.
Since none of the […]

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