Update on new 'bridgegate' developments

One of the main players in the Chris Christie bridge investigation now says the governor knew about the closures all along.

Christie Knew About Lane Closings, Ex-Port Authority Official Says

By KATE ZERNIKE JAN. 31, 2014

David Wildstein, right, with his lawyer, Alan Zegas, at a hearing in Trenton, N.J., in January. Ángel Franco/The New York Times

The former Port Authority official who personally oversaw the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge, central to the scandal now swirling around Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, said on Friday that “evidence exists” the governor knew about the lane closings when they were happening.

In a letter released by his lawyer, the former official, David Wildstein, a high school friend of Mr. Christie’s who was appointed with the governor’s blessing at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the bridge, described the order to close the lanes as “the Christie administration’s order” and said “evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference” three weeks ago.

During his news conference, Mr. Christie specifically said he had no knowledge that traffic lanes leading to the bridge had been closed until after they were reopened. “I had no knowledge of this — of the planning, the execution or anything about it — and that I first found out about it after it was over,” he said. “And even then, what I was told was that it was a traffic study.”

Document

Letter From Wildstein’s Lawyer on Lane Closings

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey knew about the lane closings as they were happening, a letter released on Friday by the lawyer of David Wildstein said.

The letter does not specify what the evidence was. Nonetheless, it is the first signal that Mr. Christie, a Republican, may have been aware of the closings, and marks a striking break with a previous ally.

The letter, sent from Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer, Alan Zegas, is to the Port Authority’s general counsel, contesting the agency’s decision over the legal fees. But it is clearly meant as a threat to the governor. Indeed, the allegations make up just one paragraph in a two-page letter that otherwise focuses on Mr. Wildstein’s demand that his legal fees be paid and that he be indemnified.

Mr. Zegas did not respond to requests to discuss the letter, which also consisted of a strong defense of Mr. Wildstein against negative comments Mr. Christie made about him during the news conference. “Mr. Wildstein contests the accuracy of various statements that the governor made about him, and he can prove the inaccuracy of some,” the letter added.

Late on Friday, the Christie administration issued a statement, insisting the letter supports Mr. Chrisitie’s contention that he did not know of the closings in advance:

“Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer confirms what the governor has said all along: He had absolutely no prior knowledge of the lane closures before they happened and whatever Mr. Wildstein’s motivations were for closing them to begin with. As the governor said in a December 13th press conference, he only first learned lanes were closed when it was reported by the press and, as he said in his January 9th press conference, had no indication that this was anything other than a traffic study until he read otherwise the morning of January 8th.

“The governor denies Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer’s other assertions.”

The bridge scandal erupted in early January, when documents emerged revealing that a deputy chief of staff to the governor, Bridget Anne Kelly, had sent an email to Mr. Wildstein saying, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” the town at the New Jersey end of the bridge, where Mr. Christie’s aides had pursued but failed to receive an endorsement from the mayor, who is a Democrat. The letter does not delve into the motives behind the lane closings.

Mr. Christie has steadfastly denied that he knew before this month that anyone in his administration was responsible for the lane closings, and his administration has tried to portray the closures as the actions of a rogue staff member.

The governor fired Ms. Kelly.

The closings caused extensive gridlock in Fort Lee, stretching some commutes to four hours and delaying emergency vehicles.

Mr. Wildstein communicated the order to close the lanes to bridge operators. He resigned from his position as the director of interstate capital projects at the Port Authority in early December, saying that the scandal over the lane closings in September had become “a distraction.” In a statement that documents show was personally approved by the governor, the administration praised him as “a tireless advocate for New Jersey’s interests at the Port Authority.”

The Port Authority has since refused to pay his legal costs associated with inquiries by the New Jersey Legislature and United States attorney into the lane closings. In his two-hour news conference earlier this month, Mr. Christie said his friendship with Mr. Wildstein had been overstated; that while the governor had been class president and an athlete, he did not recall Mr. Wildstein well from that period and had rarely seen him in recent months.

The Wall Street Journal has since published photos showing the two men laughing together at a Sept. 11 anniversary event — which happened during the four days the lanes were closed. A high school baseball coach also recalled them as friends in high school.

The Legislature has sent subpoenas to Mr. Wildstein and 17 other people as well as the governor’s campaign and administration seeking information about the lane closings. That information is due back on Monday.

Ms. Kelly’s email was revealed in documents Mr. Wildstein submitted in response to an earlier subpoena from the legislature. But those documents were heavily redacted, leaving clues but no answers as to who else might have been involved in the lane closings. Some of the documents, for example, showed texts between Mr. Wildstein and Ms. Kelly trying to set up a meeting with the governor around the time the plan for the lane closings was hatched. But it is unclear what the meeting was about.

Other texts show Mr. Wildstein and Mr. Christie’s top appointee at the Port Authority, Bill Baroni, disparaging the mayor of Fort Lee during the lane closings, and discussing how to respond to the mayor’s complaints and inquiries from reporters. Those texts, too, are heavily redacted, but indicate that the two men were in contact with the governor’s office at the time.

The lane closings caused extensive gridlock in Fort Lee.

MSNBC Pathetically Apologizes For Tweeting Truth About Right Wing Racists

How Not To Run A Liberal TV Network

By Charles P. Pierce on January 31, 2014

In Fast Copy, his vastly underrated novel about Texas, newspapers, and Texas newspapering in the 1930s, Dan Jenkins writes of his hero, "newshen" Betsy Throckmorton, that her approach to local news -- to wit, actually covering it -- so inflames a prominent local merchant that he storms into her office and threatens to pull all his advertising. 

In response, Betsy tells the guy that she is suspending him, and that his advertisement is no longer welcome in her newspaper and, basically, he can go to hell or Waco, his choice. 

Naturally, by the end of the encounter, the goober is begging Betsy to take his advertising back. What can I tell you, but I think MSNBC chief Phil Griffin is no Betsy Throckmorton.

We wrote yesterday about the storm of fauxtrage that arose over an anonymous MSNBC tweet concerning a new commercial from the Cheerios people. This prompted an ungainly dive from the "liberal" network in the face of the flying howler monkeys. However, yesterday, the surrender became abject. 

Photo Illustration by DonkeyHotey via Flickr/Special to The Politics Blog 

 Obvious anagram Reince Priebus, the empty suit in the emptiest job in American politics, threatened to keep every Republican off MSNBC unless heads rolled to his satisfaction. 

Whereupon Griffin apologized again, and assured Priebus that he had fired the anonymous staffer who'd put up the tweet in the first place and, pretty please, would Priebus allow nutballs like Tim Huelskamp to come on MSNBC again? 

Flushed with triumph, Priebus pretended once again to be an important person.

"So, look, this was a first step. It was the first time I talked to Mr. Griffin. He reacted pretty quickly, and now we have to stay on top of it," Priebus told conservative pundit Sean Hannity. "So, you know what? It's sort of like being on probation, I guess. But the fact of the matter is we're here, we're watching them and it's our responsibility - and it's mine in particular, I think -also to stand up for our party. That's what I did today, and I'll do it again. I promise you that."

Good for you, junior. Here's a juicebox. Now run along.

There is no more powerless person in American politics than Reince Priebus, and few entities more powerless than the Republican National Committee which, last time around, couldn't even keep its primary calendar straight.

The power in the Republican party lies now in the vast network of independent organizations funded by the same claque of about 15 plutocrats, and what power does not lie there lies in the elements of organized theocracy.

Reince Priebus is a not very convincing marionette who couldn't even get elected to the Wisconsin state senate. What he knows about politics you could put up his ass and have room for a change of clothes. Priebus should have been told to fuck off and come back when he shows the ability, in the immortal words of Bob Knight, to lead a whore to bed.

 I realize that, unlike Roger Ailes, whose organized slander, pander and propaganda festival never apologizes for anything, and who could give a rat's ass if a Democrat ever entered his studios again, Griffin has the great deadweight of NBC News on his back while he tries to do his job.

 (I imagine that they've only just now revived Tom Brokaw, the man who invented World War II, and pried him off the fainting couch. and that the Dancin' Master, who still has a job despite this immortal moment, will have a segment on Sunday in which Priebus can flex it up again.)

I appreciate the problem. But some poor bastard -- whose identity, I guarantee you, the flying monkeys are at the moment seeking because they need an actual head on the wall -- has lost a job behind this now because Griffin took a ridiculous figure like Reince Priebus seriously. This is like getting held up by mail.

Screw U: How For-Profit Colleges Rip You Off

The for-profit college industry makes a killing while handing out expensive degrees that fizzle in the real world.

By Yasmeen Qureshi, Sarah Gross, and Lisa Desai

The folks who walked through Tressie McMillan Cottom's door at an ITT Technical Institute campus in North Carolina were desperate. They had graduated from struggling high schools in low-income neighborhoods. They'd worked crappy jobs. Many were single mothers determined to make better lives for their children. "We blocked off a corner, and that's where we would put the car seats and the strollers," she recalls. "They would bring their babies with them and we'd encourage them to do so, because this is about building motivation and urgency."

McMillan Cottom now studies education issues at the University of California-Davis' Center for Poverty Research, but back then her job was to sign up people who'd stopped in for information, often after seeing one of the TV ads in which ITT graduates rave about recession-proof jobs. The idea was to prey on their anxieties—and to close the deal fast. Her title was "enrollment counselor," but she felt uncomfortable calling herself one, because she quickly realized she couldn't act in the best interest of the students. "I was told explicitly that we don't enroll and we don't admit: We are a sales force."

After six months at ITT Tech, McMillan Cottom quit. That same day, she called up every one of the students she'd enrolled and gave them the phone number for the local community college.

With 147 campuses and more than 60,000 students nationwide, ITT Educational Services (which operates both ITT Tech and the smaller Daniel Webster College) is one of the largest companies in the burgeoning for-profit college industry, which now enrolls up to 13 percent of higher-education students. ITT is also the most profitable of the big industry players: Its revenue has nearly doubled over the past seven years, closing in on $1.3 billion last year, when CEO Kevin Modany's compensation topped $8 million.

To achieve those returns, regulators suspect, ITT has been pushing students to take on financial commitments they can't afford. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking into ITT's student loan program, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how those loans were issued and sold to investors. (Neither agency would comment about the probes.) The attorneys general of some 30 states have banded together to investigate for-profit colleges; targets include ITT, Corinthian, Kaplan, and the University of Phoenix.

A 2012 investigation led by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) singled out ITT for employing "some of the most disturbing recruiting tactics among the companies examined." A former ITT recruiter told the Senate education committee that she used and taught a process called the "pain funnel," in which admissions officers would ask students increasingly probing questions about where their lives were going wrong. Properly used, she said, it would "bring a prospect to their inner child, an emotional place intended to have the prospect say, 'Yes, I will enroll.'"

For-profit schools recruit heavily in low-income communities, and most students finance their education with a mix of federal Pell grants and federal student loans. But government-backed student loans max out at $12,500 per school year, and tuition at for-profits can go much higher; at ITT Tech it runs up to $25,000. What's more, for-profit colleges can only receive 90 percent of their revenue from government money. For the remaining 10 percent, they count on veterans—GI Bill money counts as outside funds—as well as scholarships and private loans.

Study Haul

How for-profit schools leave their students high and dry

96% of students at for-profit colleges take out loans. 13% of community college students, 48% of public college students, and 57% of nonprofit private college students do.

For-profit colleges enroll 13% of higher-education students but receive 25% of federal student aid.
The 15 publicly traded for-profit colleges receive more than 85% of their revenue from federal student loans and aid.

42% of students attending for-profit two-year colleges take out private student loans. 5% of students at community colleges and 18% at private not-for-profit two-year colleges do.

1 in 25 borrowers who graduate from college defaults on his or her student loans. But among graduates of two-year for-profit colleges, the rate is 1 in 5.

Students who attended for-profit schools account for 47% of all student loan defaults.

Sources: Sen. Harkin, Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, Education Sector

Whatever the source of the funds, the schools' focus is on boosting enrollment. A former ITT financial-aid counselor named Jennifer (she asked us not to use her last name) recalls that prospects were "browbeaten and hassled into signing forms on their first visit to the school because it was all slam, bam, thank you ma'am." The moment students enrolled, Jennifer would check their federal loan and grant eligibility to see how much money they qualified for. After students maxed out their federal grants and loans, there was typically an outstanding tuition balance of several thousand dollars.

Jennifer says she was given weekly reports detailing how much money students on her roster owed.

She would pull them from class and present them with a stark choice: get kicked out of school or make a payment on the spot. For years, ITT even ran a (now discontinued) in-house private loan program, known as PEAKS, in partnership with Connecticut-based Liberty Bank, with interest rates reaching 14.75 percent. (Federal student loans top out at 6.8 percent.)

Jennifer, who had previously worked at the University of Alabama, says she felt like a collection agent. "My supervisors and my campus president were breathing down my neck, and I was threatened that I was going to be fired if I didn't do this," she says. Yet she knew that students would have little means to get out from under the debt they were signing up for.

Roughly half of ITT Tech students dropped out during the period covered by the Harkin report, and the job prospects for those who did graduate were hardly stellar. Even though a for-profit degree "costs a lot more," Harkin told Dan Rather Reports, "in the job market it's worth less than a degree from, say, a community college."

Jennifer says the career services office at her campus wasn't much help; students told her they were simply given a printout from Monster.com. (ITT says its career counselors connect students with a range of job services and also help them write résumés, find leads, and arrange interviews.) By the time she was laid off, Jennifer believed the college "left students in worse situations than they were to begin with."

It's not just whistleblowers who are complaining about ITT. There's an entire website, myittexperience.com, dedicated to stories from disappointed alumni. That's how we found Margie Donaldson, a 38-year-old who says her dream has always been to get a college degree and work in corporate America: "Especially being a little black girl in the city of Detroit, [a degree] was everything to me."

Donaldson was making nearly $80,000 packing parts at Chrysler when the company, struggling to survive the recession, offered her a buyout. She decided to use it to get the college degree that she never finished 13 years before. Five years later, she is $75,000 in debt and can't find a full-time job despite her B.A. in criminal justice from ITT.

She's applied for more than 200 positions but says 95 percent of the applications went nowhere because her degree is not regionally accredited, so employers don't see it as legitimate. Nor can she use her credits toward a degree at another school.

Working part time as an anger management counselor, she brings in about $1,400 a month, but there are no health benefits, and with three kids ages 7, 14, and 18, she can barely make ends meet. She has been able to defer her federal student loans, but the more than $20,000 in private loans she took out via ITT can't be put off, so she's in default with 14.75 percent interest—a detail she says her ITT financial-aid adviser never explained to her—and $150 in late fees tacked on to her balance each month.

Donaldson says she has tried to work out an affordable payment plan, but the PEAKS servicers won't agree until she pays an outstanding balance of more than $3,500—more than double her monthly income. "It puts me and my family, and other families, I'm sure, in a very tough situation financially," she says.

Donaldson says she didn't understand how different ITT was from a public college. If she had attended one of Michigan's 40-plus state and community colleges, her tuition would have been roughly one-third of what it was at ITT. Now, she says, all that time and money feels wasted: "It's almost like I'm like a paycheck away from going back to where I grew up."

Wow, Fox News Is SCREWED

A new piece in New York Magazine lays out some pretty devastating facts about the Fox News Network that show how little influence the network really has, and how its future is bleak based on its aging demo of (really) old white men. http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/fox-news-2014-2/

The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

An 'All In' guide to Christie's troubles

Chris Hayes brings you an "All In" guide to the mounting Christie allegations.

New York congressman threatens to throw reporter off balcony

By scarce January 28, 2014 9:14 pm

 

Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) took exception to a line of inquiry tonight from a local news reporter, threatening to throw the reporter "over the balcony" and saying "I will break you in half" at the SOTU. 

 

 

Well here's something you don't see every day. A New York congressman threatening a reporter live on air. Seems the heat is getting to Michael Grimm.
via Daily Beast

Congressman Michael Grimm threatened Michael Scotto, a reporter with NY1, a local New York television news station, after the State of the Union Tuesday night saying "you're not a man. I could break you in half." [Some reports said "will" instead of "could".]

Scotto, was finishing an interview with Staten Island Republican Michael Grimm about the State of the Union when he decided to ask one more question. What that question was is unclear because Grimm immediately cut him off saying "I'm not speaking about anything that is off-topic. This is only about the President's speech." The reporter then spoke to the camera saying that he hoped to ask Grimm about the ongoing campaign finance investigation around his 2010 campaign. Grimm has been linked to an allegedly corrupt Israeli rabbi and his ex-girlfriend has been indicted on charges of being a straw donor among other controversies.

Transcript by NY1:

"And just finally before we let you go, we haven't had a chance to talk about some of the..." Scotto began before Grimm cut him off.
"I'm not speaking to you off-topic, this is only about the president," said Grimm, before walking off camera.
"So Congressman Michael Grimm does not want to talk about some of the allegations concerning his campaign finances," Scotto said before tossing back to the station. But as the camera continued to roll, Grimm walked back up to Scotto and began speaking to him in a low voice.
"What?" Scotto responded. "I just wanted to ask you..."
Grimm: "Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again I'll throw you off this fucking balcony."
Scotto: "Why? I just wanted to ask you..."
[[cross talk]]
Grimm: "If you ever do that to me again..."
Scotto: "Why? Why? It’s a valid question."
[[cross talk]]
Grimm: "No, no, you're not man enough, you're not man enough. I'll break you in half. Like a boy."

Spymaster wants to outlaw reporting on NSA spying

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

In the movie plot of a spy thriller, our hero gets captured by agents of a repressive government, and they take him into a dark interrogation room, where the sadistic spymaster hisses at him: "We have ways of making you talk."

Meanwhile, in real life, the director of our National Security Agency hisses at journalists: "We have ways of keeping you from talking." Well, not quite in those words, but Gen. Keith Alexander, chief spook at NSA and head of US Cyber Command, did reveal a chilling disrespect for our Constitutional right to both free speech and a free press. In an October interview, he called for outlawing any reporting on his agency's secret program of spying on every American: "I think it's wrong that newspaper reporters have all these documents… giving them out as if these – you know it just doesn't make any sense." Then came his spooky punch line: "We ought to come up with a way of stopping it… It's wrong to allow this to go on."

Holy Thomas Paine! Spy on us, okay; report on it, not. What country does this autocrat represent? Alexander's secret, indiscriminate, supercomputer scooping-up of data on every phone call, email, and other private business of every American is what "doesn't make any sense." It's an Orwellian, mass invasion of everyone's privacy, creating the kind of routine, 24/7 surveillance state our government loudly deplores in China and Russia – and it amounts to stomping on our Fourth Amendment guarantee that we're to be free of "unreasonable searches and seizures."

That's the real outrage we should be "stopping." But no, our constitutionally-clueless spymaster doubles down on his dangerous ignorance by also stomping on the First Amendment. If this were a movie, people would laugh at it as being too silly, too far-fetched to believe. But there it is, horribly real.

"Keith Alexander Says The US Gov't Needs To Figure Out A Way To Keep Journalists From Reporting On Snowden Leaks," www.techdirt.com, October 25, 2013.

"NSA chief: Stop reporters 'selling' spy documents," www.politico.com, October 24, 2013.

"Goodbye Free Press? As Europe Erupts Over US Spying, NSA Chief Says Government Must Stop the Media," www.alternet.org, October 26, 2013.

GOP’s ‘most likely to succeed’ now disappoint

Republican golden boys Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell continue to face more and more scrutiny in light of federal investigations. Ed Schultz and panel discuss.

Congress fails the jobless yet again

While the Senate and House might have passed a budget, they are proving ineffective once again with unemployment insurance. Ed Schultz & Rep. Mark Pocan discuss.

Tale of two GOP governor scandals

Two golden governors of the Republican Party are losing their shine, in a year plaguing the party with scandals. Ed Schultz and panel discuss.

Start spreading the news, he’s leaving today

Earning the title of Ed Schultz’s Pretender, New York native Sean Hannity plans to pack his bags escaping the state of taxes and Democratic rule.

 

AMC movie theater calls “federal agents” to arrest a Google Glass user

By: Julie Strietelmeier

on January 20, 2014 2:00 pm

161 Comments

A long time Gadgeteer reader contacted me today through Google Hangouts to tell me that he had a story that he thought I’d be interested in reading. He then forwarded me a long email with a story from a very good friend of his. It was such a surprising story that I asked if I could have permission to post it here on The Gadgeteer. I ended up communicating with the author of the story and have posted it here for everyone to read…

I have been using Google Glass for about 2 months now, and about 2 weeks ago I got prescription lenses for the glasses. So in the past two weeks I was wearing Google Glass all the time. There were no stories to write about, until yesterday (1/18/2014).

I went to AMC (Easton Mall, Columbus, OH) to watch a movie with my wife (non- Google Glass user). It is the theater we go to every week, so it has probably been the third time I’ve been there wearing Google Glass, and the AMC employees (guy tearing tickets at the entrance, girl at the concession stand) have asked me about Glass in the past and I have told them how awesome Glass is with every occasion.

Because I don’t want Glass to distract me during the movie, I turn them off (but since my prescription lenses are on the frame, I still wear them). About an hour into the movie (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), a guy comes near my seat, shoves a badge that had some sort of a shield on it, yanks the Google Glass off my face and says “follow me outside immediately”.

It was quite embarrassing and outside of the theater there were about 5-10 cops and mall cops. Since I didn’t catch his name in the dark of the theater, I asked to see his badge again and I asked what was the problem and I asked for my Glass back. The response was “you see all these cops you know we are legit, we are with the ‘federal service’ and you have been caught illegally taping the movie”.

I was surprised by this and as I was obviously just having a nice Saturday evening night out with my wife and not taping anything whether legally or illegally, I tried to explain that this is a misunderstanding. I tried to explain that he’s holding rather expensive hardware that cost me $1,500 for Google Glass and over $600 for the prescription glasses.

The response was that I was searched and more stuff was taken away from me (specifically my personal phone, my work phone – both of which were turned off, and my wallet).

After an embarrassing 20-30 minutes outside the movie theater, me and my wife were conducted into two separate rooms in the “management” office of Easton Mall, where the guy with the badge introduced himself again and showed me a different ID. His partner introduced herself too and showed me a similar looking badge. I was by that time, too flustered to remember their names (as a matter of fact, now, over 30 hours later I am still shaking when recounting the facts).

What followed was over an hour of the “feds” telling me I am not under arrest, and that this is a “voluntary interview”, but if I choose not to cooperate bad things may happen to me (is it legal for authorities to threaten people like that?)

I kept telling them that Glass has a USB port and not only did I allow them, I actually insist they connect to it and see that there was nothing but personal photos with my wife and my dog on it. I also insisted they look at my phone too and clear things out, but they wanted to talk first. They wanted to know who I am, where I live, where I work, how much I’m making, how many computers I have at home, why am I recording the movie, who am I going to give the recording to, why don’t I just give up the guy up the chain, ’cause they are not interested in me. Over and over and over again.

I kept telling them that I wasn’t recording anything – my Glass was off, they insisted they saw it on. I told them there would be a light coming out the little screen if Glass was on, and I could show them that, but they insisted that I cannot touch my Glass for the fear “I will erase the evidence against me that was on Glass”.

I didn’t have the intuition to tell them that Glass gets really warm if it records for more than a few minutes and my glasses were not warm. They wanted to know where I got Glass and how did I came by having it. I told them I applied about 1,000 times to get in the explorer program, and eventually I was selected, and I got the Glass from Google.

I offered to show them receipt and Google Glass website if they would allow me to access any computer with Internet. Of course, that was not an option. Then they wanted to know what does Google ask of me in exchange for Glass, how much is Google paying me, who is my boss and why am I recording the movie.

Eventually, after a long time somebody came with a laptop and an USB cable at which point he told me it was my last chance to come clean. I repeated for the hundredth time there is nothing to come clean about and this is a big misunderstanding so the FBI guy finally connected my Glass to the computer, downloaded all my personal photos and started going though them one by one (although they are dated and it was obvious there was nothing on my Glass that was from the time period they accused me of recording).

Then they went through my phone, and 5 minutes later they concluded I had done nothing wrong.

I asked why didn’t they just take those five minutes at the beginning of the interrogation and they just left the room. A guy who claimed his name is Bob Hope (he gave me his business card) came in the room, and said he was with the Movie Association and they have problems with piracy at that specific theater and that specific movie.

He gave me two free movie passes “so I can see the movie again”. I asked if they thought my Google Glass was such a big piracy machine, why didn’t they ask me not to wear them in the theater? I would have probably sat five or six rows closer to the screen (as I didn’t have any other pair of prescription glasses with me) and none of this would have happened. All he said was AMC called him, and he called the FBI and “here are two more passes for my troubles”. I would have been fine with “I’m sorry this happened, please accept our apologies”. Four free passes just infuriated me.

Considering it was 11:27 P.M when this happened, and the movie started at 7.45, I guess 3 and a half hours of my time and the scare my wife went through (who didn’t know what was going on as nobody bothered to tell her) is worth about 30 bucks in the eyes of the Movie Association and the federal militia (sorry, I cannot think of other derogatory words).

I think I should sue them for this, but I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with “who is my boss – they don’t want me, they want the big guy” again, so I just spilled the beans on this forum, for other to learn from my experience.

I guess until people get more familiar with Google Glass and understand what they are, one should not wear them to the movies. I wish they would have said something before I went to the movies, but it may be my mistake for assuming that if I went and watched movies two times wearing Glass with no incident the third time there won’t be any incident either. As for the federal agents and their level of comprehension… I guess if they deal with petty criminals every day, everybody starts looking like a petty criminal.

Again, I wish they would have listened when I told them how to verify I did nothing illegal, or at least apologize afterwards, but hey… this is the free country everybody praises. Somewhere else might be even worse.

Crazy huh? His story read like something out of the Jack Ryan movie that he and his wife had gone to see. Are there any other Google Glass users out there that have been treated badly just for your wearable tech? If not, are you reconsidering wearing a pair to the next movie you attend?

Update (01/21/14):
Wow, this article has completely blown up our web server due to the traffic. I just wanted to follow up with a few comments and info. First of all, I’m not a journalist, I’m a tech geek writer. Posting this article has given me a good learning lesson though, which I’ll use if I ever post a similar article in the future.

I have been criticized for not citing my sources and following up with the theater to verify that the story was true. I didn’t feel the need at the time because the person who gave me the story is a long time Gadgeteer reader and works in law enforcement. I felt 100% confident the story was not a hoax.

I did however call the theater in question and tried to get in touch with someone there for a comment. My calls went unanswered.

After the article was posted. Rob Jackson of Phandroid posted his take on the article and asked me for the author’s contact info. With the author’s permission, I forwarded that info and Rob followed up with some questions and answers that he posted on his site. Take a look for more info on this story:
http://phandroid.com/2014/01/20/fbi-google-glass-movie/

Update #2:
I just received info from the author with regards to the agents that questioned him:

For the sake of having all the facts right.
I have been trying to find out who the agents that “interviewed” me at
AMC were, so I asked help from a guy I know at FBI. I worked with this
guy in the past when I was employed at a webhosting company. He did
some digging, and he tells me the “federal agents”
talking to me were DHS.

Update #3:
The title of the article has been changed to reflect the recent update from the author that it was actually the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) who detained him and not the FBI as he originally thought.

Update #4:
The story has been confirmed. I just received this email from the author:
Julie, Rob.
I spoke with a reporter from Columbus Dispatch, who obtained a
statement from DHS and forwarded it to me. Here it is:

From: Walls, Khaalid H [mailto:Khaalid.H.Walls@ice.dhs.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 1:16 PM
To: Allison Manning
Subject: ICE
H Ally,
Please attribute the below statement to me:
On Jan. 18, special agents with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations
and local authorities briefly interviewed a man suspected of using an
electronic recording device to record a film at an AMC theater in
Columbus.  The man, who voluntarily answered questions, confirmed to
authorities that the suspected recording device was also a pair of
prescription eye glasses in which the recording function had been
inactive. No further action was taken.
Khaalid Walls, ICE spokesman
Khaalid Walls
Public Affairs Officer
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
313-226-0726
313-215-7657(m)

Update #5
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/01/21/google-glass-at-easton-theater.html

Teacher's MLK Day Smack Down Of Paul Ryan And The Tea Party Says It All

By Randa Morris

A social studies teacher refused to accept an award from Congressman Paul Ryan on MLK Day; Watch the video to find out why the story resurfaced this week.

There are hundreds of examples that could be pointed to, which would illustrate best why the Tea Party should quietly excuse themselves from speaking about Martin Luther King (MLK). 

Their legacy of racism, attacks on the working class, cuts to the social safety net, and contrived attempts to repress the votes of minority citizens, all contrast sharply with what MLK stood for. 

Yet maybe no person or event can explain it quite the way a Wisconsin teacher did, two years ago, when he refused to accept a Humanitarian Award from Congressman Paul Ryan.

Ryan attended an MLK Day ceremony in Racine, Wisconsin.

It goes without saying that Paul Ryan was hoping for a bit of good PR, when he attended a 2012 Martin Luther King Day Ceremony. The ceremony was held at Gateway Technical College, in the Congressman’s home state of Wisconsin. Paul Ryan was there to present a well known and respected teacher, named Al Levie, with a Humanitarian Award, named after himself. But Congressman Ryan didn’t exactly get what he was hoping for, as Al Levie refused to accept the award.

“He had no business even being here.”

Levie said of the Ayn Rand loving politician. Levie referred to Congressman Ryan as a “lackey for the one percent.” He pointed out how hypocritical it was for Paul Ryan to be delivering a humanitarian award, on a day which was set aside to honor the memory of Dr. King.

“He (Ryan) cuts and slashes healthcare, while Martin Luther King dedicated his life – and he died for – people to have adequate healthcare to have adequate jobs,”

Unlike Paul Ryan, Dr. King stood up for the working class.

In the video, Levie further highlighted the difference between Martin Luther King and Paul Ryan by saying

“King made it very clear that he was on the side of working people. Ryan, on the other hand, he has absolutely no affinity for the working class.”

Al Levie teaches social studies and is on the executive board of Voces de la Frontera, a Wisconsin based non profit that works for immigrants rights, and justice for low wage workers. He is also on the board of the Racine, WI Chapter of the NAACP.

Al Levie’s video says it all.

Sure, we could point to Sarah Palin’s ridiculous comments about how President Obama was playing the ‘race card’ by talking about MLK. We could point out that the Tea Party chose to launch a sexist attack against Wendy Davis, on a day when the rest of the country was paying tribute to a man who faught for civil rights.

We could bring up the demographics that exist within the Tea Party, highlighting the fact that the party itself is almost entirely made up of white people.

But instead of all that, we thought we’d bring back Mr. Levie’s video. This teacher does an awesome job of highlighting the differences between small people like Paul Ryan and great men, like Martin Luther King.

Levie’s video ends with the words “For him to come to an event where somebody of King’s stature is being honored, is wrong.”

Watch Al Levie refuse to accept Paul Ryan’s Humanitarian Award.

The radical Martin Luther King that we need today

As the nation rediscovers poverty, it’s time to replace the safe, airbrushed icon with the revolutionary he was

By Joan Walsh

 

State troopers stand shoulder to shoulder on the steps of Alabama's State Capitol on March 25, 1965, barring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from entering. (Credit: AP)

When Nelson Mandela died last month, I envied South Africans who had worked alongside him for freedom: Americans haven’t gotten to see many of our icons of justice get that old. My immediate thought was of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated at 39, though Bobby and John Kennedy, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, quickly followed.

But the inescapable image was King. Even if the freedom struggle of the 1960's didn’t end up letting King grow old like Mandela, let alone lead his country as President, it was hard not to compare the two, especially since Mandela so often declared his debt to his younger American ally.

King and Mandela had much in common, but one thing stands out this week: As they were lionized globally, both were deradicalized, pasteurized and homogenized, made safe for mass consumption.

Each was in favor of a radical redistribution of global wealth. Each crusaded against poverty and inequality and war. Both did it with an equanimity and ebullience and capacity to forgive and love their enemies that made it easy to canonize them in a secular way. White people love being given the benefit of the doubt and/or being forgiven. I speak from experience.

But now, as the country turns again to issues of income inequality and poverty, and economic populism is said to be having a “moment,” maybe it’s time to remember Dr. King, the radical. The one who died trying to ignite a Poor People’s Movement that he saw as the natural outcome of the civil rights movement. The one who tried to branch out to fight poverty and war, but at least in his lifetime – and so far in ours – didn’t succeed.

* * *

I loved pretty much everything about the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington last year, except how the right got it so wrong. It seemed to be the beginning of a movement to reclaim the real MLK, especially among liberals. King was of course celebrated hugely, but so were lefty heroes who never get enough credit, like Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph.

There were stories about “The Socialists Behind the March on Washington,” as well as about the media’s and the Kennedy administration’s wrongheaded fears of violence.

---

---

Coming off of that gorgeous 50th anniversary celebration, though, where we remembered the triumph of King the strategist and organizer, let’s remember the King who tried and, by common measures, failed. Wasn’t feted, wasn’t lionized.  King was always a radical, but at the end of his life, he was something of an outcast, criticized by liberals, the left and the right.

Forget about the right, for now: King crossed some Democrats and labor leaders when he turned against the Vietnam War in 1967, after his unparalleled Riverside Church speech. He knew the war was not only wrong, but was making Johnson’s alleged “War on Poverty” fiscally impossible.

Meanwhile a growing black power movement mocked King’s commitment to nonviolence and integration. Even some close allies in the civil rights movement blanched when he joined Marion Wright Edelman and other organizers to start a Poor People’s Campaign later that year – a movement of black, white, Latino, American Indian and Asian people mired in poverty, to fight the war and get the help they deserved. They were to march on Washington and set up a camp there in April 1968, the month King was assassinated.

Harry Belafonte tells a story in his amazing memoir, “My Song,” about King being challenged by his SCLC deputies on his accelerating radicalism generally, and the Poor People’s Campaign specifically, just a week before he died. Describing King as a “socialist and revolutionary thinker,” Belafonte says he clashed with close ally and future Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, over not only the Poor People’s Campaign, but King’s thoroughgoing critique of capitalism.

Belafonte quotes King telling the group, gathered at the singer/actor/activist’s New York apartment: “What deeply troubles me now is that for all the steps we’ve taken toward integration, I’ve come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house.”

When Belafonte asks what that means they should do, an exhausted King tells him:   “I guess we’re just going to have to become firemen.”

Assassinated a week later, King wouldn’t get to lead the Poor People’s Campaign. But almost 50 years later, most of us who think the way he did are still firemen in a burning house, constantly fighting the fires set by radical Republicans to make life worse for the people King cared most about, never getting around to building the sturdy, welcoming, capacious, fire-resistant dwelling that lives in our political imagination. King would be proud of our accomplishments, and also a little bit sad for us. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

* * *

Some of King’s closest living allies have been trying hard to right the reverend’s record. “There have been and continue to be efforts to ‘neuter’ or ‘de-radicalize’ the Dr. King who delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in August, 1963,” says his longtime lawyer and speechwriter Clarence B. Jones.

Though the dream speech, which Jones helped write, was itself radical, he sees King’s April 1967 “Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break the Silence” speech at Riverside Church as “the ideological turning point for King.”

Harry Belafonte likewise thinks much of American political culture “is guilty of dealing with Dr. King’s life and story in grievously superficial ways. What gave us all strength to do what we did was his radical thinking.”

Acknowledging that King’s turn against the war and toward cross-racial, anti-poverty organizing was “controversial” among his closest colleagues, Belafonte notes: “It was controversial, but controversy wasn’t something he shunned; controversy became the system through which disagreement and debate could be heard. He was comfortable with that. He welcomed it. That aspect of his history is never really discussed.

“The vested interests don’t want us speaking of Dr. King in radical terms,” Belafonte continues. “The great tragedy and irony of it all is that the public hungers for voices that are driven more by these moral concerns.”

I’ve never waded into the debates over whether King was a “socialist,” though Belafonte and another close ally Julian Bond say he was (to the chagrin of Glenn Beck, who of course tried to hijack the March on Washington anniversary a few years back).  Socialism has been such a stigmatized and divisive and practically irrelevant notion in my lifetime (even though I worked for a socialist newspaper!) that I’ve never needed to claim King for its roster. But whatever we call King’s point of view, stripping him of his very obvious economic radicalism distorts not only his history but all of ours.

And as a younger generation shows more curiosity about political solutions that aren’t on the agenda, it may limit King’s appeal, too. A 2011 Pew poll found 49 percent of Americans 18 to 29 say they have a positive view of socialism vs. 43 percent with a negative view. Capitalism is underwater among that age group, with 46 percent positive and 47 percent negative. And here’s one of King’s most famous, resonant quotes about capitalism, from his August 1967 speech: “Where Do We Go From Here?” (I like this version, because it’s punctuated by his SCLC audience’s replies):

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here?” that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. (Yes) There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. (Yes) And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. (Yes) But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. (All right) It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” (Yes) You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” (Yes) You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that’s two-thirds water?” (All right) These are words that must be said. (All right)

Now, don’t think you have me in a bind today. I’m not talking about communism. What I’m talking about is far beyond communism. (Yeah) My inspiration didn’t come from Karl Marx (Speak); my inspiration didn’t come from Engels; my inspiration didn’t come from Trotsky; my inspiration didn’t come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long time ago (Well), and I saw that maybe Marx didn’t follow Hegel enough. (All right) He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called “dialectical materialism.” (Speak) I have to reject that.

What I’m saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. (Yes) Capitalism forgets that life is social. (Yes, Go ahead) And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. (Speak) [applause] It is found in a higher synthesis (Come on) that combines the truths of both. (Yes) Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. (All right) These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

Labels don’t matter, but solutions do. Rather than remembering King solely as a civil rights leader, we must reclaim him as a radical advocate of economic justice, looking to lead a multiracial movement of poor people to complete the unfinished business of the civil rights movement.

As King put it plainly, “What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can’t buy a hamburger?”  Post-integration, too many black people couldn’t sit down at integrated lunch counters and buy a hamburger; 50 years later, too many people of every race have the same problem.

We are ready for the radical King now. President Obama, perhaps belatedly, has declared income inequality “the defining issue of our time.” Even poverty seems back on the agenda. The man who may be doing the most to advance these issues right now isn’t a politician or a rabble rouser; it’s Pope Francis, who’s been hailed by everyone from Obama to Paul Ryan (Ryan gets him wrong) as helping us make the issue of poverty central to our politics.

“If Dr. King were alive today, he would be in Rome visiting Pope Francis holding a joint press conference to summoning the world to aid the poor eradicate poverty,” Clarence Jones says. The President promises he’s going to the Vatican to meet the new pope, and that’s a start.

For now, though, all these years later, King’s allies and inheritors are still fighting fires in a burning house. It’s time to rebuild the house with room for everyone, and keep it safer from the fiery danger of injustice.

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large and the author of "What's the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America."

More Joan Walsh.

Marco "Gulp" Rubio now odds-on favorite to be 2016 GOP nominee

http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics/us-presidential-election-2016/republican-candidate

Kornacki: Complete Dawn Zimmer (Hoboken New Jersey Mayor) Interview: Is She Lying Or Telling The Truth?

January 18, 2014 clip from Up With Steve Kornacki featuring the complete interview with Hoboken, New Jersey (NJ), Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who makes explosive allegations against Republican Chris Christie's Lieutenant Governor, Kimberly "Kim" Guadagno.

Zimmer claims Guadagno tied Hoboken's receipt of requested Hurricane Sandy federal relief money to Mayor Zimmer's approval of a particular development project that favored a developer with ties to Christie crony, former New Jersey Attorney General, David Sampson.

Sampson also happens to be a major player in the Christie - George Washington Bridge lane access shutdown scandal ("Bridgegate").

Hoboken NJ Mayor says Christie administration withheld Sandy funds

(CNN) - In another controversy surrounding New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said Sunday that Christie directly ordered the withholding of Superstorm Sandy recovery funds unless she backed a redevelopment plan he favored.

By Leigh Ann Caldwell, Chris Frates and Cassie Spodak, CNN

Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Zimmer said she was told by a member of Christie's administration that Sandy relief funds hinged on her support for a real estate development project and that the directive was coming directly from Christie.

"She said that to me -- is that this is a direct message from the Governor," Zimmer said, referring to Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who Zimmer said approached her in a parking lot in May to deliver the message.

It's "stunning" and "outrageous," but true, the Hoboken mayor told CNN's Candy Crowley. "I stand by my word."

Later in the day, she released a statement saying that she had met with the U.S. Attorney's Office for several hours at its request and provided the office with her journal and other documents.

"As they pursue this investigation, I will provide any requested information and testify under oath about the facts of what happened when the Lieutenant Governor came to Hoboken and told me that Sandy aid would be contingent on moving forward with a private development project," she said.

Zimmer said the Christie administration wanted her to approve a project by The Rockefeller Group, a real estate developer with ties to Christie's administration.

When asked by CNN to respond to Zimmer's accusation that Christie had a direct hand in the threat, Christie spokesman Colin Reed refused to address it and instead referred to a previous statement, which said Zimmer's allegations that relief funds were withheld is based on partisan politics.

The allegations come as other controversies revolve around Christie's administration. In one, evidence mounts showing that Christie aides were involved in tying up traffic in a town at the foot of the George Washington Bridge in what may have been an act of political retribution against another mayor. In another, the Christie administration hired a firm for post-Sandy tourism ads that cost nearly twice as much as the next highest proposal.

This is the first time Christie has been directly connected to the controversy.

Christie administration pushes back

In his statement to CNN on Saturday, Reed blasted Zimmer's claim that the funds were based on the real estate project. He said her accusations are false, adding, "It's very clear partisan politics are at play here as Democratic mayors with a political ax to grind come out of the woodwork and try to get their faces on television."

Reed went on to attack the cable news channel that first broke the news Saturday. "MSNBC is a partisan network that has been openly hostile to Governor Christie and almost gleeful in their efforts attacking him," Reed said.

MSNBC said its story is based on an interview with Zimmer "and e-mails and personal notes she shared with MSNBC."

The Governor's spokesman also said the Mayor and Governor have had a "productive relationship," noting an August tweet by Zimmer saying she's "very glad Governor Christie has been our Gov."

Christie marches on as controversy at home unfolds

Zimmer's comments Saturday and Sunday are a change from what she told CNN just last week, when she said that while she wondered whether Sandy aid funds were being withheld because she didn't endorse the governor's re-election, she concluded that "I don't think that's the case."

"I don't think it was retaliation and I don't have any reason to think it's retaliation, but I'm not satisfied with the amount of money I've gotten so far," Zimmer told CNN last week, not mentioning her concerns about the redevelopment project.

But Sunday morning, Zimmer told CNN's Crowley that she didn't speak out before because she didn't think anyone would believe her, adding that she is now "offering to testify under oath."

Zimmer admitted to supporting Christie in the past, saying she is not a part of "the Democratic machine." But the information around the George Washington Bridge scandal -- involving lane closures at the entrance to the busy bridge, apparently for political retaliation -- prompted her to speak. She said she sees parallels between her story and the bridge controversy: "The Christie administration using their authority to try and get something."

Zimmer said Guadagno appeared to feel guilty for delivering the message.

"I believe if and when she is asked to testify under oath, the truth will come out, because I believe she will be truthful and she will tell the truth," Zimmer told Crowley.

Zimmer also said she is speaking because she wants Hoboken to receive an appropriate level of funds in the second round of recovery dollars about to be released.

Sandy recovery funds

After Sandy, Hoboken was 80% underwater. Zimmer told CNN last week that Hoboken received only about $300,000 of the roughly $100 million in state funds the city requested for flood prevention.

Reed, Christie's spokesman, told CNN that Zimmer asked for $100 million from a roughly $300 million pot of money for which there was $14 billion worth of requests.

Since that request, Reed said, Hoboken has been approved for nearly $70 million in aid. The city has also been identified as a pilot community for a federal program to prevent flooding, one of only four such projects in New Jersey.

Zimmer, however, had a different account of allocated funds. She said the $70 million given to Hoboken was through flood insurance and other mechanisms that did not need approval from the state. She received only $300,000 in Christie-approved funds, she said.

CNN received images of journal entries from the Mayor's office that Zimmer told CNN she wrote at the time.

See the journal entries

In one, Zimmer writes that the conversation with Guadagno left her upset and shattered the image she had of Christie.

"I thought he was honest, I thought he was moral -- I thought he was something very different. This week I found out he's cut from the same corrupt cloth that I have been fighting for the last four years. 

I am so disappointed -- it literally brings tears to my eyes," the journal entry says.

Zimmer also wrote that Guadagno told her she needs "to move forward with the Rockefeller project. It is very important to the Gov."

Reed, asked by CNN about Zimmer's comments on Guadagno, said, "Mayor Zimmer's characterization of her conversation in Hoboken is categorically false."

Three days after the purported Guadagno comments, state Community Affairs Commissioner Richard Constable was on a panel with Zimmer, discussing Sandy relief.

Zimmer told MSNBC that Constable leaned over and told her, "If you move (the redevelopment project) forward, the money would start flowing to you."

In a statement to CNN, Constable spokeswoman Lisa Ryan said, "Mayor Zimmer's allegations that on May 16, 2013, in front a live auditorium audience Commissioner Constable conditioned Hoboken's receipt of Sandy aid on her moving forward with a development project is categorically false."

Debate about redevelopment

Zimmer's claims center around a property owned by The Rockefeller Group, which had its plan for "redevelopment" of a three-block area of Hoboken rejected by the city's planning board. Instead, the panel voted to classify the area owned by the company as available for "rehabilitation." The "redevelopment" label was sought because its tax incentives offered a much more lucrative deal for the development company.

Aides and advisers to Christie have ties to Wolff & Samson, the law firm representing The Rockefeller Group.

The Hoboken Planning Board rejected the "redevelopment" plan three days before Zimmer was allegedly first approached by Guadagno.

Zimmer provided MSNBC with a 2012 e-mail from Wolff & Samson's Lori Grifa -- previously commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs -- to Hoboken's lawyer that shows her lobbying on behalf of the project: "Our client, The Rockefeller Group, has specifically asked us to speak with you regarding its property in Hoboken."

Grifa is not the only connection between the Christie administration and The Rockefeller Group. The Samson in Wolff & Samson is David Samson, chairman of the Port Authority, who was appointed by Christie. Samson was recently served with a subpoena in the George Washington Bridge case by an investigative committee seeking relevant documents.

The Rockefeller Group told CNN, "We have no knowledge of any information pertaining to this allegation. If it turns out to be true, it would be deplorable."

The law firm, in a statement, denied Zimmer's allegations and said it did nothing wrong: "The firm's and Ms. Grifa's conduct in the representation of our client was appropriate in all respects. Further, Ms. Grifa notes that while DCA Commissioner, she never met with Mayor Zimmer or The Rockefeller Group to discuss the Hoboken project."

Zimmer told MSNBC that she couldn't agree to The Rockefeller Group proposal because "there are fundamental problems with the site in northern Hoboken, including traffic and flooding issues, that would be magnified if the plan were to go forward.

A spokesperson for The Rockefeller Group told CNN that it still hopes to develop the site under the designation of "rehabilitation," but that this is "contingent on the plan the city comes up with."

Another investigation?

As word of the allegations spread Saturday, the chairman of the investigative committee tasked with looking into the George Washington Bridge scandal weighed in.

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, D-Middlesex, told CNN: "This certainly has attracted our attention. 

We need to obtain all relevant facts, confer with our special counsel and determine the committee's best course of action."

Stopping Trans-Pacific Partnership is crucial to save American jobs

The need to keep jobs at home is clear. Ed Schultz exclusively sits down with seven members of Congress to discuss stopping the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Meet The Republican Millionaire Who's Pushing For A Higher Minimum Wage

By Nathaniel Downes

Meet Ron Unz, Republican Millionaire and one-time candidate for US Senate. The former publisher of The American Conservative recently appeared on MSNBC in order to continue his call to raise the minimum wage.

The Never Ending Sorry: Late-Night Comedy Roundup

Chris Christie: Media Darling?

Christie’s “Bridgegate” scandal is only boosting his esteem in some pockets of the media. John Fugelsang and Mike Papantonio discuss why the media is taking a soft focus.

Unemployment Rate Falls to 6.7%

By Taegan Goddard

The U.S. economy added just 74,000 jobs last month — way below expectations by economists — but the unemployment rate sunk to just 6.7%.

Wall Street Journal:

“Put December 2013 as the month in which the country’s labor data officially became a mess. What are we to make of a number that came in so far below expectations after a very strong November, all at the same time that the unemployment rate dropped all the way down to 6.7%.

How on earth are we supposed to read a discernible, meaningful trend in his morass of contradictions?

One thing’s certain, it's a reminder that month-to-month data reactions are dangerous.”

Chris Christie's Top 5 Practically Believable Alibis For Bridgegate

Who was the real target of the Christie staff's political retaliation?

Chris Hayes plays out Rachel Maddow's stunning theory of who was the real target of the Christie staff's political retaliation.

Random Observations on Chris Christie's Epically Long Press Conference

1. Just for shits and giggles, let's take Christie at his word at his press conference answering questions about his staff's involvement in limiting access to the George Washington Bridge as political retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey. Let's believe everything he said (even though he said he had just heard about the scandal at 8:50 the previous morning and insisted twice that he had lost sleep over two nights which, unless he's living some kind of Groundhog's Day, isn't possible unless he knew that something was going to break, in which case his whole press conference was a lie, but, still, let's pretend, shall we?).

Even looking at what he said in the most generous light possible, what we're left with is a governor who, by his own admission, has surrounded himself with people who are dishonest, who prefers to remain ignorant about problems, who is more concerned with personal betrayal and hurt feelings than public consequences, and who is out of touch with the day-to-day operations of his own government. In other words, he's all bluster and no substance, an incompetent boob. In otherer words, he reached under his gut, took out his tiny penis, and fucked himself in front of the press. In otherest words, the round man waved bye-bye to the Oval Office.

2. But what he said was actually a pretty disturbing portrait of rampant narcissism, as is Christie's way. There was Christie presenting himself as the poor fool, the victim of a lying woman (with its underlying implication of "C'mon, everyone. Bitches be crazy"). He said of Bridget Kelley, "I've terminated her employment because she lied to me." And for no other reason. That's fucked up right there. The sin wasn't mucking up the traffic of the busiest bridge in the United States for some phantom political game. It wasn't delaying ambulances, police, and school buses. No, it was that she lied to Sultan Christie.

Is that too far? Look at the transcript. No less than a half dozen times does Christie refer to Kelly's "lies." And Christie said he didn't ask Kelly why she conspired with David Wildstein to screw the entry lanes to the GWB from Fort Lee because she might be called to testify before a legislative committee? No, fuck that. Again, taking him at his word, you don't ask because you don't want to know.

3. Advice to Chris Christie: When there's ample video evidence, recorded proudly by your own staff, of you being a bully, don't say, "I am not a bully."

4. Advice to Chris Christie, Part 2: Stop giving civics lessons in your press conferences. Yeah, we fuckin' get it. "Politics ain't bean bag" or however the fuck you wanna put it. Really, fucko? We delicate pussies would have never figured that out without you informing us. Oh, and without watching TV news once during our lives.

5. Advice to Chris Christie, Part 3: Yeah, you may have 65,000 state employees. But you don't have that many in your own office. So just stop equating your deputy chief of staff with the poor schlub inputting mailed-in tax forms in some basement office in Newark. You know what Kelly's job was. Or see #1.

6. Advice to Chris Christie, Part 4: In general, stop pretending you don't know people. Port Authority official Wildstein? Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee? Dude, Sokolich backed you on a couple of things. He's one of those Democrats you always tout as making you so glori-fucking-fied bipartisan. There's a photo of you with him. He was elected and reelected at the same time as you. You look like the liar you are when you say such things.

7. And what the fuck exactly is the atmosphere in the governor's office if your minions feel free to do such fuckery?

8. What the Rude Pundit didn't hear amid the apologies and the "Buck stops with me, but, you know, I was lied to, but, sure, the buck stops with me, even though, hey, I was lied to" was Christie saying that anyone should be investigated for possible criminal charges, like misuse of government funds, for starters. We already know what David Wildstein will do under oath: take the Fifth so he doesn't, well, shit, incriminate himself. Someone's gonna be offered immunity and a deal, which leads to...

9. Yesterday, the Rude Pundit said what he thought happened to make the bridge debacle possible. But he's calling "bullshit" on the whole press conference. He's calling "bullshit" on Christie's whole internal investigation, which looks like it'll have the same momentum as OJ Simpson looking for the "real" killers. It was an act of political preservation, delivered with braggadocio and pomposity ("Look how good I am at apologizing"). As such, it'll fool the idiots and the simpering reporters who laughed at Christie's exasperated jokes.

But, somewhere not so very far away, Hillary Clinton just started shifting strategy to how she'll defeat Rand Paul in the general.

// posted by Rude One @ 2:15 PM