Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:37:32 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Jack Newfield :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Jack+Newfield istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/gop-gains-across-us-but-not-here/5939/ Wed, 8 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST The Republican Party made gains all over the country on Election Day, except in New York. Here, the Democratic Party has been in the ascendancy since 1998, when Chuck Schumer unseated Senator D'Amato and Eliot Spitzer was elected attorney general, ousting Dennis Vacco. In 2000, Hillary Clinton crushed Rick Lazio to claim Senator Moynihan's open seat. This year, the Democrats gained three seats in the state Senate, with a recount continuing in Westchester for a fourth Republican-held seat. This... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/provoked-ask-jackie-robinson/5516/ Tue, 30 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST Jackie Robinson! His name echoes in my brain as I listen to some National Basketball Association players and commentators drop the word "provocation" to justify what Ron Artest did in Detroit. They say poor, fragile Ron Artest was "provoked" by a cup of liquid thrown by one of those boozed-up fans in the expensive seats. Nonsense. Real provocation is what Jackie Robinson endured his first three years in the major leagues. He was hit by pitches nine time his rookie year. He was spiked repeatedly... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/thankful-for-the-brave-and-noble/5228/ Tue, 23 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST This is my annual Thanksgiving column in appreciation of some people who use their talents to help others, to spread joy, and to demonstrate courage and class in everyday ways. Tony Bennett. He proves that good guys do finish first. Many great American novelists, such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway, peaked and burned out by 40. Others have remained vigorous and fresh into their 50s. But Philip Roth has had a rebirth in his 60s and now his 70s, publishing three exquisite novels over the last decade... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/mr-newfield-interviews-himself/3388/ Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST I am facing major surgery later this week. Such a prospect can both focus the mind on big thoughts and make the mind race from topic to topic. To cope with this circumstance, I have chosen to make this last column for a month a self-interview, with honest answers to gently probing questions. Q: Do you have a philosophy of journalism, or do you just wing it each time based on what grabs your attention? A: I do have an underlying set of principles. Tell the truth no matter what. I try not to have... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/velella-release-sends-insulting-message/3045/ Tue, 12 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST Of all the people outraged by the preferential treatment and early prison release given Guy Velella, there is a special hurt in the voice of a South Bronx defense lawyer, Ramon Jiminez. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Mr. Jiminez has spent 29 years practicing in that relentless meat grinder called Bronx Criminal Court. He has been a witness to long days of what passes for justice, as it is applied to teenagers without high-priced lawyers and without powerful friends. Friends who can pull... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/national/black-vote-a-sleeping-giant/2907/ Fri, 8 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST This dead-even presidential election may be decided by the black turnout in the big cities of five swing states. In Ohio this means Cleveland, Cincinnati, Akron, and Columbus. In Wisconsin this means Milwaukee. In Florida this means Miami, Pensacola, and Tallahassee. In Michigan this means Detroit and Flint. In Pennsylvania this means Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Polls suggest that Senator Kerry is getting 92% of the black vote. But nobody knows how much of the black vote - including millions... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/national/bury-their-hearts-on-k-street/2691/ Tue, 5 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST In all my seasons of exposing Master of the Universe predators, I have not seen a creature as low as the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who took the Fifth Amendment all morning one day last week before the Senate's committee on Indian affairs. Senators called him "scuzzy" and "disgusting" as they charged that he and his partner, Michael Scanlon, fleeced and coerced six Indian tribes out of $66 million in fees, while Mr. Abramoff was labeling these Native Americans "monkeys," "idiots," and "morons" in... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/jackie-robinson-statue-assured/2527/ Fri, 1 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST Sometimes you can get a scoop just by standing around at a cocktail party. Especially if the party is at Gracie Mansion and it is Mayor Bloomberg who is offering up the new inside information. "We now have all the money we need to build the Jackie Robinson-Pee Wee Reese statue in Brooklyn," Mr. Bloomberg volunteered to me Tuesday night. "We have the sculptor's design approved by the Robinson and Reese families. We got the last couple financial commitments locked in tonight. We will unveil it... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/arts/gibbon-of-grifters/2459/ Thu, 30 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EST If A. J. Liebling, who was born 100 years ago on October 18, had been a fighter, he would have been a skilled craftsman, renowned for his improvising intelligence. He would have been Bernard Hopkins or Archie Moore. Despite his obese, unathletic body, and small, delicate hands, Liebling did box in his younger days. And he cultivated friendships with the wisest trainers and cornermen of his era. Together these things gave him the insight that boxing was partly geometry - essentially about angles... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/hammer-and-the-decline-of-a-movement/2331/ Tue, 28 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EST The indictments for alleged money laundering of three of Tom De-Lay's closest associates raise questions about the nature of contemporary conservatism. And deeper questions arise about the narrative arc of what happened to the purist conservative movement of 40 years ago, after it gained power. In the 1960s, the founders of modern conservatism, like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and William Buckley Jr., were motivated by big ideas and vivid principles. I did not agree with them, but I could... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/city-is-losing-battle-in-the-war-on-rats/2200/ Fri, 24 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EST New York City is losing the war on rats. This pestilence has resilience. The rats seem more adaptable than the bureaucrats. Despite increased funding and exterminations, the city's rat population is still growing. Citizen complaints about these rodents are up by 40 percent since 2002. In 2003, there were 20,900 citizen complaints, up from 16,000 in 2002. In 2003 there were 170 reported rat bites, and 137 this year as of last month. The mayor's annual management report did not include the rat... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/arts/who-really-invented-rock-n-roll/2037/ Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EST Little Richard once said, "The blues had an illegitimate baby and we named it rock 'n' roll." This is a fair and clever summary of what happened between 1949 and 1954, when black and white musical traditions cross-educated each other, and then disc jockey Alan Freed popularized the phrase "rock and roll," which was black slang for having sex. Now along comes Rolling Stone magazine, huckstering a commercial myth to sell magazines, get advertising, and make a buck. Along the way, they falsify and... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/national/how-john-kerry-is-blowing-it/1676/ Tue, 14 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EST John Kerry is blowing this election with a campaign that is internally dysfunctional, incoherent on Iraq, and not nearly tough - or quick - enough in responding to attacks and mistakes by his opponent. People who work in the Kerry campaign have described it as like New York City's Board of Education 15 years ago. Decisions don't get made. The buck gets passed. Choices get blurred. Phone calls don't get returned. Smart thinkers don't get allowed into the campaign by the burnt-out palace guard... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/another-dirty-trick/1523/ Fri, 10 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EST Vadim Yarmolinets has been a reporter for the Russian-language daily newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo for 14 years. He came to America because he was disgusted by all the political censorship on newspapers in the former Soviet Union. Now, he says, he is being censored on his own paper in America because of a story he wrote on the Adele Cohen - Inna Kaminsky Democratic primary in Brighton Beach. The backdrop to all this is Brooklyn machine politics, where there are often a few dirty tricks in the... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/national/us-investigating-gop-lobbyists-with-ties/1377/ Wed, 8 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EST A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., is hearing testimony and analyzing thousands of banking and billing records connected to two prominent Republican lobbyists and strategists as part of a racketeering probe involving Indian-run casinos. The men, Jack Abramoff and Mike Scanlon, have received a total of more than $45 million since 2001 from 11 tribes with gambling casinos ranging from Louisiana to Mississippi, to California to Michigan, and to Texas. They are under investigation for... Jack Newfield http://www.nysun.com/national/once-a-foe-now-a-casino-lobbyist/1396/ Wed, 8 Sep 2004 00:00:00 EST When Ralph Reed was the director of the Christian Coalition, he called casino gambling "A cancer on the American body politic." But now, Mr. Reed is emerging as a stealth lobbyist for some Indian casinos, paid indirectly through Mike Scanlon's company, Capital Campaign Strategies. Journalists, including this reporter, have documented about $4 million in secretive payments from Mr. Scanlon's company to Mr. Reed's companies - Century Strategies and Capitol Media, which originated with the... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/in-the-new-brooklyn-its-woman-vs-machine/1048/ Tue, 31 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EST This is the story of Woman vs. Machine over a seat at the table, in the city of diversity. This is also the story of Brooklyn's growing immigrant Russian Jewish community and how the Brooklyn Democratic Party has used gerrymandering, throwing candidates off the ballot, and switching polling sites at the last minute to block the empowerment of this vibrant in-grown community. Inna Kaminsky is a 27-year-old mother of two who jumped into the primary for the Assembly two weeks before the end of... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/resign-now-mr-mcgreevey/357/ Tue, 17 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EST New Jersey's governor, James Mc-Greevey, should resign immediately. He should resign because he has corrupted democracy in an abuse of power involving patronage, not sex. The gender of his lover is irrelevant. If he had placed an unqualified female lover in an $110,000 job advising on homeland security, in the anxious age of terrorism, it would be no different. This sleazy politician, already drowning in a sea of corruption involving his fund-raisers, tried to save himself with a repugnant... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/namath-biography-a-feat/250/ Fri, 13 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EST In August of 2001, Mark Kriegel was suddenly fired by the Daily News from his job as a three-times-a-week sports columnist. He never saw the ax coming. At age 38, with a 2-year-old daughter, Mr. Kriegel was unemployed, without prospects for steady work, and filled with fear. But he was able to convert this fear into fire. He worked every day for more than two years in a focused frenzy. He was like an athlete in a career-defining crisis, or a deciding seventh game. What Mr. Kriegel did was write... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/national/democratic-image-boost/160/ Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:00:00 EST The Democratic Party re-branded itself this week in Boston as the party of American flags, generals, Vietnam War heroes, Swift boats, optimism, hope, and love of country. Through the immense, modern power of TV, marketing, polling, and public relations, the Democratic Party made itself the party of strong national defense, the middle class, jobs, strength, and national health insurance, which may be the sleeper issue of this whole election. The rousing speeches of John Edwards and Barack Obama... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/minimum-wage-fight-alters-dynamics-of-state/110/ Tue, 20 Jul 2004 00:00:00 EST If everything goes according to plan in Albany, the Republican-controlled state Senate will pass a law raising the minimum wage to $7.10 an hour as early as tomorrow - or the first week in August. This will mark the culmination of a four-year crusade by the 6-year-old Working Families Party to better the living conditions of 700,000 New York State residents trapped in the low wage world. Never before has a new political party made such an impact on statewide public policy. If would also be a... JACK NEWFIELD http://www.nysun.com/new-york/kudos-for-jobs-well-done/54/ Sat, 17 Jul 2004 19:45:35 EST It is easy to muckrake the miscreants in power, but it is also essential to be positive and acknowledge decisions that do get made on the merits, and some office holders who are motivated by public interest. So, today I want to praise some of the good decisions government makes - and thank some of the honest, capable people in local government. Mayor Bloomberg's new plan to prevent homelessness and build 12,000 units of "supportive housing" for the mentally ill is an excellent new policy. It is...