A Stitch in Haste

I'm having trouble coming up with a non-expletive term for our infamous local megalomaniac:
After being dealt a rare public embarrassment by the City Council, which forced his administration to acknowledge on Monday that he was legally required to send out $400 rebate checks promised to hundreds of thousands of New York homeowners, a defiant Mr. [...]

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You may have noticed the current Sidebar Sidetrack, which links to a survey of ugly buildings.
By sheer coincidence, word has come down that New York City's out-of-control Landmarks Preservation Commission continues to justify its own unjustifiable existence by finding new sharks to jump:
Silver Towers/University Village, three concrete towers designed by I. M. Pei that were [...]

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So my plan was merely to attend the morning sessions of "LGBTQ Law 2008: Where Do We Go from Here?" at Columbia Law School and then head home. I've been going to these sort of symposia for years and they tend, quite frankly, to be rather redundant. The talk from one of the lawyers who [...]

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The District of Columbia's subway bureaucracy has announced that it will commence warrantless, suspicionless searches at subway entrances:
The program is modeled after one begun three years ago in New York that has withstood legal challenges. However, experts said it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of such searches, beyond assuring the public that police are [...]

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A remarkably oblivious op-ed on the recent despicable vote by the City Council to extend their own term limits, from a former New York City politician:
But those who want to maintain a democratic check on the executive branch should welcome the result. For while Mr. Bloomberg himself may benefit from the change (if New Yorkers [...]

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It's a long-standing principle in the law that "predatory" crimes should not be applied to those whom the law is meant to protect. So, for example, minors usually (though not always) cannot be prosecuted for statutory rape. Due process demands (or ought demand) that someone cannot simultaneously be the perpetrator and the victim of the [...]

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This was absolutely not the kind of "reform" I was hoping for:
The NYPD lieutenant from Long Island who authorized the use of a stun gun during a fatal police confrontation with a naked Brooklyn psychiatric patient committed suicide Thursday morning, police said.
On his 46th birthday, Lt. Michael Pigott of Sayville shot himself at Floyd Bennett [...]

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I was finally all prepped to record some video and shoot some pictures of Diamond at the new dog run, now open after a seemingly excessive period of construction and landscaping.
I wound up documenting a less-than-festive scene:

Standing dumbfounded at the splashy pool (a particular favorite of Diamond's), cruelly thrown over an unclimbable fence, my only [...]

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… and putting a fence on it doesn't help:

While John Jay Park itself may be a bit of a thorn in my libertarian side, a fence around the park is not, nor is this sign. Perfectly reasonable in my opinion.
But when does my opinion ever count?

I tease, of course: the sign was put up recently [...]

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To review: The only incursion upon property rights worse than private-for-private eminent domain (such as that shamefully sanctioned by Kelo v. New London) is landmarks preservation. At least with eminent domain, a soon-to-be-former property owner receives "just compensation" for the incursion upon his rights by the majoritarian mob.
With historic preservation, however, the mob doesn't even [...]

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