Times have changed since 2004 when federal agents launched massive raids on illegal aliens at an apartment complex in Hightstown. “One Spanish-language newspaper recently dubbed Hightstown the "Paradise Town" of New Jersey.”

Hightstown has enacted a no-questions-asked policy on immigration status and is now considered a “sanctuary city”. The borough, with a population of 5,300, “allows its undocumented residents to officially interact with local police and access city services without fear of being reported to federal authorities”.

One illegal immigrant at the complex where the raids were staged called on the police recently to help place a family member in alcohol rehabilitation; others have reported domestic abuse, extortion, theft and other crimes. Some are calling the town's pro-immigrant mayor for advice on City Hall weddings and landlord troubles. Hightstown has added services aimed at immigrants.

Hightstown Mayor Robert Patten, a Republican, is under the impression his community would be a ghost-town without illegal immigrants, while Governor Jon Corzine is spending taxpayer money to build affordable housing. New Jersey’s illegal immigrant population, estimated at close to 1 million, has apparently already discovered plenty of affordable housing in places like "Paradise Town".

Blue Jersey’s ‘Hopeful’ sees Hightstown’s “sanctuary city” policies as providing “A Better Approach to Immigration” than communities actively working with federal law enforcement to reduce problems associated with illegal immigrants. “The result: Crimes are reported, and the town is flourishing.” From the sounds of it, Hightstown is flourishing with crime. We fail to see how turning a blind eye to immigration status s is a better approach, assuming the valid reasons for our immigration laws and the public‘s desire to see them enforced.

Illegal immigration in New Jersey has grown so dramatically in size and impact that the League of Municipalities recently formed a task force to study the cost to municipalities of providing education, law enforcement, health care and other services to illegal immigrants. Readers may remember our post about “One Loud Councilperson's Opinion” after voters rejected Hightstown’s school budget for the second straight year. If there’s an advantage to illegal immigration for legal residents and taxpayers, we’ve yet to hear it.

Fausta writes, “Hightstown is subverting the principle of the rule of law”. “The message is clear: the immigrants are taught that the law applies to someone else.” “Having, supporting and countenancing a group of people whose entire existence is predicated on evading the rule of law” is “erosive to our society”.

It’s also expensive, especially for a state that’s basically bankrupt. Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies said, "You're also talking about a group of people who often work off-the-books but are getting access to expensive city services. It's not fair to everyone else paying the bill."

A public safety drill was conducted at Burlington Township High School to test the reactions of police, faculty and school administrators to a school shooting, hostage taking crisis.

The mock terror attack involved two irate men armed with handguns who invaded the high school through the front door. They pretended to shoot several students in the hallway and then barricaded themselves in the media center with 10 student hostages.

Two Burlington Township police detectives portrayed the gunmen.

To make the drill more realistic, about 10 students volunteered to act as hostages or wounded victims. Several faculty members helped simulate a complete school lockdown, followed by an evacuation.

The scenario for the drill could have ended right there, but it didn’t.

Two Burlington Township police detectives portrayed the gunmen. Investigators described them as members of a right-wing fundamentalist group called the “New Crusaders” who don't believe in separation of church and state. The mock gunmen went to the school seeking justice because the daughter of one had been expelled for praying before class.

It’s this last part of the script that has people upset. It was totally unnecessary for the purpose of conducting the drill, but it does beg the question - why was it added to the scenario?

Blue Jersey’s Steve Hart believes it was a nod to the “reality-based community”:

And yet the public, working on the evidence of its eyes rather than the blinkered ideology of the Bush cultists, constantly has to be reminded to be afraid only of certain kinds of terrorists. It has the temerity to notice that while Islamist violence abroad is certainly dangerous, we have plenty of homegrown terrorists with light complexions and flag decals on their vehicles to worry about as well. This annoying tendency of the reality-based community keeps conservative pundits and bloggers in a near-continuous state of sputtering Yosemite Sam outrage.

This fear-crazed brand of wingnut political correctness is in full noxious flower this week as Michelle Malkin - whose eruptions of nonsensical outrage occur as regularly as blasts of steam from Old Faithful.

As someone who regularly refers to conservatives as knuckle-draggers and Jesus whoopers, we’ll discount Hart’s calm analysis just a tad. It is clear though why Hart thinks the additional information in the scenario was necessary - some may have been reminded of the Beslan school hostage crisis and massacre or of the recent bulletin by Homeland Security to law enforcement warning that Muslims with "ties to extremist groups" are signing up to be school bus drivers. To Hart that’s a big no-no.

Burlington Township officials probably were afraid of being attacked by the “reality- based P.C. crowd” for stirring up fear about Islamic theorists. So, the right-wing praying,” New Crusaders” who don't believe in the separation of church and state, bit was added. The additions to the scenario certainly made Hart happy. But you can’t please everyone, Blue Jersey’s “huntsu” says the “the scenario is stupid” and based on “a right-wing lie”.

Burlington Township should have stuck with the basic scenario and let people fill in their own blanks as to who the gunmen were and what their motivations might have been.

Blue Jersey’s “hunstu” has written two more blog posts about Chris Christie in a vain attempt to prove the U.S. Attorney’s corruption-busting record is being exaggerated and that he’s involved in some sort of conspiracy to damage Democrats. Posts here and here.

What better way for ‘huntsu” to prove his point than to provide links to sources contradicting his theory?

Such as this link to a September 14, 2006 post by Wally Edge on Politics NJ:

Christie is a Republican who served as a Morris County Freeholder and as a leader of George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign in New Jersey, but accusing the corruption-busting federal prosecutor of playing partisan politics is a tough sell.

Or to provide this link to a January 12, 2006 article in the Westfield Leader:

“After helping to put 86 elected officials in jail during his first term as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, Chris Christie last week vowed to continue his fight against public corruption.”

In his most recent post, “huntsu” has compiled a spreadsheet of so-called "investigations" by Chris Christie’s office since 2002. The list is an odd mix of indictments, convictions and other stuff in the news. It’s also loaded with errors and is useless for any meaningful analysis. Below are just a few random examples of the errors contained in their “investigations list”.

David Chang is listed for giving illegal campaign contributions to former Senator Robert Torricelli and Audrey Yu is listed for a related obstruction of justice charge. The spreadsheet indicates neither has been convicted. Of course both were convicted in 2000. However, the Chang and Yu cases predated Christie’s term as U.S. Attorney.

Former Camden mayor Milton Milan is listed for public corruption, but the list falsely indicates there was no conviction. Milan was convicted of various corruption charges in 2000, again predating Christie’s term as U.S. Attorney.

The Democratic State Committee and Jim McGreevey are both listed for “Machiavelli-gate”, but apparently “huntsu” is counting each line item as a separate “investigation” with no outcome. David D'Amiano, is listed as being convicted for arranging bribes, albeit without noting he was the middleman in Machiavelli-gate.

West Long Branch Mayor Paul Zambrano is listed as taking bribes, but not as convicted - Zambrano pled guilty as charged.

West Long Branch councilman Joseph DeLisa is twice listed for taking bribes. He’s shown as not convicted on page 2 and convicted on page 3. DeLisa pled guilty and was sentenced to15 months in federal prison.

Patsy Townsend, Monmouth County deputy fire marshal is listed for taking bribes, but not listed as convicted. Townsend pled guilty.

We could go on, but there’s little point in spending more time on Blue Jersey’s conspiracy theories, useless “investigations” spreadsheet, faulty analysis and baseless charges against U.S. Attorney Chris Christie.

Back in December of 2005, we quoted from an Editor and Publisher post on an article that was to appear in the New York Times about conservative blogs having the upper hand in getting their messages into the MSM. Corzine’s campaign blogger Matt Stoller was supposedly going to be quoted in the Times as citing an example of a New Jersey blog using that power to get a negative charge against Corzine into the media.

We were curious what Stoller was going to claim, because we weren’t familiar with any conservative New Jersey blogger that managed to get anything against Corzine onto the airwaves and into print. But a left-wing New Jersey blogger certainly did. We posted the E&P quote, without any commentary, to tweak “jmelli’s” nose, not to brag. Here’s why.

On October 24th we posted Is Corzine the Next McGreevey?. The post contained a tip we received that “something big is about to happen, and when it hits; it’ll make Jim McGreevey look like a Cub Scout compared to Jon Corzine.” For reasons known only to “jmelli”, he claimed he knew what that “something big” was and proceeded to post a rumor about Jon Corzine on Blue Jersey, MyDD and Kos.

About a week after our Is Corzine the Next McGreevey? post, quotes from Mrs. Corzine appeared all over the media. She spoke of Jon Corzine buying endorsements, compromising his ideals to get elected by cutting deals with political bosses and the affair with Carla Katz that led to the breakup of their marriage. We couldn't imagine anyone would suggest our post prompted the media to print the damaging interviews with Mrs. Corzine.

But, shortly thereafter, the rumor “jmelli” posted made its way onto NJN TV reports, received a reference in the New York Times and finally made it on Drudge. Taegan Goddard’s Political Newswire and Steve Adubato even wrote about the rumor.

At the end of the gubernatorial campaign, Corzine was dogged by this rumor “jmelli” so effectively spread in the left-wing blogosphere. That rumor never appeared on Enlighten-NewJersey, but we did post another email tip: “Reporters are after a videotape of Corzine, inebriated, making statements that will damage him beyond belief with African Americans. (Carla Katz supposedly makes an appearance.). “

The tape never surfaced and the story never entered the MSN. It also wasn’t mentioned in the brief NYT piece, Conservative Blogs Are More Effective, hyped by Editor and Publisher. Although, Stoller is quoted complaining about “the right-wing infrastructure”.

Since then Carla Katz hasn’t stopped making appearances in the news, but our “video tape” post only became fodder for Blue Jersey bloggers. As a matter of fact, Blue Jersey’s “jmelli” still enjoys telling stories about the Corzine tape, embellishing it as the years go by. Check out his latest version in his post New Jersey's Newest Smear Outlet?

In 2005, anonymous conservative blog and bottom of the right wing-smear-machine-totem pole Enlighten-NJ posted rumors alleging that "a videotape of Corzine, inebriated, making statements that will damage him beyond belief with African Americans" was about to come out. It didn't take long for the Drudge Report to pick it up and push it to Fox and finally mainstream media outlets. Instead of admitting how wrong they were, they bragged about it.

How long will it take for “jmelli” to put up links to the Corzine video tape story that he claims appeared on Drudge, Fox and mainstream media outlets? Of course he can’t, because it never happened and he knows it never happened.

We weren’t bragging, we were laughing at "jmelli’s" skillful use of the left-wing blogosphere. We still are.

Blue Jersey blogger, “huntsu”, is still on a quest to prove U.S. Attorney, Christ Christie, is a partisan hack. This time he’s taking on The Trentonian's Jeff Edelstein for writing that Christie’s office has charged and convicted 105 people for public corruption.

Sorry, Jeff. But Christie only claims 125 cases including investigations, indictments and convictions as of yesterday, and not the 105 convictions Edelstein claims. If this weren't a column in the Trentonian a retraction would be in order for such a wild exaggeration of fact.

Sorry “huntsu”, but Christie didn’t “claim 125 cases including investigations, indictments and convictions as of yesterday”. A reporter, not Christie, cited a number in the link you provided. There is no mention in the article about the number of public corruption investigations undertaken. Here’s the quote from the linked piece:

Critics have charged that Christie has pursued Democrats to help his party. But his 125 public corruption cases have targeted officials from both parties.

“Hunstu” continues conflating investigations, indictments and convictions. The number of indictments can be determined, but the total number of investigations are not a matter of public record and therefore are unknown. Not every investigation ultimately leads to a person being indicted and of course not everyone indicted will plead guilty or be found guilty at trial. But, so far Christie office has won every case that has reached the courts.

“Huntsu” hasn’t provided the number of people indicted for public corruption, but has arrived at a total of those convicted. We’ll assume his conviction total includes all public corruption cases brought to a conclusion while Christie has been in office. But who knows, “huntsu” hasn’t provided a list. Here’s what he’s come up with:

A review of the NJ US Attorney's Office press releases provides just 59 convictions, 21 of Republicans, 37 of Democrats and one we could not determine a party affiliation for. That leaves another 46 for Edelstein to find. Or retract.

But Edelstein's number was about investigations, so let's see if that proves the point.

Edelstein's number did not include “investigations”, just indictments and convictions as is quite clear from his column.

“Huntsu” also lays this on his readers:

Of the 150 people we found who have been investigated, indicted or convicted only 33 are Republicans and 112 are Democrats. Five are unknown.

We'll do a more in-depth analysis in a later post, but the preliminary review shows that Democrats are 300 percent more likely to be investigated than Republicans, a number far out of whack with the true ratio of party identification or elected officials. Dems are only 175 percent as likely to be convicted.

First. There is no way to know the number of Democrats and the number of Republicans who have been investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s office. The vast majority of investigations only come to light when someone is indicted or the media reports that subpoenas have been issued.

The number of subpoenas issued does not equal the number of criminal investigations underway. Hundreds of subpoenas can be issued in the investigation of just one person’s possible wrongdoing. And one subpoena may be all that’s necessary to prosecute hundreds of people.

Second. Investigations are launched on the basis of information and evidence of possible wrongdoing, not on a party affiliation quota system. The same holds true for indictments.

Third. Public corruption cases include those involving public employees of every stripe, not just elected officials.

Fourth. This is speculation on our part, but we’ll go out on a limb and say the number of public employees who are Democrats far outweighs the number who are Republicans. If we’re correct, it stands to reason a far greater number of people in position to commit corruption offenses are Democrats and therefore, more likely to get caught committing an offense.

Fifth. Certainly there are people who have been indicted, but yet to be found guilty or not guilty. That would be because their case has yet to come before the court. However, every person charged with political corruption, whose case has come before the court, has been convicted. That would be 100% of Republicans and 100% of Democrats.

Blue Jersey blogger “huntsu” has written two new posts about our state’s U.S. Attorney, Chris Christie. From the second most recent:

One of the main themes of our recent coverage of Chris Christie is his largely undeserved reputation for bipartisan investigations. For one, his biggest Republican cases -- Treffinger and Monmouth County -- both predate his taking office.

“Bipartisan investigations”? Undoubtedly, a sizable number of the employees, 127 attorneys and 118 support staff, working for U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, are Democrats. Ralph J. Marra, Jr, is a career professional in the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of New Jersey. He’s Christie’s First Assistant U.S. Attorney and a Democrat.

Marra has been in charge of political corruption cases since Christie arrived, and he's a lifelong Democrat who says he tells his children to vote a straight Democratic ticket while "skipping the ones who are crooks."

How many political corruption cases involving Democrats and how many involving Republicans has Christie’s office investigated? How many are being investigated now? It wouldn’t surprise us if investigations of Democrats far out numbered Republicans, they don’t call our state Blue Jersey for nothing. But we have no idea what the breakdown might be. “Huntsu” wouldn’t know either, unless he’s working in the U.S. Attorney’s office and keeping score. Investigations are not a matter of public record.

Chris Christie has an excellent reputation for prosecuting crimes regardless of the party affiliation of the perpetrator. That includes political corruption cases, for which there is a public record. The Star-Ledger had this to say on March 11, 2007:

Christie's office has brought about 115 official corruption cases over the past five years. His office, rightly so, has not made an official tally of the party affiliations of those indicted, but, given the numerous Monmouth County officials snagged, Republicans have probably far outnumbered Democrats in the dock.

Has Christie’s office overlooked political corruption on the part of New Jersey Republicans? Has he investigated, indicted, arrested and prosecuted state Democrats without evidence of possible wrong doing? We can’t find any examples and “huntsu” doesn’t provide any. As a matter of public record, Christie hasn’t lost a single political corruption case.

“Huntsu’s” latest Christie post takes on a second Tom Moran column defending Christie:

The factual error is the assertion that Christie has been under attack for "more than five years." Assuming Moran spiked this column on Wednesday for publication Friday, Christie had been in office exactly four years and two months that day.

As with his previous post, “huntsu” continues to have a problem with dates. Christie has been U.S. Attorney for five years, as he was sworn into office on January 17, 2002. Unlike “huntsu”, most people wouldn’t consider crimes committed after that date to “predate his taking office”.

Check out the dates in the Monmouth County “Bid Rig” cases (see below) and not the dates of indictment, but the dates the crimes were allegedly committed. The “predating his taking office” accusation is obviously false.

If Treffinger’s successful indictment on October. 24, 2002, arrest on October 28, 2002 and guilty plea on May 20, 2003 shouldn’t count towards Christie’s political corruption case record, then subtract one from his total.

Anyone who wants to spend the time totaling political corruption indictments during Christie’s tenure, tallying convictions the U.S. Attorney won at trial vs. the pretrial guilty pleas he obtained, it’s all there waiting to be counted. Here’s the link. A bit more work would be required to figure out the party affiliation of the corrupt politicians caught in the act since Christie became been the U.S. Attorney. Perhaps “huntsu” can enlighten us with a list.

Here’s the rundown on the Monmouth County prosecutions by Christie’s office:

Keyport Mayor John J. Merla took $9,000 in cash on Sept. 11, 2003 and between December 2003 and February 2004, accepted another $2,500.

Keyport Councilman Robert L. Hyer took a $5,000 payment on June 18, 2003.

West Long Branch Mayor Paul Zambrano accepted $5,000 in cash on Sept. 30, 2003. On Nov. 18, 2003 he accepted two envelopes of cash - one with $1,500 for him and the other with $1,000 to be given to another unidentified official. On Jan. 29, 2004 he accepted a cash payment of $4,000 and another for $1,500 on Nov. 17, 2004.

West Long Branch Councilman Joseph DeLisa accepted an envelope with $1,500 in cash on Nov. 18, 2003.

Hazlet Mayor Paul Coughlin took $3,000 on May 19, 2004.

Councilman and police commissioner Thomas A. Greenwald collected a $2,500 "fee" for laundering $25,000, on Nov. 5, 2004. On Nov. 11, 2004 he took a money laundering fee of $2,000. He kept a total of $24,500 in "fees" for additional money laundering transactions in 2005 on Jan. 17, Jan. 20 and Feb. 4.

Middletown Committeeman Raymond O'Grady took one payment for $1,000 on Oct. 21, 2004, and another for $5,000 on Feb. 17, 2005.

Assistant supervisor at the Monmouth County Division of Highways, Thomas Broderick, accepted a payment of $5,000 on May 4, 2004.

Deputy Monmouth County fire marshal, and code enforcement and emergency management official in Neptune Township, Patsy Townsend took $1,000 in cash in November 2004.

Deputy Mayor of Neptune, Richard Iadanza, accepted a cash payment of $1,500 on June 25, 2004 and another $1,500 on Nov. 17, 2004.

Asbury Park Councilman John J. Hamilton, Jr. had a paved driveway valued at about $5,000 or $6,000 for installed for free at Hamilton's home in August 2001, in exchange for the promise of steering municipal contracts to the cooperating witness.

Former Monmouth County Freeholder Harry Larrison, Jr., was charged with accepting cash bribes and corrupt payments totaling at least $8,500. Larrison accepted $5,000 in cash in 2001 or 2002 from a Monmouth County official who received the money from a developer on Larrison's behalf. Larrison received another cash payment of $3,500 from a second developer in 2002 or 2003.

Marlboro Township Mayor Matthew Scannapieco, received bribes of approximately $135,000 between 2001 and 2003 in conjunction with three development deals.

Commissioner of the Marlboro Township Municipal Utilities Authority and its chairman from February 2002 through January 2004, admitted that in December 2002, he attempted to bribe a member of the Marlboro Township Council, on behalf of a builder. He admitted that in 2001, he paid bribes totaling $6,200 from another builder to two Marlboro officials. He admitted that in 2001, he offered a $25,000 bribe, on behalf of a builder, to a member of the Manalapan Planning Board. He admitted that in 2004, he extorted $15,000 from a builder.

Superintendent of the Monmouth County Division of Bridges, Anthony Palughi, admitted that during 2004 he accepted payments totaling $12,500 dollars, from a confidential FBI informant and an undercover FBI agent, to reward him for arranging corrupt payments to be made to other Monmouth County officials.

The Ridge Nightfly brings to our attention that the National Journal has released its 2006 congressional vote ratings. The Journal rates and ranks lawmakers on how they vote relative to each other on a conservative-to-liberal scale in both the Senate and the House.

The Journal’s scores are based on the members' votes in three areas: economic issues, social issues, and foreign policy. This year’s scores were based on 82 key roll-call votes in the Senate and 95 in the House during 2006.

Nightfly points out that it’s “interesting Mike Ferguson, who was portrayed by his opponent in last year's election as being a right-wing Neanderthal”, ranks right in the middle, at 221 of the 449 members of the House rated.

As you can see from the National Journal chart below, Ferguson’s liberal composite score was 47.2 and his conservative composite score was 52.8. Most people would consider those scores to reflect a moderate voting record, but not everyone.

BlueJersey blogger, huntsu, takes exception to Nightly’s observation in How The Ridge Nightfly Doth Spin:

Ferguson may vote for the occasional environmental bill or education bill that moves him to the left, but these positions are certainly right-wing and out of mainstream in this district.

Hunstu provides a list, sans links, to supposedly prove Ferguson is “out of the mainstream”. Readers are referred to the Dump Mike blog for details. The post concludes with this:

The point is that he may average to the middle because of a few carefully chosen votes, but when you are comparing him to perhaps the most conservative Congress in history (last year's, not this year's) being to the right of the middle is still pretty far to the right.

Don't forget also that we never compared Ferguson to Neanderthals -- it's too unfair to the Neanderthals.

If there’s something wrong with the 95 roll-call votes used, the methodology, the statistical analysis performed by the Brookings Institution or the final scores and rankings the National Journal published, hunstu doesn’t tell us. Hunstu apparently has another method for comparing voting records, but what it is we're not told.

It should be obvious the blogger doing the spinning is not Nightfly. The voting record of New Jersey’s Republican delegation would best be described as fairly moderate, with an average liberal composite score of 43 and an average conservative composite of 57. Ferguson voting record was to the left of that average, with composite scores of 47 liberal and 53 conservative.

The voting record for New Jersey's Democrats is decidedly liberal, with a delegation average composite score of 85 liberal and a conservative score of 15. Clearly, if there are New Jersey congressmen out of the mainstream, you’d find one or more of them among the Democrat’s delegation – not the Republican. We’ll be so bold to predict the same will be true next year, despite the new congress being controlled by Democrats.

Here are the ratings for New Jersey’s congressional delegation:

How To Read National Journal’s Ratings

A score of 94 on economic issues, for example, means that the representative was more liberal than 94 percent of his or her House colleagues on key economic votes during 2006. "N/A" means the member missed more than half of the rated votes. The designations "E" and "S" and "F" refer to the "economic" and "social" and "foreign" policy votes used to determine overall ratings.

Tom Moran’s column today is about New Jersey’s “left-wing noise machine” and the “conspiracy theorists who consider U.S. Attorney Chris Christie a partisan hack” because he’s investigating the possibility Democrats might be involved in political corruption. This is a truly shocking development considering New Jersey’s place in “the unholy trinity of politically corrupt states”.

With every major city and all three branches of state government controlled by Democrats, not to mention the majority of congressional seats, checking up on Democrats holding New Jersey’s purse strings might be a smart move.

Still, the lefty conspiracy theory holds that without political pressure from the Bush administration Christie’s investigations of Senator Bob Menendez and more recently, a boatload of Democrats seated in Trenton wouldn’t be happening. After all, the New Jersey State Attorney hasn’t noticed any problems, just Christie.

But in that case, we would surely have heard from one or two of the career prosecutors in his [Christie's] office by now, at least anonymously. Why would a guy like Ralph Marra, Christie's first assistant and a Democrat, go along with a partisan scam?

Why indeed?

Democrats and lefty bloggers began their attack on Christie long before the Bush administration replaced eight U.S. Attorneys - right about the time Christie’s office started investigating high-profile New Jersey politicians with a “D” next to their name.

One senior Democrat who asked not to be named said a group of "high-end" Democrats met to discuss this recently, and all felt the firings strengthened their case that Christie is using his office to sabotage Democrats.

That view is gaining some ground. The lefty blog BlueJersey.com suggested Christie has kept his job because he is doing the White House's bidding by going after Democrats on corruption charges. And New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote that the firings make the bias charges against Christie "quite plausible.".

Gee, it’s almost sounds like a coordinated attack on Christie from the left. And funny, the New York Times and Blue Jersey bloggers were a bit more skeptical about Bob Menendez when Jon Corzine appointed him as his replacement in the U.S. Senate.

There have been 75 corruption indictments in New Jersey over the last four years. The public has a right to yearn for a break from the past, and Mr. Menendez does not represent a clean slate. – NYT:December 9, 2005

Wasn’t it the Star-Ledger that uncovered the questionable rental deal involving Menendez that led to Christie’s investigation?

Sorry, but Menendez asked for that one. He chose to rent his home to a group that received his help in Washington. Should a federal prosecutor look the other way when faced with such a clear conflict?

Apparently, the answer from the left is yes, if the politician is a “progressive” Democrat.

And didn’t Senator Menendez “reach out” to the U.S. Attorney's Office about the subpoenas Christie served on the non-profit receiving Menendez's “help”? Yes he did. Does that “yes” by Menendez count on Blue Jersey’s list of politicians contacting the U.S. Attorney?

More recently, Democrats have been grumbling about the subpoenas in Trenton aimed at finding criminal abuses in the state's budget process. But, please -- anyone who has watched the way Democrats grab money for pet causes in the final days would agree that it's an excellent place to sniff around for corruption.

Christie has prosecuted more than 115 public corruption cases in New Jersey since becoming U.S. attorney in 2002, and he hasn't lost a single one. That’s the real problem Democrats have with Christie, he’s just too darn good at his job. Can’t stop the corrupt gravy train that’s helping to bankrupt the state - that would be an abuse of political power.

We see the Blue Jersey blog has been supplanted with the new PoliticsNJ.com website. Apparently, the moneyed people have made their move to take over the liberal side of the New Jersey blogosphere.

"Wally Edge," announced that the site had been bought by the Observer Media Group, owner of the weekly New York Observer.

Observer owner and publisher Jared Kushner confirmed Thursday that he'd arranged to buy the site for an undisclosed sum a month earlier.

A new owner, new design, new staff and new bloggers were unveiled Thursday for a Web site that has become a mainstay among those who can't get enough of the Garden State's dramatic and sometimes corrupt politics.

The Kushners, including Jared, have long been mega contributors to the Democratic Party.

You may remember the Kushner family being in the news, especially, Charles Kushner, Jared’s father. Charles Kushner was a major backer and pal of disgraced former senator Bob Torricelli and was known as ex-governor Jim McGreevey’s ‘main man’.

“It was no accident that when Bill Clinton was president, he made several appearances at Kushner functions in Florham Park. And so, especially, had Governor James McGreevey, who, more than any of the others, was a political creature built of his [Kushner’s] will and cash.”

“Kushner Cos. has been Senator Menendez's biggest donor in the past five years.” Charles Kushner even teamed up with Jon Corzine in an attempt to buy the New Jersey Nets basketball team in 2004 - the deal apparently fell apart when the partners couldn’t get the state to help fund the purchase.

Charles Kushner is also the guy who pled guilty to 18 federal crimes that included: making illegal campaign contributions, lying to the Federal Election Commission, tax fraud, hiring a prostitute and using videotapes to try to entrap his brother-in-law to stop him from cooperating with the Feds. He’s out of prison now.

We suppose Blue Jersey will be kept around to organize and raise cash for Democrats. PoliticsNJ is now “the center of gravity for New Jersey [Democrat Party] politics”.

U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie Has Democrats Rattled

U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie has prosecuted more than 100 public corruption cases in New Jersey since becoming U.S. attorney in 2002, and he hasn't lost a single one.

Christie is handing out subpoenas to find out who benefited [from $378 million in Christmas Tree Grants]. As a result, the rumor mill is abuzz that the FBI wired a legislator, and as many as 15 "public servants" may go down.

The folks at Blue Jersey are becoming concerned and developing conspiracy theories:

Chris Christie may be the most honest US Attorney in history, but he is also a powerful Republican partisan who is beholden to a powerfully partisan Bush White House for his job while others in the same position are losing theirs.

The subpoenas for the legislature came right while the Democrats were making noises about passing major tax reform and corruption reform legislation, blunting the political gain to be made.

We've got a US Attorney, Chris Christie, and he has not been fired.

Eighty-seven others, including Christie, have not been “fired”. But, seven Bush appointees being replaced by seven Bush appointees and its time for congressional Democrats to issue subpoenas. As the Blue Jersey blogger writes:

Ooooh! Congressional subpoenas of the Bush admin on firing US Attorneys. What fun!

U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States. You may recall that when President Bill Clinton took office one of the first things he did was to fire every U.S. Attorney - except one, Michael Chertoff, then U.S Attorney for the District of New Jersey - saved by Senator Bill Bradley. Clinton’s mass firing of 93 U.S. Attorneys was unprecedented, but within the President’s authority.

It’s within Christie’s authority to investigate and prosecute corrupt politicians. Do the folks at Blue Jersey think he should demure so as not to “blunt” Democrat political gains from making election year “tax and corruption reform noises”?

So far Chris Christie’s political indictment to conviction batting average is 1.000. It looks like this hard hitting U.S. Attorney has Democrats rattled and resorting to the old standby - blame the “powerfully partisan” President Bush - this time for corrupt NJ politicians from the Democratic Party.