It was finally Mayor Bloomberg, however, that gave him the boot this April. Only recently was he allowed back inside the press room, but as an uncredentialed observer. Martinez Alequin's publication has slimmed down to an online-only format and operates from Blogspot.com as "Your Free Press." He has been questioning––some might say heckling––public officials for 20 years. This spurs a broader look by the Times at what it takes to be a credentialed press member. more ›

If you were wondering how former mayor Rudy Giuliani feels after the thumpin' the Republicans took last week, wonder no more, because he's been facing it with the same, stubborn Rudy-vision that we all remember from his NYC mayoral years. The NY Times was on the scenefor a speech Giuliani made:

In his first public comments about last week’s Democratic sweep of Congress, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former Republican mayor of New York City, who is a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said on Sunday that he did not view the election as a major rebuke to his party. But he said that Republicans “have to go back to your principles in figuring out how you react to something like this.” more ›

As if we need any more reason to wonder how the MTA does its accounting, there's this article from the NY Times titled, "Cash for Forgotten Airport Link May Help Build Stadium Station." Really. See, Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg want to build a new Metro-North station for the new Yankee Stadium, but where would this money come from? No, not some loan or bond the state takes out, but pretty much from under the mattress: "...the transportation authority has dug into an old pot of money and found $40 million. The money is left over from $645 million that was set aside for the extension of the N subway line to La Guardia. The airport subway link, which was a pet project of Mr. Bloomberg's predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was 'abandoned,' said Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the authority." Gothamist proposes that we go through the MTA's books and we bet we'll find a couple hundred million just laying around. All we want is a .1% finder's fee - heck, we'll take .05%. So, magically finding this money means that the station can probably be built. more ›

One thing Gothamist knows is that while the Mayor may have learned to kiss babies (Steinhauer didn't delve into whether or not these babies wanted to be kissed), he still looks uncomfortable, which brings the funny in our book, in pictures like this one of the Mayor and Santa at Macy's Santaland. Oh, and here's the Mayor with some babies. more ›