John McCain took to the floor of the United States Senate today during a debate over domestic terrorism and let slip a crack about our favorite neighbor to east.
“Isn’t it true that Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor was specifically referring to a case for a person captured on Long Island?” the former GOP standard-bearer said. “Last I checked, Long Island was part — albeit sometimes regrettably — part of the United States of America.” Read More
“One of the scariest jobs ever is tweeting for an elected official,” Amanda Alampi wrote yesterday on The Atlantic’s website.
The line appeared in her short essay, under the simple heading: “@ComptrollerNYC, @JohnCLiu.”
A spokesman for Liu emailed me to explain:
“Amanda was our summer associate last year and with her strong background in Social Media, she assisted the press office to amplify the Comptroller’s message through that medium.”
I asked the New York City Comptroller, and likely 2013 mayoral candidate, John Liu, who is also on Twitter and Facebook, if he’s ever sent around the kind of images that Anthony Weiner has.
After extolling the virtues of social media, he smiled, thanked me for the question, and lightly punched me in the arm. It didn’t hurt. Read More
“I’ve talked to him and Anthony’s a very good friend,” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand told reporters outside a technology conference at NYU this morning.
“I think he will answer the questions necessary that are appropriate,” she said. Read More
Eric Ulrich, a Republican City Councilman in Queens who, National Review thinks could take on embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner, is out with a public statement explaining his own outspokenness on Twitter.
“First of all, I can say with certitude that my Twitter account, to my knowledge, has not been hacked. With that said, I cannot believe that anyone would use a tragic incident like the one that occurred on Friday to advance their own agenda. To suggest that a bike lane would have prevented this from happening is simply absurd. While I welcome a serious discussion about traffic safety in my district, I will not allow people to use this unfortunate event to begin that conversation.
More on Ulrich’s Twitter flap, here.
After telling a constituent to “#getalife” on Twitter, Councilman Eric Ulrich called to explain.
In short, he said the message was directed at a bike lane advocate who he said had long been harassing him.
It was sent in response to a woman who said Ulrich’s Queens district needs more bike lanes after a pedestrian was struck by a vehicle. The added bike lanes could have slowed traffic, thus, reducing the likelihood of an accident, the woman on Twitter, HangingbyaStrap, argued.
Ulrich disagreed. Read More
Rick Lazio emailed supporters this morning with the announcement that he’s launched a new website called IGNITE with Rick Lazio.
The site has some lengthy posts by Lazio and others, along with an extended bio of the former congressman and a plug for his upcoming television appearances.
Lazio’s introduction says the idea is to Read More
Rudy Giuliani isn’t buying Anthony Weiner’s explanation about his hacked Twitter account.
“I don’t know why you wouldn’t want the FBI to investigate this!” Giuliani told our colleague, Dan D’Addario, at the Prize4Life Gala last night.
“If you were a private person,” Giuliani said, “you might say it wasn’t significant. I am a lawyer, I was a prosecutor, and if a client came to me, I’d say, ‘Call the FBI!’ Who knows how many more times they could hack him? And it’s not just personal information, it could be sensitive information!”
In a sit-down interview one day after a poor showing in front of reporters, Weiner can’t rule out that the photo might be of him.
Weiener also said it’s not a “national security thing.” He adds, “I’m not sure it rises, pun intended, to that level.”
Tech reporter Adrianne Jeffries probes the tech-side of the Weiner / Twitter controversy, and concludes: “The hacker explanation requires many more assumptions…than the failed-private message explanation.”
