I. “It is a story of corruption, mismanagement and abuse of power,” Daniel Friedman said as his voice aspired to a preacher’s cadence and elicited some amens from the...

Guns, God and Gays.  It’s shorthand for the reluctance of white middle class Americans to vote Democratic despite general agreement with the party’s economic policies. It’s also captures three cultural hurdles...

Move over, Jeremiah Wright. Barack Obama is no longer an angry black man, a closet Muslim or, gasp, a Socialist. He is the devil himself.  He is Richard Nixon. The headlines out of Washington are...

Looks like libraries are going to need lots of shelf space for Andrew Cuomo.  In just the third year of his first term as New York’s Governor, Cuomo’s tenure has already...

The advent of the 2013 political season in New York is inescapable.  The Big Apple’s mayoral aspirants square off in nearly daily debates.  Nassau’s Republican incumbent County Executive, Ed Mangano, is...

It’s good to be the Westchester County Executive.  The suburban county has a $1.7 billion budget,  5000 employees and its own amusement park. But a lifetime pass for Playland isn’t the ambition of the incumbent...

It’s never surprising when city folk dis the suburbs. Ed Koch called suburban life “sterile.”  The Times’ recently reported on “scruffy bohemians” from Brooklyn “colonizing” Rockland’s Nyack– in the Fashion section....

With the Times reporting on stoned seniors forsaking shuffleboard for bong hits, you might think New York’s government is chillin’ too.  Polls show that nearly two-thirds of New Yorkers think smoking weed in public...

The real winner in this past Tuesday’s election in Rockland County’s Airmont?  Diversity and compromise–  all candidates in this municipality, once found to discriminate against Orthodox Jews, courted that community’s vote.  The results offer the...

This blog and the @rkarben Twitter feed get a write up by one of the state’s premier local news websites, SloatsburgVillage.comhttp://www.sloatsburgvillage.com/.  Read the article here.