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John Edwards walked out of a federal courthouse a free man Thursday, but with his reputation deservedly in tatters.

The former U.S. senator and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination has been proved a horrid husband and despicable human being. He cheated on his dying wife, fathered a child with the other woman, notoriously denied the little girl was his and stood by while a friend...

This Jan. 17 inter-office memo from the Town of Hempstead Building Department just recently came to our attention thanks to poor snail mail management by me.

With no disrespect to the very real grief experienced by the family of Catherine Mantel, whose death prompted the memo, we pass along the key paragraph. Why? Because it's an illustration of how tightly knit and multigenerational a family...

Four Republican candidates running for U.S. Congress and state Legislature want a nonprofit that sued Westchester County over affordable housing -- and eventually made millions -- to donate the money back to the county.

Rep.  Bob Turner of Rocky Point, who is seeking the nomination to run against Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, was among the Republicans that on Tuesday called on the...

My column on Monday was about why people waiting for a bus can't tell when -- if ever -- the next one will come, even though the necessary technology is built into the smartphones used by millions of consumers. But it's not just buses. Look around and you'll find glaring examples of technology going unused all over the place. Police cruisers in Nassau County are equipped with computers, for instance,...

It wasn’t so many weeks ago that Tuesday’s Texas Republican presidential primary was looming as one of the highlights of a hotly contested but largely imaginary battle for the nomination. Hotly contested, because Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich had enough credibility to get some press coverage and some money, and Ron Paul had enough love from his devoted band of followers to get some votes. Imaginary,...

It’s a hopeful sign that the Brookhaven Town Board has voted to set up a bipartisan committee to draw new electoral districts for next year based on the 2010 census.

The idea was Supervisor Mark Lesko’s, and the town board was wise to go along. The further away from politics we can get the redistricting process, the better off we’ll be. The voters should choose their representatives, not the...

In a new low, Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar Assad have massacred at least 100 people in the area of Houla, including dozens of children. Most were shot at close range. It's been clear for awhile that Assad has got to go. He's murdered thousands of his people and clings to power through sheer ruthlessness. Despite unremitting violence, Syria's pro-democracy protesters have persisted and...

Pick your poison: deficits or recession.

That’s essentially the word Congress got Tuesday from the respected, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office about the difficult trade-offs lawmakers face in formulating the nation’s fiscal policies.

Option No. 1 is for Congress to change nothing in current law. Do that and taxes would soar in January 2013. The Bush tax cuts, the two-year cut...

Though it seemed likely that President Barack Obama would want to avoid nominating a new chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, opening up a confirmation battle during the presidential campaign, the White House wasted no time. On Thursday, Obama nominated Allison Macfarlane, an academic expert on nuclear issues.

Macfarlane is an associate professor of environmental science and policy...

Someone's been arrested at last in the heartbreaking case of Etan Patz, the 6-year-old who vanished on the streets of SoHo 33 years ago. It's unclear if the mystery has at last been solved. But what is clear is the unfortunate legacy of Patz's disappearance, which played a big role in ending what the writer Lenore Skenazy has called free-range kids. Etan Patz vanished on the very first morning he...