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In Times Square late Sunday night, hundreds of protesters gathered to vent angrily about the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the pistol-packing neighborhood watch volunteer who shot an unarmed black teenager named Trayvon Martin last year in a scuffle whose details are murky to this day.

While gut-wrenchingly furious, most of the protesters I saw interviewed managed to maintain their poise....

New York City "makes up for its hazards and its deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin -- the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled," wrote the incomparable E.B. White in 1948. On good days, I think he's still right. On others, I think his notion is a cruel joke.

Consider the taxi wars.

Here's...

Let’s start with the nice stuff first. Unlike other Democratic mayoral candidates, Anthony Weiner has not wasted his breath inveighing against Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s school reforms. Weiner doesn’t seem to mind the mayor’s charter-school push, and he has said kind things about Bloomberg’s hard-driving spirit of innovation.

But standing in front of a closed Catholic school yesterday, the...

We've always known New York City is not a normal place. Minneapolis is normal. Omaha is normal. New York is a town whose lurid eccentricities have a disturbing way of massing into destructive madness -- like Sandy roaring into town under a full moon at high tide. The resulting chaos is not a sight for the squeamish or for tiny school children or for civics teachers.

As the city's election...

The No. 1 issue on the minds of likely voters in New York City’s upcoming elections is not the stop-and-frisk imbroglio. It’s not the tough, elusive struggle for better outcomes in programs for the homeless and mentally ill. It’s not the shockingly sorry status of more than a few city parks. It is education, said a speaker at a Manhattan Institute forum this morning, citing a recent Zogby poll the...

On Sunday evening, as most of New York was winding down from a quiet holiday weekend, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer barged into what had been a sleepy contest for city comptroller with a Shakespearean burst of sound and fury. He wants forgiveness. He wants redemption. He wants his old public life back. He wants to be loved. He wants to matter again. You give me another chance, Spitzer is saying, and...

After voting against the original superstorm Sandy relief bill, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) came to Wall Street recently to raise money—and Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) is howling mad.

“Being from New York we’re not supposed to be suckers,” King fumed to The New York Observer’s Politicker. “It’s bad enough that these guys voted against it—that’s inexcusable enough. But to have the (nerve) to...

Chalk up a nice win and a bizarre moment for civil rights on Capitol Hill yesterday. Supporters unveiled a life-size statue of Rosa Parks in the U.S. Capitol, providing a reason for all Americans to cheer. The ceremony shows that Congress -- while stupefied by its own challenges -- at least is willing to honor someone who stepped up and took on the challenges of her time.

Parks, of course,...

Was that a valedictory address on Thursday from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg? I think the answer is yes, but I don't believe the term valedictory does the event justice.

It was a public relations event staged by one of the most determined -- and successful -- salesmen America has ever seen.

Bloomberg does many things well. But I would put his ability to organize, sell and market...

Two days before Hurricane Sandy made an East Coast landfall, the feds downgraded it to a post-tropical cyclone.

Yes, a cyclone! The kind of thing that carried Dorothy from the prairies of Kansas to the Land of Oz. The kind of thing that thrill-seekers pay money to ride at Coney Island.

But the scientists at the National Hurricane Center knew precisely what they were doing, and from their...