Spies Like Us!

I’m sure glad that big terror plot sting operation went so well now that New York’s law-abiding Muslim community has become suddenly distrustful of the NYPD:

It is no secret to the Muslim immigrants of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, that spies live among them.

Almost anyone can rattle off what they regard as the telltale signs of police informers: They like to talk politics. They have plenty of free time. They live in the neighborhood, but have no local relatives.

“They think we don’t know, but we know who they are,” said Linda Sarsour, 26, a community activist.

It is another thing for them to be officially revealed. Over the last several weeks, during the trial of a Pakistani immigrant who was convicted on Wednesday of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station, Muslims in Bay Ridge learned that two agents of the police had been planted in the neighborhood and were instrumental to the case.

They absorbed the testimony of an Egyptian-born police informer who had recorded the license plate numbers of worshipers at a mosque. They heard that an undercover detective, originally from Bangladesh, had been sent to Bay Ridge as a “walking camera.”

The trial’s revelations, and its outcome for the defendant, Shahawar Matin Siraj, have brought a bitter reckoning among Muslims in the city. Many see the police tactics unveiled in the case as proof that the authorities — both in New York and around the nation — have been aggressive, even underhanded in their approach to Muslims.

And despite the conviction of Mr. Siraj, who was found guilty on all four of the counts he faced, some Muslim leaders remain convinced that he was entrapped, including an imam who knew the informer and had found him to be suspicious.

. . .

“It’s like a police state here,” said Omar Maged, 34, an assistant teacher at a public high school. “We do not feel that we are living in the most free country in the world.”

Where Have All The Shoe Stores Gone?

They’ve overstocked gaudy sequined high heels, every one. When will they ever learn? They will never learn:

As anyone who has recently walked down Eighth St. between Fifth and Sixth Aves. can’t help but notice, the block resembles a retail ghost town, as if the Great Depression had hit all over again. Virtually every other store is vacant, with For Rent signs prominently posted. In all, about 20 stores were empty when a reporter walked the street two weekends ago. On Sixth Ave., the former Sam Goody space, also in the BID’s district, is vacant.

. . .

Carol Wilson, W. Eighth St. Block Association co-chairperson, is still waiting to return home after her apartment was literally pulled apart after the recent unsettling incident where mercury was mysteriously found in it. But she’s also disturbed about the retail situation on W. Eighth St., where she says the stores don’t offer anything anybody living on the block wants.

“Most of it’s now club clothing, tattoo stuff, smoking apparatus, belt buckles,” she said. “We don’t shop there. I don’t think N.Y.U. students even shop there. People are shopping at discount shoe stores on 14th St., and look at the shoes they sell here — high-heeled, with sequins. Who wears those?”

But Will His Downfall Be His Girth Or The Cutoff Jeans? Perhaps The Latter!

This bank robber is working from a distinct disadvantage:

A beefy bank robber who made off with $3,800 from heists in Tottenville a week ago and Westerleigh on Tuesday is still being sought by police.

The bandit — described as 6 feet tall and weighing more than 300 pounds and 26 to 31 years old — hit the SI Bank & Trust branch at 6975 Amboy Rd. on May 19 and the Richmond County Savings Bank branch at 832 Jewett Ave. on Tuesday afternoon.

In Tottenville, he handed the teller a note and walked out with $1,300.

On Tuesday, the thief entered the Richmond County Savings Bank dressed in jeans cut off at the knee, white sneakers, a gray hooded sweatshirt and a black and white baseball cap.

Hizzoner The President? Or, If A “Republican In Name Only” Speaks To A Graduating Class, Do Independents And Moderates In Middle America Actually Notice?

If he really wanted to be provocative, he would have come out against, say, tort reform limiting medical malpractice damages (whoops — wrong speech!):

By warning a graduating class of doctors to reject “faith-based science,” Mr. Bloomberg yesterday signaled yet again that he plans to use his second term to take the national stage.

The mayor railed against letting “ideology get in the way of truth,” and singled out creationism, global warming, and stem cell research as topics where science is under attack.

Mr. Bloomberg’s views on these issues — and on other topics he’s taken on over the last few months — barely register outside the five boroughs. But after winning re-election by a record margin, Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire, is becoming increasingly vocal and eager to address controversial topics.

“It boggles the mind that nearly two centuries after Darwin, and 80 years after John Scopes was put on trial, this country is still debating the validity of evolution,” Mr. Bloomberg told graduating medical students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he earned his bachelor’s degree.

Mr. Bloomberg combined two of his favorite topics, science and education, when he criticized school districts in Kansas and Mississippi that want to teach “intelligent design,” the theory that human life cannot be explained solely by evolution. He said schools would be “condemning these students to an inferior education” by promoting faith over settled science.

And forget local issues like, say, garbage collection and Sunday parking — this time it’s about a “national conversation”:

The interim dean at Baruch College’s school of public affairs, David Birdsell, said Mr. Bloomberg was clearly using his office as a bully pulpit on a national scale.

“If you look at what Bloomberg is calling attention to in this speech, it is clear that he is attacking national issues,” Mr. Birdsell said.

“He certainly sounds like a person who at least during these remaining three years wants to use the mayoralty to shape a national conversation, if not a national candidacy,” he said.

How About Reconceptualizing It As The $300 Million September 11 Memorial Parking Garage?

Forget $1 billion — can the Sept. 11 memorial at Ground Zero really cost $500 million? You don’t even know the three-fifths of it:

The goal is a $500 million memorial. But some expenses are irreducible. A rough calculation suggests that it might cost $300 a square foot to build the simplest structure to fill the 70-foot-deep hole: four 250,000-square-foot floors with no memorial, no museum, no voids, no pools and no landscaping.

“It’s going to cost you about $300 million,” [design committee co-chair] Mr. [Roland W.] Betts said, “just to get up there and build your windswept plaza.”

At least a parking garage would recoup some money . . . and that would really show the evildoers!