If Anything Will Help Us Get Over The Terrible Events Of That Day, It’s Rudy Giuliani

Because it’s not like it’s crass or anything to shore up the 9/11 widow constituency for a potential 2008 run:

Supporters of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani have started discussions with relatives of 9/11 victims about backing him if he runs for president in 2008, some family members told The Post.

The conversations have taken place in recent weeks, according to some victims’ families, who described the talks as “casual.”

Marian Fontana, who lost her firefighter husband on 9/11, said she got an invitation to go to a Giuliani exploratory committee dinner last week from a former firefighter working with Giuliani’s committee. She described the invite as “last-minute.”

Fontana said she was appreciative of what Giuliani did after 9/11, but would want to know a lot more about any candidate’s stand on a variety of issues.

“I feel like I’m not ready to endorse,” said Fontana, who added, “I could see why [Giuliani supporters] would want to reach out to family members.”

But wait, there’s more:

But some relatives who are anti-Giuliani are already planning “Swiftboat”-type attacks against the ex-mayor — modeled on the negative campaign against John Kerry in 2004 by his fellow Vietnam vets. It seems likely that 9/11 kin could help Giuliani counter that criticism.

Some 9/11 family members have been deeply critical of Giuliani, blaming him for communications failures the day of the attacks.

Others have faulted his administration for allegedly not doing enough to protect rescue and recovery workers from polluted air at Ground Zero.

For the most part, those family members who have spoken with Giuliani supporters are family members who have maintained a relationship with Giuliani in the years since the attacks and were already fans of his.

A Giuliani spokeswoman declined comment.

Times Ledger Newspapers Come Out Against Ritalin

The new owners of the Times Ledger newspapers (ahem) should probably intervene here. A fluff piece on Scientology? Is Rupert Murdoch a Scientologist or something? I can’t even fathom what they were thinking*:

A Bayside native has been appointed to lead the Church of Scientology’s anti-drug campaign in New York, a drug education effort that the group says is the largest in the world. Meghan Fialkoff of Bayside will run the New York “Say No to Drugs, Say Yes to Life” campaign, part of the secular nonprofit Foundation for a Drug Free World. Although the campaign is run by Scientologists, Fialkoff said they do not promote the religion, only their anti-drug message.

“In our church basically we’re helping people go free,” she said. “It’s all about helping people live lives where they can be free, and if you’re doing drugs, you’re not. You’re a slave to whatever your buying and how you’re going to get it.”

The campaign will distribute millions of booklets about how to prevent drug use, Fialkoff said. The information covers drug use in general. There are pamphlets tailored to information about specific drugs, everything from crack to painkillers to ritalin, which the campaign calls “kiddie cocaine.”

*What a bad week for the Queens weeklies.

Who Still Walks Around With Slingshots?

Latter-day Dennis The Menace terrorizes co-workers at Brooklyn high school:

A Brooklyn high-school teacher was sent home after he showed up for work drunk and got into an argument with a co-worker yesterday — then returned to the school with a slingshot to confront the colleague, police and education sources said.

Judson Kilpatrick, a 42-year-old teacher at Paul Robeson HS in Crown Heights, landed in hot water after he started fighting with another teacher and officials discovered that he had been drinking, the sources said.

Kilpatrick was promptly sent home.

But he continued to harass the co-worker by repeatedly calling him on the phone, authorities said.

Kilpatrick then returned to the school after classes let out, armed with the slingshot and empty gun holsters, sources said.

It’s Not So Much A Quota As It Is A Make-Work Plan For Its Enforcement Agents*

A Department of Sanitation representative tries to explain the five cigarette butt rule to a tough crowd:

When it comes to giving tickets, the city’s Department of Sanitation (DOS) does not have quotas.

That was the word from the agency’s citywide community affairs officer, Ignazio Terranova, who was in the hot seat as he responded to claims that the agency is more than eager to give out summonses, during the December meeting of the Friends United Block Association (FUBA).

Speaking to the group gathered at Temple Shaare Emeth, 6012 Farragut Road, Terranova acknowledged that DOS enforcement officers could make mistakes, but insisted that the agency is not writing tickets simply to make up a certain number and fill the city’s coffers.

“We do not have a quota, whether people choose to believe it or not,” Terranova asserted. Nonetheless, he added, “But we did not hire 56 new enforcement agents to go out and sit in a car and drink coffee all day. Their job is to find summonses, whether five or 50 in a day.”

There are perameters that must be exceeded, said Terranova, for a ticket to be written. “You’re not going to get a summons for one item,” Terranova contended. “If there’s a cap on one water bottle, you’re not going to get a summons. What constitutes a summons is five things wrong with the garbage or five things on the floor. On the sidewalk, it could be one plastic cup and four cigarette butts. That constitutes five items.”

Keeping your sidewalk and 18 inches into the gutter clean, Terranova added, is a matter of making sure it is free of debris two hours a day — from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from noon to 1 p.m. That is actually an improvement, he told his listeners; before a relatively recent law was passed, residents could be ticketed at any hour of the day or night, seven days a week.

*At least he didn’t call it “productivity goals”!

Bienvenue A La Porte Authorité

The Port Authority continues its frankly daunting rebranding campaign:

A white tablecloth brasserie, Metro Marché, officially opened its French doors yesterday across the hallway from the Peter Pan ticket counter at the Port Authority Bus Terminal — a place where until yesterday the only French fare could be found at the Au Bon Pain.

Once occupied by the Silver Bullet Saloon, the Metro Marché space above the A, C, and E subway station stood vacant for several years. Now it is being filled with the bus terminal’s first fine-dining facility, an early step in a long-term plan to revamp the dingy station into something more modern and elegant.

The terminal, known for its badly lit corridors and low ceilings, is often associated with gloomy scenes of urban life, a memory of the days, not so long ago, when its walls were covered in graffiti and loiterers were a common sight in front of bus gates.

Yesterday, the deputy executive director of the Port Authority, James Fox, spoke of a station “renaissance,” and pointed to Grand Central Terminal as an example of what the bus terminal aspires to become.

. . .

The restaurant is paying $90 a square foot to rent the 5,000-square-foot space from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.