"The Blue Wall of Violence" courtesy of MoCADA Yesterday, The Daily News printed an article that began, "A cop-bashing art exhibit at a taxpayer-funded museum in Brooklyn portrays the city's Finest as trigger-happy racists who have put bull's-eyes on the backs of black New Yorkers." The exhibit is a retrospective of the artist Dread Scott's work called "Welcome to America," and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) is calling the paper out......

Two members of a three-judge federal appellate court panel took the city to task yesterday for removing the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy. Debbie Almontaser, who helped found the dual-language school with an emphasis on Arab culture, stepped down before the school opened last fall, after controversy over remarks she made in the NY Post. Last summer, Almontaser had commented on t-shirts with "intifada" printed on them, made by a youth group she......

MOVIE: Delve into the mind and life of H.L. “Doc” Humes (pictured) in a documentary by his daughter. Titled Doc, the 96-minute film focuses in on the counterculture icon. "In the 1950s and early '60s, Doc co-founded The Paris Review, wrote two acclaimed novels, and was a gregarious fixture of the cultural scene in Paris, London and New York. Doc was a 1950s NYC intellectual, a 60s free speech militant, and a 70s visionary crazy......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on Autumn and Liberty Aves. in Brooklyn, a suspicious fire on Wallace Ave. and Pelham Parkway in the Bronx,and a carjacking on 85th St. in the Bronx. Lawyers for Ted Corliss continue to argue for charges to be dismissed against their client, who attempted to jump off the Empire State Building, even after the State Supreme Court ruled that jumping off tall buildings was a form......

The Parks Dept. decided to throw in the towel on litigation that's been going on for three years and conceded to reevaluate its requirement that no more than 50,000 people could gather on Central Park's Great Lawn at one time. Aside from six allotted exceptions (per year) that include four reserved for performances by the Metropolitan Opera and the NY Philharmonic, the city's rationale for crowd-size restrictions was that very large crowds could damage the......

D is for drunk and disorderly, not boobs and breasts. At least according to New Jersey State Senator Richard Codey. The Times first reported yesterday on the halftime events at Gate D at Giants Stadium during Jets games. Hundreds of fans gather on the exit ramp, chanting at women and encouraging them to expose their breasts. If they don't lift their shirts, the women are met with boos and sometimes are spit at or have......

Hallelujah! Yesterday the judge presiding over the Reverend Billy case dropped the charges that claimed he harassed public officials. The Rev was arrested in June while reciting the First Amendment in Union Square during a Critical Mass ride which coincided with the protest of the proposed MOFTB rules. Turns out the prosecutors didn't meet their deadline to file papers explaining the arrest and its justification. The Reverend's (whose real name is Bill Talen) lawyer, Earl......

Are disputes between dry cleaners and their customers a new source of income for lawyers? The owner of an Upper East Side drycleaning business is suing a man for papering the neighborhood around his store with fliers that impeach the quality of his service. Todd Ofsink owns Todd Layne Cleaners on East 77th St. and is suing Evan Maloney for $100,000 for defamation. Maloney had some negative customer experiences at the store, so he set......

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke today, giving a speech and sort of answers some of questions posed by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and School of International and Public Affairs Dean John Coatsworth. We're sure video and transcripts will come shortly, but in the meant time, The Bwog, New York, and City Room have been liveblogging the speech. Here's a sample of questions posed, via the City Room:In response to a question about the treatment......

When the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting announced in June that they were proposing new rules for videographers, filmmakers and photographers - everyone who's ever seen an image of New York responded. The new rules that were met with opposition are summed up at the MOFTB website, which will also direct you to the 11 pages of single-spaced rules. Those 11 pages are now going to have to be rethought, as the MOFTB......

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg traveled back to his Massachusetts roots and gave the commencement speech at Tufts University. Bloomberg, who grew up in Medford, name checked various haunts in the hood, tried to seem with it by mentioning Busta Rhymes, Ali G, and Salma Hayek, and reminded kids to call their mother. He also discussed free speech, in what the Sun called a nod to the Minutemen incident at Columbia: The fourth lesson is, in......

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (directed by Mary Jordan): It's not such an uncommon story—a misunderstood, sensitive, artistic boy moves from the sticks to Manhattan seeking creative and sexual freedom. However, Mary Jordan's documentary, Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, paints Jack Smith, the avant-garde photographer, filmmaker, actor and performance artist as hardly a common person. Influential on such filmmakers as Federico Fellini, John Waters and Andy Warhol, Smith's most notorious movie......

Almost six months after a group of Columbia students rushed the stage when Minutemen Project leader Jim Gilchrist was speaking, the university has imposed sentences against the protesting students. The Columbia Spectator reports the students received "disciplinary warnings" which will be on their transcripts until the end of 2008. Monique Dols, a General Studies student who spoke to the media last fall, said, "It's a light punishment, it's a slap on the wrist. It's a......

After its story about how the NYPD spied on organizations for at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, the NY Times reports that the city wants to keep NYPD records sealed, in fear that the media will "fixate upon and sensationalize them." Well, that's probably too late. The Times also reports that the city is worried the sealed information will hurt its "ability to defend itself in lawsuits over mass arrests."......

With the sun out, the temperatures high, one can only think of one thing-- what's going on in the World of the -ist's? Bostonist dug deep to uncover Barack Obama's unpaid parking tickets, their Governor's latest ethical lapse, and a plagarizing sports writer. Chicagoist had everything in twos: two views on having the Olympics, losing two members of their Super Bowl team, and two music festivals. DCist put their noses in legal books as......

The first time I saw Daily Show correspondent John Oliver was at the UCB during their Best Comedy in the Universe Festival. During his half hour set, there was no thirty-second period where the audience wasn't laughing uproariously. From that alone I can say that Oliver is a tremendous talent and I can't wait to see him take the mic once again. Which of your Daily Show assignments has been your favorite thus far? I......

A reader snapped this picture from the protest against the NYU College Republicans' "Find the Illegal Immigrant" game in Washington Square Park today. College Republicans president Sarah Chambers denied the event was racist and told the Washington Square News, "The event will open up both vocally and physically the issue of illegal immigration." She added, "The media response was much larger then I expected - the NYU response was no." NYU's response was, "Our......

Federal Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. banned the police's ability to routinely videotape demonstrations yesterday. Haight found the NYPD violated Handschu v. Special Services Division, a 1971 decision that established "consent decree"; Haight wrote in his decision, "Solely politically based investigations are flatly prohibited by the guidelines. In other words, there must always be a legitimate law enforcement purpose - having a purpose of investigating political activity exclusively for its own sake is never......

It's a new semester at City College and it'll be a new round of fighting over a campus center's "Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur" sign. The Daily News reports that City Councilman Charles Barron re-placed the controversial sign for the City College NY community center and vows to re-place it if it's taken down again:"We are here to say to the City University that we have a right to self-determination, that we have a right to free......

Remember when Rivington Street was painted all sorts of colors for a musical being filmed? Well, it looks like the movie won't be in in theaters until September, but the trailer is already floating around out there. Check it out: We don't see any shots of the colorful LES in there, but we're pretty sure we caught a glimpse of Bono (who apparently has a role). The love story is set in the 1960s during......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting at the Turkey Nest Tavern in Williamsburg at 4:41am, a police officer struck by car in Farragut, and an armed robbery in Central park at 8:23pm last night. Starbucks is opening its second location in Cobble Hill, and local cafe owners aren't happy: “The rest of us will be killed... because Starbucks’ plan is to saturate every neighborhood until its coffee shop is the last one standing.”......

Yesterday, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger sent a letter explaining the school's response to the incident where student protesters and members of the Minutemen Project got into an unseemly brawl during a College Republican sponsored talk. The full text of the letter is after the jump; here's the pertinent part about punishment:Third, there has been a comprehensive review of security at student events. In this case, an examination of the facts shows that Columbia......

Columbia-Minutemen fracas from a few weeks ago continues to simmer, as the Minutemen now want to sue the university and members of the Chicano Caucus. The Columbia Spectator reports (on what the Bwog mentioned last week) that the group wants to sue "for discrimination and defamation of character during the Minuteman events and protests at the beginning of this month and in subsequent public interviews." While the suit hasn't been filed just yet, the......

One Koran in the toilet is bad. A second Koran in the toilet, you got problems. Or a rash of copy cats Koran dunkings. At Pace University's downtown location, a Koran was found in a toilet at the library's bathrooom - the second Koran-in-the-toilet incident in recent weeks and the fourth hate incident spanning the NYC and Westchester campuses. Pace is investigating the incident, but the Council on American-Islamic Relations' NY chapter issued a statement......

Members of Columbia University's Chicano Caucus and International Socialist Organization had a press conference yesterday to discuss the fallout from last week's clash with the Minutemen group on campus. The protesters said they didn't mean to stop the Minutemen's head from speaking when they went on stage, but, as the Chicano Caucus' political chair reasoned, "We are sure that if the Ku Klux Klan came to campus, African Americans would be there to protest. So......

The Columbia Spectator reports that a person is clearly seen kicking a protester from last week's chaotic Minutemen even at Columbia. Video shown on Univision - and later posted on YouTube - shows a Minuteman supporter wearing a dark baseball cap kicking a protester, who was bleeding. And the Spectator points out that he looks a lot like the man seen in this Village Voice picture from a Minutemen protest in the city in......

Wednesday night's clash between immigration "watchdog" group the Minutemen and Columbia University student protesters has even pulled Mayor Bloomberg into the frazy. During his radio show, Mayor Bloomberg said university president Lee Bollinger has "got to get his hands around this. There are too many incidents at the same school where people get censored." Case in point: School of International Affairs needing to uninvite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from speaking because the school couldn't coordinate......

Protest is alive and well at Columbia, though it's still a far cry from 1968. Yesterday evening, Jim Gilchrist, head of the Minutemen, the "citizens' vigilance operation" that patrols the Mexican border in California, was invited to speak at Columbia University. But pretty much as soon as he got on stage, a group of student got on stage and protested - and then all hell broke loose. The Bwog liveblogged the event, and here's......

The men's hockey team at Columbia has been suspended by the school's administration until next January over language used in a flier the team put up on campus. According to the Columbia Spectator The controversy began when the team distributed fliers in early September with the phrase "Stop being a pussy." On Sept. 21, the presidents of Columbia's four undergraduate councils sent a letter to several administrators asking them to take action regarding the......

- Really? NYU banned showing those controversial Danish cartoons at a campus talk called "Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons?" - Four teens are being charged in that NYU hit and run. - The Post and one spicy divorce lawyer go after the restaurant they like to call "Toxic on the Green." - Thinking about how to use, and not use, the McCarren Pool. - Shockingly,Eliot Spitzer doesn't think Pataki shows "leadership." And? -......