Jared Kushner has quickly acquired all the trappings of a Manhattan power player — the real estate, the bold-faced wife, and the vanity publication. But he can't quite seem to leave New Jersey behind. The long-running Kushner family beef with the New Jersey Star-Ledger seems to have played a role in New York Observer editor Tom McGeveran's decision to quit last week. McGeveran cited a side project (a "publication," he told us) as the reason for his departure. But Observer staffers tell us that Kushner — a hands-on publisher who clashed with previous editor Peter Kaplan — wanted to go after the Star-Ledger, leading to a blowup that tipped McGeveran over the edge.

When the inimitable CNBC reporter Charlie Gasparino announced the title of his new crisis epic, The Sellout: How Three Decades of Wall Street Greed and Government Mismanagement Destroyed the Global Financial System, to his friend Teddy Forstmann, the financier was skeptical. "So what you're saying," Ted said, "is that somewhere along the line, Wall Street as an institution had some principles to sell out?" He had a point. Crisis-book connoisseur Moe Tkacik caught up with Gasparino as he obsessively checked his Amazon rankings today to find out more.

Ray Kelly is a technology junkie. New York’s police Commissioner uses a Kindle for a “significant part” of his daily reading. “I read the newspapers, every newspaper, in the morning, early on,” Kelly told us at the Library Lions gala last night. He also reads online. “In my car, too, with the Internet, we’re able to do that,” he said. How does one read the Internet in one’s car? “We have a terminal in the car. So I do a lot of reading,” Kelly replied. Of course. Let's hope he has a driver, because surfing the web while driving has got to be as distracting as texting is.

View more in our Party Lines slideshow.

Ivanka and her mother were on The View this morning promoting whatever it is they promote. They were on there for like five seconds before Elisabeth Hasselbeck's beady eyes zeroed in on the newly wedded heiress's ring finger and found it shockingly bare. Where was Ivanka's wedding ring?!?! she asked. How would Ivanka possibly keep it in her head that she was inextricably bound to another human being (or maybe not inextricably, exactly, but bound enough that extrication would require two teams of lawyers) without a giant yoke of metal around her finger to weigh her down, reminding her of this fact? Ivanka attempted to explain: "I was engaged for three months and then I've been married around eight days, so it's sitting on my bedside table." A likely story. Clearly, this marriage is doomed.

Ivanka Trump Forgets Her Wedding Bling [People]

The crack reporting team over at Guest of a Guest is on the case of the latest socialite scandal. See, 'mocialite Paul Johnson-Calderon has been accused of breaking into the fancy apartment of Cleo Vauban, an ally of his BFF turned enemy Jules Kirby, at 1 Union Square last week. This is after he was caught on tape allegedly stealing a girl's handbag at a club, and accused by Kirby of stealing her BlackBerry at some point or other. (He says he didn't.) Anyway, the alleged recent break-in apparently included some vandalism, and the whole thing was caught on a security camera. Our best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw the whole thing on tape at 31 Flavors last night. We hear it's pretty serious.

Paul Johnson-Calderon Can’t Catch A Break With Security Cameras; Gets Caught Vandalizing Cleo Vauban’s Union Square Apartment Building! [Guest of a Guest]

We know we said this earlier, but it bears repeating: We were very proud of you all this Halloween. As Saturday night progressed, a larger and larger percentage of the people on the street downtown were stumbling around in awesome costumes — such that by two in the morning, probably 80 percent of the people out and about were dressed up. Riding the L train home was like being an extra in a psychedelic combination horror-porno flick. So bravo, everybody! That said, there were some people who didn't behave — and the Post's crime blotter is full of them. Apparently, All Hallow's Eve this year was the time to randomly injure someone you don't know, for no reason.

Despite an early outbreak among celebrities, the swine-flu pandemic seems to in large part be taking a bigger toll on the poorer masses. The people who don't have health insurance, whose financial situation compels them to work even when they are sick, who ride the germ-infested subway, and who are forced to navigate the unapologetic loogie-hockers of Chinatown every day are the ones for whom H1N1 is shaping up to be a real threat. But wealthier New Yorkers are not off the hook.

As the State Commission on Public Integrity begins an inquiry into Governor David Paterson's allegedly unethical attendance at a World Series game, it's worth recalling Mayor Rudy Giuliani's exponentially more long-lasting, fruitful, and unethical relationship with the Yankees. Giuliani was always at Yankee games, but as the Village Voice's Wayne Barrett reported a couple of years ago, he only paid for "some of his tickets." Furthermore, Giuliani and his friends were "repeatedly given Yankee jackets, caps, autographed balls, and other gifts," and Giuliani even received personally engraved World Series rings worth tens of thousands of dollars while he was in office. Mayor Bloomberg attends plenty of Yankee games as well, but he pays for his own seats, every time, obviously.

The Yankees' Clean-Up Man [VV via Glenn Thrush/Politico]

We don't know what Connecticut senator and Democratic albatross Joe Lieberman is up to right now, but Machiavelli would probably approve.

Here's Lieberman, on Face the Nation this past Sunday, talking about filibustering a health-care-reform bill that includes a public option:

I feel so strongly about the creation of another government health insurance entitlement, of the government going into the health insurance business, I think it's such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single Senator to stop a final vote.

But then there's this story from The Hill, last night:

Sen. Joe Lieberman has reached a private understanding with Majority Leader Harry Reid that he will not block a final vote on healthcare reform, according to two sources briefed on the matter.

Robert Pattinson tells Vanity Fair that he and Kristen Stewart were never an offscreen item, and Stewart confirms, "It's so retarded. We're characters in this comic book." She also vents about the woes of being a celebrity, and is sick of people comparing her to Angelina Jolie. Talk about problems. Meanwhile, director Catherine Hardwicke swears there's a "nervous attraction" between Stewart and Pattinson. Not that she'd say that to hype an upcoming sequel or anything. Lindsay Lohan's getting over Samantha Ronson like any other starlet would: by making out with Gerard Butler. The duo locked lips on the dance floor at the Sol Kerzner Mazagan Beach Resort launch in Morocco, then left together in the wee hours of the morning. Kate Hudson clarifies that her new ring has nothing to do with an engagement to A-Rod, but she is having a tough time going off booze for an upcoming movie role. And Jude Law has yet to meet his month-old daughter, but he did manage to hook up with a "hot blonde" at the Box on Saturday night.

Last Sunday, Times columnist Maureen Dowd blithely unleashed one of her smugly scathing criticisms against the Catholic Church for what she and many other critics perceive as their mistreatment of women, particularly nuns. In doing so, she pushed our fresh, new archbishop, Timothy Dolan, over the edge. Last week, he composed an editorial accusing the paper of anti-Catholicism and submitted it to their op-ed page. "It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime," he wrote, going on to list a number of articles on religion he perceived as having an anti-Catholic bias. One concerned child sexual abuse in Brooklyn's Orthodox community. Another was about a Franciscan brother who had a child. A third story explained the Church's decision to welcome Anglicans into the fold.

Election Day is finally here! Time to fulfill your one civic responsibility besides jury duty, which you usually lie your way out of anyway. Sure, maybe you haven't really been paying attention to the issues as closely as you could have — Someone is fat, right? And Mayor Bloomberg is rich — but you're going to go pull the lever because, damn it, patriots fought and died so that you could live in a representative democracy, and you're not going to let them down. That's thoughtful of you, but don't bother, says Times ethicist Randy Cohen.