• Oh, no! Gay-marrying New Paltz mayor Jason West, not yet 30 and the closest the upstate hamlet has to a national celebrity, has been defeated by an ex-ally, 514 to 379. West reportedly alienated the town with a “heavy-handed” governing style. Well, he is a puppeteer by trade. [NYT]
• This should keep conspiracy theorists occupied for the next decade: A laptop with “sensitive” 9/11 info, including photos of newly unearthed human remains, has been stolen from a medical examiner’s SUV parked next to ground zero. [NYP]
• Bloomberg’s Spanish is improving. The mayor, whose tenuous grasp of the language was a reliable joke for years, delivered a ten-minute speech in Spanish during his Mexico visit and even took questions. [amNY]
• The Daily News catches Con Ed in a bizarre practice: The utility giant is hiring limo drivers to guard electrified grates and manholes. The drivers (sorry, “site-safety personnel”) simply park next to the stray-voltage area and sit there, sometimes for days. On it, indeed. [NYDN]
• And some New Jersey children tuning in to the Disney Channel were exposed to an accidentally aired bit of hard-core porn this week. The program they thought they’d see? “Handy Manny,” about “a bilingual Latino handyman and his talking tools.” The cable company, Comcast, had no comment. [WNBC]
