Leave Dianne Feinstein AloneWhat is feminism for if not to protect the right of 89-year-old multimillionaires to keep their jobs at the public’s expense?
Democratic Money Mobilizing to Win SenateIt will still be an uphill battle for Democrats, but they have a decent shot at giving a new president a fighting change to succeed.
Brooklyn Judges Mockable, StalkableA group of Brooklyn judges are fighting to keep their cushy parking spaces, which they say are necessary to keep them safe. Some wacky environmentalists think that’s laughable.
company town
Jeb’s JobFINANCE
• Lehman landed former Florida governor Jeb Bush as an adviser. Makes you wonder which bank will get the honor of hiring W. when the “first MBA president” finally steps down. [Deal Journal/WSJ]
• Does Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis’s move to save Countrywide, the largest mortgage lender in the United States, make him a modern-day J.P. Morgan? [MarketWatch]
• John Dyment, the global head of Deutsche Bank’s hedge-fund unit, jumped ship for Shumway Capital Partners, a hedge fund based in Greenwich. [TheStreet.com]
company town
Giuliani Asks Press to Back Off His Third WifeMEDIA
• Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani asks the media to lay off his wife. Media laughs to itself and continues writing. [WCBS-TV via Mediabistro]
• In an effort to make viewers stick around for commercials, Fox will experiment with running short programming clips during the break. [WSJ]
• The entire Harper’s archive is online, a cornerstone of the magazine’s relaunched Website. [Harper’s]
intel
Bush-Cousin Judge Won’t Be Investigated for Car Crash That Killed New Haven CopA federal judge who is George W. Bush’s cousin killed a New Haven, Connecticut, police officer in a traffic accident in October, and this afternoon New Haven police decided not to pursue criminal charges. Judge John Mercer Walker Jr., a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, is first cousin to former President George H.W. Bush they share a grandfather, George Herbert Walker and first cousin once removed to the current president. On October 17, in what a New Haven police spokeswoman termed “difficult weather conditions,” the 66-year-old Walker was driving an SUV that struck 38-year-old Officer Daniel Picagli, a seventeen-year veteran of the New Haven police department.
the morning line
Cops and Yoko
• The NYPD is developing a scary trend in the people-killing arena. Another man, this one in the Bronx, was fatally shot by the cops last night — four times and at very close range, witnesses say. He was armed, at least. [amNY]
• Both tabloids lead with Yoko Ono’s extortion news, which we reported yesterday; today’s added value is the following tidbit: The driver claims that rock’s First Widow is just trying to stop him from proceeding with a valid sexual-harassment case against her. Eww. [NYP]
• It’s hard to top If I Did It, so Judith Regan’s next book project is a “biographical novel” about Mickey Mantle. Tame enough, except it calls Billy Martin a rapist and includes fictional scenes of Mantle sexin’ Marilyn Monroe, who just “lies there staring at him.” [NYDN]
• The Times continues its disturbing — and sometimes darkly hilarious — series on New York’s deranged small-town justice. In this one, a judge sentences young male cons to “judge’s probation,” which involves them hanging out with him, driving his car, and, in one case, moving in with him. [NYT]
• And Peter Boyle is dead at 71. Judging from the headlines, the press seems intent on remembering this fantastic character actor (one of John Lennon’s best friends, by the way) as the dad on Everybody Loves Raymond, to which we can only respond: Go rent Taxi Driver. Now. [WNBC]
intel
Lawyers’ Group Seeks Inquiry Into Brooklyn’s Anti-Immigrant Author-JudgeWhen we saw yesterday that Brooklyn judge John Wilson wrote a children’s book, Hot House Flowers, that reads as a not-so subtle dis on immigrants — “dandelions,” in his telling, barge into a happy hothouse and proceed to spawn legions of weedlike children who take up all the soil and drink all the water — we thought, Well, that’s not going to sell in New York, like, at all. But poor sales may be the least of “Border in the Court” Wilson’s problems. The Legal Aid Society of New York just told its staff that it is requesting an inquiry by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct into whether His Honor can be trusted to rule impartially in cases involving immigrants. Perhaps Wilson will soon have more time to tend his own garden?
— Jon Steinberg
Judge Is in Immig Groups’ Bad Books [NYDN]
