Tickling kingpin Eric Massa is jobless, although he’s still affecting Democratic politics.  How should we remember the Southern Tier’s former federal conduit as he prematurely transitions back to private life?  The answer is “As a left-wing fanatic who also turned out to be a lowlife perv,”...

Take off your Klan hoods and pay attention, my fellow conservatives: we’re in trouble.  To wit, Douglas Turner has found us out.  It’s hard to get through The Buffalo News copy-churner’s columns, as his output is as boring as it is unpleasant.  But disregard how he’s a student of the Rod...

Liberals tolerate any lifestyle choice, unless that choice is smoking.  That little trail of fumes emanating from the lit end of a smooth, satisfying, delicious cigarette or rolled-up-phonebook-sized cigar frightens them far more than, say, radical Islam or unsustainable deficits. As evidence, the fun...

We need government-funded trains to facilitate travel across the country.  On top of that, their construction will spur financial recovery.  That’s because it’s 1936.  Regrettably, when it comes to fixing and administering the economy, we’re still coping with a Depression mentality; further,...

Can you prove what you’re selling is yours?  Wait: why should you have to if you didn’t do anything wrong?  You’re not on trial to establish the chain of ownership for any wristwatch or DVD player you put in hock.  But you may get legally hassled anyway depending on where you are.  To wit,...

Barack Obama wants something.  Scott Brown doesn’t.  Brown wins.  Yes, last week’s special election provided the most awesome result of all time. But it could delightfully be topped.  The one thing more fun for conservatives than the phrase “Republican Senator Number 41″...

Guess the Hate Crime isn’t a fun game.  But it’s unfortunately being played in Erie County.  Consider two recent infamous attacks within the jurisdiction.  In both, it goes without saying that the victims deserve infinite sympathy while the perpetrators should face ample time in a cell...

Thanks to Game Change, political gossip is currently more fun than the celebrity kind.  The book about 2008’s presidential campaign has created a remarkable stir before it’s even for sale, as everyone on the outside who’s interested in politics eagerly anticipates reading about what...

City Hall can’t run the economy properly.  City Hall can barely run City Hall.  Buffalo has not quite been dragged into financial utopia by its government; that’s especially seen in the folly of redistributing our money among companies of the bureaucracy’s choosing.  But at least one...

It’s nice to agree with your congressperson every so often.  Concurring with one’s representative makes one feel, well, represented.  That’s true even if accord happens for some as rarely as seemingly every area of the country except Buffalo gets walloped with Christmas-week snow.  Anything...

The best summary of the social disease factory called the Woodstock Festival was offered by The Who.  The unenthusiastic participants’ perfectly crude, decidedly and awesomely not safe for work reaction both during and after the squalid affair effectively summarizes the faux idyllic colossal mud bath. ...

You can learn everything about an individual’s nature by observing how he acts toward customer service personnel. More specifically, anyone who aims unprovoked nastiness at a waiter or cab driver has inadvertently revealed himself to be at his core a crotch of a person. That brings us to Gentleman...

It’s bad enough that we live a dying, miserable city… can we really handle the fact that our state is the unhappiest in the entire union? No, a new study reports the unhappiest state in the union is our very own Empire State. Apparently, we don’t love New York. The study compared self-described...

The City of Buffalo would like you to dine out. Please. But kindly only do so at sanctioned eateries that the local government has blessed with cash. The Buffalo News recently highlighted the specific flaws of a loan program that removes “free” from markets: City Hall lending to business...

I’m going to start smoking just to make sure I can never work for Amherst. I don’t know if my broad skill set ranging from a mediocre typing speed to the principled unwillingness to steal co-workers’ lunches from the break room fridge would make me eligible for town employment. Nonetheless,...

If the rents increased organically in an improving area, class warfare warriors would moan about how gentrification was driving out the proles.  Alternately, when the government prices out the very people who toiled to made city sections livable, it’s apparently equality in practice.  Many Buffalonians...