Two Buffalo narcotics detectives are under investigation by the Erie County district attorney's office for allegedly forging a court time slip, authorities confirmed Tuesday.

After years of halting and unsuccessful efforts by the Town of Amherst to sell the fertilizer produced by its sewage treatment plant, the Town Board finally approved a deal Monday to sell the black pellets in bulk to a Virginia-based fertilizer producer.

Mayor Byron W. Brown's sketchy plan to overhaul the city's economic development process has raised more questions than answers, some lawmakers complained Tuesday.

WHEATFIELD -- The state Department of Environmental Conservation announced Tuesday that it considers reports of old ammunition in fill used for a town drainage project “unsubstantiated” and is closing its investigation.

WASHINGTON -- And so, it seems, Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown and Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand will live happily ever after.

The Buffalo Retired Teachers Association is awarding four $1,000 college scholarships to 2010 graduates of the Buffalo Public Schools.

First AM&A, now the Lafayette Hotel.

Rocco Termini – for all the projects he’s completed, with these big ones, he’s become the Emily Litella of Buffalo Development.

You know, ACORN really suffered a black eye when James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles posed as a pimp and prostitute and ACORN workers in Baltimore nevertheless offered to help Giles become a first-time homebuyer under an ACORN program. After all, those Baltimore ACORN workers quite clearly were willing to aid and abet an illegal activity. As O’Keefe employer Andrew Breitbart explained in the Washington Times,

When filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN – the nation’s foremost “community organizers” – dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for – and getting – help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice.

Now, I’ve read the transcript enough to see that O’Keefe wasn’t posing as a pimp. He was posing as a law student – a graduate student – who was trying to help Giles ostensibly escape an abusive pimp and strike out on her own.

It’s also been revealed now that O’Keefe did not “dress as a pimp”. This is a significant part of the story, because ACORN was defunded and demonized based on the fact that its employees were either so stupid or so corrupt as to assist a white kid dressed in full Blaxploitation pimp outfit and his bitch to deal with taxes and buy a house.

And that meme – O’Keefe dressed as a pimp – was repeated everywhere. As BradBlog explains, it was cited by the Baltimore Sun, CNN, the New York Times,
the New York Post, the Philadelphia Daily News, and NPR, to name a few.

Just this week, the Brooklyn DA concluded its investigation arising out of the O’Keefe entrapment of a Brooklyn ACORN office, and found no criminality, adding that they “edited the tape to meet their agenda“.

Yes, why are we reading transcripts, exactly? How do I know that the transcript is accurate? The full and unedited videos exist, but Breitbart and O’Keefe have never released them anywhere, at any time. The public outcry and outrage over this alleged scandal last year helped to decimate an organization that existed to assist the less fortunate. All based on lies and exaggerations, it turns out.

It would be the simplest thing in the world for those unedited videos to simply be uploaded to YouTube. They won’t.

Why?

Andrew Breitbart himself explains the whole thing:

An unhinged, palpably nervous liar. You can see his mouth going dry. Look at all of those entreaties to show the video and answer questions under oath and whatnot. That’s hardly the point. All he has to do is post the unedited videos, and he hasn’t. He won’t. It would be too damning to him.

And the question that I have here has to do with messaging – the right lied and bullshat this entire story, but it won the relevant news cycles. Here we are in the next calendar year, finding out that the whole thing is more Borat than Woodward. It’s more Ali G than Bernstein. It’s a lie. It’s being an agent provocateur to entrap someone into doing something silly.

Why didn’t the mainstream press examine this more closely? Was it to avoid seeming too “liberal”, or was it just about money and sales? Why didn’t it press Breitbart to reveal the full, unedited tape before running their “dressed as a pimp and prostitute” stories?

As it happens, neither ACORN nor any of its employees has so much as received a summons for any of this. None of this was criminal – all of it is political. I have huge questions about why ACORN was targeted, and why O’Keefe and Giles went with the whore story. I suspect it has everything to do with a ham-handed, anachronistic sheltered upper-middle-class white kid racism.

Over the past few weeks, people argued over whether someone Tweeted whether there were hostages during the non-shooter non-event at a UB Library. The bigger question I have is why a conservative propaganda outfit can put out blatant lies and not be called on it until a half a year later.

The American political left needs to get its shit together and more rapidly and more effectively combat this sort of half-assed misinformation.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Breitbart Forced to ‘Apologize’ for ‘Apparently’ Lying About ACORN ‘Pimp’ Story During CPAC Meltdown (bradblog.com)
• Video: Breitbart Admits O’Keefe Didn’t Dress As a Pimp (trueslant.com)
• Video: Breitbart Admits O’Keefe Didn’t Dress As a Pimp (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Is Breitbart ‘the pimp?’ (crooksandliars.com)

Last week Nickel City Chef celebrated its first
show of its 2010 series. This competition featured a secret ingredient made by a homegrown, hometown food manufacturer: Sorrento.

Ricotta cheese took center stage as Nickel City Chef Adam Goetz of Sample Restaurant took on Challenging Chef Ross Warhol of the Chautauqua Institution’s Athenaeum Hotel. Both chefs have a penchant for molecular gastronomy techniques, and each of them delivered three spectacular dishes. Warhol’s warm Ricotta Plaque with shaved vegetable salad, chorizo vinaigrette and tomato marmalade cornet was a show stopper, but Goetz’s counter with a stunning and ambitious Ricotta Tasting really blew the judges away. They had a very difficult time choosing a winner, but in the end, Nickel City Chef Adam Goetz took home the trophy!

Nickel City Chef’s 2010 season has just begun, with a total of eight shows scheduled through the month of June. This Sunday you can catch Nickel City Chef JJ Richert of Torches versus Challenging Chef Carmelo
Raimondi of Carmelo’s in Lewiston.

This show is almost sold out, but you can get tickets to it or any of the other Nickel City events by clicking here.

Nickel City Cheftakes place in one of the
city’s best kept secrets – a fully restored turn-of-the-century warehouse on Buffalo’s West Side, the home of Artisan Kitchens & Baths.

Completely outfitted with two competition-worthy kitchens, this unique setting is the ideal location for this exciting hyper-local cooking competition. At each event, a Nickel City Chef and his or her challenger (each representing a locally-owned independent business) must complete three dishes in under an hour with each dish showcasing a secret ingredient. They employ classic and modern techniques in order to demonstrate their skills and personal cooking philosophy. All of Nickel City Chef’s secret ingredients always come from right here in Western New York!

A panel of professionals act as judges to determine which chef prepares the most technically perfect, creative and delicious cuisine. The audience enjoys catered snacks and delivers their own vote for their favorite chef of the day. With seating for nearly 200, Nickel City Chef events provide guests with an exciting, uniquely WNY cooking experience. With four cameras mounted in our pro kitchens and over a dozen flat screen monitors, there isn’t a bad seat in the house.

Nickel City Chef is a Feed Your Soul.

Yes, it's still winter. More snow flurries are in the forecast today and tonight, with an afternoon high just above freezing, dipping into the lower 20s overnight. Thursday and Friday are likely to inspire thoughts of spring. Sunshine is expected, especially on Friday. Temperatures will still feel like winter, though. Highs both days are expected to be only in the mid 30s.

Keith McShea is reporting live from Buffalo State during the second day of boys basketball's championship week at Buffalo State. Follow the Section VI action at the Prep Talk blog.

Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda Superintendent Mark Mondanaro announced tonight he is returning his $7,000, or 4 percent, pay raise, hoping to improve teacher contract talks he said are now headed for impasse even as the money-troubled district proposes cuts in teachers, administrators and some classes.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand says Governor Paterson should step down if reports by the New York Times are true.

From temporary road closures facing commuters to myriad potential disruptions for homeowners, Town of Tonawanda residents learned tonight what to expect when a massive sewer replacement project begins this summer.