Gov. Chris Christie

[Crafty_Dog]

Life retains its ability to surprise:

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie just spoke out against the failed drug war in his inauguration speech! http://bit.ly/1f3Q1BE

[ccp]

Thanks to Christie we are only number two among states in the Democrat party extortion racket:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Media/Slideshow/2014/01/28/10-Worst-States-Taxes-2014?page=1

[Crafty_Dog]

Christie Knew About Lane Closings as They Happened, Ex-Ally Says
The Port Authority official who personally oversaw the lane closings on the George Washington Bridge in the scandal now swirling around Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Friday that the governor knew about the lane closings when they were happening, and that he had the evidence to prove it.
In a letter released by his lawyer, the official, David Wildstein, a high school friend of Mr. Christie’s who was appointed with the governor’s blessing at the Port Authority, which controls the bridge, described the order to close the lanes as “the Christie administration’s order” and said “evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the Governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference” three weeks ago.
“Mr. Wildstein contests the accuracy of various statements that the Governor made about him and he can prove the inaccuracy of some,” the letter added.
The letter marked the first signal that Mr. Christie was aware of the closings, something he repeatedly denied during a two-hour press conference earlier this month.
In early January, documents revealed that a deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, Bridget Anne Kelly, had sent an email to Mr. Wildstein saying, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” the town at the New Jersey end of the bridge, where Mr. Christie’s aides had pursued but failed to receive an endorsement from the mayor.
Mr. Christie has steadfastly denied that he knew before this month that anyone in his administration was responsible for the lane closings, and his administration has tried to portray it as the actions of a rogue staff member.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/nyregion/christie-bridge.html?emc=edit_na_20140131

[ccp]

Though they try Fox cable and talk radio simply cannot balance the liberal media bias.

I think it clear Christie knew of the bridge closings.  I do believe there is a chance he may have been told the reason was for a "traffic study" and did not know the real reason for the closing, but on the face of it, is certainly stretches reasonable credibility. 

As one who "leans Republican", though I no longer call myself one, I certainly do find it disheartening how the national candidate Democrats always seem to slip out of any SIMILAR scrutiny when they are caught red handed.  Even OBVIOUS lying before an election does not bring the same media outrage.  A simple stupid email is all it takes it appears to bring someone down but months of making up fabricated stories and lies and obvious cover-ups means nothing.   
The left controls 90% of the media. 

And most people either don't keep up with the news, don't care or just want the paychecks I guess.  It really is astonishing when we see the occasional reporter going onto the street and asking random people what they think about certain current events or history etc and not only do they not have a clue they make up answers.  To think people like this vote.....

It really is who controls the hearts and minds (and pocketbooks) of many of the people that makes all the difference.   No Republican is on the national scene as yet who can do this.  Walker sounded good.   The Ex Senator from Mass. who lost to Warren was good a few night ago.  I agree with Crafty Huckabee is worth another look.  Walker from Wisconsin was good recently.  Maybe Jindal?  My nephew works very closely with him.


*****Christie going on offensive about accusation
Associated Press
By ANGELA DELLI SANTI and PHILIP ELLIOTT 16 hours ago
     
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is going on the offensive after a former loyalist said he has evidence the Republican governor knew more than he has admitted about an apparently politically motivated traffic jam ordered by one of his staffers last year.

GOP ponders scandal's toll on Christie's future Associated Press
NJ Democrats combine traffic jam probes Associated Press
Lawyer: Evidence contradicts Christie on closures Associated Press
Lawyer: NJ probe of Christie office can proceed Associated Press
10 things you need to know today: February 1, 2014 The Week (RSS)

The governor's political team sent an email Saturday to donors, along with columnists and pundits who might be in a position to defend Christie, bashing the man Christie put in a top post at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the accusations the man's lawyer made in a letter Friday.

The email says the former Port Authority official, David Wildstein, "will do and say anything to save David Wildstein."

The action from Christie's supporters comes as Republicans are debating the implications of the scandal that this year has surrounded the administration of the possible 2016 presidential contender. It was sent at a moment when Christie is in the spotlight with his state hosting Sunday's Super Bowl.

Christie's team criticizes the initial report Friday about lawyer Alan Zegas' letter as "sloppy reporting," noting that Wildstein did not present any proof to back up the claims that his lawyer made. The note also denies that Christie knew about the traffic jam or its political motive until after it was over and bashes Wildstein on a variety of fronts, characterizing him as a litigious teenager, a controversial mayor and for his past career as an anonymous political blogger.

The email, headlined "5 Things You Should Know about the Bombshell That's Not a Bombshell" was obtained by The Associated Press and confirmed by Christie's office. It was first reported by Politico.

A lawyer for Wildstein, who was the first of four people with Christie connections to lose a job because of the scandal, did not immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press on Saturday.

The implications of the scandal for Christie have become a source of debate not just for Democrats but also for Republicans.

Some said the accusations could derail hopes of Christie running for president if he can't shake the scandal soon, while others were quick to express faith in the governor while discrediting his accuser and questioning his motives.

"It's not good for him," said Matt Beynon, a Republican operative who worked on former Sen. Rick Santorum's 2012 presidential campaign and still has him as a client. "The longer the story goes on, the worse it gets for him. If this is still an issue a year from now, he's going to have trouble pulling the trigger. ... Gov. Christie will have to think long and hard about running."

But Ken Langone, a co-founder of Atlanta-based Home Depot Inc. and a staunch Christie supporter, expressed no such reservations.

"I have complete faith and trust that the governor is telling the truth, and I continue to believe that he would be a superb president if he were elected in the future," Langone said.

Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based Republican consultant, agreed that Christie's chances on a national stage won't be harmed so long as he has been honest about what he knew.

"As long as he was telling the truth, he is fine," Mackowiak said. "But if he knew about this, it brings him in directly and adds — potentially — dishonesty to the charges."

Christie, who has kept mostly to the sidelines during the run-up to this year's Super Bowl, which his state is hosting, received a smattering of boos and some cheers during a pre-game ceremony in New York on Saturday. He didn't appear affected by the crowd's reaction during the Times Square ceremony.

As the new head of the Republican Governors Association, Christie's priority this year is raising money for the party's gubernatorial candidates around the country. Republicans maintain that donors are staying loyal to Christie so far.

"My donors are saying they believe what Gov. Christie is saying. They're giving him a lot of rope," said Ray Washburne, who leads the Republican National Committee's fundraising effort.

"He's not raising money for himself," Beynon added. "If you're a donor in Cleveland, you're thinking about (Ohio Gov.) John Kasich and not Chris Christie."

Also Saturday, the lawyer for a state legislative panel investigating the traffic jams said he was confident the probe can continue without impeding a federal criminal investigation.

Reid Schar, special counsel to the panel, said he had discussed the parallel probes with officials from the U.S. Attorney's office Friday and said the committee "would be mindful" not to interfere with the ongoing criminal investigation.

The lawmaker who chairs that panel said Wildstein's new allegations validate the skepticism committee members have expressed throughout the probe, an investigation Christie once referred to as the Democrats' obsession and some state Republicans have called "a witch hunt."

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/2/curl-evidence-exists-that-the-ny-times-is-now-a-gr/

[ccp]

Remember when Ann Coulter was his greatest cheerleader?   How times have changed: 

A BRIDGE TOO FAR-FETCHED

Ann Coulter
By Ann Coulter February 5, 2014 6:31 PM

New Jersey governor Chris Christie deserves to be defended.

The gravamen of the media's case against Christie on Bridgegate seems to be that he is a "bully" -- which I painstakingly gleaned from the fact that the governor is called a "bully" 1 million times a night on MSNBC and in hundreds of blog postings and New York Times reports.

Christie is not a bully. If anything, he's a pansy, a man terrified of the liberal media, of Wall Street, of Silicon Valley, of Obama, of Bruce Springsteen, of Mark Zuckerberg, of Chuck Schumer. It's a good bet he's afraid of his own shadow. (In fairness, his shadow is probably pretty big and scary.) About the only thing Christie doesn't seem afraid of is the buffet at Sizzler.

Even Christie's defenders call him a bully, but in an admiring way. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly recently said of the governor: "One reason Mitt Romney lost to President Obama was that Governor Romney is too much of a gentleman. He apparently did not have the 'fire in the belly' to deliver a knockout blow. But Christie does and is therefore a threat to the Democratic Party."

O'Reilly thinks Christie would have gotten in Obama's face? (I mean other than for a quick make-out session with Obama during Hurricane Sandy?)

By sheer coincidence, that was Christie's job at the 2012 Republican National Convention. As the keynote speaker, it was his assignment to "deliver a knockout blow" to Obama.

Let's see how he did.

In Christie's entire gaseous convention speech, he talked about New Jersey (ad nauseam), his parents, his kids, his upbringing, every tedious detail of his tedious life -- "I coached our sons Andrew and Patrick on the fields of Mendham, and ... I watched with pride as our daughters Sarah and Bridget marched with their soccer teams in the Labor Day parade."

Just before I dozed off, I seem to remember Christie sharing his seven-layer dip recipe.

The guy whose role it was to attack the president mentioned Obama exactly one time. Once. And even then, not by name.

Here is Christie the Lion-Hearted taking the fight to Obama: "You see, Mr. President, real leaders do not follow polls. Real leaders change polls."

And that's how Christie bravely threw down the gauntlet to Obama on Benghazi, on Obamacare, on skyrocketing unemployment, on crony capitalism, on astronomical government spending and so on. He said: "Real leaders do not follow polls."

Accusing a politician of following polls is the biggest cliche in politics after "He's dividing us!" In Obama's case, it isn't even true. Would that he followed polls! If he did, we never would have gotten Obamacare.

Of course, there wasn't much time for Christie to talk about Obama, because the main theme of his convention speech was: Chris Christie, Augustus Corpulus.

He said "I" 37 times and "me" eight times, breaking Kim Kardashian's old record for a single tweet. He only mentioned our actual nominee (Mitt Romney) seven times -- in order to tell us how we were all going to have to sacrifice and make hard choices, and Romney was just the man to tell America the bad news and make us all suffer.

I suppose Christie considered it more than sufficient to announce that he, personally, supported Romney: "If you're willing to fight with me for Mitt Romney, I will fight with you."

He -- Chris Christie! -- supported Romney. What more could voters want?

It was as if Christie had sent his speech to MSNBC for pre-approval.

And it's not just one godawful speech. Christie's daily checklist appears to consist of two items: (1) Suck up to liberals. (2) Ask waiter for more bread.

After a 30-minute conversation with Sen. Chuck Schumer last fall, Christie capitulated to the Democrats' need for 30 million more voters by directing his temporary Senate appointee to vote for the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill. Schumer considered Christie so impotent that he immediately leaked the news that he had buffaloed Christie on amnesty in a single phone call.

The people amnesty helps are Democrats, who get multiple millions of new voters, and the soulless rich, who don't care about the country and don't care about the culture. They just want cheap labor.

Instead of standing up for the long-suffering middle class that is the backbone of the Republican Party -- much less the lower class lionized in so many Bruce Springsteen songs -- Christie sided with Silicon Valley billionaires and Wall Streeters on their servant problem, while also helping Democrats with their demographic problem.

A few months later, Christie doubled down on amnesty by granting in-state tuition to illegal aliens.

There isn't a wall high enough to stop illegal immigrants from sneaking across the border when the reward waiting on the other side is free health care, jobs, driver's licenses and college tuition subsidized by American taxpayers.

But at least Christie no longer has to lie awake at night wondering if Mark Zuckerberg will be his friend.

True, Christie yelled at a few public school teachers, but they richly deserved it.

Taking a page from John McCain, the main targets of Christie's wrath are his fellow Republicans. This has won him the respect of his most crucial constituency, liberal journalists, who have been precisely as loyal to him as they were to McCain.

If Christie looks guilty in Bridgegate, it's not because he's a "bully." It's because he believes lawbreaking is no big deal. Maybe he's hoping his BFF Obama will grant him amnesty.

COPYRIGHT 2014 ANN COULTER*****

[ccp]

I don't know how I could in good conscious support support this guy.  He did to an extant stand up to teachers unions which is a first in the "union thug" state of NJ.  It is unbelievable how powerful they are here.

But  I don't see another single thing that he did that was helpful.   He certainly is no conservative. 

I don't believe he did not know about the GW bridge.  People who know him and his minions know the underlings wouldn't even "go to the bathroom" without his knowledge and permission.  So for him not to have known about the bridge is not believable to me.  He may have been lied to about there being a electronic paper trail (emails) and that was what he was so able to be furious about.   So he could come out and claim he was "lied to".


To me it is all the scandal is the same as Lois Lerner/IRS and her taking the 5th.  These people are caught red handed and their choice is either to be honest and rat out their superiors and thus live the life of being crucified for eternity by the thugs in the party or let the lawyers get them the minimum they can and get a payoff later on when no one is looking or can do anything about it.   What does one choose?   The smaller stick with the carrot or the big stick and suffer forever far more aggresiously (sp?).

Is this the best the Republicans can do?   Way too early, but I hope not.

[G M]

I'm not a fan. If this takes him out of the running, awesome.

Sure, governors from a NE blue state with rino tendencies have been electoral gold in the past for us, but maybe it's time to look past the rino with the BMI of a rhino and the dulcet speaking voice of Tony Soprano.

Just throwing that out there.

[DougMacG]

He is not my favorite, but I am not as negative on Chris Christie as ccp is. (But I don't live there.)  I don't know that he is guilty on this scandal.  Blue (yellow?) state Republican governors are one of two types, either a lean with the wind rino or a true conservative who has learned to soften the edge and turn it down a little to get elected.  I have no idea how Christie would govern as a President on economic or foreign policy.   It makes more sense to me that he be treated as an unknown than as a frontrunner. 

The way he behaved around his reelection exposed his ego over the interests of state or country.  I can't imagine Rubio, Rand Paul or Jindal putting personal gain ahead of public interest, like holding the Senate election a month before his reelection to keep Senate Dem voters away from the Governor race.

Executive experience is one thing.  But direction, results and character matter.  We need the trains not just running on time (lanes open?) but running in the right direction.

[bigdog]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/political-marriage-between-chris-christie-and-president-obama-breaks-up-over-sandy-aid-rift/2014/03/06/070627ae-a47f-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics

Sounds like he is trying make a run for it...

From the article:

“These were never two guys who could sit down in a bar and watch the game on TV,” said former New Jersey governor Richard Codey (D). “The relationship was symbiotic, and now it’s gone.”

Obama’s team has played down talk of a split. “Since the day Hurricane Sandy made landfall, the president has been determined to put politics aside and coordinate with local officials to meet the needs of those Americans who were impacted by the storm,” said Bobby Whithorne, a White House spokesman. “We appreciate Governor Christie’s close coordination during the ongoing recovery, and we hope it will continue.”

[ccp]

"Gayle Kesselman, co-chair of New Jersey Citizens for Immigration Control, said she thought the report would have shown more immigrants coming to New Jersey."

It is an invasion.   It is getting worse.   It is obvious.   Absolutely no enforcement that I am aware of.   Illegals now know this so they have just come out of the closet so to speak.   It is not just the obvious Latins from south of the border, but many thousands from Asia, Africa, Caribbean, Eastern Europe and elsewhere (western Europe and Middle East).  The elites of course tell us this is humane or ultimately good for the economy and therefore good for all Americans.   This is so absurd.  No one represents us. 


*****The Associated Press By  The Associated Press   
on February 01, 2011 at 3:02 PM, updated February 01, 2011 at 3:03 PM

Matt Rainey/The Star-LedgerRamon Gonzalez Solares, of Ewing, sits inside an interview room at the Elizabeth Detention Center, where he had been detained for 6 weeks, in this August 2010 file photo. The illegal immigrant had been in the U.S. since 1985 working in a diner and as a landscaper. He was facing deportation to his native Guatemala.

The number of illegal immigrants in New Jersey has remained largely steady from 2007 to 2010, but a report released Tuesday shows it remains among the states with the highest percentages of undocumented immigrants overall.

An analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of recent U.S. Census figures shows about 6 percent of New Jersey's population is made up of illegal immigrants.

With an estimated 550,000 illegal immigrants, New Jersey ranks fifth among the states with the highest illegal immigrant populations, behind New York, Florida, Texas. California is the state with the highest illegal immigrant population.

New Jersey had about 600,000 illegal immigrants in 2007, according to the study, but the range of estimates is such that the decline is not enough to be statistically significant.

The Pew study also finds New Jersey third among the states with the largest share of illegal immigrants in the work force, behind Texas and California, with illegal immigrants constituting about 8.6 percent of the Garden State's work force. Immigrants represent a higher percentage of working age people than the general population, the study said.

Levels of illegal immigration nationally also remained largely the same. The study found the number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. in 2010 was roughly 11.2 million, a number virtually unchanged from 2009, when the level of illegal immigration declined for the first time in two decades.

More than 70 percent of the nation's foreign born are in this country legally, with illegal immigrants making up about 28 percent of the foreign born population, according to the study, which was based on the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey through March 2010.

Both immigrant advocates and those who favor stricter immigration controls said they were surprised at the findings, and said they thought immigrant communities in New Jersey had been growing at a faster pace.

"We have more people coming, and a bigger population because of more children born here," said Flor Gonzalez, who heads the Plainfield-based Latin American Coalition, a service center for immigrants.

"These immigrants are suffering more because of the lack of work, and they're more afraid now to go to the police and complain about crime, and domestic violence is going up," Gonzalez said.

Gayle Kesselman, co-chair of New Jersey Citizens for Immigration Control, said she thought the report would have shown more immigrants coming to New Jersey.

"I'm surprised there isn't more movement from states like Arizona that have stricter laws on immigration, coming to states like New Jersey which are more lax, and don't do anything about illegal immigration," she said.

[Crafty_Dog]

The invitation arrived by email, bearing the seal of the State of New Jersey and the name of its new governor, Chris Christie. It asked a select group of Muslim leaders to break the daily Ramadan fast at Mr. Christie’s home, and began with a traditional Muslim salutation.
From Our Advertisers

“Assalamu Alaikum (Peace be with you),” the greeting, from summer 2010, read. “Wishing you a happy and blessed Ramadan.”

With the gathering, at an evening meal known as Iftar, Mr. Christie opened what Muslim leaders recall as a period of exceptional warmth between the state’s sizable Muslim community and a prominent Republican. The governor became a fierce defender of local Muslims, rebuking his party in forceful terms for its hostility to a proposed Islamic center in Manhattan, and denouncing what he called “the crazies” on the right for attacking a Muslim lawyer Mr. Christie had selected for a judgeship.



But as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination half a decade later, Mr. Christie’s ties to Muslim leaders in New Jersey have grown deeply strained. The governor has recast himself as a relentless warrior against terrorism, with little patience for what he calls “politically correct” national security policy.

Among some community leaders, who saw Mr. Christie as a rare Republican who rejected alarmist, broad-brush rhetoric about Islam, a sense of betrayal has set in.

Most distressing, to advocates for New Jersey’s Muslim community, has been Mr. Christie’s rigid stance on refugees fleeing Syria: Citing his distrust of President Obama’s administration to screen them for security risks, Mr. Christie has called for a full stop to the settling of refugees in the United States.

That includes, he said on a radio show, “orphans under 5.”

Community leaders say Mr. Christie has also missed opportunities to speak out, in the thunderous tones they have come to expect, about what they see as flagrantly hateful remarks from other Republicans. Donald J. Trump has called for intensive monitoring of Muslim-Americans, and has repeated a widely debunked myth that throngs of Muslims in Jersey City celebrated on Sept. 11, 2001.


Mr. Christie has responded in restrained terms, stating that he had no recollection of mass celebrations in New Jersey, and warning in a statement against an “indiscriminate” crackdown on Muslim communities. But while he has called Mr. Trump’s account “factually wrong,” Mr. Christie has said it would be pointless to confront the wealthy provocateur more aggressively.

To some Muslims in the state, who viewed Mr. Christie as an energetic and unexpected champion, his comments about refugees and his cautious response to the emboldened hard right have come as a disorienting letdown.

Mohamed Younes, president of the American Muslim Union, a group based in North Jersey, said Mr. Christie had become unrecognizable to him as a presidential candidate.

In the past, Mr. Younes said, the governor attended forums hosted by his group and hosted Ramadan gatherings where he described New Jersey as a proudly inclusive state.


Mr. Christie impressed Muslim leaders soon after taking office in 2010, when he was drawn into a controversy over plans to construct an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, near the World Trade Center site. Opponents branded it the “ground zero mosque,” and national conservatives rallied against it.

At a news conference that August — 10 days before the first Ramadan gathering at the governor’s mansion — Mr. Christie warned Republicans against tarring “all of Islam with the Mohamed Atta brush,” a reference to one of the hijackers who attacked the twin towers.

The same summer, Mr. Christie cautioned against demagogy on the issue of immigration, more broadly.

“What I hear now, that’s not him,” Mr. Younes said. “There are a lot of people really angry. I think people who do not know him, they think he is ridiculous, like Trump.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national advocacy organization that identified Mr. Christie in a 2013 report as an exemplary Republican, has condemned the governor for his comments on refugees. Jim Sues, director of the group’s New Jersey affiliate, said in an interview that Mr. Christie had helped cast “a shadow of suspicion and fear over all Muslims.”

Mr. Christie has drawn rebukes from non-Muslims, too: Former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, also a Republican, said Mr. Christie was wrong to take such an uncompromising view of the refugee crisis.

Mr. Kean, who led the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, said a refugee crackdown would be a propaganda coup for the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and might undermine relations between law enforcement and American Muslims.

“I think that kind of attitude helps ISIS,” Mr. Kean said in an interview. Of Mr. Christie, he added, “I like him and I admire him, but I don’t agree with him on this.”

Mr. Christie has defended his tough language on national security and the refugee situation as a matter of plain speaking. He has emphasized that his objections to admitting refugees stem not from their faith, but rather from doubts about the Obama administration’s managerial competence to filter out dangerous people arriving from a war zone.

At the Council on Foreign Relations last week, the governor said that he trusted American Muslims to understand that his opposition to admitting refugees was motivated solely by security concerns. (A spokesman for him said state authorities had conferred about security with religious leaders, including Muslim clerics, in the aftermath of the recent attacks in Paris.)

Noting that New Jersey had one of the nation’s largest Muslim communities, he said Muslims were “good, faithful Americans” and “not nearly as sensitive” as opinion leaders in Washington believe.

“They’re Muslim-Americans, and they understand that the safety and security of their family is at risk,” Mr. Christie said. “Just the way the safety and security of Catholics are at risk, Protestants are at risk, Buddhists are at risk when the American homeland is not safe and not secure.”


He said that he was aware of the reaction against his remarks, and acknowledged, “I’ve seen the emails I’ve gotten since I said what I said and the Facebook posts and all the rest of that stuff.”

But to shift his views on national security policy based on that backlash, Mr. Christie said, would be “politically correct,” and a mistake.

While Mr. Christie’s policy prescriptions have frustrated some former admirers, they have not set him apart from most of his Republican rivals. None of the Republicans running for president have endorsed allowing Syrian refugees into the United States, except perhaps for some Syrian Christians.

Most of Mr. Christie’s opponents have distanced themselves from Mr. Trump’s incendiary ideas, but until recently the leading candidates have mainly avoided clashing directly. Only lately have a few — including Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio and former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida — taken on Mr. Trump more aggressively.

Mr. Christie stiffened his pushback on Mr. Trump on Monday, saying in a CNN interview that the real estate developer’s Sept. 11 tale was “just wrong.” But he declined to rebuke Mr. Trump in more pointed terms, telling a reporter, “Everybody else can determine what they think is outrageous or not outrageous.”

If Mr. Christie is positioned comfortably in the mainstream of the Republican presidential field, Muslims in New Jersey say they remember when he once stood well apart from his party, as an openly ferocious advocate on their behalf.

In 2012, after the revelation that the New York Police Department had conducted surveillance of Muslims in his state, Mr. Christie criticized the police for overstepping its territory, and established a Muslim outreach committee headed by the New Jersey attorney general.

Perhaps most significant to New Jersey Muslims was Mr. Christie’s 2011 appointment of a Muslim lawyer, Sohail Mohammed, to a Superior Court judgeship in Passaic County. When Mr. Mohammed’s nomination met with resistance from the far right, and insinuations that he might be influenced by Shariah law, Mr. Christie erupted.

Mr. Mohammed, he said, was an “extraordinary American.” The alarmism about Shariah, he said, was “crap.”

“It’s just crazy,” Mr. Christie said at an outdoor news conference in July 2011. “And I’m tired of dealing with the crazies. It’s just unnecessary to be accusing this guy of things just because of his religious background.”

Mr. Mohammed’s nomination was approved.

Mohammed Hameeduddin, a councilman in Teaneck, N.J., who was the township’s first Muslim mayor, said he had been “very moved” by Mr. Christie’s defense of the judicial nomination. At an Iftar event he attended at the governor’s mansion, Mr. Hameeduddin, who is a Democrat, said Mr. Christie had spoken gracefully about the common American identity of the attendees and the welcoming nature of the state.

The Iftar invitations stopped coming a few years ago, several Muslim leaders said. Mr. Christie’s office said the last official Ramadan dinner was in 2012.

“He has abandoned us and has moved on,” Mr. Hameeduddin said, adding, “He’s going more toward the position of the national Republican primary voter.”

Follow The New York Times’s Metro coverage on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the New York Today newslett

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/02/26/chris-christies-despicable-endorsement-of-trump/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_popns

[Crafty_Dog]

Warning-- crude joke:

To measure Donald's penis, first you have to get it out of Christie's mouth.

[G M]

Warning-- crude joke:

To measure Donald's penis, first you have to get it out of Christie's mouth.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/nyregion/bridgegate-trial.html?emc=edit_na_20160919&nlid=49641193&ref=cta&_r=0

[DDF]