​Former Voice columnist and CUNY Journalist-in-Residence Tom Robbins was on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning on WNYC, talking about the fallout from the NYPD showing an anti-Muslim training video to 1,500 personnel.

It was great to hear Robbins credited for breaking this story (a full year before Michael Powell's follow up in the Times) in a January, 2011 Voice column titled "NYPD Cops' Training Included an Anti-Muslim Horror Flick."

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Caleb Ferguson

​It's the holidays and time for nightly benefit parties. This month, we're be circling back to non-profits and art groups we've talked to through out 2011 as they gear up for their annual shindigs.

Today we're talking to Valery Jean, Executive Director of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE). FUREE (whom we've interacted with several times this year, including during our coverage of Mary Lee Ward's foreclosure) is celebrating 10 years of stirring up trouble in Brooklyn on behalf of poor and working class New Yorkers trying to hold on. We chatted with Jean (who was on Tom Robbins's "Thanksgiving Honor Roll" last year) about FUREE's origins, the challenges of development in Brooklyn, Occupy Wall Street, her take is on Governor Cuomo's recent budget, and their big bash tonight at La Vie Lounge & Restaurant.

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Crooked rabbi Balkany

​Political heavyweight Rabbi Milton Balkany was sentenced today to four years in prison for trying to shake down a hedge fund. As the Post reports, federal judge Denise Cole took the unusual step of ordering the 64-year-old rabbi jailed immediately, saying she was "seriously concerned" that he would try to run away if free on bail.

His scheme was to blackmail Steve Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors into coughing up millions to two Brooklyn yeshivas, including one where Balkany was dean.

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Shiho Fukada/VV

​It is October 14, 2000, and Guy Velella -- the ex-state senator and convicted felon who died yesterday at 66 -- is in his home base in the north Bronx practicing the fine art of retail politics. Nobody does this better, and the tell-tale silver-streak in his careful pompadour is seen bobbing up and down as he pumps every hand he spots. He is escorting his friend George Pataki on a Saturday afternoon campaign swing. It is up Crosby Avenue and under the el on Westchester. "Say hello to the governor!" Velella hoots to the ladies coming out of George's Restaurant on the corner.

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​ "Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."

This fine free advice, first offered by Humphrey Bogart to Nazi swill in Casablanca, is here offered to Glenn Beck who -- after offending almost all of America's rabbi's, as reported by our Joe Coscarelli here -- made another bone-headed miscalculation on his show Tuesday when he maligned a certain section of the Bronx.

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Cary Conover

​ The first 2011 Nobel Peace Prize nomination goes to the Lower East Siders who hammered out Monday night's near-unanimous community board vote approving new housing for those five acres of weed-strewn parking lots sitting forlornly behind chain-link fences these past 40 years along Delancey Street.

The deal okayed by Community Board 3 calls for 1,000 units of housing, half of it targeted to middle and low-income families, plus new non-Wal-Mart-style retail and open space.

For those wondering what's the big deal, or what took so long, consider these facts:

This is the largest clear parcel of land in Manhattan, where unfettered real estate is the single most precious local resource.

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​Some of the nastiest union battles erupt with employers whose hearts beat firmly on the left side of the political spectrum. Partly this is the result of hurt feelings: How could my workers be so distrustful? Another accelerant is the assumption that well-meaning bosses know best, a perception shared across the political divide. Whatever the cause, these fratricidal battles have scarred the best non-profit organizations. They've also torn-up unions themselves when their own workers announce they'd like the same bargaining rights as those they represent.

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​ There are thousands of pages to wade through, but so far the catch of the day in the 127-defendant Mobapalooza takedown by the feds is a caught-on-tape conversation in which a mobster describes how he took care of a major menace: his mother-in-law.

Peter Pace Jr., a Genovese crime family associate with a 30-year-long rap sheet, was captured on tape in a January 21, 2008 rap describing how he handled things:

"I tried to throw her off the roof on Viewmont Avenue back in 1988. She was a fucking junkie, right? So now...she's fucking telling everybody that I'm gonna come rob everybody, set me up with the neighborhood, right? So I brought her up to the fucking roof, about six stories, it was fucking, I hung her off the fucking side of the roof."

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Morgan Schweitzer

​A major city Islamic organization is putting a few tough questions to the NYPD about how a loony Muslim-bashing movie came to be shown to city cops, as reported in this week's Voice.

"Our nation's battle against terrorism is only made more difficult whenever security officers are taught to view all Muslims, and the faith of Islam itself, with suspicion," said Council on American-Islamic Relations-New York Board President Zead Ramadan. "We call on Commissioner Kelly to order an internal probe of how this propaganda film came to be used and to put policies in place to ensure that NYPD training is not biased by agenda-driven materials -- or trainers -- targeting any religious or minority community."

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​There's no surer sign of big political trouble than to have CBS TV's Marcia Kramer on your case, and this week it is Mike Bloomberg's long-awaited turn on the receiving end. Bloomberg promptly proved he's feeling the heat by getting all prickly and calling Kramer -- a prominent City Hall presence for decades -- "Miss" and trying unsuccessfully to head her off at the pass.

The moment came Monday as Kramer put the mayor on the spot during his press availability, demanding that he tell a wondering city why he needs to keep his weekend whereabouts secret. The question, long pondered by reporters, has at last caught on with politicians in the wake of Bloomberg's absence in the lead-up to last month's blizzard. Queens councilman Peter Vallone Jr. has introduced a bill to compel the mayor to let us know when he's out of town, and who's in charge when he's away.

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