It’s been almost nine years since 9-11, and the church still has not been rebuilt. Church leaders have the blueprints drawn and are ready to rebuild, but bureaucrats won’t cooperate, and the church can’t get rebuilt.

The church has for several years wanted to build the new St. Nicholas a block northeast of its original home on Cedar Street. But doing so would require trading land with the Port Authority, and an agreement has proven elusive. In the meantime, the church designed a domed marble complex that would be six times the size of its original home, and far more expensive.

Both St. Nicholas and the Port Authority are eager to resolve the issues quickly, especially since the authority plans to pick a contractor to build the southern perimeter wall for the entire site this summer, and it needs title to the church’s property to proceed. But officials involved in the talks say there remain substantial differences over the size of the church complex and the amount of money the Port Authority will contribute to building it.

“We understand the church’s mission,” said Chris Ward, executive director of the Port Authority. “It is part of the history of the site and we want to maintain that. We just need to put the project in the right context.”

So an expensive Christian church gets tied up in bureaucratic red tape, while a $100 million mosque super-center is waved right on through? Liberal politicians are lining up by the boatload to show their support for the Ground Zero mosque, but I don’t hear too many of them advocating for St. Nicholas to be rebuilt. Instead, the bureaucrats have gotten in the way of the rebuild. The mosque mysteriously doesn’t have that problem; in fact, it was fast-tracked. Mayor Bloomberg and members of his Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 9-0 to allow construction of the Ground Zero mosque, but New York bureaucracy is standing in the way of letting a Christian church get rebuilt. What does it say about this country that we can build a mosque at Ground Zero, created by bloodthirsty Muslim extremists bent on violent jihad, but can’t rebuild a Christian church?

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While concerns over the 16-page pamphlet have arisen in recent days, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene created its “Take Charge, Take Care: 10 Tips for Safer Use” brochure in 2007. Its purpose, according to a statement from the department, is “to help people who are injecting drugs reduce the harm associated with this type of drug use until they are able to get into treatment and recover.”

… “The pamphlet provides potentially life saving advice” reads a health department statement.

But critics such as New York City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., chairman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, believes the pamphlet is “an indefensible waste of taxpayer money” and is effectively spreading a lie that there is a safe way to inject drugs.

“Heroin use is at epidemic levels in New York, and we should be spending money to address that, not teach first-timers how to use,” says Vallone.

Users are instructed to never use alone and to always use new supplies, even giving recommendations on where to find new syringes. Junkies are encouraged to warm up their bodies by jumping up and down before they inject themselves, because this will help them find the vein easier. Bloomberg says that the entire purpose of this pamphlet is by getting people to do whatever they are going to do as “healthily” as they can.

Because, you know, there’s healthy druge use and unhealthy drug use.

What makes this even more insane is that this is the same mayor who has ushered in an amazing nanny state in New York City. He’s banned trans fats, attacked cigarettes, tried to institute forced calorie counting, and even more insanity when it comes to nutrition. (Adults can’t be trusted to make their own nutritional choices.) So, is what Mayor Bloomberg is saying is basically that eating trans fats is worse than shooting up heroin? I doubt we’ll see any instructional pamphlets on how to eat a healthy amount of trans fats from the nutritional warrior. There’s no “safe” way to use drugs, but here’s Mayor Bloomberg, telling drug addicts that there is.

The most appalling part of these heroin pamphlets, though, is something that even the most idiotic person could figure out.

Which people are most likely to need instructions on how to shoot up heroin: seasoned drug addicts or people just starting to use drugs? Someone who is already addicted to heroin would know all of the little tips on how to shoot up properly. Someone who is curious about using or has just started using would find this pamphlet very useful, though. An addict would find it completely useless. This pamphlet is basically a how-to guide of using heroin. And it’s awful, because this leads people who may have had reservations about using heroin just take the leap, all because the NYC government is telling them that there is a safe way to do it.

So, to sum up, in Bloomberg’s world, there is no healthy way to eat trans fats and smoking is awful. Eating too many calories should be outlawed and “green” taxis should be mandatory. Heroin, on the other hand, isn’t that great, but if you’re going to use it, you might as well do it “safely”. Nevermind the poison you’re injecting into yourself — just make sure you’re injecting it properly.

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HE dumps salt on almost everything, even saltine crackers. He devours burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. He has a weakness for hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken, washing them down with a glass of merlot.

And his snack of choice? Cheez-Its.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has become New York City’s nutritional nag, banning the use of trans fats, forcing chain restaurants to post calorie counts and exhorting diners to consume less salt. Now he is at it again, directing his wrath at sugary drinks in a new series of arresting advertisements that ask subway riders: “Are you pouring on the pounds?”

But an examination of what enters the mayoral mouth reveals that Mr. Bloomberg is an omnivore with his own glaring indulgences, many of them at odds with his own policies. And he struggles mightily to restrain his appetite.

… Under his watch, the city has declared sodium an enemy, asking restaurants and food manufacturers to voluntarily cut the salt in their dishes by 20 percent or more, and encouraging diners to “shake the habit” by asking waiters for food without added salt.

But Mr. Bloomberg, 67, likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others’ lips. (At Gracie Mansion, the cooks deliver it to him with a salt shaker.) He sprinkles so much salt on his morning bagel “that it’s like a pretzel,” said the manager at Viand, a Greek diner near Mr. Bloomberg’s Upper East Side town house.

Not even pizza is spared a coat of sodium. When the mayor sat down to eat a slice at Denino’s Pizzeria Tavern on Staten Island recently, this reporter spotted him applying six dashes of salt to it.

A health tip sheet from the mayor’s office tells New Yorkers to “drink smart” by choosing water, even though Mr. Bloomberg has a three- to four-cup-a-day coffee habit.

“I can count on two hands the number of times I have seen him drink water,” said one dining companion, who spoke on condition of anonymity, so as not to offend the mayor (who likes his coffee weak, and with milk).

It figures. Hypocrisy is so typical for liberals. Consider Laurie David, who has bragged about yelling at people who drive SUVs — while she jets around cross-country in a private luxury jet. Consider Al Gore, who tells us that we have to cut back on our energy usage — but uses enough energy at his palatial estate to power a small third-world country. And here is Michael Bloomberg, telling New Yorkers that they have to eat better while he doesn’t do it himself.

Look, I don’t begrudge anyone what they want to eat. I could care less if Bloomberg took a pound of salt, a Big Mac, a slice of pizza, and some Cheez-Its, liquified them, and drank it as a milkshake. He’s entitled to eat whatever he wants to eat. That’s not the problem. The problem is, why can’t anyone else? Why is Michael Bloomberg allowed to eat whatever he wants while he meanwhile is telling New Yorkers how they should be eating? If someone wants to eat eight Big Macs a day and balloon up to four hundred pounds, then that’s their problem. It’s also their problem when they get a heart attack at 35, not mine or anyone else’s. But that’s what liberals can’t understand, and that’s where we get the hypocrisy. Liberals think that they are just so smart and wise and all-knowing, that of course they should be allowed to make decisions for the rest of us.

They’re just too pompous and lazy to adhere to their own standards.

Hat Tip: Right Wing News

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“There are lots of threats to you in the world. There’s the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can’t sit there and worry about everything. Get a life,” he said.

That “What, me worry?” attitude pretty much sums up Bloomberg’s advice to New Yorkers on the terror plot. As far as he was concerned, the professionals were on it, so New Yorkers shouldn’t let it tax their brains.

“You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist,” he added.

“In terms of what you as individual on the streets should worry about is not whether the person sitting next to you on the subway is a terrorist. The likelihood of that is so small it is not something you should worry about,” Bloomberg said.

New Yorkers were disinclined to agree:

New Yorkers say Bloomberg is entitled to his opinions, but not everybody agrees with him.

“I feel that he’s definitely wrong about that because terrorism right now is at its all-time high since 9/11. Everybody wants to be a terrorist and blow something up,” one New Yorker told CBS 2 HD.

“We’re always going to be a major hit for terrorism. After 9/11, you never know,” another added.

But fear not, you wimpy Americans! Bloomberg and his team of “experts” are on the case, and there is nothing that any of us need to worry about! The threat of another terrorist attack is miniscule! And if you worry about terrorism, then you need to get a life!

Except, you know, there’s all those terrorist plots we keep foiling. Obviously, the terrorists aren’t giving up. And I’m sure on September 10, 2001, the entire country with the exception of the Clinton administration would have listed planes flying into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field killing over 3,000 Americans as an impossible thing that could never happen.

But don’t worry. Stop thinking about terrorism. It won’t happen again. Right, Mayor Bloomberg?

Except as soon as we do that, that’s when it’ll strike again.

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The Mayor’s approval rating of 76% has been largely due to his efforts to safeguard city residents from tobacco smoke, trans fats, cars, guns, and other ills with which the ignorant masses are too stupid to deal with on their own. He seeks to build on this foundation with his ambitious new program, entitled “A City That Really Cares.”

This futuristic iniative would put into place a 1,000 police force charged with enforcing new requirements such as:

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