By Jeffrey Page

First, she sideswiped a tractor trailer truck on Route 684.

Then it was the sight of her driving with one flat tire that caused several people to call the state police to report someone driving dangerously.

The case eventually went to trial in Westchester County and she was found not guilty of driving under the influence.

It was Kerry Kennedy, 54, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and ex-wife of Governor Andrew Cuomo, at the wheel. I’m inclined to believe her explanation that her erratic driving was the result of mistakenly taking a potent sleeping pill instead of her thyroid medication. I have no sympathy for drunken or drugged drivers but as far as intent is concerned, I still buy Kennedy’s story of a mistake and think the jury reached a fair and correct conclusion.

Now, incredibly, Kennedy says she thinks the district attorney is a little too aggressive in bringing drunken driving charges, and she went on television to offer a critique of the justice system in Westchester County. In this, like a Ringling Bros. clown, she stepped in a bucket.

Appearing on the Today program, Kennedy told Matt Lauer: “I think in Westchester County they have a policy of pursuing every single case of driving under the influence whether the police think the person’s innocent, whether the D.A. thinks they’re innocent.”

(Well, if the district attorney thought Kennedy was innocent, she could have declined to prosecute. But she’s the official who runs the criminal justice system in Westchester – and she decided to proceed.)

“And,” Kennedy continued, “this is a terrible policy because it means a lot of people who are innocent get caught up in the criminal justice system.”

It also means that a lot of people who are guilty get prosecuted. A terrible policy? I think rules that might make people think twice before driving home while blind drunk is a pretty good policy.

What is Kennedy saying? That district attorneys ought not pursue DWI cases? Or not prosecute the one against Kerry Kennedy? Or that we should do way with the criminal justice system altogether unless we can establish a defendant’s guilt or innocence without the inconvenience of seating a jury?

Since incidents of drunken drinking, crashes, deaths and injuries are so random – any of us could be a victim – the district attorney who pursues “every single case of driving under the influence” gets my vote.

Meanwhile, maybe what Kerry Kennedy and all of us need is a clear picture of what is meant by use of the word “injured” in most newspaper stories about DWI incidents. Does it mean a cut on someone’s face? A broken arm? A sprained ankle? Worse? Newspapers usually don’t follow up and discuss the “injuries.”

So let me tell you and Kerry Kennedy the story of Barbara Rokas, whose encounter with a drunken driver occurred in 1990. I became aware of her in 2001 when she contacted me at The Record of Hackensack to tell me what happened to her. (Long-time readers of Zest of Orange may recall some of this information from a column I wrote in 2009.)

Kennedy ought to read the complete inventory of injuries inflicted on Barbara Rokas before she complains about the D.A.’s office being too aggressive, too persistent, too determined in its prosecution of drunken drivers.

Barbara was driving through Kearny, N.J. on her way to pick up her husband. A car came speeding down Chestnut Street and smashed into her car. One estimate at the time was that the kid driving the other car was doing 75 mph. It was also revealed that he had been drinking since 7 in the morning; he encountered Rokas at 3:30 p.m. His blood alcohol level was 0.19; the legal limit was 0.10.

Barbara’s blood was all over the pavement. First aid responders thought she was dead and covered her face. But she was alive.

She needed about 500 stitches to close the cuts on her head alone. She was in a coma for 22 days. She suffered serious brain damage. She had a fractured thighbone and collarbone. She was paralyzed on her right side. She was deaf in one ear. She had double vision. She had severe memory loss. She was confined to a wheelchair. She had slurred speech.

Then came lawyer talk. “[She] has also suffered, and will continue to suffer, loss of the pleasures and pursuits of life and a diminution and impairment of her capacity to enjoy life,” her attorney said in court papers.

That was 24 years ago. Barbara is now 72. Life hasn’t gotten much easier.

Kennedy could learn a lot by talking with Barbara, who is the unfortunate stand-in for all of us: you, me, your mother, your sister, your kid, your husband, your wife. She could be Kerry Kennedy.

And so it brings a profound sense of relief when I read a story in the paper about a tenacious prosecutor presenting a case to a jury and a judge who understand the misery drunken drivers cause.

That, incidentally, would be unlike the judge who sentenced the man responsible for reducing Barbara Rokas’ life to – her word – “a zero.” The penalty was two months of weekend home confinement. That was 1999.

Barbara Rokas still struggles to get dressed every morning.

By Jeffrey Page

It took long enough, but Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, after several days of contemplation, finally found the need to veto a piece of legislation that would have set civil rights statutes in the morning trash.

As you probably know, State Senate Bill 1062 would have restored some of the odious Jim Crow laws of decades ago – not that its sponsors would agree. Briefly, SB-1062 would give shopkeepers and business people the right to refuse to serve gay men and lesbians. Arizona knew just how to talk up SB-1062. It wasn’t anti-gay, Arizona said, it was pro-religious freedom.

Arizona has good practice in describing certain travesties. It’s Arizona, after all, where police officers are required to check the immigration status of anyone who looks like he might be in the U.S. illegally. Can you take a guess who the state has in mind? Clue: It’s not Poles, Lithuanians or Canadians.

SB-1062 might have reminded you of the south before the Sixties, but its supporters say it was really a matter of ensuring religious freedom. Take a grocery store owner, for example. If he can show that selling a can of tomato soup or a pack of English muffins to a gay couple would violate his “strongly held religious beliefs,” he could point to the door and tell the two not to come back.

Question: Where in the Bible does it note that God would be greatly offended if he ran a luncheonette in Phoenix and two lesbians walked in to order tuna sandwiches on rye and coffee?

Question: Where in the Constitution of the United States did the framers define marriage?

And if SB-1062 – approved by the Arizona State Senate by an anemic vote of 17 to 13 and by a less than overwhelming Assembly vote of 33 to 27 – had become law, how easy or difficult would it be to allow shopkeepers with “strongly held religious beliefs” to refuse service to certain other people who don’t hold those same beliefs.

In considering undoing what the State Senate did on Feb. 19, Governor Brewer consulted with politicians and business people who feared that SB-1062 would harm the Arizona economy. She most likely was pushed along the road to veto by the National Football League’s starting talks on yanking next season’s Super Bowl game out of Phoenix if SB-1062 was enacted. It could be said that in Arizona, the economy trumps “strongly held religious beliefs.”

The NFL, several corporations, politicians from around the country, and Arizona’s two U.S. Senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, all appealed to brewer to make SB-1062 disappear.

They were joined by three of the state senators who voted in favor of SB-1062 and who were now looking for a way to kill it. Their reasoning for introducing the bill was misunderstood, they said.

In their letter to the governor, the three state senators said: “We must send a clear message that Arizona is a state that values religious tolerance and protects and values each individual’s ability to follow the dictates of their [sic] own conscience.”

That’s about as close as they ever got to the word “gay.”

Next, the measure went to Brewer for approval or veto. It took her seven days to kill SB-1062. It should have taken seven seconds.

By Jeffrey Page

Grossinger’s was gone. The Concord was gone. The Brickman, Brown’s and scores more as well. But Kutsher’s, with its more than 400 guest rooms, soldiered on before finally giving up the ghost. Earlier this month, the auction sale that seems to accompany all dying Catskill resorts, was held.

This was the last of the great ones, the place where Helen Kutsher, who died last year at 89, used to greet returning guests with “Welcome home.” Recently, Kutsher’s, facing the humiliation of a break in its roof and snow on its floor, slipped away after bidders bought all matter of Kutsher’s stuff. Plans call for the hotel to be razed and replaced by a health spa and resort, reportedly a $90 million venture. Why do I think that herring, lox and cheese danishes will be replaced by quinoa, kale and tofu?

These hotel auctions are attended by people wanting a piece of the old Catskills, which thrived during their now-ended Kosher Century. At the height of their popularity with primarily Jewish clienteles there were close to 500 such resorts in Sullivan County alone. Bidders want menus, furniture, kitchen equipment, memorabilia, anything actually, and all the better if it bears the name of the dead hotel. But such named pieces aren’t always available.

A number of years ago, when the Concord had gasped its last, we attended one of these sales and went home with an enormous metal mixing bowl. It was battered and dented, emblazoned with nothing identifying it as from the Concord. But we knew its origin. Once, it might have been used to mix potato pancake batter. Nowadays we use it to catch rain water from a leaky chimney.

At the Kutsher’s sale some people were interested in a walk-in refrigerator, which eventually went for $650, according to a compelling story in The Times Herald-Record. Others bought sports goods, perhaps remembering the late Milton Kutsher’s love of all games, but especially basketball. And so, the Record said, a basketball signed by Bob Cousy went for $250. Same price for a baseball signed by Sandy Koufax.

Milt Kutsher – Helen’s husband, and one of the nicer guys in the hospitality industry – died in 1998. But there are people who’d swear Kutsher’s the institution could never die. After all, it might have been the first kosher resort in Sullivan County and lasted a century. It opened in 1907, seven years before the storied Grossinger’s, which always seemed to get more publicity than Kutsher’s.

But there were quiet, unreported stories of Kutsher’s, the kind that families love to tell and re-tell. In New York around 1915, Mr. Elias Blau was to be married to Miss Rose Weicholz. Mr. Blau believed Miss Weicholz was simply too skinny and so decided that in order to get her to gain some weight, he would send her to Kutsher’s to do some serious eating. The resort, run in those days by Max Kutsher and his brother Lou – Milton’s father and uncle – did the trick for Rose and whichever family member it was who accompanied her to the mountains. Rose was happy. She ate enough so that when she returned to Brooklyn, Elias was happy.

Milt Kutsher was delighted when I told him this story roughly 60 years after the fact. “The kitchen did it every time,” he said.

Kutsher’s guests had a never-ending appetite and that kitchen was designed to keep them happy, and sated. Something else that kept guests coming back was the sight of Helen or Milt patrolling the lobby and greeting vacationers by name and asking about their trip up from the city.

Milt Kutsher, who took over the place after World War II, always seemed to be the prescient owner who understood what the public wanted. He booked top name entertainment, created a sports academy whose instructors’ names were usually found on the sports pages, and made his hotel the home court for the annual Maurice Stokes basketball game. Stokes was the NBA all-star who died of a brain injury at 36. The game was a fundraiser to make Stokes’ last years bearable and affordable.

One view of the downfall of the resort industry held that some hotel keepers failed because they didn’t keep up with the competition. One owner, for example, believing there was money to be made as a winter resort as well as a summer place would install an indoor pool, and woe to the hotels that didn’t keep up.

But there were other causes. There was the much quoted line – often attributed to Milt Kutsher, but not necessarily his own – about the fate of the industry. “You want to know what killed the mountains? Air conditioning and airplanes,” he told me sometime during the seventies, a time when the bigger hotels were still hanging on.

All of a sudden, the hot summers of New York could be tamed, and all of a sudden, a summer trip to Paris or Rome seemed more exciting than playing Simon Says in Monticello.

Then, it was only a matter of time.

By Jeffrey Page

St. Valentine’s Day again, and despite its standing as little more than a boon to retailers of candy, greeting cards, flowers and the like, I have found myself playing a holiday game and making mental lists of the people whom I’ve never met and yet would be happy to send a Valentine. Some of them are gone and some of them remain. (And thanks to Lennon and McCartney for those words; and thanks to George and Ringo as well. Four Valentines are in the mail.)

So, Valentine’s greetings to the family of course – wife, daughter, son-in-law and the newest member who’s just 18 months old and who seizes my breath and makes me smile even if I’m not in the mood to smile.

And also to:

–Jackie Robinson, the most courageous of men. By this time, everybody knows what he did for the nation and understands his bravery, not to mention his raging competitiveness. Here’s what Jackie had to say: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” Those are the words that appear on his gravestone.

–Loretta Weinberg, the Democratic leader of the New Jersey State Senate, who’s at the forefront of the investigation of the September outrage at the George Washington Bridge. Some people at age 79, facing the wrath of Chris Christie, might go away quietly. Not Loretta, who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor with Jon Corzine in 2009. Recently when she asked that Christie inform the Legislature when he’s going to be out of state, Christie declared at his snarkiest: “I understand. She’d really love to be lieutenant governor, and she’s not. So every chance she gets to stick it to me, she does.”

Loretta dismissed Christie, likening him to a spoiled brat, describing his outburst as nothing more than “a playground taunt.”

–The reporters and editors of the Record of Bergen County who broke the bridgegate scandal and who have provided spectacular coverage ever since. If you got stuck on the bridge, The Record is the paper you need to consult. (Truth in column writing: I worked at The Record until 2007.)

–Marcia Ball, whose swamp rock singing and piano playing make me jump all over the place, whose ballads make me sentimental and whose rendition of Randy Newman’s song “Louisiana 1927” makes me tremble with an emotion I thought was reserved for people who survived Hurricane Katrina.

“It rained real hard and it rained for a real long time. There was six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline. Louisiana, Louisiana, they’re trying to wash us away.” If you can listen to Ball sing that refrain and not consider yourself a Louisianan, you’re made of strong stuff.

–J.S. Bach and his Coffee Cantata and the plaintive cry of the character Liesgen who at one point sings, “If I can’t drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment, I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat.” I love coffee; I know what Liesgen means (though I’ve never felt like a roast goat).

–Bette Davis for her look and her voice, and especially for two of the greatest lines in movie history. In “All About Eve,” she urges the guests at a house party, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” And in the otherwise forgettable “Cabin in the Cotton” she declares to the lovelorn Richard Barthelmess, “I’d love to kiss you but I just washed my hair.”

–Dylan Thomas for his poem “Fern Hill,” in which he recalls ” … in the sun that is young once only, time let me play and be golden in the mercy of his means.”

–The 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers for their humbling of the Yankees.

Happy Valentines Day everybody, and take it easy as you shovel the snow.

By Jeffrey Page

Pete Seeger on the banks of his beloved Hudson River.

I never met Pete Seeger, but of course this didn’t stop me from reaching certain conclusions about him. One such was that anyone who could sit down and write an anthem like “If I Had a Hammer” had to be a pretty great individual. Another was my sense that Seeger was a man who defined modesty.

Clearly I’m not alone in my appreciation of the life and music of Pete Seeger. Now, in the 11 days since he died at the age of 94, there have been calls by some of his admirers that the Tappan Zee Bridge be renamed in his honor. After all, they argue, Seeger lived in Beacon overlooking the Hudson River, which, farther downstream flows under the TZB and which will flow under its $14 billion replacement, whose construction has begun.

Link Seeger and the bridges? I think such a name-change would be a mistake. For one thing, we will probably never fully understand the extent of the disruption of the Hudson’s ecology during the construction and life spans of the two enormous bridges. Proponents of the Pete Seeger Bridge should remember that Seeger spent much of his life trying to achieve an unsullied, uncontaminated and unpolluted Hudson. I don’t believe he ever crusaded for the first TZB, or the one that’s being built now. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Moreover, I don’t imagine Seeger would feel especially proud of having his name superseding that of the Tappans, a family of Indians that lived in the areas surrounding Nyack when the Dutch arrived. And of course, his name would not include the word “zee,” from the Dutch for a wide sea. Unless they called it the Pete Seeger Tappan Zee Bridge, which would be ridiculous.

The Tappan Zee Bridge and its replacement span ought to remain precisely that.

But if we’re going to honor Pete Seeger by naming something for him, how about changing the name of the Hudson to the Pete Seeger River. After all, if it were not for him and the Clearwater project, the Hudson might be the same old befouled mess it was before Seeger and his friends decided to do something about it.

As far as Henry Hudson is concerned, he won’t be forgotten. There’s the Henry Hudson Parkway on the upper west side of Manhattan, the Henry Hudson Memorial Park in the Bronx, a 16-foot statue of Hudson atop a 100-foot column in the park, the Henry Hudson Bridge connecting the northern tip of Manhattan with Spuyten Duyvil in the Bronx, and Hudson Street downtown in the West Village.

We know Henry Hudson made four voyages to North America. He explored the river that would be named for him on his third visit. But the mystery of his fate developed on his fourth voyage, when he searched for northern passages to Asia.

He was in Canada, sailing on what would become Hudson’s Bay when his crew mutinied and took control of the ship. One account holds that the crew was weary and wanted to return to England but that Hudson insisted on continuing his exploration. The crew took the ship and set Hudson, his son, and seven crewmen adrift in a longboat. They were never heard from again.

Ultimately you have to wonder why the fuss about Hudson. After all he wasn’t exactly the first European to reach what would become New York. In fact, he arrived second, in 1609 – a full 85 years after Giovanni da Verrazzano.

“A very agreeable site,” Verrazzano wrote in his log as he entered the great harbor of the future New York, “located between two hills between which flowed to the sea a very great river.”

That would be the Hudson. Or the Seeger.

By Jeffrey Page

We loved his voice, we loved his banjo. We loved “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “We Shall Overcome” and all the others he wrote for us. We loved his sense of humor and his uncanny ability to get 3,000 people at Carnegie Hall – mostly strangers to one another – to open their mouths and sing with him. We loved the fact that he was always there. Whether the issue was Vietnam, civil rights, the environment, voting rights, sexism, or the inarguable right of the people of the Hudson Valley to have a swimmable river free of garbage and chemicals, he was there.

But now I go back to something else: a hearing room at the Federal Courthouse in downtown Manhattan 59 years ago, as the House UnAmerican Activities convened for another in its Communist witch hunts. It took extraordinary courage to tell HUAC, in a voice at once polite and defiant, to go to hell. But that is precisely what he did, and for this he would pay.

He was questioned about his political activities, and about the places and events where he had performed. He would not answer. Even more important to HUAC was who was at those meetings and performances. But he would not name names. He said he would answer any questions from the committee about himself or about his songs, but would refuse to discuss individuals.

At one point he was asked about an item that had appeared in 1947 in the Daily Worker. The paper, published by the Communist Party U.S.A., noted that he would be singing at an event called the Allerton Section Housewarming.

Was the Allerton Section part of the Communist party, a committee staffer asked.

“Sir,” he responded, “I refuse to answer that question whether it was a quote from the New York Times or the Vegetarian Journal.”

Francis Walter, the chairman of HUAC, directed him to respond.

And this was his response: “I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it.”

This was the kind of answer to HUAC, and its like-minded friends in the Senate, that had cost countless people in and out of the entertainment industry their jobs and livelihoods.

HUAC members and staffers peppered him repeatedly with questions about the places he sang and the people who attended his music, and he refused to give in.

At one point he said: “I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known. I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American. I will tell you about my songs, but I am not interested in telling you who wrote them. I will tell you about my songs, and I am not interested in who listened to them.”

He defined what it is to stand on principle, on honor. His was the kind of declaration that ought to be hung in classrooms, right next to the American flag. He was cited for contempt of Congress for his refusal to talk about his friends and acquaintances, and sentenced to one year in jail. The conviction was tossed on appeal. But the damage was done, and he lost entertainment gigs and was barred from appearing on network television for several years.

We will remember this man for his music, his integrity, and his courage in the darkest of times.

By Jeffrey Page

It is very cold this morning, but the snow turned out to be less catastrophic than anticipated. The sun is shining, the sky is a rich blue and a few minutes ago a guy on the radio uttered one of the lovelier phrases in the English language.

“Pitchers and catchers,” he said, and it turns out that after today it’s just 13 days until the start of spring training for the throwers and receivers. The Arizona Diamondbacks report on Feb. 6, the Mets on Feb. 15 and the Bronx team on Feb. 14. All this means that winter will soon be over; never mind what the calendar or the meteorologists say.

Several days after pitchers and catchers report, the position players arrive for spring training. Then, on March 30 there’s an opening-day game with Los Angeles playing Washington in Sydney, Australia. The traditional opening day will be on the 31st. VIPs will toss first pitches, some people with questionable ability will sing the national anthem, the cheering will commence when the vocalists reach “o’er the land of the free,” umpires will cry out “Play Ball!” and there will be happiness in the land.

Now is a wonderful time of year. For one thing, it proves that we’ve survived another winter, this one more frigid than most. It is a time to think about the next six months in our futures and to at least consider the possibility that all will be well.

For Mets fans, however, it is tinged with the aroma of disappointment. It’s a time of welcome, but of fear and slight resignation as well. In other words, a year like most other years for followers of the Mets. As in so many summers past we stand at the cusp of another season of hope, rage and ultimately (in all likelihood) grave disappointment. But wait, this is baseball and therefore we hope. Miracles happen in this game. Maybe this will be the year of surprise and delight. Maybe this is the year of another miracle in Flushing. God knows we deserve it. God knows we need it.

I love the game: a double play, a bunt (rare nowadays) that catches the infielders glued in place, a game-ending home run in the bottom of the ninth, a perfectly executed hit and run, the long afternoon of a pitcher refusing, inning after inning, to give up a first hit. Or, just sitting in the warm sun of spring. That’s another thing I like about baseball – the day games early in the season and into summer when you can sit and talk, have a beer and take in that sun.

I detest the business of baseball: the fact that if you take a kid to a game and add up the price of parking, tickets, a pennant or other souvenir, maybe a scorecard, a round of hot dogs and drinks, maybe something more substantial as the game progresses, you spend enough money to have made a mortgage payment. And it irks me that the slowest, clumsiest, most inept players demand salaries in the millions and that part of those salaries are partially underwritten by you and me when we buy tickets.

But it’s baseball and I can forgive a lot when the reward is to watch players execute those plays that I can only wish I could duplicate.

Because it is winter heading into spring, it’s a time of remembrance as well. It may be 59 summers since the Dodgers of Brooklyn defeated the Bronx team in the ’55 World Series, but still I am shocked when I look up the Brooklyn roster of 1955 and realize that of the 32 players listed, only nine are living.

That fabled infield of Reese, Robinson, Gilliam and Hodges, gone.

The outfield of Furillo, Snider and Amoros, gone.

Our catcher, Campanella, gone.

Among the pitchers, Podres, Labine, Loes, all gone. But the great Don Newcombe (who pitched a 27-7 season), Carl Erskine, Roger Craig, the kid Sandy Koufax (“the kid” is 78), Tommy Lasorda and Ed Roebuck are with us.

Why do I go back to these guys every spring? Why do I think of them almost as members of my working class family? That’s a subject for deeper thinking and another column.

Wait ‘til next year.

By Jeffrey Page

Listening to Chris Christie you might have gotten the impression that the passive voice in English grammar was invented specifically for politicians whose actions have been shown to be less than admirable.

A week after his Oscar-worthy performance as best actor in a press conference (as he fired one aide, severely disrupted the careers of some others, and told us over and over how humiliated and heart broken he was by their actions), Christie was back before the cameras to deliver his state of the state message to the legislature.

During this sequel, Christie did what politicians – Nixon, Clinton, Reagan et al. – do when they’re caught in unpleasant situations and must confess but do not wish to take the blame.

And thus, the passive voice.

Early in the state of the state, Christie felt he had to do a little more breast beating and then get back to business. But he was unable to get himself to say, “I made a mistake” and take the rap. And clearly he wasn’t about to follow up with details of that “mistake.” Yet in shifting blame to his staff, he conceded that he’s not much of an overseer of that staff.

“I made a mistake” is a good, solid declarative sentence. But for Christie it would have been a little too good, too solid, too declarative.

(Cue the passive voice, please.)

“Mistakes were clearly made,” Christie said, which made him look foolish to anyone who’s been following story and who wanted an explanation that starts in the good old first person. Check sources and you find that not only have a huge band of politicians used the passive voice but they all use it to say the same thing: Mistakes were made. Of course there have been some politicians who’d never resort to the artificial silence of the passive voice. For example, can you imagine Harry Truman – the sign on his desk proclaimed “The buck stops here” – announcing “A bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.”

The Christie Show never stops. There was his decision to identify the four days of politically inspired traffic jams on the George Washington Bridge as a “mistake.” In fact, it was not a “mistake.” It was a subversion of the political process, especially that part of the system that identifies someone in Christie’s high office as governor of all the people, not just the ones who voted for him.

Remember, this mess came about in Fort Lee because the Democratic mayor Mark Sokolich – the “little Serbian,” according to another foot-in-mouth by Christie staff when he really is a rather tall Croat – was not about to endorse Christie, a Republican, for a second term.

If Christie had an ounce of integrity, he wouldn’t have spent the last couple of weeks issuing his faux apologies, informing us of his broken heart and his humiliation, and then flying up to Fort Lee to make amends with Mayor Sokolich.

Instead, because of the incredible disruption he and his staff caused with their two-bit terrorism on the bridge, Christie could have addressed the people most immediately affected by the lane closings. Which is to say he could have stood on the pedestrian walkway on the upper level of the bridge and held up a sign reading, “I’m Governor Christie and I apologize for the trouble I caused you during those four days of horrible traffic jams I inflicted on you back in September. Please forgive me.”

But, knowing Christie, the sign’s message would have begun “Trouble was caused.”

Lastly, in case bridge users just didn’t understand how, uh, sincere Christie was at his news conference and in the state of the state, he slammed us over our heads with his supposedly contrite promise that he – actually, he said “we” – would cooperate with “all appropriate inquiries” into the lane closings.

All appropriate inquiries? Has anyone informed the feds that their investigations of the GWB lane closings will be subject to Christie’s definition of “appropriate?”

By Jeffrey Page

In the Sixties the great Phil Ochs believed that Mississippi should find another country to be part of. Nowadays the state that could do us all a favor by taking a walk is Florida.

At issue is an odious state law that tramples the Fourth Amendment by requiring anyone who applies for public assistance to submit to drug testing. A trace of heroin, cocaine or marijuana in your urine would disqualify you from getting help through welfare. As far as I can make out, it doesn’t matter if you live alone or if you’re the parent of a bunch of children who have that habit of asking for a meal three times a day. Smoke a joint or snort a line and your kids can go hungry, and maybe you could even lose your apartment.

Florida Governor Rick Scott defended his Dickensian dirty-urine bill by noting that it was designed to assist families and taxpayers. On one hand, he said, “Any illegal drug use in a family is harmful and even abusive to a child.” On the other hand, harm and abuse are inflicted on a child when her mom or dad doesn’t have the money to put a healthy meal on the table, all because the parent failed the drug test.

Meanwhile there doesn’t even seem to be much if a drug/welfare problem in Florida. The Orlando Sentinel reported that during a three-month period last year, a grand total of 32 people (out of 21,000) failed the drug test. Another 1,600 declined to take the test.

Scott’s clean urine crusade is not aimed at all Floridians. He has not suggested that people wanting driver’s licenses, or seeking elective office, or registering at the public library, or applying for unemployment insurance, or signing up for Social Security and Medicare be drug tested. These last two are federal programs which I mention because Scott was elected with Tea Party support and has been mentioned as a 2016 possibility.

Neither human kindness nor the Constitution get in Rick Scott’s way because he doesn’t understand one basic fact. Unlike many fathers in Florida, Scott doesn’t have to worry about his two children ever going hungry. Not when their dad spent $75 million of his own money to get elected in 2010. Various sources suggest his net worth was about $218 million that year. How difficult was it to struggle along after spending $75 million? Not so difficult since Scott rejected his $130,000 salary as governor and takes an annual pay of 1 cent.

This is a man who fails to understand that not all Floridians are rich, fat and happy. What he most likely does understand is that most people applying for welfare probably don’t have the wherewithal to challenge his foul ball of a regulation.

But with the help of the ACLU, one man – the dad of an 8-year old son – sued the state. An obscure federal district judge in Central Florida saw right through the law’s ignorance of the Fourth Amendment and tore it apart.

As 2013 ended, Judge Mary S. Scriven ruled that Scott’s law was unconstitutional and a violation of those Fourth Amendment protections.

Scriven said the collection of an applicant’s urine “entails intrusion into a highly personal bodily function,” and that intrusion also “extends well beyond the initial passing of urine,” according to a report in the Sentinel.

She concluded that Scott’s drug testing, which she described as “suspicionless,” amounts to a search and reminded the state that proper searches and seizures are based on “probable cause.”

Incidentally, Mary S. Scriven was nominated to the federal bench in 2008 by President George W. Bush.

 By Jeffrey Page

 Do we all agree that New Years resolutions – to do things better, indeed to be better – are a waste of time? Does anyone actually follow through and keep these promises for more than a week or so?

 In fact, some of us resolved a year ago to just stop making resolutions. Or at least to make them when the spirit moves us, and not wait for Jan. 1. August, after all, is a fine time to stop smoking or to be a better dad. You know what I mean.

But there is temptation in that brand new calendar tacked to the wall with all its clean little boxes to note our progress through the year. There are no erasures yet, no inky cross-outs, no canceled appointments. To look at a new calendar, like the one with the Norman Rockwell illustrations I got free of charge at the drug store, is to see a chance to start fresh, to renew hope, to tell ourselves that, damn it, this will be the year when I lose the weight, when we will call a long-lost cousin, the year that I’ll keep the promises I make to myself and others.

So while I assume you agree with me that making resolutions is just a silly exercise in wishful thinking, I must tell you I’m caught and am sitting here at my desk looking at the nice blank calendar. And sure enough, here I am resolving to do better. I’m thinking about the year just ended and the promises I forgot to keep, and I’m thinking about the year that starts today.

In so special order, here’s what I’ve decided so far.

—I’m going to try and not take people for granted. I won’t allow the curse of great distance between my friends and me to keep me from the important people of my life. I will make the effort to stay in touch, to make the phone call, to send the birthday card, to make the visit.

–I’m not a Catholic but I intend to pay close attention to Pope Francis and strive to never forget this great man’s thinking. Great? So soon into his papacy? Yes. After all, he said this: “Among our tasks as witnesses to the love of Christ is that of giving a voice to the cry of the poor, so that they are not abandoned to the laws of an economy that seems at times to treat people as mere consumers.”

—I will continue my relationship with the scales of Weight Watchers. This program, I think, had added years to my life. To make the program work, all I had to was take it seriously. Not always easy, but when it is worked, it works.

–I’ll remember Nelson Mandela’s walk to freedom in 1990 after 27 years in prison. I will marvel at his survival, and will wonder if I could have withstood 27 days in prison, let alone 27 years.

–I’ll remember my father-in-law’s great act of grandfatherly love when he drove from home on Long Island to our house in Sullivan County to take my daughter out for an ice cream soda. I want to repeat that with my own granddaughter, probably not this year. Will she choose chocolate? Strawberry? Does it matter?

–My admiration for Malala Yousafzai will continue undiminished. Malala is the Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban for the crime of encouraging other children to learn to read. She survived the shooting. She was 15; she survived. “Our books and pens are the most powerful weapons,” she has said.

–I’ll eliminate spider-solitaire from my computer because I waste entirely too much time playing this mindless game.

—I’ll offer my services as an infielder to the Mets and as a point guard for the Knicks because, God knows, both teams need me in their starting lineups.

Best wishes for a healthy and peaceful 2014.