A longtime aide to former Gov. George Pataki has signed on to Rudy Giuliani’s presidential exploratory committee.

Michael McKeon, a Yonkers native, will be one of Giuliani’s senior communications advisors.

McKeon joined the Pataki adminstration in 1995 and was a chief spokesman and strategist for the governor. Recently he was part of Jeanine Pirro’s failed bid for U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton.

More evidence that Pataki’s not running?

Since her brother’s death on Sept. 11, 2001, Rosaleen Tallon has been an unrelenting critic of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Tallon, whose brother Sean was a firefighter who lived in Yonkers, blames Giuliani for the fact that the radios that the firefighters carried failed to work.

Last week she was among the protesters outside the baseball-themed fundraiser that Giuliani held in Manhattan and she was among those interviewed by the New York Sun.

Here’s the “link.”:http://www.nysunpolitics.com/blog/2007/03/more-from-the-rudy-fundraiser.html

Photo: Rosaleen Tallon at an earlier protest about the memorial being built at the site of the former World Trade Center.

No posts until Monday

For the first time, a congressman has acknowledged that he does not believe in God.
Rep. Pete Stark, a Democrat who represents San Francisco’s East Bay, issued a statement saying, “I am a Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being.”
Stark’s statement came after the Secular Coalition of America held a contest to identify the highest elected “non-theist” in the country. Stark (pictured below) won.
As The Washington Post noted, John Adams and Adlai Stevenson were among other Unitarians who have served in Congress and Thomas Brackett Reed, the speaker of the House in the 1890s, called himself a freethinker. But the article quoted Fred Buettler, the deputy historian of the House of Representatives, as saying they all claimed to believe in God.
“As far as I know, Representative Stark is the first self-proclaimed non-theist,” Beuttler told the newspaper.

Some other firsts it noted: Freshman Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, is the first Muslim in Congress. Reps. Hank Johnson of Georgia and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii are the first Buddhists.
One interesting note: all are Democrats.
But a word of caution. Americans aren’t that enthusiastic about atheists. Last month, a USA Today/Gallup poll found that only 45 percent said they would vote for a well qualified candidate for president if he or she were also an atheist. A Catholic candidate got 95 percent, a Jewish one 92 and a Mormon 72.

New York’s tiffs go nationwide.

Rudy Giuliani’s disputes with the city’s firefighters after Sept. 11 are now part of the presidential campaign. Here’s an Associated Press article.

Firefighters union assails Giuliani

By LIZ SIDOTI

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s largest firefighters union has accused Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, of committing “egregious acts� against firefighters who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In a letter to its members Friday, the International Association of Fire Fighters, excoriated Giuliani for his November 2001 decision to cut back the number of firefighters searching the rubble of Ground Zero for the remains of some 300 fallen comrades.
The 280,000-member union accused him of carelessly expediting the cleanup process with a “scoop-and-dump� operation after the recovery of millions of dollars in gold, silver and other assets from the Bank of Nova Scotia that had been buried.
Giuliani’s campaign insisted that he respects and supports first responders.
The former mayor and the union have feuded for years over his policies in the aftermath of the attacks, but the firefighters’ latest criticism comes as several polls show Giuliani ahead by wide margins in the GOP nomination race.
Seeking to blunt the impact of the accusations, his campaign announced the support of nearly 100 South Carolina firefighters and countered with its own letter from Lee Ielpi, a retired New York firefighter.
“There is no one who respects firefighters and first responders more than Rudy Giuliani,� Ielpi wrote. “Firefighters have no greater friend and supporter.�
The union’s latest broadside initially was included in a scathing letter dated Feb. 28. Union officials say that letter was drafted as leaders were weighing whether to invite Giuliani to a presidential candidate forum but never was distributed to members because the union ultimately invited Giuliani. Giuliani, however, declined the invitation to next week’s forum, citing scheduling conflicts.
“We decided to fall on the side of taking the high road and extend an invitation to him,� said Harold Schaitberger, the union’s general president. “That letter was never intended to be released.�
Nevertheless, the letter showed up on Web sites this week. After it surfaced, the union decided to send a revised letter with the same criticisms to its members on Friday and posted it on the union’s Web site.

“Mayor Giuliani’s actions meant that firefighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like so much garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills landfill,� the letter said, adding: “Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them.�
“What Giuliani showed is a disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen and those brothers still searching for them,� it added.
The union said the purpose of the letter was “to make all our members aware of the egregious acts Mayor Giuliani committed against our members, our fallen on 9/11 and our New York City union officers following that horrific day.�
Ielpi, for his part, said he was “deeply disappointed and disheartened� by the union’s recent political activities and called the letter offensive and inaccurate.
Tim Brown, a former firefighter and executive director of Firefighters for Rudy who is also a Giuliani campaign aide, added: “We are honored by the support of so many first responders from across the country and are appreciative of their continued enthusiasm for Mayor Giuliani’s candidacy.�
The union says it’s bipartisan. It endorsed Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004.
At least 10 Republican and Democratic candidates plan to attend Wednesday’s forum, including Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, and former Sen. John Edwards. On the Republican side, the only top tier candidate who has committed is GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, declined an invitation.

Barack Obama was at the Grand Hyatt Hotel on 42nd Street tonight and at least 1,500 people packed a ballroom to hear him speak and raise money for his campaign.
The night was billed as a “young professionals” event by the campaign. Some were firmly behind Obama; others said they wanted to hear what he had to say.
When he took the stage, he told the crowd: “We are in one of those moments where we cannot afford timidity and we can’t afford smallness and we can’t afford division and we can’t afford nastiness…if we focus on what we have in common, what binds us together as a people, then there’s no challenge that we can’t meet. And that is the spirit that we are seeing in this campaign across this country.”

About the war, he said that the country understood that “Politics is not a game. It is not a sport, that there are consequences that are profound to the decisions that we make in Washington. And that the reason we’re not meeting the challenges we face, it’s not because we don’t …have good answers.
What’s absent is leadership. What’s absent is political will.”
“Barack is the real deal,” his wife, Michele, said in introducing him. “What I mean by that is Barack is really exactly who he says he is. You know there’ s no hidden agenda to this guy. He is decent, he is sincere, he is authentic, he isn’t manufactured.”

It’s hard not to compare Obama’s fund raiser to John McCain’s the night before. Obama’s seemed designed to stir up excitement among young people. The tickets were cheaper but the crowd was larger. McCain’s drew people who had served in administrations past—Henry Kissinger, for example—powerful and experienced, but not young.
Of course, Obama is already being criticized as inexperienced. And McCain as a man whose time is past.
But as McCain said Thursday: It’s still early in the race.

NOTE: The comments and descriptions of the Obama fundraiser came from a pool report provided by New York Post reporter Maggie Haberman.

For all I know Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the best of friends.

But reporters are having great fun with the rivalry between them.

Tomorrow night, Obama invades her turf, holding a fund raiser in Manhattan.

The Daily News reports it sold out so fast it had to moved to the one of the ballrooms at the Grand Hyatt hotel on 42nd Street. One reason: at $100 a head it was geared toward young people and sure to generate excitement.

On the weekend, you heard the dueling speeches in Selma (and Clinton’s inexplicable southern accent.) Now the battle for the bucks.

Trinity Lutheran Church in Southeast wants to hold an overnight vigil tomorrow night.

It’s Lent and the night of prayers would mark the season.

But it would also test whether the town really will try to block the church’s participation in the Brewster Emergency Shelter Partnership.

Because the church also wants to put up homeless men and women overnight. Earlier in the winter various congregations came together to offer a warm place to sleep for those who needed it.

Those congregations within the village of Brewster encountered no difficulities. Trinity Lutheran Church is over the border in the town of Southeast and it was told the plan would violate zoning laws.

A similar case arose in New York City and it went the court. And the city lost.

I can think of many good reasons why churches might have to abide by zoning laws—whether the courts agreed. The laws are often meant for our greater good—cleaner water, open space, curbs on overcrowding.

But using the law to forbid a church from offering comfort in the middle winter is not one of those good reasons.

The church was waiting to hear from the town today. I hope it prevails.

UPDATE: The church plans to go forward with its vigil and in the meantime the town has referred its members to a state Department of State law as the reason it can’t house homeless people overnight. Stay tuned.

Former Gov. George Pataki and his chief of staff, John Cahill, have joined the New York law firm of Chadbourne & Parke. They will concentrate on energy, environmental issues and corporate matters, according to a press release from the firm.
While he was in office Pataki focused on the environment, and it was an area that seemed to be particularly important to him.

He was applauded by groups such Audubon New York, which commended him for his years of conservation leadership.
“Not since Teddy Rooosevelt has the state had a more dedicated governor intent on protecting New York’s great natural heritage,” said the chapter’s executive director David Miller.
But the governor also got criticism for cutting the state Department of Environmental Conservation and its regulatory ability. And others said he often announced far-reaching proposals that then were repeatedly delayed.

Today Richard Land, head of public policy for the Southern Baptist Convention, criticized Rudy Giuliani’s divorce from his second wife in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I mean, this is divorce on steroids,” Land said. “To publicly humiliate your wife in that way, and your children. That’s rough. I think that’s going to be an awfully hard sell, even if he weren’t pro-choice and pro-gun control.”

The former mayor has been married three times. He married Judith Nathan in 2003 after a very messy split from Donna Hanover, so messy that he told Hanover he was leaving her through a press conference.

But evangelicals, if you listen to their leaders, should already be turning their backs on Giuliani. He’s pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control. Yet he still leads in some polls.

Religious leaders say his support will dwindle when Americans learn more about the man dubbed “America’s mayor” after the Sept. 11 attacks. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain comes to New York City tomorrow evening for an event billed as an exchange of ideas. And some evangelical leaders don’t like him either.

Earlier this year, James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, said he wouldn’t support McCain “under any circumstances.”

On the other hand, last year, the senator delivered the commencement address at the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. He had famously declared Falwell and other Christian leaders “agents of intolerance” during the 2000 presidential campaign.