A Democratic senator who jumped ship gets his lucrative committee chairmanship back after abandoning the Republican-led coup.

Sen. Hiram Monserrate of Queens had lost the job after he was accused of slashing his girlfriend’s face with a broken glass.

A Republican senator says the Democrats are willing to do anything. It’s certainly questionable on the face of it.

First reported in the Daily News. Here’s the Associated Press version:

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A Democratic senator stripped of a lucrative committee chairmanship after he was charged with assaulting his girlfriend has been quietly reappointed to the post.
Queens Sen. Hiram Monserrate got the job back in the aftermath of the coup he helped Republicans engineer in the New York Senate.
Senate President Pro Tempore Malcolm Smith wrote to the state comptroller on Friday — the day after Democrats regained control of the chamber — requesting reinstatement of Monserrate’s $12,500 annual stipend as chairman of the Consumer Protection Committee.
Smith, a Queens Democrat, didn’t immediately comment Wednesday on his decision.
Monserrate is still facing charges, including felony assault. He is accused of slashing his girlfriend’s face with a broken glass. He has denied the charges and plans to fight them in court.
The state comptroller’s office said it cut a check to Monserrate on Friday. The payment was first reported by the New York Daily News.
“What a surprise,” said Republican Sen. Martin Golden of Brooklyn, who called on Monserrate to step down from the Senate after the assault case became public. He also admitted he was uneasy with the two-day alliance with Monserrate that helped the Republicans stage the June 8 coup.
“There could be no other reason (to award a stipend) other than just another part of a deal to try to hold that Senate Democratic conference together,” he said. “It is so fractured that they are willing to do just about anything to do that. That’s what it’s all about: Power.”
Monserrate’s spokesman and Senate Democratic leadership refused comment Wednesday.

The Los Angeles Times is running transcripts of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings.

You can read exactly what the senators and the judge said, and decide for yourself who makes the most sense.

Here is today’s session.

PHOTO: Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor testifies on Capitol Hill today before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

In her opening statement, Judge Sonia Sotomayor told senators that her judicial philosophy was simple: “fidelity to the law.”

“The task of a judge is not to make the law – it is to apply the law,” she said.

It’s funny how both sides say the same thing, and mean something very different.

Read her statement here.

Photo:

Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, right, talks to her mother Celina, on Capitol Hill in Washington today, during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

New York’s senators will meet to talk about more equitable staffing.

Like everything else in Albany, to the winner go the spoils. Now come reports that 11 top staff members got raises while the coup left the capitol in chaos.

More from the Associated Press.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — With millions of dollars in payroll at stake, Republican and Democratic leaders in New York’s deeply divided Senate say they’ll meet this week to try work out more equitable staffing in the chamber.
The Senate has a $93 million budget and almost 1,300 employees. Hundreds of those workers are hired in part because of political affiliation and work for individual senators, party-controlled central Senate staff or committees controlled by majority party chairmen.
Staffing remains a sore point after news reports over the weekend that 11 top Senate staffers got raises ranging from $10,000 to $32,000 in the past month, when the chamber was paralyzed by a power struggle and it appeared likely Democrats would lose the majority. Republicans call the raises badly timed patronage

Mayor Bloomberg laces into the State Department for allowing foreign governments to forgo paying property taxes, the New York Post reports.

According to the tabloid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reversed a longstanding position, a move that will cost the city millions.

Bloomberg calls the decision unfair; no comment in the article from Clinton.

What do you think? Should foreign governments be exempt?

My brother Mark is growing an organic mini-garden in his backyard.

Here’s a photo from the weekend.

The corn might not be as high as an elephant’s eye, but it’s as tall as my nephew.

Some quick facts:
Organic plants

Organic soil in a raised bed

Frame 8’ x 4’ made of locally grown balsam fir

24” chicken wire to protect the plants from neighborhood rabbits

What’s growing in the garden? Corn, cherry tomatoes, many kinds of lettuce, green and red bell peppers, green onions, cucumbers, habanero peppers and strawberries.

There’s also a stray peanut plant which might not be organic. It was found growing behind the garage.

UPDATE: The garden is now 100 percent organic. A squirrel made off with the questionable peanut plant. Oh, and I forgot the basil.

The confirmation hearings of Judge Sotomayor have begun and one of the witnesses scheduled to testify is Frank Ricci, the New Haven firefighter who sued over reverse discrimination and ultimately won.

Should you think that was Ricci’s first lawsuit, you’d be wrong.

He sued New Haven in 1995 for failing to hire him because of his dyslexia. Three years later he was talking of suing his subequent employer, the Middletown fire department.

There’s more here in Slate.

Are liberals trying to sully Ricci’s reputation? Are conservatives misrepresenting his background?

PHOTO: Frank Ricci, left, lead plaintiff in the the “New Haven 20” firefighter reverse discrimination case speaks to the media outside of Federal Court in New Haven, Conn., on June 29. The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that white firefighters in New Haven were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

This is too funny.

The Associated Press is reporting that a supermax federal prison won’t let an inmate read two books by none other than—President Obama.

“Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope” were deemed “potentially detrimental to national security” by prison officials.

Are they serious?

According to AP, prison officials cite specific pages that were objectionable. What do they contain? AP says it’s not immediately obvious though nearly half the pages cited are in a chapter devoted to foreign affairs.

Prison officials referred calls to the FBI, whose guidance they sought. A prison spokeswoman told the AP the agency was looking into the matter.

More Obama news. Just what was he eyeing in this photo? Drudge has one take.

Good Morning America says not so fast and runs the video.

PHOTO: President Barack Obama talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, standing with, from left to right, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi before a moment of silence for earthquake victims at the G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy, on Friday. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Pedro Espada returns to the Democratic fold and says the coup was never about power. No?

What was the point of the last five weeks?

Did anything change?

Late last month I wrote about an effort to improve the diets of schoolchildren.

Bistro owner, Francois Payard, helped out with a whole wheat pizza with tofu.

Two days later, Payard’s Patisserie and Bistro on the Upper East Side of Manhattan closed. A disagreement over rent.

More here at Zagat.