Would you march in a parade alongside a terrorist? If your answer is 'no,' you may be disqualified from holding office in New York City.
As you may have heard, organizers of the upcoming Puerto Rican Day parade have bestowed the honor of leading the parade upon 74-year-old Oscar Lopez Rivera.
Just a bit of background on this man: His supporters may hail him as a 'militant,' but in fact Rivera is a stone-cold terrorist. Long before he was leading parades, Oscar Lopez Rivera was leading the Puerto Rican independence group FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation.)
FALN terrorists bombed government buildings, restaurants, banks, and stores, more than a hundred in all. One of their most infamous works was the bombing of Manhattan's historic Fraunces Tavern in 1975. Put simply, the FALN made Bill Ayers and his Weather Underground look like duds.
After being convicted of various violent crimes, this truly bad hombre spent 36 years behind bars. He would have died in a federal lockup had not President Obama commuted his sentence just before leaving office. Rivera, who has never apologized or expressed contrition for his violent deeds, was released last week, just in time to be honored in New York City, the very city where many of his bombs killed and maimed.
The upcoming hero's welcome is the idea of New York Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, a millionaire slumlord who rarely met a Marxist thug she didn't like. But this odious woman is not alone. Dozens of other New York politicians are also saluting the terrorist, chief among them Mayor Bill de Blasio, who will proudly join the parade. Even Governor Andrew Cuomo is considering marching, although he is first holding up his finger to see which way the wind is blowing [update: Cuomo has said he won't march. We'll see who, if anyone, follows].
The good news is that not all of Gotham has gone totally insane. Goya Foods, a sponsor of the parade for 60 years, has bowed out. So have the New York Yankees, JetBlue, Coca-Cola, NYC firefighters, AT&T, the New York Daily News, and others. Police Commissioner James O'Neill, expressing his disgust, correctly described Rivera as a 'terrorist.' Perhaps he remembers that the FALN bombed NYPD headquarters in 1982, severely wounding three cops.
Of course, the passionate love affair between left-wingers and murderous thugs is nearly as old as Romeo and Juliet. Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Michael Moore and others made pilgrimages to Venezuela to worship at the feet of Hugo Chavez, a man who holds the distinction of destroying an entire country.
Even further back, many American radicals had a soft spot for their 'Uncle Joe' Stalin, who rivaled Hitler in his genocidal ways. They were also hot for Fidel, Che, Mao, and assorted other communist thugs.
Here at home, the cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal has been heralded as a 'political prisoner,' even though he savagely murdered Philadelphia cop Daniel Faulkner. Your tax dollars helped support Mumia's commentaries on National Public Radio for a time; he has also been invited to give various college commencement addresses. The left has no discernable sympathy for Officer Faulkner's widow Maureen.
That Puerto Rican Day parade, coming up in two weeks, still has a few sponsors. Among them is the United Federation of Teachers, the union that represents New York City teachers. They are sending quite a message to their students, wouldn't you say?
And Mayor Bill de Blasio? Well, even after the Manchester terrorist bombing, he defends his decision to march behind a terrorist. 'The parade committee made a choice this year on someone to honor,' Mayor de Blasio said, weasel that he is. But suppose that parade committee had decided to honor native New Yorker President Trump? Rest assured that the mayor and his left-wing cronies in New York City would have stayed home. To them, a terrorist is far preferable to a Republican president.
Forget basketball, this is the real 'march madness.'
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