News Round-up and Open Thread for Tuesday, September 26

by: Sharon GR

Tue Sep 26, 2006 at 07:59:01 AM EDT

• Right after stepping down as chairman of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee amid a scandal about a sham part-time job, State Senator Wayne Bryant was praised in Camden yesterday as ground was broken for a new Law School building for Rutgers. Bryant helped the school receive $11 million in state funding; he also had a part-time job there as an adjunct professor.
• Republicans in the legislature demanded a special session on ethics reform, while the one on property taxes is still in session. Assembly Republicans issued an 11-point ethics reform package of bills, while Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman observed that "it is the height of absurdity for Assembly Republicans to point fingers on ethics reform."
• The Real Estate bubble is bursting, with new data released yesterday. Both home prices and home sales fell in the last year, for the first time in eleven years.
• The Senate unanimously confirmed Stuart Rabner as the new Attorney General.
• Newton has backed down from their proposed bill to punish landlords and businesses for involvement with illegal immigrants. A similar plan in Riverside has drawn sharp criticism and a big ol' lawsuit filed by The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders.
• Franklin Twp. (Gloucester County) has become a Democrat-controlled town, as deputy mayor Peter Scapellato has changed parties.
• The earth is getting warmer! How about that? Who woulda thunk it?
  
• Thousands of soldiers in the U.S. Army will have their combat tours extended.
  
• Lt. Ashley Henderson Huff was killed in a suicide bomber attack in Iraq. She graduated from Montgomery High School. Lt. Huff had been married for just over a year, and was due to come home in six weeks. She becomes the first woman from New Jersey to be killed in this war.