I keep seeing bloggers and other people complaining about how the smoking ban is the worst thing that has happened to New York, that it's a symptom of what's wrong with New York. Witness Liz Smith's column today:

THE NIGHT BEFORE, I had attended an atypical dinner party on Park Avenue. (Atypical in that the food was simply great!) Here's what people talked about, first and foremost: the mayor's anti-smoking law, and how even people who don't smoke are deploring it and saying it has hurt him politically more than anything else he has done or ever will do. (Nobody mentioned the city economy, the war or the Middle East. It was as if that was too troubling to touch. But one network biggie did drop a few hints after dinner about the chaos now in Iraq.)

This city endured Giuliani, with the rabid enforcement of no-dancing regulations in bars, the random targeting of clubs for raids and searches, the passage of anti-stripper bar laws that wouldn't happen in Iowa, without these people getting too upset. But unless you allow them to expose others to second-hand smoke, then -- and only then -- has fascism begun to arrive.

As I write this, NYC is watching its police force behave as badly under Bloomberg as it did under Giuliani, and I can't imagine that he isn't involved. The city continues to lose lawsuits over its treatment of political demonstrators, but chooses to continue to violate their rights and pay out settlements. We're laying off people because of a budget crunch, but the city has budgeted $5 million for such cases next year. Go read James for a good post on this subject.

This weekend the papers have articles about a 57-year-old woman in Harlem dying of a heart attack after the police broke down her door, threw in a stun grenade, and handcuffed her in a drug raid that was at the wrong address. I don't need to mention that she was not white, because we all know the NYPD would never behave in this manner in a predominantly white neighborhood. You can go read James's post on it, and then read Jimmy Breslin, which includes this:

She has lived there for 23 years. The police might have asked neighbors about the occupant of the apartment next door. They did not. Instead, with wanton, criminal disregard they recklessly violated the civil rights of Ms. Spruill and this is a matter that should land them as defendants in federal criminal court.

This morning, while Ms. Spruill will not be in church, George Bush and his prayer book will be in his church.

George Bush is a Jesus freak and a television tough guy.

He wants Americans to replace the saliva in their mouths with blood. He creates the national atmosphere of hate and fear and crackdown and violence.

His creed of scathing contempt and preventive detention and pre-emptive bombing strikes at the smallest country he can find has turned this country's life into dreadful fear and hate everywhere.

And in Harlem on Friday, it helped cause the death of Alberta Spruill, who worked every day of her life and went to church every Sunday.

NY Newsday has good coverage of this story today, including the fact that the police conducted the raid without doing any verification of their informant's report.

I can't finish without one last item from Newsday. They have a big story about city parks. Increasingly, the nicest ones like Central Park and Bryant Park are being privatized, and guards are there to make sure the "wrong kind of people" don't patronize them. The small story on Bryant Park ends with this:

Unlike most public parks, however, Bryant Park is not entirely egalitarian. Stand out from the BlackBerryed corporate crowd, and you may be asked to state your business.

So it was when a large security guard interrupted a reporter's interview with a parkgoer to demand credentials. "We like to know what's going on," he said.