MSNBC host Alex Wagner became frustrated on Wednesday when Business Insider’s Josh Barro insisted that some of the actions of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie which have been construed as “intimidation” are closer to standard transactional politics. Wagner insisted that the closure of two local outbound lanes of the George Washington Bridge in 2013 was anything but standard politics because it resulted in “casualties.”RELATED: Jake Tapper: Christie Got More Scrutiny for BridgeGate Than Hillary Clinton Did for Benghazi
Barro began by saying that a number of the behavioral improprieties that Christie has been accused of, with the exception of the bridge closure, are really standard political behavior. He specifically cited the claims of Olympian Carl Lewis who says Christie sought to pressure him out of running for the New Jersey state Senate as a Democrat.
“These seem like the sorts of political things a governor ought to be doing, trying to get strong candidates out of races,” Barro posited.
“Closing the bridges, there were casualties to that decision,” Wagner protested.
It was unclear whether Wagner was using the term “casualties” to apply to waking wounded or the word’s more modern context which includes both wounded and fatalities. However, she would be hard-pressed to prove either accusation.
On January 8, shortly after emails surfaced implicating Christie’s staff in the closure of the bridge for allegedly political purposes, hundreds of reports surfaced linking those closures to the death of a 91-year-old woman who passed away before an ambulance that was caught in bridge-related traffic could reach her.
Some suggested that this was a preventable death that was brought about by the state of New Jersey’s negligence. A follow up report in the following day’s New York Times debunked this assumption. Quoting the late nonagenarian’s daughter, the Times reported that the deceased’s family believes that she passed away in her home and was only later pronounced dead at the hospital.
“The traffic didn’t make any difference,” the husband of the 91-year-old’s daughter told the Times.
“I honestly believe it was just her time,” the woman’s daughter added.
State senator and Union City Mayor Brian Stack appeared on CNN on Tuesday where he came out in support of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and said that he has been one of the “best” governors the state has ever had. He added that he thought the mayor of his city’s abutting city, Hoboken’s Dawn Zimmer, was making “far-fetched” allegations against Christie’s administration.RELATED: Donald Trump: Chris Christie “one email away from disaster”
Stack said that Christie did “great” in his address on Tuesday marking his second inauguration as the Garden State governor.
“Has your confidence in him been shaken at all?” The Lead host Jake Tapper asked referencing the allegation surrounding the closure of the George Washington Bridge in 2013 and the claim that the governor’s administration threatened to withhold Hurricane Sandy aid from Hoboken.
“I don’t believe the governor knew anything that was going on with the bridge, Jake,” Stack replied. “We all have staff members that sometimes do things that we’re not proud of.”
“As for Mayor Zimmer in Hoboken, I mean I just think the story is far-fetched,” he added. Stack said that his relationship with Christie has been “great” and that Trenton has “gone out of their way to be helpful” to him and his city’s residents.
Tapper suggested that Stack may have a better relationship with Christie because he is a political ally. Stack said that he supported former Gov. Jon Corzine for reelection in 2009. “That was a huge mistake,” he added. “He didn’t do anything. He was never responsive, being a fellow Democrat, he was never responsive.”
“As for being a governor, I think he’s been one of the best we’ve had in New Jersey,” Stack added.
Asked if he would support Christie in a bid for the White House in 2016, Stack said that he would “be inclined to support him.”
As Ed wrote this morning and Guy Benson has covered exhaustively all weekend, the allegations mounted by Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer on MSNBC now amount to several diary entries and a bunch of holes.
First, the central question. Did Hoboken get fewer Sandy funds than it needed or deserved? Are there actual damages to which one might tie this alleged political corruption? The original MSNBC report played fast and loose with the numbers to leave that impression, but the reality is Hoboken got millions in relief funds, but perhaps not in the exact amounts Zimmer was requesting. Guy Benson:
The original MSNBC story leaves the distinct impression that the city received less than $350,000 in aid out of a $127 million request. In fact, Christie’s office points out, Hoboken has benefited from nearly $70 million in federal and state recovery and relief funding — which they say is commensurate with aid received by similarly situated municipalities. They emphasize that not a single grant application from Hoboken was denied.
MSNBC’s report, Christie aides say, conflated total aid with the much narrower issue of “hazard mitigation” funds. They concede that Zimmer did, in fact, request more than $100 million in hazard mitigation assistance — which at the time accounted for more than one-third of the entire available budget allocated for that purpose.Her story has changed. First, it was that Christie withheld Sandy funds because she didn’t endorse him, according to this New Jersey reporter:
Matt Katz @mattkatz00 Follow
8 days ago Hoboken Mayor told @WNYC & @GonzalezSarahA her loss of Sandy aid was tied to failure to endorse @GovChristie. Now different storyIn the second version of the story, the retaliation is over a development deal.
Zimmer waited almost a year to reveal the Christie administration’s alleged strongarming, leaving it hidden even as he ran for reelection.
She tweeted awfully nice things in August about a guy who had allegedly threatened her city:
Some of the alleged strongarming took place on a TV set, with Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Richard Constable, where no audio or video of the conversation was captured. Now, one of the eye witnesses to that encounter, a fellow Democratic mayor, says no such thing went down.
Zimmer, a Democrat, stuck by her story Sunday. She said her conversation with Constable occurred May 16 at Monmouth University prior to their appearance as panelists on a TV event produced by NJTV.NJTV doesn’t have any pre-broadcast audio records from that event, said Debra Falk, a spokeswoman.Belmar Mayor Matt Doherty, who also was a panelist, said he didn’t hear a conversation between Zimmer and Constable.“I sat next to Mayor Zimmer and, if I recall correctly, (Constable) was on my other side,” Doherty said.Doherty, also a Democrat, said Belmar hasn’t faced delays in receiving recovery money.“The administration has always been cooperative and professional and encouraged us to contact them right away if there’s anything we need,” Doherty said.Zimmer brought her story to light on MSNBC on Saturday and in an interview on CNN said the alleged quid pro quo offer from the high-ranking administration was “a direct message from the governor.”If Christie’s not your 2016 cup of tea, fine. If it turns out he did know about Bridgegate after claiming not to, he’s in serious trouble. Plenty can oppose him for either of those reasons, but until Zimmer has something more than her own diary entries, which contradict eye witnesses and her own tweets, this should not be the story that turns anyone against him.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell proudly announced on Wednesday night that he “wrote” a hard-hitting, campaign-style political advertisement attacking Chris Christie. The ad, which he broadcast on his program, The Last Word, uses the New Jersey governor’s own words against him — a common practice in campaign ads. “Don’t let Christie embarrass and humiliate America,” the ad’s narrator urges the audience.RELATED: Inevitable: MSNBC shows now producing their own anti-Christie ads
What’s more, O’Donnell closed his program with instructions for his audience on how to produce similar anti-Christie ads on their own. He even provided them with some helpful clips which could facilitate the creation of those ads.
Harmless, right? Not so much.
In May of 2012, Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends found themselves in hot water when the program produced and aired their own campaign-style ad targeting President Barack Obama. The 4-minute commercial was roundly criticized by media observers and prompted Fox News Channel’s Executive Vice President of Programming, Bill Shine, to issue a statement insisting that the ad was “was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network.”
The ad prompted commentary and news reports from outlets like CBS News, ABC News, The Hollywood Reporter, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Salon, and Mediaite asking whether Fox had crossed a line when they aired what many legitimately considered a pro-Republican attack ad.
Conservative media critics like HotAir’s Ed Morrissey and The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik came out strongly against the move by Fox. Zurawik said the video package “resembled propaganda films from 1930s Europe more than it did responsible TV politics of today.”
Even the White House got involved. “White House spokesman Jay Carney had a stern conversation with Michael Clemente, a top executive at Fox News, about the video,” The Huffington Post reported.
“Carney said that ‘Fox and Friends’ had gone much too far.”
Following a firestorm of controversy, Fox announced that the associate producer responsible for the ad was leaving for CNN.
Forgetting the lessons of that incident, O’Donnell fell into a similar trap. But without the tempo of a political campaign to inspire a backlash against the host’s decision to, by his own admission, write and air an anti-Christie ad, will this move result in any consequences for MSNBC and O’Donnell?
What a bizarre spectacle. Assuming he did not lie during his marathon news conference last week, the feeding frenzy surrounding New Jersey governor Chris Christie will be remembered as one of those incredibly odd moments of elite journalistic hysteria that are difficult to explain to people who weren’t there or didn’t get it.
I’m not referring to the scandal itself; that’s easy enough to understand. What Christie’s team did was outrageous and deserves as much foofaraw and brouhaha as the New Jersey media can muster.
What’s harder to grok is the hysteria at the national level.
For starters, there have been countless greater outrages at the state level that have received far less national coverage. (Indeed, there have been national scandals under President Obama that have received less intense national coverage.) Since 1961, four Illinois governors have ended up in jail, and with the exception of Rod Blagojevich, few have received comparable media attention.
Meet the Press dedicated 33 minutes to the New Jersey scandal, including a grilling of Reince Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee, as if Christie were Nixon during Watergate (a comparison ostensibly serious people have made).
Many conservatives see liberal media bias in all this. But that diagnosis misses the fact that this was the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, giving producers ample opportunity to advance a liberal agenda. Moreover, Christie is actually quite popular in establishment media circles — the sort of politician Sunday-show liberals insist America needs more of. He’s also quite unpopular in many quarters of the Right.
If there is a secret left-wing cabal interested solely in advancing the liberal cause through the media, the Christie auto-da-fé was a missed opportunity.
A more plausible partial explanation is partisan bias, which can be hard to distinguish from liberal bias in many outlets since it tends to favor Democrats. The key difference is that partisan bias focuses more on the political interests of specific politicians or a party generally.
Feeding-frenzy defenders insist the closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge is special because innocent constituents were deliberately inconvenienced for partisan purposes. That’s surely what makes this scandalous, but it hardly makes it unique. The Obama administration employed similar tactics during the sequester and the government shutdown. Closing the open-air World War II Memorial, furloughing air-traffic controllers, and other efforts were deliberate attempts to maximize the pain of innocents for political benefit. The tactic worked, but that’s not a justification for it, is it?
The allegation that the Obama administration used the IRS to target political opponents is far more explosive (similar tactics were at the core of the Nixon impeachment effort). And, unlike Christie’s claims of what he knew and when, similar White House denials haven’t held up.
And in the same week the media succumbed to St. Vitus’s dance over Christie’s alleged “cover-up,” it was revealed that the Department of Justice had appointed an Obama donor from the civil-rights division, instead of the public-integrity division, to investigate the IRS scandal. The department now says it would be unlawful to remove her from the assignment because of her political views. That’s untrue. No hysteria there.
Christie is widely seen as a threat to whomever the Democratic nominee will be. Unlike some recent GOP nominees, who struggled to be merely lifelike, Christie has an authenticity and charisma most national Republicans lack. As ABC’s Jonathan Karl put it on This Week, Christie is “the most intriguing and colorful person” in American politics.
That probably explains the overkill as much as anything. Christie is new, exciting, and interesting in ways Obama once was. The difference is that when Obama was new and exciting, the media were biased in every regard and heroically skeptical of any Obama wrongdoing. “We thought he was going to be . . . the next messiah,” Barbara Walters recently said. The cult of personality has diminished but the partisan skepticism remains.
Christie, like most Republicans, never benefited from such skepticism, and never will.RELATED:How Chris Christie Lost His Way
Bill O’Reilly has no doubts about why Chris Christie is being targeted so strongly in the media and especially by Democrats: he is the “biggest threat” to the left, and so “the politics of destruction” are being thrown into overdrive in order to delegitimize him with “BridgeGate” and thereby ensuring he is not a serious challenger to Hillary Clinton in 2016. O’Reilly didn’t say the scandal is irrelevant, but he did say it’s very much overblown.
O’Reilly argued that Mitt Romney lost in 2012 because he was too much of a “gentleman” and wasn’t tough enough on issues like Benghazi, and so the tough Christie is “a threat to the power of the Democratic party” because of his reputation for blunt honesty. Ans so, he is being “marginalized” by Democrats “using his bluster against him.”
O’Reilly said, “If you are passionate and state your position firmly and flamboyantly… you become a big target.” He also noted that Democrats are more nervous about Christie than they are about more conservative potential candidates.RELATED: Poll: Conservatives Warming to Christie Following Media Barrage over Bridgegate?
She doesn’t give him a pass on it — as you’ll see, the word “atrocious” is mentioned — but contextualizing Bridgegate vis-a-vis the NSA and Benghazi (and the IRS, and Bob Gates’s accusations, etc) does Christie a big favor. Given the bad blood between them, she could have been much harsher.RELATED: Rush Limbaugh Chides Fox News for Defending Christie
Has any all-star tea partier really unloaded on Christie yet, by the way? It’s strange that after three days of punishing media coverage, the Republican who’s taken the biggest swing at him is … this guy.
In less than 24 hours, the big three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they've allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama's Internal Revenue Service controversy. Since the story broke on Wednesday that aides to the New Jersey governor punished a local mayor's lack of endorsement with a massive traffic jam, ABC, CBS and NBC have responded with 34 minutes and 28 seconds of coverage. Since July 1, these same networks managed a scant two minutes and eight seconds for the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups.
In contrast, journalists such as Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos pounced on the developing Christie story. The GMA host opened the program on Thursday by announcing, "Chris Christie in crisis. Calls at this hour for the feds to step in, investigate the explosive e-mails."
Stephanopoulos later wondered, "One of the big questions right now, how much has it hampered his White House prospects?" Guest Matt Dowd insisted that, on a scale from one to ten, the controversy was already at a "four or five."
Via the Daily Caller, are we at this point so soon? The story about his deputy’s e-mails broke this morning; he put out the requisite shock-and-disappointment statement a few hours ago; and now here’s a righty pundit already dropping the R-bomb on him, albeit conditionally. Half the Republicans I follow on Twitter are rolling their eyes that anyone in the media could be so exercised about petty hardball played by local politicians, especially when Bob Gates is busy accusing the president of the United States of sending men to die in a war he never believed in. Christie’s not in any imminent danger.RELATED: Christie denies involvement in controversial lane closures, says was 'misled'
But look — at this point, given his emphatic denials that he had anything to do with the lane closings, what’s the alternative to resigning if a smoking gun emerges proving that he did? He’s not going to stand at the podium, cop to having lied baldfaced to the world about his role in punishing the public in order to retaliate against a political enemy, and then say, “Oh well, see you tomorrow.” His whole shtick is that he’s a straight talker who tells the truths that more polished politicians are too afraid to tell. He can’t admit to having lied to protect himself and then go back to business as usual. So what’s the alternative to resignation if he gets caught red-handed? Which, I guess, is another way of saying that the odds of him getting caught red-handed are verrry low or else his denials wouldn’t be so emphatic. If he was involved, the way this was done, I assume, is Christie telling a close aide to make it happen and then the aide telling Kelly to make it happen. That gives him plausible deniability. No paper trail, no muss, no fuss. At worst, if Kelly turns on him and claims that she’s confident the order came from Christie himself, he’ll dismiss it as fingerpointing by a bad employee who’s eager to rehabilitate her rep by telling the media what it wants to hear. He wouldn’t go all-in on denials if he had reason to believe he was exposed.
As for the rest of the clip, where Cupp teases out a scenario in which Christie resigns, becomes a martyr to his supporters for doing so(?), and then rebounds by running for president anyway, I don’t know what to tell you except that Tapper’s green room must include a mini-bar. Any pol who would abuse his power for such petty, egotistical reasons, lie about it repeatedly, and then actually step down in disgrace isn’t going to be considered for the most powerful job in the world. Especially when a big chunk of his own party’s base already disdains him.
With its latest cover, a paywalled look at Chris Christie’s 2016 hopes, Time magazine opted to forgo the high road and run with a fat joke instead.RELATED: TIME Editor Defends Christie ‘Elephant’ Cover: ‘He’s Obviously a Big Guy’
“The Elephant in the Room,” Time blares, making a thinly veiled reference to Christie’s girth, his being a Republican, and the fact that his landslide reelection victory has some Tea Party Republicans feeling uneasy about the GOP’s future.
The New Jersey governor, who recently underwent weight loss surgery, has long had a well-known struggle with his weight, but is said to be losing the pounds slowly but steadily.
New Jersey State Senator Barbara Buono delivered her concession speech shortly after her campaign rival Governor Chris Christie was declared the winner of the gubernatorial election. In her speech, Buono took multiple shots at the “Democratic political bosses” in New Jersey for their “betrayal” of her campaign.RELATED: Chris Christie's reelection romp
Buono said her campaign “took on the bosses in the political machine that have defined New Jersey politics for far too long,” and specifically went after Democratic leaders for sabotaging her campaign.
“The Democrat political bosses––some elected, some not, made a deal with this governor, despite him representing everything they’re supposed to be against. They didn’t to it to help the state. They did it out of a desire to help themselves politically and financially.”A few minutes later, Buono praised her staffers, saying they “withstood the onslaught of betrayal from our own political party.”
Gov. Chris Christie today downplayed a confrontation he had with a public school teacher during a campaign stop this weekend, saying the story has been misrepresented.RELATED: Chris Christie Loses Gloria Borger Poll of SC GOP Primary, But Wins Actual Polls
“All you guys did was listen to her side of the story — which was grossly inaccurate,” the governor said during a campaign appearance at the Nutley Diner this morning.
On Saturday, Melissa Tomlinson — a teacher at Buena Regional Middle School — showed up at a Christie campaign rally in Somers Point to protest the Republican governor’s education policies.
She said she approached the governor and asked him, “Why are you portraying our schools as ‘failure factories?’” She said Christie cut off the conversation and responded: “What do you want? I’m tired of you people.”
The governor today denied saying that.
“She said, ‘Why do you call schools “failure factories”?’” Christie recalled. “I said, ‘Because they are.’ She said to me, ‘Well, it’s because you cut funding.’ I said, ‘No. In fact, there’s more state funding for education today than any other time.’
“I never said, ‘I’m tired of you people,’” he continued. “What I said was, ‘It’s never enough for you people. No matter how much money I give, it’s never enough for you people.’”
A picture of Christie pointing his finger at the teacher during the conversation spread throughout social media websites this weekend. The story also sparked a wave of backlash on Christie's Facebook page.
During the 2008 banking crisis, then-Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel famously said, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste.” The broadcast networks certainly followed his advice when reporting on Hurricane Sandy since the storm became a hurricane one year ago, hitting the New Jersey coast on Oct. 29.
Network reporters and experts have repeatedly claimed that the storm was either caused or worsened because of climate change. In fact, 100 percent of the 32 news stories and briefs in the past year that mentioned climate change and Hurricane Sandy claimed global warming directly impacted the storm – even though “no single weather event can be linked directly to a long-term driver, such as global warming,” according to climate change activists.
ABC, CBS and NBC spun the issue even more. Only 6 percent of the stories (2 out of 32 stories) provided another view. No story actually quoted an expert who disagreed. The closest the networks came to providing a “balanced” news story was saying that “whether climate change is to blame for it [Sandy] is the subject of debate,” on the CBS “Evening News,” May 28. In another story, NBC listed climate change as a possible cause: “Blame it on a freak storm, climate change, or both,” said “Today,” on Nov. 3, 2012.
The stories were predictably one-sided. From “Today” interviewing Al Gore to journalists quoting politicians like liberal New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, there was little room for debate on the issue.
Other reports claimed “extreme weather” events like Sandy were becoming more common. The idea that weather is more extreme and varied than any point in history was also uncontested and considered a fact by the networks. On July 4, 2013, “This Morning,” CBS congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes made that case in a conversation with global warming activist and meteorologist Michio Kaku. “As one scientist told us, its not just like global warming, it’s almost like global weirding. All the weather is more extreme,” she argued.
On CBS “This Morning,” Jan. 26, Time senior writer and global warming alarmist, Jeffrey Kluger even had the audacity to call climate change skeptics, “flat earthers” and like “the people who say the moon landings never happened,”
“The latest peer-reviewed studies, data and analyses undermine claims that the weather is more ‘extreme’ or ‘unprecedented,’” according to Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot. “They are exploiting any weather event to promote their religious like cause and a storm like Sandy is shamelessly used to gin up fear,” he added.
Experts Say Weather Patterns Are Normal and ‘There Is No Trend In Hurricanes’There are experts who disagree that weather is more extreme than normal and that man is causing extreme weather events.
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi told Forbes in May that “blaming turbulent weather on global warming is extreme nonsense” and that the current climate changes are part of a normal weather cycle.
For example, the chart used by global warming alarmists like Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth” that supposedly shows a period of global warming have long been debunked for faulty methodology.
Bastardi went on to explain:
“First of all, we need to keep in mind that ‘climate’ occurs over at least three-decade periods and on a large scale … Right now we’re seeing the same kind of major events on a regional scale that occurred the last time the Pacific Ocean shifted its temperature phase from warm to cold when the Atlantic was in a warm phase, and globally, the Earth’s temps have fallen about .05C in the last four years.”
Not all scientists agree that Sandy was anything other than a natural disaster either.
Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama Huntsville, took that view.
“Hurricane Sandy was a minimal hurricane. So, it is in no way indicative of arising trends in hurricanes that might be attributed to global warming.” In addition, Colorado State University researchers William Gray and Phil Klotzbach told National Geographic that human activity on the formation and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes “is likely to be negligible.”
While all three networks frequently interviewed or cited global warming activists, not one had a scientist presenting a different viewpoint in the stories linking Sandy to climate change since the storm, even though such scientists clearly exist.
Media Use Sandy Crisis to Promote Climate Change Activism
Not only did the news provide unbalanced coverage, journalists actively championed the cause of global warming, and used Sandy as an example for why climate change “is real” and why we need to “act” sooner than later.
On CBS “This Morning” on Nov. 1, anchor Charlie Rose asked global warming activist and Time editor Bryan Walsh about the storm and its “big lessons.” Walsh responded, “Well, I think there’s – there’s a few. One is that climate change clearly is real. I mean scientists will differ on exactly how much climate change contributes to a storm like this. But what we know is that this will become more and more common in the future that we’ll have stronger storms.”
If reporters didn’t sensationalize, they scolded for not “acting” on the climate. On ABC “World News” Jan. 8, correspondent Dan Harris warned of a future following inaction saying, “Many cities had record warmth, including Washington D.C., where a lack of action on manmade climate change is likely to mean 2012 is just a glimpse into an unpleasant future, according to many scientists.”
The “Green is Universal” network, NBC, was the most outspoken on the issue and sounded more like activists than journalists. On “Today,” April 3, weather anchor Al Roker was incredulous at an NBC poll that showed 37 percent of people did not believe in global warming. Roker said, “But 37 percent said – 37 percent of these people don’t believe in global warming. They think it’s a hoax. I mean – that, uh, okay, two words – Superstorm Sandy.”
Roker found a way to bring in climate change to Hurricane Sandy again on Sept. 24 when interviewing Vice President Joe Biden about government aid through FEMA.
“You guys have been going to these – it seems like with a pretty regular, you know, in the last 18 months, Sandy, Moore, Okla., you name it, Isaac, Irene, now this. Are we looking at the new normal?” Biden replied, “We can’t attribute any one thing to global warming – but there is – there are all of these weather events seem more severe and more pervasive.”
Same-sex marriages can begin within days in New Jersey after the state's highest court ruled unanimously Friday to uphold an order that they must start Monday and to deny a delay that had been sought by Gov. Chris Christie's administration.The ruling puts New Jersey on the cusp of becoming the 14th state — and the third most populous among them — to allow same-sex marriage. As of Monday, one-third of Americans will live in a place where gay marriage is legal."The state has advanced a number of arguments, but none of them overcome this reality: Same-sex couples who cannot marry are not treated equally under the law today," the court said in an opinion by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. "The harm to them is real, not abstract or speculative."A judge on a lower court had ruled last month that New Jersey must recognize same-sex marriage and set Monday as the date to allow weddings. Christie, a Republican who is considered a possible 2016 presidential candidate, appealed the decision and asked for the start date to be put on hold while the state appeals.A spokesman for Christie said that he will comply with the ruling, though he doesn't like it."While the governor firmly believes that this determination should be made by all the people of the State of New Jersey, he has instructed the Department of Health to cooperate with all municipalities in effectuating the order," spokesman Michael Drewniak said in a statement.Same-sex marriage is being debated elsewhere. Oregon has begun recognizing same-sex weddings performed out of state, and it is likely that voters will get a chance next year to repeal the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage. The Hawaii Legislature also soon could take up a bill to legalize same-sex unions, while a similar measure has passed the Illinois Senate but not the House. Lawsuits challenging gay marriage bans also are pending in several states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
This feud is long past the Jersey Shore.RELATED: Christie’s debate comeback is his Bush moment
Reality TV star Jenni "JWoww" Farley is taking Gov. Chris Christie to task for his views on gay marriage.
In an exclusive interview with the New York Daily News, Farley 27, says, "I'm going to come after you."
"If you have a problem with two people being in love, and you're against gay marriage, I have a problem with you," says Farley.
"What happens between two human beings has nothing to do with Chris Christie and does not affect Chris Christie," she adds. " What does affect me is when my best friend can't get married in New Jersey, and my best friend's mother, who is a lesbian, can't get married."
The former "Jersey Shore" star is promoting the third season of "Snooki & JWoww," her spinoff with Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi.
This isn't the first spat between Christie and a "Jersey Shore" cast member. Christie has never hidden his disdain for the show, saying it portrays the Garden State in a negative light. But Farley says she forgives him for that.
"The problems that he had with me, Nicole, Vinny (Guadagnino), Pauly (Delvecchio), I've put that aside," says Farley. "He's a politician, he's able to grant these wishes for people in love. Your personal opinion should have no effect on other people's love lives, especially if you're in a position of power."
Earlier this month, Farley apologized for calling Christie "retarded" for his stance on gay marriage.
She later clarified the context of her remarks via Twitter.
"Caught off guard last night and said things I normally don't say. I find it disgusting people are still against gay marriage...," she wrote. "So because of that I called [Chris] Christie a name which wasn't appropriate. I do find him disgusting and judgmental. I'm for gay equality."
A state Superior Court judge denied a request Thursday by Christie's administration to delay the Oct. 21 start date for gay marriages in New Jersey until its appeal is over.
When confronted by a diner patron during a campaign stop in Edison earlier this week, Christie had this to say, on the matter, "My view is: If you want to change it, put it on the ballot. Let everybody decide. It shouldn't be decided by courts, it shouldn't be decided by politicians in Trenton."
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