A great Sunday evening read on the gambling issue in New Jersey

Tom Moran at the Star-Ledger editorial board gives some great analysis about the north vs south Jersey issue when it comes to gambling. Moran looks at the makeup of the teams already clashing over the issue and how in the end our Mayor Fulop may have joined the losing side. Good stuff before bed tonight.

Paul Mulshine, for the win

Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine skewers Christie as Dallas fan and "friend" of Jerry Jones yet handing out HUGE contracts to his company through the Port Authority in a column today. He also touches on how out-of-touch Christie is with the idea of closing PATH late nights. Paul Mulshine, for the win.

Is Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop getting a free "Bridgegate" pass?

Tom Moran with the Star-Ledger editorial board does some digging and tells you what he thinks. Good reading on a stormy Sunday.

Back tonight for the late night thread.

One wonders just what Mayor Jerramiah Healy was thinking when he decided to rehash his drunken naked front porch incident with the Star-Ledger

And making it worse, maybe he WASN'T thinking. Can you imagine his press crew trying to spin THIS? They thought this was long dead and gone. Then the mayor himself brings it back up a week before the election. And manages to make it WORSE?! Oh boy.

Years ago when the issue came up originally Healy told the New York Times:

Healy told The New York Times that he had been drinking and couldn't remember how he ended up on his stoop naked. A spokeswoman for the mayor told The Jersey Journal at the time that Healy heard a commotion outside, went to investigate, and someone snapped a photo.

Now there's a NEW version of events, one far more salacious and in some eyes with a racist tinge to the new story. The Star-Ledger picks up the story change:

Now he says three young women woke him by banging trash cans outside his house, so he rose from bed, wrapped a towel around himself, and went to investigate.

Take the naked photo incident. At the time, Healy acknowledged he had been drinking and said he could not remember what happened.

“Three Hispanic girls, young kids,” he says. “So I go out on the porch and they pulled the towel off me. Now I start laughing, and then they started doing other stuff. I said, ‘I’m old enough to be your grandfather.’ ”

What other stuff?

“It was filthy,” he says. “I chased them away, and I just sat down.”

And that, he says, is when a political enemy snapped the photograph.

Uh, um, just simply amazing right? #1 as to why you'd revisit this tawdry event and then to bring in three young Hispanic girls to the telling is beyond belief. Does Healy no longer care if he wins? Did he see some kind of political advantage to retelling this story a week before a hotly contested election? If so please email Johnny and let him know what it is. We promise to pass it along.

Ward C Councilwoman Nidia Lopez, who ran on Healy's ticket four years ago and has since changed to the Fulop side expressed disappointment with Healy:

"I think the Hispanic community deserves an apology and I think our mayor needs psychological help ... For this mayor to degrade Hispanic women by creating this wild story eight years later ... three young kids molested him, he's laughing about it. How the hell did he know they were Hispanic?"

"When I ran in 2009, I asked him if that was really him on the stoop, and he said, 'I don't know baby. I was so drunk I don't remember.' Those were his exact words to me .... There is absolutely something wrong with this picture."

What do you think readers, what do you think of the whole mess and the changing story a week before the election? Hit us up in comments.

Peter Genovese with The Star-Ledger loves the Pulaski Skyway

LOVES the Pulaski Skyway, or Skyway as he and others tell it. Take a few minutes this morning by following this here link and read Genovese's ode to a bridge we all use and he can't get enough of. We think you'll enjoy it.