Roger Ebert, died on Thursday in Chicago. He was 70.

Roger Ebert, the popular film critic and television co-host who along with his fellow reviewer and sometime sparring partner Gene Siskel could lift or sink the fortunes of a movie with their trademark thumbs up or thumbs down, died on Thursday in Chicago. He was 70.

William H. Ginsburg dies at 70; Monica Lewinsky's attorney

William H. Ginsburg dies at 70; Monica Lewinsky's attorney

William H. Ginsburg, a seasoned medical malpractice attorney who bolted to national prominence in the brutal arena of Washington politics as Monica Lewinsky's lawyer, died Monday at his home in Sherman Oaks. He was 70.

The cause was cancer, said his daughter-in-law Virginia Ginsburg.
In 1998, Ginsburg was a senior partner in a Beverly Hills medical malpractice firm, where he had a sterling track record defending unpopular clients. He represented the physician accused of covering up the cause of entertainer Liberace's death from AIDS and the cardiologist who examined Loyola Marymount University basketball star Hank Gathers just before the young player's sudden death during a game.
He also defended a Glendale hospital in a case that wound up helping to establish the foundation for a patient's right to die.
"He was a superb jury trial lawyer," said Los Angeles attorney George Stephan, who worked with Ginsburg for 25 years. "His cases were very difficult ... but he was just very insightful about what was important to the jurors and the justice system."
It was Ginsburg's longtime friendship with Lewinsky's physician father that landed him in the middle of the biggest scandal to hit Washington since Watergate.
Lewinsky was the former White House intern who found herself in legal jeopardy for allegedly lying under oath about having sex with President Clinton.
Shortly after the scandal broke in January 1998, Ginsburg agreed to represent her but quickly became a target himself, drawing barbs from prominent critics accusing him of amateurish missteps, including his early failure to secure immunity for his client.
On Feb. 1, 1998, he set a record for appearing on all five major Sunday political talk shows, fueling criticism that he was making too many public statements, including some that appeared to undermine Lewinsky's credibility.
She avoided prosecution but not a grand jury appearance, during which she gave eyebrow-raising testimony about Clinton, a blue dress and a cigar.
Ginsburg said he would have relished the chance to take on independent counsel Kenneth Starr in front of the public and a jury. But after half a year in the media glare, he turned Lewinsky over to a new defense team and returned to his private practice with a sense of relief.
"If you submitted the entire Bible to the press and one page had the word 'sex' printed on it, the press would focus on that word, rather than the other wonderful truths that we find in that book," he told The Times after leaving Washington in June 1998.
The son of a lawyer who worked on Lyndon Johnson's Senate staff, Ginsburg was born in Philadelphia on March 25, 1943. He moved to Los Angeles with his family in the early 1950s. After graduating from Hamilton High School, where he was active in the theater department, he studied political science and drama at UC Berkeley. He later channeled his theatrical impulses into a different field, earning a law degree from USC in 1967 and passing the bar in 1968.
Among his first clients were conscientious objectors, even though he was then serving in the military as a member of the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps. Later, he represented many of the country's largest pool and spa builders from lawsuits over swimming accidents, winning the majority of those cases even against the most sympathetic of plaintiffs left with paralysis and other severe injuries.
In the mid-1980s he defended Glendale Adventist Medical Center in a $10-million lawsuit brought by William Bartling, who had five serious diseases and wanted to be disconnected from the machines that were keeping him alive. The hospital refused to accede to his request and a state court agreed that turning off the respirator would be tantamount to aiding a suicide.
The state court decision was appealed but the night before the hearing, Bartling died from his illnesses, giving Ginsburg solid ground to ask for the case to be dismissed.
Instead, he urged the court to proceed and it wound up ruling that Bartling had the constitutional right to refuse treatment. Ginsburg, by seeking clarity in the law for the medical providers he represented, "took the high road," Griffith Thomas, the opposing attorney, told The Times in 1998.
Stephan, who worked with Ginsburg on the case, said that his former colleague "in a sense ... didn't lose the case. He won because what was important to doctors was certainty in the law and a provision that would allow the patient, doctors and the family to all work together for an outcome. That was important to the people Bill was representing."
During his career, Ginsburg tried more than 300 cases, many of them involving complex medical procedures and vexing issues of liability. None, however, brought him as much attention as the Lewinsky sex scandal. He often referred to his famous client as "poor little Monica" and belittled the forces arrayed against her. "I had to ask myself," he said on CNN, "'How many FBI agents and U.S. attorneys does it take to handle a 24-year-old girl?'"
Later, in an open letter to Starr in California Lawyer magazine, he wrote: "Congratulations, Mr. Starr! As a result of your callous disregard for cherished constitutional rights, you may have succeeded in unmasking a sexual relationship between two consenting adults."
He bowed out of the case two months before Lewinsky's grand jury date, saying his public sparring with Starr had diminished his effectiveness.
..................
William H. Ginsburg, who was Monica Lewinsky's lawyer during the sex scandal of the Clinton presidency, has died. He was 70.
His daughter-in-law, Virginia Ginsburg, tells the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/12eIurv ) that Ginsburg died of cancer on Monday at his home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-william-ginsburg-20130403,0,1254484.story
http://news.silobreaker.com/
 

Bonnie Franklin Dead at 69 One Day at a Time Television Series

'One Day at a Time' Star Bonnie Franklin Dead at 69

Bonnie Franklin, best known for her role as a single mom on the '70s-'80s sitcom "One Day at a Time," died at her Los Angeles home Friday morning of complications from pancreatic cancer. She was 69 years old, and died surrounded by family and friends, confirmed her agent, Robert Malcolm.
The cancer was diagnosed last August, and the actress revealed shortly after that she was undergoing treatment.
On "One Day at a Time," which was developed by Norman Lear and aired from 1975 to 1984 on CBS, Franklin was groundbreaking as Ann Romano, the single mother of two daughters, who were played by Valerie Bertinelli and Mackenzie Phillips. The show was an anthem for a generation grappling with difficult issues never portrayed before on a sitcom. When the show was in its prime, millions tuned in to watch what was regarded as TV's first realistic portrayal of a divorced mother struggling to raise her teenage daughters.
"The truth of the matter was ... we were reflecting what was out there. It just hadn't been on television before," Franklin told "Good Morning America" in 2012 when the cast reunited. "You can do all these heavyweight subjects that are important, but you have got to do it with humor."
PHOTOS: In Memorium 2013
On TV, the dynamic between Franklin's character, Ann, rang true for many. Behind the scenes, the women said, their relations were just as natural as they appeared on TV, although, at first, Franklin admitted, she was skeptical about the castings.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/day-time-star-bonnie-franklin-dead-69/story?id=18630828

Everett koop Dead at 96 U.S. Ex-Surgeon General video

C. Everett Koop
Dr. C. Everett Koop, who was widely regarded as the most influential surgeon general in American history and played a crucial role in changing public attitudes about smoking, died on Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 96.
Surgeon General of the United States
In office January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989
President	Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush
Preceded by	Edward Brandt (Acting)
Succeeded by	James Mason (Acting)
Personal details
Born	Charles Everett Koop (1916-10-14)October 14, 1916 Brooklyn, New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	February 25, 2013(2013-02-25) (aged 96) Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Flanagan (1938–2007) Cora Hogue (2010–2013)
Children	Allan Norman David Elizabeth
Alma mater	Dartmouth College Cornell University
Religion	Presbyterianism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Everett_Koop

Dr. Koop issued emphatic warnings about the dangers of smoking, and he almost single-handedly pushed the government into taking a more aggressive stand against AIDS. And despite his steadfast moral opposition to abortion, he refused to use his office as a pulpit from which to preach against it.

These stands led many liberals who had bitterly opposed his nomination to praise him, and many conservatives who had supported his appointment to vilify him. Conservative politicians representing tobacco-growing states were among his harshest critics, and many Americans, for moral or religious reasons, were upset by his public programs to fight AIDS and felt betrayed by his relative silence on abortion.

      

As much as anyone, it was Dr. Koop who took the lead in trying to wean Americans off smoking, and he did so in imposing fashion. At a sturdy 6-foot-1, with his bushy gray biblical beard, Dr. Koop would appear before television cameras in the gold-braided dark-blue uniform of a vice admiral — the surgeon general’s official uniform, which he revived — and sternly warn of the terrible consequences of smoking.

      

“Smoking kills 300,000 Americans a year,” he said in one talk. “Smokers are 10 times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers, two times more likely to develop heart disease. Smoking a pack a day takes six years off a person’s life.”

      

When Dr. Koop took office, 33 percent of Americans smoked; when he left, the percentage had dropped to 26. By 1987, 40 states had restricted smoking in public places, 33 had prohibited it on public conveyances and 17 had banned it in offices and other work sites. More than 800 local antismoking ordinances had been passed, and the federal government had restricted smoking in 6,800 federal buildings. Antismoking campaigns by private groups like the American Lung Association and the American Heart Association had accelerated.

      

Dr. Koop also played a major role in educating Americans about AIDS. Though he believed that the nation had been slow in facing the crisis, he extolled its efforts once it did, particularly in identifying H.I.V., the virus that causes the disease, and developing a blood test to detect it.

Where he failed, in his own view, was to interest either Reagan or his successor as president, George Bush, in making health care available to more Americans.

      

Dr. Koop was completing a successful career as a pioneer in pediatric surgery when he was nominated for surgeon general, having caught the attention of conservatives with a series of seminars, films and books in collaboration with the theologian Francis Schaeffer that expressed anti-abortion views.

      

At his confirmation hearings, Senate liberals mounted a fierce fight against him. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said Dr. Koop, in denying a right to abortion, adhered to a “cruel, outdated and patronizing stereotype of women.” Women’s rights organizations, public health groups, medical associations and others lobbied against his appointment. An editorial in The New York Times called him “Dr. Unqualified.”

      

But after months of testimony and delay, he was confirmed by a vote of 68 to 24, garnering more support than many had expected. Some senators who had been hesitant to support him said he had convinced them of his integrity.

      

Dr. Koop himself said he had taken a principled approach to the nomination. As he and his wife, Elizabeth, had driven to Washington for the confirmation hearings, he recalled telling her, “If I ever have to say anything I don’t believe or feel shouldn’t be said, we’ll go home.”

An Only Child in Brooklyn

Charles Everett Koop was born on Oct. 14, 1916, in Brooklyn, and grew up in a three-story brick house in South Brooklyn surrounded by relatives; his paternal grandparents lived on the third floor, and his maternal grandparents as well as uncles, aunts and cousins lived on the same street. He was the only child of John Everett Koop, a banker and descendant of 17th-century Dutch settlers of New York, and the former Helen Apel.

Dr. Koop traced his interest in medicine to watching his family’s doctors at work as a child. To develop the manual dexterity of a surgeon, he practiced tying knots and cutting pictures out of magazines with each hand. At 14 he sneaked into an operating theater at Columbia University’s medical college, and he operated on rabbits, rats and stray cats in his basement after his mother had administered anesthesia. By his account, not one of the animals died.

While attending high school at the private Flatbush School, he worked as a summer volunteer in hospitals near his family’s vacation home in Port Washington on Long Island. He then attended Dartmouth College and, after graduating, entered Cornell University Medical College in Manhattan and married Elizabeth Flanagan of New Britain, Conn., a Vassar student.

He completed his residency at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, where he acquired a reputation for boldness. Afterward, his surgery professor, Dr. I. S. Ravdin, offered him a job as surgeon in chief of Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, a rare offer for someone so young.

Dr. Koop held that position until the Reagan administration recruited him 35 years later. By then he had become renowned in medicine as an innovator in surgery on infants.

Dr. Koop and his colleagues performed thousands of operations to correct birth defects in premature babies or other newborns; 475 operations alone were on those with esophageal atresia, a condition, previously fatal, in which the esophagus and the stomach are not connected.

In one case, after cutting open the side of a baby’s chest to find an entire section of the esophagus missing, he built, on the spot, a new link out of tissue from the baby’s colon. It became standard procedure for repairing such a defect. He also did groundbreaking work in separating conjoined twins.

Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, a pediatric surgeon turned public health advocate, died Monday. He was 96.

Koop served as surgeon general from 1982 to 1989, under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

He was outspoken on controversial public health issues and did much to raise the profile the office of the surgeon general.

He died peacefully at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, Dartmouth College said in a news release announcing his death.

"Dr. Koop did more than take care of his individual patients -- he taught all of us about critical health issues that affect our larger society," said Dartmouth President Carol L. Folt. "Through that knowledge, he empowered each of us to improve our own well-being and quality of life. Dr. Koop's commitment to education allowed him to do something most physicians can only dream of: improving the health of millions of people worldwide."

Koop, called "Chick" by his friends, was perhaps best known for his work around HIV/AIDS. He wrote a brochure about the disease that was sent to 107 million households in the United States in 1988. It was the largest public health mailing ever, according to a biography of Koop on a website of the surgeon general.

He was also well-known for his work around tobacco, calling for a "smoke-free" society. His 1986 surgeon general's report on the dangers of secondhand smoke was seminal.

"That was the shot heard around the world, and it began to change public policy everywhere," said John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.

The report started the move toward prohibiting smoking on airplanes, restaurants and at workplaces.

Dr. Koop was the most recognized surgeon general of the 20th century. He almost always appeared in the epauleted and ribboned blue or white uniform denoting his leadership of the commissioned corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. With his mustacheless beard, deep voice and grim expression, he looked like a Civil War admiral or, as some cartoonists suggested, a refugee from a Gilbert and Sullivan musical.

The theatrical appearance, however, masked a fierce self-confidence, an unyielding commitment to professional excellence and a willingness to challenge the expectations of his patrons.
A 64-year-old retired pediatric surgeon at the time Ronald Reagan nominated him in 1981, Dr. Koop had no formal public-health training. His chief credential was that he was a socially conservative, Christian physician who had written a popular treatise against abortion. His confirmation took eight months. Few people expected him to talk about homosexuality, anal intercourse, condoms and intravenous drug use when almost nobody else in the Reagan administration would even utter the word “AIDS.”

Dr. Koop, however, believed information was the most useful weapon against HIV at a time when there was little treatment for the infection and widespread fear that it might soon threaten the general population. In May 1988, he mailed a seven-page brochure, “Understanding AIDS,” to all 107 million households in the country.

“He was a guy who surprised everybody,” said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was Dr. Koop’s chief tutor in AIDS matters and became a close friend. “People expected one thing, and they not only got another thing, they got someone who was amazingly effective.”

“You couldn’t go anywhere where he wasn’t recognized. Even the tollbooth guy on the [Boston] Callahan Tunnel — everybody recognized that beard,” said former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler, who worked closely with Dr. Koop on the campaign against tobacco, among other issues. “He really was America’s doctor.”

Kessler recalled Dr. Koop’s refreshing lack of ideology, which sometimes perplexed those inside the Beltway.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/25/health/c-everett-koop-dead/?hpt=he_c1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/c-everett-koop-former-surgeon-general-dies-at-96/2013/02/25/be6cc52e-c5da-11df-94e1-c5afa35a9e59_story.html

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/us/c-everett-koop-forceful-surgeon-general-dies-at-96.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Ed Koch, Ex-mayor of NYC, dies

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch listens during the ninth annual National Action Network convention in New York on April 18, 2007. Koch, the combative politician who rescued the city from near-financial ruin during three City Hall terms, has died at age 88. Spokesman George Arzt says Koch died Friday morning, Feb. 1, of congestive heart failure.

Ed Koch's favorite moment as mayor of New York City, fittingly, involved yelling.Suddenly inspired to do something brash about the rare transit strike that crippled the city in 1980, he strode down to the Brooklyn Bridge to encourage commuters who were forced to walk to work instead of jumping aboard subway trains and buses.
"I began to yell, `Walk over the bridge! Walk over the bridge! We're not going to let these bastards bring us to our knees!' And people began to applaud," the famously combative, acid-tongued politician recalled at a 2012 forum.
His success in rallying New Yorkers in the face of the strike was, he said, his biggest personal achievement as mayor. And it was a display that was quintessentially Koch, who rescued the city from near-financial ruin during a three-term City Hall run in which he embodied New York chutzpah for the rest of the world.

Koch died at 2 a.m. Friday from congestive heart failure, spokesman George Arzt said. He was 88. The funeral will be Monday at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.
Koch was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital on Monday with shortness of breath, and was moved to intensive care on Thursday for closer monitoring of the fluid in his lungs and legs. He had been released two days earlier after being treated for water in his lungs and legs. He had initially been admitted on Jan. 19.
After leaving City Hall in January 1990, Koch battled assorted health problems and heart disease.
The larger-than-life Koch, who breezed through the streets of New York flashing his signature thumbs-up sign, won a national reputation with his feisty style. "How'm I doing?" was his trademark question to constituents, although the answer mattered little to Koch. The mayor always thought he was doing wonderfully.

 

 

Former Mayor David Dinkins, who succeeded Koch, called the former mayor "a feisty guy who would tell you what he thinks."
"Ed was a guy to whom I could turn if I wanted a straight answer," he told Fox 5 News Friday.
Bald and bombastic, paunchy and pretentious, the city's 105th mayor was quick with a friendly quip and equally fast with a cutting remark for his political enemies.
"You punch me, I punch back," Koch once memorably observed. "I do not believe it's good for one's self-respect to be a punching bag."
His hospitalization forced him to miss this week's premiere of a new documentary about his career. "Koch" opens in theaters nationwide on Friday.
The mayor dismissed his critics as "wackos," waged verbal war with developer Donald Trump ("piggy") and fellow former mayor Rudolph Giuliani ("nasty man"), lambasted the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and once reduced the head of the City Council to tears.
"I'm not the type to get ulcers," he wrote in "Mayor," his autobiography. "I give them."
When President George W. Bush ran for re-election in 2004, Democrat Koch crossed party lines to support him and spoke at the GOP convention. He also endorsed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's re-election efforts at a time when Bloomberg was a Republican. Koch described himself as "a liberal with sanity."
In a statement Bloomberg said the city "lost an irrepressible icon" and called Koch its "most charismatic cheerleader."
"Through his tough, determined leadership and responsible fiscal stewardship, Ed helped lift the city out of its darkest days and set it on course for an incredible comeback," Bloomberg said.
Koch was also an outspoken supporter of Israel, willing to criticize anyone, including President Barack Obama, over decisions Koch thought could indicate any wavering of support for that nation.
In a WLIW television program "The Jews of New York," Koch spoke of his attachment to his faith.
"Jews have always thought that having someone elevated with his head above the grass was not good for the Jews. I never felt that way," he said. "I believe that you have to stand up."
Under his watch from 1978-89, the city climbed out of its financial crisis thanks to Koch's tough fiscal policies and razor-sharp budget cuts, and subway service improved enormously. But homelessness and AIDS soared through the 1980s, and critics charged that City Hall's responses were too little, too late.
Koch said in a 2009 interview with The New York Times that he had few regrets about his time in office but still felt guilt over a decision he made as mayor to close Sydenham Hospital in Harlem. The move saved $9 million, but Koch said in 2009 that it was wrong "because black doctors couldn't get into other hospitals" at the time.
"That was uncaring of me," he said. "They helped elect me, and then in my zeal to do the right thing I did something now that I regret."
His mark on the city has been set in steel: The Queensboro Bridge -- connecting Manhattan to Queens and celebrated in the Simon and Garfunkel tune "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" -- was renamed in Koch's honor in 2011.
Koch was a champion of gay rights, taking on the Roman Catholic Church and scores of political leaders.
During the 1977 mayoral campaign against Mario Cuomo, posters that read, "Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo" mysteriously appeared in some neighborhoods as Election Day approached.
A lifelong bachelor, Koch offered a typically blunt response to questions about his own sexuality: "My answer to questions on this subject is simply, `F--- off.' There have to be some private matters left."
Koch said in 1989 that that his biggest regret as he left office was that "Many people in the black community do not perceive that I was their friend."
During the 1988 presidential campaign, Koch said that "Jews and other supporters of Israel would be crazy" to vote for Jesse Jackson. The remark caused a black backlash that carried into the 1989 Democratic mayoral primary, when Dinkins took 97 percent of the black vote.
Koch said the second half of his remark about Jackson went unheeded. It was, "... in the same way that blacks and supporters of black causes would be crazy to vote for George Bush."
Jackson on Friday said in a statement that Koch's "leadership and legacy will never be forgotten in New York City, New York state or our nation."
Koch was fast-talking, opinionated and sometimes rude, becoming the face and sound of New York to those living outside the city. Koch became a celebrity, appearing on talk shows and playing himself in movies including "The Muppets Take Manhattan" and "The First Wives Club" and hosting "Saturday Night Live."
In 1989's "Batman," the character of Gotham City's mayor, played by Lee Wallace, bore a definite resemblance to Koch.
When Koch took over from accountant Abe Beame in 1978, one thing quickly became apparent -- with this mayor, nothing was certain. Reporters covered him around the clock because of "the Koch factor," his ability to say something outrageous any place, any time.
After leaving office, he continued to offer his opinions as a political pundit, movie reviewer, food critic and judge on "The People's Court."
Koch remained a political force in Albany well into old age. He secured a promise in 2010 from then-aspiring Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a number of state legislators to protect the electoral redistricting process from partisanship -- and then vocally protested when Cuomo and others reneged on that pledge two years later.
Even in his 80s, Koch still exercised regularly and worked as a lawyer for the firm Bryan Cave.
At his 80th birthday bash, Bloomberg said Koch was "not only a great mayor and a great source of advice and support to other mayors, he happens to be one of the greatest leaders and politicians in the history of our city."
He had been in the hospital twice in 2012, for anemia in September and then for a respiratory infection in December. He returned twice in January 2013 with fluid buildup in his lungs.
He had undergone surgery in June 2009 to replace his aortic valve and gallbladder surgery a month later. He had a pacemaker inserted in 1991 and was hospitalized eight years later with a heart attack. In early 2001, he was hospitalized with pneumonia.
Koch was born in the Bronx on Dec. 12, 1924, the second of three children of Polish immigrants Louis and Joyce Koch. During the Depression the family lived in Newark, N.J.
The future mayor worked his way through school, checking hats, working behind a delicatessen counter and selling shoes. He attended City College and served as a combat infantryman in Europe during World War II, earning his sergeant stripes.
He received a law degree from New York University in 1948 and began practicing law in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood, where his political career began as a member of the Village Independent Democrats, a group of liberal reformers. He defeated powerful Democratic leader Carmine DeSapio, whose roots reached back to the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine, in a race for district leader.
Koch was elected to the City Council and then to Congress, serving from 1969-77 as representative for the "Silk Stocking" district that was then known for its millionaire Park Avenue constituency.
The liberal Koch was the first Democrat to represent the district in 31 years. But his politics edged to the center of the political spectrum during his years in Congress and pulled to the right on a number of issues after becoming mayor.
His answer to the war on drugs? Send convicted drug dealers to concentration camps in the desert. Decaying buildings? Paint phony windows, complete with cheery flowerpots, on brick facades. Overcrowded city jails? Stick inmates on floating prison barges.
Koch defeated incumbent Beame and future Gov. Mario Cuomo in the Democratic primary to win his first term in City Hall. Like his hero Fiorello LaGuardia, the fiery fusion party mayor who ran the city from 1933 to 1945, he ran on the Republican and Conservative party lines in the 1981 mayoral election.
He breezed to re-election in both 1981 and 1985, winning an unprecedented three-quarters of the votes cast. At the time, he was only the third mayor in city history to be elected to three terms.
While mayor, he wrote three books including the best-seller "Mayor," "Politics" and "His Eminence and Hizzoner," written with Cardinal John O'Connor. He wrote seven other nonfiction books, four mystery novels and three children's books after leaving office.
Early in his second term, Koch flip-flopped on his pledge to remain at City Hall and decided to run for governor against then-Lt. Gov. Mario Cuomo. But his 1982 gubernatorial bid blew up after Koch mouthed off about life outside his hometown.
"Have you ever lived in the suburbs?" Koch told an interviewer who asked about a possible move to Albany. "It's sterile. It's nothing. It's wasting your life."
During the same interview he said that life in the country meant having to "drive 20 miles to buy a gingham dress or a Sears, Roebuck suit."
It cost him the race, but it convinced many of the 8 million city residents that Koch belonged in New York. Meanwhile, Cuomo went on to serve three terms as governor.
Koch's third term was beset by corruption scandals. Queens Borough President Donald Manes -- a close ally -- committed suicide in March 1986, after having resigned over kickback and patronage allegations. Bronx Democratic leader Stanley Friedman and three others were also tarred. Koch's commissioner of cultural affairs, former Miss America Bess Myerson, stepped down in the wake of a scandal involving her boyfriend and a judge overseeing a legal case concerning him.
As the pressure grew, Koch suffered a minor stroke in 1987.
The administration was also beset by racial unrest, first after the 1986 death of a black youth at the hands of a white gang in Howard Beach and three years later after a black teen was shot to death in Brooklyn's tough Bensonhurst neighborhood by a group of whites.
Six weeks after the second slaying, Koch lost the Democratic primary to Dinkins, the city's eventual first black mayor. Koch later said the simmering racial tensions didn't lead to his defeat.
"I was defeated because of longevity," Koch said. "People get tired of you. So they decided to throw me out."
The man who bragged that he would always get a better job, but New Yorkers would never get a better mayor, left his City Hall office for the last time on Dec. 31, 1989.
Looking back, Koch said in a 1997 interview: "All I could think of was, "Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, I'm free at last."
He was finished with public office, but he would never be through with the city. At age 83, Koch paid $20,000 for a burial plot at Trinity Church Cemetery, at the time the only graveyard in Manhattan that still had space.
"I don't want to leave Manhattan, even when I'm gone," Koch told The Associated Press. "This is my home. The thought of having to go to New Jersey was so distressing to me."
Not long after buying the plot, he had his tombstone inscribed and installed. The marker features the last words of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl: "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish."
It also includes a Jewish prayer and the epitaph he wrote after his stroke:
"He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the City of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II."
Koch was survived by his sister, Pat Thaler, and many grandnieces and grandnephews.

Former Mayor Ed Koch, the combative, acid-tongued politician who rescued the city from near-financial ruin during a three-term City Hall run in which he embodied New York chutzpah for the rest of the world, died Friday. He was 88.
Koch died at 2 a.m., spokesman George Arzt said. The funeral will be Monday at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.
After leaving City Hall in January 1990, Koch battled assorted health problems and heart disease.

http://www.columbian.com/news/2013/feb/01/bc-us-obit-koch-11th-ld-writethru2290-ed-koch-mayo/

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/ed_koch_iconic_nyc_mayor_dies_at_88/

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33095986/?q=New%20York%20City

http://www.nbcnews.com/

http://www.thenewsmachine.com/us/2013-02-02/ed-koch/
http://www.archives.com/GA.aspx?_act=DeathRecords&klp=GA95001&cam=499&KW2=New%20York&Location=NY&gclid=CLP5hLH8l7UCFQhyQgod3CQAGg

http://www.thenewsmachine.com/

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/former_mayor_ed_koch_dead_at_age_75lqLcuapohQ9JC6ILAXrL

Two Belgian brothers 45-year-old Marc and Eddy Verbessem assisted suicide

Two Belgian brothers who were born deaf and were slowly going blind chose to end their lives the way they began them: together. The dual deaths of the identical twins last month marked the first reported double euthanasia of twins worldwide.




45-year-old Marc and Eddy Verbessem were inseparable during their lives, the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws reports. Suffering from an incurable illness, the pair shared a room in their parental home before studying shoe repair and moving in together in a small apartment.



But when Marc and Eddy learned they were slowly going blind in addition to already being deaf, the twins feared losing all possible means of communicating with one another. "The thought of only being able to feel each other was unbearable," Het Laatste Nieuws writes, according to a HuffPost translation.



"Physically, their conditions were strongly deteriorating," Dr. David Dufour, who treated the brothers, explained to VTM. When the brothers learned their bid for euthanasia was accepted, "a weight fell off their shoulders," Dufour added. "They were happy and relieved that a date was set to end their suffering."



Belgium is one of only three countries that allow euthanasia for non-terminally ill patients, the others being Switzerland and the Netherlands.



Belgian law permits euthanasia when a patient declares the assisted suicide to be his or her own wish and doctors agree the patient is in unbearable physical or psychological pain.



The brothers Verbessem's application for assisted suicide was controversial, however, and the first hospital they approached declined their bid. "There is a law, but that is clearly open to various interpretations. If any blind or deaf are allowed to euthanize, we are far from home. I do not think this was what the legislation meant by 'unbearable suffering'," doctors at the first hospital said, according to The Telegraph.





Dirk Verbassem, the brothers' older sibling, told the Telegraph that Marc and Eddy's life had become insufferable. "Many will wonder why my brothers have opted for euthanasia because there are plenty of deaf and blind that have a 'normal' life," he said. "But my brothers trudged from one disease to another. They were really worn out."



De Volkskrant writes that Marc and Eddy were happy and calm on the day of their deaths. They were cremated and buried together in identical urns.



Assisted suicide remains a controversial topic worldwide, even in the case of terminally-ill patients. Last week, an Irish court denied a woman who was terminally-ill with multiple sclerosis the right to end her life.



"It would be impossible to ensure the aged, disabled, poor, unwanted, rejected, etc. would not avail of this option to avoid a sense being a burden on their families and society," Judge Nicholas Kearns told the Court, according to Reuters.



In the UK, 58-year-old Tony Nicklinson died in August 2012, one week after a court denied him the right to assisted suicide. Nicklinson suffered from locked-in syndrome and was paralyzed since 2005. The BBC reported he died from a pneumonia after refusing food.

Aaron Swartz Death A co-founder of Reddit and activist

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-aaron-swartz-cofounder-of-reddit-and-online-activist--dies-20130112,0,6773249.story

NEW YORK -- A co-founder of Reddit and activist who fought to make online content free to the public has been found dead, authorities confirmed Saturday, prompting an outpouring of grief from prominent voices on the intersection of free speech and the Web.

Aaron Swartz, 26, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment weeks before he was to go on trial on accusations that he stole millions of journal articles from an electronic archive in an attempt to make them freely available.