Politics: It was a banner year for Borough President Markowitz. He played a role in attracting Trader Joe’s to Atlantic Avenue, got to flirt with the idea of running for mayor, and even deliberately insulted Robert Redford and the gay community. Love him or love him even more, Marty sure isn’t boring. So here it is: the year in Marty! Comment.

Politics: Borough President Markowitz’s Christmas card was the best to land in our “In” box (that pile of mail near the linotype machine). So for our third consecutive year, here’s our exclusive analysis of all the hidden imagery in the elaborate artwork, including at least one reference to Markowitz’s nascent mayoral bid. Comment.

Bay Ridge: The candidate who nearly unseated New York City’s lone Republican congressman Vito Fossella in 2006 isn’t taking any chances this time around — he’s already won a key endorsement, even as a new report shows that his opponent’s finances are in trouble. Comments (3).

Politics: Rep. Yvette Clarke voted against a symbolic House resolution last week supporting Christmas and America’s Christian heritage. Comments (2).

Politics: A local writer has cast District Attorney Charles Hynes as the villain in a new movie about an unlikely big-screen hero — “O’Hara.” Comments (2).

Politics: The first-term Park Slope Democrat was one of just nine members of Congress who last week voted against House resolution 847, a symbolic bill that, among other things, acknowledged “the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.” Comments (3).

Politics: Borough President Markowitz used city-paid staffers as campaign workers and ignored “inappropriate sexual activity” of his chief of staff and three office employees — or so says his disgruntled former communications director in a bombshell sex discrimination lawsuit. Comments (1).

Politics: A Dyker Heights man not only incited a debate about illegal immigration at last week's Republican debate, but he also thrust himself and his neighborhood into an international spotlight. But that's Ernie Nardi for you. Comments (10).

Bay Ridge: Somebody doesn’t like Councilman Domenic Recchia — and has taken it upon himself to “go negative” against the Bensonhurst Democrat even before it’s clear what higher office he’s seeking. Comments (5).

Politics: Controversial former Councilman Noach Dear trounced Republican James McCall for a Civil Court seat on Tuesday. Not bad for a guy who didn’t campaign and was opposed by rank-and-file liberals. Comment.

Politics: Community Board 6 District Manager Craig Hammerman earned our coveted “Press Release of the Week” award for a bizarre exchange of e-mails with, well, it’s not entirely clear with whom. Comments (1).

Politics: Congestion pricing was the hottest public issue when Mayor Bloomberg announced the traffic-reducing initiative this summer, but only about 100 people showed up for a public hearing on the issue in Downtown Brooklyn last week — and 20 of those were elected officials. Comment.

Politics: Irate Brooklyn politicians are pulling out the stops to prevent the MTA from raising mass transit fares next year. Comment.

Politics: Brooklyn’s newest congresswoman, Rep. Yvette Clarke, has written fewer bills than all but three members of her 54-person freshman class — and she didn’t even roll out her first piece of legislation until earlier this month, after getting wind that an influential political magazine was about to publicly skewer her for failing to draft a bill. Comment.

Editorial: Voters must reject Noach Dear for Civil Court and choose his worthy opponent, the Republican James McCall. A Republican for judge? In Brooklyn?! Here’s why. Comment.

Politics: Yet another person has started dreaming about the day when Borough President Markowitz is term-limited out of office — Councilman Bill DeBlasio announced this week that he will seek Markowitz’s seat in 2009. Comment.

Politics: A Republican contender for a Civil Court judgeship in overwhelmingly Democratic Brooklyn — who has run as a line filler for his party in previous years — is surging this year, thanks to the notoriety that comes from running against a controversial, ethically challenged, homophobic and largely absent Democratic opponent. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: A prominent gay and lesbian political club came out against Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-development on Monday night — even as the developer and Borough President Markowitz are still discussing creating a gay community center in a Ratner-owned building Downtown. Comment.

Politics: How much do gays and lesbians despise Civil Court judicial candidate Noach Dear? One group of queer activists actually considered endorsing Dear’s Republican-Conservative opponent this week. Comment.

Fort Greene: Behemoth record label Universal Music Group must change the name of rapper Nas’s new album, “Nigger,” or risk losing $84 million in state investments, a Fort Greene assemblyman said this week. Comments (32).

Politics: Someone is re-writing history by altering Councilman Bill DeBlasio’s Wikipedia page — and the culprit is someone inside city government. Comments (1).

Politics: Councilman James Oddo — hot-headed, expletive-spewing Neanderthal or a great defender of America’s cherished bipartisan traditions? You decide. See the whole f-ing thing on YouTube! Comments (3).

Atlantic Yards: Borough President Markowitz has declined a gay Democratic club’s invitation to herald the positives of the Atlantic Yards project at a forum later this month, and, while he’s there, explain why he supported a notoriously homophobic Borough Park politician in his race for a Civil Court seat. “I have little interest in becoming someone’s punching bag,” the Beep told the group. Comments (2).

Bloomy in the ’Hood: Mayor Bloomberg waltzed into the Polonaise Terrace ballroom last Thursday night for a bureaucrat’s version of a polish wedding: Hizzoner’s first town hall meeting in Greenpoint. And he heard an earful from locals. A “Stoop” special edition! Comment.

Bay Ridge: Politically fractured Bay Ridge is united in opposition to a toll increase on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Comments (4).

Bloomy in the ’Hood: At least one resident attended the town hall meeting to complain about something that the mayor can’t directly fix: the G train. Comment.

Bloomy in the ’Hood: Bloomberg leapt at a chance to discuss housing when Community Board 1 Land-Use Committee Chairman Ward Dennis complained about a lack of communication between city agencies and the community. Comment.

Bloomy in the ’Hood: Bloomberg certainly heard plenty of complaints about the 2005 rezoning that unleashed the wave of high-rise development on the neighborhood. Comment.

Yellow Hooker: Congressional candidate Steve Harrison, who is anti-war, stands up when a group of anti-war activists go too far. Comments (5).

Cartoon: Our cartoonist’s take. Comment.

Fort Greene: The Slave Theater — a half-century-old Bedford-Stuyvesant institution where generations of kids saw their first movies and Al Sharpton held rallies — may soon be put up for sale, thanks to the county’s epic mismanagement of former Civil Court Judge John Phillips’s dwindling estate. Comments (5).

Downtown: Vandals spray-painted at least 19 swastikas and left anti-Semitic flyers around Brooklyn Heights Monday night, a few hours after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spewed anti-Semitic rhetoric in a speech at Columbia University. Many believe there is a connection. Comments (2).

Politics: Councilman David Yassky — whose hopes to win a seat in Congress were quashed last year by his Council colleague Yvette Clarke — has reportedly declared that he will run again, this time to replace city Comptroller Bill Thompson, himself an aspirant for higher office. Comment.

Bay Ridge: Councilman Domenic Recchia will go after five-term Rep. Vito Fossella (R–Bay Ridge) — but Fossella is already firing back. Comments (1).

Politics: Borough President Markowitz’s choice for a Civil Court judgeship won Tuesday’s Democratic primary, but Markowitz lost something far bigger: the gay vote. “We now regard him with universal disdain,” said one activist. Comment.

Politics: A Civil Court race pitting firebrand former Councilman Noach Dear against a lesser-known judge has been thrust into the spotlight by gay and lesbian activists because of Borough President Markowitz’s endorsement of Dear, who was rated as unqualified for the bench by the City Bar Association. Comment.

Politics: The race between two sitting judges for a spot on the Surrogate Court — the powerful office responsible for doling out patronage jobs to legions of Court Street lawyers — has fast become the ugliest Brooklyn battle since the racially divisive election that brought Rep. Yvette Clarke to office last year. Comment.

Politics: State Sen. Marty Golden (R–Bay Ridge) has his platform, an open field, and a fund-raising apparatus — and he may have even found a date to announce his run for mayor. Comment.

Politics: Rep. Ed Towns, the 12-term legislator who survived a close fight during a 2006 re-election campaign that many felt would be his last, now says he’ll run for re-election next year. Comment.

Bay Ridge: The White House has changed course and asked the Federal Emergency Management Administration to release emergency relief funds to residents of Bay Ridge whose homes and cars were damaged in the Aug. 8 tornado. Comment.

Park Slope: A trolley-styled shuttle bus that was conceived as a way of generating tourism to Brooklyn’s cultural destinations is actually being mostly used by locals hitching a free ride, a new study has found — yet Borough President Markowitz is about to sink hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars into keeping the “disappointing” system going. Comments (1).

Politics: Global warming is happening. The scientists say it, the mayor says it, and even the president is talking the talk. Now, one Brooklyn artist is walking the walk. Comment.

Editorial: Two new reports show that Brooklyn’s leaders need to do more to attract visitors and keep them here long enough to spend their money. Comment.

Red Hook: Our cartoonist’s take. Comments (1).

Politics: Surprise! Rep. Yvette Clarke is running for re-election. Comment.

Downtown: Activists gathered at Borough Hall on Tuesday to protest the War in Iraq — but Allen and Maryellen Tice of Adams Street appeared tired of making the same old case against the four-and-a-half-year-old conflict. Comment.

Books: Brooklyn District Attorney Charles “Joe “ Hynes thinks he is wielding a new, extra-legal deterrent against police corruption — his debut novel. Comment.

Downtown: Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries doesn’t need to run for re-election until 2010 — but that doesn’t mean he’s not hitting the streets. Comments (1).

Politics: Barack Obama was John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. all rolled into one for an overflow crowd of supporters at the junior senator from Illinois’ first official campaign stop in Brooklyn on Wednesday night. Comment.

Bay Ridge: Federal disaster aid for residents of Bay Ridge who were pummeled by the Aug. 8 tornado is being held up until President Bush, who is on vacation in Texas for the rest of the month, decides whether he wants to release the funds. Comments (1).

Politics: A diverse group that included Arab-American activists and Jewish educators rallied on the steps of the Department of Education on Monday to demand the reinstatement of Debbie Almontaser to the helm of the city’s first Arabic language and culture academy. Comment.

Editorial: A single extra story — 10 feet! — drew the ire of Borough President Markowitz last week when the Beep recommended that the city deny a developer, Two Trees Management, a variance to build a little higher. Comment.

Politics: Mayor Bloomberg has unleashed a fleet of satellite-guided, scooter-driving inspectors on city streets to target trash, potholes, and other terrors of urban living, City Hall announced last week. Comment.

Politics: Gov. Spitzer has signed a bill that would make it illegal to leave menus and circulars on people’s stoops — but the new law has set off a messy situation of its own for small business owners who depend on such strategies to draw in customers. Comment.

Politics: Styrofoam trays are one step closer to joining indoor smoking and trans fats in the trash bins of city history. Comment.

Cartoon: Our cartoonist’s take. Comment.

Letters: Our Inbox was stuffed with letters about our coverage of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, our coverage of Councilman Simcha Felder (in a note from the Councilman himself!), the development of Coney Island, parrots in Park Slope, a neighborhood brothel, luxury development Downtown, and a strange omission on Borough President Markowitz’s Web site. Comment.

Politics: Barack Obama will swing into the Borough of Kings for the second time in four weeks to soak up more financial and moral support of Brooklynites. Comment.

Bay Ridge: Both lawyer Steve Harrison and Rep. Vito Fossella are ready to duke it out again — mostly over the war in Iraq. Comment.

Politics: Rep. Yvette Clarke is on bed-rest in her Flatbush home following surgery last Monday to remove uterine fibroids. Comment.

Letters: Once again, The Paper has been inundated with correspondence from readers like you. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: City officials have reportedly trimmed a $300-million tax break for Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner that was rubberstamped by state lawmakers last month. Comment.

Editorial: Borough President Markowitz championed the MTA’s land giveaway to pal Bruce Ratner, yet now says MTA mismanagement is behind a proposed transit fare hike. Markowitz shares the blame Comment.

Politics: Presidential candidate Barack Obama was in Brooklyn Heights last week, meeting and greeting residents. Comment.

Letters: Our mailbag is full with letters about Borough President Markowitz’s run for mayor, Barack Obama’s run for president, a state bill to ban the distribution of some flyers and the conclusion of the Arena Bagels saga. Comment.

Politics: Councilman Charles Barron makes it official — he’s running for borough president. Comment.

Politics: Borough President Markowitz put “Lighten Up Brooklyn” on a diet this year — sponsoring just three days of walking tours instead of a monthlong weight-loss initiative. Comment.

Politics: Borough President Markowitz, who for months has been openly toying with a run for the mayoralty in 2009, is trailing his would-be opponents badly in the only race that matters right now: money. Comment.

Brooklyn Angle: Park Slope has officially caught Obama Fever. And Brooklyn Heights is filled with rabid Clintonistas. A report from the campaign trenches. Comment.

Downtown: Councilman Bill DeBlasio vowed to stop one of the borough’s most prolific architects this week, charging designer Robert Scarano with endangering the safety and aesthetic character of Brooklyn’s neighborhoods. Comment.

Politics: City Hall has moved to Brooklyn for two weeks — and Mayor Bloomberg’s staffers say they are already thinking better than ever! Comment.

Bay Ridge: State Sen. Marty Golden hosts a “Harry Potter” party. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Comment.

Politics: Press release, press release, in our e-mail, who is the greenest pol of all? Comment.

Editorial: The latest Ratner sweetheart deal is the worst of them all. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: Bruce Ratner “doesn’t need” the massive public subsidy handed to him by the state Assembly last week, Mayor Bloomberg said on Friday — and called for Gov. Spitzer to block the legislation. Comment.

Politics: Mayor Bloomberg’s development guru is now running the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. Comment.

Politics: Mayor Bloomberg threw open his Upper East Side townhouse for a fundraiser for Borough President — and potential mayoral hopeful — Marty Markowitz on Wednesday, drawing a crowd of 80 or so well-heeled donors and boosting the still undeclared campaign of the term-limited Beep. Comment.

Politics: It’s the dude versus the narc: Two Brooklyn lawmakers — one a former Soviet engineer, the other a former police officer — are hashing it out over a bill to make marijuana legal for medicinal use. Comment.

Politics: Breaking news! Mayor Bloomberg will host a fundraiser for term-limited Borough President — and mayoral hopeful — Marty Markowitz in his Upper East Side townhouse next week, The Brooklyn Paper has learned. Comment.

Carroll Gardens: Sen. Chuck Schumer ate his way into the fight to save the Red Hook food vendors, grabbing some delicacies last Saturday and saying the city should abandon a plan to sell the group’s vending permits on the open market — a scheme that many believe will lead to higher permit fees for the mom and pop vendors and competition from deep-pocketed corporations. Comment.

Politics: Vice President Dick Cheney must be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” a Brooklyn lawmaker charged last week, joining an elite group of seven members of Congress calling for Veep’s firing. Comment.

Downtown: A Brooklyn Heights councilman wants every building in the city to be partially powered by the stuff that comes out of the fryer at your local diner by 2009. Comment.

Park Slope: Shocker of the week: Park Slope’s community board wants gay marriage to be legal. A public hearing held by Community Board 6 at Park Slope United Methodist Church last Monday ended with the unanimous passage of a resolution in favor of Gov. Spitzer’s bill to grant marriage licenses regardless of gender. Comment.

Politics: For once, Borough President Markowitz wasn’t the biggest personality in the room. Markowitz hosted celebrity impersonator Howie V. Cher (left) and transgender beauty Clover Honey (impersonating Mae West, right) to usher in this year’s Brooklyn Pride festivities. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: Web Exclusive: A veteran member of Community Board 6 will resign next Monday to protest the politically motivated axing of nine board colleagues who voted against Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-development — and he’s urging his fellow panelists to do the same. Comment.

Politics: Last month’s purge of nine anti–Atlantic Yards members of Community Board 6 is raising new questions that Borough President Markowitz has turned the panel into a crony clubhouse. Comment.

Bay Ridge: Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani got a hero’s welcome inside a Bay Ridge catering hall this week — but outside, the man running for president as “America’s Mayor” got Swift-boated. Comment.

Red Hook: Borough President Markowitz was the first city official to ever lecture on a cruise ship while still in office, The Brooklyn Paper has learned. Comment.

Cartoon: Our cartoonist’s take. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: Nine community board members were purged by Borough President Markowitz because they didn’t toe his Atlantic Yards line, raising questions about the future independence of the city’s most local governmental forum. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: Our editorial on the politically motivated purge of community board members by Borough President Markowitz. The board members dared question the Atlantic Yards mega-development of Markowitz buddy Bruce Ratner. Comment.

Politics: Borough President Markowitz is back from his free, six-day ride on the Queen Mary 2 — but don’t worry, it’s all legit, according to the city. Normal people pay up to $23,399 for the transatlantic crossing, but Markowitz got his for free because he talked about Brooklyn tourism while on board. Comment.

Politics: A Brooklyn lawmaker has persuaded Mayor Bloomberg to make a three-point turn and require the city’s smoke-belching taxi fleet to be fully replaced with fuel-efficient hybrids by 2012. Comment.

Politics: State Sen. Eric Adams has not — repeat, has not! — endorsed anyone for president yet. Whew, that was close! Comment.

Letters: A letter from Assemblyman Karim Camara — and other hot missives! Comment.

Bay Ridge: It is official: possible mayoral candidate Marty Golden has decided to make the run — for charity, that is. Comment.

Downtown: Former President Bill Clinton stopped by actor Gabriel Byrne’s Garden Place home last Thursday to raise money for his wife’s White House bid. Comment.

Politics: Assemblyman Karim Camara (D–Crown Heights) won The Brooklyn Paper’s coveted “Hero of the Week” award for introducing legislation that would cap legislators’ terms at just 12 years, but also won The Brooklyn Paper’s ignominious “Goat of the Week” award after being arrested on a drunk driving charge on Wednesday morning in Albany. Comment.

Politics: Rep. Vito Fossella (R–Bay Ridge) is pushing a bill that will encourage restaurants to take their used frying oil and turn into an environmentally safe fuel. Comment.

Politics: Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to charge drivers $8 to enter Downtown Manhattan is an unfair burden on Brooklyn motorists, pols said this week, even as traffic experts said it could ease gridlock throughout the borough. Comment.

Politics: Borough President Markowitz has opposed East River bridge tolls before. What’s he saying now? Not much. Comment.

Bay Ridge: Commuters in Bay Ridge who want a 12-minute water taxi ride into Manhattan have been left at the dock - and they have Mayor Bloomberg to blame, a local pol charged this week. Comment.

Editorial: The two faces of Mayor Bloomberg are again on display. One day, the mayor is one of the nation’s leading advocates of environmentally sound, community-sensitive, sensible development. The next day, he’s a backroom crony greasing the wheels for a developer who ignored the community. Comment.

Brooklyn Angle: The Brooklyn Angle: Our columnist goes head-to-head with John Edwards. Comment.

Politics: Some of the borough’s bold-faced names came out this week to celebrate, well, themselves — and all the hard work they did to make Brooklyn the hot, happening place it is today. Comment.

Politics: Extra, extra! Former Congressman Major Owens is getting into the newspaper business. Comment.

Politics: A local lawmaker wants to forever change your grocery store experience by banning the plastic bags that have become a ubiquitous part of every shopping trip. Comment.

Politics: Find out what Rep. Yvette Clarke has against Bob Hope. Comment.

Downtown: Rep. Yvette Clarke threw her support behind the owners of several Downtown Brooklyn houses who claim their buildings were once part of the Underground Railroad. Comment.

Brooklyn Angle: If Barack Obama is going to beat Hillary Clinton, the road to victory goes through Brooklyn. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: Two Brooklyn lawmakers have already abandoned their week-old proposal to dig a tunnel under the proposed Atlantic Yards project as a way of fixing the mega-development’s anticipated traffic — a sad foreshadow of how difficult it will be to find a solution to the coming traffic snarl at the intersection of Flatbush, Atlantic and Fourth avenues. Comment.

Atlantic Yards: Barclays Bank’s partnership with Bruce Ratner is under fire from the state Libertarian Party — not because of the bank’s slavery- and apartheid-linked past, but because the British banking behemoth’s participation in the Atlantic Yards project is a tacit endorsement of the state’s use of eminent domain, which Libertarians despise. Comment.

Editorial: The city needs to stop dumping plans on Brooklyn neighborhoods with no consultation or discussion. Comment.

Politics: Cobble Hill mom Helen Selsdon’s little anti-war walk this Sunday has become a bona-fide march. Comment.

Politics: Finally, someone is making a federal case out of honoring Hugh Carey. Comment.

Bay Ridge: Is he or isn’t he? Our correspondent sits down with mayoral hopeful, state Sen. Marty Golden. Comment.

Yellow Hooker: Our columnist imagines a city led by “Mayor Marty Golden.” Comment.

Politics: Brooklyn and Vienna’s Leopoldstadt district have a lot in common — Jews, high-fat foods and leaders with an eye on the future — so no wonder they just signed a partnership. Comment.

Politics: Borough President Markowitz took a page from President Kennedy when he declared, “Ich bin ein Wiener” in a speech this week. Here’s how MM and JFK match up in our first-ever Presidential Smackdown. Comment.

Politics: State Sen. Marty Golden is apparently running for mayor — though like a fellow Marty (Borough President Markowitz), the Bay Ridge Republican is being a bit coy about it. Comment.

Politics: Disgraced former Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Clarence Norman — who is out of jail pending an appeal of an earlier corruption conviction — was back in court this week facing his fourth trial in less than two years, this one for allegedly intimidating two Civil Court candidates to pay up to $100,000 for campaign services. Comment.

Bay Ridge: The Democratic Party — which failed to do even basic behind-the-scenes work for its candidate in 2006 — now says it will go after Rep. Vito Fossella (R–Bay Ridge) with a vengeance in 2008. Comment.

Politics: The city should use the money it saved this winter because of global warming to combat global warming, says one politician — and it’s not Al Gore. Comment.

Politics: The electorate closed a door, but Gov. Spitzer has opened a window to his pal Carl Andrews, giving the former state Senator a job in his new administration and earning complaints from critics, who call the position a cynical “quid pro quo.” Comment.

Bay Ridge: Group hears president out over beers at Peggy O’Neil’s Comment.

Politics: Rep. Yvette Clarke is sworn into office. Comment.

Politics: Just because you lost the race for your father’s Congressional seat doesn’t mean you don’t have really good political advice to impart. Comments (1).