The mayor of New York City, who once said while campaigning, "I will attempt the most transparency possible in every public endeavor," ducked out of a press conference he called to respond to a video of his NYPD SUV  disobeying traffic laws. New York Daily News: The mayor read a brief statement declaring his "great respect" for the "training and protocols" of his NYPD security detail and professing that he was "committed, obviously, to traffic safety." He said Police Commissioner Bill Bratton "addressed the topic of my security detail earlier today. I'm very comfortable with what Commissioner Bratton said and I refer you to his comments." With that, de Blasio left the podium, ignoring reporters shouting questions at him as he walked out of the City Hall Blue Room. And so what began as a simple story about the mayor's motorcade violating the rules of the road turned into a self-inflicted crisis about openness at City Hall. This was, after all, a mayor who once declared,...(Read Full Post)