Otis G. Pike was the greatest member of Congress from Long Island I have known in 52 years as a journalist here. Mr. Pike, who died last week at 92, was simply extraordinary.

He was able to win, over and over again as a Democrat in a district far more Republican than it is now. His communications to constituents were a wonder — a constant flow of personal letters. As a speaker he was magnificent — eloquent and what a sense of humor!

The results of Election 2013 in Suffolk County had many meanings.

The defeat of East Hampton Councilman Dominick Stanzione, charged repeatedly by the Quiet Skies Coalition with being the “puppet” of aviation interests at East Hampton Airport, illustrates the fate of politicians who link themselves with obnoxious activities. The East Hampton Airport has become the biggest noisemaker on the East End. The helicopter traffic between the field and Manhattan has been especially onerous. The choppers have been flying loud and low over the East End.

Three Shelter Island men have kicked off a campaign to provide financial assistance to the Suffolk County Fire Academy. For more than seven decades it has been the institution that trains all the members of the 109 fire departments in Suffolk.

In recent years it has been hurting financially.

“Fire training for firefighters by firefighters,” is the greeting you receive when telephoning the academy, the official training center for the more than 11,000 firefighters in Suffolk.

As the U.S. government moves to spend $700 million to attempt to shore up the Suffolk County coast from Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point — and Sagaponack and Bridgehampton are getting set to spend additional millions in efforts to try to bolster their beaches — Concerned Citizens of Quogue couldn’t have invited a more [...]

By Karl Grossman A terrible tragedy occurred days before this summer was to arrive. A precious, brilliant, beautiful young woman, Anna Mirabai Lytton, 14, was riding her bicycle on Pantigo Road in East Hampton Village on a Saturday afternoon and was run over by a vehicle and died. “Our hearts are collectively broken,” said Eric [...]

A couple of weeks ago, a celebration was held at the East Hampton home of Lenny and Julie Ackerman honoring the staff at Stony Brook University Hospital Heart Institute for the care they gave when Ms. Ackerman suffered a heart attack and stroke last year. At the event were 200 people including the doctors and [...]

By Karl Grossman If you’re going to eat a lobster on Long Island, it’s highly unlikely these days that it came from the waters of the Long Island Sound — long a huge source of lobsters. That’s because the lobster fishery in the Sound has been decimated. In Connecticut, the die-off has been blamed on [...]

By Karl Grossman The recent vote in the House of Representatives on reining in the National Security Agency’s dragnet approach to collecting data was extremely close­205-to-217­with the three congressmen representing Suffolk in the narrow majority voting against the measure. In the battle over the bill, “Conservative Republicans leery of what they see as Obama administration [...]

The Long Island Rail Road disability fraud scandal says much about the greed of a large group of government employees and an outrageous failure of government oversight — and what good investigative reporting can do. Some 600 LIRR retirees face loss of their disability benefits after the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board finally decided last month [...]

By Karl Grossman   The fight over fracking has come to Long Island. Although there are no shale deposits here to exploit for gas by hydraulic fracturing ­known as fracking­the ocean off Long Island could be the site of a terminal that opponents charged at a recent public hearing is aimed at sending gas fracked [...]