To Ocean County’s political folklore, add the cannoli moment. Joe Vicari, proud of his Italian and Jersey City heritage, must be feeling the heat in his bid for yet another three-year term on Ocean County’s all-Republican freeholder board. Sponges used to be his campaign mainstay. “The guy with the most sponges wins,’’ he likes to joke. Only this year there’s no guy trying to unseat him. Instead it’s Michele Rosen of Waretown, who once served on the old Dover Township Committee before Vicari, the late Tom Renkin, and political sniper Robert Haelig put the Grand Old Party back in control of …

The massacre of Toms River’s reputation in October 1972 was bloodier than the British attack on the village and its defenders during the waning days of the Revolutionary War. And it's impact reverberated throughout Ocean County. The despoilers did not arrive by longboat through Cranberry Inlet. Loyalist William Dillon of Island Heights did not lead the murderous pack to the village. Instead they came overland, from Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, led by Maury Levy, a writer in search of a story, even if he had to make one up. “Death at Toms River,’’ screamed the headline over the …

There are trials you don’t forget, especially if they have sex, violence, organized gangsters and great lawyers. The trial of a North Jersey wiseguy reputed to be Joe Pesci’s model for his role in “Goodfellas,’’ was one of them. I didn’t know it then, but Robert “Cabert’’ Bisaccia, was a mobster on the rise when he was hanging out “down the shore’’ in 1974, moving from motel to motel and looking for prey. He found it when a Seaside Park doctor went looking for somebody to collect money from a contractor he loaned money. The contractor owed the doctor money. So Dr. Gerald F. Wolfe asked …

Few issues have shattered the political tranquility of Ocean County and Toms River the way the controversial plan to build a new $315 million toll road from South Brunswick to the Garden State Parkway did in the early 1970s. Plans for the Driscoll Expressway, named for the former governor and father of the New Jersey Turnpike, seemed like a runaway train that could not be stopped. But stopped it was. The so called Parkway Spur was authorized by New Jersey lawmakers in 1965, but the New Jersey Highway Authority, which operated the Garden State Parkway, did not have the money to build it. …

What a week! First the Big Oyster announces it will close the nation's oldest nuclear plant in Forked River 10 years before its extended license expires. Then the governor unveils his $110 million Barnegat Bay bailout. It's hard not to be optimistic with so much good news coming our way. The impact could be as important to the northern part of the bay as it is to the region around Oyster Creek. That's because more than 60 percent of the nitrogen pollution flowing into the bay comes from the Metedeconk and Toms River watersheds. Those watersheds stretch far into the western fringes of Ocean …