messina_bloombergPolitico – by Maggie Haberman

Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s campaign manager, who will chair the relaunched, tax-exempt version called Organizing for Action, visited New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office at City Hall last week to coordinate the fight for gun control legislation, POLITICO has learned.

Aides to Bloomberg, one of the faces of gun control nationally, had already been working with Vice President Joe Biden’s task force on a gun control bill before it was recently unveiled. Continue reading “Jim Messina to Mayor Bloomberg’s office to talk guns”

ar15Daily Caller – by Jorge Amselle

Sadly, so called “assault rifles” are getting a lot of negative press lately and are being subjected to a great deal of misinformation. This is not just coming from the usual anti-gun crowd, whom one would expect to lack knowledge about firearms and how they function, but also from supposedly knowledgeable gun owners and hunters, some of whom favor “reasonable” controls on firearms freedoms. Here are a few of the fallacies.

Why do you need that? Continue reading “The AR-15, you don’t need one and they are too dangerous to own”

bloomieDaily Caller – by Caroline May

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had his eyes less on the evils of guns and big gulps at a Christmas party last month than on the assets of a female party guest.

In a New York Magazine profile of New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, author Jonathan Van Meter recalls how in researching Quinn’s prospects as a candidate for mayor at “a Christmas party for the rich,” he was introduced to Mayor Michael Bloomberg who subsequently ignored praise for his gun-control advocacy to instead admire a woman’s backside. Continue reading “Mayor Bloomberg: ‘Look at the ass on her’”

ray kellyNew York Post – by Raymond Kelly

While assault rifles serve no legitimate hunting purpose, and their ban would be a welcome advance after the Newtown slaughter, illegal handguns remain the weapon of choice for killers and other criminals in New York City.

Ninety percent, or 2,493, of the 2,779 illegal firearms seized from suspects in arrests in the city last year were handguns.

By contrast, a total of 77 assault weapons were seized in arrests in the city, less than 3 percent of the total. Continue reading “Ray Kelly: Scourge of NYC’s streets”

stinger missileKIRO TV

Seattle police came across an unusual item during this weekend’s overwhelming response to a gun buyback program -– a military-issued missile launcher tube.

Officers were giving out gift cards Saturday in exchange for unwanted weapons, but weren’t expecting to see the Stinger missile launcher tube. Continue reading “Missile launcher brought to hugely successful gun buyback event”

teachers-trained-concealed-weaponsAOL – by David Schepp

North Carolina public-school employee Michelle Fish can’t take a gun to school. But that didn’t stop the 42-year-old elementary school librarian from recently participating in a daylong seminar on how to handle and carry a gun.

Fish was one of a dozen or so educators in the Tar Heel State who attended the free firearms training course at Triangle Krav Maga combat center in Cary, just west of the capital, Raleigh. Continue reading “Teachers And Guns: An Educator Explains Why She Learned To Shoot”

Huffington Post by Jaweed Kaleem

A little over five years ago, Alison and Doug Kirk held their 9-year-old daughter’s hand as she lay on a futon in their Nashville living room, told her they loved her, and watched her take her last breath.

The Kirks had known for a long time that their little girl, Caroline, would die. In her last weeks, she was under hospice care, lived off an oxygen machine, was fed through a tube, and spoke only in small murmurs. It was the normal course for a child born with Niemann-Pick, a terminal disease that gradually leads to the breakdown of the nervous system, brain and lungs. Continue reading “Home Funerals Grow As Americans Skip The Mortician For Do-It-Yourself After-Death Care”

Salon – by NATASHA LENNARD

Last fall, we reported footage released of NYPD officers brutalizing a shirtless, shoeless homeless ban who was sleeping (with permission) in a Brooklyn synagogue youth outreach center.

21-year-old Ehud Halevi was beaten and pepper sprayed, as security camera recordings show, spent four days in prison and faced a string of charges including felony assault on a police officer — charges which were later dropped when the district attorney reviewed the disturbing video. This week, Gothamist reports, Halevi filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD with the help of famed civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel. Siegel, the former director of the NYCLU told the Gothamist that he is confident Ehud will be awarded compensatory damages. He told the site: Continue reading “Homeless man brutalized by NYPD files federal suit”

RT News

The NYPD is facing a lawsuit from a woman who was injured in a police shootout outside of the Empire State Building in New York last summer. The 32-year-old was crossing the street when a stray bullet wounded her and eight other bystanders.

“I was just crossing the street,” Chenin Duclos told CBS News. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong and quickly life changed.” Continue reading “Woman injured in Empire State Building shooting sues NYPD”

New York Magazine – by Joe Coscarelli

NYPD boss Ray Kelly was his version of giddy yesterday while describing new technology that will allow police to just see straight through people’s clothing. As detailed by The Wall Street Journal, “The so-called T-Ray machine detects terahertz radiation, a high-frequency electromagnetic natural energy that is emitted by people and can penetrate many materials.” Kelly, in a speech at the Waldorf-Astoria, explained, “If something is obstructing the flow of that radiation, for example a weapon, the device will highlight that object.” After a demonstration, he added, “You get a sense of why we’re so hopeful about this tool.” And the government is footing the bill. Continue reading “NYPD Testing T-Ray Device to See Through Clothes”

Huffington Post – by Jill Colvin, DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

BROOKLYN — Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Borough President Marty Markowitz waffled Wednesday over who has responsibility for overseeing the failure of some Brooklyn religious Jewish schools to teach their students basic English, math and science. Continue reading “Brooklyn Yeshivas Not Teaching Students Basic English And Math, Despite Being Required To By Law”

Huffington Post – by Jill Lawless

LONDON — British and Irish burger fans could face a Whopper shortage. Burger King says it has stopped buying beef from an Irish meat processor whose patties were found to contain traces of horsemeat.

The fast food chain said in a statement Thursday that it had dropped Silvercrest Foods as a supplier for its U.K. and Ireland restaurants as a “voluntary and precautionary measure.” Continue reading “Burger King Horsemeat: Chain Drops Silvercrest Food, Supplier Linked To Scandal”

Huffington Post – by Colleen Long

NEW YORK — An esteemed religious counselor in New York City’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community was sentenced Tuesday to 103 years in prison for molesting a girl who came to him with questions about her faith.

Nechemya Weberman was convicted in December of 59 counts, including sustained sexual abuse of a child, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse. He testified in his own defense, saying he “never, ever” abused the girl, and maintained his innocence at sentencing. Continue reading “Nechemya Weberman, Orthodox Counselor Guilty Of Sexual Abuse, Sentenced To 103 Years In Prison”

NPR – by Peter Overby

Congress faces a battle over gun laws that could be the biggest in a generation.

Leading the charge for gun rights is the National Rifle Association, with its huge budget and grass-roots operations. On the other side, a new leader has emerged in recent years: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not only outspoken on gun control, he has also opened his substantial wallet for the cause. Continue reading “Bloomberg Puts Millions Behind Gun Control Push”

NY Daily News – by ERIN DURKIN

Mayor Bloomber has attended many gatherings of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in his 11 years in office, but the Newtown massacre changed things, he said.

When he addressed the nation’s gun scourge at a Washington meeting Friday, he said he detected a decidedly different tone on guns. Continue reading “Michael Bloomberg sees mood swing on gun control at annual U.S. Conference of Mayors”

Huffington Post – by Sara Gates

New Yorker Noah Zerkin was riding the subway this weekend when he came across a familiar face sporting an exciting new piece of technology. It was Google co-founderSergey Brin wearing Google’s augmented-reality “glasses.”

Brin, who has publicly shown off the company’s Project Glass headset many times since it debuted in April 2011, took the device with him for a ride on New York’s downtown 3 train on Sunday. Continue reading “Sergey Brin Wears Google ‘Glasses’ On New York Subway”

Huffington Post – by LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK — A federal judge let the New York Police Department on Tuesday temporarily resume stop-and-frisk stops she believes are unconstitutional while she decides what permanent remedies are necessary to prevent illegal stops in thousands of privately owned buildings.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan lifted immediate implementation of the order she issued earlier this month concerning a program aimed at decreasing city crime. Continue reading “Stop-And-Frisks In Bronx Buildings To Resume: Judge Temporarily Lifts ‘Operation Clean Halls’ Decision”

Huffington Post – by SHAWN POGATCHNIK

DUBLIN — Food quality officials said Thursday they have identified more horsemeat traces in beef burgers produced in Ireland and pinpointed the problem in an imported ingredient. Ireland’s second-largest manufacturer of supermarket beef patties shut down its production line in response. Continue reading “Silvercrest Foods, Irish Plant, Suspends Operations After More Horsemeat Found In Burgers”

Yahoo News – by Scott Bomboy | National Constitution Center

One of the least known constitutional amendments is getting a lot of publicity as a wild card in the ongoing budget battle in Washington.

The 27th Amendment is the most recent amendment, and there are many people who probably don’t remember what it stands for: congressional pay raises. Continue reading “27th Amendment gets publicity in budget battle”