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Albany Police Officers Union, local 2841, “We respectfully demand that you do the right thing and repeal the law.” FROM: Albany Police Officers Union, local 2841, Council 82, AFSCME, AFI-CIO, P.O BOX 6567, ALBANY, NEW YORK 12206 (518) 438-9422 To: Andrew M. Cuomo / Dean G. Skelos / Neil D. Breslin / John T- McDonald III / Phil Steck / Sheldon Silver / Jeffrey D. Klein / Cecilia Tkaczyk / Patricia Fahy Note; see the formal list of people this letter went to at the bottom. April 15,2013 Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen: The Albany Police Officers Union condemns and opposes...

Three Democratic governors who successfully pushed their state legislatures to toughen gun laws are asking Congress to do the same. “We need the federal government to take the lead and enact reasonable laws to reduce gun violence by, at a minimum, ensuring that more gun purchasers pass a federal background check,” Govs. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Dan Malloy of Connecticut wrote in a letter to Senators on Wednesday. “The American people are clear on this issue – more than 90% support background checks prior to gun purchases. They understand that if you can’t pass...

The bad news? Between this and what’s going on in South Carolina, American voters seem to have finally jettisoned any pretense of standards for their political leaders.The good news? We’re still on track for a Sanford-versus-Weiner presidential election in 2028. Cross those fingers. According to the poll, if Weiner entered the Democratic primary today, his 15 percent would put him behind Quinn’s 26 percent but ahead of City Comptroller John Liu (12 percent), de Blasio (11 percent), Thompson (11 percent) and former City Councilman Sal Albanese (2 percent).By comparison, without Weiner, Quinn would receive 30 percent of Democratic votes and...

Pro-Life students at the University of Buffalo came under fierce attack by a group of professors who compared them to a lynch mob. At least one professor was arrested after she launched a profanity-laced tirade directed toward the students. The professors were outraged after the Students for Life club received permission to display a pro-life exhibit that included graphic images of abortion victims along with Holocaust victims and victims of lynching. A half dozen history professors condemned the display in a letter to the student newspaper. “Anti-abortion protesters appear to have a lot in common with those who supported lynching,”...

Denver Public Schools has quietly put the rest of its controversial variable-rate bonds with swaps on the market to sell as fixed-rate debt. Five years after issuing a 30-year, $750 million school pension bond that turned into a financial quagmire for the district, DPS is selling $519.8 million in fixed-rate, refunding certificates of participation (COPs), set to price during the week of April 15, according to an announcement Friday from Fitch Ratings. ... DPS "fixed out" — or issued debt at a fixed interest rate — half of the original $750 million in debt in 2011, and paid nearly $42...

Anthony Weiner is on a roll. A week after floating his name as a possible mayoral candidate, the disgraced former congressman finishes second when he’s included in the field of Democrats, a new poll reveals. Weiner — who resigned from office in 2011 after getting caught in a sexting scandal — said he’s mulling a political comeback by running for mayor.

His lunch was “the bomb.” Airport officials detained a traveler who mentioned an explosive device at JFK — only to discover he was actually talking about food referred to as The Bomb, TSA sources said. Jason Michael Cruz, 29, was on an escalator in Terminal 7 Thursday when a TSA officer overheard him tell a friend he “had the wrong kind of bomb” just after 1 p.m. She reported the conversation to her supervisor, Robert Haddok, who sent officers to a security checkpoint to question the pair. Officials ushered Cruz and his friend, Matthew Okumoto, to a holding area, where...

(CNSNews.com) – If you sell a gun to your son, “there’s something wrong with your family," says New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In a radio appearance on Friday, Bloomberg, a gun control activist and co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, praised the legislation that is now moving forward in the Senate. The bill would require universal background checks for most sales of firearms, including those online and at gun shows.

Syracuse, N.Y. -- The union representing New York State Police say they believe the state's stricter gun laws could put law enforcement officers at risk. In an email release on Monday, the New York State Troopers PBA said its 6,000-member group "holds widely shared concerns" about the NY Safe Act. Nonetheless, the union takes exception to some state lawmakers accusing the troopers of failing to enforce the law. "The individual members of this union did not write the terms of the bill nor vote on its passage," the release said. "We urge the citizens of New York state to remember...

Never let a tragedy go to waste. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on Monday quickly used the explosions in Boston for political gain, linking the Republican Party to the horrific act. At 4:10pm, Kristof tweeted, "explosion is a reminder that ATF needs a director. Shame on Senate Republicans for blocking apptment." [SECOND UPDATE: More journalists are politicizing the tragedy. See below.]

The Supreme Court, following a pattern that is now quite well established, chose again on Monday to remain on the sidelines as the national debate over gun ownership heats up in the political realm. Without comment, the Justices denied review of the latest attempt to test whether the Second Amendment right to have a gun extends beyond the home. The denial of review in Kachalsky v. Cacace (docket 12-845) was the latest in a series of denials of attempts to get the Justices to explore the reach of the Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing a...

Dozens of resorts with permits to operate on national forests have bought or acquired rights to use nearby bodies of water for snowmaking. The Forest Service had adopted a clause that said those resorts had to transfer their water rights to the federal government ... After the National Ski Areas Association sued, a judge ruled last year that the agency violated procedure in not seeking public comment before adopting the clause. The agency now plans open houses April 16 in Lakewood, Colo., on April 17 in Salt Lake City, and April 18 in Lake Tahoe, Calif., to get input.

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Key measures of New York's tough new gun law kicked in Monday, with owners of firearms now reclassified as assault weapons required to start registering the firearms and new limits on the number of bullets allowed in magazines. As the new provisions took effect, New York's affiliate of the National Rifle Association planned to file a court request for a federal injunction to immediate halt to the magazine limit. Gov. Andrew Cuomo calls those and other provisions in the state's new gun law common sense while dismissing criticisms he says come from "extreme fringe conservatives" who claim the government has...

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Machiavellian Plot to ignore and subvert the Rights of potentially millions of NY State residents developed another layer late Sunday. After breaking the story of Amhurst NY Area Resident David Lewis having his lawfully purchase and legally owned firearms confiscated by order of the State Police after a flagrantly illegal and Un-Constitutional review of his medical records , Word came to me in my capacity as in journalist late Sunday that NY Officials have apparently doubled down on their sinister plot and blatant abuse of power. My sources revealed that two prominent and well regarded Buffalo...

The Supreme Court is staying out of the gun debate for now. The justices on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a strict New York law that makes it difficult for residents to get a license to carry a concealed handgun in public.

Assigning essay against Jews widely condemned. The Albany school district has placed on leave a teacher whose persuasive writing assignment was for students to argue that Jews are evil in order to convince a Nazi official of their loyalty. The teacher was not in class at Albany High School on Friday and Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard said the district will take some form of disciplinary action. She said it was too early to say exactly what that would be, but it could range from a letter of reprimand to termination. She did not say when the district would allow the...

A group of New York veterans is preparing to march into court after a town ordered the Gadsden flag removed from a military armory. The city of New Rochelle, N.Y., has removed the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag from the New Rochelle Armory after the city council refused to let a veterans organization display the flag, World Net Daily reported. The United Veterans Memorial and Patriotic Association of New Rochelle is fighting the decision, ordered by City Manager Chuck Strome after complaints that the flag is a symbol of the Tea Party movement, according to World Net Daily. Read...

ALBANY — High school is full of hypotheticals, like “How does one solve for x?” and “What happens if I skip class?” But this week, students at Albany High School were given an alarming thought puzzle: How do I convince my teacher that I think Jews are evil? That question was posed to about 75 students on Monday by an unidentified 10th-grade English teacher as a “persuasive writing” exercise. The students were instructed to imagine that their teacher was a Nazi and to construct an argument that Jews were “the source of our problems” using historical propaganda and, of course,...

Robert Byrne, an international grandmaster and United States chess champion who, as the chess columnist for The New York Times, analyzed top-flight matches from 1972 through 2006, the eras of Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov, died on Friday at his home in Ossining, N.Y. He was 84.