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Bloomberg appeared on John Gambling's WOR-NY radio show, Capital New York reports, to discuss two bills passed by the New York City Council -- one that would create an inspector general to oversee the NYPD, and another to allow people to sue over racial profiling by the police. "The racial profiling bill is just so unworkable," Bloomberg said. "Nobody racially profiles."

From Capital New York:

The mayor went on to cite the city's murder rate, which has fallen dramatically during his tenure, and argue that now is not the time to conduct a "social experiment."

"There is this business, there's one newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying, 'Oh it's a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group,'" he went on. "That may be, but it's not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murder. In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little."

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The New York Daily News reports:

The Council voted with veto-proof majorities for bills creating an inspector general's office to oversee the NYPD and allowing people to sue over racial profiling by police.

The IG bill passed 40-11. The profiling bill passed 34-17 -- exactly the number of votes needed to withstand Bloomberg’s expected veto.

Bloomberg's counsel Michael Best objected to the bills in a letter to the Council, arguing that they “would seriously impede the ability of the Police Department and the City to protect 8.4 million New Yorkers” and cause an “avalanche of new lawsuits against police action.”

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For Stanford's straight male engineering grads, the latter might be attractive. But for those female engineering majors who date men, the availability of hot non-Siri girls in New York may not be much of a draw.

Women made up 30 percent of the undergraduate class at Stanford's engineering school in 2010-11. That's not an insignificant number -- certainly enough that any commencement speaker should presume some female audience (leaving aside for the moment the share of male grads who might prefer to date dudes). Stanford has also turned out a number of high-profile female engineers, from Marissa Mayer to Clara Shih; anyone who thinks the face of Stanford engineering (or engineering, period) is uniformly male isn't paying attention.

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The New York Times reports that Bloomberg is planning to send a letter on Wednesday to top donors, urging them against supporting the four senators - Mark Pryor, of Arkansas, Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota - who have collectively raised over $2.2 million from New York.

From the Times:

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Reuters reports:

The sweeping plan includes 250 recommendations, ranging from installing floodwalls and storm barriers to upgrades of power and telecommunications infrastructures.

With the Big Apple facing significant impacts from climate change in the decades to come -- including becoming as hot as Birmingham, Alabama, by 2050 -- the plan aims to make sure that New York City's extensive subway, transit, sewer and water, energy and food distribution systems will still be able to serve the more than 8 million people who live there.

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Before getting to the big news, let's review the dominant fairy tale: As embodied by New York City's major education announcement this weekend, the "reform" fantasy pretends that a lack of teacher "accountability" is the major education problem and somehow wholly writes family economics out of the story (amazingly, this fantasy persists even in a place like the Big Apple where economic inequality is particularly crushing). That key -- and deliberate -- omission serves myriad political interests.

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One tip the group's representatives are given as they meet with state representatives from Oregon to Nevada: maybe don't mention Bloomberg's name once you're there, as the New York Times reports:

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Yet another letter became known publicly on Thursday, one tainted with the poison ricin and mailed to President Barack Obama from Spokane, Wash., the FBI said. Authorities have arrested a man in Spokane in connection with that letter, which was intercepted May 22.

The Secret Service said the White House-bound letter similar to the ones Bloomberg was sent was intercepted by a White House mail screening facility. Two similar letters postmarked in Louisiana and sent to Bloomberg in New York and his gun control group in Washington contained traces of the deadly poison ricin.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the letter sent to Obama contained ricin. It was turned over to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force for testing and investigation.

The two Bloomberg letters, opened Friday in New York and Sunday in Washington, contained an oily pinkish-orange substance.

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In Bartow, FL, Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old student was expelled from Bartow High School and arrested for conducting an unapproved chemistry experiment.  She combined some household chemicals in an 8-ounce water bottle and the top popped off, giving off a small explosion.  According to the school principal, Ron Pritchard, "she made a bad choice. ... She wanted to see what would happen [when the chemicals mixed] and was shocked by what it did.”  She was charged with possession of and discharging a weapon on school property.

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The proposal would extend voting rights to "not a United States citizen, but is lawfully present in the United States" and "has been a resident of New York City, as defined herein, for six months or longer by the date of such election." This would include local elections, including for mayor, the comptroller, the public advocate, members of the city council, and the borough presidents.

The New York Daily News reports:

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While Mayor Bloomberg has been mayor, the NYPD has carried out over 5 million stop-and-frisks. Analysis by the ACLU of official police data found that over 86 percent of the stops were of black or Latino individuals. The analysis of police data also revealed that 88 percent of the stops did not result in an arrest or summons (and of course an even smaller proportion ever lead to a prosecution, or conviction). The number of innocent people stopped alone serves as ample riposte to Kelly's suggestion that any demographic is "understopped."

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This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.

Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly spoke at a briefing Thursday.

Kelly says the two suspects had a pressure cooker bomb and five pipe bombs they wanted to set off.

They said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joh-KHAHR' tsahr-NEYE'-ehv) told Boston investigators from his hospital bed that he and his brother had discussed going to New York to detonate their remaining explosives. They said they decided it spontaneously.

Kelly had said a day earlier that the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were targeting New York, but was later briefed by federal officials.

Tsarnaev traveled to New York at least once last fall. There is a photo of the suspect in Times Square.

Tsarnaev's older brother, Tamerlan (TA'-mehr-luhn), died in a shootout with police.

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The National Journal cites an anonymous senior official in the group, who said senior members of the super PAC met to discuss possible responses to the failure of gun control legislation:

The Bloomberg group is mulling a variety of messages and methods for Arkansas. One approach would be to target reliable Democratic voters, including African Americans, with advertising that calls out Pryor for “opposing the president’s agenda,” the official said. Another would be to expand the campaign to suburban women and other moderates. The campaign might not be limited to the issue of guns.

“Money would not be an object,” the official said, adding that a decision on whether to target Pryor would come soon and that action against other Democrats is still possible.

Pryor is one of the more vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in 2014.

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One reason was the ambiguity of the legal situation: While public parks close by 12 p.m., Zuccotti Park was a public-private hybrid, owned by an investment firm, Brookfield Office Properties. Technically such “privately owned public properties” are accessible to the public twenty-four hours a day. Still, by our experience, the mere existence of such a law would have been of little relevance if the authorities decided they wanted to evict us anyway, but it allowed something of a fig leaf. But why did they even want a fig leaf?

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The first lady elevated the conversation Wednesday, during a rare return to her hometown of Chicago. In a city ravaged by violence, with more than 500 gun-related homicides last year alone, she spoke eloquently -- and apolitically -- transcending the partisan politics that seem to subvert her husband's efforts for reasonable gun control legislation.

But what was most unique was for whom, and to whom, Michelle spoke. Her words gave voice to an oft ignored (but disproportionately affected) victim of America's gun violence: the black mother.

The first lady spoke of Hadiya Pendleton, the slain 15-year-old student, gunned down just blocks from the Obama's Chicago home -- and only days after Pendleton had attended the president's second inauguration. With tears in her eyes, Michelle said, "Hadiya Pendleton was me and I was her." The first lady went on to add that Pendleton's family is "just like" her own.

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But now that the former congressman is hinting at a comeback, with an emotional tell-all interview in the New York Times Magazine and open talk that he's eyeing a run for mayor of New York City, can he recapture that glory on the left? And critically, was he even a good congressman to begin with? Good enough to run the nation's largest city?

Even among his Democratic compatriots, Weiner was always a bit of a divisive figure: a great communicator and powerful leader, but one who didn’t play well with others. “He operated as a lone ranger, giving a voice to the progressive movement, but not operating as a partner with a larger set of House members or progressives on the outside,” one senior strategist for an outside progressive group said, contrasting him with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who works closely with partners to advance her agenda.

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The ad, which began airing on Monday, was paid for by a group of left-leaning labor groups and other Democratic activists, which call themselves NYC Is Not for Sale 2013. The ad shows Quinn's picture amid a cloud of smoke, and says that “Virtually all of Christine Quinn’s decisions were made in rooms just like this, with her friends in the 1%.”

NY1 reports:

The ad also faults her for changing term limits, saying "She is always on the wrong side. On living wage."

Quinn's lawyer says she passed the measure, so she can't be on the wrong side. However, she delayed the vote and passed a watered-down version.

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