"He went out of his way to attack New York on the bill,” King, R-N.Y., added, the New York Daily News reports. "It's a little early to forgive and forget."

“It’s life and death,” King continued. “There were really false and phony charges made against the Sandy aid, and if Ted Cruz had prevailed, my constituents would be homeless."

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When Gillibrand -- a hot topic in political circles this week, as a potential liberal presidential candidate and a champion for addressing sexual assault in the military -- was appointed to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat in 2009, Nate Silver wrote, "This is not a terrific outcome for progressive Democrats," because "Gillibrand, statistically speaking, has been one of the more conservative Democrats in the House. Moreover, she is a somewhat proud conservative, being a member of the Blue Dog caucus. In a state like New York, which is capable of electing and re-electing a very liberal senator, that’s a somewhat underachieving result for the Democrats."

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“The only discussions I’m having are about how to help the state, how to get the state running, how to make the government a better government,” he conitnued. “And to the extend I’m focusing on politics, it’s my race next year.”

“I understand the press appeal of presidential politics,” Cuomo added. “But no, I’m doing what I’m doing.”

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From the Post:

“The governor has told people in recent weeks that there’s not a chance for him to run if Hillary gets in the race because she’ll easily wrap up the Democratic nomination,’’ said a Cuomo administration insider with direct knowledge of the situation.

“He knows that and he accepts that, and so he won’t even be thinking at all in those terms — unless Hillary decides not to run, which seems unlikely,’’ the source continued.

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State Sen. Diane Savino and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal announced the legislation at a news conference Sunday in New York City. The bill was introduced on Friday.

If passed, New York would become the first state to raise the minimum age to buy cigarettes to 21. Four states and some communities have increased the age to 19, and at least two towns have agreed to raise it to 21.

Savino says "anything we can do to stop young people from starting is a step in the right direction."

A hearing on the city's proposal to raise the minimum age to 21 is scheduled for May 2.

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Lila Shapiro at Huffington Post reports:

Despite the unresolved legal challenge, two New York state lawmakers from New York City, Sen. Michael Gianaris and Sen. Deborah Glick, both progressive Democrats, said the time was right to propose a ban.

"There are often challenges to any manner of legislation that is protecting of the LGBT community and you can't sit on your hands and wait until things get resolved somewhere else," said Glick, who became the first openly gay legislator in New York in 1990.

According to the American Psychological Association website, ”To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation (sometimes called reparative or conversion therapy) is safe or effective.”

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From The Journal News:

In the deal announced Thursday, Katz received a lesser parking ticket and an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, which would result in the marijuana charge being thrown out if he finishes the community service by the end of June and doesn’t run afoul of the law for up to a year. He did not appear in court Thursday, leaving it to his attorney to formally enter the plea. Katz did not return a call for comment.

Katz, who was pulled over for speeding in March and then charged with pot possession, sits on the Assembly Committee on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, and also happens to have voted against legalizing medical marijuana in 2012.

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That's what the family of Carolee Sadie Ashby is finding out after her 1968 hit-and-run death was solved with the help of a Facebook post. Now, the family of the 4-year-old girl in upstate New York is grieving—online and off-—as they come to grips with the fact that nothing will be done to punish the drunk driver responsible for the death.

On Wednesday, the Fulton Police Department announced that Douglas Parkhurst, 62, of Oswego was the person who struck and killed Carolee on Halloween night nearly half a century ago. The Associated Press reported that Carolee was walking with her sister and cousin after going to the store to buy candles when Parkhurst failed to stop for the children at an intersection. Parkhurst had been drinking that night and was questioned by police but denied ever seeing the girl or hitting her. The case went unsolved for years, but police continued to track down leads.

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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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“If reporters want to go try to find more, I can’t say that they’re not going to be able to find another picture, or find another person who may want to come out on their own, but I’m not going to contribute to that. The basics of the story are not gonna change,” Weiner said, speaking to RNN-TV’s Dominic Carter.

Weiner has recently been making the media rounds, possibly in the hopes of running for mayor of New York City this year. A recent poll put him in second place behind Christine Quinn in the primary, though trailing 26-15 percent, with 50 percent of Democrats saying they would not vote for him.

Watch:

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“If getting that information, including torture, would save one innocent life, including, that we’ve seen, children, would you use torture?" Ball said. "I would be first in line.”

Ball tweeted on Saturday:

[embedtweet id="325411515333230592"]

Via HuffPo.

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“Police have to be in the community, they have to build up as many sources as they can, and they have to realize that the threat is coming from the Muslim community and increase surveillance there,” King, a New York Republican, told the National Review.

“We can’t be bound by political correctness,” he continued. “I think we need more police and more surveillance in the communities where the threat is coming from, whether it’s the Irish community with the Westies [an Irish-American gang in New York City], or the Italian community with the mafia, or the Muslim community with the Islamic terrorists.”

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The 26-year-old Tsarnaev died in a police shootout overnight.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they couldn't publicly talk about an investigation in progress. One says that Tsarnaev traveled out of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

Investigators believe that Tsarneaev and his brother Dzhokhar are responsible for the deadly Boston Marathon terrorist attack. Dzhokhar is still being sought. The ethnic Chechen brothers are from Dagestan, which neighbors Chechnya in southern Russia. They lived near Boston and had been in the U.S. for about a decade, an uncle said.

One official said there are no known ties at this point to Chechen extremist groups.

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Her mother would hear nothing of it.

"We don't need any charity," She bristled.

Of course she was lying. A sudden loss beyond her control. A need for a little help over the hump. Theirs was as honest a case for charity as any. But her sense of pride would not let her admit it. So, my mother's musical development came to an abrupt halt and instead of her dream career, bathed in the footlights of a concert stage, one thing after another, she ended up struggling to raise my brother and me on her own.

The arc of these events conveyed to me for the first time that a separate set of rules exists for the poor. Pride, for example--which they took pains in Sunday school to drum into my head as being among the deadly sins--was, for the poor, a virtue. And Charity, championed--during those same Sunday sessions--as one of the highest virtues of the heart was, in practice, a thing tinged with shame.

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"If I run for mayor and if I become the mayor, I want people looking at me and saying, 'You know what, you are in charge, you did this. You are accountable,'" Weiner said.

Louis also had to push Weiner to answer questions about the lewd photos he tweeted out, asking him how many people received the messages. From NY1's transcript of the exchange:

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Los Angeles police Lt. Andrew Neiman said the department was urging officers to be extra vigilant around large crowds and would increase security at sporting events such as the Los Angeles Dodgers game Monday night.

The department was also activating its emergency operations center to increase communication and increasing patrols for transit and other critical areas, Los Angeles County Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

Police in Washington, San Diego, Vegas and Atlanta were monitoring events closely and assessing potential increases in security measures. Agencies were also stepping up social media response, telling the public via Twitter and Facebook to report suspicious activity to the police.

Chief NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Monday that critical response teams were deployed around the city, and officials were stepping up security at hotels and other prominent locations.

Police at three major Los Angeles area airports, including Los Angeles International Airport, were in a "heightened state of vigilance," with increased patrols to make it visible that more police were on duty Monday, said Chief of Airport Police Patrick Gannon.

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My first trip, I was only 17. The family of one of my best friends was moving to Bethesda, Md., right after our graduation. So he and I and our mutual best friend, a funny teenage triangle, drove one of the family cars east. My mother had just died, and I knew with certainty that she never would have let me make that trip alone with two boys. She loved those boys, she knew they were good boys, but she could rarely get beyond appearances. My grieving, distracted and much more open-minded father, on the other hand, gave me his blessing. It was the first tangible result of my mother’s absence, and it was good and bad. I was free; I was also unmothered, untethered.

We bombed across Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana and into Wauseon, Ohio. The desk clerk at the roadside motel wasn’t sure what we were up to when we asked for two rooms, but made sure I was the one getting the second room, by myself (I was). I could hear the noise from the turnpike, and I didn’t sleep well. Suddenly I didn’t like the way freedom smelled: like the disinfectant they used in my mother’s hospital room on top of old cigarette smoke.

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The lawsuit, which was brought by the Second Amendment Foundation and supported by 20 states, objected to the requirement that residents show that they have a specific need to carry concealed in public. The NRA called it “a de facto ban on carrying a handgun outside the home.”

From the New York Times:

In November, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, upheld the law. California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey have similar laws.

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns, and it struck down a District of Columbia law that barred keeping guns in homes for self-defense.

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From the Post:

Dan Halloran, 41 — who is charged in a bribe scheme to get state Sen. [Malcolm] Smith into the mayoral race — repeatedly hooked up with Meaghan Mapes, then 21, in her Queens home between 2010 and 2011, sources said.

She served as his deputy chief of staff during that same period, earning $30,000.

The relationship was the final straw for Halloran’s wife, Cynthia, and the two were locked in divorce proceedings by early 2011.

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