Following the mass shootings first in Aurora, Colorado and then at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, the shooting outside the Empire State Building in New York marks the third mass shooting this summer in the United States. The incident occurred at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, near New York’s most famous skyscraper.

Just after 9AM, local time, a gunman opened fire in the street near the Empire State Building. According to the New York Post, two men who were coworkers started arguing in the street during the morning rush. They began fighting on the pavement when one of them drew a gun and shot the other fatally in the head, after striking him three times. The shooter then put his gun in his black bag and walked away from the scene.

A local construction worker, Chris Ogden, saw the gunman opening fire and then informed officers near the Empire State Building. New York Police Department arrived at the scene within a few minutes after receiving the emergency call. The New York Police Department officers, who were on foot, confronted the gunman who turned to his gun and fired at them. One of the officers killed the gunman in the confrontation. Police later confirmed that the gunman had indeed been shot dead.

Counting the shooter, there were a total of two deaths at the scene and nine more people were injured — four women and five men. Some of them may have been shot accidentally by officers, but they have all been taken to a number of hospitals in the city and fortunately none of them were seriously wounded. They are all expected to recover quickly.

The FBI has confirmed that the shooting was not terrorist-related. The incident was nothing more than a workplace dispute, but still caused a sense of panic in the city of New York, whose inhabiters have lived through all too familiar scenes in the past.

Police commissioner Ray Kelly identified the shooter as Jeffrey Johnson, aged 53. Johnson shot his 41-year-old former manager using a 45 caliber semiautomatic handgun. The shooter was a Hazan Imports employee for the last six years, designing women’s accessories and clothes and he had been fired from his job about a year ago as part of downsizing in the company. While the incident took place near the the Empire State Building, the landmark was not otherwise connected to the shooting.

New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, one of America’s biggest gun law reform advocates, said that “soothing words are nice, but maybe it is time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it,” expressing his discontent for both President Obama and his republican rival Mitt Romney.

Image Courtesy of   chrisinphilly5448

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Bellevue, U.S.A. — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been challenging President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to speak out about gun control, but Bloomberg declined a chance to do it himself at the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) in September, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms noted.

According to CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, Bloomberg was invited to the 27th annual event, scheduled Sept. 28-30 in Orlando, Florida, but he turned it down.

“What does it say about someone who demands that others shill for his agenda, but when given the chance to take his fight to the gun rights community, he retreats,” Gottlieb wondered. “Mayor Bloomberg is always quick with his tongue in front of a friendly media audience, or in the confines of a broadcast studio, but when he has an opportunity to meet with people who have differing viewpoints about a fundamental civil right, he takes a powder.”

This will be the first time in its history that the GRPC is held in the Sunshine State. Among the anticipated speakers will be Mark O’Mara, defense attorney representing George Zimmerman, the man now charged in the death of Trayvon Martin. The announcement has stirred considerable media attention for the upcoming event.

“It seems odd for a guy like Michael Bloomberg, who rushes to every television news camera and microphone, to avoid what could be a major media event,” Gottlieb mused. “He’s been complaining about the ‘deafening silence’ from Romney and Obama, but when he is offered the chance to confront gun owners, whose rights he wants to see trampled, he voluntarily puts on a muzzle.

“Mayor Bloomberg has spent the past several months,” he said, “establishing himself as a Nanny State monarch, telling people give up their guns, to drink less soda, eat fewer fries and forego giving baby formula to newborns. He’s good at criticizing people he calls gun ‘nuts,’ but lately he seems a few cashews short of a full can, himself.

“Perhaps he’s worried that a trip to Orlando might end with a sunburn,” Gottlieb concluded. “From all indications, he’s had a little too much sun already.”

Image Courtesy of  Oxfam International

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Seven district attorneys representing all five New York City’s five boroughs — Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island — and the counties of Munroe and Onondaga took a stand against child abuse and neglect through the pages of the New York Daily News.

Expressing their concerns about the 77,000 New York children who were victims of abuse and neglect in 2010, including at least 114 who died, the district attorneys pointed to personal experiences prosecuting child abuse and neglect cases. They emphasized the deadly effects of child abuse.

“Nationally, nearly 80 percent of children who died as a result of abuse or neglect in 2010 were three years old or younger and almost half were infants less than one year old,” they District Attorneys wrote.

They urged greater support for the Nurse-Family Partnership — a maternal health and early childhood development service — that pairs first-time pregnant mothers and young families with a registered nurse on a voluntary basis. Research shows that this approach can cut cases of abuse and neglect by as much as half, improve child safety and reduce later juvenile crime.

The op-ed stated support for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent budget request before the state Senate for $5 million in funding for the Nurse-Family Partnership.

“We have a moral obligation to protect children from child abuse. It’s also in the best interests of public safety and fiscal prudence, and we urge the Legislature to make resources for the prevention effort a top priority.

The seven prosecutors are all members of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, the national anti-crime organization of 5,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors and violence survivors, which is launching a nationwide campaign in April to support the prevention of child abuse through voluntary home-visiting.

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In July 2004, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg presided over a celebratory signing ceremony at City Hall for a new law that banned the NYPD from racial or religious profiling. Advocates gushed. The mayor hailed the new law.

“Racial profiling will not be tolerated in our city,” Bloomberg declared after reading the law’s definition of racial profiling, which includes religion. “New York City is home to 8 million people of every race, ethnicity and religion from all over the world.”

Fast-forward to the present, and the NYPD has come under fire for spying on the Muslim community in the city and beyond, including using informants to prepare reports on political speech at mosques and dispatching undercover officers to map Muslim-owned businesses in Newark, N.J.

The activities seem to counter at least the spirit of the law. So, why hasn’t there been an investigation or enforcement?

The answer may lie in the text of the law itself, which experts say is vaguely worded and lacks a clear enforcement mechanism. Further, there appears to be little political will among city and state officials and prosecutors to go after the NYPD over profiling.

“The racial profiling law, to me, does not appear to be worth the paper it’s written on,” says Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYPD officer and prosecutor who is now a professor of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York.

O’Donnell and others point to the section of the law defining profiling. Here it is:

an act of a member of the force of the police department or other law enforcement officer that relies on race, ethnicity, religion or national origin as the determinative factor in initiating law enforcement action against an individual, rather than an individual’s behavior or other information or circumstances that links a person or persons of a particular race, ethnicity, religion or national origin to suspected unlawful activity.

Those two bold-face phrases are at the heart of the matter. The law does not define either phrase. “The word ‘determinative’ – what does that actually mean?” asks O’Donnell.

“The devil is in the details, and it all boils down to how we define profiling,” says Udi Ofer, advocacy director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Right now, the definition is very weak. ”

That may be by design. The original version of the bill drafted by the city council defined racial profiling somewhat differently — it focused on the NYPD’s practice of “stop and frisk,” and it outlined specific penalties. Officers could have their leave reduced, be ordered to do community service, and be suspended or fired for violating the law. But the final version was watered down, reportedly following objections by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. The measure was “reduced from a toughly worded proposal several pages long to a single paragraph,” the Associated Press noted at the time.

“Unless there’s an explicit enforcement provision, it’s difficult to enforce laws,” Ofer says. On Wednesday, City Councilman Jumaane Williams introduced a tougher anti-profiling bill, which outlines how victims of profiling can sue the city.

The city and state officials who might investigate have so far declined to do so or aren’t commenting.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last week said he would not to look into the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims, citing ”significant legal and investigative obstacles.” Asked by ProPublica about potential violations of the 2004 law, the office of New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance declined to comment. The office of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, which plays a watchdog role for city residents, also declined to comment on the surveillance of Muslims by the NYPD.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder did say this week that the Justice Department is beginning to review whether to investigate possible civil rights violations by the NYPD.

The 2004 anti-profiling law has apparently not yet come up in court, so there is no precedent that might offer clarity on its phrasing. “The 2004 law, as far I know, has never been used in terms of someone claiming in court that it’s been violated,” Ofer says.

As we noted earlier this week, the NYPD’s activity also raises questions about potential constitutional violations and other rules that govern police investigations.

Bloomberg’s office and the NYPD did not respond to requests for comment. The mayor recently maintained that the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims is “legal” and “constitutional,” though he has not repeated his earlier claim that the NYPD merely follows threats and leads, and does not consider religion.

by Justin Elliott, ProPublica, March 2, 2012, 12:53 p.m.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/americanprogress/

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The Occupy Wall Street movement tapped into anger about bank bailouts, crony capitalism and corporate welfare, but it turns out that most Americans are mad at the federal government and not their banks. A new Reason-Rupe Poll finds 76 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of their banks and just 15 percent view them unfavorably.

In contrast, only 32 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the federal government. Sixty-two percent of voters rate the federal government unfavorably.

Forty-nine percent of Americans approve of the job President Obama is doing, with 47 percent disapproving. Only 13 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, 80 percent disapprove.

Fifty-four percent of Americans also say they are more worried that the federal government will do something to make the economy worse, while 40 percent are more worried that the government will fail to take action on the economy.

State governments are more popular than the feds, but only half of all Americans view them positively. As you get closer to home, 58 percent of Americans have positive views of their local governments, and the same number look upon their local school districts favorably.

The survey finds people feel a lot better about private businesses. For example, 88 percent of Americans have a positive view of their grocery stores; 73 percent look favorably upon their cell phone makers; and 69 percent say they view their Internet service providers favorably.

If Ron Paul does not win the Republican presidential nomination, he is the best positioned candidate to make a third-party or independent run, according to the Reason-Rupe poll. Thirty-four percent of Americans say they would consider voting for Paul if he ran as an independent or third-party presidential candidate.

A similar number, 31 percent, say they would consider voting for New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, if he made an independent run for the White House in 2012.

Sarah Palin said it is “not too late for folks to jump in” to the presidential race. If Palin left the Republican Party and ran as an independent, 27 percent of voters say they might vote for her. The problem for Palin: 67 percent of Americans would not consider voting for her in that scenario.

It has been reported that former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is considering running as the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate. Twenty-one percent of voters say they’d consider voting for Johnson, while 29 percent say they do not know enough about him yet.

In terms of the 2012 presidential election, 29 percent of Americans say they will definitely vote for President Obama next November and 44 percent say they will not vote for him.

In a memorable Republican presidential debate moment last month, Texas Governor Rick Perry could not remember the third government agency he would eliminate if elected president.  And another GOP candidate, Ron Paul, says if he is elected he will get rid of five federal agencies: Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior.

So which federal agencies are the American people most willing to eliminate or consolidate? Forty-five percent of Americans are ready to eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development and 41 percent would eliminate the Department of Energy.

The Department of Education was on both Paul’s and Perry’s lists to cut, but 61 percent of Americans want to keep the Department of Education and just 34 percent say eliminate it.

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A new poll suggests that over a third of Americans support the Occupy Wall Street protests while 58 per cent are enraged by the protests. In Albuquerque, a 48-year old man was arrested for throwing a knife at protesters near the University of New Mexico on Friday 21. The attack was directly related to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The poll, conducted by Associated Press-GFK, revealed that 37 per cent of Americans support that the protests have spread from New York to numerous cities across the country and globe. Occupy Wall Street which originally began as a lower manhattan protest consisting of a few hundred marchers, has rapidly expanded across the nation and soon all over the globe.

Influenced by ‘Occupy Wall Street’, protesters have taken a stand in nearly 30 cities in the U.S as well as parts of Asia and Europe. Over five thousand people marched through the streets of Los Angeles and congregated peacefully outside City Hall on October 15. Marchers also travelled from Wall Street to the West Village and settled in Times Square on October 15.

Times Square is a notorious tourist spot and having these marchers crowd the streets affected store owners, businesses, tourists and shoppers. A tourist travelling from south Florida with his family, Mark Bryan, said “This is really unfair of those who came all the way to New York to see the city.

It is intimidating and my children are scared of the marchers. I don’t understand why the can’t protest outside governmental buildings instead.” The protesters chanted, “We got sold out, banks got bailed out” and “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street.” The protest continued last weekend and took place on the Upper West Side and travelled to Columbus Circle Friday 21.

The marchers were joined once again by a celebrity in favour of the protests; this time Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. Seeger, 92, is a famous and hugely popular American folk singer marched and sang and performed with the protesters all night. The protesters, who come from all walks of life, are settled in Zuccotti Park, Manhattan.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has told protesters to leave the park as tourists who do not want to pay for hotel rooms, may camp in the park as an alternative. He also claimed they were damaging the park with their trash. School teacher, Shawn Johns, responded to this statement saying “We are not causing an damage to this park.

Each person cleans up after themselves and we have volunteers who are circling the park with trash bags to ensure the park is not left in an undesirable way.” The clean up after the weekends protest has taken place all this week in Manhattan, amongst other cities and although the damage may be at large, so was the message prevailed.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/longislandrose/

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The September 11 terrorist attacks brought more than the loss of American lives, they brought considerable impact on internal affairs of the United States. The CIA’s involvement with the NYPD is considered, by many, another stain on the Agency’s long history of scandals.

The CIA has been accused of infiltrating the police department and using its resources to conduct spying operations on a domestic level, mainly targeting the Muslim community in New York City. After a thorough investigation, the Associated Press has published an article revealing the relationship between the Agency and the NYPD in the past ten years.

Work have been done on two main levels. First, a veteran CIA officer was assigned to be in charge of training a police officer who would put into practice new espionage techniques inside the police units. This action allowed the CIA to influence and reorient NYPD towards serving intelligence instead of fulfilling its normal duty as a law enforcement institution.

Secondly, a senior CIA officer was sent to work as a clandestine operative inside the police headquarters, with the main goal of supervising and watching the progression of the project. Bookstores, cafes, bars and nightclubs are some of the public places targeted by the program which consisted of citizens’ surveillance, also referred to in the AP report as “human mapping.”

The same reports said that the NYPD has sent “rakers” into minority neighborhoods to spy and gather data. Police have also used informants, referred to as “mosque crawlers,” to report on religious sermons or gatherings in mosques, even in the absence of suspicious activity.

In his comments on the issue, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, admitted that NYPD is working with the CIA, but defended its practices saying, “If there are threats or leads to follow, then the NYPD’s job is to do it. The law is pretty clear about what’s the requirement and I think they follow the law. We don’t stop to think about the religion. We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there.”

In a response to the report, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights organization, asked the Justice Department for an investigation into the case. CAIR attorney, Gadeir Abbas, believes that “the first amendment protects our right to associate freely with one another.”

“An investigation of a community [rather than of a crime or a particular person] unlawfully chills the rights of persons within that community. Furthermore, the Establishment Clause requires NYPD to maintain neutrality between all religions. Their intelligence unit appears to be failing to maintain that neutrality by institutionalizing suspicion of all things Islamic,” Abbas said.

Police involvement in CIA activities has blurred the lines of domestic and foreign affairs as well as the limits between local and federal jurisdiction.

Some say that the CIA’s dependence on the help of the NYPD is because of the the agency’s inexperience dealing with a domestic environment. The lack of diversity among the CIA’s personnel may also play into its inability to conduct operations independent of the police department. The NYPD has both features; a direct contact with citizens, as well as a culturally and linguistically diverse staff that more easily blends into the community.

Others are questioning why the CIA doesn’t try collaborating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instead of NYPD. Whatever the reason, the issues surrounding privacy and freedom is not only found in the U.S. Many Arabs are currently fighting against regimes, where spying on citizens is routine. Meanwhile, many New Yorkers are unaware of the spying efforts of the CIA and police department.

Glynnis Jones / Shutterstock.com

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4.5 Million Without Power.. Stock Exchange Will Open Monday.. NYC Transit Has Long Road To Recovery.. MTA Restores Limited Bus Service..National Grid Crew ‘Working Very Hard’ To Restore Power.

She has already gained a reputation as the greatest menace since 2008 and as she hits the city of New York, she manages to live up to expectations: The streets were empty Sunday morning as Hurricane Irene prepared to drive rain and high speed winds through America’s most populous city.

Fox News reported that there were no hurricane-force winds over land anymore but that the storm is still considered “a low-end hurricane, high-end tropical storm.” Shoppers have emptied local food and hardware stores for supplies in preparation, says Reuters.

Tom Corbert, governor of Pennsylvania warned that the storm isn’t just a 24-hour event and that precaution had to be made even after the storm has passed. The governor of North Carolina, Beverly Perdue told reporters that Irene inflicted significant damages along her state’s coast and that some areas were still unreachable. Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia declared a state of emergency, which is the first time since 1986. “We are trying to save lives and don’t have time for silliness,” he said.

In New York, the authorities led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg took on the task of shutting down the busy city and attempt some damage control. Residents were urged to stay indoors to avoid flying debris, flooding or the risk of electrocution by downed power lines, according to Reuter’s report. Broadway shows were cancelled, sporting events postponed, shops closed and the major airports in the New York area — LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark — made sure the last arriving flights were done by noon on Saturday. Fox News said that 9,000 flight were canceled, including 3,000 on Saturday. In addition, airline companies estimate that the number of affected passengers could easily be millions because so many flight connections are made on the East Coast.

Nine people have lost their lives so far as a result of Irene, including two children. In Virginia, an 11-year-old boy was killed when a tree crashed through his roof and in North Carolina, a child died in a car crash as a result of a failing traffic light. Four other people have been killed by falling trees or tree limbs while a surfer and a beachgoer were killed by heavy waves in Florida.

President Obama cut his vacation short at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts in order to follow the preparations for the hurricane closely from the White House.

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The Obama administration is investigating ways to change the nation’s gun laws by circumventing Congress and using executive action.  The current Congress, led by Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), has been adamantly pro-guns and dismiss any suggestions of limited an individual’s gun rights.

The Department of Justice held a meeting with a group of stakeholders in the ongoing gun-policy debates in March. Administration officials suggested that part of the discussion was expected to center around the White House’s options for changing gun control policy on its own or through its agencies and departments.  The administration has proposed changes on far-reaching issues ranging from beefing up background checks to encouraging better data-sharing between agencies.

Officials admit that executive orders are one of many options that the President and his advisors are considering.  “The purpose of these discussions is to be a productive exchange of good ideas from folks across the spectrum,” one official said. “We think that’s a good place to start.”

House Democrats, in the meantime, have introduced legislation that would make essential changes to the nation’s background check for gun purchases.  At a press conference announcing the legislation, the bill’s sponsor Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) joined with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to drum up support for the measure.  “Too often, any serious discussion about guns devolves into ideological arguments that have nothing to do with the real problem,” Bloomberg, a co-founder of the coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told reporters at a press event outside the Capitol. “Our coalition strongly believes in the Second Amendment. We also know from experience that we can keep guns away from dangerous people without imposing burdens on law-abiding gun owners.”

President Obama began the gun debate earlier in the month when he wrote an op-ed column for the Arizona Daily Star. In his piece, Obama outlined his ideas for gun control reform, including stronger state-to-state coordination, expedited background checks and greater enforcement of the laws already on the books.  Not surprisingly, the National Rifle Association immediately responded to Obama’s article with criticism.  Past administrations and lawmakers have always acted out of fear of the powerful lobbying group.  Even suggesting in the wake of the Arizona shooting that firearm access should be restricted was met with a quick and harsh response from the NRA.

The Obama administration is now acting and trying to change the ridiculous laws still on the books that allow citizens nearly as much firepower as the military, despite the protests from the NRA.  The meeting today is the first of a series of meetings about possible options to reverse lax gun laws.

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