Since Wednesday, we've been following news of pending legislation in Albany that would make illegal anonymous online commenting in certain contexts.

That proposed piece of law would require the removal of any comments posted on a website by an anonymous poster "unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post" if someone complains about that comment.

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In a case that probably should have gotten more attention than it did, federal prosecutors took down a major prescription drug trafficking organization this week, indicting Jose Garcia Acosta and 13 other people for selling millions of dollars of the dangerously addictive painkiller oxycodone.

The drug ring sold the pills around 156th Street and Broadway and even transported pills and sold them in New England, where they fetch a high black market price. How extensive was the operation? Charging about $16 per pill, Acosta allegedly made $1 million a month off the sales. His car had more 3,100 pills in it when he was pulled over and arrested on Sunday. Other searches recovered another 6,000 pills.

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If you live on Long Island, there's a pretty good chance that you absolutely love drugs -- and we're not talking about weed, we're talking about real drugs like heroin, Oxycontin, and other opiates.

In response to last year's "Father's Day Pharmacy Massacre" -- during which a pill junky murdered four people while robbing prescription painkillers from a pharmacy in Medford -- Suffolk County District Attorney Tom Spota yesterday released a 98-page grand jury report about drug use on Long Island...and it ain't pretty.

According to the report, between 2006 and 2010, arrests for heroin possession has risen in Suffolk County by 170 percent, from 486 to 1,315. Additionally, Suffolk County has 70 percent more Oxycontin prescriptions than the average of any other state.

The report also finds that overdose victims with Oxycontin in their blood has risen 266 percent since 2004.

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Prophylactics often cause polemics.

And this seems to be the case in Bed-Stuy, where a high school principal's decision to pass out condoms at prom has caused quite a bit of conversation.

"This is necessary," Darryl Rascoe, Bedford-Stuyvesant Preparatory High School principal, told the Daily News. "It's practical and it's the right thing to do."

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Pedro Hernandez probably wouldn't be behind bars right now if not for Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance.

More than 30 years after the disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, it seems authorities finally have their man -- and props must go out to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance for his decision to reopen a case that sat cold for more than three decades.

Vance didn't crack the case, nor did he lead police to the alleged killer, 51-year-old Pedro Hernandez. But the attention the Patz case got last month -- when authorities investigated another possible suspect -- inspired Hernandez's brother-in-law to tell police that Hernandez confessed to him and other family members that he'd murdered a child in Manhattan about the same time Patz was first reported missing. That probably never would have happened had Vance not reopened the case in 2010.

Manhattan District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Erin Duggan tells the Voice that Vance doesn't consider cold cases like Patz's to be a lost cause. At a press conference last year to announce the indictment of Rodney Alcala -- a convicted California serial killer who authorities say is responsible for at least two murders in New York in the 1970s -- Vance told reporters that "cold cases should not be forgotten cases."

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Is there a problem with the arrest in the Etan Patz case? So wonders New York Times Columnist Jim Dwyer in today's newspaper.

Dwyer suggests that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg were awfully quick to convict suspect Pedro Hernandez, before the full investigation was done. Quoting law enforcement sources, he points out that there is not much corroborating information beyond Hernandez's statement to police.

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New York still hasn't decided whether it's going to OK medical marijuana, but more developments across the U.S. suggest that it's spreading -- though with some legal blowback from the U.S. courts and feds.

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CBS 2

Pedro Hernandez (left) confessed yesterday to murdering 6-year-old Etan Patz more than 30 years ago.

Exactly 33 years to the day after 6-year-old Etan Patz allegedly was murdered in the basement of a SoHo bodega, the suspect in the murder, 51-year-old Pedro Hernandez, has been placed on suicide watch at Bellevue Hospital.

Police say placing Hernandez on suicide watch is precautionary, but that the suspect has a history of unspecified mental health problems.

Hernandez says he'd never seen Patz prior to the day he allegedly murdered him, but reportedly told police that he "knew [Patz] was the one . . . [I] just felt the urge to kill."

Hernandez denies sexually abusing the boy prior to murdering him.
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Not too long ago, there was talk that the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the Recording Industry Association of America might sue Google, claiming that the web behemoth has used its search engine service to shape the online music market in a way trade groups do not like.

These recording industry giants reportedly pressured Google to "degrade" links to alleged "pirate" websites in search results, and that Google had profited from illegal internet file sharing by failing to do so.

New reports, however, suggest that Google is actively removing millions of links and cooperating proactively with copyright holders.

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Our tipsters continue to funnel us the best Scientology material at a rapid rate. May 9 was Dianetics Day -- 62 years since the day in 1950 when L. Ron Hubbard first published Scientology's Ur-text, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health -- and already we have in our hot little hands the video that the church forced, er, encouraged its members to watch on that day.

Above, a typically over-the-top intro video put out by the wizards at Golden Era Productions, the A/V drones at Scientology's International Base about 90 miles east of Los Angeles. Former top executives tell us church leader David Miscavige obsesses over every detail in these presentations, and he sure loves the dramatic presentation of lettering sweeping over the planet.

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The video above (compliments of NBC New York) is of a press conference held by NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly regarding the arrest of a suspect in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz.

The suspect has been identified as Pedro Hernandez, 51, who was arrested yesterday in Camden, New Jersey. Kelly says Hernandez made statements to police implicating himself in Patz's disappearance -- he says Hernandez used candy to lure the boy into a bodega where he worked. He then attacked him, choking the 6-year-old to death before throwing the remains in the garbage.

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A sergeant in a U.S. Special Forces National Guard unit faces a 20-year prison sentence for his alleged involvement in a multi-national gun-trafficking ring where he provided semi-automatic weapons to Chinese nationals who would then ship the guns to China.

Staff Sergeant Joseph Debose, a 29-year-old staff sergeant in a North Carolina-based National Guard unit, was arrested Sunday in a sting operation by federal agents in Smithfield, North Carolina. When Debose met with the undercover agents, he was carrying a loaded .45-caliber pistol.

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The U.S. Senate has just put the kibosh on K2.

After a months-long effort to ban synthetic marijuana, spearheaded by the Empire State's very own Charles Schumer, the Senate voted today to ban the sale of fake bud.

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Here are the three biggest hand-wringing fears/misnomers people have had about gay marriage, even those who support it:

1. This unimportant issue will cost Obama re-election!

2. Marriage equality would have happened by now, if not for those on-the-down low, religious, self-hating, homophobic black folks!

3. Marriage equality will never pass when it comes up for a vote, because it never has before, and therefore never will, especially in a state with a lot black voters!

Ever since President Obama came out for same-sex marriage, all three have been proven to be utter bullshit. Let's explore.

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Full disclosure: we're not cat people. They're rude, cocky, and bring nothing to the table. That said, we acknowledge that cats are living things and we would never do anything to harm one. The same can not be said about some sick creep in Long Island, who recently shot a cat with a bow and arrow.

The cat didn't die right away -- rather than put the animal out of its misery, the sicko left it to suffer with an arrow sticking out of its side. It didn't die until after it was brought to an animal hospital in Suffolk County.

The cat was found last night with a red arrow sticking out of it on the front porch of a house in Medford.

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Yesterday, the Voice reported on pending legislation in Albany that would ban anonymous online speech. We took the time to catch up with New York State Sen. Thomas F. O'Mara and Assemblyman Dean Murray, who sponsored the bill, to see what they had to say. Quickly put, their basic idea is that the proposed legislation would cut down on cyber-bullying -- such as untrue, and unsigned, comments you might come across in a message board or on a blog.

Uncertainty over the Constitutionality of the bill persists, however, with one expert telling us: "I would like to see an argument -- and I haven't seen one -- that would authorize a legislature to determine what can be posted or not posted on a private website...the Constitution does not talk about websites or anonymity. The cases over the years suggest that the legislature has no business trying to tell editors what to print."

During our convo, we asked Murray about this. He countered that it was constitutional, citing the 1974 Gertz v. Robert U.S. Supreme Court Decision as evidence that the First Amendment does not protect against the falsehood-based mean-mongering you come across on the internet.

So what the hell is the Gertz decision, you might ask?

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Convicted sex offender Jay Kroll faces a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison for possessing kiddie porn. A different sex offender was sentenced yesterday to 15 years in prison for forcing an 85-year-old woman to give him a blowjob.

The United States Attorney's Office just sent us the criminal complaint for a man who was arrested this morning after federal agents found several images and videos of kiddie porn on his computer. If convicted, the suspect, 55-year-old convicted sex offender Jay Kroll, faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison.

We have no problem with sending a convicted sex offender to prison for 15 years because he pervs out on kiddie porn. However, 15 years in prison is the same sentence "depraved sex fiend" Jeffrey Ritter received -- and he forced an 85-year-old woman to give him a blowjob.

Read all about Ritter -- a gang-banging convicted sex offender with 11 prior arrests, including one for sexually abusing a child -- by clicking here.

Kroll's got a little baggage in the perv department, too -- according to the complaint, Kroll was convicted in 1993 of second-degree sodomy in a case involving an 11-year-old boy. Kroll did about six years in prison before his release in 1999.

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Attorney Norman Siegel and Occupy Wall Street librarians announced their federal lawsuit against the city this morning.

Six months after the New York Police Department launched a secretive dead-of-night military-style operation to evict Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park, conducting mass arrests and destroying thousands of dollars worth of property, Mayor Bloomberg, Police Chief Ray Kelly, and others are being sued in federal court.

In a complaint filed today in US District Court, Occupy Wall Street is suing for compensatory and punitive damages and seeking a declaration that the city and its agents violated the constitutional rights of the movement's members.

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Steven Thrasher

Mike Signorile on the air yesterday

We're approaching, if not looking in the rearview mirror at, a watershed moment in American civil rights history. A majority of the American public now supports marriage equality for same-sex couples.

And, despite what detractors have been saying and predicting, this includes black people, too. An increasingly wide array of black political, cultural, and even military leaders -- Barack Obama, General Colin Powell, Congressman John Lewis, Mayor Cory Booker, Governor Deval Patrick, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Congressman John Conyers, Rev. Al Shaprton, Mayor Michael Nutter, Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver, and entertainers Will Smith, Jay-Z and 50 Cent, to name a few -- have come out for marriage equality.

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Etan Patz

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly announced this morning that a suspect in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz is currently in custody.

The suspect has been identified as Pedro Hernandez, who was arrested yesterday in Camden, New Jersey.

Kelly says Hernandez made statements to police implicating himself in Patz's disappearance. Police sources tell the New York Post that Hernandez lured the boy with candy as he was walking to his bus stop before stabbing him, cutting up his body, and putting the remains in plastic bags. However, we were unable to independently confirm that information.

Last month, authorities tore up a basement in the SoHo neighborhood where Patz was last seen. They found nothing.

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