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A few weeks ago, we wrote a post entitled "Cuomo's Women's Equality Act Brings The A-Word To New York State Politics." The headline basically tells the whole story.

It focused on the brewing controversy evoked by a tiny stipulation in Cuomo's new bill that calls for writing Roe v. Wade protections into state law - an immediate reaction to anti-abortion provisions being enacted in statehouses across the country. It's the only part of a ten-point bill that's aroused widespread opposition, led by Senate GOP leader Dean Skelos of Long Island. Because, duh, it's abortion.

In New York, Republicans' frustration on social issues is only surpassed by the Catholic Church, which holds a firm stance against abortion. So this should be no surprise: Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the man who informed his followers in 2009 to totally disregard federal and state abortion laws, is not a fan of the Women's Equality Act.

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If you weren't already convinced that prescription painkiller abuse is a major crisis in this city, the Health Department today came out with a range of shocking new numbers to hammer the point home.

Between 2006 and 2011, citywide overdose deaths linked to prescription painkillers jumped by 65 percent, the agency says, with a jump of 261 percent in Staten Island alone. In 2011, 220 New Yorkers fatally overdosed on pills, including 40 people from Staten Island.

Along with the spike in overdoses, the number of painkiller prescriptions jumped by 31 percent, from 1.6 million to 2.2 million between 2008 and 2011. Most of the increase came from people aged 25 to 34, and over 250,000 New Yorkers or 4 percent of the entire city population reported misusing painkillers.

The full Health Department report is here.

FoxBroadcasting/Youtube

Remember your meme? It was fall of 2011, when computer screens were bright with speculation about a well-dressed cop with Lower Manhattan's First Precinct who kept showing to Occupy-related events. The image of the "hipster cop," or real-life Detective Rick Lee, became loved, then sort of hated, then largely disappeared into the ether as the original news peg died.

Then we saw this, the trailer for "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," a Fox show starring Andy Samberg and airing this fall. In it, Samberg plays a manchild/cop in the NYPD's fictional 99th precinct (somewhere in Brooklyn) who gets ribbed by his colleagues for his casual attire.

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Well, we think it's fair to say that reporters at the Associated Press are none too happy with word that the government secured two months of phone records from the world's largest wire service for some murky leak investigation.

"Yeah, there's a bit of a freak out," an AP reporter tells us. "Clearly, I need to know whether it's specific to me in any way. They haven't told us specifically whose phones are on the list."

In an article on the seizures posted by the wire service, their top executive, Gary Pruitt, called it a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.

When they found out about it, AP officials dashed off a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding the records be returned and copies destroyed. The pages contain information on 20 phone lines with work and home numbers for reporters, incoming and outgoing calls and the length of the calls.

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FDNY/Flickr

We guess this is what you call bragging rights. On Monday, the fire department was called in to save an NYPD officer who got stuck in a tree while trying to rescue a cat in Queens. The firefighters laughed at the cop, and saved the cat first, but also published photos of their rescue paramedic teams training for crazy situations (i.e. not cats) on Randalls Island the same day.

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In late January, Mayor Bloomberg released plans for his twelfth and final budget. In it, we see an attempt on behalf of the Mayor to leave the City in a fiscally solvent manner when he leaves next year, including a culmination of spending preferences (higher city agency budgets) and an unfortunate reality of cutback measures (layoffs, attrition, etc.). We're left with a budget totaling about $70.1 billion to close a $1.1 billion deficit shortfall.

On a larger scale, City Council is exactly like most ordinary Americans (read: us). New York City's budget racks up bills that eventually have to be paid off one way or another, all of which are promises made in the past by politicians to give this amount money to so and so. Following this trend, the IOUs gradually take up a larger portion of the budget. And this time around, it looks like these "legacy costs" will suck up nearly 25 percent of all of our government's funds in the next two years.

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@FreeCooperUnion/U-stream

After nearly a week of avoiding confrontation with the group of Cooper Union students staging a sit-in in his office, last night president Jamshed Bharucha went up to the seventh floor to speak to them.

The conversation followed a forum in the school's Great Hall, during which Bharucha, an accomplished violinist, tried to explain his feelings about the end of the school's free tuition through a musical analogy.

"I tend to feel and express my emotions mostly through music, which plays constantly through my head," he told students. "So I hear your mournful tones, I hear your high pitched agitation, I hear your yearning for resolution and harmony. But I also hear the crescendo of hope."

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It's been almost exactly two months since the fare hike for our city's public transportation went into full effect. Overnight, straphangers' wallets were a little heavier, facing a permanent $2.50 per ride fee as well as bumped-up prices for weeklies and monthlies. And presumably, no one was happy.

But there was another roadblock we'd now have to face collectively as commuters: a $1 fee if we decided to buy a new MetroCard instead of replenishing the value on our old one.

Naturally, it's a pain for those who've lost their golden tickets but the measure was an incentive snuck into the fare hike to discourage New Yorkers from wasting plastic (by the thousands). You would think we'd think twice about tossing our MetroCards into the trash once their lives ended. Turns out we didn't... and now the MTA is making much more money than expected from the tiny provision.

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After three years, Bernie's coming back.

Yes, folks, Bernard Kerik, jails commissioner, police commissioner, alleged adulterer, aborted Homeland Security secretary, tax fraudster and perjurer will emerge from federal prison in two weeks and finish out his four year sentence in a New Jersey halfway house, the Post's Cindy Adams tells us.

And at some point in the near future, Rudy Giuliani's former best pal will begin the second? Third? Fourth? act of his interesting life.

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Brooklyn DA Charles "Joe" Hynes, not as visually compelling as Snooki.

You know, it used to be the case that if two New York politicians needed to settle a score, one could shoot the other in the gut. The contenders for Brooklyn district attorney aren't so quaint. Still, at least one is using the most familiar weapon in his arsenal: The lawsuit.

Abe George is a candidate for Brooklyn DA (he's also published an op-ed here on Runnin' Scared) who believes that an upcoming CBS TV series about incumbent DA Charles "Joe" Hynes violates campaign finance law. Today, George and his political action committee are filing a complaint against Hynes and CBS, claiming that a "six-part news series" following the attorneys in Hynes' office and airing May 28 amounts to undisclosed publicity--a "contribution-in-kind" from CBS that adds up to much more than the legal $5,000 campaign contribution limit from corporations.

"They're going to say that this is a news program, and therefore it's exempt," George told the Voice. "We're saying it's an infomercial and therefore it's not exempt."

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Isn't 2013 a little late to be publishing myopic "women who rock!" pieces? This Daily News gem, for example, showed us exactly how absurd it is to write about how much Star Trek values its complex female characters, then undermine those very points with a photo and caption that screams, "HEY, TITS."

Here are some brief tips for those who want to write about the entertainment industry embracing feminism going forward:

1. Got a terrible pun you're itching to use? Don't. Using the word "veritable" does not legitimize "Babe-fleet academy." Nor will it ever.

EX: "Specifically, Zoe Saldana and Alice Eve make this second entry in the rebooted sci-fi franchise a veritable Babe-fleet academy."

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C.S. Muncy

At this point, it goes without saying the controversy that is stop and frisk will be a staple of the 2013 mayoral race.

Floyd v. New York - a case that seeks to upend the controversial practice - is heating up, as the NYPD seeks to justify its usage through intimidating tutorial videos. The Community Safety Act, which would implement serious transparency measures on the boys in blue, is currently making its way through City Council, with each major figure in New York City politics taking a stand on it. And, of course, we learned last week that stop and frisk numbers are actually dropping as we move closer to the ballots.

The momentum is evident here but, for voters, their options are limited. As of now, Comptroller John C. Liu is the only candidate that has called for the complete repeal of stop and frisk across the five boroughs. Christine Quinn and Bill de Blasio has called for its reform, holding themselves back from full elimination of a policy that has racked up 5 million tallies since its inauguration.

So, when it pertains to stop and frisk, what better time for civil rights groups to call on the youth vote to get things done?

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Dear Royal Diary,

What bollocks. Is this punishment for what happened in Vegas last year? They're sending me to New Jersey to inspect Hurricane Sandy damage on my American tour. This is so going to be way less fun than flying military aircraft in Afghanistan, which was a joy for me because I got to use my thumbs, like, you know, with PlayStation. At least on Wednesday I get to attend a celebrity polo match in Connecticut, which 200 journalists are attending, along with the 400 invite-only guests, including models. Smashing! I guess Americans really do care about underprivileged tots in Lesotho.

Alright, diary. I'm knackered. Nigel took his day off today, so I had to hold the pen myself this time.

Cheerio,
Harry xoxo

[@sydbrownstone][sbrownstone@villagevoice.com]

You probably know the rules by now: in New York City, if you're caught in public view with pot, or in possession of 25 grams or more, you're getting a violation. Because of this (well, at least, partially), New Yorkers made up 99.2 percent (149,951) of the entire state's marijuana-related arrests (total: 155,048) last year. And, in 2012, getting thrown in the can for the reefer was still No. 1 in New York with the highest amount of arrests.

But lately, the external pressures placed on internal agencies by the incredibly high rates has become an engine for policy shifts. This is why Governor Cuomo continues to try to outlaw the public view provision in the criminal code last year. And why Bloomberg has opted out of the 'stay overnight in jail, be at court in the morning' situation for marijuana offenders. And why NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has even told his officers to chill (brah) with the pot arrests.

Luckily, it looks like these efforts are actually showing real-time results.

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"In the 21st century, almost all of our daily activities are linked to the internet - from banking to shopping to using our telecommunications networks and physical infrastructure systems," Governor Cuomo said, announcing the creation of an all-star New York cyber security advisory board last week. "Just as we protect against crime on our streets, we must also work to defend New Yorkers from cyber threats, ranging from identity theft to consumer fraud to threats to our physical infrastructure."

For years, cyber security experts have feared that hackers might one day be able to control American power plants, utilities, or telecommunications remotely. Then, last Monday, a group of hackers supporting Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad briefly took over the Onion's Twitter account. "UN retracts report of Syrian chemical weapon use: Lab tests confirm it is Jihadi body odor," they tweeted using The Onion's handle. Two weeks prior, the same group hacked the AP, which caused the Dow Jones to plummet 143 points. Breaches of states' data, including tax or criminal information, is also not that unusual, points out James Lewis, cyber security expert and a director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. New York, he says, is particularly vulnerable.

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House Republicans finally got their hearings on Benghazi, and we have learned that the Obama Administration, the CIA, and the FBI massaged their talking points before announcing the attack last September, and that at least a couple of people thought the U.S. military could have gotten to Benghazi quicker than they did.

At least, that's what we heard. Our friends the rightbloggers seem to have heard that Obama and Hillary Clinton murdered Ambassador Stevens in cold blood, for no better reason than that they hate America (or love Islam!), and that the President must be impeached for it at the very least.

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A Bloomberg story blew the lid on one state senator's ties to the fracking industry yesterday. Turns out state Senator Tom Libous (R-Binghamton), who said in March that he'd "make sure no [fracking moratorium] bill passes the Senate," has deep ties to a real-estate company leasing underground natural gas rights to a drilling company. Now, Libous is feeling the pushback.

Libous' wife founded the real-estate company, Da Vinci II LLC, and a campaign donor, Luciano Piccirilli, runs it. Da Vinci also owns 230 acres of land leased to a drilling company on top of the state's Marcellus Shale deposit. Piccirilli, meanwhile, has contributed $28,000 to Libous' campaign over the years, and jointly owns two Florida homes with Libous, according to Bloomberg.

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NYU's insurrection isn't dying down -- it's accelerating.

Ever since the faculty of New York University's core division, the School of Arts and Sciences, voted no confidence in the administration of President John Sexton in March, Sexton has been on a charm offensive, promising angry professors that he will solicit their input and try to be a better listener going forward. So far, at least, that effort is falling flat, as more and more school constituencies continue to line up against him.

The faculty of NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development held its own no-confidence vote last week, and finished tallying the results yesterday. The result was overwhelming, with 117 faculty voting in favor of a statement of no confidence, 45 voting against, and 22 abstentions. The Gallatin School of Individual Study also narrowly voted no confidence in the administration, 23 to 21, with 6 abstaining. Meanwhile, NYU's troubled Tisch Asia program just held its own vote today. 19 faculty voted in favor of a no-confidence statement, one against, and two abstained.

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A group of Zynga racers in front of the finish...crosswalk.

On my way to work this morning, I came across something rather odd. A little past 11 a.m. at the corner of Lafayette and Bleecker, a group of 50-ish people were setting up a footrace in between two traffic lights. They waited until one light turned red, made the cross-walk at one side their starting line, and ran through a hastily pulled ribbon at the other cross-walk to finish. There were pictures. And applause. And a lot of people standing around going, "What the f*ck?"

It turns out that this was the second annual New York "footrace" for Zynga's mobile employees, during which they traverse a single block. I caught up with racer Alwin Ventura, an associate producer, at the finish line.

"Isn't this kind of dangerous?" I asked. "Oh yeah," he said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

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Though considering that Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu had very similar positions, it wasn't a particularly contentious discussion.

When moderator Juan Manuel Benitez of NY1 asked the Democratic hopefuls how they differed in their stance on stop and frisk--of which both are highly critical--Liu made one point very clear. "At least we're here!" he said, after stressing the need to get rid of stop-and-frisk altogether.

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