The New York Police Department is on track to make its 5 millionth stop-and-frisk today, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. The controversial program, which directs police to stop suspicious-looking people on the street and frisk them for weapons or drugs, has come under fire for disproportionately targeting minorities, while showing little discernible impact on crime.

Since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002, NYPD officers have stopped 4.4 million innocent people, the vast majority of whom were black or Latino:

About 4.4 million of the stop-and-frisk encounters, or 88 percent, were of innocent people as they did not result in an arrest or summons. More than 86 percent of people stopped were black or Latino.

At 5 million, the NYPD has stopped more than the combined populations of Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC. The racial bias is glaringly obvious; in 2011, the police stopped young black men more times than the total number of young black men in New York City.

The NYPD’s relationship with minority communities has become especially strained by the program’s overzealous targeting of young black and Latino men, culminating in the death of a 16-year-old boy, Kimani Gray, last weekend. Gray. Police stopped Gray for suspiciously adjusting his belt. Gray then allegedly pulled a gun on the officers, forcing them to shoot him multiple times. However, the autopsy found several bullets hit Gray from behind, and eyewitnesses claim Gray was unarmed.

Stop-and-frisk is not only harming New Yorkers’ trust in the police — it’s also using their money. Stop-and-frisk cost New York City taxpayers $22 million in civil rights lawsuits last year.

On Monday, a federal district judge will hear the broadest legal challenge to stop-and-frisk yet, and could decide to do away with the program entirely.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — NRA President David Keene defended lobbyist Bob Welch’s statement that the group would continue weakening gun laws as soon as the “Connecticut effect” had subsided, saying that he had no reason to apologize.

Welch’s comments came last month at the NRA’s Wisconsin State Convention and were first reported by ThinkProgress. Both Connecticut senators, as well as the congresswoman representing Newtown, condemned the remarks and called on the NRA to repudiate them.

ThinkProgress ran into Keene at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday and asked whether he would apologize for the lobbyist’s remarks. “You only apologize for the things that you did,” Keene replied. As Keene’s entourage tried to prevent ThinkProgress from questioning further, we asked whether he thought Welch ought to apologize, the NRA President was candid: “no.”

KEYES: I know Sen. Blumenthal and some others had called on the NRA to apologize for the “Connecticut effect” comment made by the Wisconsin lobbyist.

KEENE: You only apologize for the things that you did.

KEYES: Do you think that he ought to apologize?

KEENE: No.

KEYES: No? Do you think it’s insensitive to the families of Newtown?

KEENE: I think uh…

KEYES: Do you think that it’s insensitive, sir? This isn’t a trick question, I’m honestly asking you.

Watch it:

This is the first time the NRA leadership has directly addressed the controversy, though the group had initially claimed no association with Welch, who represents the NRA’s Wisconsin chapter.

When President Bush announced his decision to nominate future-Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court, his wife Jane stood nearby holding the hands of two beautiful children — Jack and Josie Roberts. Both of these children were born in Ireland, and later adopted by the future Chief Justice and his wife. Justice Clarence Thomas also has an adopted son, his grandnephew Mark Martin, Jr., who Thomas adopted when Martin was six.

So it is a bit hard to understand why a top anti-gay advocate decided to insult adoptive parents in general — and Chief Justice Roberts in particular — as the justices are preparing to hear two cases that will decide whether same-sex couples will enjoy the same right to marry as all other Americans. According to John Eastman, a law professor and chair of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, Roberts and Thomas’ adopted children are only growing up in the “second-best” environment:

The justices also are not immune to considering how they might be affected by the course one side or the other is advocating in a dispute before them. . . . [Johns Hopkins Sociology Professor Andrew] Cherlin, who does not follow the high court especially closely, wondered whether the gay marriage cases might take on a similar dynamic. “If justices consider their own family lives in these cases, it may change the way they rule,” he said.

Gay marriage opponents said they are not worried about the votes of Roberts and Thomas.

“You’re looking at what is the best course society wide to get you the optimal result in the widest variety of cases. That often is not open to people in individual cases. Certainly adoption in families headed, like Chief Roberts’ family is, by a heterosexual couple, is by far the second-best option,” said John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. Eastman also teaches law at Chapman University law school in Orange, Calif.

There is nothing “second-best” about the family environment Roberts and Thomas have provided to their adopted children. While many critical things can be said about Justice Thomas — and we have said a lot of them — his decision to adopt his grandnephew is admirable and speaks well of Thomas’ capacity for personal sacrifice:

Neither Thomas nor his wife nor several Savannah sources contacted for this story would discuss the circumstances behind Thomas’ taking custody of Mark. But others say that the situation, while not dire, called for a responsible person to step in quickly. Mark Sr., Thomas’ nephew, had been in prison on cocaine trafficking charges. And Mark Jr.’s mother, Susan, was struggling with her own problems, raising four children, including young Mark Jr., on her own. Thomas believed that the boy would face lifelong trouble if he were not removed from his environment soon, and the parents agreed. “He was paying back his own grandfather by taking care of Mark,” says one friend.

The Roberts’ adoption story is rooted less in family tragedy and more in their devout faith. John and Jane Roberts married late in life — Jane was 42. The Chief Justice and his wife chose not to seek medical treatment that would have enhanced Jane’s ability to conceive because “Catholic doctrine prohibits most forms of fertility treatment,” and instead chose to adopt two children. As with Thomas, there are many critical things that can be said about the Chief Justice, but he is by all accounts very kind in his personal interactions and he and his wife provided their adopted son and daughter with a household where they could thrive. Roberts deserves praise for adopting children, and he certainly does not deserve the aspersions cast upon adopted parents by Professor Eastman.

Eastman is also not the first attorney involved in the marriage cases to suggest adoptive parents are somehow a second-best opinion for children. In his brief on behalf of the House Republicans defending the Defense of Marriage Act, conservative superlawyer Paul Clement claimed that “[b]iological parents have a genetic stake in the success of their children that no one else does.”

A third measure to reform gun violence prevention passed the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday along party lines, but not without bitter opposition from Republicans, who claimed that such a ban would violate the Second Amendment and analogized restrictions on guns to censoring books under the First Amendment.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) battered Democrats with questions about whether they would support restrictions on the First or Fourth Amendments he claimed were similar to those an assault weapons ban would impose on the Second:

I pose to the senator from California [Sen. Diane Feinstein], would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment, namely, would she consider it constitutional for congress to specify that the first amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?

But Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) obliterated his argument by noting the analogous actual restrictions on the actual First Amendment:

In reference to the question my colleague from Texas asked, would you limit books? Would you name specific books? Yeah. It’s constitutional within the ambit of the First Amendment to eliminate child pornography. And we have lots of laws that are very explicit about that. Very explicit. That are constitutional, that have been upheld as constitutional. Similarly, you can’t falsely scream fire in a crowded theater. Similarly, we have libel laws. Every one of these is an impingement on the sacred First Amendment, upheld as constitutional. There are reasonable limits on each amendment, and I think it is anomalous, to put it kindly, for either side to interpret one amendment so expansively and another amendment so narrowly that it just doesn’t add up because your interpretation of the Constitution should be consistent.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) then dealt the final blow with a direct comparison between First and Second Amendment restrictions both intended to protect public safety:

It is hard to imagine that it would be a violation of the First Amendment for somebody to yell fire in a crowded theater but it’s not a violation of the Second Amendment to prevent somebody from bringing a hundred-round magazine into a crowded theater in a Aurora, Colorado.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) made a different constitutional argument, noting “we’ve heard testimony there are some 4 million weapons” banned by the bill. He cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 opinion in D.C. v. Heller to assert that that 4 million weapons necessarily “qualifies as common use” as defined by the decision and “cannot be banned.”

While Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion did strike down a ban on weapons in “common use,” he specifically stated that the Constitution allows bans on “dangerous and unusual” weapons. Lee failed to explain how the fact that manufacturers of “dangerous and unusual” weapons have manufactured so many has any bearing  on whether are not they meet the definition of “in common use.”

Whitehouse lamented the “clear” intractable Republican opposition to the assault weapons ban and suggested that a separate vote on the high-capacity magazines element of the bill would have more success in passing the Senate. The Senate judiciary Committee has already approved measures to expand background checks and reduce gun trafficking, but they all face significant obstacles in both the full Senate and the House.

In the months since Massachusetts passed a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana, several towns and cities have enacted zoning and other laws to ban or limit medical marijuana dispensaries in their jurisdictions. In a ruling Wednesday that focused on a Wakefield, Mass. bylaw banning dispensaries, state Attorney General Martha Coakley said flat-out bans are illegal because they “frustrate” the purpose of the state law.

The Act’s legislative purpose could not be served if a municipality could prohibit treatment centers within its borders, for if one municipality could do so, presumably all could do so. Because we find that such a total ban conflicts with the Act, we must disapprove Article 11 on that basis.

More limited restrictions on dispensaries, and even temporary moratoriums, however, are permitted. Coakley issued a separate opinion Wednesday upholding a moratorium in the Town of Burlington. Coakley also rejected arguments that invalidating the ban would require localities to accommodate an activity illegal under federal law:

We recognize that marijuana remains a Schedule I drug and that the federal government is empowered to enforce the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) against those possessing or cultivating medical marijuana. However, no court has held that the Massachusetts Act is preempted by the federal CSA, and it is beyond the Attorney General’s limited standard of review of town by-laws to determine that issue. Further, other state courts have held that claimed federal preemption of a state’s medical marijuana law is not a valid basis for upholding a municipal zoning ordinance banning medical marijuana dispensaries that are authorized by that state law.

Other states such as California, which was the first state to pass a medical marijuana law in 1996, have had longtime local bans on marijuana dispensaries that have not been invalidated. But as the memo notes, states differ both in the nature of their medical marijuana laws and the nature of state authority over local jurisdictions. In California, courts have come to varying conclusions about local bans, and the state Supreme Court is now considering the issue.

For the third straight night, a large crowd of mostly young people hit the streets of Brooklyn to protest the police shooting of 16-year-old Kimani Gray. According to the police, Gray pointed a a .38 caliber revolver at two undercover officers, before they shot and killed him. Others, particularly friends and family of Gray, are casting doubt on the official account of the incident.

Here is a summary of the lingering issues:

There are no witnesses who saw Gray with a gun. “When asked if there are any witnesses in the case who ‘specifically say they don’t see a gun,’ Commissioner Kelly said, ‘No.’ The commissioner went on to say the department has three civilian witness. Two of them heard an officer say, ‘Don’t move,’ the commissioner said. The third said they heard an officer say ‘freeze.’ The commissioner added that one of the witnesses also heard an officer say, ‘What do you have in your hands?’…Asked again if ‘witnesses say the gun was pointed at the officer at any time,’ the commissioner said, ‘No. I told you what we have as far as the witness is concerned.’” [Village Voice, 3/13/13]

One eyewitness insists Gray “did not have a gun in his hand.” “A Brooklyn woman who claims she had a ‘bird’s-eye view’ of the fatal police shooting of 16-year-old Kimani (Kiki) Gray says the youth did not have a gun in his hand. Tishana King is the only civilian eyewitness to come forward, and her account sharply differs from Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s assertion that Gray had pointed a .38-caliber revolver at the cops before they opened fire. ‘I’m certain he didn’t have anything in his hands,’ King told the Daily News.” [NYDN, 3/13/13]

The autopsy report found Gray was hit with 7 bullets, including 3 in the back. “Seven bullets hit Mr. Gray, including three that entered his body from the rear, according to the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The autopsy did not establish the order in which the bullets struck Mr. Gray, or determine the path of the bullets, which might make clearer if Mr. Gray had his back to the officers when he was shot, or if he had twisted away after being struck from the front.” [New York Times, 3/14/13]

The police have not questioned the officers involved since the shooting occured. “When asked how many witnesses saw Gray with a gun or pointing a gun, Commissioner Kelly first said that, ‘We are not speaking to the shooting officers because of an agreement that we have with the district attorney.’ The commissioner explained that speaking to the officers could give them immunity; ‘So we don’t have direct information from the officers themselves.’” [Villiage Voice, 3/13/13]

More details are also emerging about Gray’s history of trouble with the law. According to the New York Post, Gray has been “arrested on almost a dozen charges since turning 16 last year. His arrests include grand and petit larceny, possession of stolen property and inciting a riot.” It is not clear how many charges, if any, resulted in convictions.

Some of last night’s protesters clashed with police “pitching bricks, bottles and garbage.” 46 people were arrested.

The Club for Growth, a right-wing group that supports tax cuts for the rich, privatizing Social Security and writing Tea Party ideology into the Constitution, spent $300,000 to keep a key ally of anti-union Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) on the Wisconsin Supreme Court — and that was just in the primary:

Now, another member of the court’s 4-3 right-wing majority, Justice Patience “Pat” Roggensack, is up for re-election. Roggensack is being aided by the same outside groups that aided Walker in advancing some of his most controversial proposals. The far-right independent expenditure group Wisconsin Club for Growth spent an eye-popping $300,000 on television ads supporting Roggensack during the primary. Club for Growth was responsible for more than 75% of the nearly $400,000 in TV spending in the primary race, and more than 80% of the total ad spots, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG estimates released by the Brennan Center for Justice and Justice at Stake.

In addition, Roggensack is being handed big checks by some of the same wealthy donors that gave to Governor Walker in his recall campaign, such as Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks and David Uihlein, Jr., as well as a variety of PACs and local Republican Party chapters.

Her opponent, Marquette Law Professor Edward Fallone, has been endorsed by a host of progressive organizations, but lags well behind in fundraising. If Fallone took the majority the court could do a virtual 180 on some of the state’s most contentious issues

It’s not surprising that the Club and other well-moneyed conservatives are willing to spend big to keep Roggensack on the court. Roggensack was part of the 4-3 majority that upheld a law pushed by Walker to undermine public sector unions. She also cast the key vote to reject an ethics rule that would have prevented justices from hearing cases involving their major campaign donors. Instead, Roggensack backed a rule written by corporate lobbyists.

The last time control of this court was at stake, conservatives also spent big to keep Walker’s allies in charge. In the week before conservative Justice David Prosser’s reelection, a report found just three groups spent nearly $1.4 million to keep Prosser on the bench. A group with close ties to the billionaire Koch brothers spent nearly $400,000.