Rev. Al Sharpton has been arrested at the Brooklyn Bridge as he and hundreds others protested the acquittal of the three police officers involved in the 50-bullet shooting of Sean Bell the day before his wedding.

The officers claimed they thought Bell was shooting at them outside the Queens stripclub, but it was later discovered Bell was unarmed.

Sharpton, Bell’s friends Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman who were also wounded that night, and Bell’s fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell, were arrested today along with sevon or eight others in the largest demonstration so far calling for a federal investigation into the November 2006 shooting.

Protesters gathered Wednesday in “pray ins” at six locations in New York City led by Hazel Dukes, the former state NAACP leader .

In Brooklyn, Rev. Herbert Daughtry and City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn), were arrested along with about 25 others who were sitting in the street at the Brooklyn entrance to the Manhattan Bridge.

The group from Brooklyn had planned to march across the bridge toward Manhattan and meet up with a group, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, marching from One Police Plaza to the famous span.

“As long as they [police] are respectful, we will be respectful,” Dukes said. “If they are not respectful, we still will be respectful.”

Protesters gathered at 3 p.m. at the following locations: 125th Street and Third Avenue; Park Avenue and 34th Street; 60th Street and Third Avenue; Varick and Houston streets; at House of the Lord Pentecostal Church, 415 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn; and police headquarters at One Police Plaza.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently met with church and civic leaders to urge for peaceful demonstrations.

Queens State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Cooperman cleared detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper in the shooting of Bell and his two friends outside a Queens strip club on Nov. 25, 2006 without a jury.

Prosecutors failed, the judge said, to prove the officers had used excessive force.

Sharpton had called for acts of civil disobedience across the city. Several other demonstrators have been arrested as they stopped traffic at bridges and tunnels.

U.S. attorney spokesman Robert Nardoza said the case was under review, but he declined to comment further.

McGovern, former Clinton backer, urges her to drop out

Former Sen. George McGovern, who backed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, is urging her to drop out of the race.

McGovern announced today he is switching to endorse Clinton’s rival Barack Obama.

After the results from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries Tuesday night, McGovern said it’s virtually impossible for Clinton to win the nomination.

McGovern said he is calling former President Bill Clinton to tell him of the decision and added that he remains close friends with the Clintons.

3 Obama campaign offices searched after bomb threat

In response to a bomb threat yesterday in Indiana, authorities evacuated and searched three Barack Obama campaign offices.

The threats were made in a call to a Terre Haute, Ind. television station. Lewis Robinson of the Secret Service’s Indianapolis office told the Associated Press the caller made threats against Obama offices in Terre Haute, Vincennes and Evansville.

The reports mirror the circumstances of Obama’s office in Vincennes being vandalized early Monday morning. In that incident, a male caller also reported the vandalism to a station in Terre Haute.

In what many pundits are claiming to be the night of reckoning for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, Tuesday’s primaries resulted in a dominating victory in North Carolina for Clinton’s rival Sen. Barack Obama and a squeaker in Indiana that came down to the wire.

Clinton won Indiana by just over 22,000 votes, or 51% to 49% Obama. Indiana was not declared until about 1 a.m. as campaigns sweated out votes being counted in the heavily populated, Obama favoring Lake County. In the end, those votes were not enough for the upset.

The story was entirely different in North Carolina, however, as Obama captured the North Carolina primary 56 percent to Clinton’s 42 percent - spurred by African American and new voters.

Many pundits, viewed Obama’s victory speech - which was thundering and similar to speeches he gave pro-Wright - as a general election speech, suggesting Obama believes the primary race is over.

This has been one of the longest, most closely fought contests in history,” Obama said at a victory rally in Raleigh, N.C. Tuesday night. “And that’s partly because we have such a formidable opponent in Senator Hillary Clinton.”

In recent weeks Clinton has argued Obama’s failure to reach white, blue-collar workers meant Obama would lose the general election fight against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

However, Clinton failed Tuesday to decisively win Indiana — despite it’s large population of the rural, blue-collar, low education voters that have typically supported her.

In her speech last night, Clinton pledged to work hard to win upcoming primaries in Kentucky, Oregon, and West Virginia and plugged her website for supporters to donate money.

I will never give up on you, and your families, and your dreams, and your future,” she said.

Seemingly extending a hand of unity, Clinton said she would work to support the Democratic nominee even if she does not win the nomination.

Clinton, who many felt needed double victories Tuesday, trails Obama in the delegate count, the popular vote, and in the number of states won.

Obama won at least 69 delegates in the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. Clinton won at least 63 delegates, with 55 still to be awarded.

In the overall race for the nomination, Obama leads with 1,815.5 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Clinton has 1,672.

Obama is on pace to reach a majority of the pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses in two weeks, when Kentucky and Oregon vote. Obama has a 158-delegate lead among pledged delegates.

There are 217 delegates at stake in the final six contests. Also, about 270 superdelegates are yet to be claimed.

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The woman convicted of running a high-end Washington prostitution ring that catered to members of Washington’s political elite, including Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter killed herself today.

The body of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, otherwise known as the “DC Madam”, was found in a shed near her mother’s house in Tampa with two suicide notes. Palfrey had hung herself with nylon rope from the shed’s ceiling.

Defense attorney Preston Burton, who defended Palfrey in her criminal trial, said: “This is a tragic news and my heart goes out to her mother.”

Capt. Jeffrey Young of the Tarpon Springs Police Department said Palfrey’s mother had no indication her daughter was depressed to the point of being suicidal. Young said there’s no early indication that alcohol or drugs were involved in the death.

Palfrey was convicted April 15 by a federal jury of running a prostitution service, allegations she had denied. Palfrey maintained that if any of the women in her escort service engaged in sex acts for money, they did so without her knowledge.

She was also convicted of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering.

Palfrey faced 57 to 71 months in prison. She was free pending her sentencing July 24.

“I am sure as heck am not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone, you know, four to eight years here, because I’m shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever,” Palfrey told ABC last year when she released phone records in a public news conference that revealed some of her clients. “Not for a second. I’ll bring every last one of them in if necessary.”

Vitter, a married first-term senator, had admitted being involved with Palfrey’s escort service and apologized for what he called a “very serious sin.”

Others implicated included military strategist Harlan Ullman and Randall Tobias, a former senior State Department official.

Super-superdelegate Joe Andrew pulled a “Judas” move today and defected from the Clinton camp to endorse Obama.

Andrew, Democratic National Committee chairman from 1999-2001, was appointed to his position by former President Bill Clinton. Andrew was one of the first to endorse Clinton’s wife Hillary for the 2008 presidential race.

…a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue this process, and a vote to continue this process is a vote that assists (Republican) John McCain,” said Andrew in a press release today announcing his decision.

Andrew plans to urge Democrats to rally behind Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and “heal the rift in our party” today in a news conference in Indianapolis, his hometown before Tuesday’s primary in the state.
While I was hopeful that a long, contested primary season would invigorate our party, the polls show that the tone and temperature of the race is now hurting us,” Andrew wrote. “John McCain, without doing much of anything, is now competitive against both of our remaining candidates. We are doing his work for him and distracting Americans from the issues that really affect all of our lives.”

About an hour later Andrew sent out letter predicting how the Clinton camp might react to the news of his decision, describing their tactics to be “old politics” and Republican-like.

My endorsement of Senator Obama will not be welcome news to my friends and family at the Clinton campaign. If the campaign’s surrogates called Governor Bill Richardson, a respected former member of President Clinton’s cabinet, a “Judas” for endorsing Senator Obama, we can all imagine how they will treat somebody like me. They are the best practitioners of the old politics, so they will no doubt call me a traitor, an opportunist and a hypocrite. I will be branded as disloyal, power-hungry, but most importantly, they will use the exact words that Republicans used to attack me when I was defending President Clinton.

When they use the same attacks made on me when I was defending them, they prove the callow hypocrisy of the old politics first perfected by Republicans. I am an expert on this because these were the exact tools that I mastered as a campaign volunteer, a campaign manager, a State Party Chair and the National Chair of our Party. I learned the lessons of the tough, right-wing Republicans all too well. I can speak with authority on how to spar with everyone from Lee Atwater to Karl Rove. I understand that, while wrong and pernicious, shallow victory can be achieved through division by semantics and obfuscation. Like many, I succumbed to the addiction of old politics because they are so easy.

According to the Associated Press, Clinton spokesman Phil Singer responded: We support that Democratic process and think that every American should be able to weigh in and support the candidate of his or her own choosing.”

Andrew says Wright controversy and gas tax influenced his decision after the jump>>