The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is backing Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, ordered that a public hearing today on a proposed resolution be canceled because it supported a legislative effort by Barack Obama, The Post has learned.

The hearing for a council resolution on behalf of Obama’s Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act was abruptly canceled late last week after Councilwoman Darlene Mealy (D-Brooklyn) had waited months to get it on the calendar.

Legally required public notification of the hearing had already been made, and staffers from Obama’s Senate office had been invited to testify.

But Mealy and staffers on the Council Government Operations Committee were told by Quinn’s aides it had been called off.

“This legislation is great legislation but the speaker felt that we should pull this bill because with Sen. Barack Obama’s name on it, it seemed like the City Council is endorsing him,” Mealy told The Post.

She said she was disappointed because she believes in the content of the bill, which aims to curb voter intimidation, is what matters - not “whose name is on it.”

Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Governmental Operations Committee, said he was “quite surprised to find out it was taken off the agenda.”

Jamie McShane, a spokesman for Quinn, said “the hearing would be rescheduled in due time.”

Meanwhile, Obama said yesterday that Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq war should give voters pause.

“What’s clear when you look at her statements and her approach to the problem, she was too willing to give the president a blank check,” he told The Associated Press.

“There’s been a little bit of revisionist history since that time, where she indicates she was authorizing only inspectors or additional diplomacy.

“I think everybody in Washington and people in New Hampshire and around the country understood this was a vote for war. The question is: Does she apply different judgment today?”

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN Post Correspondent

 LONDON - Mayor Bloomberg wants to keep more of an eye on you.

After a demonstration here that included surveillance on his convoy, Bloomberg said he wants to follow London’s model and dramatically increase the number of closed-circuit TV cameras used in New York.

The mayor said Big Apple residents must accept that they are under constant watch by video cameras - and he called opposition to such surveillance “ridiculous.”

“In this day and age, if you think that cameras aren’t watching you all the time, you are very naive,” Bloomberg told reporters at London’s City Hall.

“We are under surveillance all the time” from cameras in shops and office buildings, “and in London, they have multiple cameras on every bus and in every subway car,” he added.

“We live in a dangerous world, and people want to have security cameras.”

London has one of the world’s highest concentrations of surveillance cameras. An estimated 4 million operate in Britain.

“It’s ridiculous, people who object to using technology,” Bloomberg said during a meeting with the London’s head of counterterrorism, Chief Superintendent Alex Robertson.

“The cameras on subways and on buses in this day and age, we are way behind and we really do have to catch up,” Bloomberg said.

“The MTA . . . just has to get us this kind of technology. Americans are too exposed and there are some people that don’t like cameras, but the alternatives are so much worse,” the mayor added, noting that he intended to discuss the matter with MTA officials.

Robertson said Londoners’ trust had to be gained first.

“You have to maintain public confidence and people believe it’s for good not for evil. We’re not spying on them and we’ll only use it for good and not for evil.”

“New Yorkers innovate a lot, but we don’t have a lock on all the great ideas,” Bloomberg said after a meeting with London Mayor Ken Livingstone.

“We will be happy to follow Ken’s footsteps or in this case bus tracks because the world’s great cities like London and New York do have to learn from one another to meet the challenges of our time.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg also said he wants to look into a high-tech traffic-light control system - which can zero in on a busy intersection and change traffic flow by changing the pace of its lights.