Civil Rights Roundup: 07/17/08

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news. I’m going to New York this afternoon and won’t be back until late tomorrow, so the roundup will be off until Monday

What is the world coming to when hippies attack the homeless?

An Arizona sheriff is being accused of racial profiling in his aggressive efforts to roundup undocumented immigrants.

The University of Texas is working to make sure websites which document human rights atrocities don’t disappear.

Prison guard fired for wearing a beard in accordance with his religious obligations.

Missouri ordered to bolster efforts at registering low-income residents to vote.

ACLU will defend Amish in suit over how to label their horse-drawn buggies.

Census won’t count gay marriages.

Latino squad earns respect at Watts basketball tournament.

A 3rd Circuit panel held that removing disruptive Christian protesters from a gay pride event was constitutionally permissible. In an opinion joined by the third justice on the panel, Judge Dolores K. Sloviter justified the removal because the protesters went beyond distributing literature and waving signs, and actively attempted to drown out the proceedings. A concurring opinion also would have upheld the removal, but on the grounds that the protesters used “fighting words” when they referred to a transgender woman as a “she-male” and told her she would be going to hell.

The NAACP was cordial but not exactly warm when John McCain came visiting.

One oft-repeated (by me as much as anyone) refrain about racism is that overt racist sentiment is not really expressed or actively believed much in modern America. Some 2004 survey data seems to indicate we’re too optimistic about that.