Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The US Supreme Court will resolve a circuit split on identity theft by illegal immigrants. The question is whether aggravated identity theft requires knowledge by the user that the documents he obtains are those of a real person, as opposed to fabrications. Immigrants with family members on both sides of the US/Mexico border are dreading increases in border fortifications, as they may interfere with simple visits to the border to share pictures, food,...

It was interesting to watch General Powell’s endorsement. It is clear that Powell thinks the modern Republican Party has stretched way beyond where he’s willing to go in terms of its race rightward. The concerns he laid out about the current GOP extend from the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as VP, to the prospect of two more conservative judges on the Supreme Court, to the steady increase of Islamophobic fear-mongering that has characterized the Party since 9/11. Now, it is fair to say...

On the ballot in California is a proposal (Prop. 4) which would require teenagers seeking abortions to notify their parents. It doesn’t require their consent, and it has exceptions for abusive parents and a judicial bypass option. Sound okay to you? Well then play Modern Mitzvot’s Choose Your Own Adventure: Prop. 4 Saga! Fun for the whole family (except the pregnant teenage daughter, of course)!

So Barack Obama has asked that an special prosecutor be appointed to investigate allegations of voter registration fraud (aka, the ACORN controversy) and voter suppression efforts. The McCain campaign’s response? Not exactly in line with what you’d expect if you thought they were seriously and honestly concerned that this issue was “destroying the fabric of democracy.” To the twenty people left in the country who think the McCain campaign is serious or honest about anything...

The Republican Party keeps inching right up to that line of calling Barack Obama a terrorist.

I had the debate on, but wasn’t watching closely — in fact, I was playing solitaire while listening with an ear to it. The bottom line is that Obama is like a Winky Wright — you simply can’t hurt him. He’s too good defensively. A fellow chessmaster might be able to out-box him, but McCain is no debate whiz. McCain needed a knockout, and he wasn’t going to get it. And in striving for it, he sounded far more conservative and doctrinaire than he has at any point in...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Among other problems, the language interpretation at Guantanamo Bay trials is awful. Wyoming remains one of the few states without a hate crimes law. The Tulsa World: Many Native Americans don’t celebrate Columbus Day. Civil rights leaders are worrying that a new agreement between Las Vegas officials and ICE will increase racial profiling and decrease the reporting of violent crime. Working from the ground up: Increased success by local Black...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The Virginia GOP chair compared Obama to Osama, and then refused to back down after a critique from the McCain campaign (“While Barack Obama is associated with domestic terrorist William Ayers, the McCain campaign disagrees with the comparison that Jeff Frederick made.”). It’s a civil rights issue because I’m coming around on my earlier views as to whether the Obama-as-terrorist charges are racially-tinged or not. See also this...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news It’s election time, and you know what that means: illegally keeping eligible voters off the rolls! Polling places may not have the resources to handle the expected crush of voters this election. The Supreme Court is examining whether employees who cooperate in discrimination and harassment cases, but are not the complaining parties themselves, are protected via anti-retaliation provisions. A federal appeals court has blocked the release of 17...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news A Federal judge has ordered the release of several Chinese Muslim detainees from Guantanamo who have been cleared of links to terrorism for several years. The judge demanded that the men be admitted to the United States immediately, and ordered that immigration services not interfere with them in any way. The US filed an emergency appeal to stay the order, with White House spokeswoman Dana Perino saying that allowing admittedly innocent men wrongfully...

In my civil rights roundup today, I referenced an AP analysis which argued that Sarah Palin’s charge that Obama “pals” with terrorists had a “racial subtext”, as well John Cole’s claim that he really did not see it. I noted that while I essentially agree with Cole, I thought that the case raised some interesting hypotheticals worth exploring in a later post. Read the rest of this post over at The Debate Link.

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Obviously, this column by the treasurer of the Buchanan County (Va.) GOP (and county representative on McCain’s Virginia leadership team) is not racist. After all, the author denied that it was, and we all know that’s good enough when it’s a White guy! It’s worth noting again — this election will be a pivotal one in terms of setting the Supreme Court’s agenda for the foreseeable future. It’s not a parody —...

Volokh conspirator Todd Zywicki has an interesting post up asking about people’s development on the issue of abortion. Specifically, how and why they might have changed their mind on the issue. He says that he knows plenty of people who used to be pro-choice, but became pro-life — but few who made the opposite journey. And for those who have, he’s curious as to what prompted the change in mindset. You can read about my own journey on this issue here, but the comments to Prof. Zywicki’s...

Oh, and one more thing on the debate…. Was I the only (Jewish?) person who winced when Sarah Palin repeatedly used the phrase “never again” to refer to how we should respond to the financial crisis? Obviously that phrase has very particular connotations to me that aren’t appropriately applied to even the worst economic situation, but I can’t decide if I was being objectively unreasonable or if other Jews might have reacted the same way.

These are off-the-cuff reactions, without having seen any commentary on the debate. In my only post on the subject prior to the VP debate, I talked a little bit about the “expectations game” and the extent to which it’s reasonable or unreasonable to use it as a frame for evaluating the debate. The basic theme I tried to lay out was that while beating expectations — particularly when the bar was set as low as it was for Gov. Palin — wasn’t enough for a win per se,...

The blogosphere is abuzz about this speech by AFL-CIO chief Rich Trumka, talking to the United Steelworkers about racism in the labor movement and how they need to fight against it to get the right candidate, Barack Obama, into office. My thoughts, and the reactions of other bloggers, over at The Debate Link.

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news A Nebraska law intended to stop the abandonment of newborn babies is now seeing parents drop off older kids — including teenagers — saying they can no longer care for them. The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh will decide whether to leave the national church in protest of its ordination of a gay bishop. GLBT voters in New Haven, Connecticut, got a chance to fire questions at the leader of the state Republican Party. Though he opposes most...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The former police chief of Gary, Indiana has been found guilty of civil rights violations after kicking a suspect during a raid. A Michigan commission has thrown out disciplinary charges against a member of the state’s board of canvassers who had opposed certifying a initiative that successfully banned affirmative action. The Supreme Court will not rehear its decision striking down the use of the death penalty in child rape cases. Large numbers...

Okay, here’s the scoop everybody. The civil rights roundup is back. But it will be on a significantly-modified schedule. For starters, this is likely the only Tuesday you’ll see it, as I have class with only a lunch break straight through from 9:45 – 4 that day. Most days, though, a probably-abridged roundup will show up by mid-afternoon. And with that, away we go! The trial of a South Carolina state trooper accused of ramming a fleeing suspect with his car has begun. A group of...

Outgoing Israeli PM Ehud Olmert says in an interview that Israel must withdraw from nearly all the West Bank and East Jerusalem in order to achieve peace, and says that the focus on maintaining control over particular “strategic” chunks of land as more important than reaching a permanent peace deal is misguided.

An Israeli peace activist was lightly wounded in an apparent assassination attempt that police believe was carried out by far-right Jewish terrorists. Police are raising protection for members of the group Peace Now after flyers at the scene offered a 1.1 million shekel bounty for anyone who killed a member of the organization. More background and information can be found here. Needless to say, these terrorists are repellent and need to be dealt with as the threat to Israeli society that they are.

ABC has posted excerpts. It’s basically entirely about foreign policy (except a brief digression on Palin’s religious beliefs in which Gibson was simply awful — as in, asking unfair questions with false assumptions awful), and most of it seemed pretty standard aggressive, blustering, conservative fare. Oh, and she seemed to commit us to going to war with Russia if they attack Georgia. That’s sort of important, I guess.

Some folks in the comments of my last post asked about whether homeless people have the right to vote, given that they don’t have a home (and thus, perhaps, a permanent address). Ask and I shall deliver. The National Coalition for the Homeless has a state-by-state chart detailing the rules. The verdict seems to be “theoretically, they can vote, but in some states there are higher practical barriers than others.” Incidentally, the NCH site is a great resource on the entire issue...

In Michigan, as in the rest of the country, many people are suffering from home foreclosures. Most of us feel bad for those individuals fighting to keep their home. Local Republican leaders, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to prevent people from voting. They’ve announced that they will deploy challengers on Election Day to prevent people whose addresses have been foreclosed from voting.

It’s a local judge so it doesn’t have value as a state-wide precedent, but it is a victory for equal rights all the same. At the moment, only Florida and Mississippi flatly prohibit gay adoptions, regardless of the normal best-interest-of-the-child standard.