Hey all. As I prepare to start law school, I’m doing a bit of traveling, and a lot of packing. As a result, I’m going to put the civil rights roundup on hiatus for the next couple of weeks. I hopefully will be able to get in periodic blogging as I cross-cross the country (well, the mid-west anyway), but there is no realistic way I’ll be able to keep up a regular enough schedule for something like the roundup. I’m not killing the feature — just giving it a little break...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The US Supreme Court is asking for briefs on whether it should rehear the Kennedy v. Louisiana death penalty case. The Court’s decision, which outlawed the use of capital punishment for child rape, had a factual inaccuracy in that it claimed that the US military did not allow such punishment. In a reversal, the V.A. will allow voter registration drives at veteran’s facilities. A Dallas suburb wants renters to get a “license”...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Hopefully, the Senate will fast track the passage of the ADA when it returns from recess. Students registering to vote on college campuses is confusing registrars. The DOJ is widening its investigation after an Asian student with perfect SAT scores was rejected from Princeton University. The student says that he was rejected based on race, the school notes that there is more to a candidacy than SAT scores. Some cities are turning to civil injunctions...

She’s in favor of teaching kids about condoms. Good for her — one of the few times I’ll say that about her, I wager (as you’ll gather if you follow the link).

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news What are Gov. Sarah Palin’s views on race and civil rights? Her Alaska record leaves a mostly-blank slate. California politicians are looking to challenge the LPGA’s new English proficiency rule — the only one of its kind in professional sports. Federal officials could not agree on whether a Muslim Imam from New Jersey had terrorist ties or not, and now an immigration judge has ruled he can gain permanent residency. Supporters of...

I went from “I’m not watching” to “I’m liveblogging” in the space of a minute. Let’s see what ol’ Straight Talk has for us. Catch it over at The Debate Link. UPDATE: My verdict? It was good. Very good. Far superior to Palin’s nasty attack speech, a great motion to the center, surprisingly policy oriented, and very evocative of what drew many moderates to McCain in the first place.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) is the perp.

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news This is a little late, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had a fascinating story about an area police officer who found out recently that she was intersex. A judge has ruled that the ADA applies to airlines. My home county is posting a decline in test scores and an increase in the racial achievement gap. Mounting economic diversity is to blame, claims the school superintendent. A Texas woman is fighting back against predatory lenders, saying they...

I can, but that’s because Gov. Palin’s speech only delved into substance on the topic of energy. Which makes sense — it is the one national-caliber issue on which she has any expertise. And she definitely sounded like she knew what she was talking about — though I’m not entirely convinced that the Republican Party wanted “drill, baby drill” to be the defining chant of its convention. But other than that, I thought the speech was a net negative for Governor...

I would hesitate to jump to conclusions about Sarah Palin’s pastor and what it says about her. For one, we don’t really have any way of knowing what views of his she echoes. For two, I don’t know enough about the evangelical community to know if there is any contextualization of what happened in her church that dissipates the more inflammatory statements (such as the implications that Jewish deaths in Israel represent God’s judgment against us). But since she is a newcomer...

Google sure picked some interesting inspirations for its new browser logo.

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Backlash over the Postville raid may be prompting the government to change its immigration enforcement tactics somewhat. Orange County Register: The diversity given by immigration is a source of strength, not weakness, to our nation. Same-sex marriage: good for the economy. How long until “pro-family” groups start up their victim complex by railing against “Big Marriage”? Also on the marriage front, a New York court has thrown...

CNN reports that evangelicals are rallying around Bristol Palin. And I’m glad to hear it. I’m glad that nobody is portraying her as a slut or whore. I’m glad that the evangelical community is reacting to the news with compassion given that they believe her to have engaged in what they see as immoral behavior, and I hope that they would demonstrate that compassion to all other women who have engaged in similar behavior — both on a micro-level (in personal relations) and a macro-level...

We have no idea and, thanks to the Bush administration, we legally can’t find out: A federal appeals court has ruled that the government can prohibit meat packers from testing their animals for mad cow disease. Because the Agriculture Department tests only a small percentage of cows for the deadly disease, a Kansas meatpacker, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wanted to test all of its cows, but the government says it cannot. Larger meat companies worry that if Creekstone is allowed to perform...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news I wasn’t planning on doing this today, but tomorrow I’m taking my girlfriend to the airport and likely won’t have time to post. So tomorrow will be my holiday, and today you get a roundup. In a whole new level of cattiness, Republican lawmakers in California tried to block courthouse improvements in retaliation over the judiciary’s gay marriage rulings. The anti-affirmative action forces in Arizona have admitted defeat. The...

Often-times, when Democrats run a candidate for office who is not a White male, Republicans unleash with a familiar refrain. “He’s an affirmative action candidate”, to Barack Obama. “She only got there because of her husband”, to Hillary Clinton. And when these candidates do well, it’s not evidence of any merit on their part, or that voters critically evaluated them and decided they were best for the job. It’s because of “identity politics”: Blacks...

Another problem looming for the McCain campaign: Palin fits right in with the Democratic attack that McCain is in the pocket of big oil.

So far, this is not going well. She looks star-struck up there. My girlfriend says she’s rambling. I think she sounds hokey (sometimes that’s a good thing, but I don’t think here). Her diction is not strong — she sounds halting to me. And it’s thematically disjointed. First impressions are crucial for such an unknown quantity, and right now Palin is not delivering. Also — did anyone else notice McCain’s new “country first” slogan? Definitely doubling...

So CNN reports. It’s an intriguing choice and, I think, a dangerous one, for both the Democratic and the GOP tickets. What do I mean by that? Simple: Palin is a risky choice for McCain. It could turn out really well, or it could turn out really badly. The breakdown on Palin shows someone who has the potential to really create movement for McCain, but whose main benefits are speculative, unproven, or based on shaky assumptions. So what are the key points to consider?…. Read the rest of...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The backers of the Arizona initiative seeking to ban affirmative action got a reprieve today, as a judge is willing to give them more time to prove they received the requisite number of valid signatures to get on the ballot. A suit against American contractor KBR alleges that 12 Nepalese workers were held in slavery in Iraq. They were later kidnapped by insurgents, and all but one was executed. The Mexican Supreme Court has upheld Mexico City’s...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news A quick note: Now that I’m not doing this for my job, the CRR probably will undergo some changes. First, it’ll probably be later. Because if I’m not forced by a paying employer to start working at 9:00 AM, it’s highly unlikely I’ll do it on my own. Second, it may well be shorter. I don’t know. This is a transition. But I do enjoy providing the roundup each morning, so I am going to try to keep the feature going. So...

I saw President Clinton and Senator Biden’s speeches tonight (but not Senator Kerry’s). Admittedly I saw them at a wine night, so I might have been somewhat distracted. And that might explain why I’m not as high on either speech as many others are. Certainly, I think Hillary Clinton blew both out of the water. President Clinton’s speech, I thought, was particularly flat. It felt disjointed, I didn’t feel like his heart was truly in it, and it never really developed thematically....

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The LPGA (woman’s international golf organization) is requiring all of its players to be able to speak English if they want to compete. The Tour has been dominated in recent years by foreign-born players, and there are questions about whether this requirement violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. A Filipino man convicted of sending threatening communications to a variety of Black and biracial public figures was sentenced to over three months...

Gut reaction? Clinton nailed that speech. As it turns out, the best thing she could do to accomplish her aims in that speech was to lay-into John McCain. It unifies, it delegitimizes McCain’s outreach efforts, it obviously weakens McCain (to the extent that any partisan political speech does that), it forthrightly lines up her supporters with Obama — attacking McCain accomplishes everything. And she drilled it.

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Ms. Magazine gives its quick take on the appointment of Hans von Spakovsky to a staff position on the US civil rights commission. Inside Higher Ed has the scoop on the higher education elements of the Democratic Platform, including (among other things) a restatement of their support for affirmative action. …. And here’s McCain’s plan, courtesy of the Chronicle on Higher Education, which notes McCain’s apparent reversal on that...