The cause of one of the fires is still being determined, but KSL News reported over the weekend that target shooters had been seen in the vicinity of one of them, and a target shooter admitted to starting another one of the fires. Guns may not kill people, as the argument goes, but apparently they…
Category: Liberty
Paul Ryan and Todd Akin Partnered On Radical Personhood Bill Outlawing Abortion And Many Birth Control Pills
Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported that Rep. Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin R-MO and GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan both cosponsored the bill that introduced America to the despicable term “forcible rape.” As it turns out, this may only be the second most sweeping attack on reproductive freedom that both men partnered on. Ryan and Akin also…
Ohio GOP Election Board Member: Our Voting Process Shouldn’t Accommodate Black Voters
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s recent decision to prohibit early voting on nights and weekends in all districts has many concerned about the effect on voter turnout in the state, particularly among low-income and minority communities. But one Republican Party chairman is content to suppress votes among this vulnerable demographic. Doug Preisse, chairman of…
The US Government Can Track Your Location at Any Time Without a Warrant
Is law enforcement tracking your cell phone’s GPS more like intercepting a phone call or tailing someone on the street? A federal court decision says it’s more like following you—which means the authorities don’t need to get a warrant to find out where you are at any given time. The case involves a marijuana courier,…
Middle-Class Economic Security Declines as Wealth Concentration Increases
America’s middle class became poorer and more economically insecure during the Great Recession, as household wealth concentrated in the hands of the rich, according to new Federal Reserve data about the recession and its aftermath. The latest Survey of Consumer Finance data covering the years 2007 to 2010 are yet another reminder that addressing the…
Ten Takeaways From Pennsylvania’s Voter ID Trial
The two-week trial challenging the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s voter ID law ended today. Here’s what we learned from the proceedings. Suffice to say, Pennsylvania Republicans didn’t come out looking very good. 1. A lot of voters don’t have valid voter ID. University of Washington political scientist Matt Barreto, a witness for the plaintiffs (the suit…
2012 Summary of Voting Law Changes
The Brennan Center’s Voting Law Changes in 2012 report analyzed how a series of laws imposing new restrictions on who can vote and how could significantly change the electoral landscape. As states continue to introduce and consider new restrictive measures, we will be updating the summary below and this detailed compilation of potentially restrictive laws…
Spree Killings Growing More Frequent and More Deadly
A report released in 2011 by the bipartisan Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition—called “Fatal Gaps: How Missing Records in the Federal Background Check System Put Guns in the Hands of Killers”—notes that states and federal agencies are basically ignoring the federal law requiring that records about dangerous people, including those with serious mental illnesses, be…
Our Broken Political System
Elected politicians would, at least theoretically, be expected to either represent such views or at least respond to them. But you can forget about that. On occasion, democratic pressure can build on representatives to either change a position or lose their jobs, making life sufficiently uncomfortable for them. But this is rarer than a red…
The Facts on Immigration Today
The Obama administration has directed an unprecedented amount of resources to ensuring our southern border is secure and undocumented immigrants (criminal and noncriminal) are deported. In June 2012 the Department of Homeland Security announced they would allow DREAM Act-eligible youth to apply for deferred action, granting them protection against deportation and the ability to get…
Islamophobia: A Bipartisan Project
When the New York Times ran its story on Obama’s “kill list,” showing the president poring over names of people to potentially assassinate in drone strikes, it sparked a controversy. The content of that controversy was not over this extraordinary revelation about Obama’s use of power but rather over the leaking of state secrets, which…
Flawed Voter Purge Underway In Georgia
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that after a state-level investigation, Fulton County, Georgia identified at least 2,400 voters it believed to be registered to vote at vacant lots. Like with the Florida purge, county elections officials began sending letters to those voters to determine whether they lived at those address. Unfortunately, as with Florida, they ran…
In Florida, Scott Administration Vows To Accelerate Voter Purge: ‘There Will Be More Names’
The massive voter purge order by Governor Rick Scott in Florida has been plagued with errors, resulting in election officials notifying hundreds of eligible U.S. citizens that they are ineligible to vote. In response, the Scott administration has vowed to intensify their efforts to remove registered voters from the rolls. Initially, the state created a…
Court Strikes Blow To Illinois Eavesdropping Law
In a blow to Illinois sweeping eavesdropping law, a federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked its enforcement in cases where someone is recording a police officer at work. It was a victory for activists who had feared that using smartphones or video cameras to record police responding to demonstrations during this months NATO summit in…
Rick Scott Drug Testing Executive Order Ruled Unconstitutional By Federal Judge
A federal judge has ruled that Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) violated the Constitution last year when he ordered drug testing for state government workers. U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro ruled on Wednesday that suspicionless drug testing testing for state workers violated the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable search and seizure. Scott had suspended…
Arrests In Case Of Black Georgia Couple Held At Gunpoint And Arrested While Moving Into New Home
The Kalonjis said they were held by the gunmen for 10 minutes with their hands above heir heads, and that they thought they were being robbed. The couple did not have their closing papers with them, and could not prove that they owned the home. When deputies arrived, they arrested the Kalonjis and charged them…
More Than One-Third Of All U.S. Executions Took Place In Texas
The Economist maps out every American execution since 1976, when the Supreme Court announced the modern constitutional regime governing death penalty cases after effectively suspending all executions nationwide for four years. Over one-third of all executions during this period took place in Texas, for a total of 481 people killed by that state. Of the…
Couple held at gunpoint, arrested after buying home
The Kalonji family had just closed on a foreclosed home and were told by their real estate agent they should go over to the house and change the locks. But when Jean Kalonji and his wife, Angelica, started working at the home, an armed man and another person who appeared to be the man’s son…
Study: All-White Juries More Likely To Convict Black Defendants
Two particularly salient points from Duke’s summary of the study: — In cases with no blacks in the jury pool, blacks were convicted 81 percent of the time, and whites were convicted 66 percent of the time. The estimated difference in conviction rates rises to 16 percent when the authors controlled for the age and…
Police handcuff Georgia kindergartner for tantrum
A kindergartner who threw a tantrum at her small-town Georgia school was taken away in handcuffs, her arms behind her back, in an episode that is firing up the debate over whether teachers and police around the country are overreacting all too often when dealing with disruptive students. The family of 6-year-old Salecia Johnson…