Last week, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have enabled women  to more effectively sue employers over gender based wage discrimination.   The bill was intended to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear , which limited the ability of workers to seek legal recourse under Title VII by enforcing a statute of limitations of 180 days from the first instance of wage discrimination (despite the fact that this type of discrimination is often as subtle as it is insidious and therefore can take much longer to uncover).  John McCain was absent on voting day, but made clear through comments that he opposed the bill.  Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins had this to say about the bill, the vote, and the absent McCain’s stance in the debate: (more…)

In an article this week for TNR entitled Legal Bondage, Jeffrey Rosin gives moral legislation in the US a clean bill of health, despite Justice Scalia’s alarmist dissent five years ago in Lawrence v. Texas warning that the majority’s decision to decriminalize sodomy would send the country down the “slippery slope” of unchecked moral degeneration: (more…)

I found this story over at Blonde Justice. If it were not so very unjust, it really would be funny. Well, actually it’s unjust and funny (Cheech and Chong style): (more…)

Today I came across three articles, from three sources, dealing with three different
types of privacy issues. The first two deal with Internet privacy. The last with
wiretapping (in which a New York governor finds himself caught red-handed doing things he shouldn’t have).
The first piece is from Southern Beale. Apparently, Rep. Tim Couch (R-Hyden) out of Kentucky is pushing a bill that, if passed, would make it illegal for people to post anonymously. Here’s an excerpt from the original newstory cited by SB: (more…)

The AP came out with an article earlier this week called “Men Who Do Housework May Get More Sex”. It follows a recent report from the Council on Contemporary Families summarizing the changes that have (and haven’t) taken place on the
home front over the last several decades: (more…)

Here’s another chapter in the ongoing tug-of-war between Bush and Congress over the use of interrogation methods widely considered to be torture. While Congress works to eliminate such tactics from the toolbox of intelligence agents, Bush continues to use fear tactics to shame Congress into relenting: (more…)

I read this in today’s New York Times, and all I can say is it’s about time! Finally someone is willing to take a risk to see what happens when we treat teachers as though they actually have one of the most important (and challenging) jobs in this country. A new charter school is set to open in New York City and what makes it different is the salary it will offer in order to attract top notch teachers: (more…)

In public schools throughout New York City an experiment is taking place using
incentive programs to encourage students and teachers to aim for higher scores on standardized tests, reports Jennifer Medina in today’s New York Times. The programs vary in what types of awards are offered, from pizza parties and McDonald gift certificates to teacher bonuses and student monetary awards. The idea was developed by Roland G. Fryer, a Harvard economist, and while it is still in its infancy, there is some indication that these programs are effecting positive changes in the classroom: (more…)

Here’s a sad story from the frontlines of the struggle to keep public schools religiously neutral, and an anecdotal reminder that when you complain to your kids’ schoolboard about Jesus prayers, do so anonymously: (more…)

For a helpful visual aid on how the US compares to other countries on incarceration rates, check out Pete Guither’s Drug War Rant : (more…)

Already the world leader in numbers incarcerated, the US can now boast (or cringe
in horror) that more than 1 in 100 Americans are living in prison, according to a Pew report cited today by the AP: (more…)

Just in case any of you are losing sleep over the economy, here’s some news to cheer you up. While it’s true that Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman, said earlier in the month that the chance of a recession is “50 percent or better,” Bush expressed a much more optimistic view about the economy during a press conference today: (more…)

Here’s a great post from Angry Black Bitch. It has amazed me, though not really surprised me, how much focus there has been on gender and race in this campaign. It is hard to ignore how often they have trumped policy issues in the media coverage of Obama and Clinton as they compete for the nomination. For such a modern country, with an ego way bigger than Texas, we really have not come far from the archaic roots we started from. Ok, that’s an overstatement. It’s true that women were graciously given the right to vote (less than a hundred years ago) , black people are free (to fight it out in courts where the cards are stacked against them) , and sodomy laws were nullified 4 years ago by Lawrence v Texas (which means that now state courts may label homosexuals, among others, felons only at their own risk) . On the surface, things have changed for the better, but, as Shark-fu points out, the fact that a black man and a woman are real contenders for the presidency does not mean that “American society has transcended a damn thing.” (more…)

As the military presses forward with its plans to try six detainees, the defense assigned to the case faces significant obstacles to providing adequate representation while adhering to the policy framework of the military tribunals. According to an article from the Associated Press, only one military lawyer has been appointed so far to handle the defense for all six cases, with scant support from a small handful of civilian lawyers and paralegals. The following excerpt lists a series of concerns voiced by the defense counsel: (more…)

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday for the Exxon Valdez case. Under question is how much in punitive damages Exxon is liable for, if any, to compensate the “more than 32,000 fishermen and small-business owners who filed this class action suit against Exxon in 1994,” according to Dahlia Lithwick of Slate. Here’s what she has to say about the case: (more…)

Glenn Greenwald, of salon.com , criticizes CNN for inviting Bush’s Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Michael McConnell, to be interviewed by John King, despite King’s self-proclaimed ignorance of the surveillance debate. Rather than using the interview as an opportunity to pose tough questions to a controversial figure, the session, according to Greenwald, deteriorated into a platform for government propaganda reminiscent of Pravda: (more…)

In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, criticized the military commissions for clinging to archaic policies regarding the torture of detainees. He argued that permitting the use of evidence obtained by waterboarding would be “not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence.” While waterboarding has recently been declared illegal by Congress, Davis pointed out that at a “Senate hearing in December, the legal adviser for the military commissions, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, refused to rule out using evidence [previously] obtained by waterboarding.”
Today, an article for the AP by Ben Fox announced that Davis will serve as a defense witness for Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver, who has been charged with “conspiracy and supporting terrorism.” Davis described being called as a witness as “an opportunity to tell the truth.” Here is an excerpt from the article: (more…)

I came across a disturbing series of articles in the New York Times which chronicles
more than a hundred cases of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan charged with committing murder after returning home from active duty. Many of the cases involve domestic abuse resulting in the deaths of spouses and children of these veterans. In some instances, soldiers already had charges of abuse pending when they were deployed: (more…)

In his Washington Post op-ed today, Michael Kinsley, takes on those who claim that Bush’s surge in Iraq has been a success. He argues that until we see significant withdrawals of our troops from the region, we will not know whether or not the surge was successful. The very fact that we still have more troops in Iraq than when the the surge was launched suggests that it was not. Here is an excerpt: (more…)

Paul Krugman, Princeton economics professor and author of The Conscience of a Liberal, discusses the state of America’s poor in light of recent neuroscientific research establishing a link between mental health and development and growing up below the poverty line. He appeals to the country’s conscience to renew the war on poverty in earnest. Here’s an excerpt from his recent New York Times op-ed: (more…)

I came across two op-eds in the New York Times, both by Morris Davis, who was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay from 2005-2007. The first piece was published June 26, 2007, and in it he described the detention center as being a “clean, safe and humane place for enemy combatants.” Obviously, he was doing damage control for the bad press the government had been receiving for its treatment of detainees. He derided the media for misrepresenting the center as a place where detainees lack basic rights and legal recourse, and are subject to inhumane treatment in the course of their detention. This is what he had to say in 2007, while still working there: (more…)

In his op-ed column for the New York Times today, Nicholas D. Kristof gives his take on the torture debate. What seems like common sense is lost on the Bush administration, and, sadly, we will be dealing with the consequences of its errors for a long time to come, particularly in terms of foreign relations. The fact is, our government holds prisoners in secretive conditions, without legal recourse, and uses torture to extract desperate admissions which can then be used against them. And all this at the same time as condemning other countries for their human rights abuses and holding up our own political system up as the model that other countries should mimic. How we reconcile the disparities between our values and our practices is not a private process. In fact, it’s embarrassingly public, and does not go unnoticed by the rest of the world. Kristof gives as an example Al Jazeera cameraman, Sami al-Hajj, who has gone on hunger strike after being subjected to six years of inhumane treatment in Guantanamo, despite admissions from military officials that he is not considered a real threat to the our national security. Here’s some of what Kristof has to say on the matter: (more…)

The surveillance bill passed yesterday in Senate is being debated in the House today. Bush is putting the pressure on to pass the bill immediately, amidst complaints over not having had adequate time to weigh the consequences for civil rights. (more…)

This editorial highlights the likely consequences of seeking the death penalty for 6 detainees in a military tribunal. While the lack of due process and use of torture to obtain evidence is disturbing enough in a country that prides itself on rule of law, the author notes that the government’s decision to proceed in this manner will also further damage our country’s foreign relations: (more…)