Politics
ACLU of New Mexico Announces Award Recipients
Original Author:
Democracy for New Mexico
From ACLU-NM:
Today, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico is pleased to announce the recipients of the organization’s annual awards. Each year, the ACLU of New Mexico honors an attorney and an activist for their outstanding civil liberties work in the State of New Mexico. The awards will be presented as part of the 49th annual Bill of Rights Celebration on Saturday, October 22, at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
The 2011 Cooperating Attorney Award goes to Mark D. Fine of the Fine Law Firm for his work defending the rights of female inmates in the New Mexico Women’s Correctional Facility (NMWCF) in Grants, NM. Fine currently represents three women who allege that a male employee sexually assaulted them while they were inmates. The suit also seeks to hold NMWCF accountable for retaliation against the victims after they reported the incidents.
The 2011 Guardian of Liberty Award goes to two people this year, James Walker and Steven De Los Santos, both recently graduated from Clovis High School. Despite resistance from the community and deliberate obstruction by the Clovis school board, Walker and De Los Santos successfully established the school’s first-ever Gay-Straight Alliance.
So Do We Promote Him To Senator? The Internet Remembers Tommy Thompson's Failed Anthax Crisis Management
Original Author:
(James Rowen)
As former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson gets set to take a crack at one last big public sector job - - US Senator - - it's worth remembering then-US Health and Human Secretary Thompson's performance under pressure when the country faced an anthrax attack.
Some people may have forgotten the events, and others may have missed it.
The
story was reprinted from Newsday:
In Washington, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson
officially had announced the ailing [Bob] Stevens' anthrax case to a nation whose
nerves were still very much on edge from the Sept. 11 attacks. He said of
Stevens' infection that it "appears that this is just an isolated case" and
"there's no evidence of terrorism..."
Stevens' Oct. 5 death brought grim urgency to a CDC investigation that
spanned four states through which he had recently traveled. And it brought the
world's media, numerous state and federal agencies and the White House into the
picture.
Thompson once again faced the media, saying the anthrax case was probably
An Oklahoma Supreme Court proposal that would remove some personal identifiers from court documents would be a blow to openness and transparency, but opposition to the idea from the state's largest newspaper seems hypocritical given its own secretive and slanted style of journalism.
The court has asked for comments about the proposal, which is in advance of a new electronic document system. (I'll consider this my comment.) If approved, identifying information, such as addresses, Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers and similar data would be removed from court documents. Here's the entire proposal. Here is a thorough article about it in the Tulsa World.
Uncomfy conservatives and their enablers now even busier dismantling dissent
Original Author:
<a href="/user/man-mke" title="View user profile.">Man MKE</a>
You've got to admire the chutzpah (pronounced "chuts-paw" by Michele Bachmann) of Republicans and conservatives and their opinion-leader enablers. Their attempt to seize permanent control of government (and that's hardly an overstatement, since at least one GOP party official a couple years ago said flat out that was their goal) hasn't been going well, so they're doubling down.
And how do you go about seizing control when the public isn't willing to help vote you into undismissable majorities? Well, there are ways, as we are learning in Wisconsin. For example:
* Trying to elilminate or make much more difficult our state's constitutional provision for recalls of state elected lawmakers for any reason the voters choose. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as of this morning has now written at least two editorials backing this dumb-down of the recall right.
On Protecting The Innocent, Or, Is There A Death Penalty Compromise?
Original Author:
<a href="/user/fake-consultant" title="View user profile.">fake consultant</a>
I don’t feel very good about this country this morning, and as so many of us are I’m thinking of how Troy Davis was hustled off this mortal coil by the State of Georgia without a lot of thought of what it means to execute the innocent.
And given the choice, I’d rather see us abandon the death penalty altogether, for reasons that must, at this moment, seem self-evident; that said, it’s my suspicion that a lot of states are not going to be in any hurry to abandon their death penalties anytime soon now that they know the Supreme Court will allow the innocent to be murdered.
So what if there was a way to create a compromise that balanced the absolute need to protect the innocent with the feeling among many Americans that, for some crimes, we absolutely have to impose the death penalty?
Considering the circumstances, it’s not going to be an easy subject, but let’s give it a try, and see what we can do.
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