The nation’s largest labor federation plans to mount an aggressive campaign against voter identification laws in a half-dozen battleground states that will be key in the presidential election.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told reporters on Tuesday that the labor federation will have boots on the ground registering and helping voters in Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in coordination with the group’s political program.
Labor is pushing back against voter ID laws, which they say suppress voting by minorities, the elderly, the poor and students. Supporters of the measures say showing identification to vote is needed to crack down on fraud and protect the integrity of elections.
So, now both the ACLU and the Department of Justice are suing Florida over Governor Rick Scott’s voter purge, and Florida is suing DHS for access to their immigration database:
The American Civil Liberties Union sued Florida on Friday to stop its controversial program designed to purge noncitizen voters from the rolls.
The ACLU says the program, which overwhelmingly targets minorities, needs approval from the federal government under the 1965 Voting Rights Act — a claim already made last week by the U.S. Department of Justice when it ordered Florida to cease the purge.
Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who is named as a defendant, has said Florida already received permission years ago to clean the voter rolls of noncitizens.
But the ACLU argues that the specific processes for the noncitizen-voter program — a new effort by the state — never received federal approval.
What’s more, the program is too much of a burden on, and too much of a threat to, lawful voters, who could risk being removed from the rolls due to government error, the ACLU says.
“The state of Florida is violating federal law by subjecting citizens to this new and unnecessary requirement in order to exercise their right to vote,” Julie Ebenstein, an ACLU Florida staff attorney, said in a written statement. “We are asking the court to protect the right to vote and stop this unlawful, targeted voting purge.”
Detzner’s office couldn’t immediately respond to all aspects of the suit, which was filed late Friday afternoon. But it insisted the program is fair and needed.
The program is needed of course, because, after all, it would chaos if they let sp**s and n*****s vote.
Here’s a paraphrase of Jeff Foxworthy, “If you think that people who will likely vote against you should be prevent from voting, you might not be a real American.”
It would be nice if someone went to jail over this crap.
Florida’s noncitizen voter purge looks like it’s all but over.
The 67 county elections supervisors — who have final say over voter purges —are not moving forward with the purge for now because nearly all of them don’t trust the accuracy of a list of nearly 2,700 potential noncitizens identified by the state’s elections office.The U.S. Department of Justice has ordered the state to stop the purge.
“We’re just not going to do this,” said Leon County’s elections supervisor, Ion Sancho, one of the most outspoken of his peers. “I’ve talked to many of the other supervisors and they agree. The list is bad. And this is illegal.”
It is explicitly illegal.
You are not allowed to scrub voter rolls less than 90 days before an election under federal law, and the non-presidential Florida primaries are in August.
Additionally, for Florida, this has to be pre-cleared by the DoJ.
The party of Lincoln is not the party of Jim Crow.
The CIA has begun an internal investigation into whether a process designed to screen books by former employees and protect national security secrets is being used in part to censor agency critics, U.S. officials said.
The investigation coincides with the publication of a flurry of books from CIA veterans, and it is largely aimed at determining whether some redactions have been politically motivated.
Among the publications expected to get particular scrutiny is a memoir by the former head of the CIA’s clandestine service, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who used his book, “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives,” to mount a vigorous defense of interrogation methods that were widely condemned but that he asserts provided critical intelligence about al-Qaeda.
The target of the probe is the agency’s Publications Review Board. The PRB evaluates hundreds of submissions each year and is supposed to focus exclusively on whether publication of material would threaten national security interests.
The CIA declined to comment on the internal investigation or to answer questions about the composition and practices of the PRB.
U.S. officials familiar with the inquiry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that it reflects growing concern in the intelligence community that the review process is biased toward agency loyalists, particularly those from the executive ranks.
Gee, you think?
This process has been corrupt and self serving for at least a decade.
The entire law was not struck down, but the section that prohibits the federal government from providing tax and other benefits to people who are legally married has been struck down under the Equal Protection clause.
It’s doubtless going to the Supreme Court, where it will be close.
Activists working to repeal Maryland’s same-sex marriage law have collected more than twice the signatures needed for a referendum — likely ensuring that the measure will be on the ballot for voters to decide in November.
The law’s opponents submitted 122,481 signatures in favor of a referendum; 55,736 are required. If enough are verified as legitimate, as expected, Maryland will be in the center of a national debate on same-sex marriage, with groups on both sides preparing to spend millions.
I’m still debating between writing in Stewart/Colbert or Colbert/Stewart, but I’m voting against the hate amendment.
Public opinion continues to shift in favor of same-sex marriage, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, which also finds initial signs that President Obama’s support for the idea may have changed a few minds.
Overall, 53 percent of Americans say gay marriage should be legal, hitting a high mark in support while showing a dramatic turnaround from just six years ago, when just 36 percent thought it should be legal. Thirty-nine percent, a new low, say gay marriage should be illegal.
The poll also finds that 59 percent of African Americans say they support same-sex marriage, up from an average of 41 percent in polls leading up to Obama’s announcement of his new position on the matter. Though statistically significant, it is a tentative result because of the relatively small sample of black voters in the poll.
Leadership generates its own support for policy.
Hopefully, this lesson will stick, but I doubt it.
As police departments around the country are increasingly caught up in tussles with members of the public who record their activities, the U.S. Justice Department has come out with a strong statement supporting the First Amendment right of individuals to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties.
In a surprising letter (.pdf) sent on Monday to attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department, the Justice Department also strongly asserted that officers who seize and destroy such recordings without a warrant or without due process are in strict violation of the individual’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
The letter was sent to the police department as it prepares for meetings to discuss a settlement over a civil lawsuit brought by a citizen who sued the department after his camera was seized by police.
In the lawsuit, Christopher Sharp alleged that in May 2010, Baltimore City police officers seized, searched and deleted the contents of his mobile phone after he used it to record them as they were arresting a friend of his.
I am very surprised.
Pleased, but surprised.
I’d like to see some prosecutions of overzealous cops, but I would consider this highly unlikely.
North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue says Tuesday’s passage of Amendment One makes the state look like Mississippi. Perdue made the remarks in response to a question from WITN’s Brittany Gunter while in Greenville Friday morning.
On Tuesday, 61% of the state’s voters approved the constitutional amendment which bans same sex marriages. State law already prohibits gay marriages.
The governor, a Democrat who said leading up to the vote that she was against the amendment, told WITN that the result is wrong for the state.
“People around the country are watching us, and they’re really confused to have been such a progressive forward thinking economically driven state that invested in education and that stood up for the civil rights people including the civil rights marches back in the 50s and 60s and 70s,” said Perdue. “People are saying what in the world is going on with North Carolina, we look like Mississippi.”
Yes. Yes you do look like Mississippi, and yes, this is a bad thing.
You see, I’ve been watching the kerfuffle over Obama and gay marriage since Biden’s statement on Sunday, and what appeared to be a full on weasel by Obama, or at least his Press Secretary Jay Carney, from which I inferred that the President would give the weasel answer.
I had been drafting my scathing response to this in my head for days, so when he actually made a clear and unambiguous statement I was surprised.
But my first reaction wasn’t surprise. My first thought was, “Son of a bitch! I have to rewrite now!”
At least I had the basic level of self awareness to be ashamed.
Before President Obama left the White House on Tuesday morning to fly to an event in Albany, several aides intercepted him in the Oval Office. Within minutes it was decided: the president would endorse same-sex marriage on Wednesday, completing a wrenching personal transformation on the issue.
As described by several aides, that quick decision and his subsequent announcement in a hastily scheduled network television interview were thrust on the White House by 48 hours of frenzied will-he-or-won’t-he speculation after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. all but forced the president’s hand by embracing the idea of same-sex unions in a Sunday talk show interview.
Advisers say now that Mr. Obama had intended since early this year to define his position sometime before Democrats nominate him for re-election in September. Yet many of the president’s allies believed he would not do so, trusting instead in his strong support from gay voters for having ended a ban on openly gay people in the military and disavowing a federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
Such caution was understandable, the allies said, given the unpredictable fallout the president would face by taking a clear stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day, before what is likely to be a close election. Mr. Obama’s closest advisers say only the timing was in question. Mr. Biden’s unexpected remarks undoubtedly accelerated the timetable.
Initially Mr. Obama and his aides expected that the moment would be Monday, when the president was scheduled to be on “The View,” the ABC daytime talk show, which is popular with women. Certainly, they thought, he would be asked his position on same-sex marriage by one of the show’s hosts, who include Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg.
Yet the pressure had become too great to wait until then, his aides told him; on Monday, the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, was pummeled with questions from skeptical reporters about Mr. Obama’s stance. After the Tuesday morning meeting, Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s communications director, contacted ABC and offered a wide-ranging interview with the president for the following day.
Oh snap. They took a scoop away from the ladies of The View. There will be consequences.
All joking aside, this is an unambiguous good.
BTW, the best comment I’ve heard about this so far was made by Kurt_T (His web site, www.kurttrue.com should be coming on line shortly):
Hahahaha! I really DID want people to marry their pets and climb Mount Rushmore in nipple clamps and buttless chaps! And this makes it all possible!
Suckers!
OK, I’m off to the Kinko’s to print up some recruitment materials for your children.
-kurt_t President and Supreme Cher Impersonator for Life Secret Gay Agenda
The timing was disappointing though, it seem to be calculated to avoid any impact on the North Carolina hate amendment vote, for which the executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans rightly castigates him, (scroll down) though partisan considerations might have informed his statement.
While we will leave the battlefields of the greater Middle East, we are firmly committed to the war on terror at home. What do I mean by that? Well, look at the expansion of federal bureaucracies to tackle this war.
Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror. Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for the intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feet – the equivalent of 22 U.S. Capitols or three Pentagons. The largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs is now the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people.
The rise of this national security state has entailed a vast expansion in the government’s powers that now touch every aspect of American life, even when seemingly unrelated to terrorism. Some 30,000 people, for example, are now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications within the United States.
In the past, the U.S. government has built up for wars, assumed emergency authority and sometimes abused that power, yet always demobilized after the war. But this is, of course, a war without end.
………
We don’t look like people who have won a war. We look like scared, fearful, losers.
(emphasis mine)
Osama bin Laden did not win, he’s dead, but we lost, and we did it to ourselves.
Nance said he recorded a conversation with the woman, whose name is Jodie Brunstetter, on video, and that she confirmed that she used the term “Caucasian” in a discussion about the marriage amendment, but insisted that otherwise her comments had been taken out of context by other poll workers.
…Nance paraphrased the remarks, as told to him by those who were present: “During the conversation, Ms. Brunstetter said her husband was the architect of Amendment 1, and one of the reasons he wrote it was to protect the Caucasian race. She said Caucasians or whites created this country. We wrote the Constitution. This is about protecting the Constitution. There already is a law on the books against same-sex marriage, but this protects the Constitution from activist judges.”
Nance said he recruited a friend, who works for the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families, to witness his interview with Jodie Brunstetter. He said Brunstetter reluctantly acknowledged that she had used the term “Caucasian” and then repeated the statement previously attributed to her, but substituted the pronoun “we” for “Caucasian. Nance said Brunstetter insisted there was nothing racial about her remarks, but could not explain why she used the term “Caucasian.”
When you look at many of the motivations on many of the hot button issues of “social conservative”,† you find either racial animus or racial paranoia at its core.
First, we amp up gun regulations in order to take guns from the Black Panthers, and then the NRA goes insane because they want to have guns to protect themselves from black people.
It’s like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, only instead of Kevin Bacon, it’s racism.
*Nominally white. I’m Jewish, and my brother suggested that, while we are European pale, we aren’t any more white than an Irish immigrant was in 1880. †For example, the right wing jihad against the courts, started with Brown v. Board of Ed, and Roe v. Wade didn’t become a cause celebre for the right wing until it became a proxy for Runyon v. McCrary, which held that private schools can be denied tax deductible status for being segregated.
The White House has said that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), currently before the US House of Representatives, lacks enough privacy protections in its current form and will probably be vetoed if passed.
A statement from the White House Office of Management and Budget said that, while the importance of protecting the national infrastructure from online attacks is paramount, it “strongly opposes” the bill because it lacks proper oversight, could seriously damage individuals’ privacy and hands over responsibility for domestic cybersecurity to the NSA, rather than to a civilian body.
“Legislation should address core critical infrastructure vulnerabilities without sacrificing the fundamental values of privacy and civil liberties for our citizens, especially at a time our Nation is facing challenges to our economic well-being and national security,” the statement reads.
“The Administration looks forward to continuing to engage with the Congress in a bipartisan, bicameral fashion to enact cybersecurity legislation to address these critical issues. However, for the reasons stated herein, if H.R. 3523 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”
“The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, in its current form,” the White House said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon. “H.R. 3523 fails to provide authorities to ensure that the nation’s core critical infrastructure is protected while repealing important provisions of electronic surveillance law without instituting corresponding privacy, confidentiality, and civil liberties safeguards.”
CISPA’s sponsors, House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., dismissed the White House statement.
“The basis for the administration’s view is mostly based on the lack of critical infrastructure regulation, something outside of our jurisdiction,” the pair said in a statement released during the House Rules hearing. In addition, the sponsors pointed out that the White House objects to the bill’s current form, which doesn’t contain the latest changes hammered out with civil liberties groups.
(emphasis mine)
Maybe I’m a bit of a cynic, but I’m thinking that their objection is that it does not grant enough power.
If we look at the Obama administration’s prior behavior, their concerns for civil liberties or transparency have always taken a back seat to expanding executive power. (Basically Dick Cheney with abortion support)
Also, as PC Magazine notes, the Obasa administration made exactly the same sort of statements about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows for indefinite detention of American citizens, but decided to sign it anyway.
Egypt’s National Council for Women (NCW) has appealed to the Islamist-dominated parliament not to approve two controversial laws on the minimum age of marriage and allowing a husband to have sex with his dead wife within six hours of her death according to a report in an Egyptian newspaper.
The appeal came in a message sent by Dr. Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker, Dr. Saad al-Katatni, addressing the woes of Egyptian women, especially after the popular uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.
She was referring to two laws: one that would legalize the marriage of girls starting from the age of 14 and the other that permits a husband to have sex with his dead wife within the six hours following her death.
You know, I can understand wanting to kiss your spouse goodbye, (no tongue, please) but this is completely nuts.
Of more significance, is the fact that they are also trying to remove a woman’s right to an education, and the right for a woman to initiate a divorce.
If it gets any more insane, Egyptian politics will start looking like a Focus on the Family convention.
I don’t mean that he is personally homophobic, there is no evidence that I know of about that, but that he is is politically homophobic, and so is unwilling to do anything for gay rights unless absolutely forced to.
Writing an executive order mandating that federal contractors don’t discriminate is literally the least that he could do, but for Mr. Hopey Changey, it’s a bridge too far:
A surprising new rift opened between the White House and the gay rights movement after White House officials revealed Wednesday that President Obama would not sign an executive order sought by activists to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Community advocates learned of the news during a closed-door meeting with two top Obama aides, Valerie Jarrett and Cecilia Munoz, who told the group that the White House would instead lead a multi-pronged effort to urge companies, federal agencies and others to oppose discrimination.
The Center for American Progress, which is Obama’s bitch among the think tanks called this “Disappointing”, and the HRC, another member of the Obama knee pad set was similarly pissed off.
It appears that Obama does not remember the, “Don’t ask, Don’t Give,” efforts, but my guess is that he will:
And, just to confirm that it’s not going to go away, we got this via press release;
Within hours of the White House announcement, the “We Can’t Wait!” campaign received a $100,000 cash infusion from liberal donor Jonathan Lewis, the son of major Democratic philanthropist Peter Lewis.
Quotes from Jonathan Lewis:
“This isn’t a broken promise President Obama can blame on Congress. He has not been able to provide a single valid reason for why he is now refusing to sign the executive order protecting LGBT workers. It has become increasingly clear that this decision is based on cowardice rather than principled leadership.”
“Over the past several years the LGBT advocacy groups have jumped through hoops for this administration, conducting extensive research and polling — more than has been done for any similar executive order — and now the only impediment is President Obama.”
“This is nothing short of craven election-year politics, a game Obama told us he would not play.”
Jonathan Lewis and his father, Peter, are major contributors to progressive causes. And, by major, I mean they give millions.
Another reason to give to specific candidates, particularly in the primary, as opposed to OFA, the DNC, the DCCC, or the DSCC.
But hey, a wing of the Talibaptists at the Focus on the Family liked that he dissed the LBGT community.
Below, you can see Jay Carney saying that “more study is needed”. I guess that the unspoken assumption here is that gays are just too icky to have equal rights unless we can make bigots feel better about themselves.
Seriously, Andrew Breitbart was better on gay inclusion that Barack Obama is:
Seriously, how about not being a coward on this issue. Not being a coward gets you votes.
Open Letter to National Organization for Marriage Requesting Boycott of Law Office of Bruce Godfrey
Original Letter 3 April 2012 National Organization for Marriage Open Letter By facsimile: (888) 894-3604 Re: Request to Join Boycott List
Dear Madam or Sir:
I write your organization to request that the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey be placed on the boycott list for corporate and business advocates for the recognition of lawful civil same-sex marriage. I would be most grateful for recognition of my small law office as an opponent of your cause in Maryland as you have recognized companies such as Starbucks. While Maryland attorney ethics rules place strict prohibitions on attorney solicitations of prospective clients for hire, no ethics rules prohibit an attorney from asking to join a boycott – as a target.
Bruce Godfrey has been a loud and notorious advocate of lawful civil same-sex marriage recognition in his home state of Maryland for many years. His unapologetic advocacy of equal protection principles and of the equal rights amendment of the Maryland Declaration of Rights advocacy has cost him friendships and business relationships. Godfrey is an inveterate opponent of your cause and a strong supporter of your most implacable legislative foes in the Maryland State House and General Assembly. He earned your boycott through loud commentary on this issue as a straight ally of equal protection of the laws on Facebook alone, and will continue to advocate for equal protection of the laws in Maryland per his Maryland Attorney Oath.
It was said of the late actor Paul Newman that his proudest life achievement was being placed on the infamous “enemies short list” of President Nixon during the Watergate era. If NOM requires a certain amount of achievement in opposition to your aims to merit a boycott, please receive this as a request for the clarification of your boycott criteria so that the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey may, through diligence and honest effort, merit that honor. Please target Bruce Godfrey for boycott; he intends to earn it.
When juxtaposed with another ruling that allows cops to arrest you for anything, (Seriously, not fastening a seat belt, because the cop in question had a vendetta, and for taking a sip of coke eating one french fry on the DC subway) it means that Rush Limbaugh’s constant refrain of, “Grab your ankles,” has become reality.
The arrest of a Pittsburgh man described as a Taliban sympathiser has sparked allegations that the FBI deployed a notorious confidential informant used in previous controversial stings on suspected Muslim radicals.
Khalifah al-Akili, 34, was arrested in a police raid on his home on March 15. He was later charged with illegally possessing a gun after having previous felony convictions for drug dealing. However, at his court appearance an FBI agent testified that al-Akili had made radical Islamic statements and that police had uncovered unspecified jihadist literature at his home.
But, in a strange twist, al-Akili’s arrest came just days after he had sent out an email to friends and local Muslim civil rights groups complaining that he believed he was the target of an FBI “entrapment” sting. That refers to a controversial FBI tactic of using confidential informants – who often have criminal records or are paid large sums of money – to facilitate “fake” terrorist plots for suspects to invent or carry out.
In the email – which was also sent to the Guardian before al-Akili was arrested – he detailed meeting two men he believed were FBI informants because of the way they talked about radical Islam and appeared to want to get him to make jihadist statements. According to his account, one of them, who called himself Saeed Torres, asked him to buy a gun. Al-Aikili said he refused. The other, who was called Mohammed, offered to help him go to Pakistan for possible Islamic radical training. Al-Akili also refused.
It looks like the FBI was was trying to manufacture some more terrorists, and when this guy started realized that some weird sh%$ was going down, and emailed the press, they busted him.
Let’s be clear, he is being charged with breaking the law. It is alliedalleged that as a felon, he did break the law when he fired a friend’s rifle at the range 2 years ago, but he’s being held without bail because prosecutors are alleging that he is a terrorist.
This isn’t making us any safer, and I cannot imagine how this can do anything but feed distrust of law enforcement among among American Muslims.
Samsung’s 2012 top-of-the-line plasmas and LED HDTVs offer new features never before available within a television including a built-in, internally wired HD camera, twin microphones, face tracking and speech recognition. While these features give you unprecedented control over an HDTV, the devices themselves, more similar than ever to a personal computer, may allow hackers or even Samsung to see and hear you and your family, and collect extremely personal data.
While Web cameras and Internet connectivity are not new to HDTVs, their complete integration is, and it’s the always connected camera and microphones, combined with the option of third-party apps (not to mention Samsung’s own software) gives us cause for concern regarding the privacy of TV buyers and their friends and families.
Samsung has not released a privacy policy clarifying what data it is collecting and sharing with regard to the new TV sets. And while there is no current evidence of any particular security hole or untoward behavior by Samsung’s app partners, Samsung has only stated that it “assumes no responsibility, and shall not be liable” in the event that a product or service is not “appropriate.”
…………
A Samsung representative showed how, once set up and connected to the Internet, these models will automatically talk to the Samsung cloud and enable viewers to use new and exciting apps.
These Samsung TVs locate and make note of registered viewers via sophisticated face recognition software. This means if you tell the TV whose faces belong to which users in your family, it personalizes the experience to each recognized family member. If you have friends over, it could log these faces as well.
In addition, the TV listens and responds to specific voice commands. To use the feature, the microphone is active. What concerns us is the integration of both an active camera and microphone. A Samsung representative tells us you can deactivate the voice feature; however this is done via software, not a hard switch like the one you use to turn a room light on or off.
Seriously Eric Arthur Blair must be spinning in his grave at sufficient velocity to power all of Totnes on Devon.
Yes, we have a TV that watches you back, just like Big Brother in 1984.
Any bets on how long before the NSA hacks the cloud that this interfaces, so they can spy into people’s homes? Certainly, the TOS described here would allow it, so perhaps they would not even have to hack into the system. They just need to twist some arms at Samsung.