Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s office said in a memo dated Tuesday that proposed rules that would require private and faith-based groups, such as Catholic Charities and Jewish Family Services, to allow gay parents to adopt children “does not comport with applicable state law and public policy.”
The New York Times reports on Wednesday that the shortage of sodium thiopental, covered previously by Amicus, is causing corrections officials in states across the country to take desperate, and possibly illegal, measures to obtain the supplies of the drugs needed to carry out executions.
The 9th Circuit Monday upheld the action by an Arizona district court blocking parts of Arizona’s controversial immigration law from going into effect. The ruling by District Judge Susan R. Bolton that the court upheld blocked provisions in the law that would allow for warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants and would criminalize the failure of immigrants to carry registration papers.
Just weeks after Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin pushed through his plan to cut off the collective bargaining rights of
Politico reports that Planned Parenthood, an organization that had been very critical of the compromises accepted by the Obama administration in the context of the health care debate, is much more confident that its interests will be protected in the context of the ongoing budget battle with budget-hawk conservatives.
The Washington Post today reports on a new poll showing that the momentum in favor of same-sex marriage has finally
It’s March and that means it’s time for March Madness, time for everyone to fill out their bracket, join a pool, and sneakily watch games online instead of doing work. All of this fun is created by the presence of student-athletes at America’s Division I colleges and universities, and we need to remember that these people are students, as well as athletes. The racial graduation gap has grown from 22 percent in 2009 to a current level of 32 percent.
The Supreme Court head argument on March 2 in the case of Ashcroft v. Al-Kidd, questioning whether John Ashcroft is entitled to immunity from charges that Abdullah Al-Kidd was held under the act allowing detention of material witnesses, but was treated as a suspect and was in fact never intended to be a witness in any trial. Ashcroft v. Iqbal did enough to undermine the ability of those wrongfully detained by an overzealous government to challenge their detentions, and now Ashcroft asks the court to go even further. The Court needs to take a strong stance that waving the flag of fighting terrorism is not a license to ignore the democratic freedoms government officials claim to be protecting.
As usual when right-wing politicians want to block a strongly Democratic voting bloc from exercising their right to vote, Republicans in New Hampshire and elsewhere are trotting out the tired excuse of preventing fraud to support new bills that will curtail the ability of students, African-Americans, and other core Democratic groups from voting.
Whether you believe the Constitution is a living document, or whether you believe the Constitution is rigid and should only be interpreted according the expressed intent of the framers, we can all agree that the Constitution protects free speech (except apparently Samuel Alito). The Supreme Court sent a resounding message this week when it upheld the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to speak in the most offensive possible voice at the most sensitive of times, at military funerals.
The Washington Post this week reminds readers that abortion rights can’t defend themselves. Apparently if Democrats and Pro-Choice groups do
